These Are a Few of My Favorite (Christmas) Things

Most of us have 2016 pretty firmly in our rear-view mirrors. There are a lot of my friends who can’t wait for the year to be over. Many are struggling with the losses we experienced this last year. Whether it was personal loss, artistic voices that were silenced, or post-election blues, there was more than enough sorrow to go around.

Even the Christmas season—to me, at any rate—seemed less focused and full of hope than any I remember. Of course, that may be a reflection of my own state of mind. And still, there were some things under the tree that I appreciated more than other things I’d received in the past.

We’ve all received those Christmas presents that glittered and promised so much. Often, it was a matter of days before they’d lost their luster. Sometimes what we think we want is a far cry from what really satisfies us.

I had three Christmas gifts this year that were, perhaps, the opposite of that experience.

A Guitar Strap: My son gave me a guitar strap for Christmas. That may not sound like much to you. After all, you can run down to Guitar Center and pick up a pretty nice strap for $15 to $25 bucks that will serve the purpose. But this one was different. My son made it himself. Once (when he thought I wasn’t looking) he went down to my music room and measured the straps I had. Then he made a killer strap out of parachute chord that is soft, pliable, and incredibly strong and comfortable. It’s a perfect fit. I overheard him telling someone (when he thought I couldn’t hear) that it took him more than 8 hours to make it. Beyond that, it was something he thought about and knew I would like. I may be the world’s “OK-est” guitar player, but it’s something I love to do and he knew that and responded with a gift that acknowledged that.

 

Art for My Office: My daughter is a very talented and creative soul. She’s been an actress in Hollywood and is a gifted writer. But she also has some significant artistic talent when it comes to painting. She created a series of extremely simple and elegant paintings of some of my favorite guitars that now hang in my office. They are a reminder of a common passion that we share. I could purchase stunning images of these same guitars and hang them in my office, but they simply wouldn’t have the same incomparable weight and meaning. These are stunning in their simplicity.

 

 

Hiking Boots: My wife bought me a new pair of hiking boots. I know what you’re thinking. That’s not particularly sexy or cool. Maybe you’re thinking that it’s akin to a man buying his wife a vacuum cleaner or a crock-pot for Christmas (and my apologies to any man who did do that this year). Nothing could be farther from the truth. Those who know me know that we hike almost every morning. We don’t just walk around the block. We go to a nearby park that’s really kind of a wilderness area. We hike rugged trails that climb and dip. We see deer and owls and sometimes coyotes. We witness incredible sunrises that sleeping people miss every day. It’s as much a spiritual exercise as it is a physical one. And there has never been a day when we weren’t glad that we went (even when we really didn’t want to drag our sorry asses out of bed in the dark). And having the right footwear is absolutely essential for enjoying that experience. A pair of Nike’s just wouldn’t work.

I don’t know what you got for Christmas this year. I do know that the gifts I received are ones that I’ll enjoy for a long, long time.

Happy New Year!

Little Lies

Standing at my mirror
Staring at my face
Looking past the crow’s feet
To another time and place
I try so hard not to ignore
The sorrow in my eyes
I would if I could but it’s just no good
How we love our little lies

Sitting with some friends of mine
Talking about how life has been
We speculate about the future
Confessing some of our sin
Talk about the clouds that
Obscure the sunny skies
We smile and say that we’ll be OK
How we love our little lies

Walking in the wilderness
But never quite alone
With a mind that’s full of questions
And a heart that feels like stone
Trying hard to sort it out
Feeling halfway wise
But I know I’m just deceiving me
How we love our little lies

We don’t play well with others
You can read it in our face
And we extend a finger
When we should extend some grace
We talk about loving others
When in truth we just despise
But we cover it with sympathy
Because we love our little lies

We pontificate on love
Because the concept seems so nice
But when it comes to true love
We just can’t pay the price
We play the game of love
But we hide our cards with sighs
And we never show our hand
Because we love our little lies

Dining with Doctors

For some reason, throughout much of my adult life, I’ve found myself in the company of doctors on a social level. At times I thought it was due to the fact that I’m a sick bastard and that those in the healthcare profession are somehow drawn to me in the same way that a firefighter is drawn to a flame.

I know it’s not because of my innate scientific skills. My scores on the scientific and math sections of the SATs and ACTs lowered the bar for many a high school student and single-handedly allowed many of them to be accepted at colleges and universities that otherwise would have rejected them.

Nonetheless, from my college days on, I always found myself interacting with medical types. In college I had friends who were pre-med and nursing students. When I lived in Germany after college one of my roommates was a medical student (who fainted at the sight of blood—but that’s a different story). Another of my best friends when I lived there was also a medical student and later became head of internal medicine at the hospital in the town where we lived.

Even now three of my closest friends are physicians (of different stripes). One is an OB/GYN, another is an infectious disease specialist, and a third (his wife) is actually my primary care physicians. Even my own daughter works in the Intensive Care Unit at one of the local hospitals.

