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Pi equals a close call

3/14/2022

On March 14 in a distant year past, I missed death by mere inches.

It's easy to remember that close call. The date coincides with National Pi Day, and as we all know, pi – or the Greek letter π – represents a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter and is approximately equal to 3.14159 or 3.14. In addition, 3.14 also can represent March 14, so that's why today is National Pi Day and why I can remember the day I almost bought the farm from a bomb fragment that was 10 to 12 inches in diameter, with a jagged circumference that could have ripped a mighty big hole through little me.

I was on patrol that day in the merry, merry land of South Vietnam, along with my Marine Corps recon teammates. At about 10:30 a.m., we came upon a risky looking spot with a waterhole and a three-foot-wide, well-used trail.

I don't remember these details because of an excellent memory, but rather because I have a copy of the patrol report, which had been classified confidential but has since been declassified. (So, at ease, National Security Agency. All is fine.)

Anyway, our patrol leader – that would be Gunnery Sgt. Pony Monell, the greatest gunny to ever serve the Corps and our nation – sent our point man and deuce point to check out the possible danger area. Sure enough, they ran into a bad guy, who started to unsling what appeared to be an American carbine. Our point man took him out, and as we were retrieving the enemy soldier's equipment, his comrades showed up. Since it sounded like we were going to be out-manned and out-gunned, we quickly made our way up a ridgeline, just west of another ridge, and called for air support. In very short order, a pair of Marine Corps A-4 Skyhawk attack jets showed up on scene.

The two aircraft roared down out of the sky and screeched through the narrow mountain valley between the two ridges, first one jet and then the other. They appeared so close, it seemed as if I could reach out and grab them as we sat on that ridge. I cannot remember whether the Marine pilots dropped 250-pound bombs or 500-pounders, but the ridge shook, and the explosions felt enormously strong. I'd say they were the larger ordnance, because a big, smoking chunk of one impacted with a sickening thud right between me and my best friend, Gus Villanueva, the team's Navy corpsman. If the point of impact had been 15 inches further from his right, I'd have been a goner; 15 inches further from my left, and Gus would have been history.

We looked at the smoking hunk of iron and then looked at each other with eyes wide and mouths agape.

I had experienced a couple of close calls before. This one, however, was downright awe-inspiring and flat-out scary, but what's a memorable overseas experience without some scary thrills and daring excitement?

Unique close calls followed during that year, sometimes crazy close. Two close ones occurred in one firefight, on the afternoon of Aug. 3, 1968. Yes, I have the patrol report from that one, too. In the course of the fight, enemy soldiers blasted off the butt of my M16 rifle and shot off the radio handset that had been clipped onto my left cartridge-belt suspender, just to the left of my heart. I think I made it through that afternoon without a single scratch.

If I was not a spiritual man before 1968, I certainly was after. I made it through that year with a lot of help from my fellow jarheads, with a little bit of my own gung-ho skills, and with a few miracles from a source beyond my realm of clear understanding, although I have my suspicions, my spiritual beliefs.

That brings me full circle back to π, which helps me appreciate 3.14 and March 14.

Now, I'm going to go eat some pie. I know it's National Pi Day, not National Pie Day, but I must chow down on plenty of pie this year, so that I can write expertly about pie come National Pie Day.

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Peace looked dark in City of Light

5/3/2018

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A half-century ago today, the United States and North Vietnam agreed upon Paris as the site for peace talks to negotiate an end to the war in Vietnam.

On that day, May 3, 1968, I was a Marine Corps reconnaissance scout in South Vietnam, and the Paris Peace Accords ending the war, at least for us, would not come about until early 1973.

It is not surprising that it took so long to broker an end to the war, when one looks at the obstacles that had to be hurdled just to get started. For example, it took 34 days of talks to decide that Paris should be the site of the talks. And some infamous table talks had to occur before they decided on the shape of the conference table.

Meanwhile, back in South Vietnam in 1968, my recon team and I were running four- and five-day patrols in the Annamite Mountains, trying to locate enemy troop movements and encampments. For supposedly being so beaten down during the 1968 Tet Offensive, the North Vietnamese Army sure did have plenty of troops in the hills and mountains we patrolled. While we tried to gather intelligence on enemy strength, weapons and equipment, we often ran face-to-face into NVA soldiers and had to fight our way out of some crazy close calls.

It was an exciting year, followed closely by another year in South Vietnam, mostly as a communicator at the American Embassy in Saigon. And then the Corps gave me dream orders out of the Vietnam war zone – to Paris, France.

My assignment as a Marine security guard at the American Embassy in Paris came a couple of years into the Paris peace talks. David K.E. Bruce was the chief United States delegate to the talks. To us Marines – and everyone at the embassy and, I guess, in the State Department – he was Ambassador Bruce, our ambassador to the peace talks.

