from the archives
Part One  

Tuesday, October 01, 2002

and he comes back a moment later with something small in a baggie. It is a tomato. It is not just any tomato. It is the tomato she presented to Sean Heather some considerable time ago. It is glossy orange except where it has gone bad, where it is sort of white and slimy-looking. It was a fine vegetable in its day, you can just tell by looking, but now it is slimy. The scene is reminiscent of that moment on the cop show where the parents have to identify the body.

Well, let us just say that in this case Mom takes it hard. "Why didn't you use it? It was a great tomato!" We brace ourselves to hear all about its fine future as a concert pianist, but are thankfully spared.

Sean makes small, excuse-sounding noises that don't go very far, at least not with her because she isn't having any of it. She lets him have it, though, and concludes with a lecture about how she does not want to come back-

"Good," says Sean, getting just one word in edgewise.

-and find the same thing has happened to this turnip. Ah yes, we are back to the turnip. This, she informs everyone within a couple of miles, is not just any turnip.

"No?"

"NO! This is a watermelon turnip. An ORGANIC watermelon turnip."

"Oh. Really?"

"Really."

Well, that seems to settle it. Sean reverently takes the turnip, holding it not like a regular turnip, no, not in a regular turnip-hold at all, but on the flat of his hand like he is suddenly a spokesmodel from the Price Is Right, slowly turns and paces in that bridesmaid walk back into the kitchen.

While he is gone a waitress asks the woman what that egg is for. Ah yes, the egg. I had forgotten about the egg. Throughout the minuet with the barkeep there has been a small egg sitting on the bar beside her.

"It's a nonsmoking egg," she says, as if half the eggs you meet were regulars at the back door of the supermarket, puffing Export A's. I have never encountered an egg that smoked, but then I don't live back east.

But she's talking again. "I've been smoking for longer than my boyfriend has been alive, so I thought I'd better quit."

"So you got an egg," says the host with a positively Buddhist lack of expression, now returned from the turnip presentation.

"Yeah," she says. "This egg."

"Well I thought it would be that egg."

"Yes," she says, "this one right here. Every time I want to smoke I pick it up and squeeze it."

At this point she picks up the egg and gives it a good, hard squeeze. I am prepared for real drama, but nonsmoking eggs are apparently not real and instead are made of something that does not resent a good squeeze the way a real egg might. It just squooshes a bit; no cascading fountains of egg entrails, alas.

"Does it work?" asks the waitress, intrigued.

"It's the best nonsmoking egg I've ever used."

another from the archives

Tuesday, October 01, 2002

Nothing beats a drunken laywer for eavesdropping potential. And you can usually find some at the Irish Heather, particularly after court gets out every day. Give them an hour or so to pump some beer in there and away they go!

But I must say that the perfectly sober woman who presented Sean Heather with a watermelon turnip makes a pretty fine eavesdropping subject as well. As she all-too-well knows, I'm sure. Apparently she does the vegetable-presentation thing alot. It must be some sort of obscure religious ritual; perhaps there is tofu involved in some of the ceremonies. All I can say is it probably doesn't get many converts.

Certainly not Sean Heather. Let me tell you how it was…

So there I was, sitting quietly ringside, staring up at the big painting of the staff and regulars that has that interesting story which we have already discussed, at length, in this very blog, and she walked in. A pocket-sized brunette in a short skirt and a denim vest, she looked about forty.

"Oh it's you." says Sean.

"Oh, you love to see me."

"Oh yeah, sure I do," he says, all underwhelmed-sounding. You get the feeling they do this dance alot, like an old married couple. "And what are you drinking today?"

Surprisingly, she gives him a little lecture on the nature of his beer-based cocktails. Perhaps she reads the blog. Hi. But I think she finally decided on a Guinness. This was, apparently, no surprise to the host. They dance a little more:

"Is Roger in today?"

"No, that was him on the phone a minute ago. I told him you were here and now he's not coming in."

"Oh, you love me."

"And Roger loves you."

"Look what I've got for you," she says and he says nothing but "Oh God," and she reaches in her purse putting in her whole arm up to the armpit. The purse isn't that big; there must be a trapdoor to another universe or something like with Mary Poppins. She takes it out in a huge arc, like she's winding up to throw a pitch, and when the hand stops moving there is a large, white vegetable in it. She flourishes her free hand all around it like a spokesmodel on The Price Is Right.

"And what is that?" says mine host.

"It's a turnip…"

"Well, my gratitude knows no bounds. A turnip. Let me show you what happened to the last one…" and he goes into the kitchen.

The last one?

to be continued