What follows is an archive of the columns I wrote for the Manistee News Advocate between September 2009 and September 2010. They are in somewhat chronological order in which they appeared, though you wouldn't know it because they are undated. Therefore, some may have become jumbled. Sorry. Consider it a public file cabinet. Sometimes you find strange things when you look inside the drawers of others...
So, most importantly, what have I been writing about for the past year?
Well, a little bit of everything: visiting a bat cave, scary right-wing rhetoric, J.D. Salinger and Chet Lemmon.
And much more.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The Bill of Fights: Constitution Day inspires reflection
The United States Constitution is one of the most influential documents in the history of the world.
It’s been used as a template that has led to better lives for millions all over the globe.
This Friday, Sept. 17, celebrates the day 223 years ago that the document was signed by a bunch of radicals we now call by the more noble and austere appellation: The Founding Fathers.
These fellows put together a pretty neat little package. Liberty is the concept that was most important to them, even if it did take a few centuries for all humans on this soil to achieve the rights called for in revolutionary times.
The articles of the Constitution outline a method of government we all live by, the stuff we learned in high school civics class.
These are not oft debated. If they are, it’s usually by lawmakers with minds for minutia.
But if you wanna see a fight, start talking about the Bill of Rights.
Or the Bill of Fights, if you will.
Debate is healthy for the republic. It’s how we reshape those ideas for our own good and prosperity every generation. The fact that the founding radicals isolated topics we’re still arguing about 200 plus years later proves its relevance.
The Bill of Fights has stood up remarkably well over time. There are only a few rooms that need to be shut off from the rest of the house because of mold. And maybe a couple cracked windows.
Let’s take a look:
1. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This amendment is number one for a reason. The only way to be free is if people aren’t messing with you for your beliefs, or what you want to say or write in the newspaper. Give government too much power, the people are miserable. Giving people the power keeps them on their toes.
2. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Well. Hmm. Do we really need citizen militias anymore? Not really. Our way of life has certainly changed since America was a wilderness in the 1770s. I’m going with the logic that if it’s OK for the government to have nuclear missiles, it’s OK for the average citizen to own a shotgun to go grouse hunting with. Or, a handgun to protect themselves. But, it’s when the right is abused by folks who think regular life is a warzone that it becomes frightening. This ain’t the Wild West anymore.
3. No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
I’m thankful that we haven’t had a major war on American soil in a long, long time. If we ever do, this could apply. Until then, if anyone comes knocking on my door in military dress, it better be Halloween.
4. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This whole “probable cause” thing has most likely caused police and attorneys countless headaches. Good. No one should have the power to arbitrarily go through your junk, even if the junk is against the law. If we don’t follow along with stuff like this, then we’re liable to start goose-stepping our way down the path of history.
5. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
There’s always a moment in gangster movies when the criminals “plead the Fifth.” It’s so they don’t have to talk smack about themselves. Just one more protection for liberty.
6. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Without this amendment, the State could theoretically keep you imprisoned for long periods of time without a judgment ever being passed, which is, of course, a judgment of its own.
7. In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Twenty bucks, eh. That was probably what someone made in a whole year back then ... or a newspaperman’s salary now.
8. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Death isn’t unusual -- it happens to us all -- but it is pretty cruel. The death penalty is just one of those things that will be argued until the end of time.
And here are your last two amendments:
9. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
10. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Debate them, ponder them, just try to keep the fights clean.
And have a Happy Constitution Day!
It’s been used as a template that has led to better lives for millions all over the globe.
This Friday, Sept. 17, celebrates the day 223 years ago that the document was signed by a bunch of radicals we now call by the more noble and austere appellation: The Founding Fathers.
These fellows put together a pretty neat little package. Liberty is the concept that was most important to them, even if it did take a few centuries for all humans on this soil to achieve the rights called for in revolutionary times.
The articles of the Constitution outline a method of government we all live by, the stuff we learned in high school civics class.
These are not oft debated. If they are, it’s usually by lawmakers with minds for minutia.
But if you wanna see a fight, start talking about the Bill of Rights.
Or the Bill of Fights, if you will.
Debate is healthy for the republic. It’s how we reshape those ideas for our own good and prosperity every generation. The fact that the founding radicals isolated topics we’re still arguing about 200 plus years later proves its relevance.
The Bill of Fights has stood up remarkably well over time. There are only a few rooms that need to be shut off from the rest of the house because of mold. And maybe a couple cracked windows.
Let’s take a look:
1. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This amendment is number one for a reason. The only way to be free is if people aren’t messing with you for your beliefs, or what you want to say or write in the newspaper. Give government too much power, the people are miserable. Giving people the power keeps them on their toes.
2. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Well. Hmm. Do we really need citizen militias anymore? Not really. Our way of life has certainly changed since America was a wilderness in the 1770s. I’m going with the logic that if it’s OK for the government to have nuclear missiles, it’s OK for the average citizen to own a shotgun to go grouse hunting with. Or, a handgun to protect themselves. But, it’s when the right is abused by folks who think regular life is a warzone that it becomes frightening. This ain’t the Wild West anymore.
3. No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
I’m thankful that we haven’t had a major war on American soil in a long, long time. If we ever do, this could apply. Until then, if anyone comes knocking on my door in military dress, it better be Halloween.
4. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This whole “probable cause” thing has most likely caused police and attorneys countless headaches. Good. No one should have the power to arbitrarily go through your junk, even if the junk is against the law. If we don’t follow along with stuff like this, then we’re liable to start goose-stepping our way down the path of history.
5. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
There’s always a moment in gangster movies when the criminals “plead the Fifth.” It’s so they don’t have to talk smack about themselves. Just one more protection for liberty.
6. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Without this amendment, the State could theoretically keep you imprisoned for long periods of time without a judgment ever being passed, which is, of course, a judgment of its own.
7. In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Twenty bucks, eh. That was probably what someone made in a whole year back then ... or a newspaperman’s salary now.
8. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Death isn’t unusual -- it happens to us all -- but it is pretty cruel. The death penalty is just one of those things that will be argued until the end of time.
And here are your last two amendments:
9. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
10. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Debate them, ponder them, just try to keep the fights clean.
And have a Happy Constitution Day!
Game over: Video games are relaxing black holes of time
I wasn’t John Counts this weekend.
I was Bond. James Bond.
That’s right. I didn’t spend my Labor Day weekend at some boring, banal barbecue. Instead, I was massacring henchmen in mansions and scouring Italian rooftops for devious villains.
Virtually, that is.
In reality, I was alternately standing and sitting in a living room staring at a television screen in my underwear playing the video game “James Bond: Quantum of Solace,” derived from the movie of the same name.
By the end of my 15-hour binge, my skin was a bit pastier. My eyes were burned out, glazed over. When I finally slept, I dreamed in the same jagged images of the game.
All holiday weekend, no one could get between me and my Wii.
I don’t own any video game console for this reason. They are addicting. They are addicting because sometimes it’s easier to get to the next level in a game than it is in life. They are addicting because you, the gamer, are in complete control over the universe before your eyes. They are addicting because while the games are all-absorbing, there is nothing truly at stake. When you see “Game Over” you can always hit reset and keep going. You can go back and redo things you messed up the first time.
You can’t do that in real life. Not yet, at least.
For those reasons, real life events begin to become less important. That’s when you find yourself at 3 a.m. reaching for a Code Red Mountain Dew to keep you awake for a few more gaming hours. You’re brain is usually too busy to question how you got there.
It’s not a pleasant place to be. Once your eyes wake up to reality and things begin moving at the speed of life again, there’s guilt. There’s remorse.
It’s why I’ve ignored video games for the past 15 years. The systems have come and gone. PlayStation 1, 2 and 3. Xbox. GameCube.
As the gaming systems have gotten better, the more intoxicating they’ve become.
They sure have changed since I was a lad in their nascent age of the 1980s. First, there was “Pong,” a game in which a dot moves back and forth on a screen and the player controls “paddles,” basically a thick, simple line, to bounce the dot back and forth. It amazed and stupefied us back then. Wow, we said.
Now, it compares to a monkey dipping a stick into an ant hole for dinner.
But beginnings are always quaint.
We were never the family that rushed out and bought the new gadgets when they hit the shelves. We’d wait until the hype died down -- along with the prices.
I remember the excitement surrounding the arrival of the Atari 2600 when I was about 6 years old. My older brother and I played “Donkey Kong,” “Frogger” and a game based on the “E.T.” movie for hours.
But we always played outside for hours, too.
When I was in middle school, we got the first Nintendo. We devoted so much time to the completion of Mario Brothers that the music is easily hummed and the images conjured to this day. Large amounts of my young life were also spent unlocking the secrets and mysteries of “The Legend of Zelda.” By the time I finally beat it, the map that came with the game was in tatters.
So were my nerves.
And what did I have to show for it?
“Dude, I beat Zelda,” I probably told my friends.
“Sweet,” they probably said. “Let’s go to the mall.”
I danced ever so briefly with Sega Genesis and the first PlayStation. I’d play them at other folks’ houses, but never gave in to the temptation to plunk down the hundred plus dollars to get one myself.
This would have been in the late 1990s. I’ve been relatively game-free since. Until now.
I knew where I’d be spending the holiday weekend had one of these newfangled Nintendo Wii systems. So, I went to the Family Video, and rented this James Bond game for what I thought would be a few hours of amusement.
By the time I was stripped down to my shorts and yelling obscenities at fake, two-dimension representations of people on a television screen, I knew I was lost.
I was back in the same mode I was in when I was 12, trying to figure out “The Legend of Zelda.”
In fact, I don’t even know where I found the time to write this column. I hope you all had a good Labor Day, Manistee, but I’ve got to go for now.
The game’s on pause.
I was Bond. James Bond.
That’s right. I didn’t spend my Labor Day weekend at some boring, banal barbecue. Instead, I was massacring henchmen in mansions and scouring Italian rooftops for devious villains.
Virtually, that is.
In reality, I was alternately standing and sitting in a living room staring at a television screen in my underwear playing the video game “James Bond: Quantum of Solace,” derived from the movie of the same name.
By the end of my 15-hour binge, my skin was a bit pastier. My eyes were burned out, glazed over. When I finally slept, I dreamed in the same jagged images of the game.
All holiday weekend, no one could get between me and my Wii.
I don’t own any video game console for this reason. They are addicting. They are addicting because sometimes it’s easier to get to the next level in a game than it is in life. They are addicting because you, the gamer, are in complete control over the universe before your eyes. They are addicting because while the games are all-absorbing, there is nothing truly at stake. When you see “Game Over” you can always hit reset and keep going. You can go back and redo things you messed up the first time.
You can’t do that in real life. Not yet, at least.
For those reasons, real life events begin to become less important. That’s when you find yourself at 3 a.m. reaching for a Code Red Mountain Dew to keep you awake for a few more gaming hours. You’re brain is usually too busy to question how you got there.
It’s not a pleasant place to be. Once your eyes wake up to reality and things begin moving at the speed of life again, there’s guilt. There’s remorse.
It’s why I’ve ignored video games for the past 15 years. The systems have come and gone. PlayStation 1, 2 and 3. Xbox. GameCube.
As the gaming systems have gotten better, the more intoxicating they’ve become.
They sure have changed since I was a lad in their nascent age of the 1980s. First, there was “Pong,” a game in which a dot moves back and forth on a screen and the player controls “paddles,” basically a thick, simple line, to bounce the dot back and forth. It amazed and stupefied us back then. Wow, we said.
Now, it compares to a monkey dipping a stick into an ant hole for dinner.
But beginnings are always quaint.
We were never the family that rushed out and bought the new gadgets when they hit the shelves. We’d wait until the hype died down -- along with the prices.
I remember the excitement surrounding the arrival of the Atari 2600 when I was about 6 years old. My older brother and I played “Donkey Kong,” “Frogger” and a game based on the “E.T.” movie for hours.
But we always played outside for hours, too.
When I was in middle school, we got the first Nintendo. We devoted so much time to the completion of Mario Brothers that the music is easily hummed and the images conjured to this day. Large amounts of my young life were also spent unlocking the secrets and mysteries of “The Legend of Zelda.” By the time I finally beat it, the map that came with the game was in tatters.
So were my nerves.
And what did I have to show for it?
“Dude, I beat Zelda,” I probably told my friends.
“Sweet,” they probably said. “Let’s go to the mall.”
I danced ever so briefly with Sega Genesis and the first PlayStation. I’d play them at other folks’ houses, but never gave in to the temptation to plunk down the hundred plus dollars to get one myself.
This would have been in the late 1990s. I’ve been relatively game-free since. Until now.
I knew where I’d be spending the holiday weekend had one of these newfangled Nintendo Wii systems. So, I went to the Family Video, and rented this James Bond game for what I thought would be a few hours of amusement.
By the time I was stripped down to my shorts and yelling obscenities at fake, two-dimension representations of people on a television screen, I knew I was lost.
I was back in the same mode I was in when I was 12, trying to figure out “The Legend of Zelda.”
In fact, I don’t even know where I found the time to write this column. I hope you all had a good Labor Day, Manistee, but I’ve got to go for now.
The game’s on pause.
Howling for a friend: New puppy brings Homeward Bound’s importance into focus
My girlfriend, Meredith, and I went to Homeward Bound Animal Shelter last Thursday just to take a look.
We adopted Rudy hours later and brought him home the next day.
It’s nearly impossible to walk through the shelter and not want to take all the pups home with you.
For instance, it was very difficult to pry the little fella away from his three sisters without bringing them along.
We almost did -- unintentionally.
The four 16-week old pooches all shared the same cinder block pen with a swinging chain-link fence door. Of course, while Meredith and I tried getting Rudy out to play before committing to adoption, all four dogs escaped.
We frantically ran around scooping them up and trying to get them back in the pen. The problem was that one would always manage to slip out when we put one in.
It made me question my future as the Paterfamilias of Puppy Land. Even though there’d only be one little guy, would I be cut out for it? If I can barely keep my own nails clipped, stomach filled and hair washed, how can I take care of a dog?
I didn’t have much time to ponder the big questions while chasing down the puppies at Homeward Bound. We finally got Rudy’s sisters into the pen and spent some quality time with him.
We fell in love.
He’s a little dog right now, white with a few black patches on his face and one spot at the base of his tail. He’s easily mistaken for a full-grown Jack Russell terrier, which happened twice at the Farmer’s Market Saturday morning, where we went to parade him around.
He doesn’t sound like a terrier, though.
His mother, Tip Toes, is a 2-year-old Lab mix (and still available for adoption), but Rudy’s definitely got some hound blood.
This little 14-pound squirt of a dog has a voice on him.
I know this for a fact.
We got started with crate training Friday night. From 1 until 4 a.m., Rudy paced the crate, cried and tried chewing through the bars.
During the most intense moments of his first-night blues, he reached a high-pitched hound dog wail that rattled the glasses in the cupboards.
Sorry, neighbors. I truly do apologize.
Every dog owner knows you have to let him cry it out or else he’ll always yowl in the crate. Start letting the dog boss you around and he’ll soon become the Paterfamilias of People Land.
As much as it broke our hearts, we left him in the crate that entire first night, ignoring all the yelps intended for his sisters back at the shelter to help him.
He didn’t yet know that he was part of a new pack.
Our pack.
I think he knows now. The next night went much smoother. He’s more settled in and sleeping through the night in the crate. He only howled once.
Life is good.
These experiences are to be treasured. This experience is also something that’s being threatened in Manistee County.
Homeward Bound is again in dire financial straits. Unlike tax-funded agencies, which always receive their funds no matter how bad they bungle things, the “no-kill” non-profit shelter relies solely on donations and fundraisers.
Please, be a friend to this wonderful organization so other people can benefit like we have.
Maybe you’ll need a friend too someday.
There are always plenty waiting at the shelter.
For now.
We adopted Rudy hours later and brought him home the next day.
It’s nearly impossible to walk through the shelter and not want to take all the pups home with you.
For instance, it was very difficult to pry the little fella away from his three sisters without bringing them along.
We almost did -- unintentionally.
The four 16-week old pooches all shared the same cinder block pen with a swinging chain-link fence door. Of course, while Meredith and I tried getting Rudy out to play before committing to adoption, all four dogs escaped.
We frantically ran around scooping them up and trying to get them back in the pen. The problem was that one would always manage to slip out when we put one in.
It made me question my future as the Paterfamilias of Puppy Land. Even though there’d only be one little guy, would I be cut out for it? If I can barely keep my own nails clipped, stomach filled and hair washed, how can I take care of a dog?
I didn’t have much time to ponder the big questions while chasing down the puppies at Homeward Bound. We finally got Rudy’s sisters into the pen and spent some quality time with him.
We fell in love.
He’s a little dog right now, white with a few black patches on his face and one spot at the base of his tail. He’s easily mistaken for a full-grown Jack Russell terrier, which happened twice at the Farmer’s Market Saturday morning, where we went to parade him around.
He doesn’t sound like a terrier, though.
His mother, Tip Toes, is a 2-year-old Lab mix (and still available for adoption), but Rudy’s definitely got some hound blood.
This little 14-pound squirt of a dog has a voice on him.
I know this for a fact.
We got started with crate training Friday night. From 1 until 4 a.m., Rudy paced the crate, cried and tried chewing through the bars.
During the most intense moments of his first-night blues, he reached a high-pitched hound dog wail that rattled the glasses in the cupboards.
Sorry, neighbors. I truly do apologize.
Every dog owner knows you have to let him cry it out or else he’ll always yowl in the crate. Start letting the dog boss you around and he’ll soon become the Paterfamilias of People Land.
As much as it broke our hearts, we left him in the crate that entire first night, ignoring all the yelps intended for his sisters back at the shelter to help him.
He didn’t yet know that he was part of a new pack.
Our pack.
I think he knows now. The next night went much smoother. He’s more settled in and sleeping through the night in the crate. He only howled once.
Life is good.
These experiences are to be treasured. This experience is also something that’s being threatened in Manistee County.
Homeward Bound is again in dire financial straits. Unlike tax-funded agencies, which always receive their funds no matter how bad they bungle things, the “no-kill” non-profit shelter relies solely on donations and fundraisers.
Please, be a friend to this wonderful organization so other people can benefit like we have.
Maybe you’ll need a friend too someday.
There are always plenty waiting at the shelter.
For now.
School days: Reasons to embrace the coming school year
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, kiddies, but your days are numbered.
Of summer, that is.
There are only 22 precious days left before it’s back to a life dictated by ringing bells.
After a summer of hanging out with friends, swimming and riding bikes, (or, more accurately, tweetering with friends and playing Xbox) it’s always difficult to get back into the grind of homework and tests.
But don’t feel discouraged, kiddies. Going back to school isn’t all bad.
Here are a couple of reasons to feel grateful about the end of summer:
YOU GOT THE SUMMER OFF
No duh, you say.
But what I’m getting at is: savor it, kiddies, because summer vacations end when you hit the real world.
Unless you become a teacher or a snowmobile repair man, they become a glorious thing of the past.
