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Cowboy comfort

The other day, a man walked into the winery. I had never met him, yet I felt I somehow knew him. He wore a white stetson and a shirt with snaps instead of buttons. The man looked to be in his sixties, with a slightly weathered face, a warm smile and sparkly blue eyes. When he approached the bar with his party, I made some sort of joke to which he responded, "Yer kind of a smart alec, aren't ya?"
"Yep," I smiled. He winked and grinned back at me. We'd never met before and yet, I knew him. He was a rancher from Montana, but he might just as well have been from Wyoming or Utah or Nevada or Colorado. This man was an honest to goodness cowboy. Not the George Bush variety, mind you, but the real deal. Here was an honorable, chivalrous, hardworking cattleman. The Code of the West is real. These guys live it. It was nice to hang with the fellow and his family for while. It was a little like being home.
I also enjoyed a couple that came in yesterday. They were from Green Bay, Wisconsin. This pair was retired and rotund, a lifetime of cheddar, bratwurst, pork chops and sour kraut showing in their waistlines. Figuratively, I knew them too. They were all-American Midwesterners. We chatted about the Packers and I lamented the fact that Bret didn't make it to the big game one last time before calling it quits. They seemed to enjoy the wines, but preferred the sweeter stuff.
"This our Hawaiian Guava," I told them. "It's half guava and half white grapes. The guava comes from Kea'au, a community just down the highway...."
The woman stared at the tip of the bottle as I poured the liquid into her glass. She listened intently to my explanation. Then, shyly, she asked, "What did you call that again?"
"Guava?" I said in a clarifying sort of way.
"Is that some kind of fruit?" she asked shyly.
"Well yes, it is." I described it for her, showing how big it was with my hands, explaining that it grows on a tree. It was really pretty cool. She knew what bananas and pineapples were, since those appear regularly in grocery stores all over the world, including Green Bay. But she'd never been to Hawaii or any other tropical country, so couldn't possibly have known about guavas. She was getting her first taste of them, albeit a bit distorted by fermentation and added grapes, with that sip from the glass I'd poured her.
"Well that's really something," she said. It sounded just like something my grandmother might have said.
This morning, I had some fun using the few Japanese words I know. I can say oishi (tasty), amai (sweet), hachimitsu (honey) and my new favorite, scoshi (just a little bit). Then of course there's arrigato and sayonara. The Japanese tourists love it. They are always willing to teach me more. Somehow, we always manage to communicate and laugh a little.

Tomorrow, I'll travel to Kona for a chocolate tour. We'll go to a cacao grove (or is that an orchard?) and a candy making factory. Yummy! It's the second part of a chocolate class that began Thursday night. So far so good. I'll spill the cacao beans later....

It will be nice to be out of the vog tomorrow. This afternoon, it was chokingly thick. That has got to stop. I really don't think I can stand breathing that stuff much more.

A hui hou. Aloha!

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