The old lady, the mower and the rock

The neighbors kitty-corner from us were members at the same church. They terrified me.

The husband...lets call him Morris...was on an oxygen tank. In his younger years he had smoked quite heavily to the point where to be without the omnipresent oxygen tank would have suffocated him because of the damage done to his lungs.

He was a relatively mellow man, but when you are pre-teen hearing someone wheeze heavily and breathily between words while wheeling around a big ugly brown tank...well, it can be a bit scary.

But really, I always thought of Morris as harmless.

His wife on the other hand, I did not think of that way. I thought of her as a harsh, bitter, mean-spirited, sharp-tongued, scary woman. I tried to stay away from her as much as possible.

Dad, being the good-hearted, loving man that he is, tried to change my perception. He acknowledged her meanness but pointed out what incredibly difficult lives both Morris and Irene had led. Their families hated them and literally tried to have them institutionalized. Not because they had mental problems but because they wanted the meager possessions they would then be able to get their hands on.

Their children had been known to tell the grandkids, in front of Morris and Irene, that they wanted them to die painful, horrible deaths.

Despite a lifetime of having been treated by this first by their own respective parents, then by virtually everyone they had come in contact with, they were trying to improve themselves. In the loving congregation at St. Helens they found people who overlooked their flaws and showed love and compassion. They mellowed over the years.

They even hosted a few get-togethers at their place which were always well attended by church folk.

I say these things to point out I was wrong. I should have had the good heart shown by my parents, the Scotts, the Fischers, the Nelsons, the Allens, the Richardsons, etc.

It was very funny that for years she called Greg Fischer "Craig." Every time she did everyone would laugh. every so often someone would tell her his name, even write it down but to the day of her death she called him Craig.

But to the point of the story.

I wish I could say I did it voluntarily. And, in my own defense, perhaps two or three times it was. Usually when I saw Irene outside getting ready to do it herself. But honestly, more often than not it was not voluntary. Dad or Mom would send me down to mow their lawn.

They had a decent size lawn. It was a solid 35 - 45 minute job to mow it based on the length the grass had gotten to. I would not have minded that part.

What I hated was the prelude.

See, St. Helens is built on a rock. 6" at most below the surface in any given place you are going to hit solid rock.

Sometimes it stuck above the surface. One such outcropping was in the side yard. I could see the rock from our house a quarter block away. It was that big. But just in case it had not been obvious, they marked it. It had stakes marking it. Bright yellow rope. Astronauts on at least two space missions mentioned seeing it. Stevie Wonder thought his blindness was cured but it returned as soon as he stopped looking at this rock and its marking.

In short, there was no humanly possible way to avoid seeing that rock without going out of your way to avoid seeing it.

But every time before I mowed the lawn, Irene would give me the tour of the yard.

It started with that rock.

"There is a rock in the yard. Be very careful you do not hit it. It will wreck the mower blade."

Lion prides sunning themselves atop the expansive surface of the stone roared with laughter. I simply nodded.

"There is no need to mow this section," she would say, pointing to the boundary marked by 7' tall sticker bushes.

I already knew they were there...I had cuts all over my arms from picking blackberries so Mom would make a blackberry pie. This would have made more sense if I liked blackberry pie. I didn't. But for some as yet inexplicable reason, every year I would beg her to make a blackberry pie and she would promise to if I picked the blackberries. I had a wonderful Mom. She had a very stupid son.

"The edge of our property is here," she would say, pointing to where the long grass that had not been mowed all season by the Harts made it pretty obvious.

When I was smart I would acquiesce with a polite, "Yes, ma'am." When I was me...well, pointing up the foot drop between the Hart's yard and hers and saying, "Do I need to mow up there?" only made the prelude longer.

Then the boundary with her equally elderly neighbors, usually freshly mowed by their grandchildren, would be pointed out.

Then we would walk to the front...which had no yard. "There is nothing to mow up here."

Every time.

Back to the back yard and over to the rock. Mike had his steam shovel parked atop it but she felt compelled to point it out again.

Then, when I was mowing the lawn, every time I headed towards that corner she would step out on the back stoop to watch and make sure I did not mow over that rock.

I would be lying if I did not admit I was tempted.

This went on week after week after week. Super hot days were worse. She would insist on giving me some concoction that was allegedly lemonade. It made Crystal Light seem like it has actual flavor. It made salt water taste sweet.

She would insist I drank it. And she would stand right there until I did...there would be no tossing it in the bushes and returning the empty glass to her. She had been forced to fight so hard for every little thing she had she was taking no chances on losing a glass.

She was trying to be nice.

Looking back, I wish I had been kinder to her. More patient. More caring. More like Dad.

On the other hand...that rock was pretty hard to miss.

Post script.

One day after Morris had died and before Jim Moss spent several years caring for her, the lawn needed mowed. For whatever reason I was not there to perform the task. My older sister was.

By this point, Irene was no longer able to step into the lawn to give directions. The bright yellow rope had disappeared at some point.

And yes...the mower encountered the rock.

Old times, new times, good times

Billy assaults the earth with an iron stick.

