Sparkles Defeats the Blue Dog

– Neil Matkin (Copyright 2015)

He hated it when I called him Sparkles and, as I came to love him, I stopped…mostly. Except for those rare times when he simply needed to be needled and irritated I mostly called him Steve. Being a brat younger brother was a specialty talent I had somehow developed over the years although I had no brothers of my own. In truth, I later came to realize that my bratty-ness probably crossed all lines of friendship but mainly was aimed good-naturedly at true friends with the idea that true friends could take some mild abuse for a time anyway. It was then, and only then, that I would call him Sparkles later in our friendship. Since he knew I was trying to get his goat he let it pass without incident or comment – mostly. He did once “accidentally” spill most of a shot glass full of Tequila on me during a poker game, however, it was only after I referred to him as such when I said, “Bring me some mo’ Tequila while you’re up ‘n’ about Mister Sparkles.” He brought it all right and served it right up!

I met Steve Sparks on Monday morning, August 17, 1981 the day after I first arrived at a small Christian college in East Texas as a freshman. He was a cook who had come across the country to work in the little church college traveling all the way from San Diego, California. Whether to serve the lord or become gainfully employed was anyone’s guess but as I got to know him, my bet would have been the latter – but that was not to take from his spirituality. I came to see soon enough that Steve Sparks was a special man with deep insights into human imperfection with a microscope routinely focused unfortunately on his own shortcomings, which, like us all, were considerable. I became a close friend so I’m allowed to say that, of course.

My first exchange with him was at breakfast on the first day of orientation week. He was scooping scrambled eggs from a big metal pan and depositing them onto plates and then handing them under the sneeze guard to students as we walked through the cafeteria line with our trays perched upon the rails.

“Hey chief, you wanna throw some more eggs on that plate…a man’s gotta eat,” I said with a slight air of belligerence and condescension I had picked up during my tour of duty in the Navy. Swapping insults with Navy cooks was an art that I had mastered but Mr. Sparks – as he was then to be called – was having none of it. Yeah – I was what we’d call a late bloomer what being a college freshman in my early 20’s.

“Don’t call me chief,” he responded in a monotone gruff taking no action whatsoever towards fulfilling my demand, his eyes sparkling with mischief and mild disdain reserved only for all other humans.

“Alrighty then,” I retorted seeing that no extra eggs were forthcoming. I took an extra biscuit for myself though and then shoveled more fruit salad into a bowl than the bowl could hold and it spilled over onto the tray. “Thanks Chief! Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” he retorted sarcastically.

And that was that. Our very first exchange. I remember clearly his red beard, half grin, half snarl, a rather sizable nose situated at a slight angle below his piercing, defiant, and always mischievous eyes. I thought to myself that Sparkles was a live one all right. What I didn’t know then was that we were destined to become closer than brothers and lifelong friends until leukemia took him at 57 years old almost 30 years later.

I miss you to this day Steve. I surely do.

While I do miss him and I certainly loved him I would be a liar if I didn’t comment about his occasional suffering when alive. He did suffer from various maladies including moodiness that was epic to witness at a distance and downright unsettling to experience in person. He suffered most though from what my dad’s cousin Murline called the “Blue Dog.” Depression so down and deep that functioning normally became all but impossible. I have to skip ahead a bit past many events over a lot of years to tell you a story about one of Steve’s most difficult bouts with depression. It is sure to sound like an oxymoron but the story I am about to share has to be my favorite depression story of all time. Favorite depression story? Is there such a category? Thinking about it now, the events play out in my mind like they happened this very morning.

