Published Feb. 18, 2008
Value City is closing.
Sadder words were never spoken.
To me.
For you see, you either love or hate shopping at Value City. There is no in-between.
But the people who love it - me - find a lot of good bargains there for the people who hate it - my husband, my sons, my mother, my brothers and just about everyone else I know.
It's a place for treasure hunters - and people who don't mind crawling around on the floor looking for those treasures.
I was there at Christmas time, looking for presents - specifically sheets and men's dress shirts.
Get a shopping cart - if you can find one - and follow me on that Christmas shopping trip.
But first we have to get into the store, and that's not easy. There are tables laden with seasonal items - today it would be Easter baskets; at Christmas, it was wrapping paper and popcorn tins - that seem to have been placed close together to keep us from getting in the store, but we will not be deterred. Just push the cart hard and squeeze through.
The sheets are over to the right.
The shelves are lined with sheets of every color, good sheets with high-thread counts - and cheap. But they are packaged separately, the fitted sheet, the top sheet and the pillowcases.
There seem to be a lot of packages of tan sheets. I pull a couple of them off the shelves. The colors are close but not quite matching. I pull out a couple more.
Pretty soon I have more than I can hold, and none of them match. I put them all on the floor. I never realized there were so many shades of tan.
I keep pulling them off the shelf and soon I put another pile on the ground.
Then I get on my hands and knees to re-sort my piles.
Not a match in the lot.
I put them all back on the shelves. It's hot in here. I take off my coat, lay it over the top of the cart and survey the selection again.
White. White is white, right?
When I start pulling white sheets off the shelf, I realize that there is white and cream and patterned white.
Let's forget about the sheets.
I walk around the perimeter of the store toward the shoes. I don't really need any shoes but it's fun to look. I especially like to look at the women's shoes - fancy high heels - in size 12 and bigger. Who wears those?
Maybe the women who go with the men who shop across the aisle in the big-and-tall department, where I have seen size 6X.
Housewares are on the far side of the store.
In the clearance aisle are flower vases and baskets and picture frames. Lamps and candleholders and "art" objects. Some are broken and many are missing their mate - kind of like the sheets - but it's as fascinating as any shopping trip you can take.
The last stop is the dress shirts. I see a sea of lavender and an occasional bright blue or yellow on the shirt tables. This isn't looking promising.
In the end, I find a black shirt in the size I want to get but put it back. I'm simply too exhausted to weigh the merits of that shirt.
I head toward the checkout. Hours have passed since I squeezed past that wrapping paper, and I have nothing in my cart to show for it.
But that's the thing about Value City. You always knew that even if you didn't find something that day, you'll find something next time.
Except that soon there will be no more next time.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The son shines, whether or not his house does
Entry Number 8,687 in things they never tell you when you have a baby: Some day that baby will grow up and get his own place and you — the mother — will be a houseguest there.
Mother. Houseguest. Mother. Houseguest.
How can one possibly be both those things?
My husband and I recently spent a long weekend with our older son who lives in Denver.
He has a very small two-bedroom apartment and a roommate who was gone for the weekend.
So there we were, three people in about 550 square feet of living space for three days.
The place was very clean, especially for a place that houses two working men.
But … (yes, there’s always that “but,” isn’t there?)
It was Super Bowl Sunday and we decided to make some party food and hang around the apartment to watch the game.
We went to the grocery store and picked up the ingredients we needed. When we got home, I set off for the kitchen to cook and the men watched the pre-game show in the living room.
The kitchen was clean and the countertop was cleared off but the dish-drainer — with its bad design containing a hundred nooks and crannies — was in dire need of some scrubbing.
That was the first dilemma I found myself in: Am I a good mother or a meddling houseguest if I clean it?
Would the chore be appreciated or seen as an insult to his housekeeping?
Well, I cleaned the dish-drainer. And while I was at it, I took everything off the counter and wiped it down.
Ahhh. Now I could cook.
“Thanks for cleaning up,” my son said when he came into the kitchen during a commercial break to check on me.
It sounded sincere enough.
So, I went in the cupboard to get out a pot for the chili and a pan for the cornbread. Well, I found a pot, lots of them actually, but the only thing vaguely resembling a pan was a cookie sheet. Wouldn’t work for making cornbread.
I started a mental list of things I would buy for my son when he was at work the next day.
And that was the second dilemma I found myself in. Was I still supposed to see there were necessary items missing from his cupboard, or should I respect his definition of “necessary”?
