Working Conversations About Grams

If this ain’t October weather, it’ll do ’til October gits here, as Tommy Lee Jones might say. Crispy, gusty, leaf-splayed, paintbrush-daubed, frost-threatening, owl-hooting, cloud-scuttling October. We went down to a nearby town yesterday and ate at a seafood restaurant we’d both heard good things about for years. The reports were more than accurate. We had a great waitress who, when not serving customers, was in constant motion cleaning and sprucing up the place. The restaurant was immaculate as a result. We each got a lunch special, very reasonably priced, and we figured the meals would be the usual slightly-reduced-in-size lunch entrees. Nossir. Mrs. Orr got popcorn shrimp, and I got fried catfish, and we each got a baked potato as our side. The meals came with homemade slaw, which was truly delicious, and hushpuppies. We were expecting the usual golfball-sized hushpuppies, but these were tiny little things about the size of a grape, and there were plenty of them.  My wife’s shrimp were sweet and crispy, and my catfish was cooked perfectly in cornmeal and salt & pepper. We ended up bringing half of our meals home, sans half our entrees and slaw and baked potatoes, in a carryout box due to the generous portions, and we snacked on them through the evening while watching three-count-’em-three movies. We will definitely return to the place. They offer carryout, and we’ll likely take advantage of this.

It’s apple butter season in this region and we passed a place on the side of the road where they were having an apple butter cookoff in a big kettle with one of those large, traditional paddles. They had a live bluegrass band and were selling various other things like jams, jellies, etc. We just sort of cruised through and didn’t stop, but I imagine the apple butter was good. We’ve sampled some in past years from this area, and it’s always good stuff. Perfect for a big ol’ cathead biscuit, hot and buttery.

We also paid a visit to a place we’ve been meaning to explore ever since we moved here from Texas. It’s a state park with a good-size lake, and as we drove around, we were kicking ourselves for not having visited sooner. Ample picnic areas, separate camping ground and RV areas, boat/canoe rentals, fishing docks, playgrounds for grandkids, all set into a gorgeous hilly area. We walked a bit and sat on a bench and watched the platoons of folks walking dogs of all sizes and dispositions.

Last evening, we watched a couple of slightly older movies that we really enjoyed. One was Thirteen Conversations About One Thing. Texas’ own Matthew McConaghay starred, along with Alan Arkin in a pair of bravura performances. It’s a series of interlocking plot lines about people experiencing  various crises in their lives. The acting was first rate, there was none of the usual gratuitous nudity, etc., and had a somber, adult tone and tempo. It sparked an extended conversation between the missus and me about how we never really know what’s going on in the private lives of people, even people we think we know.

Next up was a quiet drama called Working Man, starring Peter Geherty and Talia Shire. We knew Shire from the Rocky and Godfather movies, but Mrs. Orr wasn’t familiar with Geherty’s work. Way back, many years ago, I used to enjoy a cop drama called “Homicide: Life on the Streets,” set in Baltimore, MD. Geherty played a homicide detective and was a normalizing presence in a squad full of hotheads and eccentrics and weirdos. I enjoyed his character, mostly because he seemed to be resisting the trend of making police officers something of a new, edgy breed. The pot-bellied Geherty ate donuts, guzzled coffee, offered droll commentary on the passing scene, and annoyed viewers with his un-PC Irishness.  This movie is, as I noted above, a quiet movie. It’s the story of an aging factory worker who loses his job at the only remaining manufacturing plant in his moribund town, which the corporate office shuts down. The protagonist decides to blaze his own trail through this situation, with thought-provoking results. The trailer makes the film look like a run-of-the-mill Rocky-type production, but it is actually much more subtle and deserves a respectful look. The subplot about a troubled coworker and the effect of his relationship with Geherty’s character drives the movie steadily. We enjoyed it quite a bit.

The last thing we watched, late into the night, was 21 Grams, from about 20 years ago. It was similar to Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, mentioned above, and even featured an actress that was also in that movie. 21 Grams was a much darker, bleaker movie than the former. It had a very strong cast, including Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts. Too bad it also starred the odious Sean Penn, but his performance was admittedly top-notch. Like Thirteen, this movie was an interlocking series of plot lines that converge at the end. The plot is very  non-linear, and was a bit confusing. We kept pausing the movie and discussing it in an attempt to make sure we were correct in our perceptions of the lay of the land. The acting was very good, and the brisk but un-frenzied pacing helped tie it together. We’ve been talking about all three of these movies all day.

And so now we’re sitting here, chatting and munching on pork rinds (fried chicken is on the supper menu) and watching Jinx and Bluebelle wrassle. The little gal is a first-rate treacherous fighter, and manages to tie her larger, stronger brother in knots just about every time. They stage these little battles royale several times a day, always when we’re sitting together and talking, and are clearly designed to draw our attention and amusement. They almost always succeed. They’ve spent much of the day outside in the brisk air and sunshine, and have been very creative in their battles and their jockeying for attention.  But soon they will settle down because it’s almost their suppertime, and they will snooze near us until it’s time to go outside and do their bidness before coming in, receiving a small treat of cheese, and settling in for the night. Bluebelle will stretch out next to me on the couch, and Jinx will snooze next to her for a while, but will eventually hop down, stretch, yawn, and cast a glance at us as he pads slowly back to the back bedroom and hops up onto the loveseat that he claimed eons ago, and will curl into his sleeping position. Since it will be cold tonight, I’ll likely cover him with his blanket, a hair-covered cheap red throw that he loves. Jinx has always been very cold natured for a dog and appreciates the extra warmth. Tough girl that she is, Bluebelle will sleep comfortably with nothing but her own fur and her twitching, running paws.

And Mrs. Orr and I will enjoy a feast that she prepares, featuring the aforementioned fried chicken drumsticks and some homemade mashed potatoes and the gravy left over from this morning’s biscuits/gravy/sausage/eggs repast. And we will read and chat and maybe watch a gardening show, and I will tinker with a poem and a short story, and we will cover the plants on the porches against the frost coming tonight, and we will hopefully sleep reasonably well, and we will hopefully arise tomorrow to see what our next chapter has in store for us.

May you all rest well, dear readers.

~ S.K. Orr