Menu Dégustation Specialitées Alsaciennes

I had gone into a Charcuterie (butcher/sausage maker) in Strasbourg and had bought a couple of smoked sausages to bring home with me; unfortunately I left them in the mini-bar fridge of my room in Saverne (along with a nice piece of Munster cheese I had bought). I had six sausages and only got to eat one of them. It was good, but not the price of six good. I didn’t realize it until I was already almost back to Germany.

I got to Saverne a little after 18:00 Saturday evening, and took a room for the night at the Europe Hotel. I was looking for a different hotel, but my GPS system was breaking down. What I mean by that is when you go into some towns the system may not have real good coverage. And if there are insufficient satellites it won’t track your location very well. When this happens it may tell you to turn where there is no turn, and so forth. It’s not that big of a deal because it doesn’t happen too often. Saverne is not that big of a town. I parked my truck and started to walk around, thinking that I could find the hotel. I tried the “Hey Cato, le where is le hotel?” a couple of times to no avail. I found the Europe Hotel and as it turned out, I was parked very close by (I had taken a somewhat tortuous path to get there). It was a bit more expensive than the one I was looking for, but I didn’t have reservations anyway, and they had a room.

And it was just that, a room, a small room. My cubicle at work is bigger than this thing (including the bathroom). It was pretty bare bones, but it was clean and I needed a place to stay. It didn’t even have a bible that was left by le Gideons.

I wandered out into the town for a while and took some photos. The restaurant with the Foie Gras Menu was way up on a hill and outside of town. I realized that if I was going to plop down some serious cash for a meal of fattened goose liver, then by God I was also going to plop down some cash for a bottle of good wine. And if I ate that liver, then by God I was going to drink that wine. QED. I also realized that I really didn’t need to be driving back from a restaurant in a strange town, in and even stranger country, with a belly full of goose liver and a snoot full of wine. So I opted to eat at one of the other fine establishments in town.

I had a couple of recommendations from the internet and had pretty much settled on the Taverne Katz. Now if I could just find the place. Hmmm … it’s on the Grand Rue (Main Street – how am I doing Wilhelm?), shouldn’t be too hard to find.

Ran into a group of gents who were (I assume) out for a bachelor party. The groom is (again I'm assuming) the one with the black face paint, nun habit, devil horns, and the big purple phallus Seemed like a good group.



Where were we? Oh yeah … it shouldn’t be too hard to find, right? Well the Grand Rue was not hard at all to find at all. Now you should probably bear in mind that I am still looking around, taking photos and just kind of half-assed looking for the Taverne, because how hard can it be? I’m on the right street, and I’ve got the building number with me. It’s a small town and I’ll just wander up the street until I find it.

Did I mention that I was in France? Good. Then you won’t be surprised to learn that there street numbering system is a little, oh how shall we say, back asswards. In reality it is a little more sideways than backwards. I knew that the number I was looking for was around eighty something. I was keeping somewhat of an eye on what the numbers were, but not real closely. Last time I looked I was in the 50’s. “Shouldn’t be far.”

At the T-intersection I looked around, “I must have missed it, unless…” I look up the street to the right. Realizing that I’ve been in a pedestrian area for a couple of blocks, and the last sign I saw that said Grand Rue was on a vehicular street. I thought perhaps Grand Rue is a by-pass. So I look at the numbers up the side road. They starts at 1. “That’s pretty far from 80”, I think. It was only a little ways down the road that I saw the number in the 50’s, but this is the end of the road. I look at the address that was in my pocket, 80 Grand Rue. “I must have passed it somehow.” As I head back in the direction I came, I look on my side of the road and realize that the numbers are in the 100’s. “What the hell?”

The numbers on the left side of the road are even, the right side numbers are odd. OK, that’s normal. But then I realize that they are approximately 30 apart. On my left side is 102, on my right it is 73. It continues this way until I find the Taverne Katz...

If this building looks a little familiar to you it is because this was where I saw our Saint in training. “The Lord is be with you.”

The purple phallus must have distracted me enough to miss the Taverne Katz. But then do you see a sign in this picture?

“Are we here?”