Growing up I had some real close friends...Alan, Woody, Bryce, Kyle, Billy, Carl. We have mostly moved on with our lives...

Alan lives in Washington DC, we chat a bit and get together whenever he is in Oregon, but that is seldom.

Woody and I are "facebook friends'. Bryce I have not talked to in years. Same with Carl.

But today Billy is visiting Oregon along with one of his friends from Bible college. So those two, Kyle and I went golfing.


Kyle fears the ball so he is just going to stand here in this picture. Forever.

It was a good time. James knows Billy and it did not take long for him to get to know Kyle and I, so the good-natured ribbing and trash-talk was flying fast and furious with some hysterically funny comments and reminiscing.

James uses a steam shovel in place of a club to dig a deep hole in the tee box.

After that, we repaired to Kyle's house for dinner and to watch the Rangers knock the evil Yankees out of the post season.


Will Drew hit the ball or whiff completely? The Magic 8 Ball says....please try your question again later.


While waiting for the game to start, we got in a game of 2-on-2 basketball. It was like old times..except pretty evenly matched. In the old days, it was pretty one-sided.

We are all older, in much worse shape, but still had a great time throwing up some pretty crazy shots, just having fun.

It was great. I mean, I love all my friends and family, no question about that. But it filled a part of my life I have missed in recent years.

I have always loved athletic competition...playing baseball, basketball, tennis, golf. But as my friends from my youth and I have aged and gone in different directions, we have changed (rightfully) our focus.

Gone are the days I could call a few people and muster up a three-on-three games of basketball with the classic "offense calls the fouls, someone announce the score after every basket, play to 21, win by 2" that is the sum and total of the rules.

It is not good, it is not bad, it just IS. That is the reality of life today. I am happy with my life. I have a wonderful life, a great family, tremendous friends.

But there is part of me that longs for the old days.

And we got in some serious conversations as well. Kyle and Billy have both lost their Dads in recent years, I lost Mom a few years ago...Billy, as a preacher, sometimes performs weddings and funerals.

For the first time I was able to tell Billy, in person, how much pride his Dad had in him.

Also able to tell Kyle how the way his Dad treated people was a major contributing factor in the Goose and I marrying.

A lot of seriousness, a lot more goofiness. This was a day that reminded me of those halcyon days of yore called childhood, the type I sorta wish would last forever...and my aching bones wish would never return.

I am OLD

Fond memories of job disasters

For several years I worked at Tualitan Valley Builders Supply in St. Helens, Oregon. This was wonderful for many reasons. One was how it taught me the relationship between brooms and tarps.

See, some genius built this commercial building with...wait for it...a flat roof. In Oregon.

Surprisingly, with it seldom raining for more than 300 days in a row in any given year, water began to collect on this flat roof. Even more surprisingly, when the drains clogged, it tended to cause problems...such as leaking through the roof.

We, in the store below, then would get to have water dripping on us. Easy solution? Put up tarps under the leaks to collect the water.

Of course, then we would have to "empty" the tarps of water lest they collapse under the weight of all the water.

Emptying the tarps was a two-person job. One person would stand at the low end of the tarp holding a 5-gallon bucket under the place the water would come off the tarp while the other person used a broom handle to guide the water, hopefully into the bucket.

Many of us were in our early twenties.

Guiding water with a broom handle towards a person standing there may, you would think, present certain temptations.

You would think correctly.

More than once the person guiding the water would "accidentally" push the water too hard, drenching the one under the bucket. This would inevitably lead to an attempt at retribution via flinging the contents of the bucket at their tormentor...

This attempt NEVER worked, largely due to the physics of trying to fling the contents of a partially filled 5# bucket at someone who was a third of the way across the building. They would have been half way across if they were not laughing so hard.

This of course meant the victim had to find other times and opportunities to exact their revenge.

It also meant it was sometimes hard to get people to empty the tarps.

So people would be lurking around keeping an eye on these massively over-filled, sagging tarps, HOPING they did not give way and drench everything.Including, potentially, customers.

So now we were walking around in a minefield with one eye on the tarps and one eye on whoever we A) dumped water on, lest they seek revenge on us or B) on the person who dumped water on us so we could seek revenge.

You would think, at some point, this would have stopped. Please allow me to point out...we worked in a building with a flat roof in Oregon. Do you REALLY think this silliness would end? Really?

On the bright side, it points to one of the real joys of those years...namely, we had a lot of fun working together.

It also points to fond memories.

And also reminds me how glad I am to work under a dry roof. Just sayin'

My economic history through the spokes of a bicycle

Weird as it seems, I am happy that I grew up with limited monetary resources.

First off, I know how to live on very little...if I must. I do not, but I can.

Second, I learned to value the inexpensive things...like hand me down bikes.

The only way I got my first bike was because my older sister earned enough money to buy her own. So I got her old bike...emphasis on old.

It was what we always called a "bmx" or "moto-cross" bike...not because it was, but because it WASN'T a ten-speed, and in our world, there were only two kinds of bikes in existence: ten-speeds or bmx. (Yes, I now know the difference).