There’s no losing track of time because you haven’t had to be anywhere for weeks.
There’s no waking up and having that nice feeling that you have no clue what to do the rest of the day.
No, during a grown-up summer, you just do what you do the rest of the year: work.
Which is kind of a scam. Why everyone doesn’t get a summer vacation is beyond me. We could have invented a better situation than this. It must be that Puritan work ethic.
I say protest! Revolt!
So, kiddies, be thankful you’re starting school again for the year, and not just carrying on throughout the summer.
FIRST DAY EXCITEMENT
When I was a lad I would never admit it, but I was always brimming with excitement and anticipation for the first day of school.
I’d have my “E.T.” t-shirt, corduroy pants and Nikes set out on a chair the night before, the only time the entire school year I’d be so fussy and lay out my wardrobe.
My mom would always take a picture of my brother and I. Looking at the pictures now, the most noticeable thing is that the older we got, the more amount of hair gel we used.
I never slept the night before. I was too excited.
What would my teacher be like? Would my friends be in my class? Would there be any new kids at the school? What had everyone done over the summer?
Mostly, though, I was kept up all night with one burning thought: Would I get to sit next to Kathleen Brunson?
And if Kathleen wasn’t game, who would I ask to “go” with me that year.
So, kiddies, be excited that after a summer of hanging out with all your friends of the same sex, school once again puts you in contact with the other.
BACK TO SCHOOL SHOPPING
If you’re like how I used to be in my younger and more vulnerable days, you’ve probably been bumming around all summer in the same few pair of raggedy shorts and t-shirts.
Starting a new school year is prime time to get mom and dad to open up their wallets and get you some new duds.
Shopping for fall clothes is even something that’s fun for people like me who hate going to the mall.
My mom would take me to Fashion Square Mall in Saginaw. It would be a day of trying on new pants, shirts and shoes.
When it was over, I always had a nice ensemble for the first day.
After all, I had to look good for Kathleen Brunson.
Of summer, that is.
There are only 22 precious days left before it’s back to a life dictated by ringing bells.
After a summer of hanging out with friends, swimming and riding bikes, (or, more accurately, tweetering with friends and playing Xbox) it’s always difficult to get back into the grind of homework and tests.
But don’t feel discouraged, kiddies. Going back to school isn’t all bad.
Here are a couple of reasons to feel grateful about the end of summer:
YOU GOT THE SUMMER OFF
No duh, you say.
But what I’m getting at is: savor it, kiddies, because summer vacations end when you hit the real world.
Unless you become a teacher or a snowmobile repair man, they become a glorious thing of the past.
There’s no losing track of time because you haven’t had to be anywhere for weeks.
There’s no waking up and having that nice feeling that you have no clue what to do the rest of the day.
No, during a grown-up summer, you just do what you do the rest of the year: work.
Which is kind of a scam. Why everyone doesn’t get a summer vacation is beyond me. We could have invented a better situation than this. It must be that Puritan work ethic.
I say protest! Revolt!
So, kiddies, be thankful you’re starting school again for the year, and not just carrying on throughout the summer.
FIRST DAY EXCITEMENT
When I was a lad I would never admit it, but I was always brimming with excitement and anticipation for the first day of school.
I’d have my “E.T.” t-shirt, corduroy pants and Nikes set out on a chair the night before, the only time the entire school year I’d be so fussy and lay out my wardrobe.
My mom would always take a picture of my brother and I. Looking at the pictures now, the most noticeable thing is that the older we got, the more amount of hair gel we used.
I never slept the night before. I was too excited.
What would my teacher be like? Would my friends be in my class? Would there be any new kids at the school? What had everyone done over the summer?
Mostly, though, I was kept up all night with one burning thought: Would I get to sit next to Kathleen Brunson?
And if Kathleen wasn’t game, who would I ask to “go” with me that year.
So, kiddies, be excited that after a summer of hanging out with all your friends of the same sex, school once again puts you in contact with the other.
BACK TO SCHOOL SHOPPING
If you’re like how I used to be in my younger and more vulnerable days, you’ve probably been bumming around all summer in the same few pair of raggedy shorts and t-shirts.
Starting a new school year is prime time to get mom and dad to open up their wallets and get you some new duds.
Shopping for fall clothes is even something that’s fun for people like me who hate going to the mall.
My mom would take me to Fashion Square Mall in Saginaw. It would be a day of trying on new pants, shirts and shoes.
When it was over, I always had a nice ensemble for the first day.
After all, I had to look good for Kathleen Brunson.
Bedroom zoos: Give it up for all the slimy, slithery creatures
Kayaking the Little Manistee the other day put me eye to eye with a black snake hanging in a branch overhanging the river.
I threw my arms up.
I shrieked.
I almost fell in the river.
Finally, I straightened out my kayak and hightailed it away from the branch as quickly as I could.
My wimpiness discouraged me. After all, I had been around all sorts of reptiles and snakes when I was a kid.
My two best friends growing up, Junior Buck and Smitty (nicknames, of course), were budding herpetologists. They had a literal menagerie of lizards and snakes. According to Webster’s, a menagerie is a collection of wild or foreign animals kept especially for exhibition.
Both of their bedrooms, basements and garages were veritable zoos. They had chuckwallas, caimans and flying geckos in aquariums. They had Nile monitors, real chamelons (not to be confused with the cheap, tiny anoles) and bearded dragons in terrariums.
Smitty had a ball python named Llyod we’d feed a baby mouse to each week.
My buddies had a lot of emotional and financial investment wrapped up in their lizards. They should have charged admission.
Instead, we’d sit for hours watching the creatures. Wherever they were being kept was hot and damp from the heat lamps and water. And, yes, there was always a slightly funky smell.
Junior Buck and Smitty would pore through field guides trying to get their young American tongues to speak the Latin names of their creatures.
By the time he was 12, Junior Buck had so many lizards he took all the clothes out of his closet, ripped the door off of it and put a piece of Plexiglass over it.
It was his biggest terrarium yet.
He filled it with a waterfall, heat rocks and logs for the dozen or so lizards he kept in there.
Of course, they always got loose. Ruffio, his beloved Tokay gecko, was never caged. He had free run of the house. Whenever I walked into Junior Buck’s house from the front door, it wasn’t uncommon to see Ruffio hanging out on the ceiling above the television his parents were watching.
But the other lizards got loose too, making sleep-overs potentially terrifying. You never knew when you’d look down and find a little friend in your sleeping bag.
During the summers, Junior Buck slept in a rusted out pop-up camper in his backyard. The yard always flooded when it rained really hard.
All day, we’d be off at Hines Park, through which the Rogue River flowed, the same river Henry Ford built his infamous Rouge Plant on in the 1920s.
It wasn’t the cleanest river, but whatever wildlife that was in there, Junior Buck, Smitty and I would try to catch it.
There were box turtles, softshell turtles and snapping turtles. We’d grab them by their tails and pull them up from the muck and the mire and yell, “Got me a Swamp Dog!”
Whatever we caught, Junior Buck would keep in his flooded backyard. He’d tried to build pens around them, but they all always got away.
One time, he caught a black snake that looked suspiciously like the one that gave me an apoplectic fit the other day on the Little Manistee.
He kept it in an aquarium right outside his pop-up camper.
“He’s a mean bastard,” Junior Buck said as I pulled up on my bike. I looked at Junior’s arms, which were red and swollen with bite marks.
“He do that?” I asked.
Junior Buck, always fearless around his creatures, whether they were from exotic pet shops or captured from Hines, reached into the aquarium. The black snake’s mouth widened and he instantly struck, once again biting Buck on his forearm. He cursed at it.
“I’m taking it back tomorrow,” he said.
The next day, we rode out to the same place in the park where he’d caught it and set it free.
It took me another hour kayaking on the river the other day to remember Junior Buck’s black snake that wouldn’t stop biting him.
The subconscious memory is what made me recoil, I suppose.
Still, from that first one in the garden to those on a plane with Samuel L. Jackson, snakes have gotten a bad rap for too long.
All slimy, slithery things that creep through our forests and nightmares deserve just as much love as puppies and kitties.
But, unlike cats and dogs, maybe we should just give snakes their space.
Maybe they see us and shriek.
They can most definitely bite.
I threw my arms up.
I shrieked.
I almost fell in the river.
Finally, I straightened out my kayak and hightailed it away from the branch as quickly as I could.
My wimpiness discouraged me. After all, I had been around all sorts of reptiles and snakes when I was a kid.
My two best friends growing up, Junior Buck and Smitty (nicknames, of course), were budding herpetologists. They had a literal menagerie of lizards and snakes. According to Webster’s, a menagerie is a collection of wild or foreign animals kept especially for exhibition.
Both of their bedrooms, basements and garages were veritable zoos. They had chuckwallas, caimans and flying geckos in aquariums. They had Nile monitors, real chamelons (not to be confused with the cheap, tiny anoles) and bearded dragons in terrariums.
Smitty had a ball python named Llyod we’d feed a baby mouse to each week.
My buddies had a lot of emotional and financial investment wrapped up in their lizards. They should have charged admission.
Instead, we’d sit for hours watching the creatures. Wherever they were being kept was hot and damp from the heat lamps and water. And, yes, there was always a slightly funky smell.
Junior Buck and Smitty would pore through field guides trying to get their young American tongues to speak the Latin names of their creatures.
By the time he was 12, Junior Buck had so many lizards he took all the clothes out of his closet, ripped the door off of it and put a piece of Plexiglass over it.
It was his biggest terrarium yet.
He filled it with a waterfall, heat rocks and logs for the dozen or so lizards he kept in there.
Of course, they always got loose. Ruffio, his beloved Tokay gecko, was never caged. He had free run of the house. Whenever I walked into Junior Buck’s house from the front door, it wasn’t uncommon to see Ruffio hanging out on the ceiling above the television his parents were watching.
But the other lizards got loose too, making sleep-overs potentially terrifying. You never knew when you’d look down and find a little friend in your sleeping bag.
During the summers, Junior Buck slept in a rusted out pop-up camper in his backyard. The yard always flooded when it rained really hard.
All day, we’d be off at Hines Park, through which the Rogue River flowed, the same river Henry Ford built his infamous Rouge Plant on in the 1920s.
It wasn’t the cleanest river, but whatever wildlife that was in there, Junior Buck, Smitty and I would try to catch it.
There were box turtles, softshell turtles and snapping turtles. We’d grab them by their tails and pull them up from the muck and the mire and yell, “Got me a Swamp Dog!”
Whatever we caught, Junior Buck would keep in his flooded backyard. He’d tried to build pens around them, but they all always got away.
One time, he caught a black snake that looked suspiciously like the one that gave me an apoplectic fit the other day on the Little Manistee.
He kept it in an aquarium right outside his pop-up camper.
“He’s a mean bastard,” Junior Buck said as I pulled up on my bike. I looked at Junior’s arms, which were red and swollen with bite marks.
“He do that?” I asked.
Junior Buck, always fearless around his creatures, whether they were from exotic pet shops or captured from Hines, reached into the aquarium. The black snake’s mouth widened and he instantly struck, once again biting Buck on his forearm. He cursed at it.
“I’m taking it back tomorrow,” he said.
The next day, we rode out to the same place in the park where he’d caught it and set it free.
It took me another hour kayaking on the river the other day to remember Junior Buck’s black snake that wouldn’t stop biting him.
The subconscious memory is what made me recoil, I suppose.
Still, from that first one in the garden to those on a plane with Samuel L. Jackson, snakes have gotten a bad rap for too long.
All slimy, slithery things that creep through our forests and nightmares deserve just as much love as puppies and kitties.
But, unlike cats and dogs, maybe we should just give snakes their space.
Maybe they see us and shriek.
They can most definitely bite.
Running on empty: Oil spills will continue as long as we drive
Sometimes, we need to shelve the microscope and look at whatever falls into our scrutinizing eyes in large view.
Sometimes, a column needs to be a thought experiment.
So, what’s a thought I want to experiment with?
A world without cars.
Cars make us fat.
Car crashes kill more people before their time than anything else.
Cars are fueled by a resource that is not inexhaustible.
Cars pollute.
Looked at like this, it’s a wonder why tobacco and fast food companies get picked on the most as a threat to our health.
Last week’s oil spill on the Kalamazoo River (800,000 gallons!) has me thinking about all of this. Just as we finally plugged the last oil spill, another one pops its cork right here in Michigan.
The usual chatter in the media has followed. It will continue for months. It’s a narrative we’re all intensely familiar with after having gone through months of the Gulf oil spill.
The company’s at fault. The government didn’t regulate them enough, so it’s their fault. There will be a lot of devastating pictures of wildlife covered in oil. There will be pictorial diagrams of the pipe system my non-engineering mind won’t understand. There will be inscrutable acronyms. A line from a media report might sound something like: “Authorities of the GAA said the pipe wasn’t inspected by HDAD officials in over twelve months even though YWE codes call for them every eight months in odd calendar years. The HDAD is now casting blame on the GAA for negligent oversight of the YWE.”
Blah. Blah Blah.
The faux acronyms (and sarcasm) are all mine.
This is fine. The sad situation should be put under a microscope and examined in-depth so it can hopefully be prevented from happening again. Big businesses who run pipes underneath us have responsibilities to the public. So does the government, who we elect to protect the common good from “accidents” like this.
But in a broad view, how about we look at it this way: The oil spill is the fault of each and every one of us who plops our large rumps in a car each day. Myself (and my prodigious rump) included.
You can’t eat oil. You can’t build anything with it. It’s main purpose is to keep our cars running.
And America burns through some gas.
Think about the last ten times you hopped in the car. Where did you go? What did you do? Was it a necessary trip?
Probably not. If you’re like me, you hop in the car to run over to the Wesco to get an ice tea, even though it’s only a few blocks from our newspaper office.
Sometimes, we’re just riding around in our automobiles with no particular place to go.
We make needless trips because we can, because it’s our God given American right to be wasteful. That’s what liberty’s all about, right? If by pursuing our happiness we destroy the world, then so be it. Maybe man was meant to ruin the earth.
Don’t get me wrong, the internal combustion engine is a miraculous feat. Without it, our lives would be limited. There would be no Motor City, cross country road trips or the car chase in Bullitt.
These would all be bad things. Without the automobile industry, my grandparents wouldn’t have had jobs to support having children, thus no me (a negligible bit of the argument in the large view, but of vast importance to me). All we would know of the world is where our feet could take us, which slows down economic productivity and opportunity. And who doesn’t love the romance of Steve McQueen zipping around the streets of San Francisco in a muscle car.
So, alas, I know this is not a feasible, real world argument, but nor is it some liberal, hippie doomsday prophesy.
It was just a thought experiment.
But we can also experiment in real life.
This week I’m going to try a strange new thing I just discovered that doesn’t need oil, doesn’t make us fat, doesn’t kill you if you collide with another and does not pollute.
Walking.
Sometimes, a column needs to be a thought experiment.
So, what’s a thought I want to experiment with?
A world without cars.
Cars make us fat.
Car crashes kill more people before their time than anything else.
Cars are fueled by a resource that is not inexhaustible.
Cars pollute.
Looked at like this, it’s a wonder why tobacco and fast food companies get picked on the most as a threat to our health.
Last week’s oil spill on the Kalamazoo River (800,000 gallons!) has me thinking about all of this. Just as we finally plugged the last oil spill, another one pops its cork right here in Michigan.
The usual chatter in the media has followed. It will continue for months. It’s a narrative we’re all intensely familiar with after having gone through months of the Gulf oil spill.
The company’s at fault. The government didn’t regulate them enough, so it’s their fault. There will be a lot of devastating pictures of wildlife covered in oil. There will be pictorial diagrams of the pipe system my non-engineering mind won’t understand. There will be inscrutable acronyms. A line from a media report might sound something like: “Authorities of the GAA said the pipe wasn’t inspected by HDAD officials in over twelve months even though YWE codes call for them every eight months in odd calendar years. The HDAD is now casting blame on the GAA for negligent oversight of the YWE.”
Blah. Blah Blah.
The faux acronyms (and sarcasm) are all mine.
This is fine. The sad situation should be put under a microscope and examined in-depth so it can hopefully be prevented from happening again. Big businesses who run pipes underneath us have responsibilities to the public. So does the government, who we elect to protect the common good from “accidents” like this.
But in a broad view, how about we look at it this way: The oil spill is the fault of each and every one of us who plops our large rumps in a car each day. Myself (and my prodigious rump) included.
You can’t eat oil. You can’t build anything with it. It’s main purpose is to keep our cars running.
And America burns through some gas.
Think about the last ten times you hopped in the car. Where did you go? What did you do? Was it a necessary trip?
Probably not. If you’re like me, you hop in the car to run over to the Wesco to get an ice tea, even though it’s only a few blocks from our newspaper office.
Sometimes, we’re just riding around in our automobiles with no particular place to go.
We make needless trips because we can, because it’s our God given American right to be wasteful. That’s what liberty’s all about, right? If by pursuing our happiness we destroy the world, then so be it. Maybe man was meant to ruin the earth.
Don’t get me wrong, the internal combustion engine is a miraculous feat. Without it, our lives would be limited. There would be no Motor City, cross country road trips or the car chase in Bullitt.
These would all be bad things. Without the automobile industry, my grandparents wouldn’t have had jobs to support having children, thus no me (a negligible bit of the argument in the large view, but of vast importance to me). All we would know of the world is where our feet could take us, which slows down economic productivity and opportunity. And who doesn’t love the romance of Steve McQueen zipping around the streets of San Francisco in a muscle car.
So, alas, I know this is not a feasible, real world argument, but nor is it some liberal, hippie doomsday prophesy.
It was just a thought experiment.
But we can also experiment in real life.
This week I’m going to try a strange new thing I just discovered that doesn’t need oil, doesn’t make us fat, doesn’t kill you if you collide with another and does not pollute.
Walking.
World records: Does eating bicycles put you in the same league as Lincoln?
In the annals of human achievement, we think of things like Edison’s light bulb, the Wright brothers on Kitty Hawk with their glider, Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio cure.
We don’t instantly think of the French guy, Michel Lotito, who since 1966 has eaten 18 bicycles, 15 shopping carts, seven TV sets, six chandeliers, two beds, a pair of skis, a Cessna aircraft and a computer.
He Pingping, the late two and a half foot tall Mongolian, also doesn’t come to mind.
Nor does Josh Anderson of New Zealand, who can eat a 12 inch pizza in 1 minute and 45.37 seconds.
And yet all of them will go down in the history books as Guinness World Record holders: the man with the strangest diet, the smallest man and fastest time to eat a pizza.
So, should they be honored in the same regard as the great inventors, politicians and creative minds of history?
Some might say they are frivolous wastes of time.
I say record-breakers should be right alongside the Lincolns and Henry Fords in the history books.
What got me thinking about this? Two record-busting-related stories were in the News Advocate recently, both having to do with largeness: a huge trout and a huge man.
