AN ESSAY ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF COMMON BEVERAGES TO INCREASING ENTROPY (NO REAL SCIENTISTS ALLOWED)

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Beer, Coffee, Humor, Humorous Essay, Increasing Entropy

There are a bunch of scientific formulas about increasing entropy. They are all way over my head, although I think they suggest that everything will disintegrate (or be ripped apart if you’re a fan of the macabre) into tiny little nothings drifting around in near absolute zero un de ces beaux jours. The kind of ending the Norse gods would have appreciated, gloomy gusses one and all. Recalling Twain’s adage that knowing you are to be hanged in the morning focuses the mind wonderfully, there is a slim chance that if people are around billions of years from now, they will have figured out some solution, having increased their intelligence exponentially, no doubt without increasing their wisdom one iota. So instead of getting bogged down in real science, I will use a lay definition of the term “increasing entropy” (namely this lay person’s definition). I cite two impeccable sources to justify this. Back in the day (if you think I’m going to actually research this for dates and stuff you’re nuts) a NY produce importer appealed a tax case all the way to The Supreme Court. NY taxed fruit and vegetables at different rates. The importer claimed that botanically tomatoes were fruit and should be taxed at the lower rate. The Court ruled that the science didn’t matter. If commonly tomatoes are considered vegetables and eaten like vegetables, then they are vegetables. For my second impeccable source, I will quote Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean — nothing more nor less.”

Therefore increasing entropy is the process of moving from the one to the many, from a state of unity to a state of division, from three television channels to three hundred (all filled with reality shows featuring people I wouldn’t hire to clean my pool), from the harmony of Mozart to Pink Floyd (unless you’re stoned), from pure fresh snow to polluted slush. Speaking of which, Tullulah Bankhead once said that she was as pure as the driven slush, which is neither here nor there, well maybe mostly there. It certainly isn’t here. I don’t think I’d want Tullulah here. Her reputation was worse than Joan Crawford’s, and we know what Bette Davis said about Joan Crawford: “I wouldn’t sit on her toilet.” But I digress. Anyway, I consider increasing entropy to be the quantifiable (but not by me) manifestation of evil in the universe, the festering hand of Satan at work, and nowhere is this more evident than in the proliferation of frivolous choices. We all have a friend who dithers forever over a menu or a wine list. This is the mark of someone who has been touched by evil. They should be banished from civilized society. Fortunately most of those lost souls move to Florida and manage homeowners associations, where they can foreclose on some poor guy who has neglected his lawn because his little girl has cancer.

When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Chad, Africa, on the southern border of the Sahara, where it’s very hot and dry, we used to play volleyball at the Ambassador’s Residence, and then say five or so of us very dehydrated PCVs would head to a bar. We’d sit outside at tables. When the waitress approached, before she even got to the table, in Chadian Arabic I’d order five cokes and five Galas (the excellent local beer brewed by Heineken). I wasn’t going to permit individual ordering until I’d quenched my thirst. We’d drink the old-fashioned fully loaded cokes first to rehydrate, then the beers. And yes there was usually some grumbling about my high handedness, but I wasn’t going to sit there dying of thirst while some nimrod decided whether or not he/she wanted an orangina. Plus the more complicated the order, the more likely to get screwed up. Nothing was ever left undrunk. Now I just know that there is some self-styled expert out there right now screaming that cokes have caffeine and therefore are not good for rehydration. Nonsense. In Chad you could actually feel your body rehydrating when you drank a coke, and don’t get me started on the proliferation of experts on everything, another sign of increasing entropy. Go to any hot dry place in the world, and you’ll find people drinking lots and lots of tea, usually really strong tea. I’ll give you a gallon of water and a Chadian a teapot full of his strong super sweet tea, send you both out walking in the Sahara, and we’ll see who drops first. But once again I digress.

Now I’m not saying that choices don’t matter. Some do. In the words of Patrick H. T. Doyle, “If Pavlov had tested a cat he would have failed.” Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “We are our choices.” Think about that the next time you order a decaffeinated almond vanilla latte. Perhaps the most troubling satanic abomination to plague the earth in recent years are those ridiculous individual cup coffee makers. I want to pull a Belushi every time I see one. Not only do they create litter with every cup, but they represent the ultimate example of frivolous chaotic self-indulgence, in other words increasing entropy. A good cup of coffee is a beautiful thing, a natural work of art. Making a thousand variations of it, none of which taste as good as the original, is an act of spiritual disintegration.

