Dear President Obama,

Dear President Obama,

I heard you were going to come to Phoenix next week to promote your Stimulus package and I wanted to give you a Heads Up for a Win-Win situation that will get people back to work here in Arizona, be good for both the Arizona and the Federal economy and not cost the government one red cent. Yep, that's the truth! You can use your influence to promote the Southeast Arizona Land Swap bill in Congress that's been kicked around for the past three or four years. What it does is grant some federal land to the Resolution Copper Company in return for them giving some of theirs farther south in Arizona to the Feds. What it will do for them is get the world's second biggest copper mine ready to go and bring in lots of bucks in revenue for both the state of Arizona (which badly needs it, as you know) and the federal government too (and at the rate the federal government is giving away money now, they could use it too!) It's a win-win situation for you because the federal government doesn't have to do a thing except collect the revenue since the mine will be owned and operated by a private company. Oh yes, it's a company that's owned in Great Britain, but aren't we all a global economy now? This is NO TIME to be petty about that! And yes, you're going to hear some grumblings from some left wing groups and whiney environmentalists who have been trying to stop this project for some time now, but when you get down to the nitty gritty, what's more important right now? Starving people in Arizona hoping for a chance to work and make their communities better or an elite group of "We've got ours, they don't need to have theirs!" bunch of whiners. Well, now, I know you fellows who get elected must listen to the Whiners since they fund your elections with their big checks. But I've got to tell you, if you could expedite this Land Exchange so that Resolution Copper can move forward on this thing and we can get people started back to work and striving to improve themselves and they can afford to stay in these small mountain towns east of Phoenix instead of moving back to the inner cities, then these folks are going to sing your praises, Mr. President and who knows how much that brings you in the next election?

I think it's time you started doing what's right for the Little People, Mr. President and move forward on some of these private industry bills that have been stalled too long by so-called "Do-Gooder" environmentalists. We need this copper company to help make things better here in Superior and I bet, if you'd help it get started, you'd see a trickle down effect in the rest of the Copper Corridor. So go ahead... step out and give it your seal of approval. Get those folks like Rep. Raul Grijalva behind it instead of opposing it. We need it NOW not LATER!

Thank you. Your constituent, Nancy Vogler

PS: The picture here is of a sunset of Apache Leap. The new copper mine would be located just east of there.

Setting The Stage

We 'set the stage' pretty good for the new Superior to emerge last week. We didn't get the thousands of people for the Home and Building Tour we thought we might, but we did draw upwards of a thousand over the week-end. The volunteers from the Chamber of Commerce did a real fine job of welcoming the folks and making them feel at home. People were staged in two areas, the Main Street area for the Home and Building Tour and south of town at the grammar school for the Art and Antique Fair. Bill and I spent most of our week-end at the Main Street end, greeting visitors. Tina hadn't given me a specific spot to be in, so I spent the better part of two days parked in front of the Chamber office on Main Street, showing folks where to get their tickets, then helping direct them to start their tour. It took a lot of talking but (ahem! if I do say so myself) I'm good at that!

Sometimes, the people would pull up to the curb and get out of their cars, looking around our old town sort of nervously, like they expected some old miner would ascend on them with a pick and shovel. And I would move toward them, exclaiming what a perfect day they'd picked to visit our town or wasn't that necklace she was wearing "just exquisite!" and show them where to go get their tickets and in that brief moment of me talking, you could just watch their hesitation and anxiety melt away and they'd stride into the Chamber office. Bill spent his days at the old high school directing traffic and helping oldsters ascend the two flights of steps into their bygone school days of a building. On Sunday, he manned a post at the old Magma Club, the social club for miners in the long ago days, answering myriad questions about the town's history.

Just an aside here, yes, I kept my ears open and I learned a lot about the history too. More than I knew before. That during the Teens, Twenties and Thirties and possibly even into the Fifties, there were three (yes, sir... THREE!) houses of ill repute in our Main Street. The most popular one seemed to be the one the town hall is housed in now, because it had two upstairs bedrooms that looked out over Main Street (one room looking east toward Apache Leap and the other looking west toward Pickett Post) and the married men liked this whore house the best because that way they could look out and see if the Little Woman was wandering the streets looking for her man. This is the same building, by the way, that does have an active spirit in it, she's been photographed by some ghosthunters, a grim looking lady dressed in black lace scowling over at the photographer. But gee, now that I know the story, I'm wondering if that grim looking lady might not be one of the cuckolded wives, scowling about the state of affairs she found herself in. Sounds good to me!

