AND ME WITHOUT MY SECRET LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE DECODER RING!

Plowing through the Da Vinci book. Imagine an arcane book like this being written by a guy who calls himself Dan Brown, instead of Horace Snigglefritz or something. When I got to the secret mirror image poem in the rosewood box I very cleverly held it up to the light from the rear to see what it said in reverse, not realizing that the author had already reversed the image for us and it had been written in some kind of Spencerian script which I couldn't read even from the front. Gah! I am not much of a decoder!

THE FANTASTIC STORY OF MY LIFE
(Written with great restraint by my mom)
Actually, I think Mom went a little overboard in the restraint dept.

It would be neither fair nor factual to pass over this wonder boy with a mere catalogue of his glittering accomplishments.

In a scientific work of this kind it is perfectly proper to say, first, that staggered as we are by the fecundity of his loins, much more needs to be said about this unique example of how far humanity may advance in a single bound.

One has only to examine the slow progress of evolution to fully comprehend the dramatic ascension represented by Vince's sudden appearance on the scene—-this instant marvel of creation who, mere days after his birth, rocked the ivy covered halls of learning with brilliant orations and mathematical calculations beyond the power of computers.

The shameful record shows that unbelieving scholars and philosophers dragged Vince's crib into their temple, where, smirking and stroking their beards, these Great Men questioned him closely on the Ancient & Royal sciences of reason and logic.

Rapid fire, they barraged him with questions that had baffled the greatest minds for eons. It was a dirty trick. They meant to demolish the boy quickly and send him back to the nursery a squalling brat. "What is the meaning of Life?" they asked him, chuckling away. "What does it all mean?"

But the unanswerable logic that poured from the lips of the young genius could not be denied. Confounded, knowing that if Vince was right their work of a lifetime was dust, they thought up even harder questions — Why didn't the sun shine at night? Why was winter so cold? These eternal mysteries, too, Vince polished off with sharp authority.

Advanced Swedish thinkers fell to their knees in adoration. "It's Him!" gasped one of the squareheads, gazing up in wonder at the beatific expression on Vince's innocent face.

But the Brilliant Babe didn't know he was demolishing careers. "I forgive you," he said. "You uneducated louts know not what you do."

"Nonsense!" screamed a fellow whose dark past reeked of Danish blood. "It's some kind of trick!"

Fighting for their professional lives now, overwhelmed by the Niagara of irrefutable knowledge roaring in their heads, the professors knew they had only one way out--they must prove that the tiny boy was a Messenger from the Devil--was in fact the Devil! They decided to use tactics which had worked so successfully against two earlier Swedes, Newton and Galileo--denial and contempt, followed by torture:

"Let's see if he recants on the rack!" cried a dumb little Dane with big ears.

But months of torture merely brightened the flame of defiance in the brave little boy's eyes. In the end, it was his torturers who cracked. Their instruments of torture, blackened and bloody, lay broken on the floor.

Finally, just to get them off his back, Vince tossed them a crumb: he revealed the secret of the golf swing. This sensational news convinced his inquisitors that he was indeed The One. They knew beyond doubt that after centuries of trial and error, after countless human rejects, evolution had culminated in sublime perfection -- Vinny Johnson was here!

"Aw hell!" grumbled the scriveners. "Now we gotta rewrite all those ancient scrolls."

"Hah!" said the stone masons. "You think you got it rough. We gotta chisel all his sayings in granite!"

NOTE: The reader must know that the historian's lot is hard. No matter how sensational the subject matter, no matter how the work cries out for elaboration, the historian must stringently restrict himself to a plain presentation of facts without comment or opinion.

In light of this literary confinement, the author may perhaps at the conclusion of this disciplined work be forgiven an editorial indulgence: After The Coming, many thinkers of great repute tried to salvage ruined careers by rushing into print great tomes claiming that they always knew the Johnsons could do it and, in fact, had come close to a Vince in centuries past when they squeezed out two earlier Swedes of great renown, Einstein and Solomon..

But it was no use. Although they begged for mercy the Great Thinkers could not erase the thousands of lectures in which they had inflicted on innocent students the false theory that evolution was a random process of selection and rejection, and that in a chaotic universe no perfect human being could ever be produced.

What could they say? Vince was here.

Later they found out he was a hell of a golfer too. ##
Write the author at:
vgjohnson@wizwire.com

GREATEST FIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY!

1937:
This was a short fight. I just punched poor old Freddie Erickson in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him. Freddie was always a sucker for that shot to the breadbasket.

1937:
Another short fight. I got Freddie in my Death Grip until he had to give up. Those fights didn’t change our friendship; we were best pals for years.

