Cooking - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Cooking

We’ve been doing a lot more cooking during this pandemic, similar to when we were first married and couldn’t afford to eat out. My wife is digging out old favorite recipes that bring back lots of fond memories. Except back then, I was skinny as a rail and there was no need to really watch the calories like now. That means a lot more fish and salads and a lot less red meat and french fries.

My duties during our cooking escapades haven’t changed much, being the gofer (no, not golfer!), cutting up veggies, doing the occasional taste test and for sure cleaning up afterwards.

If the meal entails any kind of grilling, I gladly head outside while she does the inside prep. During the winter we use a George Foreman grill, which is twice as fast as the outdoor grill since it cooks both sides simultaneously. But it has to be cleaned, and it sure is not the same as flipping some burgers and sucking down some suds on the deck outside our kitchen.

Growing up with three sisters who helped Mom prepare meals, plus with Dad & I tending to the cows, hogs and chickens meant my cooking skills were non-existent. Moving to Dayton after high school was a challenge cooking-wise, so I had to improvise regarding meals. At the time, I was attending Sinclair Community College during the day while working at Frigidaire Division of General Motors on the night shift. Sinclair was located in the Dayton YMCA which has a great cafeteria that gave nice discounts to students. And at Frigidaire, I worked in their cafeteria during the dinner break, which paid a small stipend and provided free meals! That meant breakfast was my responsibility, with my favorite self-cooked meal being scrambled eggs with canned mushrooms. I lived at a boarding house on Riverside Drive owned by Mrs. Orsi, whom I’ve written about in this previous blog. Once a week, Mrs. Orsi would make a meal for her boarders, which was a real treat. And on weekends, it was back to Mom’s wonderful home cooking.

Eventually, I mastered the art of making grilled cheese sandwiches and canned tomato soup, but that meal and the scrambled eggs & mushrooms were just about the limit of my cooking skills. Although I do recall eating plenty of Swanson TV dinners, which were invented about that time since the TV’s itself was relatively new. But microwave ovens did not exist, so it meant heating them forever in the oven.

So when we got married, my wife had to unfortunately carry the load when it came to meal planning and preparation; thankfully a strong suit among many others. But she has a single shortcoming when it comes to cooking because she does not like to bake. That meant few if any desserts, especially my favorite pies!

So I fell in love with the pies of Marie Callender, a California woman who started baking at home for a local deli and turned that into a chain of 146 restaurants and a frozen-entree business. Recently, several years after Marie had died at age 88, the company went bankrupt and I was devastated. But after the restructuring, the pies are now again being sold. Happy days!

My love for pie came from my Mother who loved to bake as described in this blogpost about her rhubarb pie making talents. Back then, I loved a big piece of Mom’s pie right out of the oven with a scoop of ice cream on top. Now it’s a squirt from a can of Reddi-Wip over a microwaved sliver of Marie’s pie!

Probably the best meal I now make is sausage and sauerkraut, using homemade sausage from Buschur’s Market purchased each time we make a trip down to Russia to visit my wife’s mother. The unique aroma of my cooking would permeate the kitchen and seem to hang around till the next day long after the meal was over. They don’t call us “cabbage heads" for nothing!

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No Sports - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

No Sports

Over two months ago, on March 8th, we returned from Florida early because that state had dozens of Covid-19 cases and Michigan had none. That was until the next day when Michigan’s first case surfaced, and soon thereafter, Michigan passed up Florida in number of cases. Several of my golf and tennis friends are still down there and vow not to come back until the restrictions are lifted or there’s a vaccine. We’re glad we returned since our son is here and also we’re closer to family in Russia and Ft. Loramie. We did travel to Ohio on Mother’s Day weekend, and found social distancing with family to be challenging. They were more afraid of us than we were of them, because Shelby County only had 34 cases compared to 7952 in our Michigan county. So far, everyone in the family is still healthy, thank God, especially my wife’s 90 year old mother.

Going on for over two months without sports of any kind has been dreadful. For the first time in my life since about age 5, I have not regularly and actively engaged in sporting activity, whether participating, attending in person or watching on TV. Fish Report has done a great job staying engaged with the local sports scene during the pandemic, but let’s be realistic, it’s not nearly the same.

