[ How to cook your own Fish & Chips ]

It was St. Valentine’s Day eve before it occurred to Ed Nolan, a diesel mechanic and family man, that the ‘holiday’ needed to be celebrated or else his wife and eight kids would feel cheated. Brought up Catholic, Ed had met his wife Nancy when they were both in sixth grade at St. Valentine’s School back in Massachusetts, where they’d been childhood sweethearts. St. Valentine, as gorily depicted in the Catholic semi-sacred tome, “The Lives of the Saints,” had been a cupid-like young teenager shot to death by bow sent arrows, according to legend. As these grisly images surfaced in Nolan’s mind, he suddenly decided, without any planning whatsoever, that he’d have to take the entire family out to eat for “St. Valentine’s Day.” As it fell on a Sunday, but for some reason felt like a Friday, he figured it had to be a “fish place” — a restaurant specializing in seafood dishes. A born procrastinator, Ed and his family ended up driving around greater Los Angeles in search of a “fish place.” Finally, Ed pulled up to a seedy-looking diner called Cedrick’s Fish Place with Chips. “Perfect,” Ed exclaimed.

The food, planks of greenish-tinged cod with murky, dark red chowder tasted good enough going down. The younger Nolan children especially enjoyed the chowder and the process of discovering what “lurked beneath” in their bowls. “It tastes funny, but kind of nice,” remarked five-year-old Mary. 

A few hours later, the Nolan family en masse became very sick. A large quantity of vomit and diarrhea began to permeate their humble home. Much of it smelled like rotten fish. Ed procrastinated until his little girl began to resemble Typhoid Mary, a tragic character in history just as St. Valentine had been in his painful last ordeal. She began to develop her own greenish-tinge around the ears, nose, and mouth.      

Feeling nauseous and leaking out the derriere himself, Ed drove to the nearest urgent care facility post-haste. He remembered when they’d purchased a California Health Insurance policy from an agent named “Bill.” What was his last name? “Valentine,” Ed recalled. Next year, the Nolan family would plan well in advance for St. Valentine’s Day, the family’s patriarch ruefully mused.

Fishing Accident!!

Pete Wafsleger was an expert fisherman. Using bait and a fiberglass rod, he usually caught his limit. One day in May, Pete and five old friends, all experienced fishermen sans one, headed up to Pete’s favorite stream in Yosemite.  They drove up in an SUV, if not exactly fuel efficient, the vehicle was “fishing efficient,” according to Sam, the SUV’s owner and driver.

The vehicle’s onboard GPS worked swell, and within an hour, the group of friends arrived in the park. Within a few more minutes, they’d found Pete’s cherished stream. “Here we are!” he yelled. Sam stopped the car. The men felt like kids playing hooky when they got out their poles, and baited their hooks. Everybody was in a good mood. Five casts, expertly launched, went out into the stream.

Before Sam sent his own cast airborne, he spoke a red flag. “How do you even know for sure there’s even fish in this stream? It’s only about six inches deep!”

Pete and the rest turned to face Sam and flashed him looks. Every trout fisherman worth his tackle knows that a trout stream is seldom more than a foot deep. Besides, they’d all pulled stringers of writhing trout from this very stream. But at that very instant, Sam launched his cast. It sailed into the air like the others – for about seven feet – until Sam hooked Pete with considerable force – right in the forehead. “Geez Sam,” they all cried in unison, “now look what you’ve done.”

For his part, Pete just stood there bleeding profusely.  Sam drove in a quite a hurry back in the way they’d come, in fact, even further, all the way to Barstow. An emergency room gurney lay waiting for Pete. As he was wheeled off into the bowels of the hospital, his friends followed along like grown puppy dogs, and Sam seemed especially bedraggled. Pete lay there bleeding and repeating in the manner of a mantra, “Thank heavens I got health insurance coverage.”

Sure enough, Pete did have a plan in place. He’d purchased it a few months back from a California Health Insurance agent who was also a fisherman of sorts.

A few days later, the friends were all having a good laugh amid a few beers, even Pete, still wearing a bandage to protect the stitches.  “Still my friend?” Sam asked Pete.

