Blog

“What’s a soft pretzel?”

“When will they be ready?”

“Who are you?”

Others stood back, watching for their train to be announced, staring at us in the way that only British people can stare: quietly, properly, imperceptibly.

Then we rolled our first pretzels, put them in the oven. The smell caught the attention of some passersby. They stopped, asked a few questions, went to their train.

The first pretzels came out of the oven. And before we knew what happened, someone approached the counter.

“I’ll take one,” she said. Then someone else came up. Then another customer. I was rolling pretzels, and people were buying them. Ben was selling them. We kept looking at each other, wide-eyed, disbelieving.

I ducked down under the counter and made a very long distance call to my parents. It was early in the morning there. I didn’t care.

“Mom, Dad,” I said, my voice shaking with emotion. “We’re selling pretzels. People are actually buying pretzels. Can you believe it?”

The picture is of me, almost ten years ago, looking very nervous, very happy and very young. And I think I was probably up to no good.

* * * * *

(to read the first installment about our move to England, click HERE)

I’ve discovered that, as a parent, I feel much the same about cleaning out our minivan as I do about going in search of something in my wife’s purse. I’m overwhelmed before I even begin, I’d rather not be doing it, and I’m very worried about what I might find. I’m also obsessed with the possibility of inadvertently stabbing myself with something.

* * * * *

About two months ago, just before the cold weather permanently settled in for the winter, my wife was driving home from the dairy. This incident may or may not have been told previously on Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites. One of the glass half-gallon jugs of milk toppled and smashed. The milk ran throughout the van and soaked into the carpet.

I wearily trudged to the van after hearing of this disaster, trying to keep a good attitude toward the love of my life, armed with some sort of carpet cleaner, an endless supply of paper towels, and a tub of hot soapy water. My cleaning efforts were weak, at best.

How smelly can old milk really get, anyway? I asked myself, opting not to pull out the carpets.

Two months later, I can tell you.

Very smelly. So smelly it takes four of those little green trees to drown out the stench. I arrive at meetings smelling like pine needles soaked in Pine-Sol.

* * * * *

Last week my family got sick. It started with Sam projectile vomiting at the end of the tour of the Hershey’s Chocolate Factory.

“He was probably just car sick,” we said. “Or maybe that little ride in the factory upset his stomach. Or maybe it’s that pine smell in the van.”

The next day his sister threw up, same van, right on the seat. Which is right above where most of the milk had pooled two months prior. I wasn’t home at the time, but my wife, very considerately I might add, left the vomit-covered seat for me to clean up. So, on Saturday, at the end of a week during which 5 of the 6 of us  shared Sammy’s little belly virus, I found myself cleaning out the van.

* * * * *

I started with the vacuum, and this really is the crux of my story. I’ve often marveled at how, now that I’m a parent, nothing really grosses me out anymore. I eat stuff off the floor, I let my kids slobber and drool all over me – I almost licked some poop off of my hand while changing a diaper because I didn’t know what it was. After watching four kids stick everything and anything into their mouths, I now find myself doing exactly that.

What’s this? I don’t know. How should I examine it? I think I’ll stick it in my mouth.

* * * * *

While I was vacuuming the overwhelmingly piney, sour-milk smelling, vomitty stench that is now our van carpets, I noticed a little M&M on the floor. I’m not a big M&M fan, so I vacuumed it up. But just as it was going into the nozzle, I realized it was not an M&M.

It was a grape Skittle. It had that beautiful little Helvetica “S” on the side.

And for a split second I had to admit something to myself, something I’m now admitting to the world.

If I would have known that was a grape Skittle, I would have eaten it.

* * * * *

Is there anything in the world that you would eat, if you found it on a similar van floor in similar circumstances? Be honest now.

And for one of my most argued-over posts (a top 10 candy ranking), read THIS

Let me tell you about my experience with rockets.

When I was in 1st grade I joined this group called the Royal Rangers – the church equivalent of Boy Scouts. We spent many weekends camping in the rain, drinking Tang and having pancake eating contests (during which I distinctly remember a guy by the name of John Reihl eating 37 pancakes – the passing of 27 years MAY have caused that number to inflate, but not by more than 10%).

Anyway, as I look back on my days in the RR, there are a few activities that stick out in my mind: the Pinewood Derby Car races (where you could easily tell the dads were more involved than the boys due to the Lamborghini-like designs and wheel alterations and weight changes made after the weigh-in); memorizing the various creeds (which I can still spit out by heart); and the rockets.

Yes, the rockets.

* * * * *

I never actually built a rocket – it was an activity solely for the over-12 year old age bracket. But those things were awesome. They put these toilet-paper roll-like tubes together, pasted some fins on the outside, stuck some explosives up the tail end, sat the rocket on this wiry launch pad. Step back. Press the ignition button.

