Helpless: An Elegy to Happy Acres

     My brother, Tom, pictured below, wrote a lovely memoir about Happy Acres when he first visited in 1974.  In the story he says 1971 but he is mistaken.  In his many wonderful stories, he is occasionally "mistaken" about who, how, where, why and when but plods on undaunted.  When I call him on some bit of mis-remembered trivia in one of his pieces, his stock response, which I have since adopted for my own writing is:  NEVER LET THE TRUTH GET IN THE WAY OF A GOOD STORY.  
     I apologize for the quality of the photo below.  I scanned it from the back cover of my brother's book Shave Ice, published in 1989.  My copy of the book, lovingly inscribed within, has been read and re-read; passed around among friends; been lost and finally been found again.  Currently the Happy Acres blog contains two of my brother's pieces from this book.  I plan on transcribing several more in the near future.  Once again, I apologize for the picture.  My brother's left ear is not deformed.  But my!  Wasn't he a handsome devil in 1989.  He still beats me by a mile in the looks department.

Here's what I looked like a short time before I moved into Happy Acres

There is a place in North Ontario with dream comfort memory to spare; And in my mind I still need a place to go; all my changes are there.

Neil Young

“Helpless”

     In the spring of 1971, when I first saw it, the old homestead on West California avenue was hip and funky.

    Wood smoke drifted from its stone chimney.  Guitars played on the back porch.  Horses grazed on a sunny, three-acre slope dotted with wildflowers.  A lime-green VW bus occupied the lone legal parking spot.

    Wiping my feet on the entry mat, I glanced up.  An ornate wooden cuckoo clock sat in a cobwebbed notch above the door, its frozen hands suggesting time not be taken too seriously.

     “Welcome to Happy Acres!” my brother Mike sang out, wrapping me in a big bear hug.  “Mi casa es su casa.”  Of course, it wasn’t really his casa—Mike rented it from the family that had first homesteaded the place back in the 1930s.  But it felt like his.

     Parking my bag beside an old black piano, I followed him into the pine-paneled living room and noticed the first of many structural tics:  The oak floor sagged gently down and to the left.  This tweaked everything else just slightly out of square—windows, bookcases, doorframes—and gave the place a Dali-esque tilt well suited to its era and occupants.

     On that first visit—as on many subsequent ones—a party was just roaring to life as I arrived.  With the great stone fireplace crackling at their backs, glossy-haired young women in granny dresses knelt by a trunk full of record albums, riffling through Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Young, and Jefferson Airplane.  Late sun slanting through redwood trees set rubies of light dancing in their wine glasses.

     On a chunky butcher-block table in the crowded kitchen, crisp vegetables from the garden sat in wire baskets, waiting to be diced into salads, sliced into stews, broiled beside chickens.  Beyond the kitchen, late arrivals clumped down the hallway to offload parkas, instrument cases and amplifiers in the music room.  From the wall, tippy portraits of bygone ancestor’s looked down disapprovingly.

     In a back yard reached by a rickety outdoor stairwell, coals glowed in barbecues, and a cord of fresh-split bay wood scented the air.  As the first stars sparked the azure sky, strings of Chinese lanterns sprang to life in the plum trees, casting multicolored light onto the sparse lawn below.  There, bearded guys in cowboy boots and fringed jackets discussed the music business, world travels, the war.

     As a reluctant member of the U.S. war machine at the time, I ended up on the conversational fringe.    Gazing out over the twilit pasture, I heard horses nickering in their barn, oak trees creaking in the wind, an owl hooting in a eucalyptus tree high overhead.

     Through redwood branches, a vee-shaped slice of San Francisco shimmered in the distance like a rhinestone pizza.  And at vision’s edge, the Golden Gate Bridge chilled its lobster-red towers in a dry ice fog.

     That was my first visit to Happy Acres.  Of the party that roared on through the night, of the music played and sung, of the laughing faces passed in corridors, stairwells, smoky rooms, I remember little.  It was one night among many, 30 years ago.

     As those years passed, the antique cuckoo clock above the door saw many changes.  Journeys and relationships began and ended in that house, trophies and keepsakes gathered dust there, fortunes grew and dwindled.

     A parade of tenants came and went.  The horses changed color.  The garden cycled from fallow to fruitful to fallow again.  The redwoods filled in, and the glittering slice of San Francisco vanished.

     The clock also witnessed many cuckoo moneymaking schemes: rental yurts, the baby salad green farm, the music studio in the garage, the shiitake mushrooms in the basement.  Aquaculture made a splashy debut, and windrows of “designer compost” girdled the garden.  Everything produced, if not wealth, a priceless treasury of laughter and tall tales.

     Then, Sunday morning, the phone rang.  My brother’s voice was funereal.  “It’s over,” he said.  “The owners have decided to sell.”

     I reminded him of the 30 years of good times and low rent, but he would not be consoled. Time had stood still beneath the cuckoo clock, but not in the neighborhood.  Gradually, yuppies supplanted hippies, BMWs overtook VW buses, and sleek “dot-com” mansions displaced rustic redwood cabins with abalone shells nailed to the walls.

     Anybody who has lost an “old home place” to development knows the story.  It’s just progress.  It always hurts.

     Now this place too is gone.  But in our minds, as Neil Young sang, we still need a place to go.  All our changes were there.

Tom Stevens for the Maui News, 2001

     Luckily for us "Happy Acre-ites", the county zoning commission, which had caused the trouble prompting the landlord to consider selling the property, went on its mischievous way to bedevil some other poor soul.

The Mayor of Happy Acres Heading to His Garden circa 1992

A view of the garden from the rental cottage

 A view from the garden of the old milking barn.  To the right is the rental cottage.

 Harvesting peas and carrots with my housemate, Johnny Surf.  Stevie, the wonder dog guards against deer, fox, raccoon and coyote encroachment.

 The apiary.  We sell the organic honey at the local grocery store; Mill Valley Market.  Very popular.

