Simonton Says

The egg-yolk hotel

Sitting poolside at an unnamed St. Augustine hotel.

Nearby is what the hotel calls a tiki bar. It sells hot dogs, hamburgers and an impressive array of mixed drinks.

Next to the bar, a well-amplified guitarist, a skinny guy in a white T-shirt, plays Jimmy Buffett tunes. I wish I could say they are mellowing me, but the fact is that this hotel is not quite what I had bargained for.

On the beach in Ponte Vedra

Warning: The following posts are about a vacation (with a little politics thrown in). If you prefer other fare, come back next week.

Contrasts are illuminating.

This past weekend, my family drove down to Jacksonville. We stayed the first night in a friend's little place there. A retired sportswriter and copy editor, he had shelves of books on sports. What caught my eye, however, was his framed poster of Elvis advertising Elvis' last scheduled concert, the one he never made it to. Our friend also had a framed picture of himself in his younger days, looking rugged and charming.

Not your father's Oldsmobile

Hurtling down the interstate on the way to Florida, we passed a car that looked just like mine. It was a wide, older-model white Oldsmobile. It was filled with people, and the back end seemed to be riding low.

We slowed down to take a look.

What kind of people drive a car like this, I wondered.

Summer ripens

On June 21 we turned on our air conditioner. Why do I tell you this? Because it’s important. Each year, it signals the end of something.

Each summer when the heat descends, my family relaxes into it. We push the windows wide open, pull off some clothes and turn on the box fans. We drink iced drinks and let the sweat trickle down. We shift into a lower gear.

On those summer nights, the outdoors is tantalizing. Two streets away, the night air is awash in gardenias. Their deep, clinging scent wafts up from the tiny front yards of my neighborhood.

Wal-Mart in the hot seat

“What surprised and offended me most about the low-wage workplace was the extent to which one is required to surrender one’s civil rights,” writes Barbara Ehrenreich. “I learned this at the very beginning of my stint as a waitress, when management warned me that my purse could be searched at any time.”

Ehrenreich, a journalist, spent several months in 1998 working as a waitress, as a maid and finally as a salesperson at Wal-Mart, where she earned $7 an hour.

Her goal was to investigate how difficult it would be to pay for housing, food and other expenses on those earnings. What she also discovered was a world in which workers were treated with very little respect. Drug testing was routine. At Wal-Mart, she was lectured on “time theft,” which essentially meant having conversations with co-workers. (It was a theft of Wal-Mart’s time.) She and other middle-aged women workers were patronized by their younger male boss.

In short, workers were viewed with suspicion and treated like children.

Message to myself: Fight fair ... and what about the f-word?

Perhaps it was a real cheap shot on my part to attack a newspaper story in the manner I did in the previous entry. I didn’t intend to make a personal attack, but it came out that way.

The way information is presented in newspapers, magazines, TV and other media needs to be held up for scrutiny. Sometimes, ideas really need to be attacked -- and satirized. Issues need to be aired, and (I believe) indignation needs to be expressed. But personal attacks, no.

So I’m bumbling on. Maybe the Foot in Mouth Award is the thing here. Or the Learn to Fight Fair Award. I'm sorry for turning criticism into a personal attack.

Ideas about what’s appropriate are really jumbled these days. Witness the Washington Post’s use of obscenity today in its story on Vice President Dick Cheney. He cussed at Sen. Patrick Leahy. He used the f-word. And so did the Post. (So do I spell it out or not? I feel really stupid using a euphemism.) The Post then felt compelled to print its rationale: Post explains spelling out word.

Most Pointless Newspaper Story Award

Today's award for the most pointless newspaper story goes to AJC reporter Don Fernandez for his gripping report "Not couching their words, some guys confess that sofa time isn't so bad."

It is, of course, a response to Bill Clinton's new book, "My Life," in which he admits he was in the doghouse after confessing the Monica Lewinsky affair.

The article, written from the point of view of the dog, is all about how delicious the dogbowl is.

"Saved!" from self-knowledge

The movie “Saved!” is a hoot, except maybe to those Christians it’s taking a jab at. Unfortunately, it’s so mocking it will alienate some of the people it claims to be addressing.

It’s timely, too, especially since there’s such a hoopla right now about the religious faith of politicians.

“Saved” is set in American Eagle Christian High School, an aggressively Christian place, where two popular girls find themselves at odds. There’s Mary, seemingly sweet and idealistic, who begins to fear she’s pregnant. There’s Hilary Faye (I thought her name was Hilary Faith through the entire movie), who’s a lead singer in the band “The Christian Jewels” and self-styled monitor of everyone’s morals.

Coming up roses: The mind of Ron Marbaugh

When I saw him on Father’s Day, I noticed my father-in-law was wearing flowery blue jeans. Since he’s 84, a rather gruff ex-Marine, and has never to my knowledge been seen in florals, I was surprised.

The flowers were large and pink, about 4 inches wide -- what you might call cabbage roses. They decorated the front legs of his jeans.

Ron Marbaugh mostly wears jeans and short-sleeved knit shirts. When he’s not watching the Braves on TV or his daily “Gunsmoke” rerun, he’s outdoors or in his home workshop. He builds birdhouses, cultivates a big garden, and keeps a large swath of grass mowed.

Passion in the garden: An ornamental tomato presents itself

Is it possible to be in love with a tomato plant?

Earlier this evening, I sat on the porch swing and gazed out at the lone tomato plant in my front yard. Rain was dripping from the porch eaves, giving the tomato, the juniper bush and the grass a deep green color.

A small plant nearby was listing to the east, as if weighted down by its burden of raindrops. Daises near the street leaned in the opposite direction, as if they had been yearning for the sun on this cloudy day. The tomato plant stood upright in its wire cage, a short distance from the front steps.

I know that in meticulously maintained front yards, where lawns are snipped and chemically treated to perfection, there is no place for a tomato plant.