The bike was a train wreck. The only reason Sue had it was because it was left in my Grandma Alda's front lawn for a few weeks. It had no chain guard. It had handlebars that could not be tightened, so they had the nasty habit of flipping forward if you hit a big bump.

But I had a bike and was ecstatic. In a way, it represented massive mobility. Instead of walking everywhere, I could get there in no time on my bike. It moved my boundaries from our house to Woody's 9about 6 houses up the block) to everything from 7th and West Street to 2nd and West Street...which meant all the trails by the Elk's Lodge, the Botanical Gardens (which had no flowers, no maintained botanical, and CERTAINLY no gardens).

There were lots of wrecks because I tried to do the same stuff my friends did on their bikes...jumping ramps and so forth. I would wreck, cry, get cleaned up, and go back to riding. I never really cared...that was just how it was.

But, being me, I probably got jealous or something and decided I wanted a 10-speed. Dad did not like them because he thought they were too hard to maintain. So I had to earn the money myself.

Out to the berry fields. It was probably about 75 bucks to get the first one. A dark blue number. A train wreck when it came to maintenance, also...I once had to get it repaired because the tire blew and the gears got wrecked. The repairs cost more than the bike had.

My third bike came years later when I actually had a job. I bought one for me, and one for each of the twins. That says a lot about my improved economics, because the bikes were about 110 each by then...but I was able to buy stuff for my younger sisters.

That bike got some riding, including from home to work...about a ten minute ride. Still loved bike riding.

Then I "grew up" and out of bikes. Why take a bike when a car gets you there faster?

But a couple years ago, my loving wife was there and supported my purchase of a bike that cost over 200. I do not remember how much...and that also says a lot. I reached a point where I no longer counted every penny, where I knew to the last cent how much I had in the bank, when I measured the purchase of an item against the opportunity cost of say...eating warm lunch versus sack lunch or something.

It is the finest bicycle I have ever owned. They actually offer free maintenance...and for the first time in my life, I have a bike worth maintaining. So I do.

And for the first time, I have purchased upgrades...a water bottle holder, mobile tire pump, and even a temporary flat repair kit.

And that is how I know it is too much bike for me...I now have a bike so nice...I cannot figure out how to attach the temporary flat repair kit even though it has a custom bag just for hauling it.

Or maybe I am just mechanically inept.

In Memory of Jack Evans

It is an oddity that I have had very few friends my own age. My buddy Alan is 22 days younger than me. Other than that, the vast majority of my friends have been 5+ years older or younger than me.

Included in those numbers have always been several people who were my elder by decades. One such was Jack Evans.

Jack was a camp counselor at a camp I attended when I was about 16 or 17. I never really hit it off with anyone my own age...my shyness and social awkwardness prevented me from really joining in to most of the activities.

But Jack and I, we hit it off. We had a lot of lengthy, admittedly intellectual conversations. We became close enough friends that after camp was over, we maintained a correspondence.

A couple years later, Jack acquired Hodgkin's Disease.

Dad took me up to Seattle to visit him. That was tough.

Jack was a big guy, tall, heavyset, massive. Not fat, as I recall, just massive.

Except when we visited him in the hospital, he had been taking chemotherapy treatments. He was bald, had lost many pounds, and his physical strength had deteriorated so far that he could not even lift the pan to vomit into (for the uninitiated, vomiting is induced by the chemo treatments).

That was tough. The garrulous, intellectual, friendly guy was suffering massively.

It meant a lot to him that we visited (and a lot to me that Dad made a way to take me up there, I might add).

Memory of that stayed with me for years.

Jack's cancer went into remission. I got older, started dating and working, we lost touch somewhat.

But every time I went to Seattle, I thought about him, even though I seldom said anything...after all, what would co-workers care about a man they never met? Why would my wife be interested in hearing a story that, to anyone not me, is probably pretty pointless about a guy whose physical features I could probably not even describe anymore?

The influence he had lasted long after we stopped communicating, and my gratitude continued and continues.

Sadly, a couple weeks ago Dad called to tell me Jack had passed away.

I thought about going to the funeral but opted against it. I do not know why. On some level, I guess I would rather remember the journey our paths of friendship took than to swoop in years after our last contact and share my grief with people I do not know.

I have spent quite a bit of time the last couple weeks thinking about how things worked between Jack and I. When I think about how my actions, thoughts, words, etc affect those around me, a lot of the things I do are because of men like Jack who showed me a better way to live, a better mindset to share, a better way to walk through life.

Jack, I am sorry we lost touch, but I want you to know I am grateful for you taking the time to befriend someone so much younger than you. Please know that as long as I live, your influence will be felt in this world, and in a positive way.

I hope that you are at rest, happy and safe with our Lord. May God bless you for the good you did on earth and reward you for all eternity. You are missed.

My birthday record

We had Dad's birthday dinner this afternoon, a couple weeks late. When discussing it, I remembered something I had forgotten...mercifully. But now I remember, so now you shall suffer.

One of my earliest memories revolves around my birthdays. I had an old Sears Roebuck orange record player. It was plastic. I mentioned this, but it is worth mentioning again. It was orange.

