Here he is.  A great looking kid taking a serious summer power nap.  His name is Mateo (Mathew), he’s from Spain, he’s three months old, and though he looks as healthy as a horse, unfortunately he’s not.   He has been diagnosed with leukemia.   No one in his family has proven to be a compatible doner, a sad fact which has prompted a swift and very effective reaction to search one out.   His story has gone international and has received massive support from both celebrities and everyday people like you and me.

From what I understand, to date none has been found, so I am beseeching you to go to this website and read his story and, if you can, find out how you can donate in your country.  You see, even if it turns out that you aren’t the right match for this little guy, you may be one for someone like him who is also desperately in need of your help.

Thanks

With two teenagers in their room slumbering the early morning hours away, I knew the first thing on my to-do list was to ensure the kitchen was well stocked before they woke up.  This meant making a trip down to the local supermarket, but that was all right with me because grocery stores are one of my favorite places to explore, as they can tell you so much about the country you are visiting.

                There were a number of local stores in Weymouth, but the king beyond compare was Asda.  I am unsure about the right pronunciation of this place, as some would turn the acronym into a words /Asda/, which was my choice, and others would spell out the letters, which sounded a bit off to me, like the name of a syndrome – I suffer from A.S.D.A – or the name of an organization – American Society for Drug Addicts – highly unlikely in southern Dorset and certainly not a place I’d like to buy my powdered sugar from.  It actually stands for Asquith Dairies, a merger of two companies in the 1960s.  Despite being a classic British company, it might surprise you to know that it really belongs to Walmart, which bought it out in 1999 and then sold it ten years later to Corinth Investments, which, in turn, happens to belong to Walmart too.  So there is a lot of corporate incest going on there.

       Asda in Weymouth is a huge two-story supermarket well-equipped to handle the sizable floating population fluctuations that you are apt to find at seaside resorts.  It is a terrific major supermarket and provides just about everything a food-lover like me could want from a mass-scale food vendor.  On top of that, it was just a five-minute drive away and that meant I would probably be popping in on a daily basis.

       I parked my car in the indoor parking lot, then entered to pick up food as well as some data.

      One of the first things you have to look for in a place that sells food is the set up.  It was pretty straightfoward.  Ten aisles of sheer happiness.  Upstairs you could find the pharmacy, clothes, paper products, music, home items and basic appliances, and even a café.

      The first aisle was fruit and vegetables and the bakery section.  The former was solid enough and had some good deals, but the latter really caught my eye, offering just about every kind of dough that a human could stick into an oven: buns, rolls, danishes, muffins, brioches, croissants, biscuits, cakes, tortes, pies, pancakes, waffles, scones, bread, bread, bread, bread and more bread.  That delicious sliced bread that is so hard to find in Spain, bread so fresh it begins to go moldy in a matter of days.  In Spain in stays for weeks if not months, which I’m not sure is good or bad.  It all looked so enticing and so cheap – most cost only a pound – that I immediately started to load the cart without the slightest care for budget or waistline.  Dozens of thises and thats.  It was coming home with me.

         As I said, it all went for 1 pound.  At least much of it.  Asda loves to price its products at 1£, which is why you find the distinctive red and yellow tags all over the place beckoning you to invest yet more in their business.  This brought me to one of my first conclusions: the cost of living in this country, at least as far as food is concerned, is not that high, despite the reputation the United Kingdom has for being an expensive nation.  And considering that the salaries here are so much greater, even more so.  Or so I thought.

          Was that the case? More or less.  The average salary in the UK after taxes comes to about 250 euros a month more than in Spain, but the prices on the whole were comparable, and at times ridiculously lower.  Heads of lettuce cost 50p (60 centimes), 3 quarts of delicious fresh milk (3.4 liters) came to 1.93€.  That would have cost 3.06€ at a low cost supermarket in Madrid.  And so on.  So, is this point an indication that England is cheaper than I expected, or does it tell us that Spain is far more expensive than it should be?  I have said it over and over; I think it’s the latter.

        A visit to Asda also gave me clear indications that the economy is in a healthy state of being, as the store was swarming with employees, dispatching, carting, unpacking, stacking, setting, arranging, ringing up, and just generally making themselves available.  You certainly can’t seem to find such an impressive legion of workers in one of those Carrefours back home.  And, if you need assistance finding something, because supermarkets aren’t always havens for logic, the person on the floor is more than happy to accompany you, rather than just call out, “I think it’s in aisle 6.  Check there.”

         I was looking for napkins and they didn’t seem to appear with the rest of the paper goods, as you would assume.  Someone at Asda felt they belonged with party items.  So I asked and a woman took me to the very spot to ensure they really were where she thought and then smiled and asked, “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

         I almost gagged.  Offering to help more?  “What?!  No, no.  You’ve done enough already.  Thanks.”  Hats off to their customer relations training.