I arrived in Paris in the early spring of 1970 and found that we had a lot more Marines there than were at most of our other embassies, except for Saigon, because we provided security for additional U.S. agencies, such as the Office of Economic and Cultural Development, the United States Information Service, and more. However, our biggest additional commitment was security for the U.S. delegation to the peace talks. We called it the U.S. Mission to the Paris Peace Talks, as I remember it, which was housed in an attached building, connected to the main chancery. As embassy Marines, our number one priority was the security of classified information, followed by the protection of American lives and property. For the peace talks delegation, that meant we were responsible for the security of classified materiel in all the delegation offices and at the site of the peace talks at the old Majestic Hotel in Paris.

I got the impression that the talks were not going well when I got there. Nevertheless, the delegations sat down together at the table in the Majestic every Thursday.

Outside the peace talks chamber were four desks – two for the Marines and two for the other guys, one North Vietnamese and one representing the National Liberation Front (or the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam). The peace talks might have gone quicker if it had been left to the U.S. Marines and our counterparts outside those chamber doors. Then again, maybe not. An air of peace, love and harmony certainly did not exist between the gyrenes and those other fellas.

I remember Ambassador Bruce as a distinguished gentleman. I waltzed into his office one evening to make sure no classified materials were left unsecured and was surprised to see him there, working after hours. While I apologized for intruding, he said he was just finishing up work so that he could get of my way. He was diplomatic even to Sgt. Griggs.

Unfortunately, Ambassador Bruce faced health challenges and turned the reins over to his deputy chief of delegation, Philip C. Habib. So, Ambassador Habib took charge, and I think I interrupted him a time or two also.

Ambassador Habib remained at the helm as the acting chief delegate until the summer of 1971. On July 28, President Richard Nixon appointed William J. Porter as chief delegate to the Paris peace talks.

Before the end of the year, I departed beautiful Paris with orders to Camp Lejeune, N.C. Could it be I interrupted Ambassador Porter one too many times? Let me think. Nah!

I was still at Camp Lejeune when the Paris Peace Accords were finally negotiated and signed on Jan. 27, 1973. I recall that I was most happy that our prisoners of war in North Vietnam were finally coming home. I had no visions of the coming collapse of South Vietnam two years later.

A better peace treaty could have been had, one without the stipulation that North Vietnamese troops could remain in the south. Yet, the fall of Saigon still would have played out in the end.

Debating the Paris Peace Accords would be almost as painful as debating America's Vietnam War.

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Today is Danny's day

7/26/2015

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Danny Anders, left, and I set up an M60 machine-gun position on Truoi Mountain in South Vietnam about a month before Danny was wounded.

July 26, 1968, is not a date that will live in infamy, but it will live forever in my memory.

Some days are better than others. Some are flat-out bad – especially when bad guys are shooting at you. On this day, so long ago and far away, a North Vietnamese Army soldier shot one of my fellow Marines, Danny Anders. A few minutes later, a U.S. Marine fighter-attack pilot dropped a napalm bomb that almost turned my good buddy into a human french fry. Danny was having a bad day.

Fellow teammates Lee Kohler and Bob Tender were having a bad day, too, that fateful July afternoon. In fact, my whole Marine reconnaissance team was experiencing a rather awful day, as an overwhelming number of North Vietnamese troops were trying to annihilate us in a helicopter landing zone in the hills somewhere southwest of Phu Bai, South Vietnam.

I was worried even before the helicopters took us in to the landing zone. The 1st Marine Division intelligence boys suspected that an entire North Vietnamese Army division was in the area we were to patrol, and we were supposed to confirm they were there. However, a couple of other reconnaissance teams already had been shot up while trying to be inserted by choppers into that area. Now we were going to be dropped into the same place. It didn't make sense. Yet, we were going in there, no matter.

When our CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter landed in the zone, the tailgate ramp failed to go down – keep in mind that the tailgate is the exit point in a CH-46 – so we couldn't run out the back of the chopper. We were stuck there on the landing zone, waiting for the tailgate to drop open. Little did we know that NVA soldiers were just 20 to 30 meters away, waiting to cut us down whenever that tailgate dropped.

But it just wouldn't drop. The enemy soldiers were probably looking at each other, wondering what was going on with us American jarheads: Is this a crazy new Marine tactic?