Well, I went to the store and bought a square baking pan the next day, along with some dish rags, a serving spoon with no slots — because all he had in his drawer were slotted ones — a garlic press and a couple of other things.
“Thanks for buying all that stuff,” my son said when he got home from work.
It sounded sincere enough.
While I was staying there, I tried to be a good houseguest. I cleared my stuff out of the bathroom when I was done. I reused the bath towel he gave me. I tried to be as unobtrusive as a mother could be.
We really did have a great time.
After three days, we left, my eyes brimming with tears as usual.
I think next time I visit, I’ll try to tell him what I really want to tell him — how proud I am of him. How proud I am that he has managed to make his way in life.
Without cornbread pans and garlic presses and dish rags.
And, of course, the thing I’ll never be able to say.
Without me.
Mother. Houseguest. Mother. Houseguest.
How can one possibly be both those things?
My husband and I recently spent a long weekend with our older son who lives in Denver.
He has a very small two-bedroom apartment and a roommate who was gone for the weekend.
So there we were, three people in about 550 square feet of living space for three days.
The place was very clean, especially for a place that houses two working men.
But … (yes, there’s always that “but,” isn’t there?)
It was Super Bowl Sunday and we decided to make some party food and hang around the apartment to watch the game.
We went to the grocery store and picked up the ingredients we needed. When we got home, I set off for the kitchen to cook and the men watched the pre-game show in the living room.
The kitchen was clean and the countertop was cleared off but the dish-drainer — with its bad design containing a hundred nooks and crannies — was in dire need of some scrubbing.
That was the first dilemma I found myself in: Am I a good mother or a meddling houseguest if I clean it?
Would the chore be appreciated or seen as an insult to his housekeeping?
Well, I cleaned the dish-drainer. And while I was at it, I took everything off the counter and wiped it down.
Ahhh. Now I could cook.
“Thanks for cleaning up,” my son said when he came into the kitchen during a commercial break to check on me.
It sounded sincere enough.
So, I went in the cupboard to get out a pot for the chili and a pan for the cornbread. Well, I found a pot, lots of them actually, but the only thing vaguely resembling a pan was a cookie sheet. Wouldn’t work for making cornbread.
I started a mental list of things I would buy for my son when he was at work the next day.
And that was the second dilemma I found myself in. Was I still supposed to see there were necessary items missing from his cupboard, or should I respect his definition of “necessary”?
Well, I went to the store and bought a square baking pan the next day, along with some dish rags, a serving spoon with no slots — because all he had in his drawer were slotted ones — a garlic press and a couple of other things.
“Thanks for buying all that stuff,” my son said when he got home from work.
It sounded sincere enough.
While I was staying there, I tried to be a good houseguest. I cleared my stuff out of the bathroom when I was done. I reused the bath towel he gave me. I tried to be as unobtrusive as a mother could be.
We really did have a great time.
After three days, we left, my eyes brimming with tears as usual.
I think next time I visit, I’ll try to tell him what I really want to tell him — how proud I am of him. How proud I am that he has managed to make his way in life.
Without cornbread pans and garlic presses and dish rags.
And, of course, the thing I’ll never be able to say.
Without me.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Hurka recipe
After I wrote the column below, I got many requests for the hurka recipe my grandparents used. I e-mailed my aunt, Anita Csincsak, in Tecumseh, Mich., for the recipe because it was her husband, Dick, who inherited the hurka maker when my grandparents died.
Anyway, this is what she sent me:
Hungarian Hurka, from Dick Csincsak
Pork Liver 2& 1/2 lbs.
Pork Heart 2 & 1/2 lbs.
Fresh Side 2 & 1/2 lbs.
Pork Shoulder 4 & 1/4 lbs.
Rice ( 4 cups) 2 lbs.
Onions 1 lb.
Lard 1 lb.
Salt 3/16 cup
Pepper 1/8 cup
Boil pork livers and hearts until punctured when they do not bleed.
Cook the fresh side and pork butts ( or shoulder) in a separate kettle.
Cooked diced onions in the lard.
Cook rice.... one cup rice per 2 cups water
Grind the cooked meat and add to the rice, onions and seasoning
Stuff hurka and boil in water till they rise.
Let set and package..
Patti, there is no way a novice could make this without someone showing them.
... Love you Aunt Nin
So, hope that helps all you little hurka makers.
p.