After our initial meeting, many adventures ensued with Steve but, after two years in East Texas, I ultimately went to California to finish my education. That and marry. And move back to Big Sandy, TX. And then divorce. And then move back to California. And then marry again. And finish my bachelor’s and then earn my master’s degree in California while having one and then two sons with my wife of now almost 30 years. And then, after those six exciting years, moving back to work at the same college in East Texas as a faculty member shortly before son number three came along. He was a bit of a surprise but that’s a story for another time. All the while, in all the journeys running the road to and from Texas and California, I stayed in contact and maintained a close friendship with my dear friend Steven Sparks. Steven Sparks of penny ante poker fame and those coins kept lovingly in white gym socks tied at the top by the students he invited over to play.

We had gotten together often when we moved back to Texas and shortly after I arrived I got a call from Steve’s wife Pam. “He’s not in a good place and hasn’t been to work in three days. Could you go and talk to him?” I jumped in my Honda Accord and headed down the country lane just past the college to where Steve and Pam’s trailer house was situated on a small parcel of land. Passing Mr. Thomas’ trailer with every form of scrap metal imaginable and just enough room to get a small truck through a circular path – metal stacked up on every side higher than the truck itself – I was just a half mile away from Steve’s. Mr. Thomas was a fixture at the little college and a favorite with the students. I had known him eleven years now and he and Steve were particularly close.

I got to Steve and Pam’s trailer and let myself in the knee-high Dachshund fence and then climbed the porch steps to knock on the front door. No response. I knocked again harder but still no response or sign of life or movement. I banged on the door with my closed fist so hard that I feared denting the metal door. No response. I waited a couple of minutes and banged and banged and banged but still no response. Finally, I tried the door and it was locked up tight. I heard myself say “Hmmmmph!” aloud as I was growing angry and then somewhat concerned. Sparkles would not have ignored somebody beating the crap out of his door like this under normal circumstances. He was very particular on things like that and normally he would have surely been on me in a hurry. His baby blue Jeep Cherokee XJ Sport sat under the carport covered with pine needles that the wind had deposited atop his wiper blades over the last several days. It obviously hadn’t moved and I began to wonder if three days not at work was really not five or six. I tried to remember when I had last seen him or talked to him.

Working my way around the end of the trailer to the back I climbed the back stoop and knocked on the back door. Same routine as the front door. No answer after repeated progressively harder tries that did actually result in a small dent right to the left of where the glass would have been had the door had glass. “Don’t know how that happened,” I would later say when asked. I reached down as I had on the front door and tried the knob. This time, much to my surprise, it turned easily in my hand and I cautiously opened the door and quietly slid inside.

The back door led into the combined kitchen-dining area-back hallway and it took me a moment for my eyes to adjust from the bright afternoon sun to the dimness of the trailer. Just as I was starting to make sense of the dimness, I heard Steve scream at the top of his voice from the back of the trailer “GET OUT!” I responded, “Hey Steve! You ok?” after which he screamed even louder, “GET THE FUCK OUT!!!” I didn’t normally hear foul words from Steve and I immediately matched his volume and screamed back, “NO!” and then everything became very, very still and quiet. The dim still of the moment had indeed returned except now I could see quite well even in the low light.  The first thing I noticed was that Steve had taken all of the linoleum up in the kitchen and dining area and the dining table and chairs were pushed haphazardly into the living room which was considerably messier than I had ever seen it before.

The living room was truly a wreck and the extra furniture just made it worse. As I surveyed the scene I remembered that my wife and I had stayed with the Sparks on our wedding trip to Texas the night before we were married. Although we had met at college in California, we returned to our home state and married there at the sister college in Big Sandy, TX. Steve Sparks, executive chef extraordinaire, had provided the culinary delights for the reception to wide acclaim. The Aggie evangelist who married us had married dozens if not hundreds of people over his years as a minister. It was significant when he said aloud that the food at our wedding was the best he had ever seen. That was Steve Sparks on one of his best days.