Glyn Burney was the patrol leader, and I was the assistant patrol leader. We decided we would all crawl out, one at a time, through the opening between the top end of the ramp and the back of the rear-rotor section of the chopper. Our point men would go first, so Lee Kohler and Danny each slipped through the opening and dropped to the ground. Third was Bob Tender, and as soon as he slipped out, the NVA soldiers opened fire with grenades, a machine gun and automatic rifles. Lee was peppered with grenade shrapnel, while Danny's shoulder and arm were torn open by small-arms rounds. Bob reached up to the ramp and tried to pull himself up and back into the 46.

Inside the chopper, I could feel rounds ripping through the skin of our Sea Knight. Al Cirelli, who was firing his M14 through one of the helicopter's paneless portholes, took an enemy round right in his rifle's flash suppressor, which is an extension at the business end of the rifle barrel to suppress muzzle flash. Yep, we were all having a bad day, although that's not exactly what I was thinking about at the time.

Could it get worse? Yes, it could. Did it? Yes, it did. Our helicopter began to lift into the air, and the big green bird suddenly became airborne, with Lee and Danny still on the ground and Bob dangling from the edge of the tailgate ramp. The pilot obviously thought everyone was still aboard the aircraft.

Bob barely had a grip on the ramp, and then the ramp finally dropped. Bob somehow managed to maintain his grip and hold on, dangling there, high in the air. As the chopper rose ever higher, Bob's eyes got bigger.

Glyn quickly slid on his belly down the ramp and grabbed Bob's wrists, while I grabbed Glyn's ankles, and a couple of guys grabbed my ankles, pulling the human chain until Bob was safely inside the bird. I'd been through some wild firefights and downright dangerous events, but Bob's predicament was the most inconceivable and incredible and scary dilemma I'd yet encountered in that crazy Vietnam War. I couldn't believe how he was able to hang onto that tailgate. I also couldn't believe Al had not a scratch, yet an enemy bullet was lodged in his rifle's flash suppressor. And, most of all, I could hardly believe Lee and Danny were still down below in the landing zone, which had become a killing zone. Glyn ran up to the front of the chopper to tell the pilot that we had to go back down there and save our buddies.

In the meantime, two Marine combat jets – I can't remember if they were A-4 Skyhawks or F-4 Phantoms – dove down out of the sky to drop bombs on the bad guys. The jet pilots did not know that two friendlies were stranded on the landing zone when they let go their ordnance, which included napalm bombs. Lee and Danny were about to experience a fiery heat like none they could have imagined.

Fortunately, the worst of the napalm's deadly effect wiped out some of the enemy soldiers, not Danny and Lee, who then popped a yellow-smoke grenade to alert the pilots of their presence. At the same time, the chopper pilot explained to the jet pilots that two Marines were still down there on the landing zone. Every Marine recon-team insertion involves two attack jets, two Huey gunships and two CH-46s – in case of an emergency just like the one we were experiencing that afternoon. So, while the Hueys made gun runs to help suppress enemy fire, the second CH-46 swooped down and rescued Lee and Danny.

The escort-46 pilot flew Lee and Danny to Charlie Med – that was the nearest Navy medical battalion – for immediate medical treatment. Lee was able to return to our team later that day, but Danny was whisked off to Japan and then the States. We never heard from him or about what ever happened to him.

I wondered for years about Danny's wounds and his whereabouts. Was he OK? Did he recover well and get on with life? Then, in about 2000, I heard from an old friend of Danny's, down in Baton Rouge, La., where the two had grown up together. He had seen an article by me, in which I recalled Danny Anders, whom we Marines affectionately called Swampy. Danny's friend contacted Danny about me, and before too long, my old recon buddy came to visit me in California. Swampy and I finally reconnected.

In September, I will attend a reunion of my Vietnam War recon unit – Charlie Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division. I'll get to visit with about 20 Charlie Company comrades, including Danny and a couple of the other guys from our recon team, Team Mad Hatter.

By the way, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong hated recon Marines and tried to kept tabs on us through our tactical-radio transmissions, for example, and they put a monetary price on our heads. So, to confuse the enemy, the names of recon teams were changed every so often, and we later became Team Lunchmeat. Before we were Mad Hatter, we were Team Warcloud.

Anyway, our team will be represented at the reunion by at least four of us – Mike Ward, Roger Speakman, Danny and me. We'll catch up on recent events and also recall some of our times in war. And somebody will probably bring up July 26, 1968: "Hey, Danny! Swampy! Remember that day you got hit, and you and Kohler almost ended up as a couple of crispy critters? Fun times, eh, buddy?"

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Forest trip goes best with catfish

7/4/2015

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E-Town River Restaurant in Elizabethtown, Ill., serves up delicious catfish.

Earlier this week – last Sunday to be exact – I made a day trip down to the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois. As usual, I stopped in Marion and picked up Mike Ward, who served with me a long time ago in the Vietnam War.