Anyway, back to the Home Tour... I digress. After a busy Saturday morning greeting visitors, at one, I hustled over to the bakery/bistro to help out. Bert was short handed and very busy! The brunt of the visitors looked like they had picked his cafe to lunch in. As I headed in, Bert was out in front grilling chicken and sausage and said there'd be no baking but that I could pitch in and wait tables and help make sandwiches.

Now... that's flattering, but let me tell you a secret. For all of my almost sixty years, I have never actually got to wait tables for a living. I've always thought this would be a pretty nifty way to make your keep. Moving around a crowded room of folks eating, feeding them and making them happy. What's not to like about that? Well, as this seems to be my year for making my dreams come true... I got this wish too! The tables were all full, but only half were actually eating. The order taker was also the only waitress and as she flashed her wild eyes at me as I entered to wash up, I could tell this wasn't going to be a 'piece of cake'. Sandwich Girl was up to her elbows slicing rolls and avocado for sandwiches. She looked at me and gasped, "Thank God you're here!" and I looked blankly back, and said simply, "You'll have to tell me what to do. I only bake. I haven't done sandwiches." Waitress Girl came back in and slapped a sheaf of orders at Sandwich Girl and barked, "Get out there and take some orders. Help me out!" I nodded. (I can do this! How hard can this be?) as Pizza Girl came careening out of the back kitchen, barking for a platter for a hot pizza out of the oven.

I approached the first table, a huge smile on my face. There were four ladies sitting there. I remembered them from the morning. They were from Mesa. One of them was wearing a little rhinestone hat with valentines on it. They'd been so cheery and happy when they'd arrived for the Home Tour. "How are you ladies doing?" I cooed, standing at their table. "We want our lunch," Rhinestone Valentine said through clenched teeth. "We've waited an hour for it!" "Oh, my, I'm sorry!" (I was too. I can't fake these things!) "Let me see what the hold up is!" I fled back to the kitchen. Sandwich Girl was slicing through bread and she'd been joined by Pizza Girl who was heaping salad on plates, as Waitress Girl buzzed in and out barking orders and generally looking like she'd rather be anywhere else than where she was. Dishwasher Girl (turns out, it was her first day on the job) stolidly stood at the sink, back to us, washing pots and pans. "There's a group of ladies who said they've waited an hour for their lunch," I told Sandwich Girl. "I know!" she moaned, checking a pan of sandwiches being toasted. "We ran out of bacon and their order got lost. They're nearly done." "Okay," I turned and went back out to the Rhinestone ladies from Mesa. "I'm sorry," I greeted, still smiling, but it wasn't that huge easy to come by smile, I can usually muster. "Your orders are nearly ready. The girls got swamped. It's busy... you know?" "We're not staying!" Rhinestone Valentine stood up, nearly upsetting the table. The other three ladies struggled to their feet. "Waiting an hour for lunch is unforgivable!" "I'm sorry," I repeated. I wondered if she cared to know that I'd now been on my feet for the past five hours and hadn't had a moment all day to even take a sip of water or go pee, let alone sit down. No, I doubted that she'd care about that either. Still, sitting on one's fanny for a whole hour sounded pretty dreamy to me at that point!

So eventually, we got through the lunch crowd. They dwindled off and by two pm, there was only one elderly couple left in the cafe finishing up their lunch. The girls found time to sit at the staff table and share one of Pizza Girl's creations. "I like it better like this!" Waitress Girl announced happily. I looked around the nearly deserted restaurant and the elderly man caught my eye and smiled. I shook my head, "No, you shouldn't," I told her. "It doesn't pay the bills!"

Later on Saturday afternoon, I found Bert, resting his aching back and asked him what he thought of the crowds. "What if we did a really good job getting folks to visit our town, Bert? And this is only the beginning. What if they hit you like this each and every day you were open? Is this how you want to spend the rest of your days?" He grinned and shook his head. "I guess we have to be careful what we ask for, don't we?"