The next thing that caught my eye was most disturbing and I realized then that Steve had to be deep inside the blue dog because his salt-water aquarium was filthy and all of the fish were floating, rotting, in the smelly brown water – and the stench suddenly hit me hard and I wondered why I had not noticed it before now. Steve had gone in debt at least two or three thousand dollars on his salt water set up and it was his pride and joy. He nurtured those silly fish and the ‘salt water ecosystem’ he had created every day fussing over it like it was a first child. I wondered how long he had been like this for the tank to look like it did.

It had only taken a minute or two to survey the rooms and it occurred to me that the complete silence had continued with no further outbursts from the back bedroom. I didn’t want to parade into Steve and Pam’s bedroom and confront him as that seemed just way over the line but I didn’t want to leave him like this either. I felt momentarily helpless and, as I looked around again, I noticed a white bucket of floor goop or glue, the big metal “spatula” for spreading the goop on the floor, and several boxes of floor tiles waiting to be put down. The hell if I know what the goop spatula is called – some kind of a trowel I think. I did remember that spreading the goop around was to stick the tile down and there was spackle of some kind needed to float the floor and ensure that it was completely level in order to lay the tiles.

And then a eureka moment came to me like a ray of bright light piercing a pitch black night. I sure wasn’t going to be cleaning out the gross fish tank as I knew I would end up adding to the mess given the smell. But, I knew how to put in kitchen tile! Or, at the very least, Jan and I had just tiled our bathroom and it had come out all right. How hard could it be to do a little bit bigger room with an adjoining dining space?

First things first then. I turned on all the overhead lights and then every lamp I could find in the combination kitchen-dining and living rooms. I threw open curtains, raised blinds, and then unlocked and opened all of the windows before setting the AC unit to turn on the fan. I opened the doors trying to let light and fresh air in and welcome the dead fish smell out. I surveyed the floor and realized that it had already been floated and made level except for one little area where the back entryway joined up with the corner of the dining area and the back hallway. I found the spackle smack in another bucket so I knew I could finish that up in no time. My eureka moment was that Sparkles needed his kitchen floor put in! I was here, he wasn’t objecting, Pam had invited me in, and the floor was before me. He would have to feel better once the floor was in, right? It was a Thursday and I only had Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes. I could do this!

Locating the broom and dustpan in the hall pantry-closet I swept up the kitchen. It was at this point that I realized I had not heard the dogs barking and that concerned me just a bit. Steve had a Dachshund and another dog that I hated and think I intentionally forgot but I saw no signs of either one of them nor had there been a single bark since my arrival. I would deal with that later perhaps and I made a mental note. After sweeping up the floor, I opened the spackle smack bucket and made the far corner of the dining area-hall-kitchen flush. If Steve could read this today he would laugh aloud at the word “smack” which was his favorite word to describe his culinary creations. He would ask students, “Hey, you want some of this smack?” even if it was an elegant entrée. But I digress. The Sparks’ lived in a compact single wide trailer and it was really all just one conjoined room with merged functions aside from the bed and bath rooms. I hated trailers then and do to this day although theirs always felt welcoming.

Now with the last corner floated I picked up a tile and took a look at it next to one that was lying next to it. I saw an “A” and a “B” on the back of the tile and started looking for instructions on how to put it down – did it all lay the same way or was there a pattern? I found a small thin paper brochure that instructed me to measure the room and then start laying the tile in the middle of the room working toward the edges. As I looked, I saw that Sparkles had already snapped chalk lines to get it started. I poured too much goop in the center of the floor where the chalk lines crossed and started smearing it until it got thinner and about what I thought was the right consistency. I laid the first four tiles where the chalk lines crossed and thought to myself that this was going to look really nice. Two more tiles down, now two more and my square had turned into a long rectangle. I was kind of pleased with my tile laying ability seeing as I how I taught information systems at our little college and only lay tile as a once every ten-year hobby.