It is a neat little place. Lots of wood, the tables were pretty close together, a couple of pretty pictures and nice trinkets, &c hanging around. The girl realizes that I am not French and hands me the English menu. Now I had looked at the menu outside before coming in and realized that this was not the same menu. It’s a law in Germany, and perhaps in France too, that restaurants have to post there menus with prices outside. Now I wasn’t worried about getting ripped off, it was just that the menu outside had more stuff on it. The girl gladly brought me a French menu. I had the Alsatian Specialties menu, or…

Menu Dégustation Specialitées Alsaciennes
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Galletes de Pomme de Terre
“Grumbere Kiechle”
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Kase et Gumbere Knepfles aux Krakele
Panaché de Quenelles deFromage Blanc et Pomme de Terre
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Petit Choux – Petite Charlotte – Petite Raviole
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Trou Alsacien au Pissenlit
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La Timbale de Volaille
Aux Champignons des Bois Sous Croute
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Strudel Aux Pommes
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I ordered a half liter of the house Gewurztraminer, which came out in a neat little stoneware pitcher. I actually liked the pitcher more than the wine.

The starter was a shot glass filled with a Lentil salad. It had a nice subtle vinegar flavor.

The “Galletes de Pomme de Terre” were 2 small potato pancakes served with apple sauce and two salads. One was a regular salad with a nice vinaigrette, the other was an assortment of greens that were stood up with a hollowed out piece of zucchini (kind of used like a napkin ring).

Next was the “Kase et Gumbere Knepfles aux Krakele“. Four extremely light potato dumplings in a slightly sharp cheese sauce. This was very nice, and my only compliant was there was no bread to sop up the sauce.

This was followed by “Les Petits Farçis Alsacien”, which was 3 different Farçis or force meats (or sausages for Wilhelm). The Petit Choux was pork rolled in a flaky dough similar to a nut roll with meat. It was very tasty The Petite Charlotte was a force meat inside of a single piece of cabbage wrapped in a thin slice of prosciutto-like ham. And the Raviole was a small hollowed out potato, filled with pork, topped with a slice of potato and wrapped in bacon. This course was very nice.

The “Trou Alsacien au Pissenlit” was a shot of lemon sorbet in wine. There were bits of zest in the sorbet. As gay as it sounds, this was actually very nice.

When I was enjoying the Trou I was watching the waitress at the next table taking the top off of a soufflé and spooning the insides onto it. While watching this I was a little jealous that I didn’t order this. It looked really good.

Next for me as “La Timbale de Volaille”. Out came a mini soufflé just like the woman at he next table had. It was smaller, but that as OK because it was wonderful. It was served with some spaetzles that were fried in some butter until just a little crunchy on the outside. Fantastic! I ended up pouring the remainder of my soufflé onto the spaetzle. Probably not the most couth thing to do, but I think I still was one up on the devil with the purple penis in the couth department.

The Strudel was almost savory. It has apples, nuts, raisons, cloves, and cinnamon. There was a generous dusting of cinnamon on the scoop of vanilla as well. This was a damn fine dessert. And in the end the wine was actually pretty good too.

I don’t care to remember what I paid for this meal, but it was very good. Since I wasn’t going to get the foie gras, I was just hoping to find a place with a nice big choucroute (Alsacien sauerkraut) plate. As I was finishing up my desert the waitress brought (to another table) a big bowl of sauerkraut, with liver dumplings and various sausages.

As good as my meal was, I was still a little jealous.

One more Saverne entry to come...

More Photos

No post today, but I did put about 20 more pictures up on my Flickr page...
(hopefully this will satisfy my sister)

Salad, Chicken Salad and the Anti-Salad ... oh, and a visit to France too

So I went back to the Italianischer grocery and bought three more boxes of the good egg pasta. While looking around there I discovered that they have a great deli section too. I’m talking about Lardo, 24 month old Parma Ham, Mortadella as big as your head, and more salamis than any one person can keep track of. Again, I was like a kid in a candy shop. I got some of the Lardo, some of the Parma ham and two different salamis (I know one was fennel salami, I can’t remember what the other one was anymore. I didn’t get any of the Mortadella that day (but I will). I was planning on having a bunch of these cold cuts with a salad, but my lettuce had frozen in the refrigerator. I was planning on having a salad course, which would have been preceded by the anti-salad course.