What's This All About?

For the past month (plus), Bill and I have been involved with a Chamber of Commerce fundraiser. It's a home and building tour with an art and antique show of things uniquely Superior. It will take place all across town this next week-end January 31 and February 1. We've got five or six home to tour and seven buildings for folks to see. We're going to have art and antique vendors selling from the local school and I've been in charge of procuring food vendors who will be set up downtown.

It's all coming together well. We've had good publicity from the 'tony' magazines of the Southwest to local television and radio coverage that certainly can't hurt. We hope to attract some of the Snow Birds as well as restless locals from the Phoenix area looking to do something fun. We've even gotten sponsorship from the Arboretum.

What we haven't had, is a lot of volunteers at the local level. That's probably because 1) it's the first time we've had this tour and 2) it does coincide with Super Bowl Sunday and there's a lot of Cardinals fans here. Still, it would be nice if we had a bit more co-operation. One of the buildings we're proposing to show is the old high school. Built sometime in the mid-1920's and operated through the 2000-2001 school year, it's a mammoth two story red brick structure. The school board sold it for a mere pittance several years ago and the poor edifice has been sitting empty and uncared for ever since. The organizers of our Home and Building Tour got permission from the owners to open it up for tours on our two day event, but... (isn't there always a but?) it had to be cleaned first. So the committee members assembled at nine Saturday, armed with brooms and buckets and mops and a couple of vacuum cleaners to clean a few rooms. At least, that was the plan, I thought I'd heard at the meetings we've been attending.

The chairman, who is one of the hardest working ladies in town that promotes our fair town, was uneasy how many folks would give up their Saturday to come out and clean the looming edifice. She kept saying that if just a few showed up, then we'd just clean a few rooms and that's all that would be shown. Seven of us showed up Saturday morning, followed in a few hours by about seven more. Most of these folks (everybody except the chairwoman and her husband and Bill and me) were alumni of the old high school. Now, when room after dusty room was opened up that morning, there were ooh's and ahhh's and "I remember this..." and "Do you know what happened here...?" anecdotes scattered all over. It would have been fun to listen to more of their stories if we hadn't been dealing with so much dirt and dust.

Do you know how much dust can accumulate in eight years in this desert environment? I'll tellya, how much: A BUNCH! It's soft and silty and covers everything! When you sweep it, it flings itself into a cloud over your head and hovers there, making your nose itch and your eyes tear up and pretty soon while you're sweeping, you're sure you're going to expire of Valley Fever! Once you've done cleaning a vast expanse of (once beautiful) hardwood or (really vintage) asbestos tile, you look back over what you've cleaned (yeah, you think you've cleaned it!) only to find another dusty sheen, perhaps not as thick as the original, still remains. Well then, the mop buckets and mops came out. Even as a corner or two got the grime off, buckets would have to be emptied and mops cleaned up for another go at the same stretch of floor. After three attempts over the chemistry room's pale green asbestos tiles, I gave up in disgust as muddy streaks mocked my efforts to abate them. I don't know what might have worked, a good pressure washer, maybe!

By noon, I had physically had it. I felt as if I'd used up every spare bit of energy I might have risen with. I mopped one room three times, swept and dust mopped three more rooms and one hallway and scraped soil and leaves off the front steps. The folks who toiled away were still trying to make the upstairs gymnasium and its vast expanse of polished hardwood presentable and another group was toiling away in the library where shelves had been piled haphazardly. Yet a third building remained untouched until the group got down to that after lunch.

Now, I didn't stay for the afternoon fun. Bill brought me home where I collapsed on the couch for a nap with Chuy nestled beside me. He went back and worked with the others till four-thirty when nobody could stand up any longer. The building will be on the Tour and if you come, I hope you'll stop by and see the old High School, whether you were an alumni or not. I told Bill later, I'm sure glad the rest of the folks who agreed to show their homes and buildings on the Tour didn't need us committee members to come by and clean up their space for them. 'Cause if they did, I bet we wouldn't find any more willing members to do it!