It was at that point that Sparkles showed up in all of his frumpiness on the scene and, from down on the floor I looked at him in a sweeping upward glance. He was barefoot, with gaping boxer shorts exposing wisps of red pubes, and an old, badly stained band t-shirt with a now mostly indiscernible logo of some kind. His beard and hair was sticking out everywhere, fuzzy red patchy stubble where he normally shaved, and he had bags under his eyes sufficient for an extended international vacation or safari. His facial expression didn’t even hold the remote hint of a smile – actually, his face  appeared more of a constipation strained, overly sustained, near frozen, increasingly intense, foul grimace and his eyes targeted my very soul with intense disdain. I did my best to share the image but it is indescribable really. Let me just say that if the almost overpowering decomposing fish smell combined with the industrial smell of the floor goop had a matching face then this was definitely it. He didn’t exactly scream because screams do not immediately render whatever is being said unintelligible. He kind of opened his lips, gnashed his teeth to the point where I heard the squeak from him grinding them together, and then shrieked a garbled growl and glowered at me as he shot laser beams from his eyes and loudly objected in a guttural rush of hate noise. If he had done this earlier it would certainly explain why the fish were dead. If able to overcome their initial fear at the sight, I couldn’t help but think that acid rockers Metallica and Ozzy Osbourne would have been quite proud indeed of the indecipherable bellow.

I had two immediate reactions and decided to hit him head on. “Hey Sparkles!” I said as I reached for the glue bucket and poured more goop on the floor right next to his feet. “How ya doin’?” I asked as what I thought was the worst fish killer face I was capable of seeing melted into a face now capable of killing entire pods of whales. He had never been violent but my Navy days had conditioned me to think about what might be coming and I braced myself for an attack that thankfully never came. Now he screamed and I understood his exceptionally well articulated words precisely.

“I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO GET OUT!!!”

“You did,” I said. “But Steve, you do know you are standing in wet smackle, right?” I knew it was spackle in the corner where he was but thought the interchange of one of his favorite words might lighten the moment. I continued unabated. “Now I’m going to have to do that part again. Damn it Steve. Try not to screw up my work buddy! C’mon!” The attempt at the inside joke may have helped. I first heard Steve use the word smack to describe his food when a student was asking about ingredients. As a chef, Steve did not like being questioned about his food. If asked what something was or what all was in a particular dish he would respond, “You want some of this smack?” The individual asking could ask fifty times and Sparks would only ask repeatedly whether they wanted some of the smack or not. Smack became an all descriptive term for whatever was being served for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Several students would complement him, “Good tasting smack Mr. Sparks” to which he would always smilingly respond, “Thanks!” What I thought because of the lull between bellows might be working simply wasn’t. Nope. He wasn’t having any of it regardless of whether I called it snap, spackle, or smacklety smack!

“I WANT YOU TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW!!! GET OUT NOW!!!”

“Well, I can’t leave until I finish the floor Steve. I’m going to need a utility knife in a little bit. Do you have a utility knife handy?” I paused as he glowered at me and then said, “What happened to your fish tank Sparkles?”

“QUIT CALLING ME SPARKLES YOU ASSHOLE. I TOLD YOU THAT YOU HAVE TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW GODDAMNIT! I WANT YOU TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW!!! I WANT YOU TO LEAVE!!! I WANT YOU TO LEAVE!!! I WANT YOU TO LEAVE!!!” The last note rang like a bell and he elongated it for extra emphasis. I thought it was a good effect and it would have likely worked with someone less stubborn than me or with someone who loved him less.

“We all want things we can’t have Sparkles. I want a Porsche 911 but I haven’t got one now do I? Steve, try to get it through your head. I’m not leaving. Try to get a grasp man. Where are your dogs, buddy? Please tell me the dogs are not in the fish tank. And for goodness sake man, you’re busting out of your drawers – how about putting some pants on buddy?”

