6-4-09

A good dose of History Channel and ‘Jeopardy’ are cure for a noisy house

UREKA!
After all of these years. I have finally figured out the ingredients to a long sought after repellent. As soon as I get a pitch man, I am selling it.
Ever since my brother, sister and I were old enough to all want to watch something different on the television at the same time, there has been a constant struggle for viewing time and the remote control... well... control.
Now that I am married and have children of my own, it hasn’t changed.
Allow me to explain.
Nobody wants to watch what I want to watch, ever. My dad will, and sometimes my brother will but if you throw my mom, sister, and definitely my wife in the same room when I am sitting down and choosing the TV show to watch, well, let’s just say there is usually a mutiny at hand.
I had always been the black sheep in the family, until my sister came along. I was the one who got bad grades in school, didn’t like studying and always seemed to be getting sat down to have a “talk” with my dad.
The funny thing is that I was the one always watching National Geographic, Discovery Channel and that loved to watch Public Television.
My dad and I always found a common ground on this topic. No matter what we were up to, we could always find a comfortable spot in the den and get sucked into a show about the hunting and survival tactics of the South African prairie dog or some intriguing show of that sort.
As time has passed me by, probably from watching too much TV, I have come to realize that only the male species seems to get sucked into these types of shows - like a Star Trek tractor beam.
Whenever I flip the channel over from the news to let’s say, the History Channel, I notice that my family lets out a huge unified sigh and they all walk away.
For the longest time, I have tried to get them to understand that watching these shows broadens their horizons, allows them to interact in higher conversation and, most of all, allows them to answer more questions on Jeopardy.
These reasons haven’t moved them to sit on the couch with me.
They don’t like learning, I guess.
The other day I found myself turning on the National Geographic Channel to watch Planet Earth. I was looking forward to seeing this episode on the world’s deepest places. An hour devoted to exploring some of the deepest caves on the planet. How could you not want to see this?
Two minutes into the show, my family was nowhere to be found. Leigh was doing dishes, Nash was doing a wooden puzzle and Ethan had run to his room to draw a picture at his drafting table.
UREKA!
I figured it out. The first female-, child-, and lots of questions-repellent.
I was alone and watching my show. Enjoying it. It was quiet
I did it. I am selling my secret formula for $19.95 and if you act now I will throw in a 6 oz. bottle of my “Can I get you something while you watch your show” spray and a sample of my famous “yes, Daddy, I will take out the trash for you” balm while supplies last.
Try it, you’re sure to be satisfied.
Bryan Pinkey can be found in History Channel bliss or at bpinkey@nccox.com.

5-28-09

When you think of crabs, do you think Red Lobster?