Of course, because of the lettuce problem none of this worked out. However, since I had already cut up some onions, peppers and mushrooms for the salad, I tossed in an old chicken breast I had laying around, and made some chicken salad. I had some anti-salad while making it - and they were fantastic.

I moved the lettuce to a different shelf, and turned the fridge thermostat down. The next day I cut away a bunch of brown lettuce, but some of it was still good. So I made a real salad and ate it along with some chicken livers.

Saturday was raining, and I told myself that if it was raining, I wasn’t going. I debated about it for a couple of hours Saturday morning. Got on the internet and pulled up the weather forecasts. It didn’t look promising, but I was getting a little stir crazy. So I packed up some stuff and jumped into the Tacoma, and headed for Alsace. There has been some question in our family as to where we are from. One of the possible areas is/was Alsace. I think this is hogwash because some relatives came over to the US several years ago and told us that the family is from Northern Germany, near Holland. Well in an effort to set the record straight, I wanted to travel to Alsace and see whether anyone there looked like me. I was really just wanting to go somewhere, and seeing as how Alsace is only a drive of about 2 hours it got the nod.

The plan was to visit Strasbourg Saturday, spend the night in Saverne and explore it he next day. I was looking forward to trying to get into this restaurant in Saverne which is known for there foie gras dishes. If I couldn’t get into there I was hoping for a big plate of Choucroute with pork belly, sausages, pork and potatoes. But first, I wanted to visit Strasbourg…

Crossing the border into France was no problem. Corporal LeBeau didn’t hassle me at the crossing. I just showed him my passport and license, he asked me if I was a tourist, I said “Oui”, and that was that. I took this picture while waiting in line at the border. You can see my GPS unit in the photo, and the rain on the window.



The GPS directed me to Strasbourg, and once I parked the truck I made sure to save the location in the unit. The display unit is about as big as a calculator and has internal batteries, so I just put it in my backpack. After a day of walking around in a strange city it was nice to have this thing (and have it know where the truck was). I managed to find a free parking space about one km away from where I was going and it was right across the street from l’Hotel de Police. I was hoping that this was the Police Department and not some hotel where they tested their fraternization policies. I hung out for a while to see if I could catch a glimpse of Chief Inspector Dreyfus, but didn’t have any luck.

The rain had pretty much let up, so I packed a raincoat and a small umbrella in my backpack and was off to explore. I mainly visited an area called le Petite France, it’s more or less a tourist area, but … I’m one of those here. I walked past some pretty run down looking places on my way there (socialism). I didn’t take the most direct route – that whole not understanding the language thing is going to get me into trouble one of these days. All I could do today was think about how Barry Saran failed me!

Barry Saran was a teacher at St. Ursula’s School in Fountain Hill, PA. One of the classes he taught was French. This actually worked out well because the first year of High School French was basically a repeat of the previous three years of grade school and was easy. I must have paid more attention to my schoolwork in grade school, because I don’t remember a damn thing from the second year of High School French. You’d think that two years of French (25 years ago) would be enough to get around in this county. Well, it isn’t. I tried asking everyone “avez vous un ami dan la class de francais?” They all looked at me as if they’d never had any friends, forget about having a friend in the French class. This forced me to resort to Plan B.

Plan B consisted of acquiring an accent like Peter Sellers, and saying “le” in front of everything. Oh yeah, and I would call everyone Cato too. I went into a couple of bars and yelled “Cato, le beer sil vous plaite!” I don’t think they understood me, except for the one place I was somewhat forcibly “asked” to leave. On my way out the door I was heard to be telling them to “le kiss my ass!” I called them yellow swine. This is according to one of the police officers who were called to the scene. He spoke pretty good English. I managed to avoid most of the stuff they threw at me (the bar patrons, not the police). I surrendered quietly enough. One thing I did notice was how much tighter the French handcuffs were as compared to the German cuffs.

In all seriousness it was fun, and everyone was very nice. I took a ton of pictures, but since it was still cloudy and overcast, many of them didn’t come out real well. One of the churches I visited was the Cathedral of our Lady of Strasbourg, here are some pictures.





It rained a couple of times during the day, but nothing too heavy or lasting very long. One time it started to sprinkle and I ducked into what I thought was a storefront. All of a sudden I realize that I’m in some Museum. So I just started looking around like I was supposed to be there. I was not sure if there was an entrance fee, as I seemed to be going through the place sort of backwards. Everything was written in French, so I didn’t get the full experience but it was still pretty neat. It was a 3 or 4 story building with an open air courtyard in the middle of it. They had different displays of tools for blacksmithing, rope braiding, wine making, &c.