And, with that, he spun around and literally reached up and tore some hair out of his already thinning mane, and power stomped back down the hallway tracking wet spackle as he walked and leaving white footprints in his path. He went into his bedroom (thus getting wet spackle on the carpet, too – sigh) and slammed his door hard enough to shake the entire trailer. Well, interior doors in trailer houses don’t really slam do they? More of a muffled whoosh really but some wood splintered off one of the edges of the door regardless. I was trying to remember if he had any guns. No, no I didn’t remember any guns. I did a mental inventory and in the eleven plus years I had known him, my good friend had never shown the slightest interest in guns. I went back to laying tile.

Thirty minutes of silence passed and I heard movement in the back of the trailer. Then I heard water running from the master bath. I was sweating from getting up and down and positioning goop and tiles so I opened the fridge to scavenge for brewski but there was no beer to be found. Fridge looked a wreck too. I realized I had only been over socially when invited and the Sparks were always neat and orderly. This was unusual to be sure. No beer? No wonder the poor sot was depressed.

Leave to buy beer or stay without beer? Tough choices. If I left, Sparkles may very well discover me gone and then lock me out. I would then have to fix a door on top of laying the floor tiles and I just wasn’t up for both on the same day. I was now determined to stay the course and see it through. Speaking of which, I needed to re-spackle the area Steve ruined so I did that next and then positioned a chair in the hallway in front of it so maybe big foot would let it dry before walking in it again. I noticed the spackle foot prints leading down the hall once again and it made me laugh thinking that, under normal circumstances, Steve would have a cow if somebody tracked up his floors like that.

Looking over to the television cabinet I noted that there were bottles of booze in the shelf to the side of the TV. Score! What all was there? I made my way past the other chairs and dining table and discovered Gran Marnier, 1800 Tequila, vodka, rum, and a few other nondescript bottles. Tequila would have to do! No limes in the fridge but clean glasses in the cabinet. I poured myself a healthy dose and got a second glass and poured Steve one too. Don’t worry. I had a back up plan in the event he didn’t want it! I learned later that alcohol was not ideal for depression but at the time I was going for good memories. Steve and I played poker with a group of fellows once a month and we always split a bottle of 1800 Tequila over the course of seven or eight hours while playing. I was going for sentiment and a decade old tradition hoping for a lift in his mood and generally sour disposition. Truthfully, I was deeply concerned for my friend, as I had never seen this way before. I didn’t understand a lot about depression either and am not sure to this day if I helped or he was simply coming out of the cycle. My gut was that I needed to stay though and I had determined to see this train wreck to its end regardless of the destination or timetable.

Forty-five minutes more passed and I had now laid every tile I could lay without cutting tiles to size for the edges or laying tile on the drying spackle section. I noticed earlier that Steve had removed the shoe mould and stacked it in the hallway with most of the tiny finishing nails still intact. If I could cut the edge pieces to size and glue them down I could reinstall the shoe mould – or did I need to wait until the goop set up? I then recalled that Jan and I had rented a big roller to flatten the tile and make sure that the glue goop set and the tiles would stick permanently. The shoe mould had to be reinstalled afterwards. Without a utility knife, I could go no further. I walked back to the bedroom door and shouted, “Hey Steve! I need a utility knife to finish this up.” No answer. Okey-dokey.

Steve was a damn fine chef and there was nothing he was prouder of than his knives. He carried his special ones in to work every morning and carried them back in the evening until he was promoted to head chef and got his own office where they resided under lock and key. The knives each had their own thin scabbard to cover the blade and this in turn fitted neatly into a zip up carrier made for such knives. He placed them lovingly on a particular spot on his counter. In fact, Jan and I had traveled to Germany four months after we were married and Steve had saved up to have us pick up two or three particular knives while there. We did and one of them managed to escape the wrapping and puncture our luggage! I went back to the bedroom door and shouted, “Steven, if you do not tell me where I can find a utility knife to cut this tile I will be have to use one of your kitchen knives!!!” I heard movement. I backed away from the door and hustled back to the kitchen picking a chefs knife out of his rolled up carrier. I knelt on the floor pretending to cut a piece of tile barely getting the scabbard removed in time.

