another one

New item: Ingemar Johansson, 76, dies.

Most of the world does not remember Ingemar, but we old guys do. He was the Swedish model who took up heavy weight boxing, started at the top and fought the then champion of the world and won.

His reign at the top was not too long, as he lost in a rematch.

About that time I was out of town working for a bit, Miriam was home with our two girls (this is before the last two were born). She was putting curtains up in our small rented house.

She wanted to use a tie back for the curtains and temporarily held one of them in place with a largish darning needle.

Then she slipped and fell into the wall, but caught herself with her right hand against the wall. She finished the job, but could not find that needle. She looked and looked, but nothing.

And, her hand was really sore. She was sure that was because she had pounded it pretty hard against the wall when she fell, but it got worse and worse. Finally, she called our local doctor who met her at his clinic a few blocks from where lived in our town of 3500 residents.

He looked it over, saw nothing, but said he would Xray it to see if there was an injury that he could not see. He took the picture and disappeared.

When he returned he was laughing.

Right there as big as life was that needle! Right inside of her hand. He had her check into the hospital and the needle was successfully removed. Apparently they gave her a general anesthetic because when she came to, just after Ingemar had defeated Floyd Patterson, she looked at her right hand and said: “Now I can beat Johansson.”

Of course I remember Ingemar.

The sad thing is that ten years ago, when he was 66 he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and spent the last ten years of his life dealing with that/this horrible disease.

Of course, I never met him, but I always liked him (what was there not to like), even though I am not and was not much of a boxing fan.

Still it is sad to see a good life cut down by this horrid disease.

RIP Ingemar, another friend that I never met.

baking day

Arline (daughter #1) has a “baking day” each week.

Whatever her hungry family needs baked for the next week happens that day. She makes a big batch of cookies, makes them into nice little balls, and freezes most of them. Then when she wants the family to have some cookies, she gets out the amount of little frozen cookies, bakes them right there and serves them hot. They all enjoy those hot cookies.

She does all of this in one busy morning.

Hmm.

But I digress.

I Usually make bread when we run out. That may be a week and it might be less or more. Often I give a loaf away so a batch does not last as long as when I don’t, and sometimes I make a lot of quick breads making regular bread last longer.

Today was make bread making day. So, remembering how Arline does it, and dedicated the morning to baking. I made three loaves of whole wheat bread, two of all french bread (my french bread is not really french, but it is not too bad, really), and then a dish of apple crisp, with apples from the freezer.

It really does not take much longer to make two batches than one. In fact both breads will be ready to come out of the oven at the same time.

Making bread is really not a hard job. It takes two elapsed hours to make a batch, but only about 20 minutes of that in actually time, the rest is proofing and baking time. I encourage every one to make their own bread, at least once in a while.

If any one is interested I’ll posts the recipe I use (Arline gave it to me and I follow it pretty closely).

A mixer makes it a lot easier, though I have made bread for years without one. My sep father who grew up working in a family owned bakery talked about making 25 loaf batches of bread and hand kneading it!

Arline and Lora both have Bosch mixers, which are pretty nice. We have a big Kitchen-Aid. In the bakeries where I worked the mixers were all Hobart, the parent company of Kitchen-Aid, so I went that direction. Ours is the big one where the bowl raises and lowers by a lever on the side and not the one that tilts back.

And that is a story too.

A long time ago on Miriam’s birthday I went to the Bon Marche (now Macy’s) to look around. I did not know what I wanted to buy her, but I was expecting to spend about $50.

Then I came by the display of these big mixers and I was hooked. My memory is that I laid out close to three big bills for it, but it sure has worked well for us. Miriam, of course, was amazed.

I know it was not terribly romantic as gifts go.

I am sure that I bought her some lingerie to make up the romance factor. That is my story, and I am not changing it!

oops

I have been working in my wood shop this week.

The organization of the shop has been ignored for a long time. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. You get used to how things are setup and it is easy to ignore the design faults.

So I have been trying to correct those flaws, getting a place for everything to go so the horizontal surfaces will be easier to keep cleared of stuff.

So I was re-sawing these boards to make some drawers. They were about 3 ½ inches wide, wider than my table saw will cut in one pass so I was cutting them half way then turning the pice over and running it through again.

That is pretty standard procedure and nothing unusual about it at all, woodworkers do it all the time.

So I was on the last run through of the last board and it was a bit thinner than the others, and I was pushing it through with a stick but holding it in place with my left hand. The blade was safely inside the wood.

As I slid my hand across I felt something and I knew instantly what it was.

I looked at my finger and blood was oozing, not squirting. I looked it a bit more, got my handkerchief out and wrapped around it while I looked for Band-Aids.

The blade I was using has very tall teeth on each side of the blade, it slices through plywood better that way.

I had run my left pinky finger over that row of tall teeth and had cut into my finger less than 1/16 of an inch. The cut was just back from the nail a tiny bit. It was more irritating than anything. I know that one of the ways guys loose body parts is forgetting that hidden blade.

Not much blood and not much soreness, but a reminder.

So I am chastised, and healing without even a scar.

And, that should keep my careful for another 8 or 10 years.

I hope.