i've got a crush on you

pork shoulder, h in sunrays
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Mr. John Hodgman was kind enough to post this image, which I originally posted to the h in sunrays Flickr group, to his blog, good evening.

Remember that feeling you'd get when you passed that cute boy you had a crush on, and just maybe he'd say hi in a way that made it clear it was no big deal to him -- but it definitely was to you?

Yeah. Feels something like that.

That is all.

how to be a hobo (on halloween)

Whine as only a fifth grader can about not having figured out your halloween costume yet (I don’t wanna be a witch again!) until you push your father to the edge and he says: Come here.

Follow him to the master bedroom where he rummages around in his closet and drawers and pulls out:

• A funky old flannel shirt (Put this on.)


• A bunch of old t-shirts (which he promptly stuffs into the funky old flannel shirt and plumps just right so that it looks like you have a beer belly)


• A funky old flannel jacket (‘cause this is the Olympic Peninsula and it’s cold and wet out there, trick-or-treaters)

Follow him into your brother’s bedroom where he scores an old railroad conductor’s hat, then turns and twists your long hair into a bun and stuffs it all up inside.

Follow him into the kitchen where he whips out a can of Crisco and a tin of Folger’s coffee and slops on grease and coffee grounds until your 10 year old face has a five o’clock shadow.

Admire your whiskers approvingly in the bathroom mirror while he disappears outside and then returns with a stick that he’s whittled down quick and outfitted with one last bundled up funky old t-shirt.

Best costume ever.
Best Dad in the whole wide world.

Update: The above pic made John Hodgman's blog -- see just a little bit starstruck for the full story.

hobo matters

hobo matters
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Hobos did not leave many records. Those who were not illiterate were intensely superstitious and especially distrustful of ink… And in the makeshift railyard camps called ‘jungles,’ it was considered a virtue if you could legitimately and purposefully forget anything that had happened to you a week, a day, an hour before.

From An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order by Me,John Hodgman, Professional Writer, in The Areas of My Expertise, Which Include: Matters Historical, Matters Literary, Matters Cryptozoological, Hobo Matters, Food, Drink, Cheese (a Kind of Food), Squirrels & Lobsters & Eels, Haircuts, Utopia, What Will Happen in the Future, and Most Other Subjects

valley of the moon

The last time I visited my mother in Sonoma we returned to the house where she grew up along Castle Road just to take a peek. The house is still there although the property around it, where my grandfather kept his workshop surrounded by a whole assortment of farm animals (the big scary bull is strongest in my memory, although there were horses and sheep and pigs and turkeys here, too) is now covered with Ravenswood vines. My grandparents sold the property in the early 80s.

For some reason this image has been dancing around my mind all weekend. We’re driving along the railroad tracks that are hidden by those gloriously tall eucalyptus trees; their scent hangs heavy in the air. My mother tells me a story I’d never heard before: that her father, my grandfather, was in the habit of pulling over on his way home and here, by the tracks, he would dump out his ashtray, filled with cigarette butts.

The litter-freak in me recoils spontaneously. And then she continues: Hobos used to live along this stretch of track – the shelter was particularly good here – and the butts were for them. He’d dump the ashes at the same spot every time; every time he returned it was picked clean.

It’s the Sonoma summertime that’s been swimming through my head all weekend; that sweet scent and gentle breeze; lit by a moon that always seems larger here than anywhere else. And out of the corner of my eye a scene that story and castaway memory awakens for me, where glowing cigarettes hang like statellites around a fire in the dark.