We saw this odd tree in a pasture alongside the road in Eden Valley. It was so odd that I turned the car around so we could take a photo of it.

Then we saw an even bigger tree with the same odd look. And another. And another. And a hundred others along the same highway.

Coincidentally, one of the friends we were meeting for lunch used to run Forestry South Australia, so we asked him what causes this strange, hollow, burned-out look.

Two possible causes, he said. The first is bush fires. And if the trees are old enough aborigines may have used fire to hollow them out intentionally for use as permanent homes or as temporary protection from the elements.

Interesting, huh?

As I’ve mentioned many times, my father was a dairy farmer who loved nothing more than getting dirty and being dirty as a direct result of hard manual labor.

After I had left home and moved to Los Angeles, he phoned me one day. “I need some help this weekend,” he said. “Can you come out?” He had purchased some cows and needed to transport them from their current home to the family farm.

This particular Sunday afternoon in August turned out to be the hottest day of the year. Well into the low 100s. And he decided that we should hook his trailer to his pick-up and get his new cows at the hottest hour of the day.

The cows were in an open, grassless field and they clearly had no interest in taking a road trip. The recalcitrant ruminants ran from one end of the field to the other and back again with me literally in hot pursuit. Every time I’d get them near the trailer one of them would panic and lead the others in a mad dash in the other direction. A great cloud of dust rose over the pasture. I was drenched in sweat. And I was hating every single moment of the experience.

We eventually got the last cow halfway into the trailer before she dug in her hooves and refused to move forward and put her head into the stanchion. My dad and I joined forces and tried to push her into place, but a Holstein dairy cow can weigh 1,300 pounds or more and our best efforts were inadequate for the task.

What happened next is probably illegal today. It would probably be considered animal abuse. My dad said, “Tail ’er.” I had heard him say those words hundreds of times in my life and always dreaded them.

Let’s define the term. It consists of grabbing the tail and pushing it straight up in the air so that it sits at a ninety degree angle to the cow’s spine. Cows don’t like it. No, they hate it. Their tails were not meant to bend in that direction. Bend it all the way up and the cow is immediately but temporarily immobilized. It must hurt like hell, because if you bend it, let’s say, halfway up, the cow immediately moves forward to lower the angle of the tail and alleviate the pain.

I did as instructed. I grabbed the cow’s tail and bent it upward. She immediately lurched forward into the trailer.

“Hold ’er while I close the gate,” he said.

Again I did as instructed. Picture, if you can, bovine anatomy and my adjacent position. There I was leaning in and holding the cow’s tail straight up in the air, leaving me staring directly into the abyss, into the south end of a northbound cow, into what can accurately be called the tail end. If you know what I mean. It’s not the kind of view you’d pay extra for.

My dad stopped lifting the gate of the trailer to enjoy a hearty laugh at my expense. Apparently he was amused by the look of disgust on my face.

“What’s the matter with you,” he asked as he gasped for air between belly laughs.

“I didn’t go to college,” I told him, “to sweat and get dirty.”

He dropped the gate of the trailer and laughed even harder. It was, he thought, the funniest thing he had ever heard. He really couldn’t comprehend how his son had turned out to be so unlike him.

And that brings us to today’s misadventure.

I feel a responsibility to warn anyone who considers visiting the Barossa Valley that Dr John Rutter cannot be trusted. If you were to visit and you were to meet the wily old physician, do not fall victim to his charms. He is unworthy of your trust.

“What are you doing on Tuesday,” he asked me a few days ago. “Want to go with me to get some firewood?”

In my mind, getting some firewood meant driving over to a yard where a massive supply of firewood has been pre-cut and stacked in a convenient pile. I assumed a burly lad clad in a red plaid shirt would amble out of a ramshackle office and carry that pre-cut wood from the pile to John’s trailer. My job, in my mind, was to be nothing more demanding than observing and pithily commenting. No sweat would be broken. No soft, delicate hands would be blistered. No pain would be endured. No lightheadedness would be experienced.

But no, that is not what the words “Want to go with me to get some firewood” mean in RutterWorld.

I got my first clue that John may have misrepresented the morning’s endeavors when I arrived at his house and we were joined by Paul, the neighborhood jack-of-all-trades and the toughest, strongest son of a bitch you’re ever likely to meet. Hmmmmm, I wondered, why is Paul coming along to pick up this load of firewood? We drove several miles out of town and instead of turning into a lot piled high with neatly-stacked firewood, we turned off the highway onto the merest suggestion of a trail and didn’t stop bouncing over rocks and ruts until we were well in the woods.

The Doctor parked his 4-wheel drive. Paul jumped out and began loosening up his lithe muscles. Next thing I knew the doctor had eyeballed a once stately but now dead eucalyptus tree and pointed it out to Paul who then grabbed his chainsaw and began felling the monster. As soon as its trunk crashed noisily to the ground he began cutting it into smaller chunks that were still too heavy and too cumbersome to easily tote to the trailer.

