When I moved to Berkeley in the ‘70’s, I soon learned about all of the colorful characters who hung out on Telegraph Avenue.  Little did I know that my dog, Eddie, would also soon reach legendary status.

There was a guy we called “The Orange Man” who could usually be found on the edge of Sproul Plaza, at the south entrance to the university.  He was always dressed in pastel tie-dyed clothes and had long curly blond hair like a halo around his head.  He carried a plastic bag with three or four oranges inside which he would swing about as he stood for hours, talking to no one in particular.  The word was that he had lost his mind on drugs and that he fancied himself to be a sort of Johnny Appleseed, but with oranges.

There was a homeless man with bloodshot eyes and a crazed expression who camped out near the Café Mediterranean down the street.  He would mutter and scowl and then occasionally break into a frantic kung fu fight, driving away unseen foes.  Once I asked him if I could buy him a coffee.  “No, thanks, I’ve already had one today,” he replied in a clear and refined voice.

My favorite, though, was the one we called “One-way Shoes” who shuffled about town, sometimes pushing a shopping cart.  He had a pair of worn-out leather shoes with the back part squished down under his feet – like someone going outside to get the morning paper.  The shoes were so tattered that we joked that if he ever tried to back up, he would leave the shoes behind.

My friend Bruce worked at Moe’s Books in a five-story building on Telegraph and lived in an apartment on the third floor.  I was staying with him temporarily until I found an appropriate place for Eddie and myself.  Finding an apartment was going to be tough because not everyone allowed dogs, not even an average dog, and Eddie wasn’t exactly average.

Eddie was a shepherd-terrier mutt and to call him hyperactive would be an understatement. His expressions of strong will were legendary, leading him to near-expulsion from a dog obedience class (for trying to bite the trainer) to being maced by a mailman (for greeting him with barks, snarls and a driveway-long sprint). He had already dodged death once – or at least dodged a few fenders in a mad dash across four lanes of Interstate 80. But despite all of this, Eddie was a lovable and loyal pup who never wanted to leave my side.  But that day in Berkeley, we had a terrific craving for a cappuccino and couldn’t bring him with us across the street to the Café Med for fear of what Eddie would do to the apartment if left alone. So we meticulously planned (for 20 or 30 seconds) and decided that the perfect solution would be to leave the dog alone on the roof of the apartment building.

There was stairway access to the flat room where a clothesline was located and the perimeter was enclosed by a four-foot high solid wall. As we left Eddie up there, we wedged the door shut, gently pushing his eager snout out of the way, and made our way to the elevator. In a minute, we were in the lobby, opening the front door.

We were greeted by a passer-by who seemed to be very disturbed about something.

“There’s a dog running around in the street and I think it was just hit by a car.  Does it belong to one of you?”

“No.  My dog’s on the roo…,” I started to say.  Bruce and I looked at each other in horror as we came to the same conclusion.

We ran outside to see Eddie, who recognized me and came hobbling in my direction, listing twenty degrees to the right, stepping gingerly, as is he were walking on thin ice.  My mind couldn’t quite figure out how he had gotten there until I went around to the alley next to the building and saw a parked car with a dent on the hood, surrounded by Eddie-hairs.

No, Eddie had not been hit by a car.  He was the one who had done the hitting.  “Dog Hits Car”, the headline would read.

I was filled with guilt as I took Eddie to the emergency vet, certain that he wouldn’t survive the day.  I felt completely irresponsible for leaving him on the roof, but who would have thought that he would have jumped over a four-foot wall?

Amazingly, Eddie survived.  He didn’t even have any broken bones or major injuries, although for a few weeks he moved as if he had aged a dozen or so dog-years.

Looking back on it, I wonder what One-way Shoes would have said if he had shuffled around a corner just in time to see Eddie flying off the roof and crash landing below:

“Hey little bro’ – you got the right idea – keep moving forward, never go back.  Just remember though – the jumping is the easy part – it’s the landing that takes a little getting used to!”

Since we own two restaurants that produce about 15 gallons of used cooking oil each week, I decided to have the conversion done.  The cooks at our restaurants know about my project, so they save the oil for me.  Each Saturday, I go down to the restaurant and take about an hour to filter the oil through a simple sock filter and put it back into the five gallon containers. I also test the oil in a hot frying pan to make sure there is no water mixed in.  Then when I need to fill up, I attach a funnel to my gas tank and pour the oil in.  I haven’t bought diesel for about three months now.

