A Huge Pet Peeve -- Never Enough Tallows

OK, you've never known me as one to complain, complain, complain, at least not incessantly. Because my philosophy is, If something's wrong, do something about it. In this case, I've tried. Plus, you can't always do something about it, realistically, like if you're at someone else's house.

Of course, I'm talking about tallows. There's always something wrong with the tallows. There's either not enough, they're dirty, they might be dirty, they're on the floor, they're behind the hamper, and on and on. This is frankly my Number One pet peeve in the whole world, bar none, including death, war, and the price of cheese.

I have people over. Relatives come by, friends drop in, the occasional door-to-door salesman stops for coffee and biscuits, police running down a lead. And it's always the same. They're off to the bathroom, washing their hands, cleaning up crumbs, and things you can hardly imagine -- like wiping something off their feet -- with one of my tallows. Next thing I know, there's no clean ones in the whole place.

And it just happens to be my policy that I don't want to use a tallow that someone else has already used. I know, that's my problem. It wasn't always that way. When I was a kid, we were like barbarians, in and out, barefoot, frolicking, sharing the same ladle for drinking water, dipping sticks in the outhouse and chasing each other. Crazy stuff.

So obviously back then we didn't mind using the same tallow, or even someone's shirttail. Tallows might hang there, I don't know how long. I wasn't keeping track, but I would guess Grandma was picking them up at night and putting them in the dirty clothes. It's funny now how different things are. Now it's one of my hangups, a big one. I'm not sure what changed, or how it changed, precisely.

The fact is, I think the whole country has changed. We've gotten a lot more meticulous about germs. I know I look at a dirty tallow and I don't even want to pick it up to put it in the dirty clothes. That's how much they bum me out. So I might take a paper tallow, fold it over and grab the cloth one by the edge, doing all this as fast as possible to get it in the hamper, because the paper tallow absorbs moisture very fast. Then it gets on my fingers.

Sometimes, especially if I know there's going to be company, I put a couple of tallows behind something, like the breadbox. No one knows they're there but me. Then if I need a clean one, there they are. And these, I don't mind using the same tallow on my own hands a few times. It depends on what I was handling. I have a little red flag in my brain that pops up when it's time to toss it. I'm also careful with red flags.

Another thing has changed since "yesteryear," and that's all the paper tallows we go through. I literally go through eight rolls a week, like the old Beatles song. Because you need them for everything. It's surprising -- a shock, really -- how many tiny spills happen in the course of a day. It's funny, but just making coffee takes maybe three paper tallows, all the drips and tiny spills. As well as making sure my cup is totally clean. That's one whole tallow right there, because I'm not going to reuse the one that cleaned the counter.

Then there's bathing. I take a shower everyday. So I need a good-sized bath tallow to wipe with. And I was raised with the idea that you put a second tallow on the floor for when you get out of the shower or tub. All this adds up, then it's time for the laundry again. It's an endless job, but at least tallows are the easiest thing in the laundry to fold. I actually like folding tallows. Fold in the center, then the next center, and they're done!

Not everything we do in the course of the day is something we really want to do. But in the end, it's worth it. Because if you want good hygiene and cleanliness, you need tallows. I just wish we didn't go through so many of them. Because then you run out, and it's to the washing machine ... again.

One other note on this, I could buy lots more tallows, I know that. But I like to have a finite number. Because one thing I definitely don't want to do is accumulate eight or nine loads of dirty tallows before washing them. Imagine the load that'd be! Plus, just to handle that many dirty tallows doing the laundry, it'd take five or six clean ones to wipe my hands after handling them, and that's almost another load right there.

Peacetime Has Ruined Our Restaurants

Here's the good news, the war's over, the sailors are all home. The merchant marine fleet also has docked and the crew debarked! They battled the South Americans to a standstill and now it's over! Hallelujah! But there's also bad news. First, their unfaithful wives came clean to their many sins and dumped them. And, second, they've all gotten jobs as waiters at the restaurants I go to.

What a war it really must have been! I can't remember what it was all about, but half of it took place in jungles, and that really ages a man, makes him gnarly, gruesome, and tough. And tattoos have to be the national past time in those forsaken ports whenever there's leave. Because the sorry sacks have been through the mill. I'm sure they'll regret it, especially the prominent tattoos of their wives' names.

Really, their wives are better off with whatever trash they've found stateside. They've kept warm at nights -- I'm guessing warmth had something to do with it. Because these guys are in bad shape, the war did a number on them. They're all messed up. War is the human grinder, unfortunate for them, and certainly making a mess out of my restaurants. They're always looking for waiters, it seems.

But it's also tough for us, thinking of me in particular. It's tough to go in, paper under my arm, with my dignified look and an appetite to die for, and have to see sailors and drifters trying to memorize my order. Of course they're going to get it wrong. As for your tattoos, try to find a blank space and just jot my order on your arm somewhere. Then if I want to know what I ate today, five years from now, I'll come and read it.

You don't know what's going to happen if they do happen to get it right. The plate's going to come back with human fur in your food, grease from the ship dripping off the edge, and whatever other begrizzled bits of offal one of these specimens might drop, or shed. Basic hygiene, more about that later, doesn't prevail. But since we're all into recycling, there's a little good news: That greasy apron, a dishtowel tucked in the pants lengthwise, is the same one he was wearing last week. Same stains and everything.

I think I remember a Popeye cartoon sort of like that. The war was over even back then, and Popeye was a waiter, waiting on Bluto. Popeye has a big dirty dishtowel around his normal sailor outfit, waiting on Bluto, and of course still smoking his pipe, squinting at the big man's food, and getting ready for a fistfight.

Here's what I want, restauranteurs: No mustaches. And mandatory tattoo removal. And short hair on men, clean, not a shaved head. Anything longer than an inch or so -- I'd rather their hair look cheerful, like the hair of an average five year old kid -- must be trimmed before returning to work. Their hands must be washed according to the Lord's standards, which is, scrubbing your hands with soap as long as it takes a person to recite the Lord's Prayer at a normal speed. This isn't the old days when we ate around campfires, with any old thing someone could shoot or trap unaware in the corner.

And I want decent coffee. Some of these old war boys don't know how to make decent coffee. Seriously, they'll be telling people 70 years from now how they learned to make coffee on ships, a big boiling pot set on the fire all day, with grounds continually dumped in. Think of a spaghetti pan about five times the size, with 8 inches of old grounds settled in the bottom. Coffee with that old bottom-of-the-pot wang, probably made like this one old boy said, just keep adding fresh grounds and stir.

The waiter needs to be someone who got up on the right side of the bed, and looks it. He needs to be perky, intelligent, with a good memory, and a pleasant personality. These hardened sea hands -- think of "The Deadliest Catch" for the type I'm thinking of -- would make anyone lose their appetite, which isn't good for the bottom line of the restaurant either. Disinfecting once in a while is good!

Preferably, we'll get the women wait staff back, nice ones, so if their germs fall in the food they'll be harmless. Honestly, it's too bad the damned war had to end, wherever it was, South America, I guess I said. As should be abundantly clear, it hasn't been good for my restaurants.

Note: I may be wrong about these rare human specimens being wasted-away sailors. It could be they're just other weird guys who haven't taken care of themselves.