         This kind of pleasantness is repeated at the cash register, though this time with a slightly different slant.  The woman ringing me up was friendly from the outset and immediately apologized for not helping with the bagging, which was not an issue for me, because I had unloaded half the store on the conveyor belt; plus I was used to doing my own myself.  As she scanned along, she popped a question, “So, have you got any plans for the day?”

        Now, of course, I don’t ever score at grocery stores, so I was a little thrown off.  I mean, I was used to the typical “How ya doing today?”, “Having a nice day?”, and what not, not something that sounded like “I’m off at six.  Would you fancy going for a pint, luv?”

         But the half-natural way with which she asked as she passed my package of pre-cooked chicken nuggets over the barcode reader, made me realize, or at least sense, that she was not giving me a poke-poke-wink-wink, but genuinely asking about what I had in store for the day out of slightly feigned interest and that this must have had something to do with company policy.   A little light chitchat with the customer is a good public relations tactic.  Later visits would confirm that.  That was fine with me, so I replied, “Well, first I am going to eat 24 strawberry jam and white chocolate chip muffins and take it from there.”

        My answer triggered a confused look, but after she had heard my accent and realized that I was American, she must have assumed it was a bit of quirky Yankee humor that no one quite understood and smiled, “Oh, yes.  That’s nice.” Then she returned to her business efficiently and nicely.  In the end, she handed me four tokens for my purchases which I was to use to donate to one of the several charity they supported.  Each token has a certain value, and I was to deposit one, or more, into a plexiglass container for the the charity of my choice, of course.  How cool was that.

          I departed a hundred pounds lighter, but with enough food to end up a hundred pounds heavier when I was done.

It was my daughters who brought up the subject.  They asked rather tersely: Daddy, why do the English drive on the left?  No one else does.

                I smiled and told them that they (meaning the English) weren’t the only ones who drove one the opposite side of the road just as they (meaning my daughters) weren’t the only ones to ask themselves that question.  I have been told that it goes back to the old stagecoach days when the drivers (meaning the ones who drove the horses that pulled the carriage) would sit on the right side of the wagon in order to crack the whips (usually with their right hand) without lacerating the faces of their passengers, which would have been poor for business.  This sounded like a nice piece of folklore, but maybe not.  Chances are, carriage-driving customs would have had an influence on automobile-driving habits.  A little investigation shows that the Romans traveled on the left-hand side.  In Europe you had a mix, even within countries.  Traffic in Madrid used to be on the left side until the 1920s.  That’s why the metro, which is older, still uses it.  In fact, Spain is one of those countries which fall under the category of originally having no uniform orientation rules concerning traffic, and I happen to find that fitting.

                To some people, taking the motorway may have seemed like a risky way of initiating my experience of commandeering a 1 ton vehicle at high speeds in LHT circumstances, but actually it’s a lot easier.  All you have to do is stick to the left lane and let the rest go by and leave you in peace.  We stopped only once for a break at a station where my daughters feasted on several Krispy Kreme doughnuts.  The success of these sugar-packed pastries in the United Kingdom is nothing short of a puzzlement to me since the first time I had tried one was back in the 1980s in Richmond, Virginia.  Krispy Kreme had opened its doors in North Carolina in 1937, but didn’t venture much out of the Deep South until the 1990s…like much of the Deep South itself.  They were dirt cheap, a dozen cost something like $1.99, and they efficiently served their primary purpose as excellent fodder for college students with the munchies.  I later heard they had expanded rapidly to other parts of the U.S. and even abroad, too fast say some, but I could not have imagined they would be available at service stations throughout Great Britain.  This was a kingdom.  Royal subjects do not eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts.  Good old boys with wavy 70s haircuts and souped up Chevys do.  But maybe that was the first sign to expect the unexpected from the English.

             If you ask me, part of the blame behind Krispy Kreme’s recent decline must have something to do with the price: in this case, a pack of three went for 4 pounds (That’s about 6 bucks), and that included a discount.  I let my children enjoy the Krispy Kreme doughnut experience with the joy that it can bring and quietly said to myself, “That will never happen again.”

                There were also other rest stop mainstays: WH Smiths bookstores (there are more of them than actual books in the world…though I should add the company happens to be the inventor of the ISBN catalog system) and Costas, a coffee shop whose ubiquitous presence and food and drink offer make it a kind of hybrid between Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts.  While in England, I made a point of it of avoiding patronage there as much as possible in favor of supporting the local economy, as usual, it was nice to know that you could get a coffee in just about any nook or cranny of the country whenever you wanted.

