Wokeness defied in Cayucos

October 7, 2023

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin. 

Franklin’s memoir, “Life On The Mississippi, 1969,” is currently on Amazon.

By DELL FRANKLIN

I don’t see how anybody, and especially conservative Republicans, can accuse me of being “woke” when I try and eat at least one juicy half pound cheeseburger a month, drive a car that requires gas, labor over Cajun dishes with lots of Andouille, make it a point to get drunk and commingle with professional bullshitters in our local bar at least once a month, avoid and snicker smugly at self-pampering, water bottle carrying joggers, finicky vegans and vegetarians, walkers of spa-treated mini pedigree dogs, sophisticated wine tasting prima donnas; and precious money grubbing, airb&b amassing, Patagonia wearing liberals.

To those readers of CalCoastNews who have in the past labeled me a commie and Marxist and the very personification of “woke,” l , just the other day, after an at least 20-year hiatus, decided to cook up some country gravy with breakfast sausage, very possibly a dish that would cause most highly accomplished, intellectualized woke liberals to cringe outwardly and maybe faint.

The country gravy I wished to pursue, when I looked it up, is comprised primarily of a pound of breakfast sausage, butter, milk, and flour, the combination of which could plug up the arteries of an 80-year old like myself and topple me over instantly into a visit to the emergency room.

But suddenly, like waking up in the morning beside a beautiful naked woman, I just had to have some country gravy, and it didn’t even have to be on biscuits. No, I was fine with toasted sourdough or English muffins, because multi-tasking threatens the process of creating the best country gravy with sausage possible.

I went to work in the late afternoon while a baseball game was on the tube. I had previously consulted recipes on my computer and wished to simplify my ambitions. I assembled my ingredients and was already salivating over my memory of this recipe in the past while ingesting bunkhouse breakfasts in simple diners, like the long gone Skipper’s in Cayucos (replaced by the Hidden Kitchen that caters to health conscience folks and is constantly packed) that might have eventually killed half the locals in town for at least four decades with its irresistible country fried steak with country gravy.

Anyway, I got down to business and pretty much made a mess of things by forgetting to buy flour and using cornstarch instead and evidently not enough milk, because what resulted was not anything resembling gravy but instead a mound of gooey paste that nevertheless tasted good because nobody, not even an incompetent like myself can ruin the taste of fresh breakfast sausage.

I ate it all for dinner and immediately had to take Pepcid, and found no cure for the tiny animals indulging in a wild and vicious fight in my stomach throughout a sleepless, belching night of self-denial that I am a fool.

I waited a week and this time followed instructions written down on paper, added sage and garlic, and the results were heavenly—my country gravy with breakfast sausage proved scrumptious in cosmology, aroma and taste. And since I had it earlier my stomach was only vaguely aggravated and I slept well.

At the same time, I realized that conquering my country gravy with breakfast sausage to such a delectable extent was dangerous in that I might start preparing it every week and like the old cowboys from Cayucos who expired from too much of Skipper’s delicacies, I would have to discipline myself or else suffer a miserable, agonizing death spiral or an instant lights out.

Still, in the future company of drivers of diesel-fueled smoke spewing monster trucks, proud daily meat eaters and climate deniers and gun-toters and Trump ballyhooing fanatics boasting of their tools and toys and empty mini mansions, I know they will not scoff at my bearded and long-haired obvious liberal mien when I start bragging about my country gravy with breakfast sausage that, at 80 years old, has not fucking killed me.

Take that, woke accusers!