    

Some Thoughts on School

        My brother and I grew up in a very nice house on the beach in Hawaii.  Our father was an eminent psychiatrist in Honolulu and he was kind enough to pass along a few brain cells to the two of us.  Thus, we always tested well.  That is a two edged sword.  Sure it helps with the college admissions people but you're also expected to perform well and get good grades.  That was pretty much the case until we reached seventh and ninth grades respectively.  That was the fateful year ('62 I believe...) when we discovered surfing and babesters, definitely not in that order...  We went to Punahou School, traditionally considered the sine qua non of private schools on Oahu.  President Obama graduated from there, as did our step-mom and our 'step-grandma' too.  So we had our new Velzy surfboards with a neighborhood surf spot out in front of our house.  Some of the girls at school were letting us explore first base with them and life, in general, was pretty bitchin.  Unfortunately our grades did not reflect this sense of well being and the parental units decided that we needed a little mild discipline, namely to be shipped off to a boys' boarding school on the island of Hawaii.  Our biological mother died when I was five or six; my brother, two years older.  My dad's second (trophy) wife didn't really get along with us that well as we reminded her, somewhat uncomfortably, of her husband's former life and wife.  She had recently given birth to her own son and longed for the chance to raise him with our father while "the big boys", as we were called, were safely removed to another island.  Getting away from a slightly traumatic home life to begin a grand new adventure at a boys' boarding school sounded pretty good.  (At the time, I had no knowledge of David Copperfield...)

        Hawaii Preparatory School was actually a very fine school.  It was rigorous (we went to classes six days a week), strict (anyone caught smoking or drinking, even off campus, was automatically expelled with no chance of reinstatement) and intimate (forty two kids in my graduating class; four of us in second year Greek...).  It was also very cold.  You're, no doubt, thinking "Come on, you're in Hawaii, for Christ's sake...  How cold could it be?"  Well...  I'll tell you.  We were about four thousand feet above sea level in the middle of a cow pasture on a bluff overlooking the Hamakua coast, a place that caught the brunt of the tradewinds that came roaring in from the Pacific.  In the Winter, from our dorm rooms we could look up and see Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa with their lofty peaks girdled in snow.  During those winter months it got pretty cold.  There was no heat in the dorm rooms, in the common rooms, the dining room, the class rooms, or the church (which we had to attend twice a week and especially on Sundays, in our coats and ties).  That left only two ways to get warm; get into bed or get into the showers.  Since the showers provided instant heat, that was the preferred method of defrosting our tender little bodies.  The shower room for each dorm consisted of a tiled room open in front with two steel posts with shower heads sticking out in a radial pattern.  Imagine this scene:  Five or six naked bodies huddled in a circle around the shower post getting blasted by the hottest water they can stand.  The redness of the skin reflected the amount of time in the shower.

         Unburdened by girls, and with our surfboards safely stashed back home, my brother and I managed to right the listing academic ship and do fairly well in school.  The school wasn't finished yet and we had to be bussed everyday to the classrooms in town.  The classrooms were a former Marine barracks left over from WWII.  The walls were canex (pressed fiber board made from sugar cane stocks) and the floors were rough planking with lots of knot holes that allowed us to observe the goings ons on the ground under foot; mostly sugar cane rats scuttling about.  On the cold winter mornings we would sit there shivering with our hands under our butts while the teachers droned on about how ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny and how the Monroe doctrine was the keystone in America's manifest destiny etc. etc.  Because of the modest size of the school's enrollment, if you were of goodly stature and fairly well coordinated, you could count on being on the varsity teams of your choice.  I saw my fellow classmates moaning and groaning about having to endure another grueling football practice in the cold unrelenting wind, so I opted for volleyball in the fall.  Basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring.  Volleyball and basketball took place in the dark and rickety wooden gym in downtown Waimea, the little cow town that was the seat of Parker ranch, the second largest privately owned cattle ranch in the U.S.  A large part of the island of Hawaii, the largest in the Hawaiian chain consisted of cow pastures.  The rest, it seemed, was sugar cane.  The town's gym was no great shakes but at least we were out of the elements.  Our school was situated on ten very exposed acres smack dab in the middle of a cow pasture.  And yes...cow tipping was a favorite prank amongst the student body.  Our school emblem was a tree blowing in the wind and our team name was the Kamakanis (the Hawaiian word for wind...).

             High School Graduation, before the leis were piled on.

     Our guidance counselor encouraged me to apply to Stanford and Pomona with Washington U. and Oregon U. as backstops.  I sent in my applications and waited for a reply.  Several weeks later (I remember that I was reading Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" at the time) a packet came for me in the mail.  "Congratulations!"  the letter read.  "You have been admitted to Leland Stanford Junior University!"  "Oh no!"  I thought to myself.  "I've only been admitted to the Junior university!"  I was beside myself with grief until the guidance counselor gently explained that that was the full name of Stanford University.

        I was so happy to get on that plane to San Francisco and say goodbye (and good riddance) to my stepmother, whom we had taken to calling the wicked witch of the west...  When I got to SF I was herded into a van and driven down highway 101 to the Stanford campus.  The ride took about forty-five minutes, as I remember.  Where I had just come from, if you drove anywhere in a straight line for forty-five minutes, you would end up in the ocean.  The van ride took so long, I thought we were halfway to Los Angeles.  I had heard about LA with its evil smog, choking out the daylight and shortening the lives of its poor inhabitants.  I was sure the haze I saw, when I looked south towards San Jose and the Santa Clara valley, was LA's smog creeping toward us.  (My sense of 'mainland' geography was not very well developed yet)

        My freshmen roommate was a big jolly fellow from somewhere called Whittier in southern California.  Seeing my aloha shirt and the many garlands of flowers around my neck he immediately surmised where I came from.  "Hey!...you're a Haole from Hawaii!" he exclaimed;  "I dig your bitchin' aloha shirt!"  I was "Haole" from then on.  I gave him one of my aloha shirts to wear and several of my flower leis.  "Let's wander around and check out the campus."  As we approached the student commons, (Tresidder Union, I believe...) I noticed movement in the trees above us.  "Hey, Wayne, look up in that tree!  There's a bunch  of mongeese running around!  I've never seen a mongoose climb a tree before."  "No Haole, those are squirrels".

        At some point we got separated and I got totally lost in my attempts to navigate my way back to the freshmen dorm.  Instead I ended up on fraternity row and it took a kindly upper classman to point me in the right direction.  After my humble little boarding school, Stanford seemed like a veritable metropolis.  The students were also a bit overwhelming.  I, having taken typing in summer school some years before, was a very competent typist and I came up with the idea of offering my typing services to comely freshman coeds in exchange for them doing my laundry.  I figured it was as good a way as any to meet girls.  Having spent five years at an all boys' school I hadn't had much experience with the opposite sex and, indeed, I was still a virgin.