Have I ever mentioned that I am originally from southern Maryland? Oh, that’s right. About a million times.
Yes, I am proud to be a Maryland boy. Born and raised, I bleed yellow and black. I actually know my state flower and bird; Black-Eyed-Susan and the Baltimore Oriole. Go O’s.
Now, before I get a horde of neighbors outside of my front door holding pitchforks and torches, let me say that I do love my new home in N.C.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Maryland houses the Chesapeake Bay, I wouldn’t be so married to my home state. You might ask, “What is it about Maryland and The Bay that keep you talking about it and boring us to death about it?”
Maryland blue crabs.
That’s it.
Crabs.
If you haven’t sat around a newspaper-covered picnic table on the Fourth of July with a bowl of drawn butter, Old Bay, a pile of steaming Silver Queen corn and your favorite beverage in a can or bottle, then you haven’t had the TRUE blue crab experience.
When I talk to others about eating crabs, they tell me, “ I love crabs. I could eat crab legs at Red Lobster all night long.”
I get a quick shiver down my spine and find myself trying to explain the difference between “eating crabs” and eating crab legs at Red Lobster.
Have you ever eaten a really tough and fatty piece of steak? Have you ever savored a perfectly cooked filet mignon?
Yes, they are that good.
Growing up in the Del-Mar-Va area, you grow up eating crabs. It is just a way of life.
As a child you sit at the “kid’s table” and eat the legs that the adults don’t want, corn drenched in butter and black pepper, make little sculptures with all of the discarded crab shells and make “potions” with all the different types of sauces, liquids and any other ingredient to make a stomach-turning concoction.
As you get older, you are allowed to take on a crab all by yourself. This only happens under the close watchful eye of an adult and experienced peeler. Usually a family member directs you down the path of proper crab peeling techniques.
Nothing is wasted and every part of the succulent bottom feeder is cracked open and mined of its tender meat.
In North Carolina, you have pig pickin’s. In Del-Mar-Va, we have crab feasts. They are so very similar in their order of operations and boyh strive toward the same goal.
Start preparing early, at least a week or two in advance. An order for the main course is called in and reserved. Friends and family are invited and the calendar is marked.
During the day of the event, there is usually a small group that just can’t wait. These are the ones that get together early to start preparing. They set up tables and chairs, pre-heat the grills and find the perfect spot for the horseshoe pit.
As family arrive, some gather around the grill and there are usually a handful of “pros” that instruct you and let you in on their “secret, award-winning, best way” to cook the pig or crabs.
It’s all part of the fun.
This is where the two events take different paths.
When the pig is done people line up, dress their plate and get a serving or two of their favorite cut of pork. The meal is finished, some dessert is ingested and then we push away from the table to make room for our stuffed bellies.
A crab feast, on the other hand goes a little like this.
Everyone gets a comfortable seat around the newspaper-covered table. The cook dumps a large stock pot full of steaming crabs into the middle of the table and those in front of the pile pass out crabs to the left and right of them.
A hush usually falls upon the table and is followed a few minutes later by a round of “oh-man” and “Mmmmmm” as the first taste of backfin meat graces the crowd’s mouths.
This process is repeated for about four hours. I am not kidding. Three to four hours is an average length of time set aside to eat crabs. I’m not talking about cooking and then visiting afterwords. I mean just eating.
It is very important to keep your cooler next to your seat, a personal roll of paper towels in front of you and try to position yourself at the table so that it is difficult for you to get up. This is a strategy I employ to keep everyone from asking me to get them this or that.
This is why it is so important to be around good friends and family, have plenty of time on hand and have activities for the youngsters to do so that the adults can enjoy the feast to it’s fullest.
I am not knocking the pig pickin’ at all. I enjoy attending and cooking all the same. I just love my blue crab tradition. When summertime comes around, I tend to think about nothing else but crabs until I finally get to a table of ‘em piled high. I don’t even care if I have to sit at the “kids table.” I’m just ready for crabs.
Bryan Pinkey can be found pacing the docks impatiently waiting for the crab boats or at bpinkey@nccox.com.

