Thanksgiving 2007

November 22, 2007

Dear Hank,

As you can see by the date it is Thanksgiving here and as you know I usually don’t start drinking until after noon but today is an exception. You see I’ve been asked to grill the turkey beast – not beast sorry breast. The beast is in the oven. It’s a little tricky grilling down here because of the wind. Today it’s blowing moderately at 15 to 20 but that’s enough to give too much oxygen to the process unless you know how to compensate. Mainly you seal up every hole in the grill and when you start the grill you keep the cover at right angles to block the wind while you light her up. I’ve got the old Weber hidden on one side of the house, in the lee of the wind, which helps. However, one has to consider that when grilling one must, to be truly grilling, drinking, hence the exception to my rule.

This is not what I came here to talk to you about. (Those of you who don’t understand this reference need to listen to Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Gutherie. Arlo recounts an event that took place on Thanksgiving and half way through the over twenty minute song he mentions that what he’s been telling you about is not what the came here to talk to you about – See? Get it? Clever, huh? Nevermind.

But the purpose of this epistle is to make sure I understand what your most recent phone call to me was about. Mainly, yes Thanksgiving in Costa Rica and kite flying in Guatemala, but you called it ‘Getting High In the Mountains.’ I think it obvious that if you go in the mountains that you get high but I don’t think that was the implication of your meaning.

Am I to understand that after you left Wolfie at a bar in the Yucatan that you scored a motorcycle to escape the country and went overland on back roads and came to this place in Guatemala where they fly these really large kites and there was a famous and very handsome Latino media personality by the name of Francisco Geraldo Mendino Alvarez Oaxaen Jose? And that the two of you drank tequila and smoked cigars given to you by the local brujo that you say would have made Tommy Chong weep? And that after smoking and drinking and flying these massive kites you wove your way down to Costa Rica where you found the nefarious Loger, as you call him?

And that he invited you to his Thanksgiving feast, which they held a day early because they were afraid their bird might go bad if they didn’t cook it a day early and that you and old Loger-Dodger built a cement block barbeque pit and were preparing to roast the bird, a few chickens, a pig, some plantains and sundry other things when you decided it would be a good idea to crack open a few cold ones and have them while you smoked a Guatemalan fatty, which inspired Loger to yank a toad out of the bushes, which he told you supposedly had hallucinogenic properties that could be experienced by licking it, which you promptly did and then he did and then you heard his wife coming and knew she wouldn’t be pleased if she caught you toad-licking so you stuffed the toad in the cavity of the turkey and began to roast it, at which time Loger’s wife wondered why the turkey seemed to be making ribbit noises and you assured her it was just steam escaping from the skin and after she left you removed the toad but it was too late for him however the bird had a slightly odd taste that year and you learned that the combination of the triptophan from the bird and the bufotenin from the toad made you and everyone else both sleepy and prone to having wild dreams: for some exotic and sexy, for others nightmarish; and that Loger’s wife was so pissed at the two of you because you feel asleep at the beautiful out door table she had set that she tied you up, on the floor where you fell, to each other and went to bed crying and in the middle of the night you awoke to dogs pissing on you and a wild pig rutting his nose into you? All this you decided to relate to me at four o’clock this morning and when I e-mailed you back you denied any knowledge of any of this and you were now on your way to The Panama Canal.