Yet without saying a word, The Doctor made it clear that that was exactly what I was expected to do. Since Paul was either completely inconsiderate or completely incompetent, the trunk fell to the low-side of the path, requiring me to carry the firewood uphill to get to the trailer.

The doctor stood to one side, barking out instructions as if he were the czar and Paul and I were the lowliest of serfs.

Paul kept cutting. I kept loading. John kept supervising. It took two full trees and two full hours before the trailer was filled to the doctor’s satisfaction.

The entire experience reminded me of the cow herding experience of my youth. There were no bovine buttholes involved, but there was definitely one horse’s ass.

And all I could think was I didn’t go to college to sweat and get dirty.

ONE ADDED NOTE: I usually say that 98% of what I write here at JimandJamie.com is 99% true. But in interest of full disclosure, I must admit that this one is only about 75% true. Everything is accurate except the part about John barking orders and doing nothing. The man is 87-years old and had open heart surgery 30 years ago and his cardiologist just warned him not to engage in any strenuous activities — not even gardening. Despite all that, John was hefting logs like a man half his age. I had to continually bark at him to stop working so hard.

ANOTHER ADDED NOTE: There may be one other thing that isn’t true. Paul is neither inconsiderate nor incompetent. Nicest guy in the world and there is nothing he can’t do.

Our friend Vanessa volunteers at the Lyndoch Wildlife Sanctuary. They take in injured or orphaned native Aussie species, nurse them back to health or to adulthood, and then release them back into the wild. Of course, some of them can never be released back into the wild because they’ve become too dependent on humans and too unafraid of predators (like dogs and cats).

Vanessa invited Jamie to spend the afternoon visiting the animals.

The brushtail possum. As you can see in the photos below, it’s a friendly little devil.

 

A baby possum that was found sitting alongside the road after its mother was killed by a car.

This is a bettong, a word spellcheck has apparently never seen before. It’s like a mini-kangaroo that hops around being cute and making humans say, “Awwwwwwwww.” This one loves playing with (and tormenting) the sanctuary’s resident cat.

A black ring possum. Very similar to the brushtail possum our neighbor caught and transported to a lovely new home in the country.

Two echidnas curled up for an afternoon nap.

Jamie and a lizard. Couldn’t tell you what kind of lizard. A shingleback, I think.

A very inquisitive kangaroo.

And here’s the same kanga after he got tired of checking out the cell phone.

Thanks, Vanessa. Jamie can’t wait to come back to the Barossa Valley so she can visit you and the animals again.

The woman is a sexy talker. She knows exactly what words to whisper into my ear.

When we did the first of these six-month journeys neither of us knew what to take nor how to pack. So we ended up taking far too many clothes. Way too many pairs of shoes. Plus all sorts of unnecessary odds-and-ends that seemed important at the time, but ended up unused and sometimes even untouched during our travels.

We found ourselves loaded down with two suitcases each plus one backpack each. We could have used a couple of sherpas. All that gear turned each leg of the trip into a trek. And it got worse with each stop as we stuffed new souvenirs into those already overpacked suitcases.

But you live, you learn. In this case, we learned to get by with less, to pack more economically, and to do laundry a lot more often.

We took less on our second trip, still less on the third trip, and even less on this trip. We’ve stripped it down to the bare necessities.

And now that sweet-talkin’ wife of mine is just plain turnin’ me on. She just said the words I’ve always longed to hear.

“I might be able to get away with carry-ons next time.”

We were sitting in The Doctors’ living room warming ourselves before a crackling fire when someone in the Rutter family mentioned that a local artist had once painted a portrait of John.

There was some debate about when the painting had been done, even greater debate about whether it still existed, and still greater debate about whether it should be brought out for public viewing if it does still exist.

The back story is hilarious: John was the Angaston town doctor for fifty years. That, of course, made him a bit of an icon in the Barossa Valley. A local painter visited John’s and Margaret’s home and announced he wanted to do a portrait of John. He had his subject do some simple poses and took a few photos and then went away. Some weeks later he invited John and Margaret to his studio where he unveiled the finished piece.

John was horrified by it.

He was even more horrified when the artist invited him to place a bid on it.

”Place a bid on it,” John recalled with disgust. “I didn’t even want the bloody thing.”

In the end, John and Margaret shelled out $400 for a portrait they didn’t want just to avoid any further embarrassment. Then they took it home and John shoved it under the bed in a spare bedroom. Which is where his daughter Mandy finally found it last night.

We all agreed — all except John, that is — that the artist had done an excellent job of capturing him in one of his most idiosyncratic poses. John still insists that the painting is horrible and looks nothing like him and should be tossed into the roaring fire.