Anyway, this is what she sent me:
Hungarian Hurka, from Dick Csincsak
Pork Liver 2& 1/2 lbs.
Pork Heart 2 & 1/2 lbs.
Fresh Side 2 & 1/2 lbs.
Pork Shoulder 4 & 1/4 lbs.
Rice ( 4 cups) 2 lbs.
Onions 1 lb.
Lard 1 lb.
Salt 3/16 cup
Pepper 1/8 cup
Boil pork livers and hearts until punctured when they do not bleed.
Cook the fresh side and pork butts ( or shoulder) in a separate kettle.
Cooked diced onions in the lard.
Cook rice.... one cup rice per 2 cups water
Grind the cooked meat and add to the rice, onions and seasoning
Stuff hurka and boil in water till they rise.
Let set and package..
Patti, there is no way a novice could make this without someone showing them.
... Love you Aunt Nin
So, hope that helps all you little hurka makers.
p.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Opposite of fast food? That'd be hurka
Published in The Chronicle Feb. 4, 2008
Some people have stories about their ancestors picking up muskets and going out into the wilderness to hunt for food.
Me? I have stories about my ancestors picking up a meat-grinder and going into the basement to make sausage.
My grandparents had a very limited list of things they would eat, mostly things familiar to Eastern Europeans that you couldn’t find in an A&P, a Stop&Shop or a Pick ’n’ Pay.
Things such as a Hungarian rice sausage called hurka (pronounced who’d-kuh), which was made with pork shoulder, onions and rice -- and other things you probably don’t want to know about.
My grandparents made their own hurka because shadier sausage-makers used ingredients not to their liking – things such as pig snouts and ears.
None of that for my grandparents. They only wanted the “good” stuff – things such as pig livers and lungs.
Scary as that sounds, it was good stuff.
And unfortunately, when my grandparents died, so did the hurka making. It is just too much trouble.
These days, the only time we get hurka is when my parents order some from a local Hungarian church and share it with us. My dad brought some over last week.
When my grandparents made hurka, it was quite an operation -- an operation that would never be done in a kitchen. The grease and the mess made it no job for a spotless Hungarian kitchen.
That’s why my grandparents had a second stove in the basement where grease and mess belong. It was in a small room off the basement TV room.
If you are old enough, you probably remember those basement TV rooms people had before there were family rooms. They contained furniture and TVs deemed no longer good enough for the living room.
It was in this big TV room that the actual sausage-making took place.
Along one wall was a long table that my grandfather had fashioned out of plywood and scrap lumber. It was covered with a vinyl tablecloth that was thumb-tacked under the edge.
On that table was the sausage-maker, a heavy metal appliance that looked something like a meat-grinder only bigger. Next to the sausage-maker was a pan filled with water in which sausage casings – another thing you don’ really want to know about -- were soaking.
The cooked rice and meat products were brought from the stove to this table where the meat was ground, mixed with the rice, seasoned and loaded into the sausage casings.
My grandfather would take a sausage casing out of the water and push it onto the sausage maker spigot the same way pantyhose are gathered on your foot before you pull them up your leg.
Then he would crank the machine and the sausage mixture would slowly fill the casing. My grandmother would guide the plump link, pull it off and curl it into a ring. She’d place the ring on a tray to await packaging in white butcher paper. They would repeat the process until they ran out of mixture or ran out of casings, whichever came first.
And then my grandmother would bake some of the hurka in a cast iron skillet in the oven for any helpers -- or kids who were hanging around.
Mmm, I can almost smell it cooking.
Wait, I can smell it cooking.
I put some in the oven – and I think it’s just about done.
Some people have stories about their ancestors picking up muskets and going out into the wilderness to hunt for food.
Me? I have stories about my ancestors picking up a meat-grinder and going into the basement to make sausage.
My grandparents had a very limited list of things they would eat, mostly things familiar to Eastern Europeans that you couldn’t find in an A&P, a Stop&Shop or a Pick ’n’ Pay.
Things such as a Hungarian rice sausage called hurka (pronounced who’d-kuh), which was made with pork shoulder, onions and rice -- and other things you probably don’t want to know about.
My grandparents made their own hurka because shadier sausage-makers used ingredients not to their liking – things such as pig snouts and ears.
None of that for my grandparents. They only wanted the “good” stuff – things such as pig livers and lungs.
Scary as that sounds, it was good stuff.
