Oxford Eagle Feature: Forty years later former student tips Mistilis waitress, with interest

   I bought a year's subscription to the Oxford Eagle last Friday. I had been buying it off and on from the rack, and I had an electronic subscription, but the fact is more times than not I wasn't reading.
    Monday my first copy arrived in my driveway with the story about a student who was a regular customer at Mistilis Restaurant on College Hill Road back in the early 1970s. He wasn't a big tipper. He just didn't have much money back then, and at the time a lot of students just didn't tip. It's the type of story that I wish everyone could read about Oxford and Ole Miss.
    Apparently, after graduation the student learned of the ways of the world and the propriety of leaving a tip, and he often thought of the waitress who frequently served him and his friends. He didn't know her name and asked the Oxford Eagle for help in tracking her down. The Eagle contacted Jo Dale Mistilis, who was able to do so.
    And so, after 40 years, the waitress received her tips, with interest, in the form of a $500 check.
    I'm afraid copyright law doesn't allow me to reproduce any more of the story than I have above. It's a fairly long piece and worth reading, but to do so you'll need to stop by the Eagle and buy a copy for 50 cents or pay $5 for a month's subscription to the electronic edition, unless you are already a subscriber.

If disaster strikes we have Ragu; if disaster doesn't strike we still have Ragu!

   Okay, today is probably the last day that Ragu is on sale for 99 cents at Kroger. Spaghetti is on sale for 50 cents per 12 ounces. This is about as good as it gets.

    Back in 2008 or 2009 I was able to buy about 50 bottles of Ragu for 83 cents per bottle at the Maysville, Ky., Kroger store. I was also able to buy about 70 pounds of pasta at 50 cents per pound. I have not seen sub-dollar Ragu since 2009, so these prices are as good as they come and call for  all-out buying.

    In 2009 Maysville, Ragu was retailing for $1.33 on a week-to-week basis. So 83 cents was 50 cents less than the usual price. Today Ragu goes for a whopping $1.79 in Oxford, or even $1.99! So getting a jar of the stuff for 99 cents is a real bargain.

    There are some cheaper sauces than Ragu. They taste really, really bad, and are a false economy since nobody will eat the pasta and it has to be thrown out. Some of the more expensive sauces are quite good, but Ragu is best in my book for economy and taste.

    Twelve ounces of spaghetti usually goes for about $1.29. You can sometimes get it on sale for 79 cents, but 49 cents is about a low as it will go. I'd rather get a pound for that price, but 12 ounces is about all four of us eat in one meal anyway.

    Now that our cabinets are overflowing with pasta and sauce, one of two things is going to happen.

    First, we might have Armageddon in the form of economic collapse, nuclear war, a solar-flare-induced pulse which wipes out all electronics, or just massive riots by Obama's minions should their Food Stamp cards stop working one weekend; anything which might result in all the food being stripped off the supermarket shelves and not being replenished.

    Should that happen we'll have two month's worth of pasta with sauce. Obviously, I have other food items purchased at deep discount which we can alternate with the spaghetti, including 14 boxes of Lucky Charms cereal I bought when it was marked down by about 70 percent. Lucky Charms has a one-year shelf life and will keep my daughter happy in the event of a total societal collapse. My dad used to say the cereal box was more nutritious than the cereal, so if a crisis actually strikes after we eat the cereal we can then eat the box, too!

    Fortunately there is only about a one- to two-percent chance in any given year of a catastrophe so great that the food supply is disrupted. So what that means is that we'll probably just eat this spaghetti and sauce over the course of the next year. Since we have spaghetti at least once a week anyway, it's not like we're making a lifestyle change.

    The only difference is that instead of paying $1.79 for our jar of sauce we will have paid 99 cents. Instead of paying $1.29 for our spaghetti we'll have paid 49 cents. Which means that over the course of 52 spaghetti dinners we'll spend $76.96 on pasta and sauce versus the $160.16 we would pay if we just pranced into the store and bought these items without regard to price.