“You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline — it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but in the very least you need a beer.” (Frank Zappa) And finally I come to beer. Finally I always come to beer. To paraphrase and totally abuse a couple of speeches from Kennedy I think, for someone out on the cutting edge of freedom engaged in the long twilight struggle against increasing entropy, it is disheartening to see respected beer brands like Leinenkugel and Sam Adams brag about all the different kinds of beer they brew. My reaction is to resolve never to drink any of those again. I have this vision of their most experienced brewer working on the vats of their signature beer, when a boss approaches. “Frank, it’s summer, we need you down on the shandy vats. You know, where we dump lemon juice and sugar into the beer. Mergatroid will take over for you here.” I don’t even like the concept of light beer, but I lost that battle long ago. One man can only do so much. Me? Heeding the immortal words of Willie Nelson, “There are more old drunks than old doctors,” I’ll just have a Beck’s. Gotterdammerung y’all!

 

 

ONE DAY HONEY, THE NEXT DAY ONIONS (GREGORY “GROMO” ALEX’S STORY)

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Africa, Beer, Cameroon, Chad, Gregory "Gromo" Alex, Humor, Nonfiction, Peace Corps

Gromo died young as the result of a fall at his home. I believe he was fighting cancer at the time. He was a truly great man, awarded for valor by the UNDP for his heroic efforts to save lives during the horrors of Rwanda. I wrote this story long before his passing and without any knowledge of his time in Rwanda. It reflects a happier time. The Chadian Arabic proverb translated for the title is: “Yom assal, wa yom basal.”

Gromo came to Chad as a Peace Corps Volunteer almost two years after I did. He was a big muscular English teacher, reminding me of Mongo in Blazing Saddles, not that he lacked intelligence, but rather he exuded an aura of placid strength. It was impossible not to like Gromo. Chadians loved him, especially children. He couldn’t go anywhere without attracting a flock of kids. For reasons known only to him, he chose to make Princess his girlfriend. Princess was the name we vols gave her, one of those contrary nicknames like calling a huge man Tiny. We knew all the street ladies, some better than others. Remember this was the mid seventies, before AIDS, or at least before anybody knew about it. Most of them had come to N’Djamena as runaway brides who couldn’t stand being married to a much older man, or a cruel one. Or they had failed to produce children in the allotted time frame. In Chad it was never the man’s fault. In general they weren’t callous hardened prostitutes. One older vol advised us to think of them as old-fashioned New England town tarts. That said they looked to establish a longterm relationship with a rich man. And to them all white men were rich, even Peace Corps Vols. They weren’t above using a trick or two to accomplish that task. A few volunteers had been surprised by eleven month pregnancies.

Most of the street ladies were delicate boned and lightish colored, from the northern Islamic tribes. Many had tribal scars, but these tended to be shallow scars on the upper jaw or under the eyes, more decoration than disfigurement. A smattering had blue tattooed lips, permanently appearing to be wearing smeared blue lipstick. The tribal scars didn’t bother me, but I admit to finding the tattooed lips a bit off putting. Princess was a big southern Chadian woman, not fat, but strong, big-hipped and very black. She was no wilting flower. I remember sitting at an outside table at a bar one night. None of the tables were far from the caniveau (concrete open sewer) that ran alongside the road. That perfume was part of a night out in N’Djamena. I heard a commotion and looked several tables away where Princess shouted at a French soldier. Suddenly she picked up a twenty-two ounce beer bottle and hit him over the head. Then she hoisted the stunned soldier on her shoulders and tossed him in the caniveau.

As a rule Chadian women were proud, jealous, quick to anger, and not adverse to violence. Nasaras (white people or sometimes foreigners in general) were strange creatures from a mysterious culture. Like most women they wanted to gauge the worth of their relationships. A friend of mine’s girlfriend made him so angry he smashed a favorite piece of furniture, which delighted her. He must have valued her highly. Another male vol invited a female vol to dinner, thinking nothing of it. When his Chadian wife found out a woman was coming, she broke every dish in the house one by one. Nobody was coming to dinner at that house. One night in the same bar where I witnessed Princess conk the soldier, Joe, another vol, publicly admonished his girlfriend because he had given her a scarf and her female Chadian friend was wearing it, not her. The girlfriend jumped across the table and bit into his well worn Levi’s thigh high. He tried to pry her loose, but she kept at it as blood began to run down his pants. Finally he punched her hard. That worked.