        I had two main goals at Stanford.  Lose my virginity and play volleyball.  Luckily, my typing offer scared up a few customers that also became dates.  The first gal I typed for and dated was named Diane.  She hailed from some little burg in the greater Los Angeles area.  She carried a 4.0 GPA all through high school and was elected the first female student body president in the school's history, and I believe she was also the valedictorian.  The second gal I dated was a big strapping blond named Sharon.  Sharon was from Glendale, I believe, (none of these So. Cal. towns were even remotely familiar to this naive young island boy in his aloha shirt and flower leis.)  She only pulled a 3.9 GPA, however she had won three gold medals and a silver as a swimmer in the '64 Olympic games.  The town of Glendale had a Sharon Stouder day and she was paraded through town like a Rose Bowl queen; perched on top of the back seat of a Cadillac convertible waving to the adoring throngs with the mayor sitting next to her.

         I, on the other hand, had no such accomplishments under my belt.  I began to realize what a small frog I was in this big pond.  That sentiment was driven home on big game week that freshman year.  I had been quite the thespian in high school with singing leads in a couple of Gilbert and Sullivan plays.  And I won our school's version of the Oscars.  I also sang and played guitar in our school's folksinging trio.  I felt pretty confident when I went for a tryout for that year's Gayeties.  I walked into a small music studio with a piano accompanist and the play's director.  "Pick some sheet music from the pile on the piano and give us your best shot".  I quavered my way through a rather tepid rendition of "Try to Remember" from "The Fantastics".  "Thank you Mr... ahh...Mr. Stevens!  We'll call you if you make the cut".  A few days went by and nothing.  "Maybe the director lost the phone number for Wilbur Hall",  I thought naively to myself.  Later I realized I should have done "Seventy-Six Trombones" so I could really belt it out and show the director that I could 'play to the back row'...  So the thespian thing was out but I did get to play a lot of volleyball and even, eventually, managed to get rid of that pesky virginity thing.

     Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres
                       
                              Senior Year, Stanford U. 1970

   

   

Ursophobia

Mary C.

Please note, my dear cousin, that the photo  I sent you, a copy of which appears below, of the giant elk with snow dusted antlers was sent to me and forwarded to you by Anthony B. Lettunich, an old friend of mine, .  "Tuna", as we call him, was a housemate of mine my senior year at university.  We were also teammates on the Stanford volleyball team.  Tony now lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.  He gave up his youthful dalliance as a ski instructor to go back to his original calling, the law.  These pictures were taken by him in his back yard.  Earlier this summer, he sent us (fellow alumni who comprise an e-mail group), some splendid shots of a huge black bear cavorting in this same back yard.  I'm afraid, Mary C., mostly what I get in my back yard are deer.  Lots and lots of deer.  In fact just yesterday there was a big young buck nestling in the back yard.

As a denizen of Priest Lake I know you enjoy much more adventurous fauna in your back yard.  I still remember the black bear that visited us while we were splitting firewood that summer.  I was glad brother Tom had a chance to see it, coming so recently from Hawaii, he hadn't had much experience with bears.  We used to camp at a beautiful little jewel of a lake in northern Yosemite.  We would carry on top of our backpacks small inflatable rowboats which allowed us to row, with our packs perched precariously on the stern of our boats, to our private campsite which could only be reached by boat or a very long treacherous hike.  This site of ours was actually the delta mouth of a seasonal brook.  The topsoil that had been deposited there made a soft little grassy meadow that was perfect for pitching camp.  The water's flow had also deposited a treasure trove of fallen limbs.  In the summers, when we would back pack to Kibbie lake, our meadow was soft and green and the firewood was dry and abundant.  From our private site, we could see other campers; campers of a lesser God who had to walk to their campground comprised of broken shale slabs.  As this rocky ground was not level, these (lesser) campers had to make do with tents and sleeping bags placed on slanted ground.  If you have ever had to endure sleeping on unlevel ground you know how uncomfortable it is.
  

We could see these campers, some with binoculars, looking longingly across the lake at us ensconced on our soft green meadow next to the huge drift of dry firewood.  "Man, look at those guys!  Lucky suckers!  How the hell did they get there?  My buddy once swam all the way over there and said it's like paradise but because it's sided by granite cliffs, pretty near impossible to pack to."  "I was talking to one of the other campers who said she saw them floating down from the trailhead, blown by the afternoon easterlies.  She could see them reading pocketbooks. They only took to their oars when they had to turn right to row into their little paradise cove, lucky suckers...I wish we had thought of that."  Our little cove was protected on both sides by, more or less, sheer granite cliffs.  The one on the east side of our cove, rose straight up from the lake.  With a bit of scrambling, we could get to a narrow ledge about forty feet above the water.  It was a splendid place to launch ourselves down into the cool blue watery embrace of our beloved Kibbie lake.  Our little cove even had a huge tree trunk stuck in its silty bottom.  We used to climb up on it and make it rock up and down.  One magical night, under a full moon, Timmy and I rowed out onto the lake opposite this huge granite cliff face in our row boats.  My brother had a musical instrument known as a zafoon which had the body of a wooden flute and the mouth of a clarinet.  He know how to play one tune on it; Strangers on the Shore.  As he tootled away, the lovely flute-like melody echoed off the granite wall.  With no wind and no other noise, the sound was eerily beautiful.  Occasionally in the still of the afternoon, from across the lake we could hear the lesser campers yelling and clanging on pots and pans.  Because of the popularity of these accessible sites, they were also popular with the local ursine community.

I remember one summer, in particular, when a young bear with a light brown coat, as if it had been bleached by the sun, made himself a frequent visitor to these campers and their food bags.  Timmy and I swam across the lake one day when we had heard the, by then familiar, sounds of a bear visitation.  It turns out the little blonde marauder had the cheek to make off with an entire backpack with the food still inside it.  "I'm sure glad we're safe from bears"  My brother muttered".  "Do you really think bears couldn't 'visit' our campsite if they had a mind to?  Black bears can swim this lake as easily as you and I" I replied.  Later when we were rowing around, we indeed saw a large bear casually swimming across the lake.  Fortunately he was not headed for our little nest.  Brother Timmy, however, was sorely discomforted by this revelation.  Some years earlier another campsite of ours had been invaded by a mother bear and two cubs.  Mama sent the kids up into the tree where we had hung our food sack and we watched as they gaily swatted away at our little pinada till it fell to the ground, burst open, and spilled out all our food.  We watched by flashlight as the three of them had a grand feast.  They left us a small floret of broccoli and half an onion.  This, and other bear encounters over the years, have made my brother extremely wary (nay I say frightened?) of our California black bears.