                Our true destination in Dorset was Weymouth, a lovely seaside town on the southwest coast of the island, was about 2½ to 3 hours away.  The trip wasn’t too bad and acted as an infrastructural model for branching out.  The route essentially starts out as healthy four-lane highway and then gets progressively narrower from there.  Take the M-25 south, then the M-3 southwest.  That turns into the A31 and later into the A35, and finally into the A354, which was our road to Weymouth.  It’s basically straight on, but toward the end, the roundabouts get a little crazy, especially for a person who has spent the majority of their life circling in the opposite direction.  If something was going to go wrong with me at the helm, the roundabout was most likely going to be the scene of the incident, but I fared well enough, requiring only some last-minute assistance from the locals to assure I was heading towards the right place.

                We arrived in Weymouth just around dusk, made straight for the apartment we were staying at, which two dear friends had generously made available to us, then tossed our bags in the rooms (after finally learning the secrets of unlocking the front door), and tore down to the harbor for a little dinner because it was close to nine and I knew that meant we were running out of time.  We chose a classic meal to kick off the holidays, and a classic place to do so:  Fish and chips at Bennett’s on the Waterfront.

                You would think that a fast-food venue such as a fish and chips spot would be easy to order at, but that kind of premature reasoning can get a person into all kinds of trouble.  It was fish and chips for the three of us.  One for each.  And large too.  We had been traveling all day and the Krispy Kremes had done little more than whet our appetites.  The girl who served us was very nice and patient with all of our questions, though she did seem a little startled by what we planned to consume.  Large chips too?

                “How large is large?” I asked.

                She produced a small square paper plate that might have been adequate for a small square sandwich.  It looked all right. The three of us were professional French fry eaters.  We could handle that. “Go for it.”

                What she hadn’t mentioned was that they piled so many chips on that tiny plate, that I could have sworn they used a shovel.  The mounds were placed before us and we were invited to poor vinegar on them, which was typical in England but got an odd reaction from my Spanish girls.  Clara poked around the top layers of the potatoes and surmised that the portion was so great that the fish must have been underneath.  I wished I could have agreed with her, but before I could break the sad truth to her, a slab of crispy fish the size of a surfboard was dumped on top.  Ana and Clara were already warning me that there was no way in Hell they would be able to finish that, and I told they that there was no way in Hell I was going to finish mine, so they could forget about Daddy-to-the-Rescue later on.

              Ketchup came extra at 30p a sachet, a little steep since I wasn’t used to being charged for ketchup at all, but other than that, everything was great.  The good people at Bennett’s shaped the traditional paper used to hold the meal into the shape of a fish, which I said was “cute”, an observation my daughters refused to have me use because in their opinion, “Dads don’t say ‘cute’.”

                To turn this typical event into something even more special, we decided to go outside and sit by the harbor to enjoy the food in the cool summer evening air, glad to be able to enjoy anything at that temperature after six weeks of 90+ weather in Madrid.  Clara sat her plate on a rock and asked me to take a picture, which I was more than happy to do.  Unbeknownst to the three of us, a squadron of seagulls had immediately spotted us as we emerged from the restaurant, they may have even seen us ordering inside, and while I was focused on capturing on film a work of art known as “Hake Atop Mount Chips” one swooped down took a big chunk out of it.

                The surprise attack stunned us.  Amid dumbstruck laughter and shock, I tried to get each daughter to take charge of her respective plate and retreat to safety before they returned, but they feared that in doing so, the birds would continue to descend on them, this time with the target being in their hands.  So my plan was rejected, the girls fled without the victuals, leaving me to grab all three fish plates and run to seek haven from the circling birds.  Hitchcock’s The Birds was taking on new meaning in my life.  Seagulls with an attitude problem are no fun.

                We took cover around a corner and had a good laugh, but the ambush did make things tense for dinner, as each caw from above warranted an immediate search of the skies to see if another terrorist attack was imminent.  The gulls stayed away, but they never stopped looming.  We knew that the minute we departed, they would dive in and pick up whatever remains we had left behind.  The chips were delicious, but the soggy extra greasy kind which would have been great had we ordered just one for the three of us.  The fish was tasty too, but the size of the portions and the stress cut our appetite off.

                We scrambled to finish what we could, then went for a brief walk down the main pedestrian street, abandoned and almost forsaken at that hour, and afterwards went for a walk on the beach, which we enjoyed very much.  It would become our nightly ritual.

The good thing about living in Europe is that it is so compact that getting around from country to country is a pretty simple thing.  You can get to most parts in less than what it takes to cross America.  England is just a two hour flight from Madrid, which is why people head up there as often as they do.  As our flight made its final approach into Heathrow, though, I began to wonder whether we would get there at all.  Quite literally.  The trip so far had been kind of bumpy, there were storms in the area, but the pilot, who spoke the best English I have ever heard an Iberia employee ever use, warned us of this and added that there might be delays because, in his words, there are always delays at London airports.  So far, though, aside from being tossed around here and there, it appeared that we would be on time after all.

