She's A Winner, A BIG WINNER at The Viking Club, Maple Springs, NY

The Joy Of Winning Money

Forget about the time I got up, the weather, all that boring stuff and let's get down to last night. Around 6:00, we got spruced up and drove across the lake to Maple Springs for a fish fry at our other club, the The Viking, set on the lake, home for all the Swedes, one of the two groups that settled this area.  It's much smaller than the Rod and Club and not as busy, so when we walked in, we were able to get a seat at at the bar.  We ordered a beer, relaxed with some of the others, recognized some of the regulars.  I had read that this Friday they were having a steak raffle, so I asked the bartender if there was one and she said the guy would be coming around.

So this little guy walks up with a bucket and we get the deal, ten tickets for five bucks.  We never win anything but these kind of things keep clubs like this going along with alcohol consumption.  Ten minutes later, he calls out the numbers and viola, we have one of the numbers and win two 12 ounce steaks!  As my good friend Mac would say, Yippee.  We laughed with others about our winning and struck up a conversation with the couple sitting next to us, residents of the village of Ashville, Doug and Dawn Johnson. As we were talking, Evie looked up at the gambling board and saw there were a couple of $160.00 tickets still up for grabs.  So we thought, hey, this is our lucky day so we bought five dollars worth of tickets. You have to open each ticket and to win, you must have three matches on a ticket.  We opened the first four, nothing, the fifth, and we won  two dollars.  Big deal.  So, we bought two more, what the heck, might as well waste two dollars more and viola, Evie went crazy as we won one hundred and sixty bucks.  The others at the bar started laughing, wanted to come over for dinner for steaks, and so on.  We gave a nice tip to the bartender, bought our friends a beer, and thought about how much fun we were having.

We did not push our luck, so at 7:30, we went into the dining room, and easily got a table for two.  I ordered the fish fry and Evie had a Swedish special, Winka ham with ligonberry sauce. It's a fresh ham, brined, then slow cooked with Swedish spices, and its texture is more like a pork roast than ham. Evie really liked it and my fish fry was fine.  By the time we finished, the bar and dining room were starting to empty as it was close to the closing of the dining room.  As we got ready to leave, the guy with the steak raffle tickets came by and said he had more steaks.  We could win a single steak this time if we had the right ticket.  So Evie, unable to resist the temptation to win another steak, bought the special, ten tickets for five bucks.  We stood around for five minutes as he continued to sell tickets, then announced the winners.  Evie checked out tickets and by gosh, we had two winners, so we went home with two more steaks.  All I can say is when we return to the lake in January, we will be back.

7:25

That was our excitement for the night.  It's 7:00 AM at the moment, still dark out and 25º, with the threat of sunshine for the day.  I have yoga at 9:00, so I will have to hustle to get this done before I leave. I just noticed some ducks in front or our neighbors house looked strange.  When I got out my binoculars to look more closely, I realized they were standing on ice, that the lake had iced over last night.

A Raft Of Ducks On Thin Ice

Yesterday began with yoga, a good class, with three new young guys which was great.  After yoga, I got a coffee, a bad habit, then stopped at the car parts store because my new windshield wiper blades would not fit.  The gal realized that the clip on the blades was broken, got a new one and I was ready for the winter.  I then shopped at Wegman's for a few things, mostly mushrooms as I was going to make a mushroom soup when I got home.  I was home just before noon, wanted the soup for lunch, so Evie sweated the two pounds for me while I got the rest ready, shallots, garlic, broth, and seasonings. When the mushrooms were done, Evie put aside a cup, put the rest in the broth which had been simmering, for ten minutes.  I then got our the boat motor, blended the soup for about five minutes, added the mushrooms, and a cup of cream, and the soup was done.  We had it for lunch, yum, along with a schnitzel sandwich on fresh bread and watched the last Colbert Show.  It was a great way to end his season, as just about every guest from his past nine years showed up to sing a final song, "Till We Will Meet Again." Just about anyone who is famous showed up, from Henry Kissinger, to Charlie Rose and Katie Couric, Willie Nelson, Tom Brokaw, Ann Patchett, Doris Kearnes Goodwin, and Ken Burns, to Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Tom Friedman, Randy Newman, Army Chief of Staff Odierno, Yo Yo Ma and even UN Ambassador Samantha Powers and Fox News Mike Huckabee. And that's not even half of the group. It was a great ending to what had become a national institution.

The rest of the afternoon I read my John Wooden biography.  We are to the point in his life where they win one NCAA title after another and his lack of relating to his players is the major problem, as America is changing, Blacks are ascendant, the Counter Culture is in full bloom,  but John Wooden does not change. And. then, around 6:00 we headed off to the Viking Club.  Little did we know it would be a night to remember.