On July 16, Roger Hellen, of Franksville, Wis., caught a 41-pound 8-ounce brown trout in Lake Michigan near Racine. It may tie or beat the trout Rockford resident Tom Healy caught in the Big Manistee last September for the world record.
I hope it doesn’t, but it might.
There was also a feature story about Robert Wadlow, the eight-foot, eleven-inch gentle giant who passed away in Manistee during the 1940 Forest Festival, when one of the leg braces he was wearing gave him a blister. Wadlow died from a subsequent infection.
These record setters, and all record setters, should be celebrated.
They may not fundamentally change the way we live our life, but having records means we’re continuing to measure our progress here on earth.
And nothing says progress like getting 900 piercings.
Or lifting a 160 pound 15 ounce weight with your ear.
People are interested in the extremes. We spend most of our time with people who look similar to us, have similar talents and capabilities as us. We are average sized and take our time eating our pizza. A shopping cart is definitely not on our dinner plate. Nor is a 40 plus pound brown trout.
Records are the stuff of imagination. It’s the stuff of dreams.
When we stop being dazzled and titillated by strange feats and unusual human body parts, or anything that strives to set a record, it means we’ve lost our ability to dream, to think in new ways, to not test the boundaries of reality as we know them, to know that our civilization has reached its limit.
It means our minds have gone stale.
I used to love the “Guinness Book of World Records” when I was a kid. I think I still have a well-worn version from around 1987, when I was 10 years old.
I was way into the fellow with the really long fingernails that curled around his hand and the twin fat guys on motorcycles. I’m glad to see the series continues.
But what’s the sure sign our civilization isn’t in decline? That we’re still at the pinnacle of achievement?
It has to do with another record.
What holds the record as the most stolen book from the library?
Well, the “Guinness Book of World Records,” of course.
We don’t instantly think of the French guy, Michel Lotito, who since 1966 has eaten 18 bicycles, 15 shopping carts, seven TV sets, six chandeliers, two beds, a pair of skis, a Cessna aircraft and a computer.
He Pingping, the late two and a half foot tall Mongolian, also doesn’t come to mind.
Nor does Josh Anderson of New Zealand, who can eat a 12 inch pizza in 1 minute and 45.37 seconds.
And yet all of them will go down in the history books as Guinness World Record holders: the man with the strangest diet, the smallest man and fastest time to eat a pizza.
So, should they be honored in the same regard as the great inventors, politicians and creative minds of history?
Some might say they are frivolous wastes of time.
I say record-breakers should be right alongside the Lincolns and Henry Fords in the history books.
What got me thinking about this? Two record-busting-related stories were in the News Advocate recently, both having to do with largeness: a huge trout and a huge man.
On July 16, Roger Hellen, of Franksville, Wis., caught a 41-pound 8-ounce brown trout in Lake Michigan near Racine. It may tie or beat the trout Rockford resident Tom Healy caught in the Big Manistee last September for the world record.
I hope it doesn’t, but it might.
There was also a feature story about Robert Wadlow, the eight-foot, eleven-inch gentle giant who passed away in Manistee during the 1940 Forest Festival, when one of the leg braces he was wearing gave him a blister. Wadlow died from a subsequent infection.
These record setters, and all record setters, should be celebrated.
They may not fundamentally change the way we live our life, but having records means we’re continuing to measure our progress here on earth.
And nothing says progress like getting 900 piercings.
Or lifting a 160 pound 15 ounce weight with your ear.
People are interested in the extremes. We spend most of our time with people who look similar to us, have similar talents and capabilities as us. We are average sized and take our time eating our pizza. A shopping cart is definitely not on our dinner plate. Nor is a 40 plus pound brown trout.
Records are the stuff of imagination. It’s the stuff of dreams.
When we stop being dazzled and titillated by strange feats and unusual human body parts, or anything that strives to set a record, it means we’ve lost our ability to dream, to think in new ways, to not test the boundaries of reality as we know them, to know that our civilization has reached its limit.
It means our minds have gone stale.
I used to love the “Guinness Book of World Records” when I was a kid. I think I still have a well-worn version from around 1987, when I was 10 years old.
I was way into the fellow with the really long fingernails that curled around his hand and the twin fat guys on motorcycles. I’m glad to see the series continues.
But what’s the sure sign our civilization isn’t in decline? That we’re still at the pinnacle of achievement?
It has to do with another record.
What holds the record as the most stolen book from the library?
Well, the “Guinness Book of World Records,” of course.
Impure Michigan: Spoofs on ad campaign display its effectiveness
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
On the flip-side, spoofing is the insincere form of flattery, the misbehaving little brother of imitation.
This week, John Kerfoot is that naughty little brother. He’s responsible for the parodies of the Pure Michigan ads that have the Internet buzzing. The fake commercials became a statewide phenomenon after the Free Press did a brief write-up about the 34-year-old filmmaker from the Detroit area and his iconoclastic shorts.
I’m sure you’ve seen the originals on television the past couple years, part of the award-winning tourism campaign. They feature the smooth and serene narration of Michigan native Tim Allen of “Home Improvement” fame over images of our fair state’s natural beauty.
They all end with Allen pausing ever-so slightly, and with dramatic flair, saying, “That’s pure Michigan.”
The billboards, radio and TV spots were enormously successful, and gained even more attention when funding became an issue -- the campaign continues, but with about half as much cash.
As we know, the more successful something becomes, the larger it becomes as a target for parody.
That brings us to Kerfoot’s own campaign.
The five fake ads he’s made have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. And for good reason.
They’re funny.
And while some would argue their in bad taste for their foul language and subject matter, I applaud the videos.
I have a feeling Kerfoot loves Michigan just as much as I do. And sometimes being critical about something, but with a sense of humor, is just another way to express that affection.
So, what exactly are in the videos?
There are five in all, each poking fun at a different place or aspect of our wonderful state: Royal Oak, Construction, Mackinac Island, Lake St. Clair, and Grosse Pointe’s downtown known as “The Village.”
The video dealing with Royal Oak, a northern suburb of Detroit known for its hip, trendy nightlife atmosphere, talks about the types of, uh, er, male jerks who populate the streets. Except Kerfoot doesn’t use the term “jerks.”
By the way, before I continue, don’t watch these clips with children around. They are intended for mature audiences only.
Anyone who has sat in traffic surrounded by orange barrels and sweaty workers will appreciate Kerfoot’s ode to road construction, which seems eternal on our state’s roadways.
The Mackinac Island clip is a little on the gross-out side, drawing a visual comparison between the vacation spot’s famous fudge and what the horses leave behind on the streets.
Kerfoot, who is from the Grosse Pointe area, muses about the beauty of Lake St. Clair, and the irritating, swarming fish flies that take over the Pointes each summer. The Village video pokes fun at the number of coffee shops and lack of black people in the downtown area of Grosse Pointe.
It made me wonder how Manistee would fair under such an ironic attack.
Kerfoot’s love letters to Michigan may be cynical, ribald and irreverent, but they are love letters nonetheless. I hope he makes more of them.
In any case, you can judge them for yourself. They are posted at http://notsopuremichigan.com/.
The videos also display how effective the Pure Michigan campaign has been, and why it needs the cash to continue. Tourists need to know how beautiful and wondrous our state is.
Even if us natives know it’s not always fudge.
On the flip-side, spoofing is the insincere form of flattery, the misbehaving little brother of imitation.
This week, John Kerfoot is that naughty little brother. He’s responsible for the parodies of the Pure Michigan ads that have the Internet buzzing. The fake commercials became a statewide phenomenon after the Free Press did a brief write-up about the 34-year-old filmmaker from the Detroit area and his iconoclastic shorts.
I’m sure you’ve seen the originals on television the past couple years, part of the award-winning tourism campaign. They feature the smooth and serene narration of Michigan native Tim Allen of “Home Improvement” fame over images of our fair state’s natural beauty.
They all end with Allen pausing ever-so slightly, and with dramatic flair, saying, “That’s pure Michigan.”
The billboards, radio and TV spots were enormously successful, and gained even more attention when funding became an issue -- the campaign continues, but with about half as much cash.
As we know, the more successful something becomes, the larger it becomes as a target for parody.
That brings us to Kerfoot’s own campaign.
The five fake ads he’s made have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. And for good reason.
They’re funny.
And while some would argue their in bad taste for their foul language and subject matter, I applaud the videos.
I have a feeling Kerfoot loves Michigan just as much as I do. And sometimes being critical about something, but with a sense of humor, is just another way to express that affection.
So, what exactly are in the videos?
There are five in all, each poking fun at a different place or aspect of our wonderful state: Royal Oak, Construction, Mackinac Island, Lake St. Clair, and Grosse Pointe’s downtown known as “The Village.”
The video dealing with Royal Oak, a northern suburb of Detroit known for its hip, trendy nightlife atmosphere, talks about the types of, uh, er, male jerks who populate the streets. Except Kerfoot doesn’t use the term “jerks.”
By the way, before I continue, don’t watch these clips with children around. They are intended for mature audiences only.
Anyone who has sat in traffic surrounded by orange barrels and sweaty workers will appreciate Kerfoot’s ode to road construction, which seems eternal on our state’s roadways.
The Mackinac Island clip is a little on the gross-out side, drawing a visual comparison between the vacation spot’s famous fudge and what the horses leave behind on the streets.
Kerfoot, who is from the Grosse Pointe area, muses about the beauty of Lake St. Clair, and the irritating, swarming fish flies that take over the Pointes each summer. The Village video pokes fun at the number of coffee shops and lack of black people in the downtown area of Grosse Pointe.
It made me wonder how Manistee would fair under such an ironic attack.
Kerfoot’s love letters to Michigan may be cynical, ribald and irreverent, but they are love letters nonetheless. I hope he makes more of them.
In any case, you can judge them for yourself. They are posted at http://notsopuremichigan.com/.
The videos also display how effective the Pure Michigan campaign has been, and why it needs the cash to continue. Tourists need to know how beautiful and wondrous our state is.
Even if us natives know it’s not always fudge.
An ode to swimming: Taking the plunge helps drown out the noise
LeBron James. Tea Party candidates. ‘King’ LeBron James. The Gulf oil spill. LeBron James ‘The Chosen One.’
The noise of the world as it hums along boils the inside of the brain as much as the summer sun beats down and burns the skin.
There’s only one measure of recourse when the mind and body get overheated.
Take a dip. Get underwater and eliminate the roar of the world.
They’re ain’t no cure for the summer time blues like swimming. Get in a pool and do some laps. I prefer the doggie paddle (well, it’s not so much of a preference as it’s the only stroke I’m good at.) Play a game of Marco Polo with your friends. Or just sink to the bottom clutching your knees like Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate.”
Of course, here in Manistee, swimming pools aren’t necessary with the Big Lake just at the end of the street.
In the past two weeks, I’ve made a point to rush into the water at all of Manistee’s great beaches: First Street, Fifth Avenue and the ‘Water Tower’ Beach. This past weekend, I even went down to the Nordhouse Dunes, hiked a few miles, then made a dash for the cool waters of Lake Michigan when I got too sweaty.
The water was just fine.
I’m going to relish these swimming spots the rest of the summer. I’ve never had access to such great ones.
In my youth, there were swimming pools that were my favorites. I didn’t grow up with a pool in any of the backyards of the houses I lived in, but my Grandpa Basil had one at his house on Detroit’s west side. It was where I first learned to swim and spent hours of the summertime submerged, splashing and screaming with joy.
Grandpa Basil was a loud, gregarious Southerner from Arkansas who ran his own painting business. It was a good thing, too, because this particular pool needed to be painted every year. Only later did I learn that having to paint a pool is kind of unusual.
From the time I was able to walk, I helped throughout the entire process of prepping the pool, which usually started around Memorial Day.
“Boy, come on out here and help me with this pump!” Grandpa Basil would holler in his drawl.
He could have done it all himself -- he was a master at fixing things -- but always made a point to have me and my brother help out, probably to keep us busy and out of trouble.
The pool was reflective of the 1960s chic cabana style that still dominated my grandparents backyard in the 1980s and ‘90s. The overhang off the garage where the barbecue and picnic table were was always decorated with old-school tiki lights. The grill was hooked up not to a propane tank, but the actual gas lines running below the city. The pool itself was in-ground, oval, made of fiberglass and was always painted a bright blue. It looked like a giant Smurf bathtub embedded in their small backyard.
It was all very fancy stuff in 1967.
By 1984, the backyard was still respectable and in operation, but not gleaming with brand newness like it had twenty years earlier.
So, there was work to be done. First, you had to pump the dirty, brackish water that had been in the pool all fall and winter, and clean out all the leaves. Guess who got to go into the pool when the water was mostly drained and scoop up the slimy leaves and other debris with a bucket and haul it out?
“Boy, get on down there and get them leaves!”
I got very dirty and mucky and loved every minute of it.
Once all the gunk was out, we had to let the pool dry for a few days before laying in with the scrapers. It was always a group effort, with my grandma, mom, dad and brother scraping away the old paint and sanding the rough, fiberglass surface of the pool smooth. During the three or so days it took to scrap and sand, I’d accompany Grandpa Basil to Craigie Paint Company and get the bright blue aqua-colored paint.
“Boy, carry these buckets out to the truck,” Grandpa Basil would say while chewing on an unlit cigar.
They were so heavy I had to do them one at a time.
The top lip of the pool needed to be painted by hand. Since I was always too young to be trusted with a roller, this is where I’d help out, usually ending up getting more paint on myself than on the pool.
My brother usually got the honor of rolling the inside, standing in the bottom of the tub-like pool, going up and down the curved sides.
After two coats and a few days to dry, it was time to fill it up. Grandpa Basil always let me do the honors
“Boy, go get that hose turned on!”
I’d already have my bathing suit on even though it took an entire day until the pool was filled. I’d crank on the hose, yank it to the pool and stick it in.
Then, I’d wait. When the water was ankle-high, I’d walk in and splash around, then get bored and wait some more.
It was usually the next day before it was ready. If he wasn’t fussing with the perennially naughty pool filter that grunted away inside the garage, Grandpa Basil would be sitting on the deck with a cigar, the racing form and perhaps a gin and tonic.
I’d stand at the edge of the deep end and take that first thrilling dive of summer. Inside the house, while lunches and dinners were prepared, I would swim and swim and swim. There were jumping contests with cannon balls, jack knives and belly flops. There was water polo with overturned lawn chairs as goals. And sometimes, just before dinner, when everyone else was out of the pool except for me, I’d just sort of lazily float around on my back.
“Look at that boy!” Grandpa Basil would say from the porch. “He sure can float!”
Grandpa Basil’s been dead for ten years now, and the house in Detroit sold soon after that. But I learned something very important those long summer days in the pool -- when life gets too hot, just jump in some cool water.
All the world’s problems won’t go away, but for the few moments you can hold your breath underwater, they can be silenced.
The noise of the world as it hums along boils the inside of the brain as much as the summer sun beats down and burns the skin.
There’s only one measure of recourse when the mind and body get overheated.
Take a dip. Get underwater and eliminate the roar of the world.
They’re ain’t no cure for the summer time blues like swimming. Get in a pool and do some laps. I prefer the doggie paddle (well, it’s not so much of a preference as it’s the only stroke I’m good at.) Play a game of Marco Polo with your friends. Or just sink to the bottom clutching your knees like Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate.”
Of course, here in Manistee, swimming pools aren’t necessary with the Big Lake just at the end of the street.
In the past two weeks, I’ve made a point to rush into the water at all of Manistee’s great beaches: First Street, Fifth Avenue and the ‘Water Tower’ Beach. This past weekend, I even went down to the Nordhouse Dunes, hiked a few miles, then made a dash for the cool waters of Lake Michigan when I got too sweaty.
The water was just fine.
I’m going to relish these swimming spots the rest of the summer. I’ve never had access to such great ones.
In my youth, there were swimming pools that were my favorites. I didn’t grow up with a pool in any of the backyards of the houses I lived in, but my Grandpa Basil had one at his house on Detroit’s west side. It was where I first learned to swim and spent hours of the summertime submerged, splashing and screaming with joy.
Grandpa Basil was a loud, gregarious Southerner from Arkansas who ran his own painting business. It was a good thing, too, because this particular pool needed to be painted every year. Only later did I learn that having to paint a pool is kind of unusual.
From the time I was able to walk, I helped throughout the entire process of prepping the pool, which usually started around Memorial Day.
“Boy, come on out here and help me with this pump!” Grandpa Basil would holler in his drawl.
He could have done it all himself -- he was a master at fixing things -- but always made a point to have me and my brother help out, probably to keep us busy and out of trouble.
The pool was reflective of the 1960s chic cabana style that still dominated my grandparents backyard in the 1980s and ‘90s. The overhang off the garage where the barbecue and picnic table were was always decorated with old-school tiki lights. The grill was hooked up not to a propane tank, but the actual gas lines running below the city. The pool itself was in-ground, oval, made of fiberglass and was always painted a bright blue. It looked like a giant Smurf bathtub embedded in their small backyard.
It was all very fancy stuff in 1967.
By 1984, the backyard was still respectable and in operation, but not gleaming with brand newness like it had twenty years earlier.
So, there was work to be done. First, you had to pump the dirty, brackish water that had been in the pool all fall and winter, and clean out all the leaves. Guess who got to go into the pool when the water was mostly drained and scoop up the slimy leaves and other debris with a bucket and haul it out?
“Boy, get on down there and get them leaves!”
I got very dirty and mucky and loved every minute of it.
Once all the gunk was out, we had to let the pool dry for a few days before laying in with the scrapers. It was always a group effort, with my grandma, mom, dad and brother scraping away the old paint and sanding the rough, fiberglass surface of the pool smooth. During the three or so days it took to scrap and sand, I’d accompany Grandpa Basil to Craigie Paint Company and get the bright blue aqua-colored paint.
“Boy, carry these buckets out to the truck,” Grandpa Basil would say while chewing on an unlit cigar.
They were so heavy I had to do them one at a time.
The top lip of the pool needed to be painted by hand. Since I was always too young to be trusted with a roller, this is where I’d help out, usually ending up getting more paint on myself than on the pool.
My brother usually got the honor of rolling the inside, standing in the bottom of the tub-like pool, going up and down the curved sides.
After two coats and a few days to dry, it was time to fill it up. Grandpa Basil always let me do the honors
“Boy, go get that hose turned on!”
I’d already have my bathing suit on even though it took an entire day until the pool was filled. I’d crank on the hose, yank it to the pool and stick it in.
Then, I’d wait. When the water was ankle-high, I’d walk in and splash around, then get bored and wait some more.
It was usually the next day before it was ready. If he wasn’t fussing with the perennially naughty pool filter that grunted away inside the garage, Grandpa Basil would be sitting on the deck with a cigar, the racing form and perhaps a gin and tonic.
I’d stand at the edge of the deep end and take that first thrilling dive of summer. Inside the house, while lunches and dinners were prepared, I would swim and swim and swim. There were jumping contests with cannon balls, jack knives and belly flops. There was water polo with overturned lawn chairs as goals. And sometimes, just before dinner, when everyone else was out of the pool except for me, I’d just sort of lazily float around on my back.
