Category: Family

Where the buttons are

Published on by NouveauSoileau6 Comments

It’s something of a sport in my family, when things get dull and boring, to introduce a topic guaranteed to send an otherwise-content family member into complete nuclear orbit. What’s even more fun is the fact that, most of the time, the family member in question absolutely knows he or she is being picked on, but is unable … to … resist … the … urge  … to … RANT!

For some strange reason, most of these stories have to do with some mode of transportation. We’ll start with me, because I’m fair like that.

The Nut Rant. I’m sure I am not the first person to have noticed nor will I be the last to be deathly appalled by the existence of truck nuts. Ah yes, the polyurethane depiction of naked man balls, attractively attached beneath the rear bumper of a large, compensating-for-something pickup truck. No, the hilarious reaction I had when these … things first became available and/or widespread was my complete denial that they were, in fact, exactly what they appeared to be.

The scene went something like this:

Me, in the passenger seat of the car, in traffic: “What IS that hanging under that truck up there?”
Husband Tras: “What does it look like?” [suppressed laughter]
Me: “Well, it looks like testicles — good lord, what has someone got on the back of their truck that LOOKS like man parts?”
Tras: [raised eyebrows]
Me: “No.”

“No,” I said, “those are NOT manufactured depictions of human gonads. That is not what they are, because there is no one, anywhere, who would willingly and on purpose purchase and then place such a thing on the back of a vehicle. There exists nowhere in the known universe a person who would make the conscious decision to attach a replica of the most unflattering and graphically detailed piece of the human anatomy which God himself created in His image on the outside of a motor vehicle which anyone driving by could see, even GRANDMOTHERS and small children and … and …”

And. Well. Um. Ahem — yes. I guess I stand corrected, then. There is a form of humor lower than a pun — and it certainly appears that it hangs lower as well.

And so, if there is ever, at any time, something that I protest cannot possibly be, Tras has only to remind me that these things exist and I am forced to admit that indeed, the devil is loose in the world, and he is treated to Installment #487 of The Nut Rant.

Yellow Truck. Although I did not witness the birth of this long-lived peeve, I have been around for its maturation, fruition, and eventual elevation to Beating a Dead Horse heights.

It seems years ago, my brother-in-law David pointed out the idiosyncratic color scheme adopted by Yellow Transportation Inc. for its semi-tractor-trailers. They’re not, as one might reasonably predict, yellow — they are orange. Cue rant.

One day Tras entertained the children and I with the stories of the vehemence, length, and apoplectic nature of the Dave Yellow Truck Rant.™ We were, of course, delighted, and from thence forward, on any car trip, every eye was peeled for a glimpse of the hilariously rant-inducing Orange Yellow Truck.

One bright fall day, on our way South for a family get-together, one such truck was spotted and Tras snapped its photo with his phone and promptly emailed it to David, who would be joining us at our destination. The rest of the trip was merrily consumed with predictions and suggested enactments of just how David would react upon receiving the email. This we of course told him all about when we all reunited in North Carolina.

At first he was all “yeah, yeah, yeah, it bugs me, you’re all so funny, hee-hee-hee,” but, as expected, he eventually started defending his Anti-Orange Stance When It Comes to Yellow Trucks. We all sat back, pleased with ourselves, and thoroughly enjoyed the rant in full flower. (Available in either yellow or orange.)

No Hams on the Gunwale. Tras has a ski boat which I, as wife and life-partner, now own as well. Due to circumstances not particularly favorable for intensive weekends of skiing and boating (which would be, in order, the birth, rearing, and management of a 5-year-old plus the introduction of termites into the aft deck which has rendered it mostly unseaworthy) I have yet to sail upon it. Boating was, however, for many years, quite the Tras passion and I have heard many, many stories from him, his family, and his friends about the varied exploits which have, over the years, occurred on the water.

One of these was a Soileau family outing. As might be expected from an extended family which included a mother prone to making potato salad, they arrived fully laden with enough food to feed a small country for at least a week. In addition to the aforementioned potato salad, the menu apparently also consisted of pork and beans, two-liter containers of various carbonated beverages, plastic cups, silverware, and a large, fully cooked, bone-in ham.