5-21-09

Summer road trip adventures are just around the corner, just add 1 large car

Summer is coming, it’s just around the corner. How do I know this? It says so up top.
This is the time that the outside air smells the best. Fresh cut grass can be smelled all over. Flowering trees permeate the air, and during the first five minutes of a summer rain, the pavement expels a distinct aroma that makes me think of driving long distances.
Yes, folks, it’s road trip season.
About this time every year, I start to think about the joys of hopping into a large vehicle and hitting the highway.
There is something soothing about the sound of the road when you know that you have nine hundred miles and two days ahead of you. Add in all of the truck stop drink and bathroom breaks and the “scenic route” detour that adds 2 hours to the trip and a lifetime of memories and stories to tell.
When I was in first grade, I went on my first memorable road trip. For five weeks or more, dad, mom my sister, Jess (who was about 1 1/2 years old at the time) and myself, drove from our home in Maryland and ended up in San Diego, California.
My father was in the Navy at the time and had active duty in Gulf Port, Mississippi. This was going to be our midway destination and our home for two weeks where we stayed with my grandparents.
I remember being young and thinking that it was strange but exciting to be temporarily living in a different house for two weeks. I went grocery shopping in different stores, went out to eat in different restaurants, went to different parks, flew a kite with my dad and uncle on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico and even made it to New Orleans for the day and kicked pigeons and wandered into a strip club when my parents weren’t looking. Don’t worry, the bouncer shooed me back out the door laughing before I could see anything bad, or good.
When Dad was done with his “Ac-Dutra”, we continued west. From Mississippi we traveled to my father’s uncle’s house in Oklahoma. We only stayed the night, there but I vividly remember wearing an authentic Indian Chief’s head dress that he had hanging beside his fireplace.
We then visited the Grand Canyon. I ended up back there three more times on three different road trips after this trip. It’s that amazing.
There are pictures of me, somewhere, running with a Navajo Indian boy that was the same age as me. Mom said that I told everyone that “I played with a ‘Hobo’ Indian.”
Close enough.
His mother was selling turquoise jewelry on the side of the road at a scenic pull off. We didn’t speak the same language but we both knew how to play and laugh.
San Diego. We made it. Dry, beautiful weather and a huge beautiful zoo.
Aunt Nora took us in for I can’t remember how long. What I do remember is that we were sitting in a hot tub one night and hearing that a blizzard hit the DC area with four feet of snow. My parents thought it was great to be in the warmth of California while everyone back home was freezing and running out of power. I, on the other hand, was mad. All of my friends were at home playing in an unimaginable amount of white powder.
I have now turned a short story into a long one. I think what I am trying to say is that this is the time to pack the family up, pick a destination and hop in the truck.
Smell the smells of different states. Buy groceries in a different store. Collect rubber magnets that are in the shape of each state that you pass through. Eat lunch at roadside diners in the middle of nowhere... and get someone to take a picture of you all standing out front.
Make it an adventure. The memories that can be made from even a three-day weekend will live with you for a lifetime.
Believe me, I still look through my photo album of the time that I bought a ‘78 Caddy and drove across country by myself when I was 22. My family and I still look at the slides from our San Diego trip on a large projector screen when the mood hits us. My friend Steve and I still talk about driving from Arizona back to Maryland in two days. Leigh and I talk about all of our trips from Boston to Maryland and North Carolina.
A lifetime of memories, I tell you. A lifetime.
Bryan Pinkey can be found mapping out his next trip and searching for that next Caddy or at bpinkey@nccox.com.

5-14-09

Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart were ahead of their time

I recently logged into Facebook. I swear that these social networking sites are going to be the downfall of mankind.
People don’t write letters to each other anymore. There are less phone calls and more e-mails than probably should be allowed. Personal contact is at an all-time low.
A year or so, ago, my friend Steve and I were talking about friends of ours that were on Myspace and Facebook and how it is a huge waste of time, impersonal and generally stupid.
We are very cynical and “holier-than-thou” like that when we get together. Don’t judge.
I have a couple of good friends that I have lost touch with over the years and have tried everything except hiring a Bogie style private eye to track them down.
One day, a light bulb turned on. Everyone seems to be on Facebook, Maybe they are, I will see if I can find them there.
I signed my soul over to the site and never told Steve.
Quickly, I found one of my friends. “That was easy.” I thought to myself. One down, two to go.
During my endeavor to find these friends, I found other friends with which I also had lost contact.
One thing I noticed while I perused the Facebook site and “talked” with my friends is that people talk about anything and everything. The other thing that I noticed is that you can keep up with your “friends” and know what they are up to without even talking to them.
Talk about no personal contact.
I have learned more about fellow high school students, friends, and friends of those friends than I ever thought I would know.
One evening while I was having a bout of insomnia, I was thinking about all of these people that I had not talked with in over 15 years. We have all lived our lives, found careers, had families and are trying to grab a little bit of the good ol’ days through the process.
The other thing that I thought about was that it sort of reminded me of a movie I once saw.
Alfred Hitchcock wrote a little story about a man who broke his leg and spent his time looking out of his apartment’s rear window.
L. B. Jeffries, who was played by Jimmy Stewart, would watch his neighbors in the apartment complex behind his building by looking into their back windows.
The neighboring building was about the same size as his and he could see what everyone was doing in their own apartments.
Intrigued, L. B. spent his days watching the daily activities unfold. He would catch a glimpse of someone and could piece together stories of their lives through the short spurts of visual contact that he had with them. It was almost like he was watching multiple TV dramas unfold in every window.
He witnessed what he thinks is a murder, which is where the suspense comes in, but that is irrelevant right now.
You might be asking yourself, “Where is he going with this?”
While logged into Facebook, you can see the conversations that your friends are having and not even have to talk to anyone.
Now, this is sort of nice in the sence that you can “check in” on your friends and be up to speed as to how their day is going, if they had a bad day at work or what they are eating for dinner.
This site allows you to “look in” on each friend whenever you want and, as long as they feel like sharing their thoughts, you can peek into their “window,” just like Jimmy Stewart did.
There is a big voyeuristic pleasure in “checking in” on your friends. I know what they are doing and I can chime in when I feel like it and I can let them look into my “window” whenever I want.
Now yes, we are all in contact with each other. We are doing it in an impersonal fashion but staying in contact none the less.
I don’t think that the website will ever take the place of a good old fashioned phone call or a letter, but it is fun to keep up this way. Staying in touch with friends is nice anyway you slice it.
So, I guess I can live with myself for signing onto Facebook. After all, I’m still looking for my lost friends. If I happen to look in on some friends to see what they are up to, who could it hurt?
It’s not like anyone will get killed.
Bryan Pinkey can be found peeking in on his friends lives or at bpinkey@nccox.com.