They had a display of several wine barrels of differing sizes. This is the frontispiece of a barrel. The barrels would be reused, and over time the frontispieces would be carved and some would end up very ornate.



Much of the town is made up of half timbered buildings, and I don’t think there is a square corner to be found.



So I’ll leave you for now, and will continue soon with more details. Mustn’t keep baby sister waiting…

There are a couple more pics on my Flickr page.

Well it’s Friday night, and I just got paid...

... Nothing on tomorrow - Man I’ve got it made!

Today was the start of the Erdbeerfest in Erbach. Erdbeeren are strawberries, and Erbach is about a 20 minute walk from my house. Which is perfect for me, because we “don’t need no petrol for our Gurumobile.”

Sorry, had a bout of reliving my youth there, but I’m OK now … where were we? Oh yeah, the Erbacher Erdbeerfest.

So I walked over to the festivities to see what I could find there. And it was a pretty good time. A surprisingly good time, for what I would think a Strawberry festival would be. Of course there is plenty of wine at everything here, so if you have a bad time … well, then you are just trying NOT to enjoy yourself. I don’t think you could’ve swung a dead cat without hitting a booth that was selling wine at this thing. And they were all from different wineries, not just one with several booths.

A couple of booths had this thing called an Erdbeer-Bowle that is basically strawberries with wine. I don’t know if there is any more to it than that. And while it may have made my testosterone levels dip a bit, it was actually pretty good. I also had a crepe with tomatoes and mozzarella, which was acceptable. Crepes seem to be big at all of the festivals here. It’s pretty neat watching them being made. They make them on these two flat metal plates that are roughly 15” diameter. They pour the batter onto one plate with a ladle, and smooth it out with a T-shaped tool made out of metal dowels. After allowing it to cook for maybe 30 seconds, they pick it up with, what looks like, an icing knife and invert it onto the other metal plate. They then put whatever filling you want (sweet or savory), and fold it up with the same knife and hand it to you. It looks like it would be a challenging thing to do, but these girls have it down.

I tried a couple of wines from the Jakob Jung Weingut which is one of the VDP wineries. I’ve had wine from maybe 6 or 7 of the VDP wineries, and I’ve got glasses from 3 of them. I think I may try to collect glasses from all VDP wineries (I think there are seventy-some, so this may not be realistic). That should help set off my collection of Kentucky Derby Glasses. The Derby glasses were more just gathering glasses left in the infield after the Derbies than a serious attempt at collecting anyway.

I wandered over a tent where I heard some familiar sounding music. There was a band of German kids playing the Beastie Boys, “Fight for Your Right…” They were singing it in English. Most of it anyway, I didn’t understand some of the lines. The Germans (much like anyone else) remake popular songs and sing them in their own language. Today I heard the Dashboard Jesus song (I don’t care if it rains or freezes, as long as I’ve got my plastic Jesus … on the dashboard of my car) being sung in German. I recognized the tune, and asked a German guy at work what they were singing about. It was the same song.

My friends Cheryl and Keith from Virginia were here for a couple of days this week. I got to take a day off and hang out with Keith on Tuesday, and had dinner with the two of them Monday thru Wednesday nights. Monday we went to the Rauch (sp?) a Bavarian style Biergarten which is back in the woods in Eltville. Tuesday we had dinner at Schloss Reinhartshausen in Erbach, and Wednesday we ate at the Paulaner in Wiesbaden.

Tuesday I took Keith to the Metzgerei in Hattenheim and I think he was genuinely impressed. We bought some Blutwurst, Zungenwurst, and Mettwurst. Cheryl swears she took a bite of the Blutwurst, but I think she just licked it. She made the “Bitter Beer Face” when she tried it. She really did seem to like the Mettwurst though. Keith liked most of it, I don’t think he was too keen on the Blutwurst, but he played along.