“Look at that boy!” Grandpa Basil would say from the porch. “He sure can float!”
Grandpa Basil’s been dead for ten years now, and the house in Detroit sold soon after that. But I learned something very important those long summer days in the pool -- when life gets too hot, just jump in some cool water.
All the world’s problems won’t go away, but for the few moments you can hold your breath underwater, they can be silenced.
On the road: Getting in the car and taking off
“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
This opening passage of “Moby Dick” sums up the yearning to thrust yourself out of familiar surroundings and give the brain new landscapes to process, new voices to hear, different customs to comprehend.
Trips into the unknown are necessary so we don’t sink too far down into what we’re used to.
And the sea can just as easily be substituted with the road.
The road trip is a thing of American myth. And rightly so. With such a large, mighty country, it only makes sense to hop in the car to explore it every once and awhile.
I recently took off for a week, making it all the way from Manistee to New Orleans and back.
My travels took me through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama (for about 10 minutes). Oh, yeah, I went through Ohio too. How could I forget such a dazzling, interesting state?
Yes, it was hot in the Bosom of the Confederacy, but I saw so many strange and interesting things that it was worth the humid, scorching weather that greeted Meredith and I each day.
Let’s start in the Buckeye State. Meredith was very excited to point out a large statue of Jesus on the side of I-75 near Monroe, Ohio she had seen on a previous road trip.
“You’ve got to see this thing,” she said. “It’s huuuge.”
She wasn’t joking. It was impressively massive at 62 feet high. The Solid Rock Church’s ‘King of Kings’ statue also had its arms up in such a way, it looked like a referee signaling six points in the endzone during a football game. I wasn’t surprised to learn people had started calling it ‘Touchdown Jesus.’
We were among some of the last freeway gawkers who got to behold ‘Touchdown Jesus’ in all his glory. By the end of the day, the statue was struck by lighting and destroyed causing an estimated $700,000 damage.
I refused to take this as a bad sign at the beginning of our trip, though it was hard to let go of the nagging feeling that it was a sinister omen. But what else can you expect in Ohio?
Soon, we were in the South, where The War is still the Civil War, or, my personal favorite, ‘The War of Northern Aggression.’ Battlefield memorials from Shiloh to Vicksburg (both of which we passed) are constant reminders of the carnage this nation went through 145 years ago.
No where is the South’s conflicted history more resonant than in the novels of William Faulkner. We visited Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Miss. after, of course, paying our respects to that other great ambassador of the South, Elvis Presley, at Graceland in Memphis.
Finally, we arrived in New Orleans, my first time there. It’s a spectacular, magical place that seems to be suffering from the same bad luck as ‘Touchdown Jesus.’ First, the hurricane, now the oil spill. These two topics were, unsurprisingly, weighing heavily on the minds of residents in the Big Easy. The hurricane may have been five years ago now, but folks were still talking about it like it happened last week.
I was mostly in the French Quarter, which is on the highest ground in the city, and wasn’t as devastated as other areas.
But despite the bad luck, New Orleans is still a town bent on a good time. The laid back atmosphere is so very different than here in the North. It was refreshing to see people and places different than the ones I see on a day-to-day basis.
Regardless, it was good to get back home to Manistee.
But the next time I find myself deliberately stepping into U.S. 31, I’ll know it’s time for another road trip.
This opening passage of “Moby Dick” sums up the yearning to thrust yourself out of familiar surroundings and give the brain new landscapes to process, new voices to hear, different customs to comprehend.
Trips into the unknown are necessary so we don’t sink too far down into what we’re used to.
And the sea can just as easily be substituted with the road.
The road trip is a thing of American myth. And rightly so. With such a large, mighty country, it only makes sense to hop in the car to explore it every once and awhile.
I recently took off for a week, making it all the way from Manistee to New Orleans and back.
My travels took me through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama (for about 10 minutes). Oh, yeah, I went through Ohio too. How could I forget such a dazzling, interesting state?
Yes, it was hot in the Bosom of the Confederacy, but I saw so many strange and interesting things that it was worth the humid, scorching weather that greeted Meredith and I each day.
Let’s start in the Buckeye State. Meredith was very excited to point out a large statue of Jesus on the side of I-75 near Monroe, Ohio she had seen on a previous road trip.
“You’ve got to see this thing,” she said. “It’s huuuge.”
She wasn’t joking. It was impressively massive at 62 feet high. The Solid Rock Church’s ‘King of Kings’ statue also had its arms up in such a way, it looked like a referee signaling six points in the endzone during a football game. I wasn’t surprised to learn people had started calling it ‘Touchdown Jesus.’
We were among some of the last freeway gawkers who got to behold ‘Touchdown Jesus’ in all his glory. By the end of the day, the statue was struck by lighting and destroyed causing an estimated $700,000 damage.
I refused to take this as a bad sign at the beginning of our trip, though it was hard to let go of the nagging feeling that it was a sinister omen. But what else can you expect in Ohio?
Soon, we were in the South, where The War is still the Civil War, or, my personal favorite, ‘The War of Northern Aggression.’ Battlefield memorials from Shiloh to Vicksburg (both of which we passed) are constant reminders of the carnage this nation went through 145 years ago.
No where is the South’s conflicted history more resonant than in the novels of William Faulkner. We visited Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Miss. after, of course, paying our respects to that other great ambassador of the South, Elvis Presley, at Graceland in Memphis.
Finally, we arrived in New Orleans, my first time there. It’s a spectacular, magical place that seems to be suffering from the same bad luck as ‘Touchdown Jesus.’ First, the hurricane, now the oil spill. These two topics were, unsurprisingly, weighing heavily on the minds of residents in the Big Easy. The hurricane may have been five years ago now, but folks were still talking about it like it happened last week.
I was mostly in the French Quarter, which is on the highest ground in the city, and wasn’t as devastated as other areas.
But despite the bad luck, New Orleans is still a town bent on a good time. The laid back atmosphere is so very different than here in the North. It was refreshing to see people and places different than the ones I see on a day-to-day basis.
Regardless, it was good to get back home to Manistee.
But the next time I find myself deliberately stepping into U.S. 31, I’ll know it’s time for another road trip.
Thank you for being a friend: A tribute to sit-coms and their stars
Celebrities die in threes, we’re told.
So far, 2010 is shaping up to be the year we mourn actors from sit-coms. It’s only June, but we’ve already lost three.
Back in February, it was Andrew Koenig, best known as “Boner” Stabone on “Growing Pains.” Recently, only weeks apart, Gary Coleman and Rue McClanahan both passed away.
Coleman is best known as the wise-cracking Arnold from “Diff’rent Strokes.” McClanahan played the senior citizen sex pot on “The Golden Girls.”
These last two hit me the hardest. The characters they played always cracked me up when I was a kid, from Arnold’s trouble with The Gooch, his school yard nemesis, to Blanche Devereaux’s syrupy Southern belle seduction of elderly gentlemen callers.
That’s right, I watched the “Golden Girls” when I was a kid. I’m not ashamed to say it. When I was younger, like many of my generation, I watched a lot of television. Hours and hours of it. So much that it was sometimes too easy to forget the people on TV are actors playing characters. And while the characters will live on infinitely in re-runs, the actors end the way we all end.
In life, though, these three brought a very important gift into our living rooms, that of laughter. Watching characters struggle through “situations” in the half-hour comedy shows, no matter how unrealistic or how far they differ from our own lives, always makes us feel a little less alone in the universe.
They also help divert us away from whatever our own troubles may be: getting lost in a character’s problem on a TV show, a movie or a novel allows our own problems to temporarily drift away.
Talented actors are the vessels through which this process is possible.
So, I’d like to take a moment of silence for these three diverse actors.
I’d also like to take a moment of silence for the sit-com itself.
Now that I’m older and that I’ve had my own “growing pains,” and found out that “different strokes” do rule the world and that my friends and I are very much like “golden girls,” I don’t watch much television.
I don’t have cable, which in Manistee means you don’t have any television thanks to the new digital way it’s brought to us now.
But I don’t need it to know that great sit-coms are a thing of the past. I’m talking about the good old-fashioned sit-coms where families and friends sat around a living room cracking jokes you knew to laugh at because of the laugh-track.
Now, the laugh-track is dorky. Less sit-coms premiere each fall and are replaced by “reality” television, the cultural sign that the end is nigh.
Hit half-hour comedy shows like “The Office” have to pretend it’s a documentary to get people to watch.
Reality shows are vulgar, not only because they’re just as scripted as any other shows, but because they appeal to an audiences’ worst gossip-mongering tendency. That itch to look in through your neighbor’s blind to see what they’re up to. That desire to feel better than people when they’re down.
Half-hour fictions allow for the creation of great characters. They allow the creators -- the writers and the actors -- to participate in an artistic exchange with the audience.
In reality shows, it’s watching to see if “Joe” or “Donna” is going to slap whoever just called them a nasty name. Reality shows are nothing more than middle school on tape. Unfortunately, I doubt programming will change in the near future.
But I will be interested to see if anyone will be mourning Richard Hatch, the dude that won the first “Survivor,” when he dies?
What praises would we sing? What did he or anybody on reality shows bring to us that was special? Did they really have a part in bringing diversionary joy to our lives?
Maybe I’ll keep watching to find out.
Maybe.
So far, 2010 is shaping up to be the year we mourn actors from sit-coms. It’s only June, but we’ve already lost three.
Back in February, it was Andrew Koenig, best known as “Boner” Stabone on “Growing Pains.” Recently, only weeks apart, Gary Coleman and Rue McClanahan both passed away.
Coleman is best known as the wise-cracking Arnold from “Diff’rent Strokes.” McClanahan played the senior citizen sex pot on “The Golden Girls.”
These last two hit me the hardest. The characters they played always cracked me up when I was a kid, from Arnold’s trouble with The Gooch, his school yard nemesis, to Blanche Devereaux’s syrupy Southern belle seduction of elderly gentlemen callers.
That’s right, I watched the “Golden Girls” when I was a kid. I’m not ashamed to say it. When I was younger, like many of my generation, I watched a lot of television. Hours and hours of it. So much that it was sometimes too easy to forget the people on TV are actors playing characters. And while the characters will live on infinitely in re-runs, the actors end the way we all end.
In life, though, these three brought a very important gift into our living rooms, that of laughter. Watching characters struggle through “situations” in the half-hour comedy shows, no matter how unrealistic or how far they differ from our own lives, always makes us feel a little less alone in the universe.
They also help divert us away from whatever our own troubles may be: getting lost in a character’s problem on a TV show, a movie or a novel allows our own problems to temporarily drift away.
Talented actors are the vessels through which this process is possible.
So, I’d like to take a moment of silence for these three diverse actors.
I’d also like to take a moment of silence for the sit-com itself.
Now that I’m older and that I’ve had my own “growing pains,” and found out that “different strokes” do rule the world and that my friends and I are very much like “golden girls,” I don’t watch much television.
I don’t have cable, which in Manistee means you don’t have any television thanks to the new digital way it’s brought to us now.
But I don’t need it to know that great sit-coms are a thing of the past. I’m talking about the good old-fashioned sit-coms where families and friends sat around a living room cracking jokes you knew to laugh at because of the laugh-track.
Now, the laugh-track is dorky. Less sit-coms premiere each fall and are replaced by “reality” television, the cultural sign that the end is nigh.
Hit half-hour comedy shows like “The Office” have to pretend it’s a documentary to get people to watch.
Reality shows are vulgar, not only because they’re just as scripted as any other shows, but because they appeal to an audiences’ worst gossip-mongering tendency. That itch to look in through your neighbor’s blind to see what they’re up to. That desire to feel better than people when they’re down.
Half-hour fictions allow for the creation of great characters. They allow the creators -- the writers and the actors -- to participate in an artistic exchange with the audience.
In reality shows, it’s watching to see if “Joe” or “Donna” is going to slap whoever just called them a nasty name. Reality shows are nothing more than middle school on tape. Unfortunately, I doubt programming will change in the near future.
But I will be interested to see if anyone will be mourning Richard Hatch, the dude that won the first “Survivor,” when he dies?
What praises would we sing? What did he or anybody on reality shows bring to us that was special? Did they really have a part in bringing diversionary joy to our lives?
Maybe I’ll keep watching to find out.
Maybe.
OMG, Granholm: Texting ban sends the right message
When I was a teenager in the early 1990s, socializing was mostly done through parents’ telephones or, if you were desperate, pay phones.
The term “landline” was still reserved for the military.
Getting directions somewhere meant pulling out a slip of paper and writing down the various roads and turns, or having someone draw you a map.
Then along came pagers, which more or less directed you to the nearest phone.
None of these things affected the way we drove as teens, because they all took place out of the car.
But then Al Gore, armed with a pickaxe and a miner’s helmet, went underground and dug the tunnels for the interconnected World Wide Web (thanks, Al).
“Just give me the address,” you now requested, usually over a cell phone, and then punched it into the Internet, printed out the directions and off you went.
Until, of course, GPS navigational units appeared in cars and directed you where to go with robot voices.
The state government has now deemed the biggest pain brought on by all this new technology is text messaging while driving. Amid much fanfare (it was broadcast on Oprah!) Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed into law a ban on texting while driving.
Starting July 1, texting while operating a vehicle will become a primary offense, which means police can pull you over if they see your busy thumbs typing away. The first offense is $100. The second offense can cast $200.
The thing Democrats aren’t even taking into consideration is that even without the distraction of cell phones and texting, teens aren’t always the greatest drivers.
When I was fifteen, a friend of mine was seriously injured in a car accident. He broke both arms and several bones in his legs. He was in a wheelchair for months afterward. Scars still trace down both forearms and his knees.
How did the accident happen?
He was reaching for a slice of pizza.
So, do we ban pizzas in our cars while we drive because the savory smell might be so distracting we lose control?
Do we ban putting on make-up, smoking and talking to other passengers?
More and more, the government is passing laws on how an individual chooses to live their day to day life.
It’s mostly coming the liberal “control-everything” camp, the same good folks who brought you political correctness in the 1990s. Liberals like this always haughtily take the moral high ground on such issues.
“You should live the morally ‘right’ way, and we’re going to show you how,” they seem to say.
With that said, I’m actually leaning toward being in favor of the texting ban, despite the voice on the other side of my brain saying that it’s an infringement on personal liberties.
I confess that I’m an occasional driver/texter. Not only is it distracting your thoughts, which are having a silent conversation with whoever is typing away messages on the other end, but it diverts your gaze away from the road and onto the tiny little screen.
I couldn’t count how many times I’ve been behind or beside an erratic driving vehicle only to see that they’ve got one hand on the wheel, and the other holding their phone up to their nose as they type really important missives to their fellow texters.
So, I’ll reluctantly go along with the law and keep my phone in my pocket where it belongs when I’m on the road.
Ttyl, Manistee.
The term “landline” was still reserved for the military.
Getting directions somewhere meant pulling out a slip of paper and writing down the various roads and turns, or having someone draw you a map.
Then along came pagers, which more or less directed you to the nearest phone.
None of these things affected the way we drove as teens, because they all took place out of the car.
But then Al Gore, armed with a pickaxe and a miner’s helmet, went underground and dug the tunnels for the interconnected World Wide Web (thanks, Al).
“Just give me the address,” you now requested, usually over a cell phone, and then punched it into the Internet, printed out the directions and off you went.
Until, of course, GPS navigational units appeared in cars and directed you where to go with robot voices.
The state government has now deemed the biggest pain brought on by all this new technology is text messaging while driving. Amid much fanfare (it was broadcast on Oprah!) Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed into law a ban on texting while driving.
Starting July 1, texting while operating a vehicle will become a primary offense, which means police can pull you over if they see your busy thumbs typing away. The first offense is $100. The second offense can cast $200.
The thing Democrats aren’t even taking into consideration is that even without the distraction of cell phones and texting, teens aren’t always the greatest drivers.
When I was fifteen, a friend of mine was seriously injured in a car accident. He broke both arms and several bones in his legs. He was in a wheelchair for months afterward. Scars still trace down both forearms and his knees.
How did the accident happen?
He was reaching for a slice of pizza.
So, do we ban pizzas in our cars while we drive because the savory smell might be so distracting we lose control?
Do we ban putting on make-up, smoking and talking to other passengers?
More and more, the government is passing laws on how an individual chooses to live their day to day life.
It’s mostly coming the liberal “control-everything” camp, the same good folks who brought you political correctness in the 1990s. Liberals like this always haughtily take the moral high ground on such issues.
“You should live the morally ‘right’ way, and we’re going to show you how,” they seem to say.
With that said, I’m actually leaning toward being in favor of the texting ban, despite the voice on the other side of my brain saying that it’s an infringement on personal liberties.
I confess that I’m an occasional driver/texter. Not only is it distracting your thoughts, which are having a silent conversation with whoever is typing away messages on the other end, but it diverts your gaze away from the road and onto the tiny little screen.
I couldn’t count how many times I’ve been behind or beside an erratic driving vehicle only to see that they’ve got one hand on the wheel, and the other holding their phone up to their nose as they type really important missives to their fellow texters.
So, I’ll reluctantly go along with the law and keep my phone in my pocket where it belongs when I’m on the road.
Ttyl, Manistee.
Secondhand spring: Giving soul to our stuff
Spring is baseball, trout fishing and flowers.
It’s also the season when people start cleaning out their basements and attics, which can only mean one thing: garage sales.
The tables are laid out in driveways, items marked for prices and signs posted on street corners. Up until recently, I drove right past.
I would never stop at garage, rummage or estate sales because, for one, I’m not a ‘stuff’ guy. Besides a handful of personal possessions (pictures, books, my mirror with a poorly painted bullfighter on it) I’d leave everything else to burn in a house fire and not miss it.
Like most other dudes, I’m not too fond of shopping for new stuff, so why would I want to go look at other people’s old crap?
My girlfriend, Meredith, is the complete opposite. She is a junk junky. She likes to collect odd specimens found in odd places (me, for instance).
Needless to say, it makes it difficult to drive right past sales anymore.
Last junking season, we were almost the proud new owners of one of those old “vibration belt” exercise machines. You know the ones: the advertisements always showed housewives standing at the machine with a belt around their back, jiggling and shaking them while they darned a pair of socks.
The machine Meredith found at a garage sale was at least from the 1960s and, at $15, quite the bargain.
We reasoned that it could be a great party novelty: whomever was mixing up the martinis only need to strap themselves in and hit the “on” switch.
I was almost sold on it. In the end, we succumbed to our better judgment and left it in the owner’s driveway.
This season, I’ve already been, mostly begrudgingly, to four or five estate or garage sales here in Manistee.
To be a good sport, I usually make a sweep of the house or the tables, and then go and wait on the front lawn until Meredith comes out.
At one particular estate sale, I wasn’t so lucky.
For those who don’t know what an estate sale is (I didn’t know until recently), it’s when someone who is moving has an open house to try and unload as much stuff as possible. At this particular estate sale, I made my routine sweep of the upstairs, pretended to look at a few things, then followed Meredith down into the basement.
