This great article on the life and times of Columbia House reminded me of a strange period of time when I was in high school.
Like many people I discovered rock music when I was in high school. Sure, I’d had a few 45 rpm records with some top 40 hit like “Waterloo” by ABBA, and “The Night Chicago Died” by Paper Lace, but that was kid stuff. Before I had a turntable I had an 8-track player. Sometime in the mid 1970’s our family received a strange package in the mail; a Columbia House 8-track player. It was a gift sent to my father from an ex-con that my father had done some legal work for. My father really didn’t listen to music, but my mother did. Our family already had an 8-track player, so the Columbia House machine was extra. For several years the unused machine sat fallow until I rediscovered it.
I got lucky because my friend David Peterman not only had lots of LPs but an 8-track machine that recorded as well. The capacity to record was an unusual feature for 8-track machines. For those not old enough to remember, the music on pre-recorded albums on 8-track would often fade out before the big “Ka-chunk” when one track switched over to another. With home-made 8-tracks the music would switch abruptly, which would seriously harsh one’s mellow. You couldn’t buy blank 8-tracks either, so you had to find junk ones to record over. I remember enjoying Ted Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo this way…
The problem was that the whole standard for 8-tracks was total junk. In an analog tape format, precision alignment between the tape and tape head is critical. The mechanical tolerances needed for genuine high fidelity just weren’t there with this format. The Columbia House machine that I owned was so cheap that I would have to fold up paper and cram it under the plastic cartridge to keep the tape aligned! As much as I enjoyed rock music I grew to hate this machine and realized that I simply HAD to transition to LPs.
The Columbia House machine came to a violent end one night. As with many dramas in life, you never know exactly how your life will impact those around you. Evidently the story I told my friends was resurrected in this hilarious account by David Peterman. David’s memory of my account is remarkably accurate, though I think I used an ax and not a baseball bat…
When I was growing up my mother baked two particularly tasty things; whole wheat bread and Cornish pasties. I don’t know if my mother ate pasties when she was a child growing up in Anaconda, Montana, but my father certainly did when he grew up in Butte. In Butte, the Irish had co-opted the delicious pasties from the “Cousin Jacks” or the residents of Cornwall, England. The pasty was a popular lunch item, especially for school kids and underground miners.
If you search the Internet you can find many recipes for pasties, many of which will contain all sorts of additional vegetables. I’ve tasted many meat pies over the years, and I agree with the opinion of my parents that a pasty doesn’t need anything besides just the basics. The following recipe is a transcription of a letter my mother sent me some years ago. In the penultimate paragraph my mother has the chef creating an incision in the top of the pie before it’s baked. My father also made pasties for himself years ago, and suggested that one wait until the pasty is fully baked before cutting into the pie so that the moisture from the interior remains inside.
Frozen prepared pie crust may be purchased from the freezer department of a supermarket, or prepare crust using standard measurements of one cup flour and one-third cup shortening, plus ½ teaspoonful salt per pasty for plate-sized pasties.
Purchase about one or 1&1/2 pound good grade round steak, and trimming off most fat, place in freezer compartment so that it becomes about semi-frozen. It will be much easier to cut into small cubes if first frozen. It should cut up about as easily as chopping celery. Before freezing, seasoning can most easily and accurately be added by sprinkling salt and black pepper quite liberally on both sides of the meat as you would season something like a hamburger patty. Otherwise, it’s difficult to measure just how much salt and pepper you would add to the mixture Considering that you won’t need to season the potato which will be added later, on should be quite generous in applying the salt and pepper. Also consider that you will be adding butter or margarine at the last minute so that will also provide a salty flavor.
After trimming all fat off your frozen piece of round steak, cut into strips and chop meat into cubes about ¼ inch in size. Your meat will bake much faster with small, uniform pieces of meat so that you won’t over cook it, which would make it more tough. Set aside meat in a large bowl.