It looked nowhere near as good as that.

Now, for my younger traders, I should say...record players of good quality were famous for having needle issues. This train wreck scratched virtually every record. It actually functioned better when, instead of a proper needle, it had a sewing needle in it because we could not afford to purchase replacement needles.

It meant I had to be very careful. I listened to a lot of records on that thing. The Smothers Brothers. The Lone Ranger. Bob and Ray.

It scratched pretty much all of them, and that always upset me because I would listen to the same episode dozens, maybe hundreds of times. And I was always sad when another one got scratched.

Of course, there was one record I WANTED it to scratch. To wreck. To destroy.

My birthday record.

But of course it wouldn't.

It was a personalized record made of flimsy plastic or something. You could bend, fold, spindle and mutilate it. The post office might not mail it, but that record player would still play it.

What a way to wake up on your birthday every year...that player turned as loud as it would go, cracking, distorted, singing that super annoying "Hey (censored...I always hated that diminutive)), it's your birthday....today!"

And it would get played over and over and over and over all day. It would get played before lunch. Before dinner. During dinner. After dinner. While opening my present. Over and over and over.

But here is the thing...as much as I hated that particular record...I loved it. Mom always made a cake (from scratch) for my birthday, they did what they could to make it special. I mean, really, how many people get personalized records using their name in a birthday message?

And now you will have ugly orange record players stuck in your head for several weeks, so it has long-lasting side benefits. :-)

It must be time for...another pointless childhood memory!

When I was growing up, there was a certain synergy between a lot of my friendships and those of my parents.

For example, my friend Billy and I often went fishing with our dads. Dad and Lee were good friends who fished together, worked together on the long-haul trucks, and had a friendship that, despite whatever difficulties came along, was always there.

Billy and I played baseball and basketball together, hung out a lot along with a third friend, Kyle.

Kyle's Mom and Dad were great friends with my mom and dad. They went golfing together, we all went on picnics together, played softball together with the Scotts, and of course spent years together in the Gloryland Way (formerly known as Panorama, after Mom died and Dad retired from teh group as His Song) singing group.

Dad and Greg (Kyle's Dad) were of course very good friends and, being friends, sometimes went with one another to events that one greatly enjoyed and the other enjoyed much less. Which led to the first basketball game I ever saw live.

Kyle, Billy and I were all huge Trailblazer fans, as was Greg. Dad has always been one of those guys who could take it or leave it, but who enjoyed listening to the occasional game. He just never was interested enough to do anything crazy like, you know, purchase tickets to a game. Just not in his blood.

Well, somehow, some way, some tickets were procured. That is far more difficult than it sounds. The Blazers at the time played in the memorial Coliseum, which seated 13,600 and some odd people. It was sold out for over a decade. Tickets were at a premium, all but unobtainable, and certainly not to the casual fan.

If, and this is a big if, I remember correctly, Greg won the tickets, a 4-pack, in some contest.

Regardless, we somehow, some way got four tickets...except it was not actually to the Coliseum. No, it was to watch the game on closed circuit big screen at the Paramount Theatre.

I do not remember too much if anything about the game itself...who they played, or even for sure if they won. I think they did, but that could be just looking back through rose city colored glasses.

I do remember the horrific half time "entertainment" where they rolled out two rickety mobile baskets and had some sort of contest with them.

And I do remember Dad being all excited and Greg too, watching the game, having a good time, just as Kyle and I were having a similarly great time watching a game that, frankly, we did not really comprehend.

I have no idea why the memory stays with me. I guess because it was something super cool I got to do with my Dad and my best friend (I should point out at this point that there are at least 9 people who count as my "best friend", though the Goose is my bestest best friend) that was a very special night.

And you thought I was kidding in the title when I said it was pointless :-)

Bobby, You're interrupting

Back in those (not actually all that) halcyon days of yore, I had a record player. An orange, plastic record player that looked a lot like this.

For those of you who are either too young or not hip enough, a record was a round vinyl object filled with grooves which would produce sounds when spun at the correct speed and with the correct needle. They were actually quite ugly.

I say hip because there is a certain segment of the population that loves records. Why, I do not know; you had to be careful not to drop the record, not to put the needle on the record to quickly or not straight lest you scratch the record, you had to play it at the correct speed or all you would hear was Alvin and the Chipmunks, you had to keep it away from the heat lest you warp the record, and even after all that, it sounded horrible.

Yet some "hipsters" swear by records and glory in their large collections. More power to you. I will take an 8-track...err, I mean, a CD.

Anyway, one of the records I had was full of awesomeness, like "1, 2, buckle my shoe, 3,4 ........the door" (I don't remember what it was) and by the time they got to "9, 10, a big fat hen" you were hoping the hen would lay an egg so you could throw it at the record player.

It was led by a smarmy, school-teachery woman and had a bunch of kids singing. Well, on that particular song, one obnoxious boy breaks in with, "A big fat hen? that's a funny one! Bawk bawk bawk bawk!"
To which she replies, "Bobby, you're interrupting."

She should have replied, "Bobby, that was far more entertaining than anything else on this record."