    The above cost analysis doesn't include the cost of ground beef, which should always be purchased from the old-meat rack. Lucy likes no meat. I like to use a half-pound of ground beef. Jinny and Ash want to use a pound-and-a-half of meat per jar of sauce, which is unhealthy, but sometimes I just can't stand the yammering.

    Of course, when the jar of sauce costs 99 cents you can always just make two versions, one with two much meat and the other with meat used properly as flavoring. You lose the savings, but everyone gets what they want. Sometimes peace in the valley is worth it.

We enjoyed the Memphis Symphony and hope this year won't be their last

    Jinny and I took Lucy and a friend to see German Requiem performed by the Memphis Symphony at the Cannon Center in Memphis Saturday night.
    I'm really not a high-brow sort, but I scooped up a couple of cheap tickets as part of a package at the Northwest Mississippi Community Foundation's Crystal Ball last month and bought a couple more for my daughter.
    We enjoyed ourselves. The first portion was Schubert's unfinished Eighth Symphony. It lasted only 22 minutes and was wonderful. After intermission and a glass of wine was Brahm's German Requiem. This is his longest composition and lasted approximately 70 minutes, and I confess I felt towards the end it had "too many notes," as Emperor Joseph is said to have told Mozart. The performance itself was perfect and I enjoyed it; part of my problem is that I don't like sitting still for extended periods. I often watch television standing up.
    The orchestra was outstanding. The community chorus, which is made up of approximately 120 people who donate massive amounts of their time, did a great job. And the conductor, Mei-Ann Chen, looked as if she was possessed, and I mean that in a good way. She was a dynamo.
    Prior to the performance an official with the symphony got up to talk about the Memphis Symphony's financial problems. Due to really severe financial problems this will be the last year for the Memphis Symphony in it's current form. There are going to be some very major cuts and changes. In fact, the financial problems are severe enough that their major worry right now is just finishing out the season.
    In 2000 the MSO had an endowment of more than $6 million. The seriousness of the current financial situation became apparent after a new CEO was brought in last November to try to work out the organization's problems. Some hard choices are going to have to be made, but it would have been better if some of these choices had been made several years ago while the MSO still had money in the bank.
    If it should finish its season with the Sunset Symphony as part of Memphis in May -- and I'm betting it will -- the MSO will have had 196 performances over the course of the season. This includes 23 subscription concerts and 146 community engagement and educational performances. Next year's schedule, if there is one, will be much pared down.
    The Memphis Commercial Appeal and the Memphis Flyer both have had good articles on this (click the links to see the stories). The sad thing is that the MSO has been successful in taking the symphony out of the performance halls and into the schools and community -- into people's everyday lives. Much of this is likely to end.
    Lucy enjoyed the performance enough that she told us she wanted to start taking private cello lessons. She plays cello in the Oxford School Orchestra. So I'm glad the MSO was there for us. The Cannon Center downtown was a great facility, although I've read online that the Germantown Performing Arts Center has even better acoustics.
    We look forward to attending at least one more performance of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra this year. To see the remaining ticketed events for this season, click here. One event that looks interesting is the final ticketed performance of the year, a symphony made up of Rolling Stones music. I think we'll be there.
    As this might be your last chance to see the Memphis Symphony Orchestra in its current form, you might want to try to catch a performance. Your support now through ticket purchases can make a difference in what kind of symphony orchestra Memphis has next year, or if it has one at all.

Closer to home, the LOU Symphony Orchestra Winter Concert is March 3

    Of course, Memphis is 75 miles away from us Oxford folks, and while we wish them well we also want our own institutions to do well.
    The LOU Symphony Orchestra has it's Winter Concert scheduled for March 3 at the Gertrude Ford Center. Tickets are $10 and available at the box office or online. I would presume one could buy them the night of the performance at the Ford Center, but I would call first.
    The LOU Orchestra has another concert scheduled for April 14 at the Ford Center.