Keith and I also went to Schloss Vollrads, Schloss Johannisburg, and went to see the Niederwald monument at Rudesheim. When we came back we went down to the Weinpunkt, and had some … well … wein. The woman who works there is very nice. She doesn’t seem to be too put out by a couple of ignorant Americans coming in. She said she likes Bier and Blutwurst, and she’s pretty cute to boot. She humored us until some real customers (i.e. Germans) came in.

On Wednesday I met them at The Paulaner after work. It was rather warm that day, and I got there before they did. I parked my car at the top of a hill and walked down several flights of stairs to get to the street level, and I paid for that indiscretion on the way back. I had some shorts in my bag, but nowhere to change without going into someplace before they got there. I wasn’t really sure where we would be eating, so I wanted to meet them outside the restaurant. As I was walking I saw a parking garage that didn’t seem busy at all. I ducked into it and to the right saw a room for the trash. I hung my rucksack on the door and dropped trou. As I was putting the shorts on, one of the cleaning women entered the room to throw some trash bags into the dumpster behind me. She just looked at me, and walked right past me, threw the bags away, and headed out. All she saw was some awkward fumbling as I tried to pull my shorts up quickly, but I thought it was comical. I did move on pretty right away though, thinking that this was something that I do not need on my “Permanent Record”.

Big doin’s in the Reingau

Friday was the start of the Wilhelmstrassefest in Wiesbaden. I went down to it and met up with my boss, his wife and a couple of DoDDS (Dept of Defense Dependant Schools) teachers. Had a good time and met some nice folks. I think I kind of scared a few of them off when I started talking about killing dogs.

Now before you start to roll your eyes, allow me to say that I was not talking about killing dogs for pleasure. Or as a business that I run on the side. One of the couples have a small dog that is deaf and blind. From some of the conversation, I’m guessing that it is also quite incontinent. Now the woman was saying, because the dog cannot tell them how it feels they won’t be able to know when it is “The Time”. I just looked at her and said, “It’s time.” Her husband agreed with me, but apparently he didn’t have the huevos to actually say it.

Then another woman was saying how she was left with a dog that is in the same condition. She is taking care of this dog for the summer, while its owners are in the US. Apparently most of the DoDDS teachers go back to the States over the summer. She was staying in Germany so they cornered her, asked her to watch the dog, and headed out of town. She was talking about what a pain the constant care for this thing is, and how she was planning on taking some trips with her son. I just asked if she was really going to allow her summer to be ruined by a blind and deaf dog. Then I clarified it to, “someone else’s deaf and blind dog”.

I don’t think I alienated everyone at the table, but if I’d been given another hour or so, I’m pretty sure someone there would have had me brought up on charges. All in all it was a lot of fun, and I bought a back scrubbing brush from the brush guy’s booth. Drank some decent wine and had some Flammkuche. This is a super-thin crusted pizza-like thing, with bits of salty ham or bacon and quark. Quark is an unripe cheese that is sort of like cream cheese with sour cream. It’s sort of tangy, but in a really nice, mild kind of way. It was very good. I think it’s originally from the Alsace-Lorraine area.

Saturday while doing a little grocery shopping I came upon this little section of the store that had these jars of …wait … what the hell is that? … it looks sort of … like a jar of … pickled … fish? So I bought some. Haven’t tried it yet, but I will give you a report.

Saturday afternoon I went out for a walk. They were having some type of festival in Hattenheim somewhere, but I wasn’t sure what or where it was. So I walked down by the riverfront and got a glass of wine at the Weinprobierstand (which is a kiosk down by the river that sells wine). Different wineries from the town sell their products there for about two weeks at a time. This time it was the Barth Weingut, in a week or so it will be someone else. It’s really pretty nice.

Wine in hand, I headed up river toward Erbach. Stopped and spoke to a couple of guys fishing for catfish. They said it was a pretty good area for catfish. As I walked a little further upstream, I passed the sewage treatment plant. Then I thought about eating the fish caught downstream of it and the sky began to darken. No really, it did begin to darken, the wind kicked up and it looked like it was going to rain at any minute. So I quickened my pace a bit. I was hoping to get to the town of Erbach and maybe duck into a restaurant before the rain hit. As I came out of the tunnel under the highway I got a picture of the church tower and the foreboding sky.