     It turned out, underestimated the captain’s knowledge of the scenario.

     You see, just as we floated in over the runway ready to return to the earth, with the plane swaying annoyingly as if the cabin crew were fighting for control of the stick, all of a sudden, the engines revved full throttle and the aircraft lifted away again.  Knowing that planes don’t do this for pure entertainment, I took this as a bad sign and pictured the images of our crash landing breaking records on a Youtube upload, with lots of comments with “RIP” and plenty of “thoughts and prayers with the victims”, as if that was going to do much.

     Despite this, and to my surprise, I wasn’t freaked out, especially since the aircraft continued to rise and distance itself from Heathrow in a fairly normal manner, which I saw as being good since it meant that something about the landing did not seem right and that the pilot intelligently chose to abort instead of send us into a burst of flames.

     I was disturbed by the thought that the issue of concern was the plane itself, but I hadn’t noticed any unusual noises being emitted.  I couldn’t recall the loud grinding noise of the landing gear sliding out that so startles the aviophobics, but with two children next to me requiring my attention, sometimes you miss that stage.  The pilot gave some reason about there being another plane on the runway, which I agree is never a good thing when you are approaching at 250mph, but I had my doubts.  I think we had just plain overshot the runway because we were halfway across the airport and still two hundred feet above the ground before and there was no indication that we were going to get any closer.  My daughters braved it better than me, despite one suffering from an earache from the pressure with such intensity that had she possessed a weapon at the time, she would have posed a threat to the rest of the passengers on board.

     We circled around and came in again, this time without having to dash off into the clouds, but once more after sailing by terminal after terminal, it seemed as if we would never return to our planet’s surface. I had a right mind to stand up and shout, “Don’t you realize that there is no runway left!”  But it probably would have caused the kind of alarm you don’t need and people would have remarked afterwards, “I think you could have handled that better.”

     Some of my readers may feel that I was exaggerating my reaction, but proof of my worries came from the fact that, once we made it to the ground, the pilot immediately employed every means in his power short of his feet, to get the 75,000kgs of metal to stop before it ripped through a nearby field of cabbages.  The plane came to one of those screeching halts with such violence, that no one even clapped afterwards.  We all deplaned with our hair looking like we belonged to a Justin Beiber fan club.

     From my experiences, getting through Heathrow is an incredibly simple procedure.  There are plenty of officers at the passport control desks fielding the masses of travelers and, once past them, your luggage is generally out and drifting along the belt patiently waiting for you to retrieve it.  As a former resident of metropolitan New York, I always estimate an hour and a half to get through these stages, but at Heathrow, you can often be on your way in 30-45 minutes, which was what we took.  And that included getting a car rental; it was a slick fire engine red Ford, the kind that looks like it is going at a 150, even when it is parked.  All I had to do was remember to keep to the left side of the road.

I returned to Spain in 1991 to reunite my body with the Spanish spirit I had discovered three years earlier as a student.  Like so many, I had fallen in love with the Spanish way of life in part because it seemed to fit the way I looked at life.   While youth wasn’t eternal, feeling it was.  And Spain appeared particularly interested in providing the know-how.

         I also hoped to further improve my Spanish, take a stab at teaching, back then more than ever, there was little else you could do as an English-speaking foreigner, and track down a girl I was crazy about and was hoping to sweep off her feet and into my arms for the rest of my days.   It was also Spain in preparation for its big coming out party of 1992 which would officially put an end to the Franco, and even post-Franco, eras.  Time for mainstream Europe.

     The Main Dish featured on the 1992 menu was the Olympic Games in Barcelona, but other happenings elevated the year to a macro-fest of enormous porportions.  Seville was holding its universal expo, and let’s not forget what that year marked in the annals of history: the 500th Anniversary of the Discovery of America by Columbus, in which Spain, as you should know, played an enormous role.  Who in their right mind was going to pass up a chance to be around for that?  The Gulf War, perhaps.  I left while the first bombs were landing in Kuwait City and Bagdad and everybody was discovering a channel called CNN.   My parents feared for my life as they heard that a tank had been parked in front of the U.S. embassy in Madrid, some 5,800 kilometers and a continent away from the hostilities.  It was actually an armored car, but it wasn’t going to deter me anyhow.  I had my mind made up.  So, I strutted down the concourse at Kennedy to the sound of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”, Madrid-bound.