Let us contemplate the scene. Tras deftly maneuvers the boat and trailer into the lake, the family aboard, and he quickly takes truck and trailer to the parking area so that the many other boating parties may also launch in as timely a manner as possible. This is boating etiquette and boating protocol. So when he begins to make his way back to the launch site, Tras is understandably perplexed at the long, long line of cars, boats, and trailers stretching off into infinity. My, there certainly must be a LOT of people on the lake today.

The reason for the line, it soon becomes apparent, is the presence of one boat blocking the launch site. This boat hasn’t courteously been moved out of the way so others could launch — no. It is full of a merry band of picnickers, unconcernedly quaffing Cokes and sawing away at a large ham perilously parked upon the gunwale of the craft, which has drifted not one inch.

Appalled at this breach of boating decorum and stunned at the depth and volume of the feast, Tras quickly maneuvers the family out of launch’s way and on with the day of boating. Yet the ire, it did burn.

“We knew Tras was mad about something, but we didn’t know what,” said Tras’s sister Diana years later, when the event was trotted out for public consumption.

Many apologies from boating-protocol-ignorant family. And from Tras, good humor at the ribbing — which eventually, to everyone’s delight, deteriorated into low-grade, delayed fuming.

Everyone waits for the climax of the rant, for Tras can depended upon to, at least once, recall in vivid detail the horror he felt when he returned from the parking area and saw his boat at the eye of a hurricane of boater irritation — with his oblivious family happily munching around none other than a large ham laid out upon the gunwale.

We are here!

Published on by NouveauSoileauLeave a comment

Well, I am, anyway.

Like the Whos in Horton’s dustspeck, NouveauSoileau is very tiny indeed in the great enormous  internet, but as those Whos would say, I am here, I am here, I am here!

And I’m here today with an update from a post last fall, when my brother Mark emailed me a photo of The Hung Jury, a print that the West Publishing Co. , purveyor of law books, gifted to 1950s lawyers.

My father, you may recall, was not a ’50s lawyer, but assumed the practice of one who was, and presumably the contents included this print, which hung on the wall of his office throughout my childhood. After my father’s death, my mother gave my siblings and I some mementos of my father, including The Hung Jury. It was in the possession of the aforementioned Mark when a fire completely demolished his home a few years ago.

Well, last week an extremely pleasant comment landed here on the blog from a lady in Albuquerque, N.M., who is in possession of a copy of The Hung Jury. It belonged to her late husband, who got it from his father, a lawyer who practiced in Elizabeth City, N.C. Curious about its origins, she Googled and arrived here at NouveauSoileau and learned the history of the print, which I, your humble investigative journalist, had unearthed last September.

Since she kindly left her telephone number, I gave her a jingle and we had a wonderful conversation. We talked about small towns. We talked about genealogy. And, unsurprisingly, we discussed attorneys.

One of the reasons she and her husband liked the print is that the more reasonable-looking jury member, positioned to the left of Grumpy Mr. Holdout, looks a lot like her father-in-law. Interestingly, the apoplectic guy on the left, he of the pounding fist, closely resembles another figure from my childhood, a Mr. Pierce, who ran a liquor store downtown and, memorably, gave me a free candy bar on my seventh birthday. I’ll never forget it because, in addition to the unheard-of gift from heaven of a candy bar, I also couldn’t help but notice that half of the store was decorated in my honor; lots of Seagram’s 7 posters and 7-up advertisements about.

So there’s another quirky thing which makes this strange and wonderful print so interesting: anyone who’s seen it finds someone they know among the hung jury.

I’m anxiously awaiting the news if The Hung Jury will be among my eclectic art collection at some point in the future. Oh and hey —I know it’s not Art. But it’s also not Dogs Playing Poker and by golly, just because I didn’t go to law school, it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a little courthouse humor. After all, I practically grew up in one.

Need a comedian? Call a Catholic

Published on by NouveauSoileau2 Comments

Growing up, being Catholic was just as big a part of my life as it is today. I went to St. John the Evangelist Catholic School — for only three years, until it closed — but for those three years, baby, I went to Mass every single day.

An early childhood spent dreaming of saints, breathing incense, and contemplating stigmata is a powerful force indeed. Tell me, did YOU have to learn how to spell “excommunication” on any of your third-grade spelling tests?

(Well, I didn’t either; it was “Communion.” But still.)

Couple that with some of the habits of my parents, who were just as Catholic-soaked as their offspring— literally as it turns out — and you’ve got someone like me, who has a glow-in-the-dark Blessed Virgin next to her kitchen sink which I actually treasure dearly.