“Sure,” Pete said, “Can’t help it. I’m hooked.” At least he wasn’t the friend that got away.

Everybody who is overweight, not grossly obese necessarily, but even those who find themselves pleasingly plump, get the urge to lose weight right after New Year’s. Diets are taken up like Bibles, and gymnasiums and sauna rooms are filled with perspiring people of every age and description. The offices of Turtlebaum & Turtlebaum, a Sacramento accounting firm of considerable renown, was no exception. Joe D’Angelo by his own estimation needed to shed twenty pounds worn around his middle like a girdle, Patty Provencal seemed to possess a double stomach along with her double chin; Betsy Boopora’s ankles had morphed into cankles, and Irving Iso, although quite conventional in most ways, possessed arms like an elephant’s trunk.

At the beginning of 2009, they’d all made New Year’s resolutions to lose the excess flab. Each was about to be weighed to learn just who might be winning the “Biggest Loser” prizes which had been offered by management as weight loss incentives. But the results were disappointing.

When Joe hopped up onto the precision scale, he’d lost only two pounds, and Betsy had lost just under a pound. Patty had actually gained forty pounds, and Irving had gained almost sixty. To describe any of these losers as “winners” seemed a stretch, but throughout the entire year, stress and anxiety about the “weigh-in” had been bubbling in their bloodstreams like lava from a volcano, and during the celebratory feast something was bound to give. People watched in abject horror as Irving turned red as a beet and actually “popped,” like in that Monty Python movie, and as he was whisked away in an ambulance, the same medical emergency to lesser degrees struck Betsy, Patty, and Joe.  While Irving had suffered some kind of massive stroke, his co-workers were merely hospitalized; thanks to a California health insurance agent who’d issued them all policies, they at least got to stay in separate semi-private rooms.

Joe grasped the prize he’d won in his left hand, the sinister one, while lying in bed and staring at the funny whorls in the hospital room’s ceiling. A nurse coming by with a bedpan happened to glance downwards and discover what it was: It was a ticket for the balcony as a member of the audience for the television show The Biggest Loser.

Because of his manipulative personality, his tendency to steal other children’s toys, and his predilection for tattling, other boys avoided eleven-year-old Stanley. When he was outside, he played solitary games like one-hand-clapping, and worse, he’d listen to that hand. Stanley’s mother, a single mom, could be accused of being overprotective, but she had contacted a widowed California Health Insurance agent named Ralph just to make sure her odd little cherub was covered by an individual child plan. This precaution seemed prudent, even prescient, once she started dating Ralph.

Let’s go camping up in the Sierras, Ralph announced one weekend. The three of them headed for a snow-covered campground in a rented SUV. After their tent was pitched, Stanley grew accustomed to the canvas structure’s fetid air and began his characteristic clapping game, which annoyed the heck out of Ralph. “Hey, let’s go out and throw some snowballs!” he announced. Pushed out into a winter wonderland as if re-emerging from the womb, Stanley, who had never really seen snow, began making a snowball with one hand. Ralph noticed. “You have to pack it – use your other hand,” he instructed. All too soon, Stanley had made his first-ever snowball.  But instinctively returning to his familiar game, the one-hand-clapping, the uncoordinated snowball became a projectile and smacked Ralph surprisingly hard on the side of the face.  Before he realized it, and because he assumed Stanley had meant to throw the snowball, Ralph retaliated with his adult strength. He may have thrown several. In any case, Stanley eventually screamed, “He broke my glasses! Ralph broke my glasses!”

Stanley’s mom drove at breakneck speed for forty miles out of that canyon until she made it to the nearest ER, hardly glancing at her newfound boyfriend.

Stanley had been cut below the left eye by a shard of glass, requiring three stitches. Afterwards, Ralph apologized. “I’m sorry kid,” he muttered.

Stanley was quick to forgive. “Want to play my game?” he asked. Ralph was initially repulsed, but decided, “Oh what the heck!” As the SUV sped along a narrow rural road somewhere north of Sacramento, two elusive hands chased each other while never touching.

