Gulp Fiction

Eating veal is not for the squeamish

or the timid, or even for the caring, and especially not for vegetarians.
As I do not subscribe to any of those groups, needless to say, I had a good amount of veal at the Rotary Oktoberfest Saturday night, and none of the guilt from which others who subscribe to those groups might suffer.
There is something soothing about an Oktoberfest celebration in September: the air is calmer, it stays light out later in the evening, and the all-you-can-eat bratwurst and all-you-can-drink beer is like getting to open a few Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. An exhilarating taste of what is to come.
My father wore his lederhosen (my mother was out of town so there was no way to stop him); he asked me if I wanted to wear mine but something held me back.
After I was there, I wish that I had hosened it up. The stimulus of all the surroundings made me feel a bit ashamed to be so ashamed.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of brats were being cooked up. Two kinds: a veal sausage, as I mentioned earlier, that had a delicate texture, and juicy center that was simply amazing; and a more traditional brat with a slight peppery spice to it that went exceptionally well with a mound of purple cabbage kraut and brown mustard.
Sudwerk provided the beer. And lots of it. There was a martzen, my favorite, and a pilsner, which my father was drinking until we told him that they had red wine.
Sadly, many Americans don’t know that Germans do drink and make wine, especially in southern Germany, where grapes will grow reasonably well.
A German polka band played throughout the night, keeping the sleep-inducing effects of beer after beer, and more food than anyone should eat on any day other than a holiday from causing us all to call it a night, head home and sleep until Thanksgiving.
The accordion’s annoying yet invigorating sounds kept us all going, much they way I have heard others who have been to Oktoberfest in Munich describe how the high-energy music keeps the masses going late into the night without the aid of large doses of amphetamine . . . for the most part.
For years, I never truly enjoyed Oktoberfest celebrations.
Perhaps it was my parents’ friends, my inability to drink, my hatred of polka music or some combination of all three and a few others. But in reality, there was something deeper.
There was some self-hating, guilt-ridden liberal white person aspect of my personality that pervaded and convinced me that because of the injustices committed by white people that such celebrations of white (and more specifically, German) culture had no place in the world. Maybe it was having grown up in the People’s Republic of Davis that filled me with such foolishness.
Luckily for myself and the sausage makers of the world, through age and time, maturity and life lessons, that bleeding-heart element of my psyche has been thoroughly flushed out like the undigested piece of corn in the stool of society that liberal white guilt is.
Now I am just a guy who eats baby cow with a clear conscience. And it tastes just fine.

Goodbye, young prince

I have tried throughout the week to write something clever and funny. I can’t.

I have tried to write something about chilidogs or drinking too much on my day off, something to brighten the mood and get us to smile again, yet, despite my best attempts, nothing seems capable or timely or even sufficient to lighten the darkness of youth lost so young in a town so desperate for the idealism that only youth’s vision can possess.

I had never met Matt Garcia in person. I spoke with him several times over the phone, mostly during his election bid. Rarely do editorial assistants enjoy the courtesy of having our names’ remembered by anyone other than PRs and MRs and the LTTE folks.

But Matt remembered me and my name. Some would say it was because we had the same name but he gave me the impression that he would have remembered my name no matter what it was.

He spoke to me with as if he genuinely cared; much the way I have heard others in the community speak of how he spoke to them.

He listened, rather than spoke; a trait all too rare in many politicians.

I will not speak of who he was or what he still is; of what he meant and still means to this city, to the future and to the people whose lives he touched – there are people who knew him far better than I did who can testify to that far better than I ever could.

I will only say that he was a man I wished I could have known; a man, though younger than myself, who I admired; and a man who carried a cause few in this world have the strength to hold.

I will say just this and let it be.

Stand tall, young prince, as you walk into the unknown, we will care to the tending of The Field in your absence; and though you are gone, if just in being, the seeds of change you planted in the child of us all will one day blossom into the beauty you magnificently once envisioned.