Tuna Tale 12/7/07

Greetings, cats and kittens. Here's this week's conflaburation. Enjoy.

The week of the tuna.

We've been going to an Asian food place here in Greeley called "Ambrosia."

It's an exceptional restaurant, spotlessly clean and quiet, flawlessly fitted and finished inside. The staff serves from an immense menu.

Choices are truly "Asian," everything from Vietnamese and Thai to Canton-style Chinese -- and sushi !!!! (That part of the offering really gets me excited. Whoop te doo.)

The hot and spicy soup is excellent, guaranteed to clear the sinuses. Ambiance? I'd rate it ten out of ten. I like any of the variations on scallops or shrimp or both.

Laura is especially fond of tuna -- no not the canned mush, but tuna steak. So Monday, she ordered a lunch entree called "seared tuna salad."

Pretty soon here it came. Nice presentation. Pretty green spinach and kale.

Laura looked down at her meal. She's usually quite self-possessed, but the sight of the salad overcame any inhibition she might have had. Her jaw dropped involuntarily open.

I looked down at her plate and my jaw dropped involuntarily open.

The fish on top of the salad was orangy-red, brightly colored raw tuna.

She said nothing. I said nothing. The puzzled waiter went away. Laura said, "I don't know if I can eat it." But she did, most of it.

She put two slices on my plate. Thinking it might help her through this dilemma, I ate one piece. I said, "Guess what this tastes like?" and she said tell me, and I said "It tastes just exactly like I always thought raw tuna would taste."

I wasn't much comfort. Her meal cost $8. Our minds kept poking at this perplexing issue. Finally, we decided that at Ambrosia, the word "seared" must mean slightly heated on the outside, then sliced.

Would you have sent it back? We didn't.

(Background: Years ago, we used to socialize with another married couple. This often meant going out to eat. At every meal -- every single meal -- the woman would send something back. We vowed never to follow her example.)

Yes, we'll return to Ambrosia. Someday. And yes, we'll be sure to ask the waiter if the meat or fish is actually cooked, rather than raw or mildly heated.

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Here's a related anecdote. Years ago, my sister-in-law Bonnie gave us a very good definition. "What does the word 'sushi' mean in English?"

Bonnie said, "Bait."

I'm told it actually means ''hors d' oeuvres.'' But I'm suspicious. Probably what it really means is "big joke on dumb Yankee."

Our Image

We subscribe to these antique truck magazines. Can't imagine why we'd do that. But I like reading them, and I have an e-mail friendship with the editor of the main one, "Wheels of Time."

It's the official publication of the American Truck Historical Society.

In a recent issue, a reader had written a rather nasty letter to my friend, editor Stormy Wylie.

Seems there was a photo in the mag which included black smoke coming from a diesel, an antique truck making its way up Pike's Peak during the ATHS national convention last summer.

The writer whined, "We truckers have to be careful of our image.''

People seeing black smoke would, he assumed, be negatively impacted by the political incorrectness of a truck caught in the act of smoking.

I have one word for that whiner: Balderdash.

You might have read something similar in the Greeley Tribune this week in a report on Willie Spaedt's annual "Toy Run."

One biker said the toy run is good for the biker image.

Again. Balderdash.

You know what? I count myself as a "biker" and I did go on that toy run, riding my newly revived Shovelhead, "Ruby."

And I don't give an obese rodent's posterior about my "image."

I've been riding motorcycles since the mid-'70s. I have all the gear -- long hair, beard, leather stuff, black T-shirts, tattoos. It just comes with the territory. I am not trying to impress anyone, negatively or positively.

I never did care about my image. I don't care now. If I went out of my way to do something to "improve" my image, it would be as phony as Bill Clinton's picture on a $3 bill.

I enjoy my antique truck. I have gone to some pains, and expense, to make the old girl more environmentally friendly. But the modern PCV valve we installed is under the hood. It recycles vented gases, which is good for the air, but it does nothing for my image.

Should my friend Stormy withhold a nice scenic photo of an old truck just because we worry about our "image?" No. No. and Hell No.

I was there

I was there, front and center, when Winthrop Rockefeller was elected governor of Arkansas in the mid-60's.

I was a fledgling news reporter, in over my head, not knowing the significance or insignificance of what I was seeing and hearing.

All over Arkansas, giant billboards proclaimed: "BOY. That's what they'll call you the rest of your life without your high school diploma." It was a Liberal attempt to re-introduce actual education to the Ozark state.

Rockefeller was the first-ever Republican governor of Arkansas. He was a flaming Liberal, unusual for his party affiliation. But he was a part of a liberalization in Arkansas that was absolutely essential for the growth of society there.

His liberal efforts ultimately led to the election of Bill Clinton. And this is not good. It is, in fact, demonstrably corrupt. It's a shame how things good eventually erode into things shameful.

So we have gone in a few years from the essential reforms of the liberal Rockefeller to the unacceptable immorality that Clinton brought.

I was there

Yes, I was right there in the thick of it when U.S. Sen. Gale McGee, D-Wyoming, got on the wrong side of the John Birch Society.

McGee was "too liberal." He proposed development -- you know, mining coal and soda ash. He proposed development of industry to bring jobs to the state.

The Birchers succeeded in barring the "liberal" McGee from speaking to students at the University of Wyoming. Really -- that really happened. I still don't understand.

I was there

Over in Idaho, where we moved after Arkansas, I met U.S. Sen. Frank Church. A Democrat.

The Mormons and other reactionaries just despised him. I don't know why, exactly, but their hatred was palpable.

Church was an early opponent to the Vietnam debacle. He fought for and won establishment of wilderness areas in Idaho. He was a liberal par excellence, good for Idaho, good for the country. A hero's hero.

But he died basically unheralded, unrewarded, rejected, ignored, labeled, cursed.

Perhaps the reactionaries of the nation saw the future -- Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and the contemporary immoral quagmire of the Democratic Party. Gay rights. Abortion. Outright corruption in countless ways.

Those old reactionaries may have seen all this in the future when they reviled the heroes of my liberal younger days.

If that's how it was, I'd have to say they were correct.

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Word of the week: Harangue. It's from Latin, "harenga," assembly, speech, a gathering of warriors. In English, it has come to mean a long, blustering, noisy, or pompous speech. Synonym: tirade.

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Next week's word: Poultice.

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Gripes? Complaints? Whines? or Comments? Adoration? Puppy love? Feel free to express yourself below!