I looked at eight-track tapes, an organ and a box of Mason jars. There were old clothes, a reel to reel and an old sofa, cream-colored with a bursting orange flower pattern.
Two men decided to purchase the couch and lifted it up while I was in another room looking at a mound of electronic equipment I couldn’t identify. I decided I’d head upstairs and go outside and wait.
When I got to the stairway, the men were pushing the couch up it. When they got it to the doorway, they stopped. They could go no farther.
The couch was stuck. So was I.
I was trapped in the basement for fifteen minutes while the couch was maneuvered out the door. I was furious at first. I was impatient. I wanted out.
But there I was. Eventually, I calmed down. It gave me time to reflect about other people’s stuff. Slowly, I started to realize that there is something endlessly fascinating about junk. Each item contains a part of the life of whoever owned it. If we give our “stuff” soul, maybe we’ll be less likely to shuffle it off into a landfill whenever the whims of mass consumerism strike us.
Getting something from someone else for so cheap is a bit like sharing. Trading goods leads to a community.
Our “stuff” is just one thing that can bring us together.
Loftiness aside, I admit that I was the first one bounding up the stairs once the couch was out of the way.
I didn’t buy anything then, but I did enjoy playing a little Word Yahtzee that Meredith picked up at a subsequent garage sale the other night.
The box the game came in was worn and old, born the same year as me: the copyright at bottom of the scorecard said 1977.
I wondered about all the conversation and laughter contained in the 32-year-old box. I was happy we were giving it new life.
You certainly don’t get that feeling with something from Wal-Mart.
It’s also the season when people start cleaning out their basements and attics, which can only mean one thing: garage sales.
The tables are laid out in driveways, items marked for prices and signs posted on street corners. Up until recently, I drove right past.
I would never stop at garage, rummage or estate sales because, for one, I’m not a ‘stuff’ guy. Besides a handful of personal possessions (pictures, books, my mirror with a poorly painted bullfighter on it) I’d leave everything else to burn in a house fire and not miss it.
Like most other dudes, I’m not too fond of shopping for new stuff, so why would I want to go look at other people’s old crap?
My girlfriend, Meredith, is the complete opposite. She is a junk junky. She likes to collect odd specimens found in odd places (me, for instance).
Needless to say, it makes it difficult to drive right past sales anymore.
Last junking season, we were almost the proud new owners of one of those old “vibration belt” exercise machines. You know the ones: the advertisements always showed housewives standing at the machine with a belt around their back, jiggling and shaking them while they darned a pair of socks.
The machine Meredith found at a garage sale was at least from the 1960s and, at $15, quite the bargain.
We reasoned that it could be a great party novelty: whomever was mixing up the martinis only need to strap themselves in and hit the “on” switch.
I was almost sold on it. In the end, we succumbed to our better judgment and left it in the owner’s driveway.
This season, I’ve already been, mostly begrudgingly, to four or five estate or garage sales here in Manistee.
To be a good sport, I usually make a sweep of the house or the tables, and then go and wait on the front lawn until Meredith comes out.
At one particular estate sale, I wasn’t so lucky.
For those who don’t know what an estate sale is (I didn’t know until recently), it’s when someone who is moving has an open house to try and unload as much stuff as possible. At this particular estate sale, I made my routine sweep of the upstairs, pretended to look at a few things, then followed Meredith down into the basement.
I looked at eight-track tapes, an organ and a box of Mason jars. There were old clothes, a reel to reel and an old sofa, cream-colored with a bursting orange flower pattern.
Two men decided to purchase the couch and lifted it up while I was in another room looking at a mound of electronic equipment I couldn’t identify. I decided I’d head upstairs and go outside and wait.
When I got to the stairway, the men were pushing the couch up it. When they got it to the doorway, they stopped. They could go no farther.
The couch was stuck. So was I.
I was trapped in the basement for fifteen minutes while the couch was maneuvered out the door. I was furious at first. I was impatient. I wanted out.
But there I was. Eventually, I calmed down. It gave me time to reflect about other people’s stuff. Slowly, I started to realize that there is something endlessly fascinating about junk. Each item contains a part of the life of whoever owned it. If we give our “stuff” soul, maybe we’ll be less likely to shuffle it off into a landfill whenever the whims of mass consumerism strike us.
Getting something from someone else for so cheap is a bit like sharing. Trading goods leads to a community.
Our “stuff” is just one thing that can bring us together.
Loftiness aside, I admit that I was the first one bounding up the stairs once the couch was out of the way.
I didn’t buy anything then, but I did enjoy playing a little Word Yahtzee that Meredith picked up at a subsequent garage sale the other night.
The box the game came in was worn and old, born the same year as me: the copyright at bottom of the scorecard said 1977.
I wondered about all the conversation and laughter contained in the 32-year-old box. I was happy we were giving it new life.
You certainly don’t get that feeling with something from Wal-Mart.
Don’t tread on us: New roar from the right is disturbing
The hysteria and histrionics started soon after Obama was elected president.
“The government is going to take my money and spend it on other people!”
“The government is going to take away my guns!”
“The government is the enemy!”
But it’s getting even more serious than those tired old complaints.
A few months ago in Texas, a guy killed himself and two others when he crashed his plane into an IRS building because he didn’t want to pay his taxes. He left behind a long letter, which was basically an anti-government screed.
The recent passage of the health care bill that forces people to get insurance through private companies (a real Bolshevik plot if I’ve ever heard one) has resulted in politicians receiving death threats.
In Columbus, Ohio a few weeks ago, a Tea Party protester berated a man with Parkinson’s disease who was calmly sitting on the ground holding up a sign espousing his own pro-reform beliefs. The Tea Party protester mockingly threw money at him and said, “Here’s your handout.” You Tube it and see for yourself. The Tea Partier eventually apologized and said he’d never attend another rally.
Throughout the incident, the Tea Party crowd chanted, “Kill the bill!”
When the bill did pass, the moronic bimbo queen of the Republican Party, Sarah Palin, said it was time to “reload.”
The most disturbing event happened earlier this week right here in Michigan with the arrest of the Hutaree, the Christian militia that plotted to kill law enforcement officers downstate. I cover the police beat here at the News Advocate, and spend a fair amount of time with the good men and woman who put their lives on the line to keep Manistee safe. These people should never be a target.
But they are because they wear a badge, which makes them part of that evil regime: The Government.
This new roar from the right is imbued with a violent rhetoric that is downright disturbing.
Many of them come from a “fringe” element. It’s not fair to group them in with all conservatives and Republicans in the same way that it’s not fair to say every Democrat is a drug-toking, whale-saving, bearded Trotskyite. Or, a baby-killer, which is what Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, yelled at the anti-abortion Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak after the health care bill vote.
Still, limited government to downright anti-government is what the right wing’s always talking about.
They want to exist on an island, which we know from John Donne, no man can. They see themselves as pioneers/patriots who just need their plot of land to live, which they will do peacefully as long as the government stays out of their way.
Just don’t expect any services like schools, water or protection from theft, fire or your personal well-being.
What anti-government people want isn’t so much a lack of a government, they just want a government that allows them to stay separated from doing any kind of business with people they don’t want to: the poor, the tired, the huddled masses.
The truth is, you are the government and the government is you.
We’re all in this world together.
If you don’t want government, move to Mars. But, if more than a few people join you, some sort of organized government would form because it is a natural human enterprise.
Because if there is no common good, no social contract between us, we’re nothing more than animals.
“The government is going to take my money and spend it on other people!”
“The government is going to take away my guns!”
“The government is the enemy!”
But it’s getting even more serious than those tired old complaints.
A few months ago in Texas, a guy killed himself and two others when he crashed his plane into an IRS building because he didn’t want to pay his taxes. He left behind a long letter, which was basically an anti-government screed.
The recent passage of the health care bill that forces people to get insurance through private companies (a real Bolshevik plot if I’ve ever heard one) has resulted in politicians receiving death threats.
In Columbus, Ohio a few weeks ago, a Tea Party protester berated a man with Parkinson’s disease who was calmly sitting on the ground holding up a sign espousing his own pro-reform beliefs. The Tea Party protester mockingly threw money at him and said, “Here’s your handout.” You Tube it and see for yourself. The Tea Partier eventually apologized and said he’d never attend another rally.
Throughout the incident, the Tea Party crowd chanted, “Kill the bill!”
When the bill did pass, the moronic bimbo queen of the Republican Party, Sarah Palin, said it was time to “reload.”
The most disturbing event happened earlier this week right here in Michigan with the arrest of the Hutaree, the Christian militia that plotted to kill law enforcement officers downstate. I cover the police beat here at the News Advocate, and spend a fair amount of time with the good men and woman who put their lives on the line to keep Manistee safe. These people should never be a target.
But they are because they wear a badge, which makes them part of that evil regime: The Government.
This new roar from the right is imbued with a violent rhetoric that is downright disturbing.
Many of them come from a “fringe” element. It’s not fair to group them in with all conservatives and Republicans in the same way that it’s not fair to say every Democrat is a drug-toking, whale-saving, bearded Trotskyite. Or, a baby-killer, which is what Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, yelled at the anti-abortion Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak after the health care bill vote.
Still, limited government to downright anti-government is what the right wing’s always talking about.
They want to exist on an island, which we know from John Donne, no man can. They see themselves as pioneers/patriots who just need their plot of land to live, which they will do peacefully as long as the government stays out of their way.
Just don’t expect any services like schools, water or protection from theft, fire or your personal well-being.
What anti-government people want isn’t so much a lack of a government, they just want a government that allows them to stay separated from doing any kind of business with people they don’t want to: the poor, the tired, the huddled masses.
The truth is, you are the government and the government is you.
We’re all in this world together.
If you don’t want government, move to Mars. But, if more than a few people join you, some sort of organized government would form because it is a natural human enterprise.
Because if there is no common good, no social contract between us, we’re nothing more than animals.
So long, smokes: Ban reflects major cultural shift
When I was growing up, you could smoke pretty much anywhere.
Waist-high ashtrays were the norm in lobbies and waiting rooms.
When I went to visit my old man at his workplace, the Bay City Times (he was also a newspaperman; I followed in his inky footsteps), the newsroom was a thick cloud of acrid smoke from reporters and editors puffing away.
Most houses, even if the homeowners didn’t smoke, had ashtrays on coffee tables for when company came over.
Cars were equipped with attached ashtrays and the outlet beneath the radio was for the lighter, not a cell phone charger.
This was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before the cultural winds began frantically blowing the smoke away.
The slow eradication of tobacco from our lives will go down in history as a major societal shift.
In the 1910s and 1920s, as America was industrialized, smoking a cigarette was one of the few moments of pleasure a factory worker might enjoy during a long, grueling day. The long-term health dangers smoking posed weren’t nearly as threatening as the day-to-day reality of working in dangerous conditions.
In 1965, the peak of smoking, 42 percent of the American population called themselves smokers, according the American Heart Association. This, too, was a different era. Many of the men had started smoking during World War II, when cigarettes were rationed to soldiers. It was also common to see doctors hawking tobacco products on TV and in magazines.
That number has now been cut in half. Currently, about 23 percent of adult men and 19 percent of adult women smoke in America.
Never has a product been so accepted, then so reviled in such an abrupt way.
It isn’t just the adverse health effects: people have known smoking isn’t good for you long before now. Instead, the revulsion our culture feels about smoking reflects our preoccupation with perfection and safety. Those who set the health agenda seem to see America on the path to create the finest human units the world has ever seen. Cigarettes and cheeseburgers are only going to get in the way. You have to make sure your kiddies are wearing bike helmets and knee pads.
Michigan recently joined the growing number of states in having some kind of smoking ban.
While I’m still a little stuck in murky questions regarding civil liberties, the truth is cigarettes not only affect your health, but secondhand smoke is harmful to others. Anyone who tells you different is, well, just blowing smoke.
So, as a smoker myself, I can’t say I applaud the ban, but I understand it and reluctantly admit it’s the right way to go.
Maybe the previously permissive atmosphere legitimized the act of smoking and compelled people like me to start.
Like most smokers, I started in my teens. My friends and I would steal cigarettes from our parents’ packs, go out into a wooded park and smoke to “get a buzz.”
I didn’t smoke habitually until I was in college, where I fancied myself cutting quite the Romantic swath as I pored over the great tomes of American literature, a cigarette in my hand.
Huck Finn smoked a pipe. The Lost Generation writers -- Hemingway, Fitzgerald -- always had cigarettes dangling from their characters’ lips. In later years Hemingway quit because, as he relayed in an interview, it interfered with his sense of smell, which he needed while hunting.
Holden Caulfield huffed and puffed around “The Catcher in the Rye” because he was “a pretty heavy smoker.”
In Jack Keroauc’s “On the Road,” the impoverished, bohemian characters go through ashtrays, collecting the tobacco from butts to roll cigarettes.
But the smoke will clear from books, movies and TV shows as it evaporates in reality. In a few generations, maybe cigarettes will be a historical oddity like snuff. Most likely, tobacco will be outlawed altogether.
My great-great-grandkids will probably read the interactive history websites that have replaced books with wonder and say, “Why would anyone breath in smoke on purpose?”
I just hope my far-off tobacco-less progeny have a firm grasp on their mortality and aren’t presumptuous enough to think they’ll cleverly cheat death.
Yes, that’s right.
Even non-smokers die someday.
Waist-high ashtrays were the norm in lobbies and waiting rooms.
When I went to visit my old man at his workplace, the Bay City Times (he was also a newspaperman; I followed in his inky footsteps), the newsroom was a thick cloud of acrid smoke from reporters and editors puffing away.
Most houses, even if the homeowners didn’t smoke, had ashtrays on coffee tables for when company came over.
Cars were equipped with attached ashtrays and the outlet beneath the radio was for the lighter, not a cell phone charger.
This was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before the cultural winds began frantically blowing the smoke away.
The slow eradication of tobacco from our lives will go down in history as a major societal shift.
In the 1910s and 1920s, as America was industrialized, smoking a cigarette was one of the few moments of pleasure a factory worker might enjoy during a long, grueling day. The long-term health dangers smoking posed weren’t nearly as threatening as the day-to-day reality of working in dangerous conditions.
In 1965, the peak of smoking, 42 percent of the American population called themselves smokers, according the American Heart Association. This, too, was a different era. Many of the men had started smoking during World War II, when cigarettes were rationed to soldiers. It was also common to see doctors hawking tobacco products on TV and in magazines.
That number has now been cut in half. Currently, about 23 percent of adult men and 19 percent of adult women smoke in America.
Never has a product been so accepted, then so reviled in such an abrupt way.
It isn’t just the adverse health effects: people have known smoking isn’t good for you long before now. Instead, the revulsion our culture feels about smoking reflects our preoccupation with perfection and safety. Those who set the health agenda seem to see America on the path to create the finest human units the world has ever seen. Cigarettes and cheeseburgers are only going to get in the way. You have to make sure your kiddies are wearing bike helmets and knee pads.
Michigan recently joined the growing number of states in having some kind of smoking ban.
While I’m still a little stuck in murky questions regarding civil liberties, the truth is cigarettes not only affect your health, but secondhand smoke is harmful to others. Anyone who tells you different is, well, just blowing smoke.
So, as a smoker myself, I can’t say I applaud the ban, but I understand it and reluctantly admit it’s the right way to go.
Maybe the previously permissive atmosphere legitimized the act of smoking and compelled people like me to start.
Like most smokers, I started in my teens. My friends and I would steal cigarettes from our parents’ packs, go out into a wooded park and smoke to “get a buzz.”
I didn’t smoke habitually until I was in college, where I fancied myself cutting quite the Romantic swath as I pored over the great tomes of American literature, a cigarette in my hand.
Huck Finn smoked a pipe. The Lost Generation writers -- Hemingway, Fitzgerald -- always had cigarettes dangling from their characters’ lips. In later years Hemingway quit because, as he relayed in an interview, it interfered with his sense of smell, which he needed while hunting.
Holden Caulfield huffed and puffed around “The Catcher in the Rye” because he was “a pretty heavy smoker.”
In Jack Keroauc’s “On the Road,” the impoverished, bohemian characters go through ashtrays, collecting the tobacco from butts to roll cigarettes.
But the smoke will clear from books, movies and TV shows as it evaporates in reality. In a few generations, maybe cigarettes will be a historical oddity like snuff. Most likely, tobacco will be outlawed altogether.
My great-great-grandkids will probably read the interactive history websites that have replaced books with wonder and say, “Why would anyone breath in smoke on purpose?”
I just hope my far-off tobacco-less progeny have a firm grasp on their mortality and aren’t presumptuous enough to think they’ll cleverly cheat death.
Yes, that’s right.
Even non-smokers die someday.
A season for souvenirs: Chet Lemon’s home run ball and dirt are prized possessions
When I was a kid, there was nothing more thrilling than popping out of the tunnels at old Tiger Stadium and seeing that lush green expanse of the outfield. The raked brown dirt of the infield always looked so perfect.
Nothing could be made better.
While the game is always fun to watch, everything that goes along with the spectacle of a ball game has always fascinated me.
The uniforms, the bats, the helmets, the grass and, yes, the balls.
And if you’re lucky enough, you might just get to take home a souvenir at the end of a season.
Yes, I’m talking about the home run ball.
What is it about the stuff the pros use that make you quiver when you touch it?
They somehow make you feel bigger.
Touch the ball that the pros touch and you could absorb some of their talent.
My family first acquired a piece of Detroit Tiger history in the 1980s. I can’t remember who the Tigers were playing, or if it was before or after the biggest season. It was one of those seemingly meaningless, mid-summer games. We were, of course, sitting in the cheap seats. We were always Bleacher Creatures when we went to games. I still remember the metal benches with the numbers painted on them in between the white lines marking your ‘seat’ on the bench. It always seemed rather silly to me as a kid -- there was nothing there to stop you from sliding over into another seat.
The beach balls bounced around. The Wave was always thrilling.
It was an exciting game, too. This was the team that won it all in 1984: Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell and Jack Morris. And, of course, Chet Lemon.
Chet took the plate. The crack of the bat sounded all the way up to where we sat.
You forget how large everything seemed when you were a kid. Our entire section leapt up in one motion, like they were not individuals, but one giant hand. I couldn’t see squat because I was still so short. I did stand up on my bench, but it was too late.
I could tell from the way everyone’s heads craned that the ball was coming right at us. It sailed overhead and landed a few rows up.
A guy put his bare hand out like a mitt and the ball smacked into it.
He winced with pain.
It was too fast. The guy couldn’t hang on to it and the ball came rolling down underneath the benches until it stopped.
Right between my mom’s feet.
It was just sitting there. All my mom had to do was reach down and pluck it up. She raised the ball so everyone could see the gift she got from Chet Lemon, who was no doubt trotting past second base by now, on his way to home plate.
Catching a foul ball is nice. But catching a home run ball is better.