And unfortunately, when my grandparents died, so did the hurka making. It is just too much trouble.
These days, the only time we get hurka is when my parents order some from a local Hungarian church and share it with us. My dad brought some over last week.
When my grandparents made hurka, it was quite an operation -- an operation that would never be done in a kitchen. The grease and the mess made it no job for a spotless Hungarian kitchen.
That’s why my grandparents had a second stove in the basement where grease and mess belong. It was in a small room off the basement TV room.
If you are old enough, you probably remember those basement TV rooms people had before there were family rooms. They contained furniture and TVs deemed no longer good enough for the living room.
It was in this big TV room that the actual sausage-making took place.
Along one wall was a long table that my grandfather had fashioned out of plywood and scrap lumber. It was covered with a vinyl tablecloth that was thumb-tacked under the edge.
On that table was the sausage-maker, a heavy metal appliance that looked something like a meat-grinder only bigger. Next to the sausage-maker was a pan filled with water in which sausage casings – another thing you don’ really want to know about -- were soaking.
The cooked rice and meat products were brought from the stove to this table where the meat was ground, mixed with the rice, seasoned and loaded into the sausage casings.
My grandfather would take a sausage casing out of the water and push it onto the sausage maker spigot the same way pantyhose are gathered on your foot before you pull them up your leg.
Then he would crank the machine and the sausage mixture would slowly fill the casing. My grandmother would guide the plump link, pull it off and curl it into a ring. She’d place the ring on a tray to await packaging in white butcher paper. They would repeat the process until they ran out of mixture or ran out of casings, whichever came first.
And then my grandmother would bake some of the hurka in a cast iron skillet in the oven for any helpers -- or kids who were hanging around.
Mmm, I can almost smell it cooking.
Wait, I can smell it cooking.
I put some in the oven – and I think it’s just about done.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
It's what's in the cupboard, not in the bank
Published Jan. 14, 2008
Know how to tell if someone is really well off?
You can’t tell by the house she lives in or the car she drives. There is a good chance the bank owns both of those things, and she can just barely make the monthly payments.
You can’t tell by the clothes she wears or the vacations she takes. Those expenses could be piled up on a Visa card or two or three.
No, the only way to truly gauge the wealth of a person is by snooping in her cupboards.
For financial well-being is measured in rolls of toilet paper and paper towels and Scotch tape.
Or cans of chicken stock and tomato sauce.
Or jars of peanut butter and mayonnaise, bottles of ketchup and vegetable oil.
Yes, wealthy people have healthy cupboards.
It’s true.
One time a lot of years ago, we were overnight guests of one of my college friends.
She and I both got journalism degrees from Ohio State, but I used mine to get into newspapers and she used hers to get into corporate America.
While my career path may have been nobler, it certainly appeared hers was more lucrative.
And I figured that out by what I found under her bathroom sink. There was not one extra roll of toilet paper — like the cupboard in my bathroom — there were several packages of toilet tissue.
There was not one extra bar of soap, there were a dozen.
And there were extra tubes of toothpaste and shampoo and even toothbrushes.
Wow. I felt as if I was in a store.
How luxurious it was, I thought, to run out of something and find more in the cupboard.
I’m going to be like that someday, I thought.
Someday, I’m not going to have to run to the store every time I’m out of tissue or peanut butter or ketchup. Someday, I’m going to have extra.
And, for the most part, I have achieved that goal.
Now, if I run out of pancake syrup, I can go to the pantry and find a full bottle.
Or when my son dumps the last of the A1 sauce on his steak, there is often another bottle up in the cupboard.
Ahh, it’s great to find things in the cupboard.
I’ve been on a hunt for matzo meal for a couple of weeks. Matzo meal is that stuff that you use to make matzo balls to put in chicken soup.
I looked for it at the local grocery stores. I looked for it at the West Side Market. I couldn’t find it anywhere.
I stopped over at my parents’ house the other day. My mom’s got a larder that could feed the town of Amherst in a natural disaster.
But it wasn’t always like that. There were five kids in the family. We were almost always out of one thing or another.
I told her about my futile search for matzo meal.
“I have some in the cupboard,” she said. “If you want it, take it.”
Hmmm. I scoured Northeast Ohio for the stuff and my mother has some in her cupboard.
“It’s been in there for a while but it’s not open. It should still be good,” she said.
As I took the box of matzo meal down from the shelf, I couldn’t help but think that the only thing better than having a full cupboard is knowing that your mother has one, too.