For those in the Phoenix area, come see what I'm talking about: Superior Chamber of Commerce presents their First Annual HOME and BUILDING TOUR with Art and Antique Show, Saturday January 31 and Sunday February 1 from 10 AM to 4 PM. Cost is $10 day of event, or $8 presale. Call Superior Chamber of Commerce 520-689-0200 for more information. And no, we won't make you sweep a floor!

And then some...

The job continues. I baked at Toast, the cafe/bakery, twice this week. Patronage was light due to the Inauguration and a persistent rain, so my Wednesday stint was cancelled. Monday's baking session was grim: the cake donuts were too light and soft to remove easily from the pan (we bake them rather than fry them, which is sort of a sacrilege for a donut, don't you agree?) and instead ended up resolving in a pile of crumbs that got tossed into a waste can. But the same donuts I baked today plopped out of their pans intact and crumbless, ready to be dipped in butter and coated in cinnamon sugar and were sitting on the racks by nine thirty waiting for the customers to come and taste them. The cinnamon rolls I baked today were light and fluffy and dripping with oozy cream cheese buttercream by nine forty just in time to be placed on waiting diner's plates five minutes later. This job makes me happy in ways running the Landing never did. I do like to make folks happy, that's true, but turning out good things to eat is pure fun.

It's not just the food, of course, that's part of the job. There's the people too. Fellow employees are part of the job and getting on with them is part of the fun too. Take the dishwasher, for example. The fellow who made my first day so great by washing up all the bowls I got dirty. The fellow who I thought was going to make this job the Best just because he was washing up behind me. He quit. Well, technically, I guess that's wrong. He didn't quit. But after last Friday, he just neglected to show up to work anymore. Bill and I passed him on the street Sunday when we were walking the dog and he greeted us just fine. So I don't think he had any hard feelings over all the pots and pans I sent his way. I think he just felt that three days washing dishes in the small cafe was enough for him. So he stayed home this week. So, hmmmm, that part of the job wasn't so much fun today. When I needed an extra bowl because I'd messed up too many and here were four sitting dirty and I needed to get a fifth used, then I had to step over to the sink and wash a few out. It humbles the chef a bit, but hey, I've been doing that at home for over forty years. What's new?

The other girls in the cafe are great. Eager young women wanting to do the right thing, rushing to get their jobs done without getting in each other's way. Asking questions of Bert, the baker, about various aspects of recipes or how things should be done. They've got a keen appreciation of trying to do it right the first time. In a way, it's like they are students studying extra hard for that test that's coming up. But when the cafe fills up around noon and there's ten dozen things to do to keep the customers happy and the food moving, these girls hustle and there's no slouching. I have been so impressed to watch how well this young green staff is doing. Makes me proud!

So for anybody in the Superior area that hasn't found Toast yet. It's open 7 AM to 2 PM, Tuesdays through Sunday and is located at 180 Main Street. We serve espressos and lattes and gourmet sandwiches and salads as well as some great chorizo pizza on Wednesdays and Fridays and some of the best Artisan bread in the Phoenix area. And if you are dieting, ask for one of those cinnamon rolls lathered with cream cheese buttercream. That oughta do you for a spell!

Dream Job

The last thing I expected to receive in this depressed economic climate was an invitation to participate in my Dream Job. Actually, the last thing I expected to receive in this depressed economic climate was a chance to work part-time anywhere! I guess that's where Fate steps in and plays a hand for you.



During the busy Christmas season, Bill and I were invited to seven different parties and dinners. Normally, we get to one, so seven was a definite HIGH for us. We met some wonderful new people and at most of these, I would take along a tray of Christmas cookies I'd baked. They were well received and I admit it: I like to hear people rave over my baking. One of our new buddies proclaimed them to be, "The Best Cookies!" he'd ever tasted. So yeah, next party invite, here's Nancy in the kitchen baking up another tray of goodies to bestow on the group.



I guess you could say those cookies were my resume into this dream job. One of the participants was a man from Petaluma (go figure!) who was opening a new bakery/bistro in town. He remarked one evening that it would be a good thing for me to come into the shop one day a week to bake cookies for him. I laughingly agreed, figuring it was probably just 'party talk'. But what a lark that would be I thought, since secretly, I've dreamed of either working in a bakery or a restaurant and making folks happy through their bellies with my food!