4-16-09

A quick trip to the doctor’s office; how to get in and out STAT

I recently told you about my long overdue, run-in with pink eye. It lasted about a week and was a pretty bad case. I had to see my family doctor to get a prescription for some eye drops that would knock out the infection.
I waited until 8:30 a.m. before I called my doctor’s office. Calling first thing in the morning would assure me the first open slot that they might have free.
Fran, at the front desk, answered the phone and told me, “Your doctor is off today. I can get you in to see another one at 10:45.”
“I’ll take it,” I quickly responded and made a mental note of the time knowing that I would forget and have to call back about an hour and a half later to confirm.
Now for the record, I love my doctor. Not in the run off and elope kind of way, I just mean that she is a great person who I feel comfortable talking to and not only trust, but also value her opinions and suggestions.
So, I didn’t really want to see another doctor, but this was something that was textbook so I didn’t care too much.
While I was waiting for the “new” doctor to come into my room, I thought this would be a great time to catch up on some rest. My eyes were sore and felt like they would enjoy being shut for ten or fifteen minutes.
Reclining back onto the crinkly white paper that covered my exam bed and airline style pillow, I quickly found myself drifting off into a nice little nap.
Some time must have passed because I was awakened by another patient opening his exam room door and calling down the hallway. “Mam, how much longer is it going to be until the doctor comes in?”
A nurse answered back, ”Sir, when was your appointment?”
“11:30,” The male patient quickly barked.
What the what? I shook the cobwebs out of my head and I realized that I had been waiting for at least 45 minutes! Now, I might be from out of town, but that seems a little long.
There wasn’t much that I could do. I had to get my eye drops and they did squeeze me in. All I could do is sit and wait... and think up funny scenarios about people waiting for their doctor to see them.
Imagine this. Doctor comes in the door, “How are you doing, Mr. Pinkey?”
“Good, but something doesn’t taste right with those marshmellows over there in the jar on your counter.”
I thought about running out of my door and screaming that I used my cell phone and it caused a pacemaker explosion in the exam room next to me.... Get the doctor here STAT.
How about this, Simply call the front desk and ask them if they have forgot about you. I am sure they would find that real funny.
I was thinking about ripping off a piece of the crinkly white paper from the table that I was resting on and writing out a bill for the doctor for every fifteen minutes that I had been waiting past my appointment time. After all, I did take off from work.
Now I know my doctor is reading this right now and picking up her cell phone to call the head doctor. “Tomorrow, can I drop Mr. Pinkey as my patient?”
So, in all fairness, the “new” doctor did apologize and told me that they were trying some new set-up or something and that he appreciated my patience.
Doesn’t mean that I can’t think up great ways to laugh about the situation.
Next time you find yourself waiting for a long time, try this.
Lean your head out the door and loudly ask “The bottle of pills and the morphine drip bag in here, are they free samples?” I bet that “The doctor will be right in.”
Bryan Pinkey can be found picking his medical file up off of the ground outside of his doctor’s office or at bpinkey@nccox.com.