I do not know why they had that little by-play in there. Maybe a moral lesson about interrupting drivel?

What I do know is of all the people on that record, of all the teaching it purported to dispense, the only thing I really remember is the name of the poor sap.

Can you imagine having a reunion party for "that record we made when we were kids" and all anyone remembers is Bobby?

What brings this up? I would tell you, but someone just said something and I need to see who it was and what they said.

Oh, it's you...Bobby, you're interrupting.

On a lighter note...

1980 was a fascinating year for many reasons...among them the above book.

It was Grandpa and Grandmas 50th wedding anniversary and some of their kids did a lot of work. They collected family stories and anecdotes, old pictures, and other priceless material that nobody outside the family would care about but we of the family value more than all the money in the US Mint...like this picture.

Obviously, we did not realize the 70s were over. Jack, Jerry, Ken and Dad, Ann, Goldina, Joanne and Pat surround the happy couple, Grandpa and Grandma as the 8 surviving children all showed up for the gala.

All that hair and I get the bald Dad...what is up with that?

Anyhow, said book needed printing. Fortunately, we had a friend who owned a print shop. And he printed and bound the book.

I can only assume he did not charge much...after all, the fee was so cheap, it wasn't even nominal...(hint: read the last line to get the joke)

One thing you should know about Bryce

One of my friends growing up was Bryce. Nice kid, loved tv, participated in our various baseball/basketball/football/computer game sessions.

Couldn't jump.

Now, when you talk about some people who cannot jump, you hear a lot of things like, "white men can't jump" and "you can slip a piece of paper under him when he jumps."

Bryce envied the sky-walking nature of such jumps. He could not jump...AT ALL.

When he jumped, the apex of his leap was actually lower than when he stood flat-footed. He simply could...not...jump. How limited was his jumping ability? When he used dunk champion Michael Jordan in video games, Jordan took set-shots.

One day when we were out playing basketball we were talking about a post-game dunk contest that had been held at the local high school. One of his friends had been in it and lost and, reportedly, started crying.

Someone made the dismissive comment, "Oh, all Cam can do is dunk over someone seated in a chair."

Never mind that the person who made the crack could barely touch the net, much less dunk, or that dunking over someone seated in a chair is pretty impressive for a high school player.

The comment would have gone by the way-side if not for lead-footed, gravity worshipping Bryce.

"All I can do is a reverse 360 windmill jam from the free throw line but you don't hear me complaining."

Bryce, to this day that joke makes you my hero.

My first bike...

There have been two times in my life when my clothing taste was "fashionable". I can assure you that when I achieved this wondrous state, it was completely unintentional.

Once was when the country went mad and decided bell-bottom jeans were a good idea. As someone who HAD to wear them because the local Penneys sold them cheaper than straight-leg, let me assure you they were not, are not, and will not be a good idea.

The second time I looked fashionable was when people thought old-looking jeans were a good idea.

See, my clothes had to last. For a long, long time. So they tended to fade and get holes in them. Of course, unlike the sheep...err, fashion-conscious crowd, I did not have to spend extra money to get that faded, holey look to my jeans. My pants actually WERE faded and full of holes.

But at least the look was popular if unintentional.

Now, one might wonder how I, of all people, got holes in my pants. I have always been a voracious reader (as was my eldest sister at one time). It was so bad that one summer, Mom and Dad banned Sue and I from the library and insisted we go outside and play some to get some exercise.

Ironically, I did get a lot of exercise playing baseball, basketball, and even occasionally football with some of my childhood friends, but that is for another comedic piece. This one is about my first bicycle.

It was blue. It was a dirt bike style, sort of and it was the mother of all hand me downs.

Grandma Alda, the one who lived about a mile from my current home, lived in a "Senior's Trailer Park" where you had to be something like 55 or older. Well, someone left a bike in her front yard for several months so it became my older sisters.

After she got a new ten speed, I got my first bike. And what a bike it was. 

It was a blue "dirt bike". It had no chain guard, the handlebars were stripped so had an unfortunate tendency to flip forwards at the most inconvenient times, and the brakes were...well, questionable at best.

Now, a normally intelligent person would have taken great care with such a "fine" piece of machinery. I mean, the combination of bell-bottom pants and no chain guard alone was more than enough to develop the afore-mentioned holes in my pants.

I actually became an expert at finding places to crash. Whenever my pant legs got caught in the chain I knew I was going to crash. It was just the cost of riding that bike which I did love to do. So I would try to maintain my balance until finding (hopefully) a nearby grassy place. 

Barring that, I would find gravel as it was still better than wiping out on the pavement. I got more rocks buried in my knees...

Of course, I was not content to just get my pant legs caught...I had to do dumber stuff.

Like, we would make jumps of firewood and plywood. You would think that having handlebars that were stripped would keep me from jumping. After all, there was the possibility that they would not hold, would spin over frontwards thus leading me to a painful crash.

Now go back and read that paragraph again, this time replacing  the word "possibility" with the words "virtual certainty".

This was before kids had to wear shin guards and elbow pads and helmets to ride a bike, allow me to point out.