The ball held a prominent position sitting in the mouth of an old Detroit Free Press mug featuring a graphic from the front page of the newspaper when the Tigers won in 1968. The ball survived for years in that mug on a table in my parents’ house until our fractious English Setter, Maggie, got a hold of it and chewed it up.
My folks still have the chewed-up version, though. It’s a home run ball, after all. A ball the pros used.
Tiger Stadium itself was a very large souvenir, one that sadly couldn’t be saved.
I loved the old stadium. The only thing I don’t miss are the bathrooms with the long tubs I could never quite reach as a kid. My old man would hoist me up by my armpits so I was level with the beer-logged gents next to me, cigarettes dangling out of their mouths. (This was the early 1980s, when you could still smoke just about everywhere).
“What you lookin’ at, kid?” they seemed to say if I ever locked eyes with them.
My brother and I attended the last game at Tiger Stadium in 1999.
The outcome didn’t matter (though the Tigers won 8-2). This was about history.
When the game was over, we went down to the right-field fence where one of the stadium workers was dipping the little plastic commemorative ticket holders into the dirt and giving them to fans.
My brother and I, of course, both got our plastic ticket holders filled with the warning track dirt.
My souvenir has survived for ten years and still hangs on a place of honor in my office.
The same dirt that got stuck between the cleats of the pros.
Nothing could be made better.
While the game is always fun to watch, everything that goes along with the spectacle of a ball game has always fascinated me.
The uniforms, the bats, the helmets, the grass and, yes, the balls.
And if you’re lucky enough, you might just get to take home a souvenir at the end of a season.
Yes, I’m talking about the home run ball.
What is it about the stuff the pros use that make you quiver when you touch it?
They somehow make you feel bigger.
Touch the ball that the pros touch and you could absorb some of their talent.
My family first acquired a piece of Detroit Tiger history in the 1980s. I can’t remember who the Tigers were playing, or if it was before or after the biggest season. It was one of those seemingly meaningless, mid-summer games. We were, of course, sitting in the cheap seats. We were always Bleacher Creatures when we went to games. I still remember the metal benches with the numbers painted on them in between the white lines marking your ‘seat’ on the bench. It always seemed rather silly to me as a kid -- there was nothing there to stop you from sliding over into another seat.
The beach balls bounced around. The Wave was always thrilling.
It was an exciting game, too. This was the team that won it all in 1984: Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell and Jack Morris. And, of course, Chet Lemon.
Chet took the plate. The crack of the bat sounded all the way up to where we sat.
You forget how large everything seemed when you were a kid. Our entire section leapt up in one motion, like they were not individuals, but one giant hand. I couldn’t see squat because I was still so short. I did stand up on my bench, but it was too late.
I could tell from the way everyone’s heads craned that the ball was coming right at us. It sailed overhead and landed a few rows up.
A guy put his bare hand out like a mitt and the ball smacked into it.
He winced with pain.
It was too fast. The guy couldn’t hang on to it and the ball came rolling down underneath the benches until it stopped.
Right between my mom’s feet.
It was just sitting there. All my mom had to do was reach down and pluck it up. She raised the ball so everyone could see the gift she got from Chet Lemon, who was no doubt trotting past second base by now, on his way to home plate.
Catching a foul ball is nice. But catching a home run ball is better.
The ball held a prominent position sitting in the mouth of an old Detroit Free Press mug featuring a graphic from the front page of the newspaper when the Tigers won in 1968. The ball survived for years in that mug on a table in my parents’ house until our fractious English Setter, Maggie, got a hold of it and chewed it up.
My folks still have the chewed-up version, though. It’s a home run ball, after all. A ball the pros used.
Tiger Stadium itself was a very large souvenir, one that sadly couldn’t be saved.
I loved the old stadium. The only thing I don’t miss are the bathrooms with the long tubs I could never quite reach as a kid. My old man would hoist me up by my armpits so I was level with the beer-logged gents next to me, cigarettes dangling out of their mouths. (This was the early 1980s, when you could still smoke just about everywhere).
“What you lookin’ at, kid?” they seemed to say if I ever locked eyes with them.
My brother and I attended the last game at Tiger Stadium in 1999.
The outcome didn’t matter (though the Tigers won 8-2). This was about history.
When the game was over, we went down to the right-field fence where one of the stadium workers was dipping the little plastic commemorative ticket holders into the dirt and giving them to fans.
My brother and I, of course, both got our plastic ticket holders filled with the warning track dirt.
My souvenir has survived for ten years and still hangs on a place of honor in my office.
The same dirt that got stuck between the cleats of the pros.
Skunked for steelhead: Still waiting for the big one to hit
The rivers are getting busy this time of year.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been very busy pulling any fish out of them.
It’s spring steelhead season here in Manistee and anglers are out in large numbers tossing their offerings to the fish, hoping to get a big “steelie” on the end of the line.
From what I’m hearing, I’m not the only one skunked for steelhead so far. Most fisherman I’ve spoken with at the Big and Little Manistee rivers have said the same thing: “We didn’t see anything.”
Only while fishing up on Bear Creek about three weeks ago did I see some guys carting some nice big steelhead to their trucks. The erratic weather that followed -- high winds, no rain, 80-degree days -- seemed to put a damper on things.
I’ve been out a half dozen times since then and still don’t have that framed photo of me up on my wall holding a 25-inch rainbow trout. I’ll admit I’ve got sketchy skills. I’m probably going to all the wrong spots. And I’m fly-fishing, which always makes it a little tougher to yield results. An artificial fly on the end of your line is comparable to baiting a human with a rubber cheeseburger.
Still, I’m having the time of my life.
For those of you who don’t know, a steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is a rainbow trout native to the Pacific Ocean. The species was brought to Michigan more than 125 years ago. Steelheads are anadromous, which means, like salmon, they return to their original hatching grounds in rivers to spawn after spending a few years out in the big lake.
According to the DNR’s Web site: “Great lakes steelhead are usually found in waters less than 35 feet deep at temperatures of 58-62 degrees. They are often found near stream outlets, especially in spring and early summer. In the lake-dwelling part of their life cycle, they wander along the shoals eating plankton, minnows, surface and bottom insects and other aquatic life. Although they feed primarily in mid-depths, they do take surface insects, including fly fishermen's flies.”
Just not this fly fisherman’s.
Yet.
I’ve only casually gone after steelhead since I first started fly-fishing when I was 12 years old, usually in the fall. But I’ve hit the river more times for steelhead in the past month than I have over my entire life. My angling career has mostly been fishing for brook trout on dry flies during the summer, so the long nine-foot rods and heavy floating lines rigged with sinking tip leaders and split shot needed to hook onto the huge steelies are slightly foreign to me. But I’m getting used to them, even as I flog the water with my line, scaring away all the respectable fish.
At the very least, I am getting good practice swinging streamers and bottom-bouncing nymphs, which I’ve never done before.
But I was getting sick of practicing. I wanted to at least see a fish. I was starting to doubt the existence of the elusive steelhead in the rivers.
I went down to Six-Mile Bridge on Saturday to try my luck on the Little Man. I fished (unsuccessfully) for an hour before it started to rain.
I did what any smart angler stuck in the rain does: I went back to my car, took a snort of whisky and read while the rain came down.
It rained for a good twenty minutes. Usually, I’m not so scared of getting wet, but a few days before, I got caught in a downpour on the Little Man near 9-Mile Bridge. The river there is deep, fast and not easy to wade. It took me a half hour to get back to the car, and when I did, I was so soaked I had to drive home in my underwear.
All the rain was needed after a dry early spring, so I wasn’t too upset in either instance. In both cases, I had a rain coat which I failed to put on before heading into the stream because if you put it on, you’re just asking for it to rain. Or so goes my faulty logic goes.
So, there I am, reading in my car, my waders still on, when the rain finally breaks. I walked down the steep embankment toward the river and saw some guys fishing with spin rods and spawn bags, usually a much more successful method than fly fishing. I asked them how they’re doing.
“We haven’t seen anything,” they both said.
I told them I hadn’t either and followed the trail along the river downstream about a half mile.
At a point where the trail literally abuts the river, I looked down into the water and saw something move. If you lift up river water in your hands, it’s clear, but looking at it rushing over the sand, gravel and logs, it’s sometimes a rusty color. In the swiftness of the water, I saw a giant fish dart out from the undercut of the bank, waver for a moment in the current, then zip under a downed tree branch.
It had to be two-feet long. A steelhead.
I had finally seen one.
My attempts at catching it are another story. But the sun started shining and I continued to hone my skills for the next two hours.
And when I left, at least I didn’t have to drive home in my underwear.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been very busy pulling any fish out of them.
It’s spring steelhead season here in Manistee and anglers are out in large numbers tossing their offerings to the fish, hoping to get a big “steelie” on the end of the line.
From what I’m hearing, I’m not the only one skunked for steelhead so far. Most fisherman I’ve spoken with at the Big and Little Manistee rivers have said the same thing: “We didn’t see anything.”
Only while fishing up on Bear Creek about three weeks ago did I see some guys carting some nice big steelhead to their trucks. The erratic weather that followed -- high winds, no rain, 80-degree days -- seemed to put a damper on things.
I’ve been out a half dozen times since then and still don’t have that framed photo of me up on my wall holding a 25-inch rainbow trout. I’ll admit I’ve got sketchy skills. I’m probably going to all the wrong spots. And I’m fly-fishing, which always makes it a little tougher to yield results. An artificial fly on the end of your line is comparable to baiting a human with a rubber cheeseburger.
Still, I’m having the time of my life.
For those of you who don’t know, a steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is a rainbow trout native to the Pacific Ocean. The species was brought to Michigan more than 125 years ago. Steelheads are anadromous, which means, like salmon, they return to their original hatching grounds in rivers to spawn after spending a few years out in the big lake.
According to the DNR’s Web site: “Great lakes steelhead are usually found in waters less than 35 feet deep at temperatures of 58-62 degrees. They are often found near stream outlets, especially in spring and early summer. In the lake-dwelling part of their life cycle, they wander along the shoals eating plankton, minnows, surface and bottom insects and other aquatic life. Although they feed primarily in mid-depths, they do take surface insects, including fly fishermen's flies.”
Just not this fly fisherman’s.
Yet.
I’ve only casually gone after steelhead since I first started fly-fishing when I was 12 years old, usually in the fall. But I’ve hit the river more times for steelhead in the past month than I have over my entire life. My angling career has mostly been fishing for brook trout on dry flies during the summer, so the long nine-foot rods and heavy floating lines rigged with sinking tip leaders and split shot needed to hook onto the huge steelies are slightly foreign to me. But I’m getting used to them, even as I flog the water with my line, scaring away all the respectable fish.
At the very least, I am getting good practice swinging streamers and bottom-bouncing nymphs, which I’ve never done before.
But I was getting sick of practicing. I wanted to at least see a fish. I was starting to doubt the existence of the elusive steelhead in the rivers.
I went down to Six-Mile Bridge on Saturday to try my luck on the Little Man. I fished (unsuccessfully) for an hour before it started to rain.
I did what any smart angler stuck in the rain does: I went back to my car, took a snort of whisky and read while the rain came down.
It rained for a good twenty minutes. Usually, I’m not so scared of getting wet, but a few days before, I got caught in a downpour on the Little Man near 9-Mile Bridge. The river there is deep, fast and not easy to wade. It took me a half hour to get back to the car, and when I did, I was so soaked I had to drive home in my underwear.
All the rain was needed after a dry early spring, so I wasn’t too upset in either instance. In both cases, I had a rain coat which I failed to put on before heading into the stream because if you put it on, you’re just asking for it to rain. Or so goes my faulty logic goes.
So, there I am, reading in my car, my waders still on, when the rain finally breaks. I walked down the steep embankment toward the river and saw some guys fishing with spin rods and spawn bags, usually a much more successful method than fly fishing. I asked them how they’re doing.
“We haven’t seen anything,” they both said.
I told them I hadn’t either and followed the trail along the river downstream about a half mile.
At a point where the trail literally abuts the river, I looked down into the water and saw something move. If you lift up river water in your hands, it’s clear, but looking at it rushing over the sand, gravel and logs, it’s sometimes a rusty color. In the swiftness of the water, I saw a giant fish dart out from the undercut of the bank, waver for a moment in the current, then zip under a downed tree branch.
It had to be two-feet long. A steelhead.
I had finally seen one.
My attempts at catching it are another story. But the sun started shining and I continued to hone my skills for the next two hours.
And when I left, at least I didn’t have to drive home in my underwear.
No ‘iFad’ for me: Public is fooled by new whiz-bang gadgets
Ford. Edison. Alexander Gram Bell.
These are just a few of the visionary inventors and businessmen who shaped our world. They conquered physical distances and allowed us to see in the dark.
Automobiles, light bulbs and telephones changed the way we live. Other advancements in the fields of medicine, farming and the food industry eventually made our lives better.
So, what are our current so-called innovators like Apple’s Steve Jobs coming up with?
Different ways of talking on the phone and watching TV.
The iPad was released this past Saturday amid the same circus hype that accompanied the debuts of the iPod and iPhone. People in cities nationwide waited in lines to purchase the gizmo, which costs around $600. It’s essentially a tablet-sized computer that connects to the Interwebs. I won’t go into too much more about what it does, because I’m sure you’ve already seen the blitz of commercials and media reports.
The iPad tablet seems to have been delivered to the masses with the same fervor that accompanied another tablet in ancient times. But whereas Moses’s Ten Commandments gave humans some rules to live by, the iPad is nothing but a reworked medium that supplies an endless stream of substance-free novelties: sport scores, the new Rihanna video and the YouTube video of the kid high on gas after a dentist appointment.
The messages on stone were a little bit more thought-provoking than the amusements, novelties and distractions flashing on the bright, electronic screen.
If you hadn’t guessed by now, I did not wait in line to buy an iPad (or an iPod or iPhone). I think the iPad is completely unnecessary and irrelevant. I’m no wacky Luddite who advocates subsistence living “off the grid,” I’m just saying all the newfangled “iFads” and “iPhonys” aren’t worth the attention they receive.
Someday, I hope the public will wise up and the “iFad” will pass. Steve Jobs and crew are fooling them. It’s nothing but technology for the sake of technology.
Granted, I’m still skeptical about the relevance of computers and the Internet. They have sped up the way we do things and made previous inventions more precise, but how have they really altered our lives?
There’s more access to information, most of which we don’t need (pornography, narcissistic MyFace pages). The Internet changed the way we do things, but it hasn’t changed the lives of millions in the same way as, say, Gutenberg’s printing press did in the 15th Century.
The things you can use an iPad for are fun, but they aren’t fulfilling any basic human need or making any sweeping cultural changes.
Maybe this is the problem with our economy: America isn’t making anything new. And what people are buying, gadgets like flat-screen TVs and video game systems, are nothing more than sleek, high-concept equivalents to junk food.
The iPad is nothing more than a GameBoy for adults. In the end, it’s a toy. A very expensive toy.
Even cell phones, which I was reluctant to get, are mostly pointless. They’re nice for emergencies, but how often are they used for that? Most of the time, I hear people having inane conversations about who kissed who’s boyfriend yesterday, or the play-by-play of what the person is doing.
“I’m at the gas station. Now, I’m walking out of the gas station. Now, I’m getting into my car,” as if they need to supply narration to make their lives meaningful, to give importance to every monotonous move.
A week ago, I had a bunch of people in Manistee from the Detroit area to steelhead fish. One of my friends, who is usually loud and uproarious, was uncharacteristically quiet while we had post-fishing drinks at a local watering hole. I looked over and saw him fiddling with a shiny black object.
“My wife just got me this iPhone,” he said when he caught me looking. “It’s awesome.”
Those were about the only words he spoke the rest of the evening because he was so busy with his new toy.
I’d seen it before. Every person I know who has an iPhone would rather be looking up who played Raj on “What’s Happening!!” (Ernest Thomas) than interact in their current surroundings.
They aren’t present in the tangible world.
These are a few examples of how people are so terribly afraid of being alone with their own thoughts. The more you think, the smarter you are. The smarter you are, the more engaged citizen you become.
But in the end, most of us are just playing games.
These are just a few of the visionary inventors and businessmen who shaped our world. They conquered physical distances and allowed us to see in the dark.
Automobiles, light bulbs and telephones changed the way we live. Other advancements in the fields of medicine, farming and the food industry eventually made our lives better.
So, what are our current so-called innovators like Apple’s Steve Jobs coming up with?
Different ways of talking on the phone and watching TV.
The iPad was released this past Saturday amid the same circus hype that accompanied the debuts of the iPod and iPhone. People in cities nationwide waited in lines to purchase the gizmo, which costs around $600. It’s essentially a tablet-sized computer that connects to the Interwebs. I won’t go into too much more about what it does, because I’m sure you’ve already seen the blitz of commercials and media reports.
The iPad tablet seems to have been delivered to the masses with the same fervor that accompanied another tablet in ancient times. But whereas Moses’s Ten Commandments gave humans some rules to live by, the iPad is nothing but a reworked medium that supplies an endless stream of substance-free novelties: sport scores, the new Rihanna video and the YouTube video of the kid high on gas after a dentist appointment.
The messages on stone were a little bit more thought-provoking than the amusements, novelties and distractions flashing on the bright, electronic screen.
If you hadn’t guessed by now, I did not wait in line to buy an iPad (or an iPod or iPhone). I think the iPad is completely unnecessary and irrelevant. I’m no wacky Luddite who advocates subsistence living “off the grid,” I’m just saying all the newfangled “iFads” and “iPhonys” aren’t worth the attention they receive.
Someday, I hope the public will wise up and the “iFad” will pass. Steve Jobs and crew are fooling them. It’s nothing but technology for the sake of technology.
Granted, I’m still skeptical about the relevance of computers and the Internet. They have sped up the way we do things and made previous inventions more precise, but how have they really altered our lives?
There’s more access to information, most of which we don’t need (pornography, narcissistic MyFace pages). The Internet changed the way we do things, but it hasn’t changed the lives of millions in the same way as, say, Gutenberg’s printing press did in the 15th Century.
The things you can use an iPad for are fun, but they aren’t fulfilling any basic human need or making any sweeping cultural changes.
Maybe this is the problem with our economy: America isn’t making anything new. And what people are buying, gadgets like flat-screen TVs and video game systems, are nothing more than sleek, high-concept equivalents to junk food.
The iPad is nothing more than a GameBoy for adults. In the end, it’s a toy. A very expensive toy.
Even cell phones, which I was reluctant to get, are mostly pointless. They’re nice for emergencies, but how often are they used for that? Most of the time, I hear people having inane conversations about who kissed who’s boyfriend yesterday, or the play-by-play of what the person is doing.
“I’m at the gas station. Now, I’m walking out of the gas station. Now, I’m getting into my car,” as if they need to supply narration to make their lives meaningful, to give importance to every monotonous move.
A week ago, I had a bunch of people in Manistee from the Detroit area to steelhead fish. One of my friends, who is usually loud and uproarious, was uncharacteristically quiet while we had post-fishing drinks at a local watering hole. I looked over and saw him fiddling with a shiny black object.
