The Noodle Maker

Fictional Character

Macbeath is the cook that hits the rocks with Laska, Uncle Joe, and a few that have yet to emerge to be imagined. There is no rush. There is no deadline. We have the Bowser turned turtle during a storm. She’s been upside down since early November of 2024. She can stay there forever.

Back during COVID when my arms were weeping with poison oak drippings, and I was stoned out of my mind on the prednisone, all I could think about was noodle making. I was working between Morro Bay and Lompoc, mostly. 2020 was the only year that I did not make it back to New Jersey.

The fortune from which the research vessels was to come came from a single food truck selling Raven Ramen. A big black bird with a wonky eye, and a beak with ramen hanging - that was where this story began. Not in a kitchen, but on Route1, in Northern Santa Barbara County, where crews were cutting broccoli just north of Vandenburg Airforce Base.

As Laska puts her canoe in, there is Macbeath, looking out the window of the Better Duck Inn. He is making noodles, an homage to Raven, and the fortune that only got made in my prednisone infused imagination.

There was not just one research vessel in that 2020 plan, there were five of them, and five noodle factories dispersed globally to support them. I spent a lot of time thinking, I believed in the plan. Each factory was to be a noodle university, and each student would learn the process from seed planting to sauce making, earning as they were learning. I did not sleep much at all on that prednisone, but I never made a noodle, not one, in my lifetime.

Macbeath makes the noodles, and looks quietly after Laska, as she slides the canoe into the river.