Peel and cube potatoes in about the same size small pieces as the meat. (A French fry cutter is ideal to form the proper sized strips for uniform chopping). Use about three large baking type potatoes. The proportion of meat to potatoes should be about half and half. Add to mixing bowl containing meat cubes.
Finely chop two large onions of the white Bermuda type and add to mixing bowl. Mix together meat, potatoes and onions. At this point, mixture can if desired be covered and refrigerated overnight to blend flavors, but is not necessary.
On a slightly floured surface, roll out pastry with slightly floured rolling pin to the approximate size of a standard dinner plate, or smaller if desired. Place one cup of meat mixture onto crust just off center to the bottom half so that when crust is placed over meat it will form a half circle. Meat mixture may be somewhat runny from onion juices, but if crust is not rolled too thin, it should hold the mixture without running out. After flopping crust over mixture, cut carefully around outside edge so that you form a neat semicircle. (I use a fluted small pastry cutting wheel). Dip fork tines into cold water and seal edges carefully all around the semicircle so that nothing drips out. Cut a small slit about one inch long in center which will be used as a steam hole escape and an opening into which you will add melted butter and a little hot water when pasties are just taken out of oven. Use about one stick plus about two tablespoonfuls hot water heated together and poured equally divided into steam holes. Oven temperature should be preheated to 375 degrees F. and pasties baked for 45 minutes or until slightly browned. Any left over meat mixture may be refrigerated and used as a single top crust meat pie baked in an oven proof deep dish.
After you have formed and sealed pasty, carefully place it on a large cookie sheet which has been pre-greased, or a parchment paper which requires no greasing. About five pasties can be placed on a standard cookie sheet. Bon Appetite!
Growing up in Missoula, Montana our family didn’t dine at restaurants very often. In fact the number of times that we as a whole family went out to eat I could count on the fingers of one hand…
I didn’t travel much as a child either. The first time I was out of the state of Montana for more than a day was when I visited my grandmother and cousins in Los Angeles during the summer of 1984. This was shortly before my 22nd birthday. I was immediately impressed by the quality of the Mexican food in this exotic new place. I’ve been back to LA a number of times since then, and I’ve never failed to find world class Mexican food almost everywhere I go. I’ve had excellent Mexican food in San Francisco as well.
I moved to Seattle in August of 1987. At the time I had a naïve fantasy that Seattle was a major West Coast metropolis, and so I’d be able to find Mexican food as easily as I did in LA. NOT SO! Way back then, there was no World Wide Web, so you couldn’t just search the Internet for suggestions. Various Seattle hipsters suggested that Mama’s Mexican Kitchen downtown was really good, but I was shocked at how bland it was. To this day I can’t understand how anyone in their right mind thinks that place is any better than Azteca. Have they ever been to Southern California?
For several years I would read the local free tabloids like the Weekly or the Stranger, especially when they published their annual “Best of Seattle” issue. I would dutifully trot off and eat at whatever restaurant they claimed was Seattle’s Best. Inevitably they would serve refried beans, not boiled beans. The refried beans generally tasted like they came from a number 10 can…
Eventually I gave up. It was particularly galling when I would eat at Mexican restaurants far away from Mexico that would have better food than what Seattle had. I’ve had better Mexican food in Toronto than in Seattle!
But hope never dies, and several years ago I found a place in White Center, Taqueria Guaymas, that I thought was quite good. I still hold my head high if I take a guest there. Recently there’s been an explosion of taco carts around Seattle, most of which I haven’t checked out. I have it on good authority that there are a number of them that are quite decent.
I’ve known that there was a Mexican restaurant literally a few blocks away from where I live for some time now, but I’d never bothered to check it out. Last weekend a friend of mine whose judgment I trust gave it high praise. Tonight I checked it out, and I can honestly say that it’s the best Mexican food I’ve had in Seattle.
Congratulations Huarachitos Mexican Taqueria! Tonight I had my default dinner which is chicken with mole sauce, and everything was outstanding. Boiled beans instead of number 10 can refried beans. Spanish rice done right which didn’t taste like Rice-a-Roni. The chicken was cooked perfectly, and smothered in one of the best, if not THE best mole sauces I’ve ever had.