DA Creekmore says no charges for now against students who placed noose on Meredith statue

    Several sources have reported that at this time no criminal charges are planned against three students who left a noose and pre-2001 Georgia flag on the statue of James Meredith at Ole Miss.
    Ben Creekmore, who serves as District Attorney for Lafayette County, told WMC-5 on Friday his review of the law found that no law had been broken.

    Creekmore told Action News 5 late Friday morning that investigators and prosecutors have looked into several misdemeanors as possible charges. He said because the statue was not physically damaged, and the suspects did not appear to be trespassing, his office would likely not be in a position to bring criminal charges against the suspects.
    He did add that he felt the act was despicable and that federal investigators could opt to bring charges if they saw fit.

     Everything I've read suggests that these three men are not guilty of a federal hate crime, which requires their act to target a specific individual or group and not a large generalized group. But I will leave it to others to make this determination.
    But I do think they might be guilty of disturbing the peace. They reportedly yelled racial slurs at a contractor working for the university. These would seem to me to be "fighting words," and as such a breach of the peace, and a violation of  Mississippi Code 97-35-15:

§ 97-35-15. Disturbance of the public peace or the peace of others; exception

(1) Any person who disturbs the public peace, or the peace of others, by violent, or loud, or insulting, or profane, or indecent, or offensive, or boisterous conduct or language, or by intimidation, or seeking to intimidate any other person or persons, or by conduct either calculated to provoke a breach of the peace, or by conduct which may lead to a breach of the peace, or by any other act, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by a fine of not more than Five Hundred Dollars ($ 500.00) or by imprisonment in the county jail not more than six (6) months, or both.

    I respect Creekmore's decision in this matter. As a district attorney he certainly doesn't want to be seen as doing nothing. And it's not ethical for him to bring charges if he knows the law isn't with him.
    Perhaps this charge needs to be brought at the local level by the county prosecutor. And perhaps there's not enough to make it stick. But these men have certainly caused a very large disturbance of the peace.

Here's a Google search that ought to make you think a bit about campus hate vandalism with nooses

    UPDATE: Three Ole Miss students from Georgia have apparently admitted to placing the noose and flag on the Meredith. Assuming this information is correct, this event clearly was not a hoax.
    I'll have a blog post later. This is the first campus case I've been able to find where white racist, students have left an anonymous noose or drawings of a noose. There have been a number of cases where either black students or "progressive" whites have done so to increase "racism" awareness.
    It's important in a case like this to consider every possibility: that it might be legitimate, it might not be; that it might be students, it might not be. Those who jumped the gun and said "Students Did It," up front turned out to be right, but they were wrong to do this.

________________

    If you want to see something interesting, go to Google and type in the words "campus hate hoax noose." Or you can just click on the link I've provided. It will return approximately 14,500,000 items.
    I'm not going to summarize the myriad race hate hoaxes over the last couple of decades. That's why I've provided the link. What I will say is that when a noose is involved it is usually planted by a minority or "progressive" white trying to raise awareness of "racism." Apparently nooses are to real racists as quiche is to real men.
    Don't miss the compilation of columns by Michele Malkin, who has written exhaustively on campus race hoaxes, some involving nooses, others not. At least someone is trying to raise awareness of campus hoaxes!
    The response to these hoaxes is always the same. Campus sit-ins, awareness events, and minority demands for whatever it is they feel like demanding at the time.
    Sort of like the past few days at Ole Miss. A protest was organized at the site of the vandalism of a statue honoring Ole Miss' first black student, James Meredith. A noose had been placed around his neck and he was draped with a cape fashioned from a pre-2001 Georgia flag, which features a large Confederate emblem. African American Studies professor Bryan Cooper Owens is quoted in The Daily Mississippian as saying:

    “Until the university begins to address the real issues of systemic institutionalized racism on this campus, until they begin to take seriously the environment of white supremacy that exists on this campus, we will continue to see incidents like this,” Cooper Owens said.
    “If there is a pattern, it is no longer individuals,” Cooper Owens said in regards to those responsible for “symbolically lynching” the James Meredith statue, a campus representation of unity and courage amongst whites and blacks. “We can’t say it was ‘these outsiders’ — no, it was us.”    