      I tried to mollify my brother's fear by telling him that black bears were essentially harmful, harmless...  Just don't get between a mother and her cubs and secure your food, preferably in a bear-proof canister.  I'm not sure that helped much.  I once brought home a beautiful charcoal drawing of a Grizzly bear.  When I showed it to him he let out an anguished cry and turned away.  "Oh Mickey!  How could you!  This isn't helping at all.  Now I'll have bad dreams tonight.  The breathy panting as he approaches me, frozen with fright in my sleeping bag.  The warm moist muzzle rubbing against my cheek.  The agonizing crunch of those powerful fangs as he slowly begins to make a meal of me.  Thanks a lot, Mickey!"  I came to call Timmy's condition "Ursophobia".  I'm going to submit my word to Webster's dictionary for future consideration.

It's been a while now since he last saw a bear and I think his condition has improved with the passage of time.  Maybe I can favor him with that charcoal drawing now that he's better.  Maybe that will be his Christmas present.  I know I'll be getting something strange and wonderful from the local thrift store...  Love and disses, Mickey da Mayor

Pregnant Nipple Carcinoma

     I just got back from the doctor's office.  Dr. Denkler did the work on my bent fingers condition (Dupuytrens Contraction).  Dupuytrens is a hereditary condition that afflicts some anglo-saxon and nordic types.  They are mostly male and the condition doesn't manifest itself until you get into your fifties.  Slowly one or more of your fingers begins to bend in towards the palm.  The tendons of the afflicted fingers get gristly and hard.  The condition isn't that common in the U.S.  But in Holland, twenty-six percent of men over the age of fifty have it.  Apparently the condition originated with the Vikings.  The Vikings, on their various rape and pillage missions, spread it around and my "people", probably living near the coast somewhere in the British Isles got 'impregnated' with the offending gene.
  
        I pointed out to Dr. Denkler this growth I've had for some time on my left calf.  It is (was) a semi-circular pink thingy that looked like a pregnant woman's nipple (as seen by me in medical textbooks...)  My GP at the community clinic (Dr. Kathy Chang) laughed out loud when I said that to her.  Anyway the Doc looked at it and said that it looked like a basal cell carcinoma (skin cancer tumor) and he'd take a slice off and send it off to UCSF to be biopsied.  The results were positive so after we stopped admiring the wonderful job he did on my newly, mostly straightened fingers he went to work on my calf nipple.  When he was finished there was my growth lying on his tray.  It was the size of a full grown garden slug.  Man, I'm glad I was numbed up!  Because it was cancer he had to take a bunch of tissue around the tumor as well as the tumor itself.  His comely medical assistant popped it in a bottle of alcohol.  I almost asked her if I could keep it.  I didn't want to just throw away that much of my personal tissue. 

So the anesthetics are due to wear off in about an hour but I'm armed with a vicodan from the Doc's medicine cabinet.  The Colonel has some medical problems he has to deal with and I don't think my bedroom remodel will be done anytime soon.  There are currently exactly no women who are disappointed about that fact.  Sunday night when we had that big "wind from Winnecta" to say there was a draft in my bedroom would be an understatement since about a square foot of floor and wall are exposed to the outside world.  I lay in bed that night waiting to be joined by various local varmints who wanted to get in out of the weather.  If they did come in they were remarkably quiet and well behaved...  Luckily my file cabinet was acting as a buffer and I couldn't really feel the wind from my bed.  I finally found a source for turtlenecks and I ordered four in various festive colors.  I can't wait for winter so I can vogue in my pink cashmere sweater and colored turtlenecks...  I got an Amazon package yesterday containing my new gravy separator and my non-stick two piece broiler pan---perfect for EZ cleanup!  My metro-sexuality is growing...

     The post-carcinoma-nipple-removal leg is doing just fine.  There's no bleeding now, although the original bandage was pretty well soaked.  I have a nice little 2 1/2 inch stitched up incision.  I redressed it this morning with antibiotic ointment and several soft pads that I taped around my calf covered by an elastic sock type of deal.  I took the vicodan this morning that the Doc. gave me but there really hasn't been any pain to speak of.  Just a little twinge when I stand up as the blood flows down.  Other than that I can hardly feel it.  I'm sure I'll soon be right as rain.  

     The colonel managed to rally and he's back on the bedroom renovation project.  The hole in the corner of the room is pretty much covered up for the moment.  We have to lay a bit of flooring into that corner once we get the evil, mold infested red rug out of there.  We're going to move stuff around and cut the rug up in pieces.  We're thinking of sealing the wooden floor with varathane or some such to keep any moisture/mold from sneaking up from below.  I plan on purchasing a nice area rug for the space between the bed and the door.  The rest of the floor will be nude so the dust bunnies have somewhere to hide...  I'm determined to clean up my pathetic little man-cave of a bedroom until it's babester ready...

I hear the Red Sox won the "World Series" (snicker)  I was hoping the finals was going to be Yemen versus Paraguay...maybe next year.  I skipped through the first game recording on my VCR, but I couldn't really get into it as I did not have a rooster in that cock fight...    The weather is here and I wish you were beautiful.  I'm still coming down to Pacific Grove on Sunday for a little brotherly get together.  I'm scheduled for a Holter halter fitting at 1PM on this coming Tuesday 11/5.  I'll see if I can get that moved to a later hour so I don't have to rush out Tuesday morning.  I'd like to take you and Howard out for breakfast at your favorite greasy spoon so I can watch Howard fawn over his favorite waitress...(or is that mistress?).  Victory!  I just got the Holter appointment moved to Wednesday afternoon.  Timmy, you're off on Sunday through Tuesday, right?  I want us to go on a whale watching boat.  Can you look into that for us?

I think I may have mentioned it before but the Holter halter is a vest with electrodes that are stuck to your chest.  It's like a 24 hour AKG that records your cardiac performance continually.  I'm really excited because I love to perform...  I have to wear it for a  full 24 hour day.  No showers or bubble baths of any kind and I have to stay away from electric blankets or the electrical interplay between the blankets electricity and the halter's will electrocute me and I'll be fried until I'm nothing but charred, blackened bones.  I may be exaggerating a little on that last point but since I don't have my electric blanket currently plugged in, I don't think that will be a problem.  Here's hoping I stay "in sinous" for the full 24 hours.  That will further assure the good doctor and myself that I may, finally, be out of the atrial fibrillation woods.  

 

The Packet Boat to Frisco

I sing your name.  It opens the gates of Paradise.  You will be mine forever, so grant me gods.