1938:
Oh oh, This time I had to go up against Dick Albrecht. As part of our gang Dick and his brother Doug sometimes got the fatal notion to test me to see if I was still boss. Mostly we rassled. Until one time me and Dick got into it with our fists on the sidewalk in front of the old Safeway store on University Ave in East Palo Alto.

Everything was going good until Dick ducked and I sprained my little finger hitting him on the head. Can’t remember the outcome, but I don’t think the guy ever laid a paw on me.

1938:
In this fight I had to go up against Dick’s older brother Doug. Me and Doug had rassled before, not seriously, but he was tough and I knew it. Then one day old Doug got fire in his eyes. When a kid got fire in his eyes you had to look out. I’d never fought anybody before with fire in his eyes. Old Doug came at me and chased me clear over to Johnson’s Neighborhood Grocery Store at the end of the auto court, which is what they called motels way back then.

Anyway, old Doug chased me all around the auto court until he finally cornered me in the backyard of our house on Capitol Ave. He was so mad and had chased me so far I was starting to get worried. This was not light fun anymore. This was serious business that I had to face up to or I would be finished as the leader of our boyhood gang.

So okay. I finally stopped and let Doug catch me. I was too winded to run anymore anyway. The first thing I did was put my famous old Death Grip on him and rassle him down under the azalea bush. Poor old Doug acted like he thought he could break this most famous of all my rassling holds. He was really squirming around and wouldn’t give up when I asked him, “Ya give? Ya give?

What old Doug didn’t realize was that this time was different and my Death Grip was even more unbreakable because I had added a refinement developed over the years--I called this refinement my Clincher. What I did with the Clincher was, I kept my right arm around poor old Doug’s neck in a choke hold while at the same time grabbing hold of the azalea bush with both hands. When I did that, poor Doug was finished and he knew it. One more time I asked him if he gave up and he finally said, “Okay, okay, I give!”

Hah! Nobody ever got out of my Death Grip.

Wrote by hand,
Vince
www.vince johnson.net

INTO THE SAUSAGE GRINDER WITH YOU!
Pets gotta pay their way around here

Tommy The Freeloader got his courage up and crept inside today. He took a snooze right on the carpet in my office. It must have been the rain that drove him in, not the food. How can he eat that messy, foul-smelling stuff?

His extreme fear of me goes back to the time I trapped him in a cage and planned to get rid of him by throwing him in the sausage grinder! Ever since that day when he fought so hard to get free and I finally took pity on him and turned him loose out in the backyard he has known for sure that if he ever relaxes his vigilance I will grab him by the scruff and throw him in the suasage grinder!

That orange-colored feline is not earning his keep and he knows it. One day I will have to throw him in the sausage grinder!

Now my old cat Tiger - he was pure black - paid his way. He knew how the world worked. Tiger brought in many trophies and laid them at my feet. Tiger's favorite trick was to catch a mouse and hold the terrified little rodent in his jaws as he raced inside through the doggy door to show me his trophy. Then he would chase it around the room until it eluded him by hiding in the closet behind my galoshes. Never failed. Then when he couldn't find the mouse he would swish his tail and leave me with a another mouse in the closet.

Another of Tiger's favorite pastimes was to bring me birds - alive but near death from terror - daintily clutched in his jaws, then let the bird loose in my office and try to catch it in the air. One time Tiger even dragged in what I thought was a great big dead rat and dropped it at my feet, then calmly washed his face, as if to say, 'My work here is done, boss!'

I picked up the dead animal by the tail and dropped it in the trash can. What do you know? Wasn't a dead rat at all. A possum! and that animal began racing around inside the trash can. I took the whole can outside and dumped it in the driveway. Man, that possum skedaddled!

Tommy the orange Freeloader never brings me anything. He thinks he's somehow tricking me into filling his bowl every morning, and I should be so lucky to have such a fine pet.

That's all kids,
vince
www.vincejohnson.net

COOK'S JOURNAL
Choon's Chickens

Wrote by Vincent G. Johnson

After emigrating from China, Choon worked in Dinah's Shack for thirty years. When I met him he was in his 60's, a small, bowlegged man -- from malnutrition as a youth, no doubt -- and with his stooped posture and quick, scurrying movements about the large kitchen, he always looked to me like someone trying to round up a flock of chickens in a barnyard.

The chicken-chasing illusion was further dramatized if Choon was empty-handed. Then he scurried about the kitchen holding his hands away from his body on both sides, bouncing off stoves and walls, as if ready to fly the coop himself. He had the curious gait seen in many old-time cooks who have learned the hard lesson of how to walk on wet kitchen floors while carrying pots full of hot liquid -- short flatfooted steps, which give greater security against surprise grease spots on the floor.