It is this last group of people about whom I am currently speaking. We tend to spend a lot of time together. And while my pathetic match and science grades precluded me from a career in medicine, I still find the field absolutely fascinating.

Because we spend a lot of time together—and because what my doctor friends do for a living—we often discuss their work while dining together. While we never discuss specific patients (HIPPA wouldn’t permit that, nor would my friends share it even if HIPPA allowed it), we do talk about situations that they encounter.

Sometimes other non-medical acquaintances want to talk about their specific maladies or issues. I remember a time or two at an outdoor table at Taco Bell (I can’t believe how much I despise Taco Bell, but some people like it and that, too is another story) I was able to witness plein air “surgery” as my friends removed toenails and performed other medical procedures in between bites of burrito.

What I find more interesting, however, is that some rather “earthy” topics find their way into our dinner conversations on a fairly regular basis. We’ve become quite used to it, so discussing puss or weeping infections or other bodily functions at the dinner table has become something that raises no one’s eyebrows.

We sometimes forget, however, that the general public is often a bit more reserved about such topics at the table—a fact that was brought home to us not long ago at a restaurant where we were dining.

We were seated at a table that was in close proximity to other tables, which meant conversations would occasionally spill over from one area to another. I had asked my friends about some of their more unusual cases and how they had reacted to them. The conversation drifted a bit and I became aware of another conversation at the table to my right.

A couple sat there—my guess was that they were a few years older than us. Despite that, they were quite affectionate: holding hands and giggling like high school kids. I thought it was rather nice. Then the gentleman’s cell phone rang and he stepped away from the table for a moment. A small cloud seemed to form over the woman’s face.

I really wasn’t trying to listen, but then we were in close proximity. I tried hard to refocus on the conversation at my own table when I heard her say, “So, was that your wife?” The handholding and giggling ceased and the couple focused on their meals in silence. That allowed me to better focus on the conversation at my table. And just in the nick of time.

My infectious disease specialist friend was describing a case he’d been called in on that had baffled some of his colleagues working in the ER. It seems that had a patient who was in severe distress and the pain was emanating from a rather sensitive (and private) part of his anatomy. I winced slightly. My wife and my female primary care doctor did not.

It was clear that the patient had an infection (hence the summoning of my ID doctor friend), but the source of the infection was a mystery. There was nothing to indicate an STD or any such thing. It didn’t take my friend (who, by the way, is really good at stuff like this) to arrive at the root of the problem.

It appears that the male patient had been eager to impress a female of the species with his “manliness.” Nature, however, had not been overly gracious to him in that regard, so (in a matter of speaking) he took matters into his own hands.

He had injected himself with transmission fluid in an attempt to appear virile and vigorous. But not having immediate or easy access to a hypodermic needle, he had taken a needle used to inflate basketballs and footballs, and had sharpened it on the concrete sidewalk before plunging it into his most private parts.

It was at that point that the gentleman sitting to my right (remember him?) gasped, “OK, that’s enough!” My head whipped around to look at him and he rather sheepishly grinned back at me. I think it was at that moment that he realized that if he could hear what transpired at our table that I had a pretty good idea of what was going on at his.

We shifted our conversation to a more appropriate topic (it might have been something along the lines of how sausage is made) and went on with our dinner. The couple to my right left without having dessert.

It did remind me, however, to exercise a bit of caution when dining with my doctor friends. You never know who might be listening.

When the Wheels Came Off

Generally speaking, when you hear someone talking about “the wheels coming off,” it’s a pretty good indication that something has gone really, really wrong. I have my own somewhat unique (and literal) perspective on that phenomenon, and it all begins with a black 1960 VW Beetle like you see pictured here.

When I was in high school, most of the kids I knew didn’t have the cool cars that high school memories are supposed to be made of. Brooke Paulger, with his bright red 289 Mustang with the Hurst shifter, of course, was an exception to the rule. Most of us, however, drove our parents’ cars or lumbered around town in some kind of vehicle inherited from a grandmother who could no longer drive.

That was certainly the case with me—although instead of driving my grandmother’s hand-me-down, I drove a vehicle inherited from my sister. My parents had purchased it (for a whopping $150) so that my sister could travel back and forth to Iowa City to college. Driving back home one day, she ended up with a piston in the back seat (it was, after all, a rear-engine car).

We towed the bug home behind our other car. Since my sister was graduating and getting married she no longer needed a vehicle. So my dad bought a similar car for $100 from a friend. That car had a working engine, but the body was in terrible shape. Together, we took the functioning engine out of that car and swapped it for the one in the black VW. Then my dad sold the all the remaining parts for $100 to someone who wanted to make a dune buggy.

So it was that I ended up with a black VW bug that actually ran (albeit not very fast) my junior year in high school. What it lacked in style, it made up for in the fact that it was a car. Plus it had a radio that worked—even without the key! I was golden.