I managed to get into a restaurant about two minutes before the rain hit. I had a glass of Riesling and ordered the small carnivore plate. It was really called Tartar mit Ei. Out came a plate of raw ground beef, with some chopped onions and capers on the side, and a raw egg yolk lovingly placed in the center of the pile of beef. I seasoned it with a little salt and black pepper, ordered another glass of wine, and went to work on it. It was very good. The rain had stopped while I was eating, so I left and walked up into the vineyards, and it wasn’t until I looked back that I saw…



I took some more pictures in the vineyards, and met this girl who was walking her dog. No it wasn’t blind or deaf, and I did not even bring up the idea of killing it. She told me a little about the Burgfest, so I walked on down in that direction toward the music. I never found the actual Burgfest, but I did go to a little place outside of it that was having a little fest of their own. I met some really nice people there, and ended up drinking too much wine. But it was fun.

As I am feeling a little foggy today, I’m not cooking anything. So I’ll leave you with a picture of the chicken I roasted on Wednesday.



I rinsed it, dried it really well (inside and out), stuffed it with some fresh tarragon and two lemon quarters, trussed it up, hit it with a little salt and pepper, put it in a 425-degree oven for about 50 minutes, and wooohooo! Made a little gravy, and chowed down. The thing got a little heat blister on it’s belly that I broke when I took it from the oven. But aside from looking kind of like me after my hernia operation, I think it turned out pretty well.



Maybe some chicken bones are what those two little dogs need…

Those Slurping Sounds!

OK!

I have been getting an inordinate amount of harassing emails and comments about not eating vegetables. So here is a meal that includes some veggies…



… and yes peppers, while botanically a fruit, count as vegetables. I don’t care if they were stuffed with cheese and stored in oil, they still count! There was also some sun dried tomatoes (botanically a fruit as well) and pickled okra in there for good measure.

OK? I sure hope you’re happy now! And really let’s break it down. If you are what you eat, then a cow is grass. My eating a cow is the same as me eating the grass. The cow serves the function of concentrating the goodness of the grass. Pigs, if left to their own devices, will feed on vegetables and nuts. Animals are basically vegetable delivery systems.


1. You are what you eat.

2. I eat vegetarians.

3. Therefore, I am a vegetarian.

Q.E.D.

Now for the interesting items: we have a nicely cured ham (sliced as thinly as I could manage), some very good tangy fermented Italian salami, and some blutwurst from the metzgerei down the street. There is also some fresh cheese with herbs, some bread, and a good, but somewhat pedestrian, Oettinger Dunkel Hefeweizen.

Sunday I cooked some red beans and rice. I usually use smoked ham hocks in this recipe, but the commissary was all out. At least I’d like to think they ran out, and that it was not the other unbelievable choice (that they never had them). I will find out sometime in the future. I did find some frozen unsmoked and uncooked hocks, but they were from much higher up the leg than I wanted. Instead I settled on the frozen split pigs feet. These were not quite what I had hoped for either as most of the toes were cut off. All except for that one little piggy who went to market…



You can see the little toe on the one at the very top and the one in the middle on the right. I also threw in some of the rind off of the ham I bought the other day. Surprisingly the feet don’t really have much worth eating on them, so after simmering in the water awhile, I removed and discarded them. I usually pick the meat off of the hocks at this point, but this seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. So I double down on the sausage. One pound Kielbasa on pound plain smoked sausage to try and get some smoke flavor into this mess.

It actually turned out to be satisfactory. The rice was not very good though. I had bought this brown basmati rice, which takes a hell of a lot more water to cook than regular basmati. And even then it still is kind of grainy. It’s OK, just not what I was after in this meal.



But I ate it anyway (and will for lunch all this week). This time with a fine hoppy Jever Pilsner, from northern Germany.

I really don't have any choice but to eat it. I don’t have a dog to feed it to here, and I probably put too much Tabasco in it anyway. You know, nothing’s worse than waking up in the middle of the night to the slurping sounds of a dog trying to cool off his anus.

Tickle Belly Road

I was reminded recently of something that happened when I came home with my first pickup truck. It was a grey 1992 Ford Ranger. It had a small 4 cylinder engine, and a full 7 foot bed. I was going to college in Kentucky when I had bought the Ranger, and my sister’s kids were still young enough to want a ride in the back when I came home to Pennsylvania for a visit.