Thirty-four year old Geronimo Jones, hypochondriac and confirmed cheapskate, was lying in bed painfully pondering. He’d been plagued by headaches and this one was a “doozy.” Tylenol hadn’t helped. Geronimo’s split-level ranch in Modesto recently had an alarm installed; he’d gotten a deal. Drifting off to an anguished sleep, Geronimo possibly awakened; he wasn’t sure, instead of a clanging alarm he heard only silence, and was taken, by what appeared to be silver-throated aliens, at least several – one wearing a funny extraterrestrial baker’s hat. Up to the mother ship he possibly went, he wasn’t sure exactly how, it didn’t involve diesel. He lay naked on a metallic table unable to move anything but his pinkies, staring at what appeared to be a photograph of a cat; it probably had fur.

The probing began. One alien seemed to have a medical background, and was evidently very thorough.  It felt very good; whatever he was doing. But a weird voice oozing out of an orifice that might have been the creature’s mouth suddenly blasted Geronimo out of his reverie like a Buck Rogers laser beam.  “Do you have Earthling coverage?”

The next morning, Geronimo Jones for the first time in a year didn’t have a headache but was having a panic attack. “Are those aliens crazy? I didn’t ask to be admitted to their mother ship. Are they going to charge me for treatment?”

Geronimo charged. Impulsively, he put in a frantic call to his California Health Insurance agent. Ring. Ring. Pick up, pick up. “Yes,” said the agent, a woman with a pleasant feline voice, akin to a human purr.   

“This is Mr. Jones.”

“Geronimo from Modesto?”

“Yes. It happened last night.”

“What?”

“I was abducted by aliens.”

“Again?”

“This time they want to charge me for the medical care. Can they do that?”

The cat-like agent was quick on her feet. She pounced. “Yes, if they call me, they actually can. But they’ll have to call me.”

Geronimo felt calm again. Thinking it over, he felt like he’d made out like a bandit. More importantly, he didn’t have a headache.

 The cartoon boy with an “every boy’s” persona would ask the Great Pumpkin arcane questions about life, and in a manner of being, the inanimate orange harvest veggie assumed the stature of an odd deity – or at least a sage in the tradition of certain gods transported from Greek Mythology. As a religion, such a pumpkin cult has its merits, and in these days of strident calls for health care reform, certain California Health Insurance agents have taken to visiting pumpkin patches in search of their own personal Great Pumpkin that may exist in the nether regions between Visalia and Fresno. For days the search for this orange quasi-deity has continued unabated, but although some giant spheroids, many with black features painted on them  like human faces, have been located, none as of yet can be considered sacred, or wiser than others culled from among their brethren. Where this Great Pumpkin resides, proclaimed an excitable agent from the environs around San Bernardino, speaking aloud but in very muted tones, ‘He is liable to be an oracle able to speak in tongues, or to offer wisdom, perhaps possessing a fluency understandable only to those who sell policies for every conceivable need, including but necessarily limited to the occasional health-related whim.’ This agent soon attracted a considerable following with such talk, and the second Cult of the Great Pumpkin was born. Finally as All Hallows Eve approached, a sacrifice was needed, and bands of gathering California Health Insurance agents began roaming the entire state like insurance-minded dervishes. Choosing a suitable Great Pumpkin, even for pie, proved to be a dangerous undertaking once the attention of the real Great Pumpkin was attracted, and soon chunks of familiar  faces began turning up everywhere, during the night and especially once the sun was up. In fact, the most introspective California Health Insurance agents, imitating Charlie Brown in a wondrous reincarnation of animated perpetual boyhood, began sitting Buddha-like in sundry patches all over California. Finally, an unfortunate California Health Insurance agent was indeed mistaken for that very orange veggie he’d been searching for. It was bound to happen.

Billy Blalock was eager to earn extra money. He needed a new skateboard and Playstation 3, but his parents were scrimping just to get by. His “job,” raking leaves at the Jones next door in their modest Rancho Bernardo ‘hood’, seemed like a no-brainer. When Sally Jones, a pert brunette thirty-something whom Billy considered “a second mom,” agreed to Billy’s raking after school, the teenager was elated.