I have only two minor complaints. The default appetizer was an interesting mixture of pickled carrot slices and chilies. I was expecting jalapeño peppers, but whatever green chilies they served were quite bland. The bottled hot sauces on the table weren’t particularly hot. Frankly I can hardly fault Huarachitos, as Seattle really doesn’t do HOT. At most Asian places I’ve eaten at 5 stars hot is usually “meh” for me…
Seriously, check this place out! I’ve been on this quest since 1987. Like Jimmy Page during his Song Remains the Same fantasy sequence, I have climbed the mountain and reached the pinnacle. Like Jimmy, I saw into my own soul. I had a culinary epiphany on Epiphany. You can too. If you drive, you will probably have to find parking on the side streets. The address is 5418 MLK Jr. Way S. and the phone is 206-568-3019.
UPDATE: I’m afraid that this restaurant has experienced a major fire, and is now closed:
Yesterday I was talking on the telephone when I heard them; two sonic booms. The sound was loud enough to rattle the windows of my house, though not disruptive enough to change the conversation I was having about sandblasting media…
I knew they were sonic booms because I’m 47 and I used to hear them periodically when I was a child growing up in Missoula, Montana. A sonic boom has a very characteristic sound, unlike a firecracker or a gunshot, in that it’s a double noise. This is caused by the dual pressure waves emanating from the nose of the aircraft and the tail. I remember learning this as a child, because my mother allowed me to buy a book at the Missoula Mercantile entitled something like “SST” which stood, of course, for Super Sonic Transport.
At the time, there was a great debate as to whether commercial supersonic aircraft should be allowed to fly over the United States, and this book was a timely and informative source of popular information on the subject.
After I got off the phone yesterday I drove down and bought my bag of abrasives, returned home, then got on the Internet to look for news. Indeed, two fighter jets had scrambled due to a small passenger plane having violated the temporary no fly zone around Boeing Field.
The last time I was in Missoula, I spent quite a bit of time going through the microfilm morgues of both the Mansfield and the Missoula Public Libraries. I was looking for something else, but chanced across the following news story from page five of the Missoulian, dated July 13, 1985. The text within the image is essentially illegible, so here is a transcription. Please forgive me for not including the human interest story of one Karen Simons who “likes the sound caused by military planes flying at speeds of more than 2,000 mph at altitudes in excess of 80,000 feet.”
Reconnaissance aircraft pegged as noisemakers
Supersonic, high-altitude, photo-reconnaissance aircraft out of California’s Beale Air Force Base apparently are responsible for recent sonic booms that have jarred windows and shaken walls in the Missoula area.
Staff Sgt. Cliff Davis of Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls said Friday that Air Force SR-71 “Blackbird” aircraft of the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing have been flying over U.S. air space on training missions and refueling exercises.
Built by Lockheed and classified as top secret, the 107-foot–long planes fly at more than 2,000 mph at altitudes in excess of 80,000 feet, said Davis, who called them “the world’s most advanced strategic reconnaissance aircraft.”
Davis, who has been handling sonic boom complaints from Missoula and neighboring towns, said Thursday that the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command in Nebraska has been helping with complaints. Friday, however he said complaints are being processed by Beale AFB.
Davis said the Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration try to choose flight corridors that avoid highly populated areas. He said Beale officials have been notified of the Montana complaints and that they’re going to try to work out the problem.
What’s interesting to me about this story is that it became news because it happened in 1985. My memory is that sonic booms were more or less gone by the early 1970’s. There’s clearly a bit of unintended irony as well, because if the story is being reported in the newspaper, with a photograph of the airplane included, it really can’t be “top secret.”
What’s disturbing about the two sonic booms over Seattle yesterday is that it caused massive telephone call overloads to the 911 emergency systems in the area. First off, it’s a testament to how lame, ignorant and fearful so many people are who would call 911 for such a thing. More disturbingly, it demonstrates to terrorists or potential terrorists how easily the 911 system can be overloaded and brought to its knees. What better way to initiate an attack than to disable the fundamental emergency reporting network?