Know how to tell if someone is really well off?
You can’t tell by the house she lives in or the car she drives. There is a good chance the bank owns both of those things, and she can just barely make the monthly payments.
You can’t tell by the clothes she wears or the vacations she takes. Those expenses could be piled up on a Visa card or two or three.
No, the only way to truly gauge the wealth of a person is by snooping in her cupboards.
For financial well-being is measured in rolls of toilet paper and paper towels and Scotch tape.
Or cans of chicken stock and tomato sauce.
Or jars of peanut butter and mayonnaise, bottles of ketchup and vegetable oil.
Yes, wealthy people have healthy cupboards.
It’s true.
One time a lot of years ago, we were overnight guests of one of my college friends.
She and I both got journalism degrees from Ohio State, but I used mine to get into newspapers and she used hers to get into corporate America.
While my career path may have been nobler, it certainly appeared hers was more lucrative.
And I figured that out by what I found under her bathroom sink. There was not one extra roll of toilet paper — like the cupboard in my bathroom — there were several packages of toilet tissue.
There was not one extra bar of soap, there were a dozen.
And there were extra tubes of toothpaste and shampoo and even toothbrushes.
Wow. I felt as if I was in a store.
How luxurious it was, I thought, to run out of something and find more in the cupboard.
I’m going to be like that someday, I thought.
Someday, I’m not going to have to run to the store every time I’m out of tissue or peanut butter or ketchup. Someday, I’m going to have extra.
And, for the most part, I have achieved that goal.
Now, if I run out of pancake syrup, I can go to the pantry and find a full bottle.
Or when my son dumps the last of the A1 sauce on his steak, there is often another bottle up in the cupboard.
Ahh, it’s great to find things in the cupboard.
I’ve been on a hunt for matzo meal for a couple of weeks. Matzo meal is that stuff that you use to make matzo balls to put in chicken soup.
I looked for it at the local grocery stores. I looked for it at the West Side Market. I couldn’t find it anywhere.
I stopped over at my parents’ house the other day. My mom’s got a larder that could feed the town of Amherst in a natural disaster.
But it wasn’t always like that. There were five kids in the family. We were almost always out of one thing or another.
I told her about my futile search for matzo meal.
“I have some in the cupboard,” she said. “If you want it, take it.”
Hmmm. I scoured Northeast Ohio for the stuff and my mother has some in her cupboard.
“It’s been in there for a while but it’s not open. It should still be good,” she said.
As I took the box of matzo meal down from the shelf, I couldn’t help but think that the only thing better than having a full cupboard is knowing that your mother has one, too.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
We have a new perspective on the news
Published Jan. 7, 2008
Until last week, the newsroom had not been affected by the $11 million expansion and renovation project going on at The Chronicle.
Oh, sure, we've been a little inconvenienced.
Most of the parking lot was off-limits for a while, leaving us scrambling for parking spots.
And the back door, our main entrance, was closed off.
Pounding and jack-hammering have been made it difficult to talk on the phone.
And then there was the time we had no phones because water leaked through the roof into the phone control room.
Most everything has been coated with a thin layer of construction dust for a while but it has hardly been noticed by reporters and editors quite at home in years-old dusty piles of notes and notebooks.
At least we all had our own little familiar spots, dusty and noisy as they were.
Until last week.
We had to empty the newsroom so the workers can come in and build us a brand new one.
Do you have any idea how much stuff is in a newsroom?
It's not just desks and bodies, it's file cabinet after file cabinet and drawer after drawer of information gathered before a lot of us were even born.
What do you do with box scores from a 1950 Elyria High baseball game, photos from a 1970 car accident, results from the 1982 Lorain County Fair?
Will they ever be used again? Probably not. But can we bring ourselves to throw them away? It's tough.
And in the midst of all this priceless stuff are people, people who had to relocate until the newsroom construction is done.
"Get your stuff packed up," I started telling them a couple months ago.
But you see, there is a reason most of us got in the news business -- we can only do something when a deadline is imminent.
So there wasn't a lot of packing done until we got word a couple weeks ago that we had to be completely out of the newsroom by Jan. 4.
We hurriedly packed up our stuff and carried it to our temporary surroundings, a spot on the first floor that has already been remodeled.
We are a little crowded. The desks are arranged in three rows of back-to-back desks stretching from one side of the room to the other. Wires run across the floor to connect our computers.