    Note how important it is for Cooper Owners to make the claim that the vandalism was the result of institutionalized racism instead of the act of one or two criminals. He's not seeking justice for those who committed this act. He's seeking political advantage. At this point there's not even a scintilla of evidence that a student committed this crime, but he's certainly acting like one did.
    Mississippi NAACP president Derrick Johnson used the opportunity to complain about the school's street names. "You cannot have a university where, when you turn down the main drag, it's called Confederate Drive." Well, Mr. Johnson, yes you can. For what it's worth Ole Miss also has a Union Loop. Ole Miss is for equal opportunity, something Mr. Johnson apparently knows little about.
    Still others are using the event to demand that Mississippi get rid of its flag, which was adopted in 1894 and readopted by an overwhelming bi-racial margin in 2001. In fact, the use of the old Georgia flag is one of the facts that leads me to believe the Meredith vandalism may be a politically motivated hoax.
    The race-hustler crowd likes to equate the Mississippi flag and the old Georgia flag when in fact the two have nothing in common from a historical standpoint. The Mississippi flag was adopted in 1894 when school segregation was not even an issue. The inclusion of the Confederate banner was designed to honor our ancestors. Georgia, however, placed the Confederate flag in its state flag in 1956 as a direct response to the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, in support of segregation. As a result the Georgia flag was eventually changed. It all goes to intent.
    But the haters want to equate the two. And that's why I think the Georgia flag was used. They aren't exactly easy to find.
    In 2002 there was a serious incident with racist graffiti being drawn on doors in Kincannon dormitory at Ole Miss. The depiction of nooses was included. Next up was the anti-racism rally, with everyone standing up to imaginary racism. Imaginary because it was all a hoax; it was perpetrated by blacks who were not prosecuted. In fact, part of the pattern over the past 20 years is that the hoaxsters are usually not prosecuted, and often their identities are shielded by the universities where they committed their crimes.
    The Meredith vandalism may not be a hoax, but I've offered to wager heads-up on the matter with two different friends and they've both declined. But no matter who did it or what their motive was, it is still vandalism, and when the criminals are caught they should be punished whether they are racists, anti-racists, or just drunks.

Daily Mississippian reports arrest near in suspicious vandalism of Meredith statue

    The Daily Mississippian reports that an arrest in imminent regarding the vandalism of the James Meredith statue between the Lyceum and the library on the Ole Miss campus.
    There is a chance, of course, that the person or persons who did this will be drunk, racist fraternity boys. I don't think this will be the case. I think it was either non-students or else a good old-fashioned race-hoax.
    We'll see. There are a number of things about this that seem very suspicious to me, including the use of the former Georgia flag. I'll post more after an arrest is made.
    But no matter what, whoever did this needs to be punished. It gives the school a black eye and causes untold turmoil. The university cannot afford to simply ignore this.

Emptying of Dad's office desk yields unknown "Old Family Recipe" for Seafood Lasagne

    We finally got around to cleaning out my Dad's desk yesterday and found the following recipe. It's marked in his handwriting "Old Family Recipe Sidney L. Hurdle," but I don't recognize it. The recipe itself is a xerographic copy in someone else's hand. I sure wish Dad had provided us with a few additional words about this recipe!

    If a cousin or friend should recognize the handwriting or the recipe, please let me know where this came from. Below is the page I found, and below that is the recipe typed out. I've made a couple of notes, as a couple of words are missing from the recipe.

    I haven't tried this yet. I may cook it tonight and sample it on the children. If it is fit to eat I will give a report, and would appreciate any reports from any of my three dozen readers!

