Wine and circumstance are of diminishing utility.
I was a like a similie to Pavlov’s dog Sunday night. (<—Grammarians will LAUGH at that!) I had enjoyed the week, a productive one toward the end, and part of that pleasure was the anticipation of enjoying a bottle of wine a friend and neiba had given me for helping lift a few fallen twigs. I knew the wine would be good, and it was not hard to consider it a 2006 vintage “carrot” waiting for me at end of my writing assignment. I think it’s the longest amount of time I’ve kept my hands off an uopened bottle since I turned 16 — just kidding; since I was 21. But when I ALMOST finished the assignment late Friday afternoon, I knew I would want to drink some wine on Superbrawl Sunday so if I bought a gallon of Carlo Rossi Burgundy Friday evening, I’d have some left at game time. An officer and gentleman named Dick Rossi was a pilot with the American Volunteer Group, a/k/a Flying Tigers, in World War 2 and it’s the same brand of wine my mother used to send me to buy by the gallon for her during her last years in Springfield. She drank Chablis. My “house wine” is the Burg. There was food in the house to take me to Monday IF I picked up some Cheetos, so it was a fast trip to CVS for some Cheetos, a gallonowine on sale, $6.99, and two combs. They are the first combs I’ve ever bought in my life, but the hair is getting longer and I didn’t want to go over the top by purchasing some hair spray, though I have in more lavish, free-spending years, when I was younger and had more cents.
By Sunday game time, there was remaining wine enough to propel me through four quarters and probably to Tuesday.
Because the station management on Neil Street in Champaign, Illinois years ago had stopped broadcasting CBS to my PROFOUND DISAPPOINTMENT, I was bound to the radio. That’s okay, I had declined an invitation from a friend to watch it at his place, and I’m not such a Sports fan I had do watch it anyhoo.
I still see the — make that SEETHE –when I consider how Channel 3/49 bean counters robbed the public’s free air of the David Letterman channel and wantonly slithered their “my TV” palaver into that channel like oozing a People magazine into a collection of New Yorkers. Not having CBS available on the public airways, requiring viewers to purchase it by subscribing to cable or satellite is a public dis-service to citizens of Springfield. But I digress.
Let me ‘xplain something about Cheetos. When you’re as old as I am, eating Cheetos with a prodigious quantity of Burgundy, transforms game time into nap time. I fell asleep semi-supinely in my Easily Chair, so named because of how difficult it is to drift off to Sleep City when posited there.
When I descended back into conscious thought, the game was over, so to speak, and the Bears had been “bagged.” I was sleepy enough that if I had simply taken a swig or to of Carlo Rossi and turned out the lights, it would have been a short return to the peaceful state from which I had just emerged. Such a strategem — drinking Burgundy to do what healthy people do with Nyquil or hair tonic — is unhealthy. Instead I toddled into the office and spent a few hours deleting pictures from my hard drive.
Mostly they were art reception pictures I’ve already posted at my arts sites. Some were taken with the Canon camera, and they are gone forever. In my state of mind, I decided anyone who wanted any of them had already asked. And I did a WHALE o’ a LOT of thinking about why I’m taking so many frikking pictures.
I did NOT want to go to bed listening to the British Broadcasting Company babbling about life in Eeeeendya . . . . brought to me by the only public radio station my clock radio can receive, an American radio station and worse, more unbelievable to moi, a Springfield radio station!
So if you think as little of their late night programming as I do, don’t blame me. I didn’t write them a check during the most recent fund raising campaign — when was it, last Thursday? And if I could receive WILL radio, you can be sure, “blody suttin” as WUIS might say, I bleeding would. But I digress . . .
So I stayed on task until 4:00. Then it was back to the EC, tuned into WGN and read some recently donated New Yorkers to settle my mind and ate the last of the Cheetos. CHEETOS! When will I ever loin? Of course I had to hydrate; didn’t want to dry–frikking– UP. And the Rossi Burg had not moved from where I left it about 7:30. So ingested red and read. Only problem: I could not find the screw on bottle cap when it was time to go to bed. I couldn’t let it sit open with an inch and a half remaining until Monday night. I really looked for that cap, because if you’ve never quaffed Carlo the way most normal people quaff Nyquil or cool water, you know it’s an action you do not do when not under some state of duress. Still, I could not let it turn to Vinegar. It was already about half way there. So I drank the rest of the wine, turned on WUIS and Rich Bradley (outstandingly competent news director and on-air broadcaster), turned off the lights and was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
<>I allowed myself to sleep late. That’s all I want to say except that it’s been a pathetically slow return to civilization today. I am aware of what this little entry makes me look like, and you know something? That’s okay. The chances of me connecting with life as it should be, I am almost convinced, lie mostly in my rear-view mirror. I remember those chances like so many Burma Shave signs on a two-lane Georgia state route. I should have let the Burgundy breathe longer, at least until Tuesday night, and if it became all vinegar, I would have been the wiser hummin’ bean to pour it down the sink. I’m not even going to look at the gifted vintage ‘06 until Saturday, even if, as I plan, I finish the writing assignment Tuesday.Tomorrow is an udder day. I shall squeeze it gently, with lotion on my hands, and if it comes out red, I shall walk away and grab something more practical — perhaps a bottle of Diet Classic Coke.
Live long . . . . . . and proper. (<— memo to myself)