When you kiss me, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse gallop forth.  And when I think of your body,

so troubled and vague, the ground opens beneath my feet.

Your divine womanhood ascends to heaven.  You are beautiful, you sunflower crazed by light.

When you raise your eyes, you set the sky ablaze.

Friends, see how the Earth, like a mother, gives suck to her most precious child.

Oh my beloved!  All creation overflows with passion, and like a golden comet in the sky, bursts forth this cry:

I love you.

You ever feel that way towards someone?  Me neither...  Actually I must confess I stole that last line from Steve Martin.  When Steve was asked what his thoughts about sex were, he said.  "You know that look a beautiful woman gives you when she wants to have sex?  Me neither..."  The beginning paragraph I actually lifted from a wonderful Roberto Benigni movie The Tiger and the Snow.  So yesterday Bunny (to you novitiates among us that's Sheryl Patton, my former fiance from twenty five years ago and now a dear friend.  We like to do stuff together when her husband's at work--when the cat's away, the mice will play) and I were going to take the ferry into the city from Sausalito, wander around, maybe go to the Exploratorium at its new digs on pier 15, and have a sumptuous lunch on the waterfront.  The day was dull, dreary and rainy.  Bunny demurred and we decided to reschedule for Saturday, her usual day off from the Mill Valley Police Department, and also a day when Hubby would be working...  I, as I'm wont to do from time to time, re-imagined how things might have gone, say...a hundred years ago, or so...

       Bunny and I had plans to steal away on the packet boat to Frisco.  The boat was a steam schooner (with sails for insurance...) that ferried butter, milk, cream and cheese from her husband's large dairy ranch up on the Pt. Reyes peninsula to San Francisco.  Hubby's dairy products were much prized among the denizens of Frisco and his ranch was considered to be grand and wonderful.  The man himself was not so grand and wonderful.  In fact, Bunny confessed to me one day, he was small, mean and spiteful.  "He's so small we not only can wear the same clothes but we have the same shoe size!  We were in the bedroom once in one of those rare moments when he was feeling amorous towards me.  I told him:  "Take off my bra...  Take off my panties...  And don't ever wear my clothes again!"".  Bunny and I have a great love for each other but alas it must remain unconsecrated.  On her mother's deathbed, mother told daughter:  "Darling, I think you know you have always been my favorite.  Your shiftless sister isn't worth a jar of piss.  So it's to you I leave my dying words:  Don't ever divorce that mean and spiteful husband of yours.  I know he likes to get into your delicates and wear your shoes and such, but always remember:  The man is stupidly rich and that land at Pt. Reyes, and the rest of his estate, is worth a fortune.  If you give him any reason to divorce you, I'm sure he would.  And you, my dearest daughter, would be left with nary a shilling to your name.  God knows I have nothing to give you since the medical treatments for the consumption took what little money I had saved.  Try to live a long and healthful life and you have a good chance of outliving him.  Then you'll be rich and you can be with the man of your dreams, Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres.  Besides if hubby keeps scarfing up that rich butter, cheese and cream he produces, he could be dead in a couple of years.  You can wait that long can't you?"

And so it was that Bunny promised her mom to remain chaste towards me, to my undying frustration, until she was a widow and available for plucking (I said plucking...).  And that's why we planned to stow away on the milk run to Frisco.  During the week, hubby spent his time up at the ranch hectoring his cows and his cowboys.  That left Bunny the little cottage in Mill Valley to herself and her faithful servant girl, Felicia.  Although we couldn't be together in a carnal manner, we could still get together for our little adventures and imagine what the future might hold in store for us.  Since her husband not only owned the dairy ranch, he also owned the rail line that brought the dairy products to the dock in Sausalito, and he also owned the schooner that ferried his rich and creamy goods to SF.  Her husband might be a mean little man, but he was a killer at vertical integration...  Bunny assured me that she knew the captain of the ship and was sure he'd let her on board for the trip.  "Just pretend that you're my man servant and you're helping me with my trunk that I'm taking to my sister who has just arrived in town.  When we get below decks I'll hide you in the trunk, tell the captain you've gone ashore, and when we get to Frisco and my trunk is safely ashore, I'll open it, you'll pop out and we'll have a fun and jiggy day in the city!"  Amazingly, the plan worked...

Once ashore and among strangers, we could safely embrace and share a fairly chaste kiss before continuing on our way.  "Let's go to the wharf and watch the eye-talian fishermen unload their crab pots!"  Exclaimed my darling Bunny, so off we went.  After watching all the poor crustaceans get poured into the boiling water vats, at Bunny's request, we repaired to the nearest drinking and dining establishment, Shanghai Lil's.  "I don't know Bunny, I've heard unsavory tales of how unsuspecting fellows have been drugged, trussed up and put aboard outgoing ships (I knew people could be 'outgoing'...but ships?  I dunno...).  Next stop China and the poor fellows find themselves to be conscripted seamen, subjected to bad treatment and meager pay".  "Oh honey, that's all a load of poppycock!  Besides you're with me, the wife of a rich and influential dairy ranch owner.  Here on the wharf, I hear they call him "The King of Cream" and no one, not even the Shanghai Lil herself, would think of bothering you, my true love and the mayor of Happy Acres, a lovely man of no small consequence yourself!", intoned my dearest Bunny.
  

With that assurance we walked into the bar.  "Two schooners of your best Anchor steam ale!"  I cried to the comely bar wench.  Soon we were quaffing Frisco's finest.  As I finished my tankard, I excused myself to repair to the gentlemen's water closet.  As I stood before the urinal trough and unzipped my dungarees, a funny feeling came over me.  Then I felt a mighty bonk to the head and the last sensation I remember having was sliding down a chute into the waiting arms of several large and evil looking sailors.  "Next stop: Shanghai!"  Said one of them.  "Oh my god, I've been shanghai-ed!  I'll never see my beloved Bunny again!" I thought to myself.  Then I slipped into unconsciousness.  So let that be a lesson to all of you who might be contemplating a ferry ride to Frisco and a trip to Fisherman's Wharf.  You may (if you're lucky...) live to regret it!

With apologies to Jack London, I remain your faithful servant, Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres    

     

The Perils of Prudence

     For some strange reason I've lately taken to rising at an early hour.  I creep up the stairs and prepare myself a mug of English breakfast tea and carefully roll my morning cigarette from my "American Spirit Organic (absolutely no additives of any kind!) Tobacco" pouch.  (I allow myself two fags a day.  The morning smoke and the evening smoke---sometimes three on the weekend...)  As it is about 5:30 AM, it is still quite dark out and the conditions are suitable for a movie on the telly.  I have this system where movies can be streamed directly from my Netflix account on the computer to my television through the wonders of a little black box called "Apple TV".