“My wife just got me this iPhone,” he said when he caught me looking. “It’s awesome.”
Those were about the only words he spoke the rest of the evening because he was so busy with his new toy.
I’d seen it before. Every person I know who has an iPhone would rather be looking up who played Raj on “What’s Happening!!” (Ernest Thomas) than interact in their current surroundings.
They aren’t present in the tangible world.
These are a few examples of how people are so terribly afraid of being alone with their own thoughts. The more you think, the smarter you are. The smarter you are, the more engaged citizen you become.
But in the end, most of us are just playing games.
The adventures of bat boy: Gettin’ down with the Tippy Dam bats
Last month, I wrote a column about removing a bat from my house. If you missed it, here’s a quick recap: I basically saw the bat fluttering around the kitchen of my Manistee house, pulled on a pair of gloves and waited for the little guy to land before gently picking him up to release outside.
I also recounted that I hid in a room with the door closed for a few minutes before mustering up the courage to perform the task.
Little did I know that in a few weeks I’d be surrounded by 20,000 bats. This time there would be no rooms to hide in, no doors to close.
I’ll admit, I was a little wary while descending into the depths of Tippy Dam, and it wasn’t because I was on a ladder a hundred or so feet above the river.
That was frightening, but the thought of that many bats at the bottom of the ladder did make me shudder. There were, after all, enough bats to grab hold of my coat, lift me up and fly me out of their hibernaculum.
“We’re trying to sleep!” they would chirp at me.
But the bats were well-behaved, gracious hosts.
On March 6, I followed Dr. Allen Kurta, a professor of biology at Eastern Michigan, and his class down into the spillway, which doubles as the only bat hibernaculum in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
I’m sure you’ve been to Tippy, or have seen pictures. Getting down to where the bats hibernate involves getting on top of the dam and crawling down a ladder that’s dangerous enough to have a cage around it. The cage is there because if you slipped, you could fall a hundred feet into a concrete pit. The ladder is on the face of the dam, the part that stops all the water on the Manistee River. Going down, you become face to face with the lake-like body of water behind the dam.
“Just keep going,” the Consumers Energy workers hollered at us from up top. “Don’t stop and look at the water!”
After reaching a platform, getting to the bat lair involves another ladder trip down into the belly of the spillway.
Halfway down, the sunlight began to disappear. Since we aren’t equipped with echolocation like bats -- who, contrary to belief, can also see quite well -- some sort of artificial light was needed.
Like all of Dr. Kurta’s students, I had on a hard hat and safety glasses. The class and I were also treated to a 20-minute video about the dangers of confined spaces before we were allowed in the spillway. An affable Consumers employee strapped a very bright headlamp to my hard hat before I went down.
I’m glad he did. As I reached the bottom of the ladder, I stopped where I was because the dark was so disorienting. The spillway is the darkest place I’ve ever barely seen. I didn’t see any bats yet because I couldn’t see at all.
All the water pressing the walls behind us made the chambers very moist, cold and humid, which is why the bats are drawn to hibernate there. I felt it seeping in around my bones. Still, all I saw was black, then the palsied shaking of the students’ flashlights deep down in the dark.
I heard the bats before I saw them, a symphony of high-pitched squeaking and chirping. The ground beneath my feet was slimy with guano.
But I still couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything.
Then, I remembered to flick my light on. A beam burst narrowly in front of my helmet. I could at least navigate now. I moved forward, down the wide walkway to where the students were. Looking at the ground, I saw the slimy concrete was a greenish color. The cement path was as wide as a sidewalk, but with railings on each side because it dropped down fifty or so feet on either side. The side walls angled up like an attic. I started moving my head to throw light on the walls, thinking that there sure were a lot of holes.
When I fixed my headlamp on one, I realized it wasn’t a hole at all, but a giant grouping of hibernating bats. Hundreds of them.
They will surely fly into my head, I thought. One will surely gnaw me on the tip of my nose, I worried. They will have to call a stretcher to haul me out of there.
Why did I think this?
Because culturally, bats have a bad rep. They are associated with blood-sucking vampires, insanity and rabies. Some folks consider them nothing more than flying rats who want to get tangled up in your hair or nibble on your toes while you sleep.
In the end, they are not just harmless, but helpful, eating more than their weight in mosquitos each summer night.
As I continued to explore the hibernaculum with the helpful Dr. Kurta and his students, I slowly realized that there was nothing to be afraid of. The bats that zipped and zoomed by my head never even came close to touching me. The more I learned about bats, the more comfortable I became around them.
So, my days of hiding from bats are over.
If only I could say the same for very steep ladders.
I also recounted that I hid in a room with the door closed for a few minutes before mustering up the courage to perform the task.
Little did I know that in a few weeks I’d be surrounded by 20,000 bats. This time there would be no rooms to hide in, no doors to close.
I’ll admit, I was a little wary while descending into the depths of Tippy Dam, and it wasn’t because I was on a ladder a hundred or so feet above the river.
That was frightening, but the thought of that many bats at the bottom of the ladder did make me shudder. There were, after all, enough bats to grab hold of my coat, lift me up and fly me out of their hibernaculum.
“We’re trying to sleep!” they would chirp at me.
But the bats were well-behaved, gracious hosts.
On March 6, I followed Dr. Allen Kurta, a professor of biology at Eastern Michigan, and his class down into the spillway, which doubles as the only bat hibernaculum in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
I’m sure you’ve been to Tippy, or have seen pictures. Getting down to where the bats hibernate involves getting on top of the dam and crawling down a ladder that’s dangerous enough to have a cage around it. The cage is there because if you slipped, you could fall a hundred feet into a concrete pit. The ladder is on the face of the dam, the part that stops all the water on the Manistee River. Going down, you become face to face with the lake-like body of water behind the dam.
“Just keep going,” the Consumers Energy workers hollered at us from up top. “Don’t stop and look at the water!”
After reaching a platform, getting to the bat lair involves another ladder trip down into the belly of the spillway.
Halfway down, the sunlight began to disappear. Since we aren’t equipped with echolocation like bats -- who, contrary to belief, can also see quite well -- some sort of artificial light was needed.
Like all of Dr. Kurta’s students, I had on a hard hat and safety glasses. The class and I were also treated to a 20-minute video about the dangers of confined spaces before we were allowed in the spillway. An affable Consumers employee strapped a very bright headlamp to my hard hat before I went down.
I’m glad he did. As I reached the bottom of the ladder, I stopped where I was because the dark was so disorienting. The spillway is the darkest place I’ve ever barely seen. I didn’t see any bats yet because I couldn’t see at all.
All the water pressing the walls behind us made the chambers very moist, cold and humid, which is why the bats are drawn to hibernate there. I felt it seeping in around my bones. Still, all I saw was black, then the palsied shaking of the students’ flashlights deep down in the dark.
I heard the bats before I saw them, a symphony of high-pitched squeaking and chirping. The ground beneath my feet was slimy with guano.
But I still couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything.
Then, I remembered to flick my light on. A beam burst narrowly in front of my helmet. I could at least navigate now. I moved forward, down the wide walkway to where the students were. Looking at the ground, I saw the slimy concrete was a greenish color. The cement path was as wide as a sidewalk, but with railings on each side because it dropped down fifty or so feet on either side. The side walls angled up like an attic. I started moving my head to throw light on the walls, thinking that there sure were a lot of holes.
When I fixed my headlamp on one, I realized it wasn’t a hole at all, but a giant grouping of hibernating bats. Hundreds of them.
They will surely fly into my head, I thought. One will surely gnaw me on the tip of my nose, I worried. They will have to call a stretcher to haul me out of there.
Why did I think this?
Because culturally, bats have a bad rep. They are associated with blood-sucking vampires, insanity and rabies. Some folks consider them nothing more than flying rats who want to get tangled up in your hair or nibble on your toes while you sleep.
In the end, they are not just harmless, but helpful, eating more than their weight in mosquitos each summer night.
As I continued to explore the hibernaculum with the helpful Dr. Kurta and his students, I slowly realized that there was nothing to be afraid of. The bats that zipped and zoomed by my head never even came close to touching me. The more I learned about bats, the more comfortable I became around them.
So, my days of hiding from bats are over.
If only I could say the same for very steep ladders.
Swallowing my pride: Knowing how to lose is important
I’ve never been in an eating contest.
The only competitive eating I’ve ever taken part of was making sure I got to the dinner table before my brother and old man had shoveled all the good stuff on their plate.
But there I was at Glen’s grocery store last week, doing deep knee bends and trying to stretch out my stomach before the 6th Annual Paczki Eating Contest.
The challenge: who could polish off two paczkis the quickest.
Simple, I thought.
I made sure not to eat breakfast. Everyone I talked to said use water to soften the Polish pastry so it was easier to swallow.
I know it was all for fun, for charity, for the entertainment of the Manistee school kids cheering us on.
It shouldn’t have, but it started to become serious for me.
I’ve always been a tad competitive, and even though I had absolutely no experience with eating contests, I began thinking, “Yeah, I can do this. I can win.”
My competitors had already been made known to me. My man foe in the media category was Guy Wynn, the disc jokey for 101.5 Kool Hits, who had won two consecutive years in a row.
“He’s a beast,” everyone said. “You don’t have a chance.”
Nonsense, I thought. Maybe he just never had a worthy opponent like myself. It’s just stuffing two paczkis down my gullet in a short amount of time. How hard could it be, right?
I would turn Guy Wynn into Guy Lose.
The moments before any contest are harrowing. Time to pump yourself up and psyche out the enemy. I tried casting dirty looks at my opponents, who also included a spokesmen from another area newspaper.
I hopped up and down. I stretched again. I sat down and faced the two paczkis on the plate. Next to me, Gluttonous Guy was doing the same.
I’ve got this, I thought.
I didn’t.
Mr. Wynn is a quick-eating animal. It was poetry the way he jammed those jelly-filled gems into his mouth. The amazing alacrity, the stunning speed, the hurried hustle was truly something to behold.
That’s how I ended up, beholding, sitting there with red jelly smeared on my face watching Mr. Wynn, well, win.
I was still finishing up the last bites of my first paczki when his arms went up in victory.
My mouth was filled like a chipmunk. In front of the table were several rows of elementary school kids who were cheering us on.
Even though the disc jockey was getting most of the glory, a little girl passed in front of me said, “Good job.”
I was suddenly reminded the contest was about having fun, and that knowing how to lose gracefully is more important than knowing how to win.
I slowly swallowed, the paczki and my pride.
The only competitive eating I’ve ever taken part of was making sure I got to the dinner table before my brother and old man had shoveled all the good stuff on their plate.
But there I was at Glen’s grocery store last week, doing deep knee bends and trying to stretch out my stomach before the 6th Annual Paczki Eating Contest.
The challenge: who could polish off two paczkis the quickest.
Simple, I thought.
I made sure not to eat breakfast. Everyone I talked to said use water to soften the Polish pastry so it was easier to swallow.
I know it was all for fun, for charity, for the entertainment of the Manistee school kids cheering us on.
It shouldn’t have, but it started to become serious for me.
I’ve always been a tad competitive, and even though I had absolutely no experience with eating contests, I began thinking, “Yeah, I can do this. I can win.”
My competitors had already been made known to me. My man foe in the media category was Guy Wynn, the disc jokey for 101.5 Kool Hits, who had won two consecutive years in a row.
“He’s a beast,” everyone said. “You don’t have a chance.”
Nonsense, I thought. Maybe he just never had a worthy opponent like myself. It’s just stuffing two paczkis down my gullet in a short amount of time. How hard could it be, right?
I would turn Guy Wynn into Guy Lose.
The moments before any contest are harrowing. Time to pump yourself up and psyche out the enemy. I tried casting dirty looks at my opponents, who also included a spokesmen from another area newspaper.
I hopped up and down. I stretched again. I sat down and faced the two paczkis on the plate. Next to me, Gluttonous Guy was doing the same.
I’ve got this, I thought.
I didn’t.
Mr. Wynn is a quick-eating animal. It was poetry the way he jammed those jelly-filled gems into his mouth. The amazing alacrity, the stunning speed, the hurried hustle was truly something to behold.
That’s how I ended up, beholding, sitting there with red jelly smeared on my face watching Mr. Wynn, well, win.
I was still finishing up the last bites of my first paczki when his arms went up in victory.
My mouth was filled like a chipmunk. In front of the table were several rows of elementary school kids who were cheering us on.
Even though the disc jockey was getting most of the glory, a little girl passed in front of me said, “Good job.”
I was suddenly reminded the contest was about having fun, and that knowing how to lose gracefully is more important than knowing how to win.
I slowly swallowed, the paczki and my pride.
Game on: Olympics only sports worth watching
I rarely ever watch sports on television.
I don’t know the latest trade news or which teams are even good. Occasionally, I’ll hear the name of an expansion team, or a franchise that has switched cities, and give a puzzled look.
“A Colorado Avalanche? No, thank you. I don’t like ice cream sundaes,” I’ll say. “How are the Quebec Nordiques doing this season?”
You see, all my knowledge of sports is dated around 1993 when I more or less stopped watching, stopped paying any attention at all.
I’ve received a fair amount of razzing from friends and family about this over the years. As an American male, it’s my demographic destiny to watch The Game. If you don’t, you’re seen as some sort of an alien.
“You lost your man-card, dude,” they say when I blank out during barroom conversations about a Memphis Grizzlies and Charlotte Bobcats contest and ask, “Which sport is that?”
This wouldn’t be remarkable if it had always been so, but it hasn’t.
Before 1993, I was the kid who scanned the football, basketball, hockey and baseball standings in the Free Press every day before going to school. I read with rapt fascination library books about old-time hockey players like Maurice “The Rocket” Richard and Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion.
I played every sport – basketball, football, baseball, hockey – in leagues growing up. In high school, I was the captain of the freshman football team and declined to play hockey to play on the basketball team. I collected cards, could recite statistics and could name the entire roster of the Red Wings, who were still known as the “Dead Wings” at this time, several years before they began winning their Stanley Cups.
So what happened?
Other things (girls, perhaps) started to seem more interesting, I suppose. Also, a rebellious teenage attitude was overtaking me.
I was growing up and beginning to question the world, including the sports industry – the marketing, the advertising, the manufactured hype, the endorsements, the steroids.
How would my early hero “The Rocket” Richard, who played for the Montreal Canadiens in the NHL’s helmetless and glamourless 1950s, navigate this new amusement park atmosphere?
By the 1990s, it didn’t seem to be about raw athleticism anymore. Instead it was about $100 sneakers (which I admit begging my parents for), sport drinks and television commercials.
In short, my distaste for professional American sports coincided with my growing suspicion of the corrupting power of money and greed.
Which brings me to the Olympics, which I still enjoy watching, especially the Winter Olympics.
Now, I suppose the same arguments about steroid use, endorsements and greedy athletes could be made about the Olympics these days. But, despite absurdities like the Dream Teams, I still watch.
I like the Olympics because it pulls us out of our insular national mindset and forces us to realize there is an entire world out there and sometimes we mighty Americans can lose at something, even if it’s a bobsled race.
It’s fun watching the obscure sports you only see during the Olympics: luge, curling, Alpine skiing.
More so, it’s refreshing to see athletes from countries around the world in the spotlight, especially after months of the insatiable Tiger Woods.
I avoided watching that whole scandal which said just as much about our paradoxically prudish relationship with sex as it does about the conniving, greedy Woods, who gladly wore a false front all for the money.
He is exactly why I don’t watch sports much anymore.
But if you do catch me out and about until the Winter Olympics in Vancouver end on Feb. 28, I might actually know who won the hockey game between Sweden and Poland.
I might just be bellied up to bar waiting for the curling match.
I don’t know the latest trade news or which teams are even good. Occasionally, I’ll hear the name of an expansion team, or a franchise that has switched cities, and give a puzzled look.
“A Colorado Avalanche? No, thank you. I don’t like ice cream sundaes,” I’ll say. “How are the Quebec Nordiques doing this season?”
You see, all my knowledge of sports is dated around 1993 when I more or less stopped watching, stopped paying any attention at all.
I’ve received a fair amount of razzing from friends and family about this over the years. As an American male, it’s my demographic destiny to watch The Game. If you don’t, you’re seen as some sort of an alien.
“You lost your man-card, dude,” they say when I blank out during barroom conversations about a Memphis Grizzlies and Charlotte Bobcats contest and ask, “Which sport is that?”
This wouldn’t be remarkable if it had always been so, but it hasn’t.
Before 1993, I was the kid who scanned the football, basketball, hockey and baseball standings in the Free Press every day before going to school. I read with rapt fascination library books about old-time hockey players like Maurice “The Rocket” Richard and Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion.
I played every sport – basketball, football, baseball, hockey – in leagues growing up. In high school, I was the captain of the freshman football team and declined to play hockey to play on the basketball team. I collected cards, could recite statistics and could name the entire roster of the Red Wings, who were still known as the “Dead Wings” at this time, several years before they began winning their Stanley Cups.
So what happened?
Other things (girls, perhaps) started to seem more interesting, I suppose. Also, a rebellious teenage attitude was overtaking me.
I was growing up and beginning to question the world, including the sports industry – the marketing, the advertising, the manufactured hype, the endorsements, the steroids.
How would my early hero “The Rocket” Richard, who played for the Montreal Canadiens in the NHL’s helmetless and glamourless 1950s, navigate this new amusement park atmosphere?
By the 1990s, it didn’t seem to be about raw athleticism anymore. Instead it was about $100 sneakers (which I admit begging my parents for), sport drinks and television commercials.
In short, my distaste for professional American sports coincided with my growing suspicion of the corrupting power of money and greed.
Which brings me to the Olympics, which I still enjoy watching, especially the Winter Olympics.
Now, I suppose the same arguments about steroid use, endorsements and greedy athletes could be made about the Olympics these days. But, despite absurdities like the Dream Teams, I still watch.
I like the Olympics because it pulls us out of our insular national mindset and forces us to realize there is an entire world out there and sometimes we mighty Americans can lose at something, even if it’s a bobsled race.
It’s fun watching the obscure sports you only see during the Olympics: luge, curling, Alpine skiing.
More so, it’s refreshing to see athletes from countries around the world in the spotlight, especially after months of the insatiable Tiger Woods.
I avoided watching that whole scandal which said just as much about our paradoxically prudish relationship with sex as it does about the conniving, greedy Woods, who gladly wore a false front all for the money.
He is exactly why I don’t watch sports much anymore.
But if you do catch me out and about until the Winter Olympics in Vancouver end on Feb. 28, I might actually know who won the hockey game between Sweden and Poland.
I might just be bellied up to bar waiting for the curling match.
Good-bye, Stella: Greektown will never be the same
My mom, a full-blooded Greek, sent me a newspaper clipping the other day.
It was a story that appeared in the Free Press on Jan. 21 about Stella Perris, the “queen of Greektown,” who died at the age of 97.