So now you have a picture of a guy wearing ripped, faded bell bottom jeans riding a bike that crashed every 15-20 minutes still somehow deciding it was a good idea to pop wheelies, jump ramps, and...well, just ride the bike in general.

I think of someone that intelligent, there is just one thing worth being said.

Remember my name and vote for me...

An eventful trip

Dad and I took off for about a month long road trip. We were going to go hunting, visit the Grand Canyon, a couple other places. It would be a fun trip.

We were driving the yellow VW Rabbit. When you think of great cars in human history, this one ranks somewhere between the Edsel and the little known Model T-Bag. It looked a lot like the Model T, but when you were done driving it you just dropped it in the local lake and everyone has fresh tea. Not sure why it never caught on...

I learned to drive on that car. It had a stick shift that was all but impossible to find reverse or first gear. Also, it wasn't touchy...at first. But once it reached the point where it engaged it became super touchy. Hence the numerous jokes about "I knew Rabbits jumped, I just never saw a car do it" when people saw me attempting to learn on that fine machine.

On the bright side, once I was able to drive it, no other vehicle has ever provided issues.

I wish that car was the worst piece of metal that ever served transport, but it has to rank way behind the Yellow, the blue, and the Green Station Wagon, behind the Wheeled Egg, and maybe even behind the half-car-wide "pinstripe"....it was actually a pretty good car.

As the trip developed, we would play a bit of chess each evening. Dad really encouraged my chess playing when I started. He got me books so I could study the games of the masters, got me a book to record my own games, showed up at my tournaments, and so forth.

The downside to all that support is somewhere around 4th grade I got better than him and he had a several year losing streak to me. But we still enjoyed the games.

The hunting itself was not a great success. The only deer that passed away did so when struck by a rabbit. A yellow, metal rabbit driven by a father and son on a road trip...

Fortunately the car was not badly damaged. On went the trip.

It was a fall trip and we were both huge Dodger fans. They had somehow gotten to the World Series but everyone figured the As would win the Series handily. 

Well, we were still driving, listening to the game. It was on AM radio so it was fading in and out. Sometimes you were able to hear an entire sentence, other times just a word here or there and sometimes just scratching and crackling.

Well, going to the final inning, we talked about how great it would be to have a 3-2 count, 2 outs and winning run on base in the bottom half of the inning. 

For non-sports fans, that is exactly what happened. Kirk Gibson hit arguably the most dramatic home run in baseball history. Oddly, the circumstances of hearing it on a radio that was fading in and out as I traveled with Dad probably make it even more memorable to me.

Well, later in the trip, something else really bizarre happened. Maybe I was distracted. Maybe it was just time. Who knows? What I do know is one night our chess game had a strange outcome...he beat me. And instantly retired. To this day we have not played another game. And I think it is pretty funny.

Well, we ended up getting side tracked and never did make it to the Grand Canyon. Somehow, that doesn't matter. Until I am struck down by Alzheimer's or something, that trip is something I will never forget but will always look back on with fond memories. 

And every time I get in a car that is not that Rabbit...I smile.

Grandpa, Dad, and the Best Christmas Pageant EVER

Dad was real close to his Dad which is something I have always appreciated and something I learned from. I think it is safe to say I have been blessed with a very close relationship with Dad and I appreciate the time we have had together. 

I remember some of the trips the three of us took together. Some were just local stuff like fishing on Sauvie Island. One trip will always have a special place in my heart, though. 

We went down to Coos Bay to pick up a trailer. This may have been about the time Uncle Loyal had the stroke, though I am not certain about that. Anyway, we stopped along the way to fish at the Roseburg Weigh Station and to do some target shooting. It was just a great road trip with Dad and Grandpa.

On the way back for some inexplicable reason they noticed I was reading Barbara Robinson's awesome book The Best Christmas Pageant Ever . They wanted to know what it was like so Grandpa flipped on the dome light in his Chevy Luv and kept on a driving as I started reading. 

Well, they liked the first chapter pretty well so we decided to read "just one more chapter".

That one proved to be pretty good as well so we read "just one more".

It was like having two little kids begging for "just one more, just one more" except I was the little kid and they were theoretically the adults in the situation.

I wondered for a while if they were just humoring me but that worry disappeared when they had tears rolling down their faces from laughing when Imogene shouts her famous line.

We...well, I...ended up reading the entire book out loud on the trip back. It was a really great time, just the three of us traveling, enjoying a silly book but mostly enjoying time together. It was a great trip.

Post script; a couple years ago for his birthday, instead of buying anything for Dad, I took some photos from a trip I took with my sister and brother in law to Mexico and narrated over it, just memories about what Dad means to me. Part of it was about how great a moment that trip was in my life. To my delight, he told me he had just been thinking about it. That let me know it was a special time for him, too. 

Would you Risk the embarrassment?

It must be time for another childhood memory involving humiliation, embarrassment, and maybe, just maybe a big laugh. 

The early 80s were a different time in many ways. The cost of things was different, for example. Underwear were something to be hidden, not shown. Or talked about. It was an embarrassment to be seen in your undergarments, in fact. Or, for that matter, to have your underwear seen or mentioned at all. Unlike today where women frequently have bra straps or thong straps showing, guys wear their pants at half mast so you can see their boxers...