Because the car was 10 years old (and we really didn’t know much about the condition of the replacement engine) I was under firm instructions that the car was never to leave town. It was the kind of arrangement that a teenaged boy eagerly and immediately agreed to—only to forget about 10 minutes later.

That car saw all kinds of activity that the two schoolteachers who had owned it before couldn’t even imagine. Pretty much any activity that you’d associate with a 17-year-old boy happened in that bug. Harry Chapin once sang that he “learned about love in the back of a Dodge—and the lesson hadn’t gone too far.” Having a German car didn’t change that scenario for me (and the back seat was considerably smaller, anyway).

One of the activities that my friends and I engaged in with that car, however, was the procurement of libations for our weekend enjoyment. Being only 17 (and looking all of 16) the procurement procedure was sometimes complicated. That meant relying on the kindness of strangers who were 21 years of age or older in order to get what we wanted.

Usually that involved the purchase of some god-awful concoction such as Boone’s Farm Apple Wine or Ripple Pagan Pink. On occasion, we’d save our cash and get something “really special” such as Colt 45 or Budweiser Malt Liquor. On occasions where we were flush with cash and wanted to prove that we were cool (like Janis Joplin), we’d get a bottle of Southern Comfort (and pretend to enjoy it).

Finding those kind strangers of legal age sometimes proved to be difficult. So when we latched on to a supplier, we held on for dear life. My friend Scott had found such a supplier who lived in Aurora (Remember Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World? Yeah, that Aurora!). It really wasn’t all that far away—but it was a strange and mysterious place to some of us. Plus, it was “out of town”—a place I wasn’t supposed to take my car.

But one Saturday night, my friend Scott had made connection with our supplier in Aurora and he didn’t have access to a car that night. That meant the task fell to me to get us over there if we wanted to have our hootch for the weekend.

So I took off from my house—telling my parents I was on my way to Scott’s. Hey! It wasn’t even a lie (to a point). But when I got to Scott’s house, he wasn’t home. Rather than wait in his driveway, I drove around the neighborhood streets a bit. Roughly 15 minutes later, I tried again. Scott still wasn’t there, so I drove some more. Once again, nobody answered the door when I rang the bell, so I set off one more time, taking a longer route.

I was headed down a long hill when I heard a strange noise and then felt a significant clunk. I was having a bit of trouble steering, when I looked out the passenger window and saw somebody’s wheel roll past my car. I was about to laugh at the poor sucker who had lost his wheel, when I realized why I was having a hard time steering. It’s pretty humiliating when your own wheel passes you!

You know how I said earlier that when “the wheels come off” it’s usually a bad deal? Initially, that was my reaction to this particular turn of events. But then I realized that if Scott had been home when I first drove by, we would have been driving home in heavy traffic at a much higher rate of speed—with a car full of illegal booze.

Sometimes, when the wheels come off, it’s not as bad as you think.

Tales From the Trails

Hiking the trails near our home is something we have done for years. We rise early in the morning (5:00 for me) and hit the trail by 6:00.

In the summer months, the light is already in the sky. Sometimes we get to watch the sun rising in the east as the moon sets in the west. In the fall and winter months, our journey begins in darkness. We wear headlamps to find our way, and one of my friends commented that we look like a bunch of miners trudging to the mines. But even in the winter we get to see the sun rising and casting it’s glow over “our” domain.

There are benefits to hiking so early. Most of the year we have the trails to ourselves, which is incredibly peaceful. It’s a chance to talk with our good friends—with whom we have been taking this excursion for some 20 years or more.

We’ve changed locations a time or two due to extenuating circumstances. We used to hike on the property of the United States Air Force Academy, which is only about 2 miles from our home as the crow flies. You can see a view of that particular trail above. That came to a rather abrupt end when Spenser the Wonder Dog (who looks like he’s a mix of Great Dane, German Shepherd, and a brick wall) decided he was a herding dog. Spenser is a member of our good friends’ family and I think I’m his uncle—although we’re still trying to work that out.

Unbeknownst to us (at least initially) is that the property on which we were hiking was also where some members of our Air Force pastured their horses. We saw gates and occasional “evidence” that horses had been on the trail, but we never actually spotted them during our walk. That is, until one day, when we caught a glimpse of the horses on a hillock in the distance. We ignored them and they ignored us and all was good.

Spenser, however, didn’t ignore them. The next morning, Spenser went walkabout in search of his equine friends. None of us noticed it at first. After all, there were approximately 7-8 people and an equal number of canine companions swirling around in a clump. Who was going to miss one large 3 ½ legged (yes, Spenser has certain limitations) going off on his own?

The short answer to that question is that the horses noticed. When we noticed that Spenser had gone missing, we began calling and whistling. As the best whistler in the group, I just about blew my brains out until—there in the distance, with the rising sun at his back—Spenser appeared . . . with a small herd of about half a dozen horses in front of him.