4-9-09

A house of pink-eyed Pinkeys, Wal-Mart and daycare provide family fun

I joke around with my wife about the fact that she brings home all kinds of germs from teaching all of her elementary school kids. I like to call them a bunch of germ-carrying window lickers.
I owe this in part to the fact that one of my memories of elementary school consists of kids riding the school bus with their heads resting on the glass of the windows and their tongues slowly cleaning the grime off of the bottom pane of glass.
Window Licker.
Now that I have children of my own and can actually watch my daughter rest her head on the front window of our den and run her tongue across the glass, I have the authority to use the said title.
I am digressing a bit.
About a week ago, my daughter came home from day care not only with a bag of soiled clothing and empty sippy cups, she came home covered in an invisible layer of pink eye covering her cute little outfit, hands and face.
We have had numerous run-ins with pink eye. It seems like every time we come home from Wal-Mart, one of our kids wakes up the next morning with crusty red eyes.
I truly think that Wal-Mart is just a 30,000 square foot petri dish. If you want to catch something that will put you out of commission for a few days, take a quick stroll down the toy aisle with your hand out, gently brushing against a few colorful boxed items as you walk. If you want to make sure you walk out of there with something extra, just touch a few shopping carts and door handles.
Throughout all of the cases, I have never come down with it. I don’t think that I have had pink eye since I was a child. Leigh gets mad because she thinks I have some sort of immunity to the infection.
Not this time.
Wednesday morning at about three a.m., I woke to Nash crying and my eyes were crusted shut.
Son of a ....gun!
I finally got it.
When we all got up at six thirty, I told Leigh, “I got it. My eyes are slam shut.”
“It’s about time, but I’m sorry,” she said with a little bit of reassurance because now she knew she wasn’t crazy.
As soon as the doctor’s office opened, I made an appointment. I got my eye drops from our family pharmacy
By the end of the day, both eyes were red and burning. Leigh, who has lots of experience with getting the infection, stepped back when I walked into the house from being at work all day.
“Whoa, you got it bad. You caught up for never getting it in the past. DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!”
It has now been a solid week. I have had this annoying infection for seven days. I have avoided the public and coworkers as much as possible and have been washing my hands about every ten minutes.
Everyone in the house came down with the infection throughout the course of the week. Everyone’s hands are as dry and cracked as can be from washing and the house smells of bleach thanks to a germ-a-phobic wife.
Leigh had the bathtub filled with bleach water and all of the children’s toys that could handle drowning in the toxic bath. At first glance, I thought a Toys-R-Us tanker ship had been T-boned by a torpedo in the kids’ bathtub.
I think that we have officially eradicated the Wal-Mart /daycare / window licking infection from our house. It was just in time, too. I saw a C.D.C. truck driving by our house a few days ago. Our house is no longer a petri dish and my hands can start to mend.
I think that the next time we go to Wal-Mart, I will disburse rubber gloves and some respirators that I have stored down in my shop. I might even consider installing a contamination bath for the kids to walk through when they get home from daycare.
If I don’t get that infection for another thirty years, it will still be too soon.
Bryan Pinkey can be found coating his hands in Neosporin or at bpinkey@nccox.com.

