Vic Socotra

15 September 2010

Hot Sauce

I got the best damned letter to the editor yesterday. Best ever. It also served as a reminder that I have to generate not one but two issues of the Quarterly Publication I have been editing the last few years. Damn, how time flies between publication dates.

The letter quite derailed me from the hamster-wheel of the usual topics with which I belabor my innocent readers. You know the litany: Iran and the Bomb, Islamo-fascist attacks, the wars, the economy, Tea Party politics, the aging folks. All thae stuff that is depressingly normal these days.

As you might imagine, any organization that a lot of retirees in the membership has a sad and significant section in the back of each issue that has traditionally been called “Taps.” I it I publish whatever pleasant fictions are generated on the passing of our senior members.

I view it as a solemn duty, and scramble to find pictures and other supporting material in honor of men and women who spent years in service to their nation. I do not think I have ever received a correction, but I did yesterday. I am not sure I can run it in the magazine, but I thought you would be interested.

When I was going through the liquor cabinet up at my Folk’s place I found a little bottle in a velvet bag, about the size of a Tabasco-brand bottle of hot sauce. If you don’t recall, the people who bottle the fiery red stuff originally used perfume bottles for packaging, due to the strength of the peppers. I untied the cord at the top of the bag and slid the velvet down to reveal the bottle.

Some wag had concocted their own novelty hot sauce of Habanero peppers, which rate 200,000 - 300,000 Scoville Units on the incendiary scale that measures such things. The peppers can come in a variety of colors. The contents of this bottle were vaguely salmon-brown and quite ominous. The label is what caught my eye: “Scorned Woman Hot Sauce.”

My eyes widened. That is so patently offensive that I had to put the bottle in my briefcase and bring it back to Washington, for use in Bloody Mary’s or with blackened seafood or chicken.

Anyway, it was sitting on the counter where I tossed the mail after getting back from the Eat Bar, which is the counter side of Talullah’s restaurant on Washington Boulevard. It used to be Whitey’s, back in the day, and I still have problems with the hillbilly dive having gone upscale, but that is my problem and not yours.

Among the new set of bills I am getting from my folks estate was one from the business manager of the Professional Association. We don’t put my address in the Quarterly, having just the business PO Box out in Fairfax in case someone wants to write in. Lisa forwards the odd request to me at Big Pink.

I don’t get much correspondence, so I am always interested. There was an envelope inside the envelope, and this picture:

(Madam X at 85. Photo Madam X).

My eyes widened, and I put the picture down next to the bottle of hot sauce and read the letter that came with it:

“To Whom it May Concern,

Now that I have gotten your attention with a recent snapshot of myself (an old trick of mine ) I’ll proceed with my (perhaps boring) story. This picture is my 85th birthday photo assuring that you won't think I'm "'some old fossil.”

l am wondering if you ever do a second or corrective obituary? I am referring to the story on CDR _________ in your Spring-Summer issue. What an aberration it is to read an obituary that skirts the truth to the extent that it verges on being fictitious!

Having spent his entire Navy career with him, I felt I was given the shaft when his German wife wrote “His marriage to Madam X ended in divorce.”

It could have been a six-month marriage for all anyone knew. We were both from a little town in Pennsylvania, and his dad was my high school teacher.

The Washington Post quizzed me on many details and then made no mention of anything significant, like the fact that the Russians allowed us to exit via the Trans-Siberia railroad - a ten-day trip - in 1954. We were the first Americans since the 1920s to have that privilege.

Our son was born in the Key West Naval Hospital and my husband even had his “15 minutes of fame" (actually three months) when I won first prize in a national fashion contest (15,000 entries ) the Washington Post featured us in a full page story and photos and other news followed us to Paris on the trip I won.

My husband said: “My wife likes to start at the top!"

He was passed over for Captain in Newport, RI, when he decided to live with another woman. He then made the decision to retire and work in Germany, where he married the woman. That lasted a few months, until he met another German woman whom he married. They divorced, she married someone else, then after several years she divorced him and married my ex again!

Your obit says they were married 25 years. Maybe, maybe not, who is counting.

In Newport, RI, the ex sent our son away to a private school, then left me there to sink or swim.

I should've left him years before, as there were incidents of what we now call domestic violence.

He was too busy to drink very often but when he did he went crazy. I understand that his last 20 years (or more) were spent as a member of AA.

Good choice, but too late to get his act together.
I haven't lacked male companionship, but was too smart to remarry and lose my medical privileges. I tell people l can have all the heart attacks I want to at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center (NNMC).

Our son received the flag at Arlington funeral last week but the Germans, imposters, I call them, had planned for their daughter to get it, the one born in Germany after he ex’s navy career was over. What a fiasco!

I am glad it is over, but am still stinging that I was not mentioned as the Navy wife in your magazine, or the Washington Post .

Madam X”

There was a phone number in case I needed follow-up information. I put the letter down on the counter next to the hot sauce. I did not completely follow the story, but found it compelling in its brio, zest and spirit.

I am not sure I am going to run the letter in the Fall-Winter issue of the Quarterly, but it does strike me that there should be a venue for people to publish corrected obituaries.

So, absent an official running in the Professional Journal, Madam X, here it is.