In the early 80s, money was a very precious commodity to me as I had little of it. I did, however, have a very good friend I have mentioned before named Carl. Really good guy and many of the good things I have been able to do in helping others have their root in how he treated me.

One key way had to do with the game of Risk. One summer the local excuse for a store had it on sale for 11 bucks. Now, 11 dollars may not sound like a lot to you but in the early 80s for a kid just hitting his teens or perhaps a year shy, it was a HUGE amount. It was a fair penny for Carl as well. 

So we hatched a plan to purchase the game by coming up with $5.50 each. He got it through lawn mowing (he was a couple years older than I was and had that as a part time job).

I scrimped, saved, collected bottles and cans. It was always exciting to find a bottle because you got 10 cents for turning them in as opposed to five cents for a can. Yeah, I know...heavier, more fragile, etc. You are missing the point You got TEN CENTS. 

Finally I came up with my half. It was an exciting day when we walked up to Mays Department Store (a store with perhaps 500 or a 1000 square feet...not much of a department...) and plunked down our hard-earned coin. The walk was about 2 miles but it felt like 10 as the anticipation grew. We were buying a game we both very badly wanted!

It was an exciting time when we got it home, too. If that 30 minute walk to Mays felt like all day then the walk home felt like a week. We had the game in hand! It was ours to share, to learn, to play. We bought it with our own money. Every step felt like an eternity as we hurried home to play it for the first time.

Prior to buying it, we had worked out a system. One of us would keep it at their house for a week, then the other would. We determined who got it first by a coin flip.

I loved that game. I cannot tell you how much I loved it. We played hundreds of games against each other. And each of us, on our own turn to have it at our house, would play against ourselves.

We would try different strategies and tactics. And inevitably, whoever had the game that week would win virtually every game we played of it.

Now, as a general rule, it was just the two of us playing at most. Getting a big game with two or three other people was a big deal. We were okay with that. We took turns having the game in our possession and playing it. I even took it to Grandma Aldas one time.

Grandma Alda was my Mom's mother. It was cool to stay at her place because we got to watch cartoons and play cards. No television or playing cards were allowed at home. Sometimes we would stay there for a week. A half hour a day of watching Looney Tunes was well worth it! (Ironically, I now live approximately 1 mile from where she lived.)

Anyway, one time I took Risk with me to Grandma Aldas. It was a fun week. I know it was a week because at some point she did laundry.

Got back home and the very next Saturday we had a big game of Risk. This time it was not just Carl and I. Woody, Bryce, Kyle and Billy were there too. We would have a full six players! That was unbelievably exciting. This would be the greatest day of my life. We had never had a full game before. I think 3 players was the most we had ever had.

The game was at Carls' house, just 4 houses from mine. We got all set up at the table, opened the box lid....and I about died of embarrassment.

Remember I said Grandma did laundry? Now go back and re-read the first full paragraph and then come back.

Ready?

So with my 5 closest friends and Carls' sister there, we popped open the Risk box lid, that game I loved so well, to get out the contents for our big game. 

And there, right on top, inside the box lid...were my tighty whiteys. 

Freshly laundered, crisply ironed, and as embarrassing a moment as I have ever experienced. 

I hope you are laughing because they certainly all were. And I now am because looking back it was pretty funny. I guess in retrospect I should have opened the box lid before passing it on to Carl but who would have thunk Grandma would put them in there?

If you were in that situation, would you have pre-opened it or would you just go for it, pass the game on...would you Risk it?

Getting A Leg Up on the competition

Ironman Al, easily discoverable through the link to the left, has been a friend for in the neighborhood of 3 decades, a little short of. We have had a lot of experiences together in a variety of ways. Now, with all the time we have been friends it stands to reason there may, somewhere along the way, have occurred something best kept in the deep, dark corners of our minds. This is the tale of one such.

We used to occasionally stay at each others house for the night. We did all sorts of stuff. Like, once we spent the greater part of the night on his Commodore 64 trying out Sid Meier's Civil War (I THINK that was the game). It took us a while to figure out the controls. Well, okay, you caught me. We never figured them out. We did, however, manage to rout our own army when we attacked ourselves through a slight misreading of the map...

Anyhow, one night a few friends were staying over. Al and I were up later than most so we had a great idea for a stealth operation. We waited until we were positive everyone was sound asleep and then snuck into the room where Peter was sleeping. Al got on one end of the object we had decided to abscond with and I got on the other.

As quietly as possible we started to manipulate the object out of the room to hide it. Unfortunately, it was too funny. Al started laughing. I started laughing. We finally quieted down and waited a few moments.

No change in sound. We picked it up again and started making our way out of the room. About the time we were half way out the door, Peter finally spoke up. 

"You can bring my leg back now or in the morning."

Yep. We had decided to steal his wooden leg.

And we got caught. 

Because Al could not stop laughing.

