Understatement (n): a statement that describes something in a way that makes it seem less important, serious, bad, etc. than it really is, or the act of making such statements.
Cambridge Dictionary
These past couple of days, it’s been a real struggle trying to find the theme for this year’s story marking the eighth anniversary of getting the phone call I really could have done without for a few more years.
And *THAT* would be a grand example of good old British understatement. They might tell you that football is their national sport but don’t be fooled: understatement laced with biting sarcasm is keenly played by more subjects of the United Kingdom per capita than anywhere else on the face of the Earth and far more often than they’d really like to admit to.
It would have been very easy to give in to my initial impulse to just cut loose at this keyboard with the overarching vibe of this month which has been depressing at best and well nigh to the ninth ring of hell for most of the rest of it.
And were it not for an act of epic kindness the day before Grandpa’s birthday from one of the dearest friends I’ve ever known as my December tradition of automotive misery has proven to be very much alive and well, it’d be very easy to stay in the very dark places I’ve been walking of late.
But the easy way is rarely the best way and the goal of this annual post for the last couple of years is to give you dear readers an insight into my father’s life that few people would ever know from the unique perspective of the one person who was at his side for a good bit of it.
So I’ve thought about it for a couple of days and decided that even though this month has felt like falling off a cliff, it’s time to try to fly as Captain John Sheridan of “Babylon 5” would have us do.
OK…quick poll here: “how many of you were confused by the featured image and had no idea what was going on in this blog entry?”
Yep, that’s what I thought…just about everyone!
Some of you might have heard this story before but do stick around as you might get some more detail and context round the one time one of my father’s standing orders was held in abeyance by mutual consent.
This incident took place during his final tour of duty prior to his retirement which was serving as the US Army liaison officer between the Mississippi Army National Guard in Jackson and the Pentagon.
The National Guard typically trains once a month and for a couple of weeks in the summer (or at least they did back in the 1980s before they ended up being continually tasked with a whole bunch of missions normally handled by the US Armed Forces for extended deployed tours in overseas combat areas).
His primary job was ensuring that the Mississippi National Guard had everything they needed (equipment, ammunition, armoured vehicles…the works!) so that they would be a cohesive and effective fighting unit. And he was really good at scrounging all sorts of kit that made their summer training quite a delightful exercise.
In fact, Dad was away on extended TDY (temporary duty) at Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg about 100 miles to the southeast of Jackson the first year we were there when the Army finally located and delivered our household goods which had been stored in various locations in Texas after he’d been sent to Germany for a two year tour.
Try to imagine the scene: our rented house was at the top of a very small cul-de-sac and *FIVE* eighteen-wheeled goods lorries would arrive one after the other and somehow wedge themselves into that cul-de-sac to drop off our stuff and move it into the house.
So here’s a fourteen year-old kid standing between the wide open garage and the front door with a huge sheaf of papers on a clipboard getting a tag number to mark off on the bills of lading and direct them to where in that house the item needed to go.
All alone.
This circus went on starting early in the morning until I was relieved late in the afternoon when Bam-Bam had finally arrived after driving to Jackson from Manitou Springs in Colorado.
And when I call it a circus, I use that term advisedly because there were more than a few clowns and I was trying desperately to be a ringmaster which was a job for which I was never trained.
Most of the items that were delivered that day ended up where they were supposed to but there were plenty of them that would go in through one entrance and then they’d try to sneak it past me and put it back on the truck when they thought I was sufficiently distracted to not notice them.
Every now and then, they’d try to U-turn something I knew Dad would care about and I’d call them out on that and ask them to put it where I told them it needed to go and to leave it there. But the vast majority of the stuff that ended up going back on the truck was junk that my father (a notorious pack rat) really didn’t need to ever see again which is how the five fully loaded moving vans got reduced down to one when we’d leave Mississippi two years later.
As the closest military station to Jackson, Meridian Naval Air Station had overall responsibility for coordinating the moving and delivery of the household goods (once the Army had located them after 3-4 weeks of searching which had Dad and I sleeping on air mattresses whilst they were trying to locate all that stuff).
Sadly for the US Navy lieutenant who would bear the brunt of my father’s wrath when he got back from Camp Shelby, every one of those items that the movers who they had hired put back on their trucks was noted on the bill of lading as “STOLEN”.
One of the items the movers had tried to steal was a portable dishwasher with a butcher’s block that you could wheel around and use a hose with a quick connector to connect it to the kitchen faucet sink. They didn’t manage to get it past me and onto their truck and had to schlep it back into the house into the kitchen on the other side of the breakfast bar in the corner of the dining area.
We never used that dishwasher as it was intended as this house had a built-in dishwasher near the sink so it’s primary function was as a bit of extra cupboard storage space.
The top rack of that dishwasher was where a bunch of bananas and a couple of packages of Old El Paso taco shells found themselves as neighbours behind a sealed dishwasher door.
Can you hear the whistles of the trains going head-on at each other and the wreck that’s about to ensue?
Yep. That disaster was called Taco Tuesday!
One of Dad’s standing orders was that “if you complain about the meal, you have to cook the next one!”
That always seemed a reasonable enough rule to me given how much effort the average meal takes to put together.
It didn’t take long for the beef to be browned and all of the usual taco goodies to be ready to find their way into the taco shells and soon after into our stomachs assuming all went well.
I take a big bite from one of the tacos and it’s all I can do to not spit it out and make an even bigger mess soon afterward because the banana flavour in the taco shell was overpowering to say the least.
I head back to the kitchen to let Dad know that the taco shells were having a really bad day and I’m wracking my brains trying to figure out how in the world to word it in such a way that it wouldn’t violate his standing order.
I think it ended up something like this: “Dad, please understand that I am not complaining but for some reason these taco shells taste like bananas!”
He gives me this exasperated look and tells me flat out “You *ARE* bananas!”
That is when he took his first bite of his own taco and the resulting look on his face was absolutely priceless.
I had never in my life see someone go from “gah!” to “what in the hell is happening?!?” and straight on to “bleeeeeecccchhh!” in less than two seconds. But he did it and a couple of times more before he was able to speak again.
And that my friends is how we found ourselves at Mazzio’s Pizza on Robinson Road after we’d dumped those banana-infused tacos into the bin after the only time we ever set that standing order aside by mutual consent.
We figured out later that the sealed dishwasher somehow allowed the fumes from the bananas to seep through the taco shell packaging and infuse the shells with that deplorable banana flavour.
That was the last time we used that dishwasher as a cupboard.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of bananas to begin with because the texture is more than a little off-putting but Dad and I wouldn’t touch them ever again after that infamous “banana tacos incident”.
Many years later, Dad would have a couple of massive banana trees in his yard in Port Orange and he usually managed to get them to produce two full loads of bananas in a year before cutting them down but he’d invariably pawn them off on neighbours and anyone else who would visit.
As far as I know, he never willingly ate another banana ever again.
As for me, the only way you’ll ever find me having anything to do with bananas is in a loaf of banana bread where the banana flavour is not terribly overpowering.
As for the dishwasher, it did make the final move from Mississippi to Port Orange where it would end up in the garage as a storage locker for tools which it served faithfully and well for the thirty years until we cleared out the place after Dad’s passing and the dishwasher made it’s way to Goodwill.
But that standing order has been the one legacy that’s remained in my home to this very day.
Fortunately, we’ve never had need to set it aside for bananas having unholy relations with taco shells. 🙂