A whistling whoosh, and the rocket flew up in the air, too high to see. A chute popped out and us younger kids would chase it across the fields, trying to catch it before it smashed into the field and broke.

* * * * *

Sometimes we stuck a little army man in the rocket, attached to the parachute. Occasionally he returned to earth unscathed. More often than not he arrived a melted lump of plastic, 3rd-degree plastic burns. We buried those guys in a small army graveyard beside the church (ironically, most of the attendants of that particular church had grown up anabaptist, and pacifist – I’m not sure about their stance on having a military graveyard on church property).

* * * * *
Since I wasn’t old enough to launch a rocket, sometimes I would ball an army man up in a parachute and try to toss him high in the air, but I just couldn’t throw him high enough to get the chute to open up. Sometimes, you just need a rocket.

* * * * *

Having trouble getting your blog to take off? Feel like you need to inject some life and new ideas and perhaps a little rocket fuel up the tail end? Check out Bryan Allain’s new blog-coaching website: Blogrocket. He’s got some great tips, an amazing e-book about blogging, and you can even check out an option to have him personally coach your blog to higher levels. He’s been blogging for almost 10 years, has over 1000 subscribers and 6,000 – 8,000 unique readers every month.

It’s time to hitch your blog to a rocket.

On Wednesday afternoon I worked alongside Ken Mueller at Square One Coffee in Lancaster. Sometimes I love being in the city,  especially in the winter: everything is closer, people seem nicer (the cold gives everyone an excuse to hurry past one another – you can assume, true or not, that if the weather was warm you would stop and chat), and the street lights wink on, extending these short days when the sun sets so early.

Winter in the country feels very quiet, and dark, and removed from real life. Sort of like Pluto after it was de-planetized.

* * * * *

I’ve never lived in a city, but I think I would like to, some day.

* * * * *

Of course I would miss having a garden. And the kids would miss having a huge outdoor area to run around in, usually unattended. I love the peace and quiet and stillness. But, if we lived in the city, we could walk to places. We could get rid of one of our vehicles. We could have a favorite cafe and order in.

Would I miss the country more than I would enjoy the city? I don’t know.

Where do you live? What do you like the most about it?

The first time Ben and Shar took Maile and I to visit Victoria Station, we were standing around trying to get traffic counts to use in our business plan. Problem was, there were too many people to count.

Maile also got pooped on by a pigeon. I had gone to the bathroom and when I came back she was standing in the middle of the concourse, arms outspread, shaking her head back and forth in disbelief. She even had a little on her face.

* * * * *

The entire station smells like baking bread or coffee or sewage, depending on your proximity to various food stands and restrooms dotted throughout. There are five Starbucks in Victoria Station. This picture is of the small half of the station.

And 10 million travelers pass through Victoria Station…each month. It was the Heathrow Airport of train stations.

Yet somehow Ben managed to persuade the management team at Network Rail that two 20-somethings could open and operate an Auntie Anne’s Soft Pretzel stand in the middle of one of their busiest stations.

* * * * *

When our shipment of pretzel stuff arrived from the States, we couldn’t find a bay large enough to give the truck access. So we persuaded the driver to park on the street – I think one of us even promised we would pay the ticket if he got one. Then came the tedious process of unloading: pallet after pallet after pallet was lowered to the ground floor, (slightly illegally) carted through busy Victoria Station (after midnight it is still a bustling place), and deposited in an area they gave us for storage. Every time we rolled past the station manager he would shake his head disapprovingly, but we never stopped to discuss.

We didn’t know it at the time, but those pallets of flour would become our beds in the coming weeks, when 30 consecutive days of working 5am – midnight began taking their toll.

30 pallets in all, each weighing hundreds of pounds. We were exhausted. And exhilarated. And still waiting for all of our final permits.

* * * * *

Sometime in April, 2002, the store was completed. Everything was ready…except our general contractor had messed up on getting us access to water.  So each morning we took the train into the city, hoping that would be the day. And each day we discovered that the water had not been connected. Finally they identified a blue water pipe traversing the ceiling of the station, about forty feet above our store. We bargained for access. We promised to work on connecting to that pipe during off hours (from 1am to 5am). Each day we got closer.

The opening was imminent. We temporarily moved into one of Ben’s friend’s flats in the city, to shorten the commute during our opening. Yet each day, when we arrived, the water still hadn’t been connected.

I distinctly remember the feelings, the emotions, of those days. Frustration that forty feet separated us from a long-awaited opening. Excitement that we were so close. Dread, that it would fail.

* * * * *

(to read the next installment, “The First Pretzel,” click HERE

(to read the first installment about my life in England, click HERE)