This week, when I stopped by for a loaf of his extremely great Artisan bread, he asked me for my phone number and asked me if I was serious about baking for him. I told him of course I was! Next day, his partner and G.M. calls and asks if I could come in on Friday to 'watch her' bake for four hours. If it worked out, then she'd let me bake on Monday and Tuesday and several days a week I could go in and bake her signature baked goods. Heart pounding, I agreed (whole heartedly!).



The bakery/bistro is open from five to two and besides fresh bread and pastries sells coffees and sandwiches and salads for lunch. The day I got there, there were two brand new employees getting trained, one who was there for her second day and two others who've been there about a week, plus Mary and Bert, the seasoned owners. We got blitzed with the biggest day so far.



The first half hour, Mary was able to show me where a number of the products were stored and the location of the ovens, work center and utensils. She pulled out a sheaf of recipes and said even though the bakery was only in its third week, there were signature dishes that were expected to be on the shelves: notably the cinnamon rolls and the Magma Cake. So those two things I would be watching her bake that day.



We had barely begun the double batch of cinnamon rolls, when the gal who was making sandwiches came in with a strange look on her face. They had just received an order for twenty two sandwiches and had forty five minutes to assemble them. Without missing a beat, Mary told me I was on my own since she'd be hustling to help get the orders ready.



'Normally,' (I mean in my own kitchen), I don't always read a recipe completely through before assembing it. Today, I was, although a pounding excitement kept filling me up as I could sense the staff's urgency as the lunch crowd started arriving ( as soon as eleven, I might add.) I take this to be because in Arizona, folks go to work earlier in the day because of the heat, so naturally would want to eat lunch sooner. The restaurant is located in an old building downtown with fifteen foot ceilings and the acoustics are raw. From my post in back, stirring up a copious quantity of dough, I could hear a woman's high pitched laugh rocketing off the rafters. It sounded like a party going on out in front and this new staff was hustling, even if some of us had no idea where everything was!



So here I was, trying to follow the recipe as best as it was written. If it said to mix the eggs and milk and butter in a separate bowl, before adding it to the dry ingredients, so be it, I was! At home, I'd tend to just dump them into the bowl of dry ingredients and save myself an extra bowl to wash. AH HA! That's where the beauty of the bakery/kitchen comes into play. We had us here, A DISHWASHER to take care of that pesky extra bowl. I don't mean a mechanical-you-load-it-you-clean-it-out sort of dishwasher. I mean, a real blood and bones fellow named Bernie who washed, rinsed, sanitized and put them back in your own workstation so you could get them out and get them dirty all over again!!! I tellya after two hours of this, I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven!

When my first tray of liberally iced with cream cheese frosting cinnamon rolls hit the shelves, I started to relax a fraction. When the Magma Cake finally came out of the oven to cool and didn't fall or look mis-shapen, I relaxed even more, but by then it was time to call it a day. I didn't realize until I got home how totally worn out I was. It was a wild ride to find one's way around a strange kitchen and hustle to get everything done plus try to turn out a product that pleased the customers as well as the owners, but I think I managed. It's not everybody who gets to start their dream job the same year they are pushing sixty. But I think it can be done and I'm going to try real hard to prove I'm a good baker.

I purchased a couple of cinnamon rolls and brought them home for our breakfast this morning. They were pretty good. But Bill was still laughing that I had to go off to bed by eight o'clock last night. Evidently, a year of being retired had its effect on me and after only four hours of being a baker, I was pooped out quite a bit!

Christmas Tamales

For most of us, Christmas is a time of indulgent eating. Feasting and sampling far more than what we'd normally eat the rest of the year. It's become associated with 'the best', or 'the more the merrier'. Nowhere is this more true than right here in Arizona with the omnispresent tamale.

I'm a fan of tamales, never turning one down when it comes to eating one. But I've never made one, until this year. The true Mexican madre will begin making and freezing her tamales for the Christmas season as soon as the late summer or early fall and if she's got enough room in her freezer (it seems to be a sign of one-upmanship if you are lucky to have two or three freezers stuffed with tamales or their fixings) then she may have ten of dozens of tamales put away by Christmas.