The painting provoked two primary questions. One, did the painter do a good job of capturing John’s lips? And two, when was it painted?

I am relieved to say that I am not qualified to delve into the quality of John’s lips. I will leave that discussion to those whose relationships with him are far closer than mine. On the other hand, I am quite willing to speculate on the date of the painting.

It isn’t dated and none of the Rutters could pinpoint precisely when it had been painted. Was it done in the late ‘80s? Somewhere in the ‘90s? Maybe even later?

I got down on my hands and knees to take a closer look. John is holding a newspaper in the portrait and I noticed that there is a black and white photo of a man and a woman in the lower corner of the newspaper.

”It says chocolate under the photo,” I noted. I assumed it was an ad for some sort of candy.

Then Jamie took a closer look and said, “It doesn’t say chocolate, it says Chocolat and that’s the poster that was used to advertise the movie. The one with Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche.”

Here’s that poster. Does my wife know her artsy fartsy European films or what?

Of course, knowing that the ad was for the film Chocolat helped us narrow down when the portrait might have been painted. With a little Googling we found out that Chocolat was released in Australia on February 14, 2001. So that is the earliest it could have been painted.

I doubt that Chocolat made it beyond a few art theaters in Sydney and Melbourne until after it was nominated for five Oscars. The 2001 Academy Awards ceremonies were held on March 25 and the film undoubtedly went into wider release after that. So let’s be generous and say it finally made it to cinemas in Adelaide by April 1, 2001. Let’s give the artist a couple more months to complete the portrait.

Therefore, JimandJamie.com hereby concludes that this lovely portrait of Dr John Rutter was unveiled on or around July 1, 2001.

And it’s been on permanent display under that dusty bed for the last nineteen years.

ONE ADDED NOTE: Here we are nineteen years after the completion of the portrait and John appears to be sitting in the same chair and wearing the same shirt and sweater. The man is nothing if not consistent.

AND ONE MORE ADDITIONAL NOTE (not added until April 10, 2021): Don’t know why none of us noted this earlier, but the fact that John is wearing a sweater is significant. The weather stays warm until late Autumn here in the Barossa, and the seasons are backward from the Northern Hemisphere, so late Autumn would get us to probably late-April or maybe even May as a guide to when the artist took the original photos. That seems to reinforce the July 1, 2001 timeline guessed at above for the grand unveiling.

Jamie is a kleptomaniac, albeit a very selective one. She won’t steal just anything. Only small, inexpensive teaspoons.

There are, I’m sure, dozens of hotels and restaurants around the world wondering why they are one teaspoon short of a full set. Come to our house, open almost any kitchen drawer, and you’ll find it overflowing with foreign teaspoons. Our luggage is always considerably heavier at the end of a trip than it was at the beginning.

John and Margaret had heard this sordid side of my wife’s history, so they showed great wisdom when they purchased a birthday present for her. She ripped open the wrapping and found a souvenir South Australia teaspoon inside.

Good thinking, guys. A brilliant self-defense strategy if I’ve ever heard one.

Nevertheless, if I were you I’d count your silverware. I swear I heard something clinking in her pocket as we walked home.

Jamie’s birthday is on June 12, but the Doctors were kind enough to organize a dinner party to celebrate it a week early. Their daughter Mandy and husband Mark drove up from Adelaide.

Dinner was delicious, lots of big belly laughs were had, some of the Barossa’s best reds were consumed, and perhaps a sip or two of Drambuie may have slipped past our lips.

Thanks, John and Margaret and Mark and Mandy. You made it one of Jamie’s best birthdays celebrations ever.

This blue Tommy Bahama sweater has accompanied me on three trips around the world. It’s been by my side and on my back in dozens of countries and has traveled hundreds of thousand of miles. It’s kept me warm as far north as Iceland and as far south as Ushuaia.

Sadly, it has reached the end of the road. This threadbare knitwear has become tattered and torn. Faded and frayed. Ratty and ragged. Shapeless and shabby.

We were forced to put it down today. But rest assured, we were with it at the end, holding it closely, and making sure it knew that it was loved.

Farewell, my friend. We know you’re in a better place now.

If the Salvation Army can be considered a better place.

I told you that Lila Michaels, the contestant coordinator for Tic Tac Dough, was a ball of fire. Here’s how her son, legendary sports announcer Al Michaels, described her:

“She was a combination of Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers … She was hysterical and did things other mothers didn’t. She told dirty jokes. The other mothers weren’t like my mom.”

That was clearly true. After I unwittingly said that her son was my second favorite baseball announcer, Lila forgot all about protocol and procedure and told me she wanted me to appear on the next episode of Tic Tac Dough.