I saw Choon slip just once. He was carrying a big pot full of hot chicken gravy across the old planked floor. His feet went out from under him as he walked up to place the heavy pot on a table. The pot stayed on the table, but Choon went under it, flat on his back. He thought a minute, then said, "I go home now."

Choon’s round, smooth-skinned face might have appeared guileless as a boy's had he not over the years laboriously cultivated a sparse number of long black hairs which dangled from the outer edges of his lips and from his chin. He was pleased to refer to these brave strands as his beard. Choon was immensely vain about this sinister-appearing facial hair and often described it to me -- an innocent young man who didn't understand these things -- as the secret of his heroic success with women.

The old Chinese cook treasured his pots. This high regard for his pots is what started the whole thing off and nearly got Angelo killed. I came to work one afternoon and found Choon's meat cleaver stuck in the ancient door of the walk-in. The wood looked fresh and red in the sharp-edged wound. I pulled out the shiny instrument of death and held it up. "Hey, Choon, this your cleaver stuck in the door?"

"Yes, that my cleaver. I throw it at that son of a goat, but I miss."

"Which son of a goat? Angelo? Where's he at?"

"I pretty sure he leave. If he come back, I get him sure."

"What happened? How come you threw your cleaver at him?"

Stooped over his scarred, workworn table, Choon sucked his teeth, a sure sign of his displeasure. He turned his face up to me, his eyes mere slits.

He stroked his dangling mustache. "Hah! He mess with my pot all the time. One day I fix him good and teach him to mess with my pot. Every day he come in, he steal my pot. I need those pot to fix all thing." The old Chinese cook's voice turned into a soft caress as his tongue and lips tenderly spoke the familiar, much-loved words. "You know I have to feex the riiiicce, the cheeeeckin, the sweeet and sourrr porrrk and all those thing."

Choon had definite methods and definite pots he used to fix each dish. I think he must have used the same special pots and pans for all of his thirty years in this busy old landmark restaurant.

Chicken. Nobody but Choon ever fixed the hundred or so orders of fried chicken we sold every night at Dinah’s Shack. He fried the chicken in big roasting pans. We had eight of those pans. Each pan was large enough to hold two 22-pound rib roasts comfortably, three in a pinch. But two of these roasting pans were special--- they were the pans Choon used for fried chicken, and that's probably all they had ever been used for.

We all knew they were Choon's pans and kept hands off. Angelo, being the new man and not recognizing the vast importance of these pans to Choon's industry, probably figured one was the same as another and just grabbed the nearest one to braise off some short ribs or to roast that nights prime ribs. It looked like Choon had taught him different.

Choon's time-tested method of frying chicken never varied. He needed two of the pans to produce his artistry.

He worked with five-gallon cans of lard, scooping big gobs into his blackened roasting pans, then melting the lard on top of the eight-burner stove, four burners under each pan. He kept the grease in the two pans at different temperatures. Nobody but Choon knew what the temperatures were -- he never used a grease thermometer -- and maybe he didn't know himself. But it was obvious that the grease in the first pan was not as hot as the grease in the second, or finishing, pan.

The grease was never thrown away. At the end of his shift, Choon strained the used grease through a china cap lined with a towel into empty lard cans. The next day he poured the used grease -- dark now from days of use -- into the roasting pans and replenished the grease to its proper level with fresh white lard.

He worked with half chickens, split the long way down the backbone, never chopping the chicken into serving pieces until the waiter appeared to pick up his order.

Here's how he fixed his famous chicken.

He dipped the chicken halves in a special batter which contained only, as far as I was able to determine, flour and water, salt and pepper, some milk and a handful of baking powder. Maybe he sneaked something else in, but I have since tried my own version of the batter and it came out about the same.

He dunked the half chickens in the batter, coating them thickly, then -- carefully grasping a wing tip -- dropped them one at a time into the first pan where they would sink to the bottom of the grease. After they cooked for about ten minutes but were not yet browned, he transferred the chicken halves to the second, hotter, pan, where they browned nicely and finished cooking while he turned them a couple of times.

From the effect each pan of grease had on the chicken, I would guess the temperature of the first pan at about three hundred degrees, and the second at maybe three-sixty or so. The finished product was full of juice, the crust crisp and puffy.

Choon kept the cooked chicken in a warming chest. When he got an order, he just grabbed one of the cooked halves, chopped it up with his tin Chinese cleaver (bam!bam!bam! never more than three strokes, never missing the joints) and arranged the pieces on a dish, always with corn on the cob, mashed potatoes and country gravy. Then to complete his performance, with a deft, practiced motion, not even looking, he spun the dish up on the shelf over the steam table, where a bored waiter calmly laid a hand on the plate to stop it from spinning and entered into a contest with Choon to see who could look the most bored over the process.