We all stood dumbstruck as Spenser (obviously very pleased with himself) drove the horses right up to us and awaited praise for his good work. Spenser was quickly leashed and we moved on down the trail as quickly as possible. The unfortunate outcome is that we were invited not to visit the Air Force grounds again any time in the future. While we were not confronted directly, the fences and gates that were erected within days were a pretty strong clue that we personas (and dogs) non-gratis.

So it was that we shifted the location of our morning constitutionals to a semi-wild city park in our neighborhood. Our morning excursions moved to Ute Valley Park, not far from our home. We would meet in the parking lot of the middle school (where some of our children had attended) that abutted the park and set off at our normal time. We always returned long before the students began arriving so that wasn’t an issue.

We enjoyed many of the same pleasures here that we had grown to love about our previous hiking spot. The sun still rose in the east. We often saw simultaneous sunrises and moon sets. The trails were challenging (the vertical climbs were the equivalent of climbing a 40-story building each morning). Although, when it would rain, we would often end up with 3-4 inches of mud on the bottom of our boots, it was still a delight.

In the meantime, however, Spenser had acquired a new family member. Chip, who is part pit bull and part a sweet tempered Yosemite Sam, had joined our ranks. Chip is a sweetheart who loves to play with everybody—rather vigorously. One day as we were finishing up our walk in the parking lot, we encountered some teachers coming in early to get ready for their day with the students. This was a common occurrence that we actually looked forward to each day. But on one day, Chip (in his excitement and eagerness to say hello) jumped at a teacher to greet her. Although he was on leash and never got near the aforementioned teacher, Chip was reported to the Principal’s office and we were summarily banned from the parking lot.

So it was, that with a heavy heart—and a few more drops of gasoline—that we moved down the road to approach the trail from a different starting point. But our adventures were not over!

Lest you think that all of our hiking trails led to trouble and sorrow, I need to make mention of the matter of the unmentionables. Unmentionables they were, and yet, mention them, I must.

One dark Monday morning we hit the trails before dawn, equipped with our headlamps and well-worn boots. With only one cup of coffee under our belts, we were not yet in fully functional mode—but we pressed on.

I followed my wife up the first hill in the dark. Our friends and their dogs were in front of her. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something drop at my wife’s feet. The deep shadows of early morning, of course, made it difficult to tell for sure. I thought it might be a pair of gloves or a headband, or something of that nature.

I called out to my wife, “Did you drop something?” She turned—her headlamp searing my eyeballs and temporarily blinding me—and said, “No! Why?” By this time I had caught up to her, and I reached to the ground to retrieve what I had seen fall to the ground.

As I plucked it from the ground, it revealed itself to be a pair of women’s black underwear. Not slinky or kinky, but certainly not something a red-blooded male would ignore. And while I have seen a lot of things out on the trails, this was certainly not the kind of thing I normally encountered in the wild. I held them out to my wife and asked, “Are these yours?”

My wife looked at me as if I had asked her how many legs she had. “Of course they’re not mine! I don’t even own anything like that!” I glanced back at the item in my hand and said, “But they’re the same size, color, and brand that you wear.” As the person who has done the lion’s share of laundry in our household for the past 20-some years, I have a certain amount of knowledge of what passes through our washing machine and dryer, and I was sure I’d seen these errant underwear before.

“Absolutely not!” exclaimed my wife. “What in the world would my underwear be doing out on this trail?” She had a good point. As I pondered that question, our friends (who had been ahead of us on the trail) returned and asked what was going on.

As I attempted to explain the situation (while my wife vehemently asserted that she had had no sartorial relationship with those panties) my friends looked at me with horror in their eyes.

Their horror soon became mine as I realized that I had stumbled upon a scene of sexual violation, and now my DNA was all over the evidence. On top of that, I was standing in the dark with what most assuredly was a handful of kooties! I quickly dropped the item in question and we marched on.

As we finished our hike and returned past the spot where I had initially noticed the unmentionables in question, I looked at them again. Having laundered certain items many, many times, I had a certain degree of confidence that I’d seen this particular garment before. But being the wise man that I am, I left the article draped over a convenient cactus and moved on.

Later, after we had been home a while, my wife had a chance to look in the drawer where she keeps certain unmentionables. In her defense, she came to me and said, “You know, I think those actually were mine.” We deduced that (due to that evil force known as “static cling”) the aforementioned unmentionables had lodged themselves inside her hiking pants and had dislodged themselves during the vigorous trek up the first hill.

The next morning as we hiked, we made a concerted effort to retrieve the errant underwear—to no avail. They were nowhere to be found. My wife dissuaded me from posting signs of the lost item and asking helpful citizens to call us with any sightings.

As you can imagine, this is not a subject we discuss in much detail anymore. Still, I wonder . . . where did those unmentionables end up?