We use canola oil at our restaurants.  The oil comes from the rapeseed, and is grown in Canada.  Not only is the fuel free, but it comes from a renewable natural resource.  The carbon emissions that are produced by cars running on waste vegetable oil (WVO) are offset by the carbon dioxide being absorbed by the crop.

Filtering the oil, storing and pouring it into year tank can be a bit messy and time-consuming.  You save money in the long run, but you have to do some work instead.  A stop at the gas station might take five or ten minutes; filtering the oil and filling my tank might take over an hour.  The thing that happens, though, is that you really begin to see the relationship between the fuel and the traveling – it feels good to know that you’re part of the loop and that you’re not just sending your money to an oil company or being indirectly involved in the politics of importing oil from the Middle East.

People always want to know if my car smells like french fries.  Not exactly, I would say it’s more of a barbecued chicken aroma – it definitely smells better than diesel!  The gas mileage and performance is about the same as when I use diesel – about 20-25 miles per gallon.  If I’m on the road and run out of cooking oil, I can always fill up with diesel, or mix the two.

In the picture below, I’m filling up with Mazola corn oil.  A friend of mine deep fried her turkey at Thanksgiving and then gave me her used oil afterward.  So for a while, Stella was smelling like fried turkey!

I slid my card through the credit card reader and was about to start pumping gas when the car in front of me pulled out.  By now, there was a car waiting behind me, so I decided to cancel my transaction and move up to the forward pump so the person behind me wouldn’t have to wait needlessly.

As I moved up, I was congratulating myself on being such a considerate person and was pleased that the driver behind me gave me a nod and wave of thanks.  Then I slid my card through the card reader once again, but this time the pump flashed the message, “See attendant.”

I guessed that the gas station computer system had become suspicious that a person would use a credit card at two different pumps within two minutes and had intervened to block my transaction.  Muttering to myself something about no good deed going unpunished, I made my way to the attendant.

I explained the situation to the attendant and he abruptly barked back at me, “Your card is not being accepted. Give it to me.”

I never like handing over my credit card to a gas station clerk.  I like the control of handing the whole transaction myself – I’m never quite sure what kinds of mysterious numbers and charges might be added to my bill the moment I walk away.  It gives me the same unsettling feeling that I have when I check into a hotel in a foreign country and the desk clerk insists that I leave my passport at the front desk overnight for safekeeping.

Now when I returned to my car, I realized that my whole “being a considerate guy and moving to the front pump” strategy had backfired.  My appreciative friend at the rear pump was now well ahead of me in the gas-dispensing process and I still needed to pump my gas and retrieve my credit card.  To make matters worse, a line of cars was beginning to form behind her – I was holding up the entire parade.

As I began to pump my gas, out a nowhere appeared a young man with a reddish, bloated face.  “Can you help me out?,” he began, “I’m from out of town and I ran out of gas.  I need twenty dollars to fill my tank.”

Quickly, I began to evaluate the plausibility of his story – the condition of his face and the fact that there was no car in plain sight raised my suspicions, but I couldn’t really concentrate because I was racing to end my one-car gas station blockade.  Moreover, I am not a good multi-tasker and don’t like it when people come up to me and blurt requests without a word of introduction.

“Sorry, I can’t help you right now,” I mumbled.

Not to be deterred, Red Face began to negotiate.  “Ten bucks would be good.  I can get half a tank.”

Now I was pretty sure that this guy was a scam artist but had decided that I could spare two or three dollars.  I just couldn’t do it at that precise moment.  I really needed to get the gas pumping. “Okay.  Give me just a minute,” I said.

And that’s when he answered – I kid you not about this – “I don’t have a minute,” and turned his flushed face and disappeared.  I never did see a car and he just walked away with me calling out something lame like, “Then I can’t help you!”

The teenage kid at the pump across from me and I exchanged bewildered shakings of the head.  He must have wondered along with me where this stressed out panhandler might have needed to be in such a hurry that he couldn’t wait 30 seconds for some free cash.  Did he have a more cooperative and faster-moving sponsor on the hook at pump number six?  Was it time for his break? Was there less than sixty seconds worth of gas left in his tank?

I finished pumping my gas as the driver behind me snaked her way around me to get out of the station and the next car pulled up to take her place. I went inside to pay and resisted the urge to take out my frustrations on the less-than polite attendant.