        In any event, reality varied somewhat from the projections.  There wasn’t much to the war, though the armored car never left;  my Spanish did improve, though I never quite lost my Connecticut twang; and I found the girl I was mentioning, though she pretty much penned me into her friend zone big time and married someone else.  So that was a bad call.  And I ended up staying a little longer, like ever since.

       The following year’s events generally lived up to their expectations.  The Barcelona Games were a smash hit, the Expo did very well too, but the Columbus story, while noteworthy, did not get the exposure you might have expected.  Too controversial for some, as the discovery represented the beginning of the end of the original American culture, the subjegation of millions and a great loss of life.  Looked at that way, I can see they had a legitimate issue, but it wasn’t as if the Europe’s incursion into America could have been avoided.

       But it was 500 years just the same.  500 years, just the shame.

       Three weeks ago I had my laptop stolen and with it an insanely large amount of new and not so new material with it, though the squirrel in me has managed to store bits and pieces in different hideouts.  Some is certainly gone forever.  It sucks when that happens.  It makes you want to never want to pen another line again.  But this entry makes for post number 500 on this website, so I have cause to celebrate rather than despair.  I have less faith in mankind and more faith in Dropbox.

      Now let’s start with 501 and discover what is new.  There is no other direction to head.

      I took my daughters to the English county of Dorset, which is not always something that you do.  Dorset, just north of England.

I bet you thought it was going to happen.  I bet you thought I was going to let it happen.  Yeah, right!

     Go an entire month without posting a single…well…post?  That’s how shaky things have been.  They can sake, as long as they don’t topple.

     It almost happened, but just like paying taxes on the final day, which happens to be tomorrow and I’ll tell you about that later, I am down to the wire, but in time.  But in time.  But in time.

     Oh, I haven’t forgotten.

     Now, this was what I was going to say.  Yet again, in the 20th Century,Spainwould shake the very foundations of the scientific and technological  world with and bequeath to modern society an invention so profound that its effects are still being felt by me today. Literally.

            It’s the Chupa Chups, the Spanish version of the lollipop, and I just happened to have one in my mouth as we speak.  That’s how recent its reverberations can be felt.  It’s a cherry-flavored one and it’s been pretty good for the first thirty seconds, but now I am getting a little tired of it and wish do away with it elegantly like tossing it over the balcony.

       I even took a picture of it seconds before its execution.  Its death.  I placed it on a nice bare background for minimalist effect and artistic simplicity representing the futility of life as a sucker.

       The Chupa Chups is almost round like a globe, though it has a thicker band protruding around its equator.  You’ll have to excuse the imagery.  This product makes up the second tine of the great trident of Spanish inventions that I have heard about so many times throughout my life here.  The others are the modern submarine and the mop and bucket, if you haven’t been following this fascinating series.

            When I first heard this bit of trivia, I expressed my admiration out of kindness and politeness, because it was quaint, and because anyone who openly claims with pride that their country boldly ventured where no candy maker had before, or so they say, certainly garners my praise.

       I say that’s sweet, no pun intended, and move on. Then after hearing it for the tenth time, I begin to wonder just what kind of information is meted out in those social studies classes, because it’s nice to know that the Chupa Chups has its origins in the Iberian Peninsula, it’s another thing that it should earn such an honored spot in the kingdom of technological advancement.  It’s a fine contribution to society, especially for those in the dental service sector, but no more so than thousands of others.  Robert Kearn ofDetroit,Michigan, invented the intermittent windshield wiper back in1963, aprodigious creation from a driver’s point-of-view, and yet most Americans do not know this, just like they are about the vast majority of human ingenuity.

            But there you have it, a world where even the simplest things can share the limelight.

            As to be expected, the ubiquitous lollipop did not see earthly light for the first time in Iberian lands.  And, as to be expected, it is nearly impossible to determine just where it did.

            The modern version of the lollipop has been attributed to a man named George Smith, who owned a candy company inNew Haven,Connecticut, my homestate.  That really is a blow to the Spanish.  By the way, New Haven also is said to be the birthplace of the hamburger, not dreamed up by some kooky-looking clown, so it should be noted that this otherwise discreet coastal city on the East Coast of the United States noted otherwise for its fine university, Yale, has also been one of the most fertile creators of modern pop gastronomy.

            Chances are, though, the lollipop had been invented decades, if not centuries, before as its concept, eating without getting your hands all dirty, is hardly a novel one.  Haven’t you ever seen those Middle Ages movies with the Vikings plunging their swords into chunks of the roasted meat the size of footballs?

            It was apparently this issue that prompted our Spanish hero, Enric Bernat, to come up with a similar answer to the age-old issue of what to do about the children tackling with sticky food.  He had witnessed a mother scolding her child for getting his hands all messy after a bout with some sweets.  For the most part, this has always been a debatable motive for telling your kid off, because most candy is simply not designed with a kid’s mind in mind. They kind of assume the little one will handle the goodie responsibly, which is really asking a lot of any tot.  So, the kid is given free reign to behave under the toughest of circumstances and gets told off to boot.