Choon was a master at his trade, but he had one terrible weakness that almost ruined his frail body. Women. And an exploding oven was to cramp his style in that department.

The consequences of Choon's weakness were always readily apparent after his day off. On returning to work he usually scuttled into the kitchen all bent over, sad-eyed and broke. The San francisco women got all his money.

"Gee, Choon," I said to him one such morning, "you look terrible. What's the matter, too many girlfriends?"

He held his head. "I din't have no juice left. I go to the herb doctor and ask him what is wrong. He ask me how many girlfriends, and I tell him only one No. 1 girl and five extras. He say, 'Well, no wonder.'"

Now I said to Choon, "How about your No.1 girl, did you go see her yesterday?"

"Yes, and I din't have no juice left. She plenty mad and yell at me like crazy woman. I tell her she plenty lucky have good man like me. Plenty more where that come from, too, I tell her."

The new cookk Angelo, short and bald, heavily muscled, sneaked in, avoiding Choon by walking clear around behind the ovens to where the pots and pans were stored. He stooped to choose a roasting pan for the prime ribs. Choon whirled around on his toes and watched him closely. Angelo made a big show of staying away from Choon's special pans. He held up one of the other pans and grinned.

"He learning," Choon hissed, scowling with satisfaction and fingering his scraggly musache.

But that morning disaster struck. If you have ever heard a gas oven blow up, you know it makes an impressive noise and packs a big punch. WHUMP!

In reconstructing the accident, we figured out what must have happened. The old Chinese cook was preparing to make biscuits to go with his chicken dinners. There was no thermostat in that ancient oven, and no pilot light. He always turned on the gas and lit it with a wooden kitchen match, then regulated the heat by hand and eye. I often saw him eyeballing the flame and sticking his hand in the oven to test the heat. His bare hand method was infallible.

But that morning he must forgotten how long he'd been standing there talking to me and guarding his roasting pans. When he lit the match and stuck it in the oven the explosion knocked him right back on his butt. I rushed over to help him up.

Other than a very red face, he appeared to be all right, though stunned. He turned his boyish-appearing face to me and said, "What happened?"

"It blew up, Choon. Are you all right?"

"I go home now," he said. But something else was wrong with his face -- he had lost his sinister look. What was it? Then, omigawd! his face was completely hairless. Gone was the forty-year growth of fifteen black strands which had bravely dangled from the side of each lip. Gone were the nineteen long black hairs growing from his chin. After all those years of cultivation, the pride of his manhood, the symbol of his crashing good fortune with women had vanished.

We hustled him to the Stanford ER where, in shock already, he discovered his loss and plunged deeper into black depression. We took him back to his little shack behind Dinah's and put him to bed. He turned silently to face the wall.

"Come on, Choon," I said, "it's not as bad as all that. Why, hell, it'll grow back in no time."

"No, I finished now. I go good anymore. It where I get all my luck with women. I ruined now. No more women, no more joss, no more Choon."

The old cook could not be consoled. He fended off all words of encouragement with sighs and moans and a weakly waving hand. Day after day, lying in his rumpled bed, he searched in the hand mirror for signs of growth. But his barren face refused to display a single whisker. For a week he could not be coaxed out of his room. And finally, when he returned to work, he seemed lost, unable to remember even how to cook his famous chicken.

He sat down on an egg crate and moaned, "Mister Angelo, come, take all my pot, I no care. You take them all. I finished now."

This was getting serious. When Choon didn't even care about his pots anymore, I knew drastic action was needed.

"That does it," I told him. "Choon, tomorrow you and I are going to the City. What you need is some confidence to get you out of the dumps and back in action. I will prove to you that you're still top dog, just like always."

He resisted strongly, saying the women would laugh at him, but I made him go anyhow. In San Francisco, I walked up to the first working girl I saw on Market St. Beautiful blonde hair, and garishly made up.
"My friend Choon, here, wishes to escort you for the evening," I said to her. "Are you available, and how much?"

Certain of refusal, the old Chinese cook hung back, shielding his beardless face with an arm and blinking dark, fearful eyes over his elbow.

"Choon!" the girl cried. "Where have you been?"

"You know him?" I gasped.

"Why, of course," she said, smiling at Palo Alto's most famous ladykiller, "we all know him. Come on, Choon" she said, taking him by the arm. "You look real good, honey. I'm so glad you shaved off that terrible beard. You look twenty years younger." ##
Copyright Vince Johnson 1995