Summer’s End

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer is bleeding—its strength has been spent
While autumn is creeping and spreading its tent
A pavilion of color that stretches so wide
To cover in beauty the season that’s died

Fall slips away like a lingering smoke
While winter envelopes the world in its cloak
A time of deep silence, of sleep, and of death
‘Til spring gently wakens the earth with its breath

Spring dares to peek through the last winter snow
Breezes bring faint scents of life as they blow
The sunlight grows, burning off winter’s haze
Until with full force it becomes summer’s blaze

There are so many things I don’t comprehend
I don’t have the wisdom to see to the end
When does autumn begin and sweet summer end?
And when is a lover no longer a friend?

For some life’s a mystery—for others a joke
Life is a stream and we’re all in one boat
Racing through waters of joy and of strife
What in the end will we take from this life?

And the seasons of life—like the seasons of earth
Repeat their same cycles of growth, death, and birth.
And are we the wiser when all’s said and done
Than in the first season when we’d just begun?

For sooner or later the seasons will cease
The spirit of mankind will find its release
Whether in winter, spring, summer or fall
The end of the seasons will come for us all.

Concerts for the Common Man (Part1)

I always enjoy it when someone posts something on Facebook asking people to remember their first concert. The responses are sometimes surprising, but always entertaining. Sometimes the choices seem like odd twists of fate. Often the first concert someone went to was not so much a matter of choice of taste, but of chance. You went because your friends were going or because you scored tickets, or because it was a spur-of the moment thing and you thought: “Why not?”

As we grew older, however, our choices became more deliberate. We went to see who we wanted to see. Sometimes (OK, often) it was peer influenced. Eventually however, the groups we paid our hard-earned money to see where bands that spoke to us somehow.

That kind of thing always leads me down a path to the concerts I’ve attended over the years—and the impressions they made on me that have stayed with me. I happen to be one of those people who sees a story (or at least a potential story) in most everything that happens here on this planet. Here are a few of the stories behind some of the concerts I’ve seen over the past 50 years or so.

It’s usually a good idea to start at the beginning, so that’s where I’ll start my story. The first rock concert I remember seeing was Strawberry Alarm Clock. I should probably clarify something here. I’d seen bands perform before, but they were always at free events. When you have no money, you tend to gravitate toward events that don’t tax the contents of your wallet too much.

So let me clarify that Strawberry Alarm Clock was the first band I actually paid money to see. One of the big differences with this band was that they actually had a hit record that was playing on the radio. They were, therefore, the real deal. They were pros (even though some bands I’d seen in the past—such as The Flock—would go on to release singles and albums of their own. Strawberry Alarm Clock had bona fides. They were getting airtime on major radio networks.

The venue where I saw the band was something of a novelty in and of itself. It was the Jaguar Club in the neighboring town of St. Charles, IL. In the days of my youth (as Led Zeppelin would later sing), this venue would host such luminaries as The Who, and The Yardbirds (with a relatively unknown guitarist named Jimmy Page). It was (to me and I suspect to many others my age) an almost mystical place. Real rock stars played there in front of regular people like me.

One weekend, my parents (who never would have let me attend such a gathering of unsavory characters) were out of town. My friend Brian Wermich and his buddy Chuck Mason (both a year ahead of me in school) picked me up (I wasn’t even of driving age at that point, and Brian had his own car) and off we went. We had raided my parent’s meager liquor cabinet before leaving, but I hardly needed anything more intoxicating than the chance to see real rockers in action.

Standing on the sidewalk outside the club, waiting for the doors to open was something special in itself. Coming from a small Midwestern town, we weren’t used to standing in line for anything. It was a new experience. There were “cool” people everywhere. People were dressed in bell-bottoms and fringe and all kinds of outlandish gear. This was unlike anything I’d ever been to with my parents. These were people my age acting independently and making some kind of statement (although exactly what that statement was remained mysteriously vague).

When they finally let us in, it was a like stepping into another world. Strobe lights were flashing and black lights made the simplest white shirt glow with an eerie and entirely enticing iridescence. There were hundreds of people my age milling around digging the music—with not an adult chaperone in sight.

Then there was the music. It was the first time I didn’t just hear the music—I actually felt it. At first I thought the bass runs would blow right through me. Guitar riffs pierced my mind (and my ears) and stopped me in my tracks. I ran into my friend Rob Stanfield inside and just stared at him, shaking my head. We had spent many an hour (while walking to school together) talking about music and guitars and bands. Rob (having had an older brother who lived in the Old Town district of Chicago) had been to many concerts and was already light-years ahead of me when it came to live music. Having already experienced what I was going through many times himself, he just smiled and nodded as if to say, “Well, now you know!”

It was like a powerful drug. I knew that once would never be enough. I would have to return—many times to many different stages—for another taste. I was hooked. And I didn’t even know it at the time.