___________________

    Like many old-fashioned recipes, this one calls for Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, which is a magical elixir. Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup usually goes on deep discount at Thanksgiving or Christmas, although this year both Kroger and Wal-Mart held the line at a dollar a can. It's regular price is $1.49 at Kroger or $1.19 at Wal-Mart.

    Several years ago I bought 50 cans at 50-cents per can and they lasted a year. I repeated this for several years. This year the best price I could find was 65 cents per can at a Memphis Target store. I only bought 10 cans in the hope that someone would drop the price to 50 cents but it never happened. This is going to prove to be a very costly mistake this year.

Seafood Lasagna (use large casserole dish)

6-8 Lasagna Noodles

BLEND THE FOLLOWING

1 c. onion that has been sauteed in 2 T. butter

8 oz. cream cheese

1/2 cup cottage cheese

1 beaten egg

1/2 t. salt

1/8 t. pepper

COMBINE THE FOLLOWING

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

1/3 cup milk

1/3 cup dry white wine

1 7 1/2 oz. can crab meat (or fresh, see note one)

1 lb. shrimp (see note two)

1/4 cup Parmesan  cheese

1/2 ? grated sharp cheddar cheese (one-half cup? see note three)

Put 3-4 Noodles in a long casserole. Spread 1/2 onion and cream cheese mixture on noodles. Spread 1/2 soup and shrimp mixture over cheese layer. Then repeat layers. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Then add cheddar cheese. Bake for 3-4 minutes more (see note four). Let Stand 15 minutes before serving.

My Dad has written at the bottom (in his own hand) "Use Extra Large Casserole Dish."

Note One: In the margin is written 1/2 lb. fresh crab meat, barely visible. I'm guessing that is to replace and not in addition to the canned crab. The canned refrigerated crab from Costco or Sam's Club or from the fish section at the supermarket would probably be great, but not the tuna-fish type of crab in the 7.5 oz. can.

Note Two: The recipe does not specify whether the shrimp is cooked or not. I would assume the shrimp should be cooked. Also, I really don't see why the shrimp couldn't be sauteed with the onion and then spread with the cream cheese mixture.

Note Three: The recipe does not specify whether the "1/2" of cheddar cheese is a 1/2 cup or 1/2 lb. I think it is a 1/2 cup. I also think extra sharp would be better than merely sharp.

Note Four: The recipe calls for four minutes of cooking after sprinkling with the cheddar cheese. I'm not sure this is long enough to get the cheese nice and brown.

Note Five: This recipe calls for cottage cheese vs. ricotta cheese. I'm not sure which would be best. I would think you could use either.

Snake-handling pastor seemed to think his only death options were snake bite or car wreck

    A snake handler by the name of Jamie Coots has died from -- drum roll please -- handling snakes.
    The Kentucky pastor, presumably Eastern Kentucky pastor, had been featured in a year-long National Geographic series on the snake-handling splinter of Pentecostalism. He had repeatedly said he would never seek medical attention for a snake bite, and was true to his word.
    I just saw a clip of him on television, and he had the following words of wisdom: "I'd rather die from a serpent bite with folks around me praying then die from a car wreck with everybody around me cussing."
    The chance of dying in a auto accident during one's lifetime is less than one-in-100 (Source: The Odds of Dying). About a third of the people who die in car wrecks have been drinking, so by not drinking and wearing a safety belt one can reduce this to perhaps one-in-150 or less.
    The chance of the average person dying from a Snake, Bee or other Venomous Bite or Sting is approximately one-in-100,000. This presumes, of course, that one doesn't play with snakes. I would guess the chance of an accidental snake-bite death for an average citizen to be one-in-500,000 or less.
    Rev. Coots decided to take two long-shot ways of dying and to treat them as if they were the only way to go out of this world. Option one, death by serpent bite with congregants praying. Option two, death by car wreck with bystanders cussing. (Do people always cuss at car wrecks?). So he essentially chose death by snake bite, basing his choice on an obviously false dichotomy.
    He had other options. He could have lived a nice, long life and died of old age. Our lives are in the hands of God, but I believe it to be His will that we strive to avoid death by all of life's longshots and instead die of old age.
    With Coots's death, America's collective IQ has gone up. Unfortunately he had already bred, so there is no eugenic effect.