On this trip, we checked out Burden Falls and Rim Rock Trail, and I photographed a lot of the downstate countryside. And we stopped in Elizabethtown for a scrumptious lunch of river catfish – a highlight of the day's trek.

The tasty catfish is served up at the E-Town River Restaurant along the Ohio River in Elizabethtown. The catfish are caught right there in the river, where the floating restaurant is tied up. Mike and I ate lunch there two years ago and especially enjoyed their fried catfish, so we decided to stop again Sunday.

For such an ugly fish, catfish are mighty tasty – that is, if they're wild and fresh-caught catfish. I do not like farm-raised catfish. Farm cats have a rather unpleasant flavor that I assume comes from the food pellets they are fed. However, wild catfish don't have that flavor, and they don't taste fishy either. The have mild, firm, delicious meat.

Do you know that a catfish has approximately 100,000 taste buds, whereas a human has only about 10,000 taste buds? I can't imagine how remarkable catfish would taste to me if I had 100,000 taste buds. A catfish flavor explosion would erupt inside my mouth!

I'll just have to settle on the 10,000 taste receptors I have and count on the chief catfish cookers at the E-Town River Restaurant to fix me up with their crispy fried renditions of incredibly delicious catfish and the resulting flavor explosions, implosions and eruptions inside my mouth and down my gullet.

E-Town's best menu selection, in my humble opinion, is the River Catfish Special, which features a half-pound of fried river catfish, baked beans, coleslaw, hush puppies and choice of potato. Their tarter sauce is delicious, too, as was the unsweetened iced tea I was served. I was totally full and satisfied when I finished all that succulent catfish and luscious sides and cold, brisk tea. I waddled off the floating restaurant, and Mike and I headed off into the Shawnee National Forest to hike off some calories on the Rim Rock Trail.

Today is the Fourth of July, and I usually celebrate our Independence Day with good ole American hot dogs; or a big, juicy, double-decker cheeseburger; or some pork ribs slathered in barbecue sauce. So, I won't be eating any catfish today.

However, I'll catch a couple of catfish this coming week at the creek or at the lake and prepare them perfectly in butter and garlic. But I won't wait another two years for some of that delectable fried catfish at the E-Town River Restaurant down yonder in Elizabethtown. I'll be back, E-Town.

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It's the donutiest day of the year

6/5/2015

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They're sweet, soft, scrumptious – usually circular, with a nice hole in the middle – and I could eat one every day.

I'll definitely eat one today, probably more than one, because it's National Donut Day.

I love donuts. How could I possibly not love donuts? They're fried dough! And coated with sweetness! Oh, yes, people, I most definitely love donuts and will consume more than one of them today.

Homer Simpson is probably the world's most famous donut consumer. Even if you've never watched the animated television show "The Simpsons," you've probably heard of Homer and his love of donuts.

Matt Groening, the Emmy-winning co-creator of "The Simpsons," truly understands the value of the donut in our society.

"Donuts. Is there anything they can't do?" Groening has been quoted as saying. Doh!

Donuts, often spelled as "doughnuts," for the obvious reason, have been around much longer than Homer Simpson and I have been devouring them, but their origin is debatable. Let's just say that donuts are considered American in origin by most donut authorities, and by the mid-1800s, they looked pretty much like our delicious fried-dough creations of today.

Speaking of "looking like," as in resembling, not all donuts are hole-in-the-middle circles. Some are circular with no hole but, instead, filled with fruit jam or chocolate cream or vanilla custard or some other luscious filling. And most of those filled donuts are topped with frosting, icing, powdered sugar or granulated sugar. You already know that, of course, because almost everybody loves donuts and knows all about all of their different, delectable incarnations. So, of course, you know that besides round donuts, they can also look like a rather flat log, while some varieties look long and twisted – you know, like braided. Yep, we donuts lovers know and love all varieties of fried dough.

I suppose I have to include cake donuts as part of this donut discussion, too, but I'll always choose to eat and enjoy the yeasty, puffy, doughy, sweet, fried kind of donuts, thank you. In fact, my favorite is the glazed donut. That heavenly donut is simple, sweet perfection.

We have different names for donuts, so that we don't have to say "donut" each time we talk about donuts. I talk about donuts a lot, and over the years, I have learned different terms to use in conveying my thoughts about those fried-dough incredible edibles. My favorite is "belly bomb," which I picked up when I was assigned to Marine Corps recruiting. In my office at 9th Marine Corps District, headquarters for Marine recruiting in the upper Midwest, I'd come in around 7:30 a.m., and about six feet from my desk was a table with a pot of fresh coffee and one of those pink-colored, bakery-shop boxes full of assorted belly bombs. I usually had no problem acquisitioning a glazed belly bomb, because plenty of my fellow Marines preferred to acquisition a jelly-filled belly bomb or, perhaps, a chocolate éclair-type belly bomb or, maybe, one of those maple-log belly bombs. And rarely did I eat only one belly bomb. Fortunately, every day at lunchtime, I'd knock out some sit-ups and pull-ups and then run three miles.