Sitting and drinking with Gromo and Princess at another outside bar one late afternoon, I noticed a fly in my beer glass. In the states I would have tossed the beer, but not a poor PCV. I fished the fly out. I was feeling magnanimous. “Fly on little buddy and live.” But I really should have known, you can’t fly with beer suds on your wings. Suddenly Princess stood up and walked to a table with four legionnaires. Soon she was laughing and flirting. Being the more experienced vol, I explained to Gromo how this was going to play out. She would keep at it until he walked away, in which case she would know he didn’t value her highly. Or he could intervene and probably get the crap beaten out of him. Four French Foreign Legionnaires were more than a match even for Gromo. Further I explained that I was leaving. I had no intention of fighting legionnaires over Princess. I left. Gromo took a beating. Princess was happy. Eventually Gromo went so far as to take her to the states. Not long after he attended a party a bit roughed up from a recent fight with her.

I finished my Peace Corps service in December of 1978 and immediately went to work for USAID/Chad on contract. Just two months later in February of 79 civil war broke out in N’Djamena. I was asked to stay on and help with administrative tasks. After a few days of fighting, when the firing had slowed enough to permit movement, all Peace Corps Vols and non-essential personnel were evacuated to Yaounde, Cameroon. Since I stayed on in N’Djamena, I heard the rest of the story from my Peace Corps buddy Mark. After experiencing that ordeal and being suddenly uprooted, the vols were in a fey mood. Their lives had been turned upside down. The afternoon after their arrival in Yaounde, they gathered at some welcoming function at the Ambassador’s Residence. Unfortunately the pool was under repair and dry. After who knows how many beers, somebody dared Gromo to dive in anyway. He did. He didn’t kill himself, but he bloodied his head badly.

That same night in the bar district of Yaounde, Gromo sported a bloody swath of bandages and suffered a severe headache. There was a disturbance in the street. A large long-horned steer had escaped its owner and was running free trailing a rope. A crowd of laughing and shouting people chased it. This was tremendous entertainment. Gromo stepped into the street directly in front of the steer. The steer stopped. For a minute or two there was a High Noon style face off. Then Gromo reached forward and grabbed both horns. His arm muscles bulged as he held the steer. Then the steer lowered its head and flipped him up and over the steer’s back. He somersaulted in the air, landing on his back behind the steer. Thankfully part of the fall was broken by the crowd. However, his heroics allowed the owner to grab the rope and control the steer. The crowd hoisted Gromo on their shoulders and paraded him up and down the street – the conquering hero. For reward a taxi driver offered to take him anywhere he wanted to go for free. Instead Gromo asked if he could just ride around with the taxi driver all night while he picked up fares. And that’s what he did.

ACCIDENT PRONE (GREAT CHARACTERS I HAVE KNOWN — DAGUE’S STORY)

Tags

Africa, Beer, Chad, Humor, Nonfiction, Peace Corps

 

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Le gout de bonheur

 

“Dague, it rhymes with vague,” was how he introduced himself. He came from Minnesota and looked it, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, tall. After a few beers he might tell the story about the time he fell off a tractor facedown in a field. The metal spikes of the trailing equipment had planted him two inches deep, breaking a bunch of bones in the process and leaving him with a back that looked topographical. Then there was the metal plate in his head, the scar on his abdomen, and the faded burns on his forearms, each with its own story.