“I can rake!” he exclaimed to Betty, his first mom, “I can rake!”

“Yes you can,” she replied deadpan, sort of like a 34-year-old feminine version of a Caucasian Barack Obama.   

But a strange thing happened on the way to Billy’s raking. Underneath the Jones’s imported maple tree, an exotic from New England, Billy sneezed. He returned to raking. He sneezed again.  He started raking again, a bit more tentatively this time. Suddenly he sneezed in a burst, once, twice, three times, perhaps a hundred times as he couldn’t stop sneezing. Billy was sneezing so hard he was crying. He ran away in tears from the poisonous tree straight to Sally’s ample bosom. “Second mom! Second mom!”  Billy cried, “I can’t.”  

“You can’t what?” Sally asked, noticing the tears in the eyes of her neighbor’s son.

“Rake,” Billy blurted, sobbing.

Billy’s real mom Betty decided to seek a medical solution since they’d purchased an individual child’s plan from a California Health Insurance agent.  Dr. Quag was friendly to Billy at his office and patted his belly several times, which seemed a bit weird to the boy. The prescription, however, gave Billy hope. The doctor prescribed sixty milligrams twice a day of a drug called fexofenadine, also referred to as Allegra, and the funny thing was, Billy had even heard of it, having seen it recently on a TV commercial. 

“Allegra,” Billy said, “I’ll be taking Allegra so I can rake by the maple tree!”

“Yes, you can,” said Dr. Quag, “if you remember to take your peach-colored pills!”

Betty was there too. “It’s peachy that Billy’s Allegra isn’t costing me out of pocket,” she said.

“Are they peach flavored?” Billy asked.

He was the biggest-boned kid in the 16-member Pedroia clan. At age 14, Rudy was downright husky as Pedroias went, graced with good looks and a sturdy physical stature freshly bestowed upon him by puberty. But in the harsh glare of the stadium klieg lights, he weighed only 87 pounds fully dressed in pads and gear, and a California health insurance agent triumphantly emerged as the family’s hero.Bakersfield’s Rudy Pedroia was a born athlete. At age ten, his father Randy first spied his son’s potential. When the kid pranced barefoot in the summer heat, “My boy has an athlete’s foot,” he casually remarked.  

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Rudy practiced. He knew every play. Fleet of athlete’s foot, the day came when he made the varsity squad. A freshman, the Pedroia’s little star sat on the bench on that fateful night. His wise parents had purchased a child’s individual health insurance plan for their son, just in case. Rudy was third-string; at four feet five and 87 pounds, no one beyond the Pedroia clan figured that Rudy would actually play. Still, the entire family watched as they always did. Randy was proud.  “He has athlete’s feet!” he would brag to anyone within earshot while attracting looks of mild disdain. Finally Rudy’s big moment came. The home team’s first-string tackle broke an ankle and was carried off the field on a stretcher. The second-string tackle got clotheslined in the groin and nearly lost his tackle. When that unconscious 200-pounder was carted off, the coach looked at the bench and saw … “You!” he barked, “Get in there!” The crowd uttered a collective gasp.  “He’s so shrimpy!” somebody’s grandmother screeched. But Rudy knew the plays.

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It didn’t really matter. While attempting to trip up the touchdown sprint of a monstrous fullback, Rudy’s outstretched toes served as a launching pad for the opposing team’s end zone. The sound of a Pedroia metatarsal crunching could be heard at the fifty-yard line.   Gathered around Rudy’s bed in his semi-private room where all three of Bakersfield High’s wounded players were hospitalized, only Rudy’s family was smiling. “What?” Randy Pedroia said, “My son has athlete’s feet!” Since they had purchased a teenager’s plan from a California Health Insurance agent, they could afford to smile.

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Centenarian David R. Morse’s family should have seen the birthday cake disaster coming. When Great-great-grandfather Morse tried blowing out all the candles on his birthday cake, the result was predictable. If it wasn’t for a California Health Insurance agent, it could have been financially tragic for his family as well.