      Yesterday morning I watched a wonderful English period piece (that period being early 19th century).  Our heroine was from very common stock yet she had an uncommon imagination.  She parlayed this advantage of hers into a series of floridly romantic novels that became all the rage among the young female readers of the day; much to the wonderment of her humble working class family.  She soon had them ensconced in a grand estate.  Many subplots and trysts ensued, making for delightful early morning entertainment.  The movie was adapted from a book written by Elizabeth Taylor.  I thought, wow! who knew Liz had such a fine Victorian novel in her!?  Alas it was another Elizabeth Taylor who lived in England during that period.  She was likened to Jane Austin in her writings.
  

When the movie was over, as it was still somewhat dark, I found my eyelids getting heavy and I knew it was time for my morning nap...  I stretched back in my lazy boy and gratefully surrendered to the arms of Morpheus to sleep...perchance to dream...

Prudence awoke to the keening of the peacocks on the great lawn.  She brushed her chestnut locks from her eyes and contemplated another day at Maundering Hall, the great estate of The Earl of Somerset, Lord Edgar Chichester III.  Prudence had been favored with exceptional good looks (her large doe eyes of hazel flecked with gold and her flawless alabaster skin) and she had been much admired by all in the little country village of Somerset where she had been raised.  That did not change the fact that she came from a family of decidedly low pedigree.  Her father was the village cobbler and spent his days bent over his work table squinting in the poor light of the few candles the family could afford, turning out the modest and somewhat misshapen footwear worn by the local villagers, peasants all.  For this long and arduous labor he was paid mere tuppence which forced her poor mother, despite six mouths to feed, to spend hours every day laboring as a fish monger.  From six in the morning till almost tea, she wheeled her rickety wooden barrow through the muddy cobble stoned streets.  In a large wicker basket lay the day's catch.  "Herring! Lovely Fresh Sole!  I've got cockles and mussells alive alive-o!"

Her parent's meager income could not support such a large family and it was decided, with much sorrow and many tears, that Prudence, being the most presentable of the litter, should go into service.  Thus she found herself waking in the predawn to the cries of the peacocks to begin another long and arduous day as a scullery maid at Maundering Hall.  In service, the scullery maid is at the bottom of the pecking order.  Her first duties of the day consisted of cleaning out the hearths above stairs from the former night's fires.  If there were any hot embers still banked they were to be snuffed out before she was to lay the day's new fires.  She was to tidy up around the hearth and see to it that the brass andirons and all the fire tools were polished to a gleaming shine.  In laying the day's fires she had to make sure that all the paper, kindling and firewood were laid, just so, to the satisfaction of the master.  If a flaming brigand were to fall from the fire and cause smoke to escape the chimney she could expect the traditional punishment.
   

The master, it must be said, took some delight in administering this 'mild' bit of discipline.  Such discipline consisted of the offending scullery maid and the master retiring to his private quarters whereupon the poor maid was made to bend over the master's lap and a robust spanking of her bare bottom ensued.  The strokes were delivered directly by the master's bare hand and humiliated more than injured.  The spanking usually elicited a spout of tears from the unfortunate victim and the master soothed the poor girl by gently caressing her sore and  reddened bum...
  

Prudence found that, no matter how carefully she laid the fire, she couldn't seem to avoid the master's gleeful attention to the administering of this 'mild' discipline.  Eventually, she resigned herself to taking it all in stride and chalking it up to being, despite her prettiness, the lowest girl in service.  One evening she was surprised to learn that Lord Chichester III's eldest son, Master Edgar Chichester IV, had gallantly offered to relieve his father of this burdensome punishment.  Prudence found herself blushing at the thought of the young master seeing-- perhaps admiring--her tender, virginal white flesh in such an intimate area.  The young master was a handsome and cocksure young man giving to fox hunting, grouse shooting and other such sport favored by the landed gentry.  She had often found herself admiring his handsome aristocratic countenance and thought she had seen him, occasionally, return her furtive looks.  With some trepidation flavored with a certain aroused excitement, she found herself being led into the young master's bed chambers.  "Now Prudence, dear, you know it has long been tradition here at Maundering Hall to instruct the staff, especially the young female servants, in the proper execution of their duties.  This instruction occasionally calls for a bit of mild discipline.  The spanking you are about to receive should be viewed only as a bit of punishment for a job not properly done and nothing else.  As I lift your skirt and apron and pull down your panties and bend you over my thighs, I want you to know, dear Prudence, that this deed is as distasteful to you as it is to me."
  

The young master then proceeded to accomplish the aforementioned undressing and commenced the spanking.  Prudence was surprised at the relative gentleness of his touch and found herself tingling with a strange pleasure at his...

Suddenly I woke with a spasm in my injured right shoulder.  What the hell was that?  I was caught in a dream from some Barbara Cartland novel!  I don't know whether to blame the English breakfast tea or my early morning movie.  Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.  Too bad I woke up before I found out if I was eventually going to be 'rodgered' by the handsome young Edgar Chichester IV...  I sometimes call my friend Nicole in the morning in the hopes of catching her before she embarks on her busy day.  "Sneedy!  What are you up to you wascally wed headed wabbit, you!" said I.  "If you must know", said she,  "I'm wearing the quilted bed jacket my dear late mother gave me and I'm propped up by my collection of fluffy pillows.  I'm eating my breakfast bon bons and reading the latest Barbara Cartland novel.  I'm going to cut this short because I have to find out if the young master is going to have his way with the fair young scullery maid.  Goodbye and don't call me back!  I'll call you later, if I've a mind to!"  (with apologies to Nicole who, as far as I know, doesn't read "those kinds of novels".  All in good fun, Sneedy!  

     Love and disses, Mickey da Mayor

The First Potato

     I used to grow potatoes.  Lots and lots of potatoes.  In the Spring of 1992 I had about 7,000 square feet of new plantable ground in my garden.  I had spent the prior winter digging up what had been part of the horse pasture adjacent to the existing garden space.  In my lust for more garden beds, I decided that I wanted the land more than the horses did.  I expanded the wire fencing to include this new addition after laboriously moving the horses' watering trough.  Now I had an enclosed organic vegetable, fruit and flower garden the size of your average community garden.  I would be the new garden king of Mill Valley.  I envisioned myself, in my old McDonald's overalls, ambling proudly among my fellow gardeners telling them:  "Mine's bigger than yours!"

