There are some things I’m painfully curious about, and I can’t rest until I get them cleared up. If you’re walking around with the knowledge that I crave, hit me with the details. You can send snail mail to me here to the Scene, or, much better, compute it to me at walter.jowers@nashville.com.
First, I need to know about the guy who stands on the westbound side of Harding Road, just west of the Belle Meade Kroger, holding what looks like two whopping-big eggs, one in each hand. He’s not there much; I’ve only seen him three times.
He holds these eggs—or orbs, or units, or whatever they are—out toward the road, and he peers down at ’em, looking proud, the way a daddy looks at his baby. I can’t help but think he’s offering these things to the driving public. Problem is, he’s got no signage, he makes no eye contact, and there’s no place to pull over. Hey, if I could’ve made a safe and legal stop close to this guy, I’d have by God done it the first time I saw him.
Wife Brenda was with me for all three sightings. And it’s a good thing too. I could just see me walking into the house one day and saying, “Darlin’ have you seen that guy out there on the side of the road near Kroger, holding those big old ostrich-egg-looking things?” This would launch one of those long-running married-people teasing things. Every time Brenda got the chance, it’d be, “Hey, Wally, is that your eggman? No? Well, then how ’bout that guy?”
I know she’d do it, because I did it to her. Back when we were living in South Carolina, when I was a late-sleeping bed-wallowing musician and Brenda was an early-rising nursing student, she came running into the bedroom one morning yelling, “There’s a pig in our yard! It’s trying to get into the fence with the dogs! Get up! Come look!”
“Not getting up,” I mumbled. “Can’t be a pig. No pigs around here. Clearly, you have sleep deprivation psychosis. Come back to bed.”
For about a week, if we saw a dog, cat, possum, horse, or cow, I’d ask Brenda if that was her pig. A week later, I saw it—proved her right and messed up my fun. Anyhow, if any of you people have the scoop on the Harding Road Egg Guy, wise me up.
Thing Two: Why do people tap on the top of a Coke can before they open it up? Lots of people do it. Usually two taps, tink, tink, then they pop the top. I’ve asked a few folks about this, and they say it keeps the Coke from spewing when you pop the top.
People, I’ve downed more than a few canned sodas, and I’m here to tell you: You can relax on this spewing-prevention measure. I never tap. My soda never spews. Besides, if there were any real science at work here, you’d see people tapping on the top of their bottled sodas, so they could watch their little tapping experiments play out in real time.
How does something like this get started? It’s not as if you can pick up a can of Coke and feel some pre-spew volcanic rumbling inside, then do that little two-tap thing and satisfy the Spew Gods. My best guess: It’s all connected to early beer training. Wise-guy prankster beer drinkers teach the newbies to tap, then laugh at ’em behind their backs.
If you know different, tell me the story.
Last question: Which ones of y’all are drinking in the under-floor crawl spaces? In about every 10th crawl space, able associate Rick and I find a discarded six-pack or two of god-awful domestic beer.
With new houses, the obvious candidates are the masons or the carpenters. They’re the last ones with access before the crawl space gets sealed up. I’d suspect the muni codes inspectors, but I know they don’t go in crawl spaces.
Still, even when I’m under a 40-year-old house, I’ll find a couple dozen discarded Miller ponies that are new enough that the bugs haven’t eaten the labels. And that means somebody’s got cave crickets for drinking buddies.
Crawl-space drinkers, get some help. First step: Own up to the problem. Confess to me.
Visit Walter Jowers’ Web site at http://www.nashscene.com/~housesense .
