High Plains Panhandler

Putting the Ho in Hotel

A week or so ago I had to bop down to Austin (the state capital and place of mystery) for a couple of quick meetings. Since my meetings went into the night, and late night flights back to Amarillo are rare things, I asked our travel office to stick me in a hotel someplace with quick access to the university (where my meetings were). They put me in a La Quinta near the intersection of several gigantic freeways overlapping and crisscrossing each other, probably so the non-stop drone of traffic would lull me to sleep.

During one of my meetings, someone asked where I was staying. I told him, and this is what he said:

"Really?"
"Yep."
"You know that's a HO-tel. Know what I mean?"
"Hmmm. I think I'm hearing you but . . ."
"It's a hooker hotel, man."
"D'oh."

And then it all made sense. When I checked in, the woman behind the counter handed me my key and said, "Will you be paying for this in cash today?" and I didn't give it any more thought than "Huh? Why would I do that?"

As I sat through the rest of the meeting, I dreaded going back to the hotel. But because I am a manly-man (rather, because I was wiped out and had no other place to go) I ventured back to my room, glancing side to side, expecting to see bored women in high heels lurking in the shadows by the Coke machine.

It was in all in my imagination though. The parking lot was normal and well-lighted, and even though the traffic hummed and buzzed and hurried along down the freeway next door, it seemed to be a regular, conventional hotel.

That changed at three in the morning.

Some kind of massive, meaty fist started pounding at my door, shaking it in its frame. With it came a deep woman's voice: "I WANT MY MONEY! I SAID I WANT MY MONEY!"

Well, growing up as a 100% comic-book lovin' American kid, I knew exactly what to do. I lay there silently and pulled the sheets up to my chin. This impervious sheet tactic has protected me against vampires, swamp creatures, and other assorted murderers, so I knew it could certainly protect me against jilted and underpaid door-banging women.

"I WANT MY MONEY! I WANT MY MONEY!"

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!

Then she paused, and all was silent for a few seconds and then she attacked the door with even more aggression. BOOM BOOM BOOM!

"YOU BETTER GIVE ME MY MONEY!"

And then, instantly, she stopped and moved to the next room and started the whole thing all over again. She did this for door after door after door, finally exhausting the supply a half hour later.

The next morning, which took its time arriving, I refused to eat the continental breakfast served near the main desk (the continent in this case being the land of cereal and pre-packaged pastries). I feared the money woman and thought she might be lingering, ghastly in the daylight, shaking down the poor, wretched, bran-eating business traveler who might have paid for his room in cash. Instead, I hit the road, getting to my next meeting very early and then after that making it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.

Now, safely at home with a sheet, blanket, and comforter for protection, I wonder if that woman, whoever she was, eventually got her money. And if she didn't, I pity the next brave soul whose travel office sticks him in room 140 and leaves him to fend for himself in the dark of night when she reappears with thunderous anger demanding the cash she desperately wants.

Cotton Candy is not Pretty

Last night, at the elementary school's February Flurries Festival, Suzanne and I were suckered into running the cotton candy machine and selling great pink balls of the stuff for a dollar. I have to admit that when I first heard about this I was pretty excited. I mean, who wouldn't want to spin a paper wand in a spider web of thin candy filaments to make a dream kid meal? I supposed that every carnival worker I had ever seen who was on cotton candy duty looked sullen and depressed because of some other aspect of the job. It couldn't have possibly been because of making cotton candy.

But then I learned the truth.

There's no magic to making cotton candy. There's sugar, heat, and centrifugal force. And mess. That's a lot of mess.

The cotton candy machine that we used was a short, squat round tub, lined with a white plastic net. In its center was a black piece of plastic with a hole in its top. This is the thing that spits out the cotton candy strands. It all looked pretty simple, and our three second tutorial fixed in my mind that making cotton candy would be a cinch. Then again, I am a doofus.

Step one: pour the sugar into the spinner. Behind us sat a magnificent ten gallon drum of sugar and a metal scoop. When the machine stopped making candy, we were supposed to turn it off, get a large scoop of sugar, and pour the sugar into the spinner's hole. That was easy enough, although I had thought there might be more to cotton candy than just a big scoop of sugar. There isn't. It's a one hundred percent American meal - all refined sweetness.

Step two: turn the machine on. That was an easy one. I flipped the switch and peered intently into the empty tub, waiting for the magic to happen.