Google Earth's view of the garden at Happy Acres.  The long diagonal beds in the middle of the garden were my first potato fields.

A side view of the garden with greenhouse and cloches to protect tender heat lovers from our sometimes cool and foggy weather.  Some truly wondrous heirloom tomatoes have been grown here. 

       I'd heard that potatoes are a good crop to plant in new ground because as the spuds expand underground they break up the soil making the ground more friable for future crops.  That first spring I ordered ten bags of different varieties of seed potatoes.  When planting potatoes you start with mature potatoes and cut them up into chunks roughly the size of hen's eggs.  You dig a trench about eight inches deep and long enough to equal one foot per plant.  When I'd finished cutting up my seed potatoes I had thirty pieces for each variety; Alaskan Sweetheart, Peruvian Purple, Yukon Gold, Red Gold (my favorite until I discovered a cultivar known as "Cherries Jubilee"--so rare and so popular with fellow spud growers they were almost never available in the seed catalogues.).  So now I had five trenches sixty feet long and eight inches deep with a potato chunk every foot.

       I back filled the trenches and waited patiently for Summer.  I decided not to label the beds with the various spud types; I wanted to be surprised when I dug up the taters.  There are basically two ways to harvest potatoes (on a small garden-type scale).  For true, new potatoes, if the ground and the subsequent hilling up is soft enough, you can stick your hand into the soil next to the plant and feel around for the young growing spuds.  Pick as many as you need and the plant will keep growing and producing more potatoes.  When the plants finally came up that Summer, I was thrilled.  When they flowered I found out that red potatoes have red flowers, white and yellow potatoes have white flowers and the purple ones have purple flowers.  So much for being surprised.  Still, it kind of felt like an Easter egg hunt as you forked up each dead plant and all the spuds came tumbling out

I got my spuds from a little family farm ("Ronniger's Seed Potatoes") up in Northern Idaho near Priest Lake.  This seed potato farm was not far from Ruby Ridge where many White Aryan Brotherhoods and Neo Nazihoods had their strongholds.  These militias, at the time were pretty active and had drawn the attention of the FBI.  One unfortunate fellow by the name of Randy Weaver got caught in the cross hairs of the FBI and the US Marshalls.  You probably remember the story.  Sharpshooters shot Mrs. Weaver while she was standing in front of a kitchen window.  They also shot one of their sons and started a standoff that made national headlines and served to fatten the rolls of white supremacist militias.  My housemate, buddy and sometimes garden help mate was a jolly fellow named John Rosenberg.

      Johnny Surf (as some of us call him--don't know why...) was a truly awesome piano player, singer and songwriter.  He was also proudly Jewish.  One day when I was prepping the spuds for planting John, was making one of his sporadic visits to the garden.  I mentioned where the potatoes came from and their proximity to Ruby Ridge.  John put his hands to his head in vexation:  "Oh my God, you're planting Nazi potatoes!"  I assured John that neo-Naziism had not rubbed off on the potatoes and I'm sure the Ronniger family was too busy with their seed potatoes to get mixed up in any malicious militia mischief.  (we'll pause for a moment...).  Despite my assurances, the next time I came into the greenhouse where I kept my seed catalogues, I picked up my Ronniger Seed Catalogue only to find a huge indelible swastika emblazoned across the cover.  Oy vey...

Next Spring I bought several mesh bags of smallish organic potatoes from Whole Foods that were way cheaper than Ronniger's.  To be certified organic they must not only be grown organically, they can't be irradiated.  As radiation sterilizes them.  They won't grow eyes and they won't, if planted, grow more potatoes.  Since these taters were small, I was planting them whole; one per foot in my freshly dug trenches.  Our late, beloved friend Kate (RIP), who was a tenant of Happy Acres at the time, was down visiting in the garden.  Over time it became clear to me that Kate enjoyed watching me 'toil in the soil'.  She gained a certain smug satisfaction from the fact that I was toiling while she was merely watching.  She once tried to get me to weed the flower garden I had provided for her cottage by saying:  "Mikey, you should do it; you're so good at that stuff!"  So there was Kate watching me put my small potatoes into their trenches.  "How many potatoes do you get from each plant?  Like...one?"  "Kate, if I only got one potato per plant why wouldn't I just eat the ones I'm planting?"  "Oh yeah...duh!  Sorry...I was distracted; watching you toil in the soil in your grody denim overalls..."

So I got to thinking if we plant potatoes to get more potatoes, where the hell did the first spud come from?  I'm thinking aliens.  Don't ask me where they got their first spud; thinking that expansively is beyond my capacity...  The reason I was thinking of taters is because I recently purchased some quinoa, which I'd read, was a superior foodstuff; chock full of protein and all the vitamins and minerals from Argon to Zirconium...  I put down my magazine (the article was about how our new national quinoa craze had increased its price on the world market preventing subsistence farmers in Peru and Bolivia from buying it) and Googled "quinoa".  Up came a cheery web site promising to show me how to prepare and cook delicious and healthful quinoa in only twenty minutes!  I paged through the pictures and wrote down the instructions.  First step; rinse and thoroughly fluster the seeds in a wire mesh sieve (or words to that effect...) for at least two minutes.  This will remove the bitterness from the seed husks.  I brought down my wire sieve from the top shelf where it had been moldering away.  I held the sieve over the sink and poured the quinoa in...and watched it splatter through the sieve into the kitchen sink.  Pre step number one; make sure your sieve's mesh is smaller than the seeds...

        Gathering up what seeds were still in the sieve I poured them, bitterly unwashed, into the boiling water.  "Now simmer for fifteen minutes, remove from heat and let stand, covered, for five minutes.  Uncover, gently fluster with a fork and there you have it!  Fluffy, delicious, healthful quinoa!"   I followed the cooking instructions to a T.  After the five minute setting period was over, manned with my flustering fork, I popped the lid only to find a watery crimson slurry of quinoa seeds.  It seems the cheerful how-to-cook-quinoa web site was meant for white quinoa.  I had so thoughtlessly bought the red variety.  So instead of the quinoa, I was the one being flustered...  Soooooo back on the burner until the excess chicken broth water combo had vaporized.