My first recollection of “competitive" sports was during recess in the first grade playing co-ed kickball. Yes, that’s right, Miss Quinlan, our teacher, whom I’ve written about in this previous blog, insisted both boys and girls play together amicably and competitively. Of course, that was nothing new to me since I only had sisters (at the time) so had no choice but to play games at home with them. We never had enough players so we used ghost runners on the bases. In other words, if you got a base, a virtual runner took your place, allowing you to kick again until there were three outs, then you’d go to the field and another kicker would come in. Maybe my wife and I should go out in the back yard for a game of kickball. The neighbors could join in since all the players could easily social distance being spaced around the field. But no spectators would be allowed; only ghost runners!

Speaking of spectators, I learned yesterday, ESPN is considering showing virtual fans for its upcoming telecasts once live sports are restarted. No doubt there would be piped in crowd noise. imagine a cheer track like a laugh track on a sitcom. Maybe virtual boos as well! Sounds like fake sports will soon join fake news.

With no sports, my wife and I have been taking regular walks when the weather permits, otherwise using the dreaded treadmill. But finally, Michigan’s governor has allowed golf to resume, with many restrictions. At first only walking was allowed, and for the first time in years, I carried my clubs for a full 18 holes, finishing with a 7 & 6 on the last two holes, literally dying while trudging up the big hills approaching the greens on 17 & 18. Now hand carts are allowed, and next week electric carts, with one golfer riding and one walking. Worst part; no beer is allowed. Damn restrictions!

The Korean baseball league is up and running with games being shown on ESPN, with the Hanwah Eagles scheduled for Saturday/Sunday morning at 1;00am. My DVR is all set as my cousin Jared Hoying plays for the team.

Some of the teams actually have cardboard cutouts of people mounted in the seats to give the impression of fans. Not the same; more fake sports!

Yesterday I saw a corn hole match on ESPN (yea, I’m desperate!) with all the players wearing masks. The players each had their own beanbags with logos prominently displayed. Not too exciting, but those guys were good.

Also, NASCAR restarted this week at Darlington. It was indeed strange with no fans in the stands.

Speaking of ESPN, they wisely pulled ahead the 10-part Michael Jordon documentary, The Last Dance, which has been entertaining. Episode 3 was especially compelling because it documented Jordon’s frustration (aka whining) playing the Bad Boys of the Detroit Pistons in 1989 & 90 when the Pistons won NBA championships thanks in large part to the so-called "Jordan Rules” for defensing Michael.

Soon tennis nets are going up, so once the weather cooperates, I’ll have another favorite sport to play. We bring our own beer for tennis, so no restrictions there, except the 6’ social distancing.

As senior citizens, we are among the most vulnerable to the virus, which is very disconcerting and worrisome. That's why sports is so important to help take our minds off the virus for a short while. Bring on the games, virtual or not.

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Milking Cows - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Milking Cows

As a young kid on our farm, I can recall Dad hand milking the cows just as pictured above right in the cow stable. He’d take a bucket and milk each cow for about 10 minutes or so until the flow of milk was dry, then he’d move on to the next cow. The herd included about a dozen cows at the time and once the bucket was about full, he’d dump the milk into a strainer positioned atop a 10 gallon milk can.

When the can became full, Dad would carry the full can weighing about 100 pounds to a tank of water outside near our well about 75’ from the stable. Here the milk would cool down until the milkman came the next morning to pick up the cans, typically 3-4 per day.

Those old vintage cans now go for over $100 on eBay! Wonder whatever happened to ours?

The proceeds from the sale of the milk provided a regular income for the family rather than relying only on the sale of livestock and harvested crops once a year, The family could live off the milk income and use the other income for major purchases and supplies for the next growing season. But as our family grew, the funds to feed and clothe our family also grew, so Dad had to improvise.

The first step was to buy a milking machine as pictured here. The system was powered by a vacuum pump with a valve that pulsated to simulate the same action as hand milking. In this way, milking a cow took about 1/3rd less time as hand milking. That allowed Dad to increase his herd to 18 cows, improving his income proportionally in light of our larger and growing family.

About that time, I was old enough to help, so he bought another milking machine and increased the herd again to about 25 cows. Also customers were demanding higher quality dairy products, so Dad upgraded to a Grade A dairy, which meant he had to have a milking parlor separate from the stable with a cooled bulk milk tank storing several hundred gallons of milk. The milkman would then hook a hose to the tank every 3-4 days and pump out the milk into a tank truck.