Oh, they go fast however. If you are this same Mexican madre with the tamale stuffed freezer, then you do not show up to anyone's house during the Christmas season without a requisite bag of a dozen tamales bestowed upon the welcoming hostess. There were as many tamales offered as Christmas cookies where I come from. I'm quite sure that by New Year's, there won't be many tamale stuffed freezers left. They'll all be bare and waiting for more.

We've been fortunate to have met a lovely family that makes and sells their tamales. Given two days notice, Rene will have me replete with as many tamales as I request. We take them frozen back to the boys in Dillon Beach. We've feasted company on them. And we try to keep a dozen or two on hand in the freezer... just because.

But this Christmas season, I was given a very wonderful gift. My neighbor, Hope, offered to teach me to make tamales. She was thorough in her instruction and for several days before 'the Big Day' came, I was a) buying pork loin roast and beef roast and a huge bag of Mama Loco's corn husks and two pounds of manteca (lard) and on the proper day of the week(Wednesday afternoon here in Superior) a fresh bag of masa as soon as it was delivered off the truck, then b) opening the bag of corn husks and separating them and cleaning off any remaining 'hair' off the husks and c) cooking the roasts in slowcookers and saving the broth for the sauce. It was quite an operation, so that be Saturday morning, I felt I'd undertaken a whole new occupation: Making Tamales.

Hope is possibly the one of the premier tamale makers in town and I couldn't have learned from a better teacher. We started with the sauce, opening a can of Las Palmas red sauce (oh yes, these were red chile tamales that we made) and adding one part of shredded pork to two parts of shredded beef to a roux of vegetable oil and Bisquick, then just enough broth to impart the right liquidity. Then we started on the masa.

In a dishpan that was big enough to hold twenty pounds of masa, Hope creamed the lard, then broke up the masa mixture and added salt and baking powder and again, just enough broth to make it the consistency of a heavy pancake batter. (That's the crucial step, the right consistency.) Then she tested it by dropping a small spoonful in a glass of water. If the mixture floated, it was right for the tamale. If not, back to the mixing bowl adding more broth and lots more stirring.

Finally, we began the tamale making. A good tamale maker can crank out half a dozen a minute. A new tamale maker can do one in about three minutes. You pick up a corn husk and lay the wide end in the palm of your hand, the 'inside' of the corn husk is that part the mixture will go on, the 'outside' of the husk is the outside of the tamale. With a spoonful of masa, you start layering on the corn mixture across the bottom half of the corn husk. You don't want it to be too thick or it will spurt out of the tamale when it's rolled up. You don't want it to be too skimpy or you've missed the treat of the corn masa when you eat it. It's less than a quarter inch thick but thicker than an eighth inch thick and I guess when you get it right, that's the mark of a good tamale maker. Next you take a tablespoon or so of the red chile/meat mixture and spread it a third of the way down the tamale about a third of the way from where you started. A green olive or two can then be placed on the sauce. Now, starting at the lefthand side of the cornhusk, roll it up, enclosing the sauce and continuing rolling until you reach the end. Carefully fold the unfilled top end of the corn husk over the filled end, set your bundle upright in a pan and start rolling the next one. When you have enough to fill your steamer, steam a pan for an hour and a half, let them sit for half an hour and then you are ready to sample them. Downright heaven!

It's funny, but tamale ladies are quick to tell you how many they made that day. "Ten dozen!" an old lady down the street told me proudly one afternoon. "I couldn't sleep. I got up at four. And I make ten dozen by eight o'clock!" Or, "I've made five hundred since Thanksgiving!" another lady proudly told me. So I've been able to say, "My neighbor showed me how to make them and we got sixy!" (Yikes! I have a long way to go!)


I think with more practise, I could get good at these. They certainly are wonderful to eat. But I wonder if I want to get that good at making them. For I might replace my Christmas season of baking Christmas cookies with making mounds of Christmas tamales. I know it won't be hard finding somebody willing to eat them!