It's been a day of industry, with house cleaning, office building, and Mardi Gras wreath making

    Today has been a day of industry at the Col. Reb household.
    Jinny and I started out our day cleaning. I pitched in without even being asked to or yelled at.

    After a while her dad showed up. He's been helping us to convert an attic space into an office. When we bought our house this attic space didn't even have a floor. We immediately floored it, but later decided it would make a good office space. We made good progress today on our attic conversion.
    Of course, we've now lost storage space. But we have some more unfloored attic space that I am in the process of flooring. So we'll again have about 125 sq. ft. of floored attic storage space, plus our garage.
    Jinny decided to undertake the making of a few Mardi Gras wreaths and bought the supplies a week or two ago. Or some of the supplies. I decided we needed the happy-sad faces and the feather masks and ordered them off Amazon for a buck each. Lucy was in charge of the glitter. Glitter, by the way, if very difficult to get out of a kitchen once it gains a good foothold. So the wreaths were a family affair.
    Our attic office will be finished in a few days. Our Mardi Gras wreaths are finished, and one is hanging on our front door. And our house is, if not clean, at least cleaner than it was this morning.
    Now if I could just get the garage cleaned up!

Today's travel tip: If you are going to make a mistake booking a flight, don't do it during snowstorm

    Here's a travel tip for you. Although most airline tickets come with big cancellation fees, most airlines also give customers 24 hours to cancel a booking without penalty. So if in doubt, go ahead and book the flight -- you can cancel later if you need to.
    Jinny recently made an airline booking for the wrong week. All she had to do was call Egencia, the business version of Expedia, and ask them to cancel her flight.
    Of course, she picked a day when airlines were cancelling thousands of flights due to weather, with even more expected to be cancelled. After three or four hours she got someone on the phone and they cancelled her flight with no penalty save for the loss of her time.
    So if you are going to make an error booking a flight, don't do it during a major winter snow storm.

Million Dollar Quartet was a great show and the Ford Performing Arts Center is a great showcase

I snapped this photo of the Ford Center from the orchestra pit area a few minutes before Tuesday night's performance of Million Dollar Quartet. I didn't think I would ever see this type of facility at Ole Miss!

    I took the family to see Million Dollar Quartet at the Gertrude C. Ford Center for the Performing Arts at Ole Miss last night. It was a great show and a reminder of how lucky we are in Oxford to have the Ford Center.
    The musical centers on the night in 1956 that Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis got together at the Sun Recording Studio in Memphis. Their impromptu session was recorded and they were dubbed the "Million Dollar Quartet" in a Memphis Press-Scimitar new article the next day.
    My father-in-law went with us. As a young man he was a member of a Nashville band that tried to make it in the music business. I think they had one song that made it into the Top 100 for one week. Although the events showcased by Million Dollar Quartet were a little before his time he loves the music and singers from this era. (And after the show he shared a story of his band opening a show for Conway Twitty and Jerry Lee Lewis in Birmingham. Lewis was most displeased with the fact that Twitty was getting top billing for the show and made his displeasure known. The promoters ended up closing the curtain on Lewis after four songs).
    I'm not going to write a review of the musical except to say that I enjoyed it. You can read that elsewhere. I will say I agree with the Lexington Herald-Leader's view that John Countryman as Jerry Lee Lewis looks the least like the star he is portraying but does the best job of acting and sounding like him.
    I have been lucky in getting theatre seats lately, and somehow managed to get front-row seats for last night's show. I bought them fairly late, and I must have gotten online at exactly the right time as some Orchestra Pit seats were released.
    Yet the Ford Center is full of good seats. I never go in it that I am not amazed that the second-smallest university in the SEC in the smallest college town in the SEC has a performing arts center that is among the very best to be found not only at any SEC school, but at any university, period. I'm sure there are bigger and better, but when the size of our university and our town are taken into account the Ford Center is just as good as it gets.
    The Ford Center seats 1,250. By way of comparison the Orpheum in Memphis seats 2,500. But 1,250 seats is enough to bring in some good shows, and as much as I like the Orpheum I'd rather see a show at the Ford Center.
    Tuesday night's performance was a sell-out, although there were a few empty seats due to bad weather. Tonight there is a performance by Widespread Panic's "JoJo" Herman in the studio theatre. It, too, is sold out. A look at the Ford Center's upcoming events calendar shows that the facility will be put to good use over the next few months for campus events, concerts, and even a high school musical.
    If you haven't been to an event at the Ford Center, I suggest you put it on your "bucket list." You'll enjoy the show, and just as important you'll enjoy the facility.