In a less dour vein, it reminds me of a simpler time, when there were separate phone numbers for police, fire and other services. When people would see a UFO, they would often call the police, which makes me to wonder what the police were supposed to do about it; arrest the UFO?
The following is a transcription of the sensational story written by Larry Howell that appeared on the front page of the Missoulian on May 2, 1985. This is the “official” version of events, which I’ve written about previously.
A 28 year old man firing a shotgun out the window of a third floor apartment in downtown Missoula kept dozens of police officers at bay for 4&1/2 hours Wednesday before negotiators talked him into surrendering.
No one was hit by the shotgun blasts, but one reportedly came within 3 feet of a scurrying motorcycle officer and at least one other was aimed at officers, authorities say.
The man, identified as John W. Munro surrendered at 8:16 p.m. ending a tense drama that began at 3:41 p.m. when 9-1-1 received a call that shots were being fired into the alley between the 100 blocks of Main and Front Streets.
Munro’s apartment in the Missoula Apartments looks east into that alley, toward the Glacier Building, where police sharpshooters set up with high-power rifles and scopes.
Police Capt. Don Millhouse said little is known about Munro, except that he told negotiators he had recently been released from a Veterans Administration hospital. Several evacuated residents of the Missoula Apartments said Munro was a loner who’d moved in a couple of weeks before.
Millhouse said one witness told authorities that after firing the first shots, Munro yelled “Are the cops coming? I want to go to the hospital.”
Several early news broadcasts reported that Munro was a Vietnam veteran. However, because of Munro’s age – he would have been 18 when U.S. troops evacuated Saigon- Millhouse said it didn’t seem possible for him to have been in Vietnam. Millhouse was unsure how many shots were fired, but estimated it at a dozen, including the two he said were directed at officers.
Motorcycle patrolman Brent Sells said that when he peeked around a corner in the alley Munro fired close enough that Sells felt the sting of flying gravel.
“It sure got my adrenaline going.” Sells said, adding that another officer told him that the blast hit 2-3 feet behind him. He added that Munro had blown out a window in a nearby building when he saw several officers behind it.
Officers from the police and sheriff’s office were involved in the standoff, and they sealed off the entire block. While a negotiating team talked to Munro over the phone, other officers were informed of his actions by the sharpshooters on the Glacier Building’s seventh floor.
The negotiating team included officers from both departments as well as two FBI agents who acted as advisers.
Police had first believed Munro might have some sticks of dynamite, but they turned out to be flares.
Munro also had an ax, and during the latter part of the siege he chopped a hole in his floor and dropped a lit flare onto the bed of the apartment below, starting a fire, Millhouse said.
While firefighters were dousing the fire, Millhouse said Munro fired one shot through the hole. He also fired into the hallway when he opened his door to get a portable phone supplied by negotiators.
Earlier Wednesday a man whose description fit that of Munro had visited two other downtown bars and a bank carrying either a shotgun or shotgun shells and a bottle of pills.
Millhouse said Munro had asked negotiators over the phone for a prescription drug. “He asked the negotiators once for a medicine a doctor had prescribed for him but we didn’t have that kind.”
Munro yelled out the window at one point that he wanted to see his doctor, a man named Jim Crawford whose office was supposedly at St. Patrick Hospital. There is no doctor by the name Jim Crawford listed in Missoula. A little later, Munro yelled “What’s the answer?”
Police Captain Scott Graham yelled back, “We’re working on it.”
Munro was taken to St. Patrick Hospital after his surrender, where he is under heavy guard.
A man identified as John Munro clutches a shotgun as he peers from a third-floor window Wednesday afternoon.
Munro’s window as it appeared in 2010. A higher resolution image can be found here.
Law enforcement officers anxiously watch for John Munro, 28, to reappear at the window.
Officers Bill Wicks, left, and Al Baker escort Munro from the apartments.
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