Retiree Musings: Fall 2023 Edition

Retiree Musings – Fall 2023 Edition

I am a little late with my latest retirement update. I’ve been out of town for the last few weeks and my schedule and routine have changed a little as a result. Fortune and retirement smiled on us, and I have had the opportunity to stay with my dad these past few weeks after his hip replacement surgery. He has done great, they had him up and walking fifteen minutes after getting back into the room from recovery.

Dad’s surgeon is a bit of a character. He is probably in his 70s himself and is a rather large and intimidating man having served in the Gulf War as a surgeon. He came into the room prior to surgery to go over the plan and was wearing a flak jacket. He told us that he was a “sweater” and that he wore a flak jacket to keep cool. That didn’t make a lot of sense until he had someone feel it and it was filled with ice packs. He was correct that he was a man prone to perspiration as after the surgery his pale blue scrubs were now dark blue and soaked with sweat. He was quite a talker as well but had a somewhat unnerving mannerism in that he never ended conversations with ending or transitional phrases or words. He would just stop speaking, turn around, and leave the room. I told him that I was recently retired and that I had practiced as a clinical psychologist and that I had done a good bit of forensic work. He told me to sit down and proceeded to talk with me for twenty minutes about his experiences working with prisoners and in correctional settings.

By staying with dad for the last few weeks, I have gotten to spend the most amount of time in my hometown since I was in college. It has been nice to see family and friends and see the outpouring of support to my dad during his recovery. We ate very well and had a lot of great company and socialization.

One day while walking downtown looking for a mailbox to mail a letter, I ran into a childhood sports nemesis. It was the summer of 1981, and we were facing the best team in Anderson County Little League Baseball. Our opponent had the best player in the league, but we had somehow held him and his team in check until the last inning. In a move that locals are still questioning to this day, our manager decided to put me in to relief pitch. We acquired two outs pretty quickly but as the sports gods would have it, their best player came up with the game on the line and me on the mound questioning the sanity of our coach. As all good sports moments tend to occur, the count went full, and it all came down to one pitch. The law of averages caught up with us and he rips my 47mph fastball to the gap in left center. The ball goes between the outfielders and rolls to the wall. As if from a movie script, he stumbles coming around second as our center fielder reaches the ball lying at the fence. Our catcher thought the game was over and had already started walking to the dugout in disgust. Naturally, their third base coach gave him the sign to try for home, so I rushed towards home plate and prepared to do my best Johnny Bench impression hoping that I was not going to die. Our center fielder throws what may still be the most perfect outfield throw I have ever seen, and I catch the ball and brace for impact. Time slows down and I try not to grit my teeth too hard as I am sure I will be trying to find them in the dirt soon enough, but the impact never comes. I think to myself, “did he stumble again?” So, I hesitantly opened my eyes and no he was not stumbling but flying! He leaped over me and scored the winning run. I was promptly sent down to the Minor League after that and our coach started drinking again.

While staying with my dad, I also got to take in the world-famous Anderson County Burgo Festival. If you are not familiar with burgoo it is Kentucky’s most famous stew, usually made for big gatherings in huge kettles. Some people say that burgoo dates to before the Civil War and as legend has it, was invented by a French chef. Like a mulligan stew, it’s sort of an empty-the-fridge recipe. Burgoos typically have at least three different meats, and plenty of vegetables such as corn, okra, and lima beans. Burgoo lovers differ on whether the stew ought to be cooked into a brown, undifferentiated mass, or whether you can still see individual ingredients. When people from other states ask me about burgoo, I often tell them that it was made up of whatever we could find on the road and/or in the field that looked and smelled like it might be edible and that it could include anything from rabbits, wild onions, ramps, and squirrels.

I have been fortunate to live in a few different states in both large cities and small towns, but I have been lucky enough to have spent most of my life in two small towns with great festivals, Lawrenceburg and Maysville. Kentucky has a lot of unique festivals which range from the rather delicious (World Chicken Festival) to the downright strange (Wool Festival and Wooly Worm Festival). I wonder how some of these festivals started. You know there have been mayors and magistrates who have heard it from their spouses and families about messing around and missing out on all the good festivals. “Frank, you dallied around and now all we got left to choose from now are the Possum, Rotten Crab Apple, and Tree Bark festivals”.

While I have been out of town, Cathie has held down the fort with respect to my back porch peppers and Spanish moss.

I continue my daily conversations with my AI health coach. I am down 5 pounds so far and have had no further encounters with meter readers at this time. It’s interesting how you develop accountability to a computer program thinking about what your AI coach is going to say about what you ate and your activity level. I fear this is an ingenious start to how the Terminators will eventually become our overlords.

Best thing I’ve read is The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel.

Best thing I’ve eaten is the first pot of chili of the season made by Cathie.

Best thing I’ve watched is Hot Ones on YouTube. If you are not familiar with the show, it is an interview style show where the host interviews celebrities while they sample increasingly hotter chicken wings as the interview progresses. This process seems to wear down the celebrities who drop their defenses and share more openly. I’ve recently seen Hot Ones branded chicken wings in the store, but I am afraid to try them.

October 14, 2023