Steve reemerged from his bedroom but now his hair and beard were washed and combed and he had on gym shorts that hid his junk and a clean t-shirt to finish his native Californian style. “If you use my chef’s knife to cut that tile I swear to you that I am going to kick your ass! Neil, I am not kidding you! Give me my chef’s knife right now or put it where you got it please.” It was a softer growl but just as emphatic as before but he had used my name and tacked on a defeated please at the end. I looked up at him and smiled, “You got a utility knife handy? I’ll trade you.” He just glared at me as I stood up and put the knife back into the scabbard. I turned to face him and picked up the glass of Tequila I had poured for him and offered it. I was on glass number two already so mine was handy as well but he just stared at me now with a drink in each hand and didn’t move to relieve me of either.

“Drink?” I asked.

“What is it?”

“1800.”

“My 1800?”

“No, I travel with my own stash when I go to visit friends and put in their floor.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“It wasn’t a big deal Steve. The bottle’s right over there, it was easy to pour.”

“Not that. I meant the floor.”

“I don’t mind helping you with the floor Steve. It’s the least I can do. Just wanted to make sure you were all right. I figured it was work on the floor or clean out the fish tank and the floor smelled better.”

“Ok, I really didn’t mean the floor you asshole. I meant you didn’t have to drink my Tequila.”

“Well Steve, had you had beer in the fridge I wouldn’t be drinking your Tequila now would I? Do you have a utility knife or not?” I asked as I put down my glass and edged back toward his knives. His eyes flashed so I reached out to him offering the Tequila again and this time he took the glass. “What should we toast to Chief?”

“Let’s toast to you not calling me Chief…or Sparkles. You know I hate being called Sparkles and you are such an insufferable asshole.”

“I remember now that you hate Sparkles but I thought you liked it when I called you Chief.”

“I have never liked it and you know it.”

“Dean Ames called you Chief and you never said anything to him,” I said, referring to another good friend and fellow student. Dean and I had jacked up Steve’s Audi (all four wheels) putting the tires just a hair off the ground once. It was a practical joke gone awry and somehow Steve had forgiven me but hadn’t quite squared with Dino although to be fair, I had admitted to the stunt sooner. “You like Chief better than Sparkles, right? I mean, if we’re rating them, which one do you hate most?”

“Screw you.”

“So one doesn’t rank just a bit better than the other?” I asked with a wry smile crossing my face.

We both looked at one another and he finally took a big gulp. Steve put his drink down and hugged my neck hard and, fighting back tears he said, “I’m glad you are here even though you are the biggest asshole on the entire planet.” Compliments were rare with Steve and even with all of the circumstances I felt myself tearing up a bit, too.

“Me too buddy. Me too.”

Steve then picked up his Tequila and drained the glass while looking about at the floor. I drained my glass in return and offered to get some more. “Better not,” he said.

A couple of tiles were clearly not seated properly. “You screwed up my floor – you know that right?”

“Yeah. I’m not really a great floor guy Steve. Besides, the floor is easy. It’s all the dents in the doors I‘m worried about.”

“You’re kidding right?”

“You bet!” I responded quickly hoping we could change the subject and wondering why I had brought it up in the first place.

“Let’s go to Gladewater and get a toe smasher and roll it around some,” Steve said.

“When’s the last time you ate?” I asked knowing that I hadn’t had lunch and suspecting it had been some time since he had eaten as well.

“Let’s grab something to eat and then get the roller.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said and started closing up windows.

For the record, we ate at a little Mexican place in Gladewater, Texas that routinely had really bad to middling food but good service before having to drive all the way to Longview, Texas to rent a roller to finish the floor. I had to stop at a payphone and call Jan to let her know I was going to be late since I was helping Steve Sparks with his floor. When we got back, Steve wanted to be alone and appeared to be himself so I left. Pam was home but we didn’t speak and I don’t think Steve ever knew she had asked me to come over when he was down and out struggling with the blue dog.