            To resolve this problem.  Bernant devised a candy which kept the child’s hands away from the cause of all the stress.  Then he took his newfangled treat to stores all over the country requesting that it be placed on the counter right next to the register and, yes, within reach of a child.  This was a major breakthrough in marketing.

            The campaign paid off, and Bernant’s idea quickly became a hit and sales rocketed.  One source says that the annual production is about 12 million per year, which comes in at about 33,000 lollipops a day.  You would think that it would cover costs, but apparently not.  The company closed down a big plant inAsturiasin 2011 and there is only one left in the country.  These things out to be protected by the national heritage board.

Fried Eggs.  Here are two of them.  A pair.  Un buen par, as they say inMadrid.  It never ceases to amaze me just how easy it is to make jokes with eggs inSpain.  “Huevos” (eggs in Spanish) are a slang term for testicles, the equivalent in English of “balls”, and God knows their use, of the words that is, contributes plenty of mirth to the Spaniards, almost on a daily basis.  Every time the word is employed, and I mean every time, even in its real sense, rare is the occasion that someone doesn’t slip across a sly comment or a furtive look.  And everyone laughs as if it’s the first time they have ever heard the reference.

      Just today, just this very day, one colleague asked another if he had any sound effects for a play we are organizing and the other replied “un huevo” which literally means “an egg” but can be translated vulgarly as “a shitload”.  Actually he said, “I have an egg.”

       And the other invariably replied, “You have just one egg,” suggesting that the other possessed just one testicle, not that he owned a lot of sound effects material.  To which the other replied with a chuckle:

        “Oh, yeah,” returned the first in a cocky but friendly manner.  “That’s all I need.”  Meaning he was so manly he didn’t need two.  Then we all laughed, me included.

         Now, this same exchange of witty remarks could have taken place five, ten, fifteen or even twenty years ago, and the results would have been the same.  And from what I can tell, the jokes will go on for decades to come.

        Trust me, any Spaniard who sees this photo is going to think of reproductive organs before realizing that it’s just a plate of food.  The culture of the “huevo” lends itself to a lot of conversation. It’s a good thing to know should you ever engage in an extended stay here.

        But, in addition to gonads, the dish itself is a cultural oddity.  To begin with, it is rarely breakfast food, unless you are a guest at one of those hotels where they serve those meals that so enamor tourists all over the world.  Even the Spanish, who normally eschew the massive calorie intake that has garnered fame for morning tables throughout the English-speaking world, have a soft spot for those acres of tables bulging with a sensuous spread of delectables.  In fact, I would be willing to bet that a not-so-insignificant number pay for the room mainly with the incentive of being able to wake up the next morning and immerse themselves in one of the greatest pleasure known to man: the breakfast buffet.

            But limited to the restrictions of a Spanish diet in a Spanish home, don’t count on starting the day to a toast and an egg done easy over accompanied by cereal and a pot of hot coffee.  Just not gonna happen.

            Fried eggs exist, by all means.  But expect them for lunch or even dinner.  My first came for supper, traditionally a light meal here.  I did raise and eyebrow the first time a plate was placed before me.  It was ten at night and I hadn’t quite prepared myself for the fare. I didn’t take long though.

        Kids love and can pretty much go them at any time.  They are especially fond of them with chunks of paprika packed chorizo and bundles of oil soaked fries.  Does atrocities to your system, but there is no doubt that it’s top-notch comfort food.

            Another surprise is how you make them.  You would think that they would adhere to the basic laws of eggdom; afterall, just how many ways can you fry an egg?  But, I can assure you that the technique is entirely different.  First of all, they don’t do the deed with butter, but rather you fill a small frying pan with a healthy layer of olive oil.  You heat up the oil and plop and egg into the middle.  And while it crackles away, you take a spoon and you flick drops of the hot oil on the top of the egg so that cooks on that side.  This is a very old technique. For proof, take a look at this famous painting by Velázquez.

There’s the woman; and there’s the fried egg adrift in a sea of oil.

         The amount of liquid used to sizzle the egg has been reduced to less industrial quantities, but the essence of this Spanish technique is still true today, and it manages to extract a deliciously oily flavor which blends perfectly with the egg and a touch of salt.  The slightly bitter olive oil makes a huge difference.  You can reach for a loaf of baguette, rip off a chunk and poke at the yolk without fear.  The rest you should pretty much know what to do.

          All you need is some huevos.  Of course, that joke is not funny at all…unless you are Spanish.