So if ever you decide to steal someones artificial leg, make sure your compatriot in crime has the ability to hold in their laughter. You would think I, of all people, I the guy with the service reminding people of what NOT to do when committing crimes would know that. Well, now you know where I got my start.

It's Opposite Day!

Some people stop by this blog for the occasional deep, thoughtful piece. Others come for the humorous news. Still others simply want to bask in proximity to genius. It is these last ones I wish to disabuse of their misconception. How? well...read on.

Apropos of...well, nothing, really...I guess loosely based on the references to old kid's toys kicked off by Riot Kitty...I was reminded of a stupid game that we used to play. Someone would say or do something of questionable intellect and in response to being mocked would come back with, "Oh, it is because it is opposite day. So when you say yes it means no, and when you say no it means yes, okay?"

Simple question, right? Not really. It is actually a question which threatens to warp the very fabric of reality and send us all hurtling through nothingness at the mind-blowing speed of non-existence, haunted for all eternity by the ultimate existentialist question of what "is".

You see, the question itself poses a conundrum. If you are asked, "So yes means no and no means yes, okay?", what answer can you give?

Let us hypothesize you say "Yes". Well, the problem is, it is opposite day so "yes" actually would mean "no" and thus, by answering in the affirmative verbally you have in actuality responded in the negative. Unfortunately, since by responding in opposition to agreement you are not on opposite day, yes then reverts to its former state of existence and once again is a positive acceptance of the proffered transaction, thus rendering the day in a state of flux from which there is potentially no recovery. Yes means yes and no simultaneously but you don't know if it meant yes or no even though you know which one you meant for it to mean. But it might not mean what it meant. Or what it now means. Or what it will mean in the future.

Conversely, should you choose to reject the rearrangement of truth in meaning by saying "no" then you have in actually inadvertently chosen to accept the new boundaries of communication since no clearly means yes. To reject it, you actually had to say yes to mean no which, as we already covered, would actually have been both a rejection of and acceptance of the terms. Saying no clearly does the same thing.

You see, by saying no once the proposed change has been verbalized, the response is most easily construed as meaning, "yes" since yes would in fact be the opposite of no and this is opposite day. However, even though your intent was to reject a reversal of truth definitions your no has become a yes. Of course, this leads us back to the need to say yes to reject the terms which, as covered previously, is not possible.

So neither yes nor no is a workable answer to this conundrum. The wise person might try to avoid this tyrannical oppression of verbal communication via an alternative answer..."Maybe".

Unfortunately, this being opposite day, posing a possibility as a reply requires the opposite effect, in this case a definitive. Because "maybe" is defined as neither a negative or positive then we must go one step further to define the result. Because maybe leaves open the possibility of an event, the opposite would leave no possibility and therefore be interpreted as "no" which, as we know from prior examination, means yes. Or does it mean no?

So I would now ask you: Am I a genius? And remember...yes means no and no means yes, okay?

Master Caster

Ah, yes, every (?) boy's fantasy...the opportunity to "build" your own car. You would take the wax, seen to the left, melt it in that little grey heating pan, pour it into the tray below when it was molten, then pour it into the cast. Get tired of the car you were playing with? No problem...break it up, repeat the process. What a GREAT concept.

So great that it involved a 2-prong high voltage plug in the hands of young kids...yeah, no potential for problems there...and having kids playing with wax hot enough to pour into molds was pretty smart, too. I mean, think about it...this product was NOT marketed at teenagers...it was directly at the 5 - 10 year old set.

I don't know how old I was when I got it. I do remember having a lot of fun with it...though the fun factor was perhaps somewhat mitigated by random encounters with red-hot metal, scalding wax, and a cruel sister who may have experimented with snapping the wheels off. Not that it may have been completely undeserved. Unconfirmed reports have me being somewhat less than an angel as a child...I can neither confirm nor deny those reports. On a completely unrelated note, unconfirmed reports have me being something less than an angel as an adult...

Anyhow, being kids, my friend Carl Speelman ( a truly great friend and an example people should emulate) and I goofed around with it...mixing colors to create our own. We probably had more fun breaking the cars and remaking them than we did playing with them, even though I had some of that orange track that meant we could "race" them...

About that time, my sister had an unfortunate incident at a neighbors house, the VanDevenders, in which she expunged food from her system through the mouth. You may be familiar with this as "projectile vomit". Regardless, the color was a rather disturbing shade of green, perhaps the ugliest shade I have ever seen. Why is that important?

Well...we once mixed blue and yellow with a couple of cars we had mashed up previously of indeterminate color...almost black maybe? Anyway, the resultant color green was pretty repulsive. So repulsive it reminded us of Sue's unfortunate evacuation of stomach contents and led to us naming the color "Vanio" as in "VanDevender's Patio".

Ah, the joys of remembering childhood. I don't remember for sure when I put the machine away. Probably one too many times of touching the remarkably unprotected metal that heated up the wax or burning myself with wax or maybe the next hot toy came along (pun intended) or maybe I just grew up.

Oh, the joys of Master Caster...a toy that, in retrospect, never had a proper audience. Too dangerous for the age group that would be interested in it, not much fun for those for whom it wasn't dangerous.