That meant a significant and expensive upgrade to our dairy facilities but yielded a higher price per gallon that made the investment worthwhile. Making that decision involved calculating return on investment, which Dad analyzed meticulously. And it taught me a valuable lesson as well, a technique used countless times during my career and to this day.

To earn the higher prices for Grade A milk, dairy inspectors showed up randomly several times a year to check out the cleanliness and quality of our operation. Dad was meticulous about making sure we passed the inspections. One problem I recall was the presence of “milk stone” in one of our milking machines, which meant the cleaning process after milking was not adequately performed (that was my job!). So I was trained and retrained on how to avoid the build up of milk stone. Eventually better cleaners were developed that readily dissolved the milk stone rather than relying on just my elbow grease.

Eventually, I went off to college so my younger brother took over helping Dad with the milking responsibilities. They continued to improve the milking technologies until Dad was nearing retirement age and sold his dairy cows. Had either me or my brother been inclined to become farmers, no doubt the improvements to the dairy operations would have continued. Today milking technologies are impressive.

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Retirement - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Retirement

This week marks 20 years since my retirement from Ford Motor Company. At the time in May of 2000, the economy was doing well so retiring at a relatively young age was fortunately doable. Executives of the company were restricted from selling shares of Ford stock, so I had been able to accumulate a bunch of shares in my 401K that the company matched each year. On the advice of my stock broker, once the restrictions were lifted after retirement, all my Ford shares were sold.

So with our nest egg in place from the sale of the shares, we've been fortunately able to weather the subsequent financial storms so far, including the current problems, thanks to the stellar advice from our skilled broker, to whom we’ll be forever grateful.

Retirement allowed me to try several encore careers, such as teaching, private equity, politics, charitable boards and of course, blog writing, all which I enjoyed tremendously. But last fall I decided to retire for good. The run is over except you’re still stuck reading my blogs until the memories fade out. One such memory follows:

A position I held at Ford in the mid-90’s was heading up the Explorer program in the early days of sport utility vehicles.

We were trying to beat Jeep and Chevy to the punch with a 4 wheel drive vehicle designed for the highway, not just off-road. At the time, most of the SUV’s on the market had underpowered V6 engines and we concluded Explorer sales would double if the larger but smoother V8 could be squeezed into the vehicle's compact engine compartment.

I recall the day like it was yesterday when Paul G, an engineering supervisor who worked for me came up and requested $20,000 to have a supplier design and tool a thinner harmonic balancer, a flywheel-like device mounted on the front of engine crankshafts to improve smoothness. He claimed that with the thinner balancer, the existing powerful Mustang V8 could be packaged in the Explorer. That got my attention and the funds were approved.

Shortly thereafter we formed a skeleton team headed by Paul who contracted with Roush Racing (famous for the Roush Mustang) to design the Mustang V8 into the Explorer. The best part was testing the Explorer with the throaty Mustang V8 installed. What a rush compared to the sluggish V6!

1996 Explorer V8

V8 engines have a long tradition within the company, in fact the first was invented and patented by Henry Ford back in 1932 as documented in this video of the milestone.

Henry Ford and the 1932 V8

Once we figured out how to fit the V8 into the Explorer, the problem became finding an assembly plant to handle the expected volume increase, since the plant making Explorers was at capacity because the Ranger pick-up truck was also built on the same line. We concluded some of the customers for the existing Aerostar minivan built in another plant would likely switch to the sportier Explorer, so why not build both vehicles on the same assembly line so volumes could be easily adjusted to demand. So in less than six months, we were able to launch the V8 and double vehicle production, culminating eventually in the Explorer being recognized as the best-selling SUV of all time with over 8 million sales.

But what really upset us was the ugly Chevy Blazer beat out the Explorer for Motor Trend SUV of the year in 1996 even though we outsold them 2:1. Fake news!

However, the Explorer V8 team was recognized in Ford’s annual report that year for their nimble accomplishments. Paul G is on the far right in the brown shirt on this team photo taken at Roush surrounded by the V8 engine.

The added volume contributed to record company profits that in turn drove the stock price up dramatically, which eventually led to my retirement a few years later on the first day eligible, May 1, 2000. Ironically, shortly thereafter, NHTSA initiated a formal investigation into manufacturing defects in the Firestone tires used on the Explorer, that culminated in a costly recall of all the tires as documented in this wikipedia segment on the fiasco. Ford stock hasn’t been the same since. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky that good, that is if you have a wise stock broker!

Stay healthy, Fish Report readers.

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