I got back in my car, started the engine, shook my red-faced head one last time, stomped on the gas, and raced out of the station.

November has been a busy month for the Krahling family.  Not only has Heidi published her cookbook Insalata’s Mediterranean Table, but Mark has finally released his collection of short stories, Still Blinking.

From the book cover : “Still Blinking is a collection of stories which capture those tiny moments in time that pass in a blink of an eye.  Mark helps us to sit back and ask the question, ‘What just happened there?’ – sometimes supplying us with his own interpretation while encouraging us to find our own.”

Still Blinking is available online and may be purchased ($11 plus tax, shipping and handling) using a Paypal account or major credit card.

- Rosie Sorenson, award-winning writer and author of They Had Me at Meow

“Humor twinkles in Mark Krahling’s kindly observations of life’s incongruities.”

- Lum Franco, Co-author of Other Voices

Mark’s pause––your elixir. Drink! Savor!

- Carolyn Ingram, co-author of The-Not-So-Scary Breast Cancer Book: Two Sisters’ Guide from Discovery to Recovery.

“Read Still Blinking in bed, alone or with your lover, sighing and laughing outloud.”

- Christie Nelson, author of Woodacre: A Novel

Last summer, I learned about a book club for the homeless, founded in Boston.  Peter Resnik, a downtown lawyer, made it a habit of cutting through Boston Common on his way to work. Each day he would see a homeless man named Rob and they began having daily conversations about jokes, sports, and eventually literature.  Peter loaned a book to Rob, who in turn shared it with other homeless people. Before long, a book group was created, with members meeting each Tuesday to discuss stories while snacking on doughnuts and coffee.

The meetings are described in an Boston Globe article by Jenna Russell:

When talk flows at the book club, the dynamic that emerges is pure and powerful.  The members are equals, linked by what they read and respected for their insights.  Their discussions…are both a stimulus and a respite for people used to staying focused on survival – where to sleep and how to stay dry – rather than the themes and symbols of fiction.

This description very much appealed to my own sense of what a book group should be about – that the group should use the literature as a stimulus for discussion and sharing rather than something that needs to be critiqued and dissected.  I sent an e-mail to the group and received a response from Ron Tibbetts, a Beacon Hill church deacon and longtime homeless outreach worker.  Ron has created a nonprofit group, the Oasis Coalition, and has replicated the idea of a book club for the homeless.  I offered to donate copies of my book Still Blinking and he wrote back, accepting my offer.

The books are now in the mail and I look forward to hearing about what kinds of interesting discussions the stories might generate.  Ron says that the idea of a book club for the homeless is spreading across the country and that he plans to set up a blog to keep people informed of the progress. I’ll share that information on this blog when it becomes available.

Heidi Krahling’s long-awaited cookbook is now available for purchase. The book is truly a work of art – filled with more than 120 recipes from both Insalata’s and from Heidi’s family along with gorgeous illustrations by Laura Parker and mouth-watering photographs by David Matheson. The book features a foreword by Ann Lamott and Heidi’s personal stories to introduce each recipe.

Insalata’s Mediterranean Table was recently reviewed in the Marin Independent Journal and is available for purchase at Insalata’s – 120 Sir Francis Drake, San Anselmo, CA – or by clicking the following link:

I found a bee in my root beer today. This wouldn’t have been especially troubling, except for two things: the bee was still alive, and the root beer was in my mouth at the time.

My neighbor Mark had given me the root beer, telling me that it was the most delicious root beer that he had ever tasted. He pointed out all of the benefits that were touted on the can: no preservatives, no sodium, no caffeine, and real cane sugar in place of high fructose corn syrup.

Of course I didn’t know that I had a bee in my mouth – I just knew that when I poured the last little bit of the drink into my mouth there was something solid and kind of big that didn’t belong in my root beer. At the time I was sitting at a table on our patio and almost spit into the cactus display in front of me, but didn’t want to spoil the flowers.

Mark has been retired for many years and had been watching me slave over my repairs to my irrigation system. The two workmen who I had hired had just left and I was cleaning up and admiring my work when he slowly crossed the street with the can of ice cold root beer.

I had once had a bee sting me on the lip as it followed part of my roast beef sandwich into my mouth, so the thought crossed my mind that the mysterious object might be a bee that had crawled into the can while it was briefly unattended.