My second career was in newspaper journalism. To my delight, I found that a good newsroom always has a table for a pot of coffee and a box of donuts. At one of those newspapers, I learned that donuts are also known as "fat pills." Oh, I could eat some fat pills, but I was no longer exercising and running each day at lunchtime. Thus, after some months of scarfing down fat pills, I started to become fat Griggs. I just didn't have the will to turn down those delicious fat pills. Fortunately, I started running again, at least when I had the time and was not on deadline.

I work in neither a Marine Corps office nor a newspaper newsroom these days, so I no longer face the temptation of donuts or belly bombs or fat pills displayed right there before my hungry eyes. Yet, I do buy the occasional glazed donut, and I try to jog, although I don't pound the pavement or hit the trail as often as I should.

I should pound the pavement or hit the trail today. I should, because I'm going to eat several delicious belly bombs today, on this wonderful National Donut Day 2015.

Maybe I'll jog to the Krispy Kreme shop and walk back home. Nah. Too far. I'll drive there and make a gluten of myself. I'll run tomorrow. I promise.

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Remembering Jimmy et al

5/25/2015

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Jimmy Booker was right behind me on my last patrol in Vietnam. I photographed him as we walked the trail atop Charlie Ridge, in the hills west of Da Nang. We almost got into it with 99 North Vietnamese Army soldiers on that patrol. We know there were 99 of them, because we counted them as they walked along that same trail, passing us within feet, as we took a break just a few feet off that well-worn path. We were nine, and they were 99, so it wasn't a good time to pick a fight. Jimmy was killed after I returned to the States. I just learned yesterday how he died. I was told by another teammate, who called me this Memorial Day weekend. There's a Johnny Cash song about Vietnam called "Drive On," and there's a line in it that goes like this: "I came home, but Tex did not. And I can't talk about the hit he got." And I can't talk now about how Jimmy got it. It's makes me mad, and it makes me sad. This Memorial Day, I'm thinking about you, Jimmy, and about Prince Johnson, Marc Garcia, Gerald Poppa, Alvin Belmer, Freddie Haltiwanger Jr. and many more. Semper Fi, brothers.

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Colors of spring begin to show

4/4/2015

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Illinois farmers hereabouts have not set to work preparing their fields for corn and soybean planting just yet, but some of the rolling farmlands north of my hometown of Lebanon are already colored with greening winter wheat. This field northwest of Lebanon this week is bordered with purple henbit, which begins life in the autumn with seed germination and then flowers in the spring. Similarly, winter wheat begins life in the autumn with seed germination, thanks to our farmers, and begins its growth come springtime. Illinois shows off beautiful colors in the spring.

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Calling all serial cereal eaters

3/6/2015

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I love a bowl of Cheerios or some Joe's O's topped with Illinois wild black raspberries.

If you're out of cereal, you need to head to the store and buy some, because you'll need your favorite cereal tomorrow morning to help celebrate National Cereal Day.

It makes perfectly good sense that we have a National Cereal Day. I enjoy cereal. Some people – comedian Jerry Seinfeld, for example – love and adore cereal. Most patriotic Americans eat cereal.

I have been eating and enjoying cereal since I was big enough to hold a bowl of cereal and milk as I watched Saturday morning kid shows on our black-and-white television way back when. Some of those shows were cartoons and some were westerns. All of them fed us a steady diet of cereal commercials.

In between exciting episodes of "Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok," starring Guy Madison, and "The Lone Ranger," featuring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels, and "The Roy Rogers Show," spotlighting my hero Roy Rogers, cereal commercials tried to persuade us to tell our moms which cereals to purchase at the neighborhood grocery store. Quaker's cereal ads told us that its delicious Quaker Puffed Wheat and Quaker Puffed Rice were shot from guns; Sugar Bear told us he couldn't get enough of those Post Sugar Crisps; and good ol' Sugar Pops Pete said he could rustle up enough Sugar Pops for everyone, and he ensured us that Sugar Pops were tops.

Say, that's a lot of sugar. In the previous paragraph, I used the word "sugar" five times. Obviously, many moms back then were not worried about us kids ingesting bowls of sugar. Eventually, of course, mothers came to their senses and figured out that too much sugar was too crazy. The cereal companies fixed that problem in short order. They simply changed the names of their super-sweet breakfast chow. For instance, Sugar Pops became Corn Pops, which is their name today, and I still love them!