4-2-09

Stock broker, dinner guest, and taxi driver; the best Boston friend around

I have used so much of Cox Communication ink to print stories about my hardships, good times and family life. We all know each other well enough for me to tell you some stories of my unusual friends.
I would not be the man (most would still say I’m a kid) that I am if it wasn’t for my friends. Combined, they have taught me so much and have helped to mold me into the strange and politically incorrect person I am today.
Robert Nagel is in the top five of my list of best friends. An odd person that part of me wishes I could be, he reminds me of a cross between Seth Myers from Saturday Night Live and, sadly, was a spitting image of Daniel Pearl, the journalist that was killed overseas by terrorists in February ‘02.
Anyhow.
Robert, Leigh and I all lived in the same pink-painted building on Michelangelo St. in Boston’s historic North End. The first time I met him was at 1:30 in the morning on a Tuesday. I stomped down a flight of stairs to the “New Guy’s” apartment who thought it was appropriate to blast the Red Hot Chili Peppers after coming home from an evening out with his friends. With a tight fist, I tried to bang a hole through his apartment door. The volume on the radio went down and he opened the door.
“What the h*!!’s wrong with you, I’m trying to sleep up there,” I yelled and pointed towards my apartment door. I could tell right away that he was upset that he had upset a fellow neighbor and responded, “I am so sorry, we just got back from a party and had a bit too much to drink. I am so sorry, I’ll turn it down. Sorry.”
I turned and walked away without saying another word. I laid back down in my bed and felt bad now because I just yelled at a very nice, polite neighbor.
I’m unsure of how the next few weeks unfolded, but somehow we ended up spending a lot of time together on the roof of our six story apartment building. We would sit up there drinking beer, talking, and watching the lights of Boston. We just hit it off famously.
Robert was a stock broker by day and worked in the financial district in town. He loved making money. Robert was good at it. All day long he would be on the phone with clients, trading information, stocks and a ton of money. Funny thing is, he couldn’t do it for himself. He lived off of commission. Some weeks he was living high on the hog, dropping by with Chinese food for all of us and other times he would poke his head in our door and ask what WE were having for dinner. Leigh and I didn’t mind, he had turned into the best friend anyone could ask for.
When the 9/11 stuff happened, he was having a hard time making money during the day, so he decided to find another way to make ends meet. Robert had a friend that owned a cab company and said the he would give Robert a route if he got his license.
He did and got his route.
Now, Robert wasn’t happy with just making the normal fares like every other cabbie. He decided that there was more money working the late night / early morning shift. Robert would catch the “T” (Boston’s subway) to the cab station, get his car and drive to the “packie” (package store, liquor store). Robert filled his trunk with beer and liquor.
He would drive by all of the high end clubs and hang outs around closing time to find his fares. When driving them to their end-of-the-night destination he would remind them that all of the beer stores were closed. Once he hooked them, Robert told them that he could get them whatever they wanted. Pulling over in the next parking lot, he would open his trunk and sell them whatever they wanted to drink to finish off their evening at an inflated cost. Supply and demand. A man after my own heart.
One of the advantages of having Robert as a friend was that we had a free cab ride anytime, anywhere during the weekend. Leigh and I would call him on his cell and he would answer on the first ring. “Where you at?” I would give him my location and in about fifteen minutes he was screeching to a halt in front of us.
When Leigh and I left Boston, Robert was the only friend that showed up to help us load the moving truck. Jessica, my sister, did fly up to help us and I need to say that or else she would hit me next time I saw her.
Robert drove his cab to our house at eight in the morning after driving all night long. He made sure we were all set, loaded up, hugged us good bye and drove his cab back to the shop.
That was the last time I saw him.
I have exhausted every avenue that I can think of to find him. Google, Facebook, calling mutual friends, I can’t find the man anywhere.
During one of our late night conversations on the roof overlooking the “Old North Church,” (the tower that Paul Revere hung his lanterns in at the beginning of the Revolutionary War) he told me about his sister who was married to a man in Mexico that owned a copper mine. He said that the living was good down there and the copper industry was lucrative.
After all of these years of looking for him, I think that Mexico may be the last stop in my quest for contact with Robert Nagel. The only problem with this is that I don’t plan on heading down there anytime soon.
I don’t do the “Spring Break” stuff anymore, I don’t surf and I refuse to travel farther than Food Lion for a good price on alcohol.
The only way, I think, that you will find me driving fast across the border into Mexico is if I am running from the law in a ‘62 Caddy, and I don’t plan on doing that... anytime soon.
Bryan Pinkey can always be found searching for a ‘62 Caddy or at bpinkey@nccox.com. You can also read an archive of his past articles at www.jbryanpinkey.blogspot.com.