The next time I was there, the floor was completely done and beautiful with the shoe mould reinstalled all the way around. As Jan and I were letting ourselves into the knee-high fence, the dogs were running around barking at us and wagging their tails. I never discovered where the dogs were during Steve’s episode and never asked. Once inside I noticed that the fish tank was no longer in the house. I learned at some point from Pam that Steve had sold it all at First Monday Trade Days in Canton a while after the event.

In the nearly twenty years that followed and in hundreds of conversations Steve and I never discussed these events once. In our last conversation two days before he passed we said our final goodbyes.

“I love you Sparkles.”

“I love you too but you are still an asshole,” he whispered hoarsely.

“I know. Can’t be helped. Rest easy friend. Rest easy.”

One More For the Road: Sparks Cooks For The Neighborhood

After Steve passed away I got a call from a friend he had grown up with – a fellow named Dan Girard. Dan and I had met previously but somehow I hadn’t realized his early connection with Steve. One thing led to the next and we started swapping a few stories and this one from Dan is one that I have repeated often and one of my absolute favorite Steve Sparks stories.

Dan and Steve lived together in Southern California in their early 20’s before either were married or settled down. They would often have backyard parties and cookouts inviting a couple of dozen people and there were regulars along with “virgins” who had not been there before. As Steve and Dan were children of the 60’s, I can only guess how these parties went but Steve always had an entrepreneurial streak that ran opposite of his innate need for immediate gratification which ultimately resulted in routine debt.

In this case, Steve would hire two or three neighborhood kids to run around the neighborhood and let everyone know, “Sparks is cooking! Sparks is cooking steak.” The kids would actually take orders and collect money and run both back to Steve and he would whip out 20 or 30 or even 40 to go boxes for the neighborhood at ten dollars a pop.  It was his way of financing his own party.

After all of that was done, Steve would finally turn his attention to the crowd gathered in his back yard. “Your attention,” he would shout, “Your attention please!” As the crowd quieted down Steve would start on the left side of the yard and systematically take orders. He would point to each individual as he went.

“How would you like your steak cooked?”

The guest would respond and say rare or medium rare, medium well, or well and Steve would quickly move on to the next guest never writing anything down.

“And how would you like your steak cooked?”

“Medium.”

“And you, how do you like your steak?”

“Medium rare.”

“How about you?”

“Make mine bloody!” and on and on it went until about halfway through. At that point, someone would always interrupt Steve and point out the obvious.

“Excuse me Steve, but how are you going to remember all of this? You aren’t writing any of this down dude!”

Steve would give a stern look as he panned the audience. The newcomers to the back yard soiree were all wondering the same thing, of course. Steve would puff out his chest and go into his well-rehearsed spiel with what I am certain was twenty-something youthful pride and vigor.

Enunciating and emphasizing each word slowly, Steve would insist, “I am a professional chef. This, THIS…is…what…I…do…for…a……LIVING!” There would be a long pause for effect and he would scan the audience with his famous glare. “I have everyone’s order perfectly memorized!” he insisted. He would then proceed as if there had been no interruption and continue the routine until each and every guest had been asked individually how he or she wanted their steak cooked.

“And, how would you like your steak cooked?” Steve finally asked the last guest.

“Just medium is ok, thanks,” came the response.

Steve wasted no time then yelling at the entire group:

“I AM A PROFESSIONAL CHEF! YOU WILL ALL GET OF YOUR STEAKS HOWEVER THEY COME OFF OF THE GODDAMNED GRILL!!!” after which the entire crew broke out in uncontrollable laughter. Even if there were no newcomers to be surprised by the routine, Steve repeated his spiel at each and every back yard party of which there were dozens. It never got old and I never grow tired of telling the story of Steve’s back yard antics that occurred states away before we ever met.