My mother is a sensible woman if ever there was one, and practical as the day is long. She can also be very funny. One of the fondest memories of my childhood is of Mom putting together the salad for the nightly meal, rinsing the various vegetables at the sink.

A random child wanders by — say, me. Mom picks up the celery.

“I bless you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!” she cackles, spraying everyone in the vicinity with water from her dripping leafy stalk of celery.

If you’re not Catholic (or perhaps Episcopalian or Lutheran, who retain many of these same customs) you may be unaware that priests frequently bless the congregation with Holy Water, using either a special rod-like thing (called an aspergillum) that he plunges down into a vessel borne by an altar boy, or a palm frond. If you’re in the line of fire (or water, in this case) when he’s just gone back for a fresh load, you can get very wet indeed. It’s sort of the ecclesiastical version of riding the water ride at a theme park.

Exhibit B — my father. Dad didn’t just attend Catholic school; no, he went to an actual Catholic seminary (where priests are educated) for high school and one year of college. It was a boarding school and it was the 1950s. You may not be surprised to learn that all the boys were required to wear cassocks, the long black garments which priests today wear beneath their vestments and, depending on the church, so do the altar servers. His chief recollection of having to flap around in these things was that the slits in the sides, provided so that the boys had access to their pants pockets, frequently got caught up on the end of the staircase rails as the rowdy boys whirled around the banisters, late for class.

He also recalled that they were prohibited from smoking cigarettes, which is why all the boys took up pipe smoking. 1950s, remember.

At any rate, in addition to learning an awful lot of Latin, Dad also absorbed fully many of the traditions and practices of the Church. You might even say that he was infused with them. The second most-vivid comedy-gold Catholic memory of my childhood is the sight of my inventive father, swinging a thurible of his own invention and manufacture in order to hasten the heat and subsequent usability of charcoal briquettes prior to a backyard barbecue.

What’s a thurible? See right. It’s used at Mass, or on other occasions when the Church wishes to use fragrant smoke to symbolize our prayers rising to heaven, purifying what it touches. It’s pretty potent, and the chronically allergic wisely avoid those Masses which promise to be heavily clouded in incense.

But back to Dad. You know how it is. You light the charcoal and wait 1.5 geologic ages until it’s burned down to the white-hot coals which will adequately cook your burgers and dogs. So the old altar boy came up with this method to speed the Baker barbecues. Swing-swing went the Bakerified thurible, hastening the burning process of the briquettes. I suppose I was a little embarrassed by it; I mean, no other dads were swinging incense burners during other kids’ cookouts. But hey — we got to eat sooner. Thank you, Catholic Church!

Most Catholic kids, at one time or another, have played Mass. There’s a lot of drama, after all, with ringing bells and ornate platters, chalices and whatnot. (It is, in fact, the earliest form of drama.) The big moment for the kids, though, is the distribution of Communion, though always a bummer for us girls, who were forever relegated to being receivers only since only the boys could play priest.

OK, so most Catholic kids reenact the Mass. My mom, however, would reenact stigmata.

You may know about stigmata; it’s something many saints have exhibited: the bleeding from the hands, feet, and side at the sites of the wounds of Christ. It’s a big deal, saint-wise. But I’ll never forget the occasions on which my mom accidentally stabbed herself in the palm — like the time she thrust her hand right into a stick concealed in the pile of leaves she was raking — and she’d clutch her hand saying, “stigmata! stigmata!” I’d always run into the house for a stalk of celery to help her out.

When my husband, Tras (who was not raised Catholic), entered my life, he one day innocently asked me just where we Catholics procured all the implements of our faith: crucifixes for the wall, statues for the dresser, holy cards for all occasions. When I told him about Catholic bookstores, he immediately dubbed them the “Catholic PX” and never fails to remark on it when I need to run down there and pick up a gift for someone’s Confirmation or First Communion. Do I need further evidence that he’s the one for me? That kind of humor doesn’t generally grow on non-Catholic trees.

Today I was reading Pioneer Woman‘s blog, and see a post from her friend Hyacinth, who details a recent redecoration of a stairwell nook. A Catholic, she used items that were important to her, specifically crucifixes, icons, and other — in her words — “Jesus doodads.” Ah, another kindred spirit.