I have felt for a long time that one of the best ways to learn about another country’s culture is to acquire little by little the common knowledge known by the everyday citizen.  I was tempted to say originally that knowledge that every schoolchild knows, “In 1492,Columbussailed the ocean blue” and all that;  but sometimes that is a dangerous thing.  Once, I read the results of a study on American high school students general understanding of general knowledge  and decided I needed to be more prudent with my assertions.   Consider, for example, the question “When didColumbusdiscoverAmerica?”  The correct answer in the multiple-choice quiz was “Before1776”, which gave the test-taker 284-year leeway for good measure; a generous margin of error when you think about it.  Even then, only 35% managed to get that one right.  Two-thirds were unable to come within three centuries of the truth.

       I somehow doubt that things have gotten much better since then, so I will broaden my assumptions a bit.  In any event, what I am referring to is the kind of knowledge that is thrown around freely and taken as fact regardless of whether or not it is true.  No one disputes it, which is true of most information, and they perpetuate the word by propagating it throughout the land.  They pass it on to friends and family.  That’s where lore comes from.  It’s where legend is born.

       Take inventions, for example.  Being the birthplace of a particular invention can often be a source of pride.  Back in America, we are taught that Edison came up with the first electric light bulb and the phonograph, to name just two, and Bell (while Scottish) had been living in America for years when he devised and patented his telephone; and let’s not forget the Wright brothers, whose fleeting departure from the earth upon a wafer-light aircraft proved once and for all that motorized flight could be achieved.  Of course, all of these landmarks in technology have been debated by those who feel others were the true firsts, and we cannot leave out the scores of anonymous figures whose minor technical contributions led to the great breakthroughs.  But I am not hear to talk about that; I am hear to discuss just what conventional wisdom says and what it might say about each culture.

            So, allow me to repeat this.  Take inventions, for example.  Take inventions inSpain.  When asked to name any inventions that this country has produced in, say, the last two centuries, invariably 90% will come up with the following list, in any order, mind you: The submarine, the mop (fregona), and the Chupa-chups lollipop.

            “Really?” I believe I said upon hearing such ostentation for the first time and trying to think of what to say without sounding rude or condescending.  “That’s great.  I didn’t know that.”

            You have to watch your step when confronted with these situations.  Laughing won’t get you anywhere unless you are well-acquainted with the culture and the people you are talking to. If not, you may find them using the mop in an inventive way on your body.   Even when you try to question the truth to any degree, you have to take care as to how you express it.  I once mentioned to a friend from Cartegena, while in Cartegena, that the first submarine was really invented inAmericaback in the Revolutionary War.  That was a crock, because the history of underwater vessels goes back at least 150 years before the Continental Army tried to employ one.  But that has never prevented propaganda from getting in the way.

       It was a man-powered ball called The Turtle.  It was meant to sink enemy ships by screwing a hole in the hull and sticking an explosive inside.  The Turtle was shaped like an acorn, and possessed the maneuverability and speed of one, which explains why the endeavor failed. Nonetheless, it was an innovation in warfare that would become extremely effective once the mechanical technology allowed for it.

       My friend was skeptical.  He deftly pointed out that the seacraft I was referring to was not motorized and therefore could not be considered a true submarine.  That was where Peral came into the picture.  His brainchild is considered to be the first fully-operational submarine in history.  My friend had a point so there was no sense in pursing the debate, but it did make me wonder just about what constituted an invention.  The first one, at least.  One of the many manias of mankind is to determine a first for everything.  Many times that date, name or place don’t correspond to the truth, and even sometimes we are fully aware of it.  But that doesn’t stop us from spreading the myth.

       For example, it is now practically accepted that Hyram Bingham did not discover the Lost City of Machu Picchu.  In fact, the ruins which were buried beneath the tropical brush for centuries never probably disappeared from the historical memory of the locals, who apparently knew of its existence.  In the mid-1800s, a German entrepreneur attempted to make a business out of the remains, and in 1903, when the Wright brothers were lifting off the sands of theNorth Carolina beaches, another Peruvian actually engraved his name on one of the rocks as proof of arriving there first.  Bingham didn’t make it there for another decade.  But that doesn’t prevent the world from crediting this man with the highest honor a discoverer could have: discovery.  It is undeniable that he truly appreciated the importance of the find and deserves credit for bringing it to the attention of the rest of the World.  Something similar happened toColumbus.

       The mop is no different.  The concept of a floor swab that has a pole attached to an absorbent base had been around for well over a hundred years, with many improvements being made in the Unite States in the late 19^th Century, about 60 years before Manuel Joldán presented his patent inEurope.  And let’s not forget that Mickey Mouse took on hundreds in the move Fantasia, so it is safe to say the objected existed.