He lived with his extended family instead of in a rest home. It was a big family living in a big house. Grandpa-pa-pa as he was known to all was loved and revered. Although he hated celebrating his own birthday once he’d attained his late nineties, his annual party had become a family tradition, and Grandpa-pa-pa Morse reluctantly went along. The worst part was blowing out his candles with a single exhaled breath, a perfectly timed gust expelled from his increasingly frail frame that could put out all the candles at once so that he might “get his wish.” Last year at age 102 he’d wished for an end to this ordeal, but secretly of course, so as not to disappoint his younger kin. This year, the massive cake, with papaya-flavored frosting, was decorated with 103 candles, each like a tiny universe flickering. “Blow Grandpa-pa-pa,” shrieked eight-year-old Adam, already a little windbag who’d easily blown out his own candles, all eight of them, just two weeks before. The family’s beloved centenarian was gathering his remaining breath in a mighty storm at that very moment, but the task before him seemed immense. Could he still do it? Grand-pa-pa Morse huffed …. And blew with all the might he had. The result was strange. Instead of going out, the 103 candles suddenly blazed as one! Everyone in the room, a gaggle of Morses, gasped. Grandpa-pa-pa not only gasped, but began wheezing. “That’s never happened before!” exclaimed Mossy Morse, his family-values smitten granddaughter, age fifty-six, who already had grandchildren of her own, of which Adam was one. By the time Mossy’s husband Alexander realized there was an emergency, he’d begun putting the cake out with a nearby extinguisher. Adam screamed, “Grandpa-pa-pa!” when the boy saw their patriarch keel over. Moments later, they were all in the emergency room of a nearby facility, as Grandpa-pa-pa Morse was receiving urgent care.

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Mossy Morse said out loud what most of the clan had been thinking. “Thank goodness we anticipated this when we purchased a policy for our beloved grandpa-pa-pa from that friendly California Health Insurance agent we met on the pier at Santa Monica,” she said.

“Will Grandpa-pa-pa be able to blow out his candles next year?” asked Adam with a touch of naiveté. All Adam got for asking the question was a big hug from everybody – including his now reinvigorated grandpa-pa-pa.

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Bob was kidded about his name whenever he played golf. “How come you never make par?” his golfing buddies teased. The truth be known — Bob Parr was a lousy golfer. He shanked or hooked most drives, and popcorned his iron shots. He missed putts less than four inches in length. “I’ve never seen anybody do that,” remarked Bob’s friend John P. Knotworth. But on the 12th hole, a par-three dogleg, the unfortunate Knotworth was standing about fifty feet down the fairway when Bob Parr struck his fateful tee shot with an ancient driver. Knotworth was way off to the side and seemingly safely out of Bob’s line of fire. The golf ball, a brand new dimpled Titleist, had other ideas. Struck hard by big Bob, who stood six foot six and weighed close to 250 pounds without his cleats, the Titleist careened on a straight diagonal, striking John P. squarely on his forehead before he had a chance to duck, knocking him cold. Pete and Gary, two other members of the foursome, gazed upon the scene in horror. Bob was mortified by the accident he’d caused. “Oh no!” Bob screamed. John P. Knotworth resembled a dead sunfish lying by a golf course pond even by the time the paramedics arrived.

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The next day when the foursome had gathered in John P.’s hospital room, the victim was conscious and smiling, although the raised welt on his forehead looked angrier than the sting of a hornet. Pete and Gary were grinning too, but big Bob was worried – perhaps because he’d been responsible. “I’ll pay your bill,” Bob offered graciously, “it’s the least I can do.”

John P. Knotworth laughed a hearty laugh that sounded a bit like a long drive struck correctly, straight as an arrow. The knot on his forehead must have still been hurting, but he didn’t let on. “Forget about it. My California Health Insurance agent sold me a policy a while back. We got you covered Bob.”

Pete and Gary joined John P. in a fit of manly laughter that must have lasted for two minutes while Bob just stood there, finally managing a sheepish grin of his own.

“I’ll practice more on the driving range,” Bob promised. “I’ll hit five hundred balls!”

Pete was a jokester right then. “Better make that a million!” he said. That line got everybody laughing.

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