Next stop: “Sort of seeing Jethro Tull at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin.”

Stupid Is As . . .

Scientific studies indicate that the male brain doesn’t really mature until around the age of 25. Far be it from me to scoff at science, but I’m closing in on 63 and I’m still waiting.

It’s not that women are born with fully matured reasoning skills, either. While their brains may physically reach maturity earlier than those of their male counterparts, I’ve known numerous women my own age who don’t always make the wisest choices. But since I’ve never been a woman, I really can’t speak to that. And it’s really not the point anyway.

The point is that I’ve done some pretty dumb things while waiting for my lateral frontal pole to get its act together. With this being the 4^th of July weekend, I was reminded of one of those incidents.

During my childhood in the mystical and mythical small town world of the Midwest, we always seemed to have access to fireworks. While they were illegal in Illinois, one didn’t have to travel far to find a treasure trove of explosive fun. And besides, being illegal added a certain cache of coolness to having such contraband in your possession.

I remember that my brother-in-law (actually, he was just my sister’s boyfriend at the time since they were still in high school) had made a trip through some states where you could buy fireworks at roadside stands.

He returned from his trip with a car loaded with highly flammable items and a monkey he’d purchased on the trip that he named Mike (yes, I was the namesake, and the name was definitely a good-natured poke at me, which I thought was wonderful).

At any rate, there was an ample supply of black cats, bottle rockets, and cherry bombs at our house. But the truly coveted items where the M80s. Childhood urban legend had it that these babies packed the power of an eighth of a stick of dynamite. All we really knew was that these things were loud as all get-out and basically destroyed anything you put them inside of.

Naturally, when nobody was looking, I filled the pockets of my cut-off jeans with as many of these devastating dynamos as possible and squirreled them away in my room for later use. I really didn’t have anything specific in mind at the time, but it wasn’t terribly long before an opportunity presented itself.

In those days, I used to hang out with my friend, Johnny Wilson, who lived down on River Lane. His backyard backed right up to the Fox River, where we spent many hours wading in the (then) murky and polluted water. Because M80s had waterproof fuses, we toyed with the idea of shooting some into the river with Johnny’s slingshot—to see if we could send some carp flying into the air.

While we pondered that possibility, we went out on the roof of his house. He had a flat roof over the garage (easily accessible through a window) that was a great place to sit and watch what went by on River Lane below.

Not only did Johnny live next to the river, but he also lived about a block from what was then the police department in town. As a result, it was pretty common to see police cruisers drive down the street to the station. After watching a few cruise by, a dark gleam began to glow in our eyes and we stared at each other in excitement as a fantastic plan formed in our (as yet unformed) brains.

To be honest, I don’t think either one of us actually voiced the details of our plan (if you could even call it a plan). I pulled an M80 out of my pocket. Johnny put it in his slingshot and pulled the string back. I got out matches . . . and we waited.

Our patience was soon rewarded when a big, fat police cruiser slowly started making its way past the house. Without a word, I lit the fuse on the M80, Johnny aimed carefully and landed the missile directly under the police car that was now about 50 feet past his house.

It was a perfect shot! With gleaming eyes we stared at our handiwork (nobody did “high-fives” in those days), and waited. Sure enough, there was a flash and an unearthly loud explosion—followed by the sound of screeching tires as the cop (who probably thought he’d been shot at) hit the brakes.

That’s when our young brains finally kicked in and we realized that we hadn’t really thought this plan through very well. In our minds, the explosion was everything. We hadn’t actually considered what would happen if we succeeded in our endeavor.

We saw the door of the cop car open up and a blue-clad leg start to stick out. We hit the deck and froze in fear. Knowing that the cop would be scanning the area for suspicious characters, we couldn’t risk opening the window to crawl back into the house, or we’d surely be apprehended (and certainly locked up for years).

So we waited—lying low and motionless for hours (well, 10 minutes anyway), until we heard the door slam and the cruiser pull away. We looked at each other and then sheepishly and silently crawled back through the window—never to speak of the episode again

I’m happy to report that this was the last stupid thing I ever did in my life. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it while I wait for my brain to mature.

Here’s wishing you a safer and smarter 4^th of July celebration!

When I Was a Jersey Boy

I am a man with a deep, dark secret.

Most of the people who know me think I grew up in a small Midwestern town. They’re right—but they’re only partly right. There was a period of time in my youth when I lived in New Jersey. I was, in fact, for a brief time, a Jersey boy.

In 1959 my dad was transferred to Manhattan for a two-year gig with AT&T, so naturally the whole family went with him. Dad had found a nice little house in the quiet town of Westfield, New Jersey, so we loaded up the 1953 Ford station wagon and drove across the country to the East Coast.

I was only five years old and hadn’t seen much of the world at that time. Still, I could sense that some things were different. We’d only been in town a couple of days and I was out in the front yard with my mom. The garage was still packed with boxes from our move, so the car was parked in front of the house.