Dozens came out for the homeless, schizophrenic woman’s funeral, held at the same Greek Orthodox church in downtown Detroit where, 32 years ago, I was baptized. The fact that anyone showed up for the funeral was a surprise considering Stella was best known for wearing a tattered green army jacket and screaming Greek obscenities at passersby on Monroe Street. It was surmised she also had Tourette’s syndrome.
But Stella was a fixture, evidenced by all those who showed up to mourn her. Almost all Detroit media outlets carried something about her death.
She was known to everyone, but when I was a kid, I was definitely known to her.
My mom attached a note to the clipping she sent that read, “John, it’s safe to go back to Greektown.”
You see, as a kid, I was a marked little man.
No matter what we were doing or where we were at, Stella would find me. Usually, she’d be huddled in a dark alley or doorway, quietly going through her plastic bags. Until she saw me. If we were walking in a large family group, she’d ignore the rest of them and focus her attention entirely on me.
And scream at me.
My goodness, could she scream.
She’d point at me and holler in Greek, which I couldn’t understand.
I was terrified of Stella even though I was probably bigger than her by the time I was ten.
Two Stella run-ins stick out the most in my memory.
The first one is when Stella found me after a debacle on Easter had already shaken my budding nerves. I was probably around 7 years old.
Easter, if you didn’t know, is very big for the Greeks. There is a large midnight church ceremony after which we traditionally have a dinner or go out to eat. If my family decided to go to the downtown church, we’d inevitably end up at the Laikon Cafe, our favorite Greektown establishment for lamb and rice pilaf.
I liked Easter because I was allowed to stay up until 2 a.m. Maybe the clairvoyant Stella knew I would stay out much later when I got older, and was giving me a preliminary dose of grief for my own good. Who knows?
My parents, brother and an aunt and uncle sat in a booth next to window facing the street. In the booth directly next to us, two non-Greek (”whites” we Greeks -- even half-Greeks like myself -- call them) men and two women were whooping it up, having a good ole time. They ordered everything on the menu, including a half-dozen bottles of wine. They were loud and obnoxious. They definitely hadn’t come from church.
One couple left before the bill came.
When the curly-haired waiter, who spoke with a thick accent, came to give the check to the remaining couple, they pretended to fight with each other. They fought with the waiter. They didn’t want to pay.
“You paay!” yelled the waiter.
The man at the booth grabbed the littered table and angrily heaved it in our direction a few feet away, where it slammed against our table, a gesture of how much he really did not want to pay. My brother and I had lifted our fingers up just in time so they weren’t smashed.
The man proceeded to scream and yell. He and the waiter got into a scuffle, a little farther away from our table, resulting in a broken window in the door. The curly-haired Greek waiter yelled obscenities in his thick accent the entire time. The Detroit police finally showed up.
So, after witnessing this random display of violence, my 7-year-old self was ready to call it a night. But as we were walking to the parking garage, Stella found me. Even though there were six of us, she hunched down, looked at me and started pointing and screaming. My mom held my hand, tugged me down the sidewalk, and calmed me down when we got to the car.
The second Stella instance I remember was when the same aunt and uncle I was with that night were married at the downtown church around the same time. Stella showed up with all her plastic bags filled, twenty-five plastic barrettes in her hair, all different colors, and the green Army jacket with medals and pins stuck all over it. I waited for Stella to do something horrible to interrupt the ceremony, but she didn’t. She stayed in the entryway, fiddled with her bag, until a gentle church worker came and escorted her out.
I’d still see Stella in my young adult forays into Greektown, but I don’t think she remembered me. She no longer even batted an eye.
I figured she died long ago; she seemed very old when I was a kid. Seeing all the people who showed up for the funeral made my heart swell. While she terrified me as a child, Stella taught me that she and her conditions were things to be respected and understood. That we should make an attempt at understanding all people and respect them.
My thoughts go out to Stella’s family, which I didn’t know she had until reading the Free Press story. Mental illness is a terrible thing to deal with.
So, good-bye, Stella. Greektown will never be the same.
It was a story that appeared in the Free Press on Jan. 21 about Stella Perris, the “queen of Greektown,” who died at the age of 97.
Dozens came out for the homeless, schizophrenic woman’s funeral, held at the same Greek Orthodox church in downtown Detroit where, 32 years ago, I was baptized. The fact that anyone showed up for the funeral was a surprise considering Stella was best known for wearing a tattered green army jacket and screaming Greek obscenities at passersby on Monroe Street. It was surmised she also had Tourette’s syndrome.
But Stella was a fixture, evidenced by all those who showed up to mourn her. Almost all Detroit media outlets carried something about her death.
She was known to everyone, but when I was a kid, I was definitely known to her.
My mom attached a note to the clipping she sent that read, “John, it’s safe to go back to Greektown.”
You see, as a kid, I was a marked little man.
No matter what we were doing or where we were at, Stella would find me. Usually, she’d be huddled in a dark alley or doorway, quietly going through her plastic bags. Until she saw me. If we were walking in a large family group, she’d ignore the rest of them and focus her attention entirely on me.
And scream at me.
My goodness, could she scream.
She’d point at me and holler in Greek, which I couldn’t understand.
I was terrified of Stella even though I was probably bigger than her by the time I was ten.
Two Stella run-ins stick out the most in my memory.
The first one is when Stella found me after a debacle on Easter had already shaken my budding nerves. I was probably around 7 years old.
Easter, if you didn’t know, is very big for the Greeks. There is a large midnight church ceremony after which we traditionally have a dinner or go out to eat. If my family decided to go to the downtown church, we’d inevitably end up at the Laikon Cafe, our favorite Greektown establishment for lamb and rice pilaf.
I liked Easter because I was allowed to stay up until 2 a.m. Maybe the clairvoyant Stella knew I would stay out much later when I got older, and was giving me a preliminary dose of grief for my own good. Who knows?
My parents, brother and an aunt and uncle sat in a booth next to window facing the street. In the booth directly next to us, two non-Greek (”whites” we Greeks -- even half-Greeks like myself -- call them) men and two women were whooping it up, having a good ole time. They ordered everything on the menu, including a half-dozen bottles of wine. They were loud and obnoxious. They definitely hadn’t come from church.
One couple left before the bill came.
When the curly-haired waiter, who spoke with a thick accent, came to give the check to the remaining couple, they pretended to fight with each other. They fought with the waiter. They didn’t want to pay.
“You paay!” yelled the waiter.
The man at the booth grabbed the littered table and angrily heaved it in our direction a few feet away, where it slammed against our table, a gesture of how much he really did not want to pay. My brother and I had lifted our fingers up just in time so they weren’t smashed.
The man proceeded to scream and yell. He and the waiter got into a scuffle, a little farther away from our table, resulting in a broken window in the door. The curly-haired Greek waiter yelled obscenities in his thick accent the entire time. The Detroit police finally showed up.
So, after witnessing this random display of violence, my 7-year-old self was ready to call it a night. But as we were walking to the parking garage, Stella found me. Even though there were six of us, she hunched down, looked at me and started pointing and screaming. My mom held my hand, tugged me down the sidewalk, and calmed me down when we got to the car.
The second Stella instance I remember was when the same aunt and uncle I was with that night were married at the downtown church around the same time. Stella showed up with all her plastic bags filled, twenty-five plastic barrettes in her hair, all different colors, and the green Army jacket with medals and pins stuck all over it. I waited for Stella to do something horrible to interrupt the ceremony, but she didn’t. She stayed in the entryway, fiddled with her bag, until a gentle church worker came and escorted her out.
I’d still see Stella in my young adult forays into Greektown, but I don’t think she remembered me. She no longer even batted an eye.
I figured she died long ago; she seemed very old when I was a kid. Seeing all the people who showed up for the funeral made my heart swell. While she terrified me as a child, Stella taught me that she and her conditions were things to be respected and understood. That we should make an attempt at understanding all people and respect them.
My thoughts go out to Stella’s family, which I didn’t know she had until reading the Free Press story. Mental illness is a terrible thing to deal with.
So, good-bye, Stella. Greektown will never be the same.
What will Salinger’s tombstone say?
The paperback was legendary in my home.
The plain maroon jacket with the gold lettering “The Catcher in the Rye” accompanied only by the author’s name a few spaces below: J.D. Salinger.
The copy was purchased by my old man in the 1960s and then passed on to my older brother. By the time it came to me when I was thirteen, the cardboard cover was hanging by a little bit of glue.
After I read it for the third time in three years, the cover was completely off. I eventually bought a new edition. I was also entranced by his other works: “Nine Stories,” “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” and “Franny and Zooey.” If you caught me around 1998, when I was 21 years old, and asked me who my favorite writer was, I’d probably say old Jerome David Salinger.
The notoriously reclusive Salinger died last Wednesday at the age of 91. Much will be said about how he stopped publishing and disappeared from the public spotlight, a sacrilegious act in the Age of Celebrity. The vanishing act was Salinger flipping the bird to our entire berserk culture for decades, which is commendable.
It’s the same renegade spirit Holden Caulfield, the teenaged protagonist of “Catcher,” possesses as he lashes out against all those he calls “phonies.”
What would Holden think about our 21st Century lives?
The lofty literary and cultural notions Salinger’s death brings up are great, but the first thing I thought of after hearing about it was whether Salinger’s epitaph would be similar to the one Holden imagines for himself in “Catcher.”
In high school, my brother, Chris, and I both had the same iconoclastic English teacher, though six years apart. She had lived in Paris and quoted Shakespeare with a hoarse, raspy voice. In between classes, she’d smoke long, brown European cigarettes right there in the room, out the window.
I won’t name her, in case she still teaches somewhere and has this habit.
Chris’s class got to pick the book for their report. He chose “Catcher in the Rye.”
For the project, each student had to get up in front of the class and answer very basic questions posed by the raspy-voiced teacher. Where does the story take place? In what year? Those types of things.
“What does Holden want written on his tombstone?” the teacher asked my brother.
“Uh,” my brother said. He blushed.
“Go on. Say it,” she said, urging him on.
When Chris said what he said, I’m sure the class erupted in hoots and hollers.
You see, what Holden imagines on his tombstone is unprintable in this paper. It includes the king daddy of all curse words and is more or less represented in our culture by the middle finger.
Holden says it like this: “That's the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write ‘[unprintable cuss]’ right under your nose. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say ‘Holden Caulfield’ on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say ‘[unprintable cuss].’ I'm positive.”
I know it’s an epigraph a surly teen would come up with, but when we lose our own Holden-ness, when we all start to try to fit in with the “phony” world and toe the line, then something more will have passed from the earth than Salinger.
Because when we stop questioning and occasionally rebelling against the powers that be, our own tombstones won’t be worth writing on.
The plain maroon jacket with the gold lettering “The Catcher in the Rye” accompanied only by the author’s name a few spaces below: J.D. Salinger.
The copy was purchased by my old man in the 1960s and then passed on to my older brother. By the time it came to me when I was thirteen, the cardboard cover was hanging by a little bit of glue.
After I read it for the third time in three years, the cover was completely off. I eventually bought a new edition. I was also entranced by his other works: “Nine Stories,” “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” and “Franny and Zooey.” If you caught me around 1998, when I was 21 years old, and asked me who my favorite writer was, I’d probably say old Jerome David Salinger.
The notoriously reclusive Salinger died last Wednesday at the age of 91. Much will be said about how he stopped publishing and disappeared from the public spotlight, a sacrilegious act in the Age of Celebrity. The vanishing act was Salinger flipping the bird to our entire berserk culture for decades, which is commendable.
It’s the same renegade spirit Holden Caulfield, the teenaged protagonist of “Catcher,” possesses as he lashes out against all those he calls “phonies.”
What would Holden think about our 21st Century lives?
The lofty literary and cultural notions Salinger’s death brings up are great, but the first thing I thought of after hearing about it was whether Salinger’s epitaph would be similar to the one Holden imagines for himself in “Catcher.”
In high school, my brother, Chris, and I both had the same iconoclastic English teacher, though six years apart. She had lived in Paris and quoted Shakespeare with a hoarse, raspy voice. In between classes, she’d smoke long, brown European cigarettes right there in the room, out the window.
I won’t name her, in case she still teaches somewhere and has this habit.
Chris’s class got to pick the book for their report. He chose “Catcher in the Rye.”
For the project, each student had to get up in front of the class and answer very basic questions posed by the raspy-voiced teacher. Where does the story take place? In what year? Those types of things.
“What does Holden want written on his tombstone?” the teacher asked my brother.
“Uh,” my brother said. He blushed.
“Go on. Say it,” she said, urging him on.
When Chris said what he said, I’m sure the class erupted in hoots and hollers.
You see, what Holden imagines on his tombstone is unprintable in this paper. It includes the king daddy of all curse words and is more or less represented in our culture by the middle finger.
Holden says it like this: “That's the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write ‘[unprintable cuss]’ right under your nose. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say ‘Holden Caulfield’ on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say ‘[unprintable cuss].’ I'm positive.”
I know it’s an epigraph a surly teen would come up with, but when we lose our own Holden-ness, when we all start to try to fit in with the “phony” world and toe the line, then something more will have passed from the earth than Salinger.
Because when we stop questioning and occasionally rebelling against the powers that be, our own tombstones won’t be worth writing on.
Marx and me: Getting cozy with Karl in the sixth grade
When I was kid, I dreamed of being a tycoon.
This was in the heyday of the television program “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” hosted by Robin Leach.
I was a 7-year-old with “champagne wishes and caviar dreams.”
I decided I would own several large castles and cruise around the world on my yacht, an ascot puffing up from my blazer, a monocle in my eye.
I admired characters like Daddy Warbucks, the Monopoly guy and Scrooge McDuck, who bathed in gold coins.
Well, none of that has happened – yet. But I have grown to understand there is a much more complicated relationship between people and money.
It started when I was in the sixth grade and we were given an assignment to do a report on an important historical figure. We were to compile the basic facts of their lives, organize it into a report and draw a picture of the person.
Most kids chose the obvious suspects: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Amelia Earhart and Betsy Ross.
For some reason, I chose Karl Marx. Most of the kids in my class eyed me suspiciously and said, “Who’s that?”
I don’t remember how I even knew who Karl Marx was in elementary school. It could have been at the urging of my dad, a newspaperman and jokester, who once told my brother’s high school composition teacher she didn’t know English usage from sewer usage. He would have gotten a kick out of Karl Marx being discussed in my sixth grade class.
Or, it could have been at the urging of my brother, who had inherited a streak of suggesting I do strange things in front of others for his own amusement.
Regardless of where I got the influence, I earnestly began my project. I went to the library and read encyclopedia entries about The Father of Communism.
Keep in mind, this was in the late 1980s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Communism was still very much a threat. On the evening news, nuclear missiles with red stars on them seemed to be paraded through Moscow streets every night.
Also keep in mind that I was born with a port-wine stain birth mark on my forehead, which was eerily similar to Mikhail Gorbachev’s, thus earning me the nickname of, “Gorbie.”
I’m surprised my teacher, Mrs. Jenkins, didn’t call the FBI into Grant Elementary in Livonia, Michigan and have me investigated for treason.
I wasn’t a turncoat, though.
The basic concept I could understand in the sixth grade was that socialism wanted to make everything more equal. Instead of having to drool over Scrooge McDuck’s vault of gold coins, those coins would be spread out among the poor. Scrooge could share and be brought down a little, and the impoverished would be brought up a little.
It sounded reasonable enough to me in the sixth grade, but it didn’t match up with the missiles I saw on the television.
“It sounds good on paper,” my old man and brother told me, “but not so much in the real world.”
Such a fair and peaceful idea and weapons of total annihilation seemed unlikely bedfellows. It was still years before I went to college and read about Stalin’s purges in the 1930s and Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
In the sixth grade, I was more interested with the drawing of Marx, which I made from the most recognizable picture of Karl there is. All that hair from his beard merging with the hair on his head allowed me to messily scribble all over the page. It was fun.
I turned in the report and gave an oral presentation and believe I earned an A on the project.
My youthful American dream of yachts, sport cars and mansions didn’t dissipate completely, but I did have a new understanding of money and social class.
And only once did I fill up a kiddie pool with coins and try to swim in it.
It sounds good on paper, but didn’t really work out in reality.
This was in the heyday of the television program “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” hosted by Robin Leach.
I was a 7-year-old with “champagne wishes and caviar dreams.”
I decided I would own several large castles and cruise around the world on my yacht, an ascot puffing up from my blazer, a monocle in my eye.
I admired characters like Daddy Warbucks, the Monopoly guy and Scrooge McDuck, who bathed in gold coins.
Well, none of that has happened – yet. But I have grown to understand there is a much more complicated relationship between people and money.
It started when I was in the sixth grade and we were given an assignment to do a report on an important historical figure. We were to compile the basic facts of their lives, organize it into a report and draw a picture of the person.
Most kids chose the obvious suspects: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Amelia Earhart and Betsy Ross.
For some reason, I chose Karl Marx. Most of the kids in my class eyed me suspiciously and said, “Who’s that?”
I don’t remember how I even knew who Karl Marx was in elementary school. It could have been at the urging of my dad, a newspaperman and jokester, who once told my brother’s high school composition teacher she didn’t know English usage from sewer usage. He would have gotten a kick out of Karl Marx being discussed in my sixth grade class.
Or, it could have been at the urging of my brother, who had inherited a streak of suggesting I do strange things in front of others for his own amusement.
Regardless of where I got the influence, I earnestly began my project. I went to the library and read encyclopedia entries about The Father of Communism.
Keep in mind, this was in the late 1980s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Communism was still very much a threat. On the evening news, nuclear missiles with red stars on them seemed to be paraded through Moscow streets every night.
Also keep in mind that I was born with a port-wine stain birth mark on my forehead, which was eerily similar to Mikhail Gorbachev’s, thus earning me the nickname of, “Gorbie.”
I’m surprised my teacher, Mrs. Jenkins, didn’t call the FBI into Grant Elementary in Livonia, Michigan and have me investigated for treason.
I wasn’t a turncoat, though.
The basic concept I could understand in the sixth grade was that socialism wanted to make everything more equal. Instead of having to drool over Scrooge McDuck’s vault of gold coins, those coins would be spread out among the poor. Scrooge could share and be brought down a little, and the impoverished would be brought up a little.
It sounded reasonable enough to me in the sixth grade, but it didn’t match up with the missiles I saw on the television.
“It sounds good on paper,” my old man and brother told me, “but not so much in the real world.”
Such a fair and peaceful idea and weapons of total annihilation seemed unlikely bedfellows. It was still years before I went to college and read about Stalin’s purges in the 1930s and Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
In the sixth grade, I was more interested with the drawing of Marx, which I made from the most recognizable picture of Karl there is. All that hair from his beard merging with the hair on his head allowed me to messily scribble all over the page. It was fun.
I turned in the report and gave an oral presentation and believe I earned an A on the project.
My youthful American dream of yachts, sport cars and mansions didn’t dissipate completely, but I did have a new understanding of money and social class.
And only once did I fill up a kiddie pool with coins and try to swim in it.
It sounds good on paper, but didn’t really work out in reality.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