The day before, Mark had watched me swinging a pick in the hot sun, with sweat pouring down my face. After each eight or ten swings I would have to take a rest, mop off my face and get a drink. He motioned for me to come over and explain to him what the project was about and expressed concern about how exhausted I looked. That’s about the time that I decided I would hire someone younger and stronger to do the picking the next day.

I decided to run into the house to spit out the root beer in the kitchen sink. That’s when I saw the bee, looking dazed but still alive, though barely moving. I was grateful to him for not stinging me and thought he should have a chance to survive.

The reason Mark was home watching me was that he had just returned from the hospital and was recovering from a procedure in which the doctors run a scope through his arteries, looking for blockage. He had felt chest pains while doing yard work and the doctors where trying to determine if his arteries could be cleaned out or stretched wider by inserting a stent.

I let the bee crawl onto a spoon and took it outside to the table on the patio. He kept shaking himself, like a boxer who had just been knocked down and was trying to clear his head so he could get up and fight again. He took his tiny front legs and rubbed his head, as if trying to remove the sticky layer of root beer. He tried to move his wings, but they were stuck together.

The doctor had told Mark the same thing that another doctor had recently told my father – that it was too risky to do a surgical procedure – to try to clean the arteries or insert a stent – because a piece of plaque might break loose and cause a heart attack. Open heart surgery was also out of the question for someone in his eighties. Mark was advised to limit his physical activity and take medication to control his blood pressure. He returned home and was taking it easy by sitting and watching me work across the street.

The bee kept working to clean himself and liberate his wings. I put him on the spoon again and moved him to a flower in a sunny spot. He began to move about the flower a bit drunkenly at first, but amazingly, he seemed to be going about his business of collecting pollen.

I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect tonic to revive me after two days of hard labor than the ice cold can of root beer – it was every bit as delicious as advertised. As he handed me the root beer, Mark described just how much sweat he had seen pouring down my face as I labored in the sun. Assured that I was finished with my labors, he headed back across the street.

The bee had crawled to the blossom at the very top of a flower. A sudden breeze picked up and swept the bee off the blossom. He took flight, circling three times as he gained altitude and disappeared from my sight.

By the way, the root beer – the liquid part, anyway – was great!

Today is my birthday, I think.
You see, Dr. Hennig was the one who chose my birthday. He died this year – he was 100 years old.
He lived in Sedona in the last years of his life and must have been very happy there. Dr. Hennig loved to collect rocks and Sedona has some of the prettiest rocks in the world. Whenever he found an especially colorful rock that he wanted to share with you, he would  lick it, leaving a long, wide wet spot where the colors would break through. “What do you think?” he would ask as he handed it to you.
My dad was the doctor who delivered many of my future classmates in the small town we lived, but when it came time for my birth, he asked his friend, Dr. Hennig to deliver the baby. My parents made the trip to the hospital in the neighboring town – our town had no hospital – on the night of July 1 and my mother soon began labor.
The labor continued throughout the evening in the sweltering Sacramento Valley heat. My dad stood at the bedside throughout, but it was Dr. Hennig who finally brought me into the world.
He looked up at the clock and saw that it was midnight. “I’m not sure if he was born before, or after midnight,” he said as he handed me  to my mom, “but I think July 1st sounds better than July 2nd!”
Lloyd Hennig was always known for his mischievous sense of humor. When he was a teenager growing up in San Francisco, he and his friends would  take a ferry across the Bay and then catch the train to Mill Valley. They would stand at the train depot and wave to the tourists who were departing on the steam train bound for the top of  Mt. Tamalpais. As soon as the train left the station, the boys would hike straight up the mountain to the first switchback curve and wave again to the same passengers. By the third curve, the passengers would be rubbing their eyes, wondering if Marin county teenagers only came in three varieties.
I don’t know if Dr. Hennig applied this same sense of whimsy when he chose my birthday, but I do know that eighteen years later, during the Viet Nam War, the Selective Service Commision instituted a draft lottery, based on a person’s birthday. Each birthday was randomly matched with a number, and if your number was lower than one hundred, there was a good chance you would be sent to Viet Nam. July 1 was assigned the number 284 and I was able to remain a civilian and finish my college education.
Last month, by chance, I visited Sedona and was reminded of Dr. Hennig’s passing. It also made my curious about how things might have been different had he not assigned me my birthday. I did some research and found the answer to a question about which I have long been curious.
The draft lottery number for July 2 was 61.
Thanks, Dr. Hennig. July 1 sounds good to me, too.