Broad Swath

I've written something I think is quite funny. It won't appear for months; December 31st to be exact. Why did I pick that date? If I posted it now it would surely be funny, but not super funny. Why do funny when you can do super-duper-funny? Trust me, it's funny. That or I'm lost when judging my own work. (Which is it?) Have a seat in my time machine by making a note on your calendar or set a reminder in your phone. Let's have a super slow party.

Good tomatoes are coming.  And sweet corn.  It won't be long now... Far and away the most common summer meal in my family was what Dad called "AGR Dinner."  It was a simple one: grilled steak, corn on the cob, and sliced tomatoes with salt and pepper; maybe some Wishbone dressing.  What it lacked in complexity was made up for with quality ingredients; it was timed with the arrival of those first good tomatoes from the garden, or farm stand.   You could say that the history of this meal began about 7,000 years ago in central Mexico when a grass, teosinte, began evolving into maize.  It makes more sense to start in Durand, Illinois in 1942.  In the summer of that year you could have found my dad holding the reins of two horses pulling him and a one-row cultivator through a field of corn.  Maybe it's the Fourth of July, and the corn is knee high.  George is 16, and in a few weeks he will leave the farm for his first year at the Universit...

Today is our silver wedding anniversary.  (Happy anniversary my love.) Twenty-five years ago Martha and I were married at Faith, Hope, and Charity catholic church.  The ceremony was followed by a reception at the Glen View Club where we were entertained by, and some of us danced to, Las Toallitas - a band from Chicago Martha and I had selected.  Doesn't every wedding need a band wearing fezzes with a woman banging on a rack of automobile brake drums?  That was the last O'Brien wedding with music chosen by the wedding couple. We had wanted Brave Combo, a polka band from Texas that we had seen a couple times in St. Louis, but they weren't going to be anywhere near Chicago.  When we asked for a recommendation they said Las Toallitas had opened for them recently and were fabulous.  In our defense we did our research, and went to a show to check them out.  Martha's brother Joe came with us.  He gave them a thumbs up.  That was perhaps a...