But everyone seems to be working on rebuilding his or her own little area.
One reporter uses as a privacy screen a bulletin board onto which pictures of her children are tacked.
Other reporters have squeezed bookcases between their chairs and the wall and put on them essential reporter things -- like phone books and dictionaries and city directories and coffee mugs.
One wall is lined with more than a dozen file cabinets filled with things too precious to leave behind.
As exasperating as it was to get the staff to move -- and throw some things away -- it also made me remember why I like them all so much.
The newspaper isn't just a job to them. It's who they are.
In the piles of things that were headed for storage, I spotted a magazine holder, its metal sides carved into a word.
I picked it up, carried it down to our temporary quarters and perched it on top of a tall bookcase.
NEWS is the word carved into its sides.
And as it stands there, its metal shining out over us like a beacon, it feels as if we are home again.
Until last week, the newsroom had not been affected by the $11 million expansion and renovation project going on at The Chronicle.
Oh, sure, we've been a little inconvenienced.
Most of the parking lot was off-limits for a while, leaving us scrambling for parking spots.
And the back door, our main entrance, was closed off.
Pounding and jack-hammering have been made it difficult to talk on the phone.
And then there was the time we had no phones because water leaked through the roof into the phone control room.
Most everything has been coated with a thin layer of construction dust for a while but it has hardly been noticed by reporters and editors quite at home in years-old dusty piles of notes and notebooks.
At least we all had our own little familiar spots, dusty and noisy as they were.
Until last week.
We had to empty the newsroom so the workers can come in and build us a brand new one.
Do you have any idea how much stuff is in a newsroom?
It's not just desks and bodies, it's file cabinet after file cabinet and drawer after drawer of information gathered before a lot of us were even born.
What do you do with box scores from a 1950 Elyria High baseball game, photos from a 1970 car accident, results from the 1982 Lorain County Fair?
Will they ever be used again? Probably not. But can we bring ourselves to throw them away? It's tough.
And in the midst of all this priceless stuff are people, people who had to relocate until the newsroom construction is done.
"Get your stuff packed up," I started telling them a couple months ago.
But you see, there is a reason most of us got in the news business -- we can only do something when a deadline is imminent.
So there wasn't a lot of packing done until we got word a couple weeks ago that we had to be completely out of the newsroom by Jan. 4.
We hurriedly packed up our stuff and carried it to our temporary surroundings, a spot on the first floor that has already been remodeled.
We are a little crowded. The desks are arranged in three rows of back-to-back desks stretching from one side of the room to the other. Wires run across the floor to connect our computers.
But everyone seems to be working on rebuilding his or her own little area.
One reporter uses as a privacy screen a bulletin board onto which pictures of her children are tacked.
Other reporters have squeezed bookcases between their chairs and the wall and put on them essential reporter things -- like phone books and dictionaries and city directories and coffee mugs.
One wall is lined with more than a dozen file cabinets filled with things too precious to leave behind.
As exasperating as it was to get the staff to move -- and throw some things away -- it also made me remember why I like them all so much.
The newspaper isn't just a job to them. It's who they are.
In the piles of things that were headed for storage, I spotted a magazine holder, its metal sides carved into a word.
I picked it up, carried it down to our temporary quarters and perched it on top of a tall bookcase.
NEWS is the word carved into its sides.
And as it stands there, its metal shining out over us like a beacon, it feels as if we are home again.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Celluloid heroes have nothing on skunk man
Published Dec. 31, 2007
It was the final minutes of the triple-feature.
We had watched the "The Bourne Identity" and "The Bourne Supremacy."
And now we were watching the end of "The Bourne Ultimatum."
The boys were sprawled across the sectional pit.
I was on the floor in front of the TV.
And Jason Bourne was floating in New York’s East River.
Could he survive a 10-story fall and the shots fired at him as he fell?
In the midst of the suspense, I realized something menacing was in our own house.
I smelled it.
And suddenly, being face down in the East River didn’t seem so bad.
I got up the next morning and the smell of the menace from the night before still lingered.
A skunk.
My husband had found the source of the odor: The critter was hunkered down in a shoebox-size hole that allowed access to the plumbing under the pool house.
"Come see," my husband said.
We bent at the waist, squinting down into the hole while keeping our distance, ready to run if need be.
The skunk wasn’t moving but it looked as if it was watching us. Its teeth were clenching a stick like a dog clenches a bone.