He served four years in Chad as a Peace Corps Volunteer, working in N’Djamena’s parks and gardens, such as they were. A normal tour of duty was two years. Extensions for one year were fairly common, but serving four years was unusual. He was in charge of a small crew of Chadians who worked daily to ward off the encroaching desert and create little, usually temporary, pockets of beauty. He fit the city’s Beau Geste ambiance. He would have looked good in a kepi. Buildings were made of either earthen or concrete blocks with a plaster finish, often painted in dull pastels like smoky blue or leaden yellow that tended to fade gracefully. Since independence all of Chad’s infrastructure had deteriorated, but N’Djamena’s architecture had worn rather well. Visitors often mistook Dague for some unfortunate foreigner condemned to swing a pick on a work gang, but the people of N’Djamena found his indefatigable work ethic uplifting. Towards the end of his service the Chadian Government held a special ceremony to award him a medal, the only PCV ever to be so honored. A week later he received a bill for the medal.nexplicably, N’Djamena produced one of the world’s great beers, Gala. It was as if the universe decreed that if we had to endure the horrible dust storms in winter and unbearable heat in the hot season, we would be given some boon to balance things out. Gala was ambrosia. Blond men with Teutonic accents brewed Gala, importing everything save the water, and that came from a deep well, a well that tapped the ancient water trapped beneath Chad, water from pristine rain that fell long before the industrial revolution. Gala came in serious twenty-two ounce bottles which sold for about thirty cents, a price even volunteers could afford, at least for a good part of the month. Toward the end of the month many a vol was limited to eating Peace Corps sandwiches (bread and mustard), but still washed down with Gala if they could afford it. I once heard a rookie volunteer ask an older vol, “How about we split a beer?” To which the older vol replied, “Let’s split two.” It changed some with the seasons, but the Chadian Government favored a split work day for employees involved in manual labor to avoid the worst of the heat. It became a ritual for wells vols and Dague and a few others to break at midday, meet at Moustapha’s store for a beer, then go home for lunch and a siesta. After several hours of lying on your back in the dirt, trying to coax rusted bolts loose from an old land rover transmission, a cold Gala tasted mighty good.

 

Mr. Natural At Door, Dague On Right

 

Moustapha made an interesting character study. Casablanca-like, he was a dark-haired, olive-skinned, slightly built, obsequious, shrewd fellow of indeterminate age and origin. Arabic seemed his native language, though he spoke several others nearly as well. He had his hand in pots on both sides of the law, while giving the impression that he would never dream of cheating his customers, unless the amount involved was substantial, and even then he would have the good grace to feel badly about it. He did what he had to do to prosper in a hard land, and he kept his beer cold. His store sat right in the middle of town on the main street. It was rather small and cluttered, however a high ceiling and two open arched entrances gave the illusion of space. Vols would sit on coke crates and observe the passing scene.

Me on left at Moustapha’s with my late buddy Roger Jones

N’Djamena’s indigent knew where they were at noon, and though vols had but little, that little was a lot in Chad. So every weekday at noon a procession of the blind, the crippled, and those touched by the gods passed by Moustapha’s to garner a few coins. Dague’s favorite was an old man that he had nicknamed Mr. Natural. Mr. Natural wore “a twisty piece o’ rag” that just might have been a uniform once and ancient combat boots, invariably balancing a nearly empty burlap sack on his head. Rumor had it that the sack contained memorabilia from wartime service with DeGaulle’s Brassaville garrison of Free French, where Rick and his friend went at the end of Casablanca, but no one would compromise the old man’s dignity by looking. Mr. Natural had strong rough hands, a grizzled beard, and eyes that looked into places others couldn’t see, vast empty places. He always smiled and shook every available hand while mumbling strings of greetings and thank yous in Chadian Arabic. He demonstrated the same effusive gratitude for gifts worth pennies as for larger amounts. It was all the same to Mr. Natural.

One hot day the usual crowd gathered, plus Richard, a teacher vol down due to rebel activity from his remote post in a desert oasis, when Phil, the Assistant Peace Corps Director in Chad, and a middle-aged American walked into Moustapha’s. The stranger was a former Congressman who, having lost his last election, had received a Presidential appointment to some new position that had something or other to do with overseeing The Peace Corps. When he extended his hand toward a vol, Mr. Natural took it instead, and since the Congressman didn’t shake Mr. Natural’s hand, Mr. Natural didn’t let go. The Congressman tried walking to the other end of the store, but Mr. Natural just followed in tow, Harpo-like. Finally the Congressman yanked his hand away. Mr. Natural just smiled and wandered around looking for the next hand.