       That makes sense because I had trouble imaging that half the world didn’t finally get off its knees from the kitchen floor until the time Ike was president. But then again, Swiss women didn’t receive the vote until the 1970s, so you never know.

       Joldán did not deny this.  In fact, he got the idea from his stay in theUnited Statesas an aeronautic engineer.  He saw its practicality and took it home.  So he can’t get credit in tat sense. What he did do was turn the whole product into one package.  The mop itself, along with the plastic bucket fitted with the meshed wringer fitted into place with which to squeeze out the dirty water.  That was the innovation and quite possibly the difference.  Sort of like the turtle and the Peral’s submarine.

        This neat and tidy design was a rage, and it is said that when Joldán and his associates sold the company in the 1980s, 60 million fregonas had been sold.

             Still, the fact that this goes down as one of the top three never fails to amuse me.  I am sure that Spaniards have come up with creations that compete with some World’s finest, but why the old mop and pail should stand out among the pack is beyond me.  I admire a country who can take national pride in these kinds of objects, though.  I doubt the Americans, English, Germans, French or Italians would ever admit as much.  It would probably be beneath their dignity.   It’s either coming up with the heliocentric theory or nothing. Something essential.

       But the mop is essential.  It is an essential part of every Spanish kitchen.  I don’t know one without it.  To use it is to be not only a part of Spanish history, but also a part of its culture.

      You may feel that I am trying to be particularly provocative by posting a picture like this so close Mother’s Day, but the idea was entirely coincidental.  Who invented Mother’s Day anyway?  When was it invented inSpain?  And if so, did the Spaniards add a touch, like a motor or a set, that makes it so Spanish.  I don’t know yet.  It’s the day that mothers should be truly appreciated.  Are they?  Maybe it’s a legend or maybe it’s true.

One reason light can be a help is that it allows you to contend with these little buggers.  I guess we call them doorknobs, but these are more like door handles.  I worked with the round versions at home as a child.  They are known as pomos in Spanish.  But the shape of preference in Spain is the one you can see in the image, and it is called a picaporte, which sounds word for those croutons you toss in your soup.  Most of you will have guessed right if you think that the main function of this contraption is to open and, when needed, close doors, windows, closets and such. When you crank them down, and hear all those crunching innerworkings going on, you really get the full enjoyment of the mechanism in motion, if such a thing as finding pleasure in that act.  But you would be foolish to think that that is where their usefulness ends.

       Though they serve their purpose satisfactorily in their primary role, these fixed instruments seemed to have been devised with other more devious ends, and if I were to put my money on it, I would go as far as to claim that their manufacturing has been financed by the textile industry, and in particular, clothiers who specialize in button-down shirts.  This is because the rounded-end hook, while seemingly harmless to the non-Abercrombie-and-Fitch-Doorman human like me who wears shirts most of the time, is actually capable of ripping an irreparable gash in the sleeve in a split-second.  And, as the nature of the universe would have it, the more expensive the garment, the greater the likelihood of its being involuntarily torn into strips of rags.  Here is another specimen.  Facing the other direction, but equally lethal.

After all of these years, it still happens from time to time.  There are certain experiences I will never learn from.

Then there was light.  Not much, but light all the same.  Any universe can start that way.  Mine was daily.

When I first came toSpain, I treated electricity with the same degree of carelessness that I held regard for when it came to any kind of utility.  In fact, “utility” was the ideal word for the service.  No frills, just a jolt of energy or a rush of water to keep things running in the household.  Like any young American back in the 80s who had barely been exposed to the efforts of mainstream ecology, energy conservation was for geeks and Californians and not to be taken too seriously…just like geeks and Californians. Saving the Earth’s natural resources was lame, and if you had to do it, the last thing you were going to do is tell someone about it.

            My disregard for cutting back on consumption rattled the Post-Civil War Spanish generation.  My host-family mother shadowed me around the house clicking off all those switches I would leave on when I departed from the room.

       And in the morning, during the winter inMadridthe house would remain dark until nearly eight in the morning, only a brushstroke of light might erupt from the kitchen or bathroom and cast some way of finding my bearings in the hall.  Back home, my brother is capable of draining national resources with just a casual flip of the switch, but here, every watt counts.  Especially back then.

            The reason behind this was that utilities for so long were pricey as the economy tried to pull itself out of the wake of a terrible civil war and decades of isolation.  That turnaround began in the 1960s, but Spanish society by that time had spawned a generation or two of very cautious consumers who had been nurtured on rationed services.  That meant that even as things began to improve, few had it in them to spend freely, let alone splurge meaninglessly.  That was the essence. Spending had to be meaningful and when so, sparing.  Spaniards were savers forcibly by habit, not by nature.  The recent generations of spendthrifts are proof of that.

            There you have it.  My morning walk to the bathroom to start my every day, every day.