Call Dr. Atkins and tell him I'm running late
What was your favorite memory this year?
In April, I followed two friends into Smitty's, a 100-year-old BBQ joint in Lockhart, Texas. We walked toward the back of the restaurant, near the pits, and found Jimmy sharpening a long knife on a whetstone the size of a shoebox. We leaned on the counter and watched him as he slid the knife back and forth, periodically pausing to thumb the two-inch-wide blade. After a while he looked up, held his index finger and thumb four inches apart, and said, "It used to be this wide." He pronounced "wide" like "waaaad."
"Where you from?" asked Jimmy, whose bright white duds contrasted sharply with the soot that covered every inch of Smitty's interior. We told him (St. Paul, New York) and he slowly got up and said, "Guess I better show y'all around." He showed us the pits, took us back into the meat locker, pointed out the place where Miss Sandra Bullock had once dined, and let us poke our heads into the sausage room, where Smitty's stuffed and hung hundreds of sausages every day before smoking.
Then he took us back to the main pit and carved up enough meat to feed six or seven men -- brisket, ribs, sausage, smoked prime rib, and smoked pork chops. He slapped it all on three pieces of butcher paper ("These are your plates"), weighed it, added half a dozen slices of white bread, and sent us off to the dining area.We silently dug into the steaming pile of beef and pork with our bare hands -- no forks at Smitty's. After a while Mike, who had arrived in Texas from Manhattan not two hours prior, leaned back and reflected on just how far he had traveled: "Yesterday afternoon I was in a meeting where my boss said, 'You know, no one wants to see the sausage being made.'"
That was my favorite memory of 2006. Post your favorite here (click "comments" below), and let me know if you will or will not be playing hoops at St. John's tomorrow. There's still time to make a breakaway dunk your favorite 2006 moment!
posted by SPY at 10:52 AM
2 Comments:
My fave memory of 2006? These kinds of questions are always tough calls. But I certainly do recall one afternoon in July (cue the harp music and the Letterman/Shaffer-esque fade-to-blurry sequence)...
My parents were coming out to visit us for a few days. My mom and dad (79 and 76, respectively) don't get around as easily as the once did (after the age of 30, who does?). My dad hadn't been to a Red Sox game in a few years - and I thought he could really use a good trip to Fenway.
So - against all common sense and reasonable wisdom - I broke down and bought four tickets for him, me, (please - no e-mails - those are all object-case pronouns!) and my two kids, Emily, 9, and Matt, 7 in the front row on the third-base side. Actually, the first two rows. They were pairs of seats in Rows A and B - so we planned to alternate for different innings.
My dad traces his Sox-watching days to the post-Babe 1930s and has seen them all: Williams, Pesky, DiMaggio (Dominic, not his over-rated brother, Joe), Doerr, Dick "The Monster" Radatz, Yaz, Fisk, Rice, Evans, Clemens, Nomar, Pedro ... But in all those years, he never sat in a front-row seat. So, despite the exorbitant cost charged by "Red Sox Replay" (pro teams are now ALL scalpers - and don't let them tell you otherwise), I had us situated right behind the ball-girl on the third-base side.
A word about the ball-girl, if I may? Kelly. On NESN out here, she's a minor celebrity because she's seen many nights on cable and her scoops and snags draw appreciative comments and telestrator break-downs and annotations from Don and the Rem-Dawg. She might also be extremely attractive. It's not for me to say. Didn't notice. Nope. Not a bit.
So, I strike up a conversation with Kelly. Turns out she attends Boston University. Why, I teach at BU one night a week, I reply. She says she attends the College of Communication. Why, that's the college I teach in, I reply. Soon, I'm introducing her to Emily and Matt, who shyly acknoledge her presence.
Now, I've been going to sports events all my life - primarily baseball and hockey (with a lot of football in recent years). Not once - in perhaps thousands of games - have I ever snagged a foul ball or errant puck. (Maybe that's a good thing, considering the inherent risks of emergency maxillofacial surgery.) But Em and Matt are imploring me to get them a ball - as if I could summon up some voodoo Dad-mojo and make it happen.
Sometimes, though....
It's the second inning and it's hotter than heck - did I mention it's a weekday game? The kind that make you feel extra special because you're not only sitting in the front row of a baseball game at Fenway but also because you're skipping work, too. Switch-hitting Coco Crisp is up, batting from the left side agaist some right-handed tomato can from the KC Royals. After looking at a few pitches, he bounds one foul.
Down the third-base line.
Right.
Toward.
Us.
Enter the lovely Kelly. She makes a routine play on it and with a huge smile, calmly walks over to Emily and presents it to her (over, I might add, the outstretched hands of two 12 year-old-boys to her left)... (OK, and over MY outstretched hands, too...)
Em proceeds to show the entire television viewing audience her entire dental work by opening her mouth into a giant Grand Canyon of joy.
Back home, my wife and my mom are absently watching when they suddenly see Em and her baseball waving to the camera. My brother and his nephew see the whole thing play out from their seats in the upper deck behind the home on-deck circle. My dad's slapping Em on the back. My cell phone's vibrating like mad. And, bless his heart, even my son - who surely suppressed years of envy, is happy for Em, who proceeds to take out a pen and inscribe the ball with the date, opponent, etc.
In the second row, my 79-year-old dad quietly smiles and enjoys a day at the ballpark with his son and grandchildren.
Hell, that wasn't just a fave memory of 2006. That just might be a fave memory of my life...
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