A woman and here young daughter were walking past our house when the daughter saw the license plates on our Ford and asked her mother, “Illinois? Where’s that?” The mother’s reply was classic: “Oh, that’s way out West somewhere near Chicago!” We were obviously strangers in a strange land.

That fact was further emphasized when we went into the City for a baseball game. Where I grew up, everybody I knew watched the Cubs (except my best buddy, Billy Mead, who for some reason beyond my comprehension was a devout White Sox fan). People out there seemed to have never heard of the Cubs—but they didn’t hold the Sox (white or red) in very high regard, either.

The team of choice in that area was the New York Yankees. The Dodgers had already left Brooklyn and the Mets had yet to make their miserable debut. Still, local fans raved about their Yankees, who apparently were a powerhouse (again, a foreign concept to a kid who was a Cubs fan). They also had a couple of sluggers on the team by the names of Mantle and Maris that the locals seemed pretty excited about.

We had tickets right behind home plate in the stadium that Ruth built. It gave us a pretty good view of the batters and the catcher. I was kind of excited—and then a bit disappointed—when the Yankees’ catcher turned out not to be a big cartoon bear, but a guy named Yogi Berra. Apparently, in addition to being a really good catcher, he was known for witty sayings, but I never heard him say anything interesting.

Not everything about New Jersey was strange or uncomfortable. The town we lived in was a nice small town, much like the one we had lived in while in Illinois. We even had nice, friendly neighbors (even though they were a bit challenged when it came to geography and baseball).

The very nice neighbors across the street had a son, named Dusty, who was also a bit different than anyone I had ever met. In those days, few people used the phrase “Down’s Syndrome” when talking about someone like Dusty (the term they used has mercifully been replaced). There was no question, however, that Dusty looked, spoke, and acted a little differently than the rest of us. It was a bit puzzling because he was big enough to be an adult, but he seemed more like the rest of us kids in some way.

The thing of it was, that all of the kids in the neighborhood loved Dusty. It was almost as if he were a celebrity. When there were neighborhood get-togethers, all the kids wanted to be at the same table with him. It wasn’t morbid curiosity, either. We all genuinely liked him and were attracted to him somehow.

At the same time, we knew that there was something special and different about him. We sensed somehow that he was very vulnerable and we felt protective of him. We would go to high school football games and everyone took turns accompanying Dusty to the concession stand. His parents would say something like, “Dusty, why don’t you walk Mike over to get some popcorn?” He would then take me by the hand and walk me to the stand, making sure I didn’t get lost.

He would do that with several kids. Each and every one of us knew that Dusty was “protecting” us. And at the same time, it was crystal clear to us, that he was our responsibility. We were to make sure that nobody insulted or mistreated him. That was close to 60 years ago and I‘ve never forgotten Dusty.

And to me, that was a huge part of being a Jersey Boy—even if I was only there for a couple of years.

Surviving Childhood

The first biography of The Doors front man, Jim Morrison, was (rather appropriately) titled: No One Gets Out of Here Alive. I suspect that if one were to write stories about our childhoods, they might appear under the title: No One Gets Out of Here Unscathed.

Surviving childhood seems to me to be something of a miracle. I know we take a lot of precautions with our children today that parents never would have considered half a century ago. I am a firm believer that you can’t protect against every eventuality. Still, when I consider some of the experiences I had as a child, I wonder how I made it this far. And I know I’m not the only one.

Still, since I’m the one at the keyboard, you get to hear my episodes (although I’d love to hear your experiences).

My first brush with mortality came before I was able to speak. When I was but a wee boy, my mother used to lay me out on a blanket in the back yard. I swear that I remember looking up at the branches of the huge Chinese elm tree that grew there and having thoughts about not being able to talk, yet. But this isn’t about that.

Being a good mom, my mother didn’t leave me unattended. My sister—five years older than I—was tasked with watching me for short periods of time. Not wanting me to be bored, my doting sister would jump up and down and clap her hands to make me laugh—which apparently worked quite well. But as she continued, she lost her balance while jumping as high as she could, and landed on me.

Immediately I began crying—which brought my mother flying out of the house to see what was wrong. When asked what had happened, my poor sister told my mother that she had jumped on my stomach. Fearing the worst, my mother rushed me off to the doctor to have me checked out for a ruptured stomach. As it turned out, my sister had missed my stomach entirely and had landed on my leg, breaking it. Too young for a cast (and with the amazing healing powers of the very young), I recovered fully (despite my father’s assertion later in life that she probably landed on my head and not my leg).

It wouldn’t be my last trip to see old Dr. McDonald during my childhood. A couple of years later, my parents took me with them to visit a friend of theirs. While this woman was nice enough, I quickly became bored (a malady from which I still suffer) and launched off on my own to explore her very interesting house.