People who want to be healthy these days have plenty of healthful cereals to choose from, and I try to be of a healthful mind as I'm picking out my cereal at the store. I go for the rice, corn and oat varieties, with very little sugar. I try to stay away from wheat, especially white wheat flour, so I usually pick alternate grains, reserving my little bit of wheat intake for things like French baguette bread. My favorite cereal is Cheerios. It's all oats and all good. Sometimes I go for Honey Nut Cheerios, convincing myself that those nutritious little oat rings are covered with healthful honey, even though I realize that the sweetness is mostly from sugar. However, I'm not a horse; I sometimes need a delicious coating of sugary sweetness on my oats. And if the Honey Nut Cheerios are on sale in the commissary at nearby Scott Air Force Base, I will buy a box or two or three.

One evening earlier this week, I munched on cereal as I watched "The Voice" on our television in the bedroom. I sat on the bed and watched and listened and munched and crunched. My delicious cereal was a mix of corn flakes, original Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios. All three boxes of those cereals were getting low, so I combined them all into one box. By the way, the corn flakes were not Kellogg's Corn Flakes. They were Ralston Corn Flakes. I always buy what's cheapest, especially when I know damn well that the cheaper brand is going to taste just as good as or better than the more expensive one.

My wife has repeatedly told me how, as a special treat, she sometimes got to eat corn flakes with a little sugar and milk for dessert when she was a kid. I guess I'm supposed to appreciate how life was harder in 1950s Norway. The corn-flakes story goes along with those stories about walking to school in the deep snow and about how long the days were so dark during Norwegian winters. Please, spare me, and please pass me those Honey Nut Cheerios, dear.

By the way, there's a clever Cheerios joke here in Illinois. It goes something like this: What's the difference between Cheerios and the University of Illinois? Cheerios belong in a bowl.

Come on, people, smile. That was funny. It was a little bit funny, right? Well, I know something that will make you smile: Rice Krispies Treats. Heck, yeah! I'm talking about cereal in the form of a treat, a goodie, a sweet snack. If you don't know what I'm talking about, perhaps you live on Mars. Earthbound kids – and grownups, too, mind you – have been lovin' Rice Krispies Treats for decades. Everybody loves them because they're made from butter, marshmallows and Kellogg's Rice Krispies. You just mix those luscious ingredients, pack the mix into a 13x9x2 pan, let them cool, and then cut and serve. Is it cereal? Is it candy? Is it a cookie delight? Whatever, chowhounds. Let's just say it's handheld cereal goodness from food heaven.

You know what else is made from cereal and has had people snacking and smacking with joy for decades? Chex Mix! Original Chex Mix calls for Corn Chex, Rice Chex, Wheat Chex, mixed nuts, mini pretzels, bagel chips, butter, Worcestershire sauce, seasoned salt, garlic powder and onion powder. Toss that stuff into a bowl and microwave it a minute; then dump it onto a cookie sheet and bake in a regular oven for about 10 minutes; next, cool the stuff on paper towels; finally, put it into serving bowls and enjoy.

If you're a wheat-free or gluten-free snacker and want to eat some delicious Chex Mix, just eliminate the Wheat Chex, pretzels and bagel chips. Try this: Corn Chex, Rice Chex, cashews, Japanese mini rice-cracker snacks, butter, Worcestershire sauce, Creole seasoning and Lawry's garlic salt. If you're simply a lazy snacker and want any kind of Chex Mix, go to the supermarket and grab a couple of bags of ready-to-eat Chex Mix, which you'll probably find near the nuts, unless your store displays them near the chips and other bagged snacks.

While cereal can be a delicious and healthful snack – or maybe not – cereal is most often eaten as a breakfast staple. We've been enjoying cereal and milk in the morning since the 1800s, when some inventive folks decided that Americans were starting every day by eating too much bacon, sausage, ham and eggs. Dr. James Caleb Jackson, who might be thought of as the health nut of the 19th century, created something he called Granula, made from graham flour. It was so hard, folks had to soak it in milk to make it edible. Hey, folks, that's cereal. And so it was.

If you are thinking that Granula sounds a lot like granola, it's no accident. John Harvey Kellogg came up with a product similar to Dr. J's and called it Granula, too. That's a lawsuit in the making if ever there was one, and it became one, so Kellogg switched out one letter, making his cereal stuff Granola. To make a long story short, as I often do by using that old cliché, John Kellogg and his brother Will Kellogg tinkered with cereal recipes until they came up with the first cereal flakes, which became their Granose Flakes, which became Kellogg's Corn Flakes. To overuse another cliché, the rest is history.