I might have to run down to the PX and pick me up another couple glow-in-the dark Marys … just to be sure.

Haul out the holly

Published on by NouveauSoileau4 Comments

When I was a sophomore in high school, I appeared in the classic musical Mame, and in a high school which cranked out a musical every spring, it was a show-stopper. I will never know, objectively, just how high the level of talent and how rich the level of entertainment this production provided, but now, more than 30 years hence, I can say unequivocally that it was the best thing staged at Carroll County High School in April 1979.

Do you know the story? A young boy is orphaned in the 1920s and sent to live with his only living relative, a “spinster” in New York. What he finds in Auntie Mame is a bohemian free spirit. The show contains a number of barn-burner numbers including, of course, the venerable title song “Mame” itself, along with “Open a New Window” and “That’s How Young I Feel.” We sang and we danced our little hearts out.

As the 1920s draw to a close and the stock market inevitably crashes, Mame’s lifestyle is brought to a screeching halt. Penniless, but not friendless, she implores everyone to buck up. And though the calendar reads early fall, the chorus launches into a song that you’re bound to recognize, “We Need a Little Christmas.”

Haul out the holly;
Put up the tree before my spirit falls again.
Fill up the stocking,
I may be rushing things, but deck the halls again now.
For we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute,
Candles in the window,
Carols at the spinet.
Yes, we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute.
It hasn’t snowed a single flurry,
But Santa, dear, we’re in a hurry!

OK see, it’s not Christmas, but she needs a little bit of holly to pull her out of the doldrums. Tinsel and light, singing happy songs. Everyone’s poor but hey! you can still have the Christmas spirit!

It is NOT a Christmas carol.

This rant falls upon deaf ears. Well, mostly the ears are non-existent, since the fuming generally occurs in my own head as I’m driving along in the car, or held captive in some office or store where holiday tunes are pouring forth into the atmosphere a mile a minute. “Damn it, that’s a show tune from Mame and I sang it when I was 15 years old on stage! Oh, sure, I was in the chorus, but I SANG and I DANCED and it was incredible and …”

All right, I might get a little carried away in daydreams of my show-business non-start, but the fact remains that this song has no business being played on the radio during Christmas as though it were some sort of legitimate Christmas song on the order of “Silent Night,” “White Christmas,” “Sleigh Ride,” or “O Come All Ye Faithful,” just to mention a few of my own personal favorites.

So climb down the chimney;
Put up the brightest string of lights I’ve ever seen.
Slice up the fruitcake;
It’s time we hung some tinsel on that evergreen bough.
For I’ve grown a little leaner,
Grown a little colder,
Grown a little sadder,
Grown a little older,
And I need a little angel
Sitting on my shoulder,
Need a little Christmas now.

See? Not Christmas. It is evoking the Christmas spirit during the non-holiday time of the year.

Whew.  I feel better.

That said, these past couple of weeks we’ve been hauling out the holly and trying to hang some tinsel on that evergreen bough, but funnily enough, life gets in the way a little too often. Light-stringer extraordinaire Claire, though augmented by BFF Aren several weeks ago, was felled by an early season bug of some sort, and our 12-foot tree remained sadly half-lit for more than a week. A few false starts at decorating left the tree somewhat bottom heavy as Trassie laid on the homemade decorations within his level of reach.

But wonderfully it all came to a conclusion this weekend when not one but two trees were assembled, decorated and lit, and candles were indeed placed in the windows, though, lacking a spinet, our carols were sung to the accompaniment of whatever was playing on satellite radio at any given moment.

But lo! how a rose e’re blooming! The Nativity scene is in place and we here at Chez Soileau are ready to welcome the celebration of the birth of Christ with all the solemnity and dignity you might expect from an outfit such as ours, where we

… need a little music,
Need a little laughter,
Need a little singing
Ringing through the rafter,
And we need a little snappy
“Happy ever after,”
Need a little Christmas now.

OK, maybe it qualifies a little bit as a Christmas song, of sorts. I long ago admitted it into my heart, where show tunes dwell for all eternity, heavy on the George M. Cohan and edelweiss. There are a few things I upon which I insist on precision, and the properly turned out Christmas carol is one of them. So sing “We Need a Little Christmas” at Christmas, if you must, when the world is perfectly lousy with it — but remember, if you can, the message of the song, which I prefer to believe is that with a little imagination, you can evoke the season all year long.