The Rebel Deli lives -- at least in my kitchen

    Back in my student days I spent a year to 18 months working at the Rebel Deli, which was located on Jackson Ave., at the end of Fraternity Row, just west of Tidwell's Grocery and Service Station.
    The Rebel Deli's menu was about as simple as can be. They (or we) served steamed sandwiches on white, wheat, or onion roll. A variety of cheeses were available. There were no tomatoes, onions, green peppers, or any of that nonsense. Just bread, meat, and cheese steamed, put on a square of tinfoil which you then carried to your table to eat. Many of us absolutely loved them, and because I worked there I got to eat for half price.
    Grey Sellers, the owner of the Rebel Deli, wrote a little bit about the history of his restaurant on the Restaurant History of Oxford Facebook page:

   I opened the Rebel Deli in September of 1979 and served the last sandwich on May 31, 1985. It was a sad day. George Kakales, the owner of Dino's on the square, bought the property from Mr. McMillan in order to open the new Dino's. He decided that he didn't need any additional competition and would not renew my lease. I looked for other locations to move the deli to but I could not find anyone willing to lease to a restaurant.
   When we first opened, there were only a handful of places selling food after 10:30pm. (Mr. Quick, Kiami's Bowling Alley, Pizza Den, and Quick Shop). We were open 14 hours a day and would typically do half of our sales in the 2 hour period from 11:00pm to 1:00am. The drunk to sober ratio during this time slot was about 10-1. It was rare that anyone would pay with cash. We would take between 70 and 90 checks on an average day with the average check total approximately $3.50. The best thing I can say about Rebel Deli customers is that after 6 years, we closed the doors with only 7 checks that bounced and were never paid.
   I saved 1 of the steamers and we break it out 2-3 times/year. It brings back a lot of good memories.

    The video that I've posted above just shows me making some steamed sandwiches and talking a little bit to my kids about the Rebel Deli. I will note that the Pepperidge Farm onion rolls did not steam well at all. The Cobblestone Mill bread did quite well. The video is almost 15 minutes long, so please be assured that you won't hurt my feelings if you skip through parts of it!
    After the failure of the Pepperidge Farm bread I bought some much firmer onion rolls from Kroger and made a sandwich using Boar's Head oven roasted turkey and Cracker Barrel Extra Sharp white cheddar. After steaming it I topped the sandwich with a couple of pieces of crisp bacon. It was a joint tribute, to both the Rebel Deli and the Hoka Theatre, which used to sell a sandwich called the "Love at First Bite" made with turkey, cheddar, and bacon. Yes, my sandwich was good.
    The steamer is good for more than just making sandwiches. It's supposedly great for cooking shellfish and for reheating a variety of foods. I'll have to play around with it some, but my reason for getting it was to make sandwiches.
    If our group's generator will handle it I think I'll bring the steamer to the Grove for one of the football games. Something tells me I won't lack for company.