It is not, however, time for a history lesson. It is time to eat some cereal. It is also a good time to go to the store, in case you are out of cereal. Tomorrow is an important national day, and you must be prepared to observe it properly. Also make sure you have enough milk. Sugar is optional.

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Behold hot-and-sour tomato soup

2/7/2015

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Lunch today features hot-and-sour tomato soup, from leftovers and one can.

I like tomato soup – a lot. I love hot-and-sour soup.

I also like a mess called Tom's crazy slaw salad. I slice a couple of plum tomatoes, thin-slice some cucumber, chop some cabbage, throw it all into a stainless-steel bowl and toss it together with a little extra-virgin olive oil, plenty of rice vinegar, sugar, sea salt, black pepper and – as Martin Yan would say – a tiny, tiny bit of soy sauce. (As you can tell, I don't measure ingredients for this salad.) So, what does all that have to do with soup? I'm getting there.

Today, I reached into the fridge and pulled out a bowl of leftover slaw salad and a bowl of leftover mushrooms, onions and garlic that had been sauteed in butter. What to do with this stuff, I wondered. I thought about the hot-and-sour soup I had yesterday at the China Pearl restaurant. Hmm. I thought about the rice vinegar in the slaw. I thought about the velvety deliciousness of the buttery mushrooms, onions and garlic. I thought about some little meatballs we had in the freezer. Suddenly, the soup light went off inside my head. That's it! I would invent Tom's crazy hot-and-sour soup!

I grabbed my favorite big sauce pan that doubles as my favorite small soup pot. I threw in all the leftovers – probably two cups of slaw salad and a cup of the mushroom mix – along with a couple of cups of beef broth and some splats of soy sauce and a drizzle of mirin and a blop of Vietnamese chili-garlic sauce and a few drips of Vietnamese fish sauce that actually comes from Hong Kong. I heated it all on medium heat until it came to a bubble – a gentle bubble, a slow boil, you know. Then I added seven of the meatballs and let 'er simmer a while. After less than an hour, I busted each meatball in half and decided to add a can of condensed tomato soup to the pot, along with a can of hot water and a few drops of Worcestershire sauce. Another 15 minutes on the stove, and it was ready to taste. By Jove, it worked. Good stuff!

Behold, oh soup gods, Tom's crazy hot-and-sour tomato soup. That's what we'll call it. Now, chow down!

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Water quenches my thirst for fun

1/31/2015

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A Wisconsin angler casts in Madison's Lake Mendota, near University of Wisconsin.

In the last line of the book "A River Runs Through It," as in the last line of the movie, Norman Maclean says, "I am haunted by waters."

I am practically haunted by that line. Thank you for giving us that personal observation, Norman. I couldn't have said it better.

As an angler, I could come up with something silly, such as: Water casts a spell over me. As a swimmer, I could come up something stupid, like: A wonderful feeling washes over me when water and I are as one. Egad, that's bad! Yet, Norman Maclean came up with: "I am haunted by waters." It fits me perfectly.

I grew up enjoying the world of water. I swam like a fish, and I fished for fish. Still today, I am happiest when I'm on the water or in the water or along the water.

Many kinds of waters exist on our planet; we have salt water and fresh water and brackish water; we have oceans and lakes and streams. We have different kinds of streams – brooks, creeks and rivers, for example. We also have ponds, pocosins, bogs, swamps and bayous. And we have big water and small water, and I guess we have in-between water, but I've never heard anyone ever talk about in-between waters. I especially love small water.

Some of my most memorable fishing experiences have come in small water – little brooks and tiny creeks, which are beautiful and alluring, and they're also intimate. Sometimes they're full of surprises; a little creek can yield up to you a big, beautiful, colorful, shiny, smooth, wet, jumping and arching, flipping and flopping, utterly fantastic, wild trout. The battle with the trout is always exciting, but the holistic beauty of the water, the fish, the cut of the creek through the forest or the meadow or the pasture, and the special intimacy of it all is wondrous and unforgettable.

My favorite small water is a tiny creek in the San Bernardino National Forest, in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California. It's pools contain colorful wild trout, and it's edges and the surrounding forests – that would be the pine forest of the higher elevations and the elfin forest of the high chaparral, which exists at about 4,000 feet elevation and lower – are home to many southern Pacific western rattlesnakes and a lot of mule deer, black bears, mountain quail, bobcats and many more species of inhabitants, including a few mountain lions.

I discovered the wonder of my favorite creek back in the late 1980s, when I was a college student at Cal State, San Bernardino. I decided to study along the creek one day, surrounded by the serenity and solitude of the forest. I was new to the creek, and I had no idea it held trout.

