“You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven,” said years ago by Jimmy Hendrix. He lived his own ‘mayhem’. Me? Sitting in our sunroom, drinking a mug of black coffee while reading a book, quickly becomes my own wild and crazy weekend.

‘Wild and crazy’ when all I have to do is look up and see this happening out front. Out of nowhere a massive container was dropped off. A half hour later it had disappeared.

Welcome to my corner of the world.

“ I have always found that if I move with seventy-five percent or more of the facts that I usually never regret it. It’s the guys who wait to have everything perfect that drive you crazy.” ~ Lee Iacocca.

Talking with an old friend this week and reminiscing on some crazy stuff which happened on joint business trips, this quote from Iacocca came to mind. It was a good conversation – a fun conversation.

Goetta – Even when traveling, be it to some small town or a faraway international locale, it’s always without hesitation that I seeked out a local ‘go-to’ place. In other words, aside from the fact that I just love food, I really love Regional Foods.

Cincinnati has not one, but two regionally noted such foods. Cincinnati Chili, a cumin based, chocolate infused, chili on a bed of spaghetti and topped with a mound of shredded cheese tops the list.

Quickly gaining as a ‘new’ specialty ‘must have’ item is Goetta. Goetta has been around since the mid-1800s when the area flooded with German immigrants. In reality it is a meat extender peasant food; Pinhead Oats, pork bits, and spices; all for the common folk.

And there were literally dozens of slaughter houses and butchers making it. After all, Cincinnati gained the name of ‘Porkopolis’ during this period. These immigrant butchers all brought slightly differing recipes, all coming from towns located in the NW area of Germany. Today, there are just about ten with the largest creating 1.5 million pounds of the stuff annually.

So, here I am, the only one in the family who likes the stuff. In fact, I’m the only one in the family who’ll eat it; and I say “bring it on!”

Thursday evening I trotted off to our nearby University, UC, for a two-hour class in what’s known as Communiversity. It’s just an array of fun classes designed for adults. I’ve been to an Astronomy class, now the Goetta session, and for future interest I spotted several with the word Bourbon somewhere in the description.

The word ‘fun’ was absolutely correct, and the other ‘f’ word I’ll use is ‘fascinating’.

Meeting – Tuesday evening I attended a downtown meeting on Policing and Safety; only committee members of the various neighborhood associations where there and so it was a smallish affair. The meeting place was near City Hall, above our Fire Museum. A gorgeous high ceilinged place with huge windows each with dark walnut shutters.

What really got my attention was a massive (probably 8’ wide) Brass and Copper wall hanging. It was a stylized replica of the world’s first ever practical steam fire engine dubbed the: “Uncle Joe Ross”. It was invented (1854) and developed here in town, six hoses could be connected, it took three men to make it work, and (I love this) it took four STOUT horses to move it. Eventually the city had six of these beasts. A great piece of art.

As an aside, Cincinnati had the nation’s first professional, paid, fire department. Prior to that it was an all-volunteer affair – which got the various, apparently quite raucous, ‘teams’ into an occasional Battle royal; even shootings.

On a serious note – Julian Renfro, our former neighbor and friend passed suddenly this week. Yesterday was his service, two hours long, and the most uplifting funeral I can remember. Julian and his wife, Gail, own Renfro Funeral Services, but that’s not what made his life special, it was the last seven years of his life which were extraordinary. Click here and watch Julian tell his story. This is not a spoiler; but do be a tissue donor!

When it’s Election Day, school is out – and I had the pleasure of taking the gang to lunch and the Zoo. There is now a major difference over earlier trips. Now we enter a building and they stay put. Why? Well mostly because they’re now reading all display signage, and working all the ‘hands on’ stuff. It really was a great day!

Having said that, once in a while the kid in them did emerge.

Fini – Amazon Prime is in the delivery business. Like me, most of you know full well that they are. But, just maybe not to the extent by which they are. On one side of our airport they’re building a distribution site with tarmac big enough for well over 100 Boeing wide-body 767 freightliners. But it’s their fleet of ‘final mile’ delivery vans which got my attention. On our recent drive to Austin if we saw one truck towing the small vans, we saw at least 1000 being towed. If memory serves right they’ve ordered 100,000 of these things. Gives ‘scope’ to the size of that enterprise especially considering that founder, Jeff Bezos, started selling books from his garage.

Our Tevita was/is a serious lover of the sterling game of Rugby and was a standout on the local semi-pro team. He re-posted this picture from nine years ago when I drove him in my Old Benz to get 13 staples in his skull. As the song goes, “those were the days my friend”!

This week Adrianne and Vai took a tour of Clark Montessori, our local Montessori middle/high school – part of the city’s alternative school system. Over last weekend she toured Walnut Hills our college preparatory school. Walnut is substantially larger, other than that I received little as to the direction she’ll take next year, grade 7.

Gordo’s Pub and Grill is where Marcia lost control. In this case it was their Blackened Burger, complete with the works, plus grape compote and Blue Cheese (I did have a few of her fries). Mine was the Jean Robert and I should point out that we each cut our ‘beast’ in half and shared halves.

Remembering like it was yesterday. This day in 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and East & West Germany were re-connected. In part, a result of that now famous speech made by President Ronald Reagan calling out the USSRs General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, to “tear down” that Wall.

Till next week, make it a great one!
Dirk

PS. The Goetta video was made by The Kamikaze Fireflies. This duo primarily has a vaudeville act, but when touring also explore regional foods. This past summer they were in Cincinnati. Click them on You Tube and watch some of the vaudeville stuff – hilarious entertainment; be sure to catch their Fastest Foot Sandwich act.