Hang on for a tangle of sequels and a tale of the majestic strudla

This article is a couple of days late, but it was started on Mother's Day so it ain't all that bad. I wanted to call this column "Segue" because I have been told that's what I do best. (Segue: Switching subjects without warning.)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that piece on the third grade extravaganza out at Micke's Grove. One of my dear friends said I switched subjects so often, she never knew what I was talking about. Everyone else was so taken by the description of my dishabille at the grove, they didn't care, "Segue away, they cried."

Here's a case in point: Like a lot of other people, I didn't learn what a true jewel my mother was until I was in high school; as a matter of fact, a junior. It was the afternoon of the prom and in the course of getting ready for the big event; she asked me a truly embarrassing question: "Did you get your date a corsage?"

After some serious scrambling on my part and some deft florist work on the part of my mom, my date ended up with a corsage that was on a par with any, and better than most of the poesys, nosegays and orchids at that essentially forgettable event. Well, it was one of those high school activities at which a boy can't possibly emerge a winner.

If he knows how to dance (not my problem, by the way) he's bound to be called a show-off, if he can't dance, he's considered a klutz and that can't be good next Monday in class when the "Nanner, nanner" stuff starts.

Segue warning: My mom was the kind of person who could light up a room just by walking in the door and if it was a kitchen door, spontaneous music would reverberate through the metal of the pots and pans in recognition of the fact the Strudla genius of the world just made her regal entrance. She was the opposite of that guy on TV who is hell in a kitchen; he lights up a room by leaving it. To me, she was a Mother Teresa with the added bonus of knowing how to cook strudla, a gustatory feat I am certain the storied nun couldn't have done even though she reputedly did have the key to Heaven's Kitchen. Strudla, properly created and presented, takes personal knowledge of the Kitchen Saint, whoever she is, and added to that, it takes the ability to simply be able to touch raw winter wheat flour and know what month is was milled, know the exact size of the microscopic granules of said flour, the milliliter content of the albumin of an egg laid by a chicken who understands squarehead English as spoken by a German from North Dakota and will lay it on command like a PEZ dispenser, the liquid to fiber ratio and pungency of the onions that will be sautéed in goose grease involuntarily extracted from a six year old free-range gander, the precise number of grains of salt it will take to give the creation its ethereal flavor, so subtle and yet so stultifying addictive one is always extrasensorily warned, "Bet you can't eat just one."

Besides my mother, my grandmother and maybe one hundred others, world-wide, knowledge of the strudla recipe is so secret, I would have to kill all of you if I took this one step farther.

It would be like blabbing the secret to the creation of Coca Cola or Dr. Pepper. (The secret to Dr. Pepper is prune juice, but don't tell anyone.)

Segue: I think we have our values on a little crooked. I read on the Internet (Thank you, Al,) that there is a disaster happening in Hollywood this week and it is of epic proportions. You may not believe this, but "Speed Racer" only took in $20 million! It kind of makes you lose all faith in the people of the United States because they wouldn't know a $400 million blockbuster if it hit 'em in the face.

On the other hand, the tragedy in Burma was first thought to have killed 350 people and made another couple thousand homeless. The truth is there may be as many as a million deaths and ten times as many ruined lives.

In light of these findings, the least you can do is go to the show this week.

Bob Bader is a chiropractor and a writer. He can be reached at bobbyo@softcom.net.

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