After introductions the Congressman started criticizing the wells vols for using “advanced” technologies. It should be noted that auguring wells is as low tech as it gets in the machine-driven well drilling business. It works on the Archimedes Screw Principle, which has been around, well, since Archimedes. Anyway It was an old tired song. Peace Corps loved the one man and a shovel concept. It was very Peace Corpsish. Dague represented the ideal volunteer, but volunteers driving Mercedes trucks with mounted drilling rigs made them very nervous. Never mind that for years, dating back to the mid-sixties, even though in those days it was done at an even lower tech level, the wells project had provided many thousands of villagers with potable water. It wasn’t quantifiable, but many children were alive that would have died from dysentery, and many women had avoided years of back-breaking labor because drilling closed tube wells allowed them to be located up on the dunes in the middle of the villages, not down in the ouadis where open wells had to be dug. Fortunately, the U.S. Embassy, the Chadian Government, and USAID (the funding agency) all loved the project. So there was little Peace Corps could do except lecture us from time to time on the evil of our ways. Not getting a reaction bothered the Congressman, so he escalated: “How can Peace Corps Volunteers afford to swizzle beer like this?” Now that hit a nerve. Dague finished his beer and approached the Congressman. For a second I thought Dague was going to grab his collar, but he just stared, then turned and walked out. The rest of us followed.

Dague and Richard hopped on mobylettes (French mopeds) and headed down to the Peace Corps office to check their mail. Dague exited the office grumbling to find Richard standing by his mobylette reading a letter. “What’s the problem Dague?” Richard asked. “First that Congressman jerk and now no mail.” “Well why don’t you punch your mobylette? That always makes me feel better.” And Dague did. Of course he only hit the cushioned seat and not all that hard, but there was a metal plate that ran underneath the center of the seat, and Dague hurt his wrist. They decided since they were at the office anyway, he’d better go on in and let Sue, the nurse, take a look at it.

Sue was a plump red-headed Boston-Irish force of nature, reeking of rubbing alcohol and cinnamon. She and her diplomat African-American husband had seven adopted children, a catholic jumble of genders, nationalities, and races. She tended her flock of PCVs with a sense of inexorable purpose, as relentless as a firetruck. The condom barrel by her door exemplified her style, seeming to shout, “Partake! That which I contain is crucial to your health, and I have them in abundance.” A few minutes after Dague had entered her domain, Sue’s piercing voice transcended brick and plaster, dominating the city’s competing sounds, like the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. “You did what???” “I punched my mobylette,” was Dague’s matter-of-fact reply. Dague was long on honesty, perhaps, in this case, to a fault. “You moron! You idiot! You broke your damn wrist!” As her vocabulary grew more colorful, Richard slipped away, lest her attention turn to him.

There was a volleyball game at the Ambassador’s Residence after work that day. It was played on the driveway inside the security gates. It was informal, coed, and fun – a social event. Things were well underway when Dague peddled in on a bicycle. His wrist cast covered most of his hand, making it impossible for him to twist the handlebar accelerator on a mobylette. Of course he couldn’t play, but he cheered everybody on and responded good-naturedly to jibes about his broken wrist. When it became too dark to see the ball, the game ended and most people headed to a nearby bar. Dague peddled off. At some point Richard pulled up beside him. “Want to race?” he asked Dague. “Sure” Dague replied. They were both just kidding around, but Dague raised himself up on the pedals in pretense. That’s when the chain broke and Dague fell off the bike, tumbling down into a three-foot deep caniveau (concrete drainage channel) and breaking his other arm. They say Sue waxed poetic that night.

The following Saturday the wells vols used a land rover to transport Dague as they went bar hopping. He now sported a full sling type cast as well as his wrist cast. They wound up in a Chadian bar that they rarely frequented. The owner was delighted to have them. Crowds packed the isles just to watch Dague drink. He couldn’t handle a glass, but placing the bottle on the very edge of the table he’d squeeze the neck between his casts and slide down slowly in his chair, tilting the bottle ever downward until gravity transferred the beer to the general vicinity of his mouth. The excited crowd drew the attention of a passing beggar. Seeing some white faces, he decided to try his luck. He marched in waving a hand missing two fingers. “Life is hard!” he shouted in Chadian Arabic. “Allah has been generous to you white people, therefore you should be generous to me.” Dague took this as a personal challenge. He held up his sling, “See that”. Then he thrust his wrist cast under the beggar’s nose, “And that.” Dague jumped up, “Somebody help me get this shirt off.” Dague proudly presented a back with the texture of playdough that some child had left out in the rain. He pivoted, displaying the impressive purple saber-shaped scar on his abdomen Then brushing his hair back to reveal a ruddy scar, “In there is a metal plate as thick as a land rover fender.” The bar paused in absolute silence. Dague winked and began to fumble with his belt buckle. “Allah be merciful!” the beggar cried, breaking for the entrance and fleeing the bar.