My oldest sister’s three kids jumped excitedly into the back of the truck. Joining them was another one of my sisters and her dog. It was a Weimaraner, named Hannah and that dog was nuttier than squirrel shit. As we are driving around the neighborhood, I hatch one of my schemes. I take them up Gauf’s Hill and turn left onto Seidersville Road.

Seidersville Road is the road that we, as kids, would refer to as Tickle Belly Road. When my sisters and I were young, my Father and Mother would take us out for Sunday Drives every once in a while. There may have been an actual purpose to our drive, like heading to someone’s house, or we may just have been going out for a drive. The four of us kids would load into the back seat of the Galaxy 500, and with mom and dad up front, off we would go. We would all always ask, plead, and beg him to take us down Tickle Belly Road. And if we were going in that direction, he often would.

Seidersville is a winding two lane road that runs through a hilly area. Along this road there are a series of hills (more like humps really) that have sharp, though not very large drops. When a car is going at a decent speed and comes to one of these drops, you experience a sensation of free fall. It is almost like the brief feeling of weightlessness you get on a good rollercoaster, although it is to a much lesser degree on this road. Small children may come up out of their seats for a moment, but it lasts less than a second and you feel it mostly in your belly. At least humans do.

On this fine afternoon, I’m trying to get the truck up as fast as I can between these humps. I’ve got the pedal to the floor. Of course being a 4-cylinder truck, the resulting speed is not incredibly fast. It was evidently fast enough for what was about to transpire. Anyway, I had my seatbelt on so I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere. We hit the first hump, and I distinctly remember the kids squealing with delight. So I built up a little more speed for the second hump. This time I heard, along with screams of delight, the sounds of bodies returning to the bed of the truck. I look in the rearview and see children smiling and laughing, with the wind blowing their hair into their faces. The dog is prancing around nervously, but she was always doing that, so I thought it was all of the excitement and the screaming of the kids.

I built up speed for the subsequent hills. After hitting a few more humps, I’m not really sure how many or when I even noticed it, but the screaming in the back had changed pitch, and continued for what seemed to be a prolonged time. The first couple of hills were greeted with a short, surprised squeal, followed by screams of laughter. Now the screams were higher in pitch, and were continuous. I looked in the rear view and saw that the kids were frantically pushing their way to the front of the truck bed. I went over at least one more hump, which was no longer greeted with the sounds of delight. No, it was more the sounds of panic and fear.

I pulled the truck over at the first place that I could safely do so. Because, let’s face it, I am all about the safety of my passengers. Once I come to a stop, the dog dives into the cab through the rear sliding window. I don’t know how she got there, because in order to make that dive she has to go over the children who are still frantically screaming and pressing up against the front of the truck.

I leapt out of the truck and rushed to the back to see who is bleeding, who has the broken limb, whose fragile sense of self worth has just been shattered by ... oops ….that was me, but that is a much longer and sordid tale…

When I get to the back of the truck, I see the panicked faces of the children. My sister however, looks at me almost stunned. “What kind of cold-hearted person is she?” I wonder to myself. Can’t she see that these children have been traumatized? Why isn’t she aiding them and giving them comfort?

The screams have died down to a whimper by this time, there is no obvious blood on anyone or in the truck bed. At least whatever it was, it wasn’t arterial. And everyone seems to be looking in horror at the back of the truck. When I look, I understand that I was the cause of all of this distress. It wasn’t a simple broken bone, and it couldn’t just be chalked up to kids being kids. No, this was my fault…

Apparently after the second or third hump, the dog had dropped a loaf into the bed of the truck. When the kids saw it, they immediately screamed and tried to get as far away from it as they could. This of course did not include getting out of the truck, because I was driving at a speed that was… well, let’s just say it was too fast for the road conditions. The loaf was solid enough to become airborne, and had evidently been banging around in the back of the truck with my sister and my other sister’s kids as I speeded up over the last couple of hills.

My sister was extremely apologetic that her dog had just crapped in the back of my truck, but I just thought it was funny. She scooted the turd out of the back. I got the dog out of the cab, shut the sliding window, and drove home.

Of course I drove back down Tickle Belly Road in the other direction, and just as fast. But for some reason it seemed to have lost some of its luster. No matter how fast I would go, no matter how much air came between my passengers and the bed of my truck over the humps, the children’s squeals of delight just never returned that day…