It was a very simple game based on tic tac toe. Each of the nine squares in the grid contained a different trivia category. Players took turns choosing a square and attempting to answer a question from the category found in that square. If he answered it correctly, that square was filled with his X. If the other player answered it, the square was filled with her O. The categories shuffled after each answer and changed positions on the grid. Just like tic tac toe, you had to answer three questions “in a row” to win the game.

Let’s say one of the categories was “History.” When the categories shuffled, that category might end up in the upper right hand corner of the grid. But when the categories were shuffled again, it might show up in the lower left hand corner. Or anywhere else on the grid. But as the contestants answer questions and X’s and O’s are added to the grid, there wouldn’t be enough squares left for all nine categories. Some of them were eliminated. You never knew which of the categories would remain on the grid after squares were eliminated and categories were shuffled.

I won the first two games I played. I didn’t just win, I freakin’ dominated. Kicked some game show butt. I was the Tic Tac Terminator.

Then came game number three. The one I had to win to walk away with the big money.

The worst thing that could possibly happen happened. One of the categories was “Baseball.” Now I just happened to know everything about baseball. I could tell you who won the American League batting title in 1929 and what his average was. I could tell you the starting line-up of the 1962 San Francisco Giants and how many games they won that season. Clearly, I would have been far more successful in life if my brain had been filled with useful information instead of meaningless baseball trivia and stats.

You may wonder why it’s a bad thing that my favorite category came up.

Because I completely forgot about the simple strategy of winning tic tac toe. Instead of trying to get a full row of X’s, I chose “Baseball” wherever it landed on the grid.

At one point I had two squares in row and could have easily won the game and the big bucks simply by getting the third one. But when they shuffled the trivia categories around the grid, “Baseball” ended up where another X wouldn’t help me. Didn’t matter. I went for it.

Wink Martindale, the host of the program, gave me a very quizzical look and said, “Interesting strategy, Jim. Let’s see if it pays off for you.”

Of course, it didn’t. It was the strategy of an idiot. The method of a moron. It gave my opponent the opening he needed and he eventually got three squares in a row while I was off chasing “Baseball” no matter where it went. It was like pursuing a beautiful woman when you know she will eventually ruin your life. (Call me a slow learner, because I’ve also been guilty of that a few times.)

Was it stupid?

Tic Tac Duh.

Although I didn’t win any money on The Joker’s Wild, I apparently made an impression. A few months later my phone rang and I was invited to try out for another TV game show called Tic Tac Dough.

“It’s another Jack Barry production,” the contestant coordinator told me. “And I was told that you are the perfect game show contestant. You know a lot of worthless shit and you’re very enthusiastic.”

Well, ok then. I don’t know if that was quite the reputation I wanted, but… what’s that? You offer cash prizes?

I went down to visit the offices of Barry-Enright Productions in Hollywood where a roomful of other potential players gathered. We all took the requisite trivia test and those of us who passed were asked to stay. The contestant coordinator was a wacky, outgoing fifty-ish year old woman named Lila Michaels. She did as contestant coordinators do and went around the room asking questions to get a sense of which of us would make good TV game show contestants.

Lila finally worked her way around to the guy sitting next to me and said, “Stand up. Tell us your name, what you do for a living, and what your favorite hobby is.”

“My name is Joe,” he said. “I’m a landscape architect and I love baseball.”

“You love baseball, huh,” she snapped. “Who’s your favorite announcer?”

“Vin Scully.”

“Well, of course, it’s Vin Scully,” Lila scoffed. “He’s the best in the world. Who’s your second favorite?”

Poor Joe stuttered and stammered and couldn’t come up with another name. Eventually, desperation setting in, he spit out, “Howard Cosell.” (Howard, of course, excelled at virtually every sport except baseball.)

“Thank you very much,” Lila said contemptuously. “Next.”

I stood up and said, “My name is Jim, I’m in advertising, and I’m also a big baseball fan.”

“Then you get the same question,” she said. “Who’s your favorite announcer other than Vin Scully?”

“Well,” I said, “there’s a young guy up in San Francisco who does the Giants games. His name is Al Michaels.”

Lila turned back to Joe and said, “And that, Joe, is why Jim is going to be on the show and you’re not. He thinks my son is the second best baseball announcer in the world.”

Seriously. Out of all the baseball announcers in the world, I just happened to name the contestant coordinator’s son.

Americans reading this will know that Al Michaels has become one of the greatest announcers in the history of American sports. He’s gone on to broadcast the baseball World Series. Monday Night Football. The Super Bowl. You name it, Al’s done it.

But his most famous moment came when the American ice hockey team upended the invincible Soviet team in the 1980 Winter Olympics. As the clock ticked down to zero, Al said the words that made him famous: “Do you believe in miracles?”

I was prescient in calling out his name before he became famous. Do you believe in miracles?

But let me just tell you something:

It was the only question I answered correctly on Tic Tac Dough.

TO BE CONTINUED…