Crystal-clear creek water flowed over smooth, granite rocks and into a beautiful pool next to me before it continued flowing down the north side of the mountain range, across more rocks, over stretches of rippling shallows, and through many more clear, quiet, beautiful pools. As I read my textbook, my eyes became distracted by some movement in the water. I looked up and saw nothing out of the ordinary, but I let my eyes gaze into the water, to take in everything under the water's surface. Then I saw it – a golden-colored rainbow trout. Instead of silvery, it was rather golden. Instead of a pinkish line down each side, the color along each lateral line was more reddish, and the fish had red on the gills and throat, like a cutthroat trout. But it wasn't a cutthroat, and it wasn't a California golden trout. Was it a hybrid? Was it a native? Was it indigenous just to this creek and nearby creeks? I didn't care. I was surprised the little creek was home to any fish at all. I put down my book, and kept gazing into the clear pool. I spotted a few more trout and decided to return the next day with my fly rod.

The first thing I noticed the following day was the congestion of trees. I could not cast my line because of all the pines, willows and mountain alders. So, I would need to sneak up to the hole, swing my line between tree branches, and twitch my dry fly across the surface of the water. It's one of several ways that we fly fishers utilize a simple technique called dapping.

As soon as my fly hit the water and twitched a few times, a gorgeous trout darted up to the water's surface and grabbed that fishin' fly. One jump, one flip, and that golden rainbow was gone. However, I had gotten a hit on my very first cast, and from that moment on, the little creek was my favorite place to be.

I almost checked out of life while fishing along that creek – twice. The first time, I was alone at a place where the creek is squeezed between two rock walls. The rocks walls might be better described as two tall, rocky, craggy, granite cliffs. I had fished two beautiful pools just above that spot. Now I could neither walk along the creek, nor wade the creek, because it dropped steeply and dramatically in elevation and amongst gigantic boulders, all squeezed between those tall rock walls. I had to either turn back and go around on higher ground, or climb out of the little creek canyon by rock-climbing straight up. Being the stupid and impatient person I am, I decided to climb straight up. All was going well, when I pulled myself up to a narrow, horizontal crevice in the granite, and there in front of my face was a southern Pacific western rattler, coiled up, rattling and ready to strike. I was surprised and a might-bit scared; I don't know why that snake, which was only two feet in front of my eyeballs, did not strike me in the face and sink its fangs into my big schnozzola. Before it could, I fell back and down a few feet onto a granite-boulder outcropping that saved my life.

The second time I almost checked out of life on the creek, I was alone and working my way up the middle of the creek, when I slipped on a big, smooth, wet, slippery rock. I fell backward, onto my back, and cracked my head on another big rock. I suddenly went woozy and started losing consciousness. I remember looking up at pine boughs, alder branches and blue sky, all of which began to blur together, and then my vision started turning black. The cold creek water must have brought me back, though, saving me. After a minute or so, I finally got myself up on my feet and standing, although rather wobbly. I was, of course, soaking wet; the back of my noggin was bleeding; and I had a whopper of a headache.

I have lived through other mishaps in other places and have harvested the bounties in many waters around the world. I have fished above the Arctic Circle in Norway, catching colorful char; dug for clams in Japan; speared Puerto Rican langoustes in the clear waters off the beaches of the Isla de Vieques; and I've caught largemouth and smallmouth basses in freshwaters across the United States, and I've pulled calico and black basses out of our oceans.

Canoes, rowboats, bass boats, ski boats and pontoon boats have gotten me around on freshwater lakes and steams, and the United States Navy has hauled me around oceans and seas aboard various configurations of amphibious assault ships. (You squids and jarheads will know what I'm talking about when I say I've sailed aboard an LHA, an LPH, an LST and an LPD.)

Jogging along water is also a favorite pastime of mine. My absolute favorite run is along the Pacific Ocean beach, tide pools and bluffs of the Point Fermin area of San Pedro, Calif. A close second is along the Atlantic Ocean on Onslow Beach at Camp Lejeune, N.C. And when my son was in the hospital for a year in Madison, Wis., a good stress reliever for me was always a long jog along Lake Mendota.

I don't want to water down this blog too much, so I'll end this and get out of your hair. I believe I'll jog out to Horner Park and take a walk around the lake and see if I can see any wintertime life stirring in the water and ice on this last day of January. Oh, how I'm looking forward to springtime and a good fish fry.

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Pi equals a close call

Peace looked dark in City of Light

Today is Danny's day

Forest trip goes best with catfish

It's the donutiest day of the year

Remembering Jimmy et al

Colors of spring begin to show

Calling all serial cereal eaters

Behold hot-and-sour tomato soup

Water quenches my thirst for fun

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