We visit our friend Lew and get some equipment.
By Eydie Wight
My friend Lew had generously offered to lend us two carboys, bungs, and fermentation locks that he wasn’t using at the moment. Actually he generously offered to lend us two carboys, bungs, and fermentation locks that he was borrowing from a mutual friend Sylvia who wasn’t using them at the moment. I work with Lew and used to work with Sylvia. Lew is a great guy, great sense of humor, do anything for you, give you the shirt off his back, cancer survivor, one of the best people I know. In the fall of each year, Lew and Sylvia make red wine. I’ve had a bottle or two, it’s good stuff. In fact, several years ago I met Sylvia at her house after we worked night shift and we drank a bottle of homemade wine while watching “The Big Chill”. Story for another time but I did eventually make it home and after all, I’ll probably never see that nice gas station attendant again. Anyway, I’m rambling. Not rambling as much as the day we watched “The Big Chill”, but nevertheless…
We called Lew’s house to get directions and talked to his wife, Angela. Now let me just say right out of the gate that Angela is a lovely, super intelligent woman whose directions were correct, concise, and easy. We just sort of didn’t follow them. We mistook a Karns grocery store for a Giant. And I couldn’t read my own handwriting. I’m quite sure that when I’m discovered posthumously as a great modern American poet, generations of students will work on hundreds of doctorates trying to decipher what exactly I did write in all those little notebooks and scraps of paper. Sammy was still at the point where we hadn’t been wandering aimlessly for too long and so he was amused at my conjecture that although we probably weren’t looking for “Compost Lane”, it was something approaching that. After a nice little tour of Hershey and accidentally taking a nice little tour of Palmyra, we found “Lamppost Lane”, followed by “Tally-ho” and finally “Cobblestone”.
Lew’s house is big, beautiful, and upscale enough to make me a little nervous about touching stuff. We were greeted by Otis (Redding), one of those pugs that look like the offspring of Peter Lorre and Bette Davis. Degas (pronounced Degas, not De’ Gah) was the other canine greeter. We followed Lew around to the back to see the new pergola he had just built. Very nice. Angela came out holding another member of the family, Isaac (Hayes), a young Red-fronted Macaw. Angela was petting Isaac and playing peek-a-boo with him and I was admiring Isaac’s beautiful red, green, and blue plumage and Lew was telling us about Isaac’s extensive vocabulary and then Angela said to me, “Want to hold him?” Oh Lord. I had heard stories from Johann, another co-worker who has stayed at the Casa de Lew several times, that Isaac was possibly possessed by the devil and speaks in tongues. And then, there is that little episode from my childhood concerning me and the chickens that has scarred me for life, but that’s another story for another time. Needless to say, disconcerted but wanting to make a good impression, I held out my hand in the “perch” position. Isaac, helped by Angela, stepped over, looked me up and down, and promptly took my finger in his beak. “He’s testing his perch”, said Lew. It was like that time in the Girl scouts when I got to hold some one’s pet blacksnake only to have it constrict around my neck. The pressure on my finger increased as I was saying (calmly, I think), “What a pretty bird. Pretty bird.” (That is possibly cutting off my finger now. No blood, that’s good, but crushing injuries can be just as bad as amputation…) Isaac went back to Lew at the first opportunity and the bird and I breathed a mutual sigh of relief. Birds don’t like me. I must have wronged the species terribly in a past life.
Well, we got our equipment, Lew gave us a bottle of his wine, we had a great visit, I didn’t spill or drop anything, and we made it safely home.
The Adventures of Eydie and Sammy Wight 