Gift Swap

Some folks maintain that there's nothing that sums up the frenzy of the Christmas Season like a good rousing gift swap at the Christmas party. I've never experienced the ruthless intensity of the steal-em'-as-many-times-as-you-can gift swap as has been generated here in Arizona. For the past two weeks, I've attended four such parties, and let me tell you, Arizonans have really honed their skill when it comes to these types of gift exchanges.

Now the invitations read: "Bring a White Elephant gift for the gift exchange". Sometimes they may add more details to it such as one that asked that nothing over $10 be brought or the "All Christmas ornaments" exchange held by one lady friend. But the other two... (they were the more 'down and dirty' of the exchanges) just said "a White Elephant". Now what springs to mind when somebody says a "White Elephant" is as different as you and me, I'm sure. What sprang to my mind was a replica of an Easter Island sun god molded into a Kleenex box that Bill's dad gave us one year after our trip to New Guinea. Yeah, it looked like a primitive warrior, all right, but the tissue had to be pulled out of his nose and somehow we just could never bring ourselves to put the darned thing out. So when I heard "White Elephant" that's the sort of thing I imagined.

And the Rules go something like this: When your name is called or your number is called, (depending on what style is used) the first person goes to the table and selects a wrapped gift. He opens it and shows it to the others of the group. The second person who is called can either steal the first guy's present or select another one off the table. If he steals the first guy's present, the first guy gets to take another present and open it. The 'deal' here is that you hope for a high number and not to be the first person. At the first gift exchange, the poor gal who chose the first present got hers stolen so many times that she must have gotten up twenty times during the course of the party. Of course, that meant, she had desirable presents. If you happen to open a 'dud' (happened to me at both parties) nobody bothers to steal your present and at the end of the evening, gee, it's yours to take home! One item can only be stolen one time in a round. Otherwise, it would make the party pretty much interminable.

At the first party, we got a Look-See at what makes a desirable present. It ran pretty much like this: Number One was liquor. Number Two was wine. Number Three was Lotto tickets. And Number Four were gift cards. The rest of the so-called white elephants were pretty much not being stolen back and forth. The hits were a bottle of Crown Royal and another with a bottle of Jose Cuervo and a pair of men's bikini underpants. If they got stolen once, they got stolen thirty times or so.

One of the gals who had stolen the Crown Royal and had it stolen back from her, was finally hanging onto a gift card from Borders. There was another one circulating from Chili's. A laconic cowboy just had his bottle of tequila stolen from him. Since the Crown Royal had already been stolen, it was 'out' of range on this round. The crowd urged him to steal one of the wine gifts.

He grimaced. "I can't drink that stuff! I gotta drink the real stuff."

"Well, steal the gift card for Mexican food!" one of his buddies urged him.

The cowboy nodded and clicked his heels. "Will do!" He took three strides over to the lady with the Borders card and plucked it out of her hand.

"What are you doing?" she shrieked. "That's a card for Borders!"

"It sure is!" he agreed, with a wide grin. "And I just love to eat Mexican!"

"Mexican food! You fool!" she cried, "It's for a book store. They don't serve Mexican food!"

In disbelief, the tipsy cowboy stared at the little card he clutched. "But I like to eat Mexican food. I don't read no books!" The crowd roared with laughter at the crestfallen look on his face.

At the second party, the gifts were even more eclectic: an orange strait jacket with "PSYCH WARD" emblazoned on the back proved to be a big winner; a large pair of fuzzy slippers with Homer Simpson's plastic face plastered on them; more Crown Royal and two kinds of tequila (but no men's underwear this time); a lit up snowman with "I BELIEVE" emblazoned on his tummy; and an oversize margarita glass with "PIMP" in four inch letters. Yes, the prizes were definitely getting more inventive as the Christmas season progressed. The worst prize was the first one selected and nobody stole it back, a wine gift bag stuffed with a can of Spagetti-O's and two Twix fun-size bars.

The joy of these parties is listening to the banter and repartee exchanged and it's impossible not to see the personalities and quirks emerge of these folks we are partying with. Since we're the relative newcomers, I'm having a ball taking it all in. Maybe the same zaniness will wane after watching these characters for twenty years or so. But for this year, it's all fresh and new and man... it gives me something to blog about, doesn't it?

Merry Christmas! And may your gifts be worth hanging onto.