      What was left wouldn't meet anyone's idea of 'fluffy' but a small spoonful proved to be marginally edible.  I poured the steamed quinoa into my tupperware container followed by chicken thighs broiled in teriyaki sauce topped off with steamed veggies.  This 'swill', as we call it, (personally I prefer the term "prison food"...) is what I've been eating for the last five days or so.  I had a bowl this morning.  I was wearing my reading specs at the time and looking down into my food I noticed that the quinoa had sprouted.  After all that I had done to these poor little red seeds, they still had enough moxie to sprout.  No wonder the Incas were so great.  Great until Cortez and the conquistadors cruised into town...

     Hasta la vista!  Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres

The First Circumcision

     Yesterday in the mail I received two fat envelopes from Marin General Hospital.  In these envelopes were nine checks for $ 9,025 refunding me for all payments I made on my accounts.  As some of you know, on New Year's Eve, a combination of alcohol and atrial fibrillation caused me to fall down my stairs.  This unfortunate accident ultimately incurred, among other medical expenses, a $ 750,000 tab to the hospital.  I applied to MGH for charitable forgiveness.  My plea, considering my humble annual income versus the size of the debt, was ultimately kicked all the way up to the CFO for consideration.  In a heroic act of munificence on his part, all my debt was forgiven and all the payments I had made on my accounts were refunded to me.  It's a strange world we live in where good things happen to persons of questionable moral and ethical character...

So the other day while driving I was listening to NPR as a I always do.  Terry Gross was interviewing an elite African long distance runner.  He was either from Kenya or Ethiopia; I forget.  She asked him if there was something special that produced so many marathon champions from his ilk.  There are the obvious physical advantages; training at high altitude and having a body type suited to marathon running; namely skinny calves and powerful thigh and butt muscles.  However his answer to Terry's question caught me off guard.  "I believe, Terry, what separates us elite African runners from the rest is our coming of age ritual at puberty.  We must endure circumcision at the age of 14.  Being able to stoically accept this pain prepares us for the challenges of long distance running."
  
The next time I was in the back yard peeing in my designated spot, I got to admiring my lovely circumcised unit and thinking about Terry's guest.  That got me to thinking about the first circumcision.  Abraham is the first anointed Jew and the titular father of the twelve tribes of Israel.   He, at the age of 99, was the first man to be circumcised.  I find it very hard to believe that a grown man would suddenly wake up one morning, turn to his wife and say:  "Honey, I've decided to cut off the end of my dick, and I think the rest of the tribe should do likewise."  No sane man would even consider such an act unless ordered to by a higher power, no matter what his age.  Who knows?  Maybe Abraham was insane.  After all he did hear voices in his head.  Well, one...anyway...

Growing up, I loved and adored my father.  He was an eminent psychiatrist who preferred to think only big thoughts.  My brother and I treasured those rare moments when we managed to get him alone to hear him prognosticate and ponder.  I asked him one day: "Dad, what do you think of religion?  Do you believe in God?"   "Well Mike, as a man of science, I believe in empirical evidence.  If something can't be proved or seen it falls into the realm of faith.  And I'm just not comfortable taking that leap of faith.  My belief about these things is "God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul."  However, people of faith do many fine things.  Their acts of charity have provided food, medical care and nurturing too many needy souls"  This "God is there is a God" attitude seemed like a wise thing and I immediately adopted it for myself.  I later learned this outlook was called "agnosticism".  There were us agnostics and atheists and those who led a faith based life.  As the years went by I saw the many heartbreaking things that were done in the name of faith in God.  Therefore the possibility of a wise and just God looking over us diminished in my eyes till I added "atheistic" to my agnosticism.  I learned that moral people who are not 'faith based' are called secular humanists.  A fine example is my friend Nicole.  She strongly abjures organized religion but she is a shining example of secular humanism.  Hearing her carrying on about religion, the pope and mother Theresa, etc. led me to suspect that under that lustrous, formerly red, head of hair of hers there was the number "666" tattooed on her scalp.

However, thinking about the first circumcision gave me pause.  Abraham was, essentially, the first monotheist.  His faith and beliefs led to the formation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  As the leader of the chosen people, the twelve tribes that were the first Jews, he was occasionally addressed by God.  When the Almighty told Abe to go up on what became known as the temple mount and sacrifice his first born son Isaac in order to show his faith to Him, Abraham was about to plunge the knife into his trussed up son and set him on fire for the pleasure of God but, at the last minute, God, conveniently provided a ram stuck in a thorn bush and Isaac was saved.  God was, apparently, mightily pleased with Abe's act of faith and He also enjoyed the aroma of burning sheep.  At this point, we have to believe that Abe had shown his devotion to this new singular all powerful, all knowing God, and he could go on about his business of herding sheep and managing the affairs of the tribes as they continued their search for the land of milk and honey.

But at the age of 99, Abraham was, apparently, again addressed by God.  I can only imagine the conversation that took place.

God:  Abraham, this is your God speaking to you.  I have one more favor to ask of you.
Abe:  Umm, yeah...what is it now?
God:  You know that bit of skin at the end of your penis.
Abe:  Yeah?  What about it?
God:  I want you to cut it off.  And the same for all the males of the twelve tribes.
Abe:  What!  Are you kidding!?  Why should we do this?  I thought we were made in your image!  Why would You want us to mutilate ourselves?  Especially after how we have shown you our faith and obedience?  You've got to be kidding, right?
God:  I'm afraid not, Abraham.  Yes, Abraham, I did tell you that you were made in my image but that's not exactly true.  You see, I don't have a foreskin.
Abe:  How can that be if we are truly made in your image?
God:  Here's what happened.  While I was making Adam I got distracted.  It seems Mrs. God was nattering on about how the garden of Eden needed more perennials or something.  At the time, I was finishing up Adam's penis and the distraction caused me to leave a bit of extra flesh on his unit.  Over the generations, this mistake has caused me continual irritation.  Now that I have you chosen people believing in me and doing my bidding you must do this thing to perfectly conform to my image.  Take a knife and cut all around the penis and remove the foreskin.  This operation will be performed on all males, regardless of age, and shall come to be known as "circumcision".
Abe:  How about our women?  Shouldn't they undergo some similar trial?
God:  The pain of childbirth is plenty for them.  (the horror of female circumcision wouldn't rear its ugly head for many years.)

I can't say I believe in God, and yet I can't believe a grown man would cut off part of his own penis unless ordered by a higher power.  I am conflicted.  I'm currently living in a state of cognitive dissonance.  I'm just glad my circumcision took place when I was too young to remember it.  I wasn't planning on being a marathon runner anyway...
That's all the musings from Happy Acres for today.  You may now return to your regularly scheduled program...  Mickey da Mayor