Step two and a half: get pelted with heated chunks of sugar. This was a step that had been, unfortunately, left our of our primer. As soon as the spinner started really going (this took about five seconds) fragments of sugar started blowing everywhere. You don't want to have your face close to the tub at this point. Really. Take my word for it.

Step three: begin wrapping the cotton candy strands around a paper handle. This looks easy on TV, and it's fun the first couple of times (compared to half an hour later when you've swept the tub a hundred times, and you start feeling that twinge of achy arm). Getting the cotton candy to stick to the paper isn't hard. Actually, getting to stick to anything isn't hard. That's the nature of this non-fat beast. Getting it to make a nice round torch of cotton candy is a different issue. My first attempts at this ended with sticks of candy that looked like: Frankenstein, a brush fire, and Sideshow Bob.

Step four: hand the cotton candy to a happy kid and savor the fruits of your labor. Ok, this one was easy too, except by the time we got the dollar in the jar and we passed off the bag (or, in some cases, a stick) of cotton candy to a patient kid, the machine had whirled up a new webby mess that I had to dunk another paper stick in there to collect it all before it jammed around the spinner, clogging up the entire thing. When that happened, we had to turn it the machine off, unwrap the solid chunks of cotton candy from the center spinner, and throw those pieces away in our special Junk Bag.

At the end of our shift Suzanne and I were both covered, head to toe, top to bottom, back to front, with sugar. My hands were almost Spider-Man sticky and covered with tufts of cotton candy.

As much as it was fun, frantic, sticky, crazy, and bewildering, as soon as we left the table we made a new plan.

Next year we're running the ring toss.

Nicknames

We had a little conversation about nicknames the other night. Apparently, Colleen doesn't like her nickname anymore (I had been calling her "Bean" since she was one year old, inspired by the children's book Little Bean). Now, though, she's too old for that and prefers the simpler "Colleen." Alas, calling her Bean is going to be a hard habit for me to break.

Alex and Megan wanted in on this nickname business. We've had some names for them that we've used in the past. (When Alex was very small he couldn't keep socks on his feet, so I kept calling him Alexander Sockoff - it works with a thick Russian accent. It really does. Honest.) But this time they wanted their own nicknames, so Alex picked "Boo" after the ghost character in Mario Party 7 on the Gamecube.

And Megan? Well, Megan being Megan firmly announced that her nickname was now, officially, "Black Monkey." With that pronouncement, she did a couple of strange kung-foo style hand motions and then said, "No one can defeat me."

Megan, it seems, if my girl after all.

Megan Turns 8

I had a New Year's resolution of posting more consistently, but then, on January 1st I immediately ignored my resolution (along with my resolutions about learning Aikido, Chinese, lockpicking, enhancing my mental powers, and eating more fish).

Fortunately, I am so very close to finishing up some other writing that I've been sweating over, close enough that I figured I could write a little note about Megan's 8th birthday, which happened earlier this month.

We held the Big Party this year at a toy store called Daydreams and Playthings, a place full of stuffed animals, twinkly dresses, and, to my desperate relief, a spinning rack full of cheap plastic magic tricks, black soap, and whoopie cushions. After running around for awhile and poking at toys, The gaggle of girls that made up Megan's invitation list (along with Colleen and Alex) were able to get to the high point of the evening and all made their own stuffed bear (a little disturbing now that I've seen Grizzly Man). Megan named hers Strawberry. Colleen's was Nutmeg. Alex called his Benny.

Half the time the party was in the toy store, the other half at Marble Slab - an ice cream parlor a few doors down where they mix your ice cream with candy or fruit on a long frozen marble counter. When it was time to walk from one place to the other, Megan ran to the head of the line and, without prompting, starting

chanting "Hut two three four" and she and her gang of second-grade girls marched in a straight line, ready for ice cream cake. These girls were on a mission.

The great thing about this was Suzanne and I were off the hook for this party. Part of the package from Playthings and Daydreams was that they'd have an official party chaperone who would herd the party from one shiny thing to another. So at the ice cream parlor, we got to sit back and enjoy ourselves, take a few pictures, and pity the poor, overwhelmed party escort as he concentrated with all his might to keep up with the fickle flight of conversation between a table full of sugared-up, bear-hugging, squeal-talking eight-year-olds.

And Suzanne and I relaxed, enjoyed a spot of birthday cake flavored ice cream, and enjoyed our one instant in the long line of birthday parties where we didn't have to worry about spilled drinks, napkins, or messy hands. It was, I suppose, a little birthday party for us too.