"Let’s get something and poke him," I said to my husband.
"Poke him?"
"Maybe he’ll run away," I said.
My husband got the handle of a shovel and poked. I stood back.
"I think he’s dead," my husband said.
"We need to call someone," I said as I walked toward the house.
I went inside, pulled out the phone book and opened the yellow pages to Pest Control.
As I was dialing the phone, I looked out the window and saw my husband walking deliberately across the back yard.
He was carrying a handful of spear-like objects -- a spade, a tree trimmer and a couple other sticks. Draped over his other arm was a coiled orange extension cord.
He looked as if he was going to harpoon a seal.
A woman answered the phone.
"We don’t do skunks," she told me. "We only do bugs. You need critter control."
And then she rattled off some phone numbers of people who might be able to help.
I dialed one of the numbers.
"How much would you charge to get a dead skunk out from a hole in our yard?" I asked the man who answered.
"Are you sure he’s dead? $65."
Shoot, a bargain at twice the price.
I asked him how soon he could be here and went to tell the mighty hunter in the backyard that he was off the hook.
As we stood looking at the critter, we heard a car pull into the driveway.
The skunk man.
"That’s not a stick in its mouth," he said as he peered into the hole. "That’s an electrical wire. He must have been chewing on it and got zapped," he said, contorting his face into that of an electrocuted skunk.
My husband cut the electricity to the house so the critter control man didn’t end up like the critter. Then the skunk man went to work.
He thrust a grabber tool into the hole and yanked on the skunk’s head.
Whoa. That was it for me. I jumped back as the first try was unsuccessful and the critter’s head popped out of the tool.
But, a couple more yanks and it was out and safely deposited in a garbage bag.
Now, if only that grabber is strong enough to pull a body out of the East River …
It was the final minutes of the triple-feature.
We had watched the "The Bourne Identity" and "The Bourne Supremacy."
And now we were watching the end of "The Bourne Ultimatum."
The boys were sprawled across the sectional pit.
I was on the floor in front of the TV.
And Jason Bourne was floating in New York’s East River.
Could he survive a 10-story fall and the shots fired at him as he fell?
In the midst of the suspense, I realized something menacing was in our own house.
I smelled it.
And suddenly, being face down in the East River didn’t seem so bad.
I got up the next morning and the smell of the menace from the night before still lingered.
A skunk.
My husband had found the source of the odor: The critter was hunkered down in a shoebox-size hole that allowed access to the plumbing under the pool house.
"Come see," my husband said.
We bent at the waist, squinting down into the hole while keeping our distance, ready to run if need be.
The skunk wasn’t moving but it looked as if it was watching us. Its teeth were clenching a stick like a dog clenches a bone.
"Let’s get something and poke him," I said to my husband.
"Poke him?"
"Maybe he’ll run away," I said.
My husband got the handle of a shovel and poked. I stood back.
"I think he’s dead," my husband said.
"We need to call someone," I said as I walked toward the house.
I went inside, pulled out the phone book and opened the yellow pages to Pest Control.
As I was dialing the phone, I looked out the window and saw my husband walking deliberately across the back yard.
He was carrying a handful of spear-like objects -- a spade, a tree trimmer and a couple other sticks. Draped over his other arm was a coiled orange extension cord.
He looked as if he was going to harpoon a seal.
A woman answered the phone.
"We don’t do skunks," she told me. "We only do bugs. You need critter control."
And then she rattled off some phone numbers of people who might be able to help.
I dialed one of the numbers.
"How much would you charge to get a dead skunk out from a hole in our yard?" I asked the man who answered.
"Are you sure he’s dead? $65."
Shoot, a bargain at twice the price.
I asked him how soon he could be here and went to tell the mighty hunter in the backyard that he was off the hook.
As we stood looking at the critter, we heard a car pull into the driveway.
The skunk man.
"That’s not a stick in its mouth," he said as he peered into the hole. "That’s an electrical wire. He must have been chewing on it and got zapped," he said, contorting his face into that of an electrocuted skunk.
My husband cut the electricity to the house so the critter control man didn’t end up like the critter. Then the skunk man went to work.
He thrust a grabber tool into the hole and yanked on the skunk’s head.
Whoa. That was it for me. I jumped back as the first try was unsuccessful and the critter’s head popped out of the tool.
But, a couple more yanks and it was out and safely deposited in a garbage bag.
Now, if only that grabber is strong enough to pull a body out of the East River …
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