While the grownups talked about boring grownup things in the living room, I discovered a room where there where very interesting and colorful pieces of candy on a dresser. Knowing the delights of secretly discovered candy stashes (I used to crawl up on our kitchen countertops at home and dig into my mom’s secret stash of butterscotch candies), I helped myself to these enticing treats. After swallowing a couple of handfuls, I was rather disappointed in the taste. They weren’t sweet at all and almost stuck in my throat.

With a certain sense of disappointment, I wandered back into the living room, where I began to wobble a bit. I think my dad was initially a bit embarrassed by my apparent lack of coordination, until it became apparent that I wasn’t functioning at full capacity. It was then that our host realized where I had been—and that I had gotten into her stash of barbiturates.

My parents immediately called Dr. McDonald (who was already on another house call—remember those?) and he agreed to meet us at our house. Emergency Rooms, after all, were for real emergencies, not for toddlers who had swallowed colored pills.

We drove home, and (following Dr. McDonald’s advice) my parents did what they could to keep me awake. When nothing else worked, my dad took me down to the basement and put my on my tricycle (which I loved). I began slowly pedaling around the basement.

When Dr. McDonald finally made it down the stairs to our basement half an hour later, I was working on a new world land speed record for tricycles in the basement. When I nearly knocked him down on my third lap around the basement, he told my dad that he thought I’d probably be OK left promptly (probably to go home and have a scotch after surviving a near collision with a 200 MPH toddler). And, as Forrest Gump would say, “That’s all I have to say about that.”

However, I didn’t spend all of my youth under Dr. McDonald’s gentle and capable care. My dad was transferred to New York to work for AT&T. We actually lived in New Jersey–which my sister and I thought was kind of a different country (And in some ways, it was). They didn’t even know who the Cubs were there! And when we first moved in, a neighbor walked by and saw the Illinois plates on our car. “Illinois? She asked. Where’s that?” Her friend replied (and I’m not making this up), “Oh that’s way out west somewhere, near Chicago!”

Nonetheless, New Jersey is where I learned to ride a two-wheeler after AT&T transferred my dad to Manhattan. Both Mom and Dad took their turns running behind me as I learned to pilot my way along the sidewalks of Westfield. To this day, my heart goes out to the bushes along that sidewalk that gave their lives to my quest for two-wheel stability.

As is usually the case, I eventually learned to ride that bike without the assistance of training wheels. It really didn’t bother me (much) that the bike I rode was actually a girls’ bike that my sister had outgrown. As Roger Daltry would later proclaim, I was “Going Mobile.” That, however, had some significant consequences.

It was Labor Day–the last day of summer before beginning first grade. I was out on my bike for one final summer ride, I think. I say, “I think,” because I really can’t remember a thing about that day. Apparently, I was a few blocks from home when I was racing with another kid down a cul de sac and standing up so I could pump the pedals faster. At some point, the chain on my lovely girls’ bike froze, and the wheels on my bike stopped instantly. Momentum shot me over the handlebars and headfirst onto the street. Nobody had ever heard of bike helmets in those days. I’ve always been somewhat hardheaded, but my noggin was no match to the New Jersey asphalt.

I remember waking up in a room that I didn’t recognize (it was my sister’s room in our home in New Jersey) and wondering where in the world I was. I managed to get out of bed and wandered into the living room, where I stood next to my mother and yelled, “Mom? Where are you?” Apparently I had severe tunnel vision and couldn’t see her, but I’m sure I took several years off her life because she thought I was blind (she only lived to be 90). I ended up spending about a week at Overlook Hospital somewhere in New Jersey, with what turned out to be a pretty severe concussion. But it all turned out OK (Well, history hasn’t entered the final verdict on that, but . . .).

New Jersey, however, wasn’t finished with me, yet. The next fall (my second grade year) I actually started school on time. But because it was the fall, it was football season. So I joined a bunch of boys playing out on the playground at Lincoln Elementary School. New Jersey playgrounds were different than the one’s I’d known in the Midwest. They were pretty much rock and pebbles with some broken glass mixed in (I’m assuming to add color and interest).

In those days, I don’t think they had come up with the concept of “touch football” yet. We did it like the Giants did (Nobody had yet come up with the idea of a “Jets” team yet, either). It was tackle football and that’s all there was to it. Most of the guys I played with were older (4^th and 5^th grade guys). I was, however, pretty quick, so they let me run the ball. I took a hand-off and ran as if my life depended on it (which wasn’t too far from the truth).

A 5^th grade guy tackled me with a vengeance and rode me like a surfboard along the rock and glass-strewn ground for about 30 yards (OK, not, really, but that’s what it felt like). When I stood up, I felt something warm and sticky running down the side of my face. During our slide along the ground, we’d encountered a sharp rock or a piece of glass. Now my left ear was hanging by a bit of skin and bleeding like a son-of-a-gun.

Not wanting to break off their game, the older guys told me to hold my arm up to my ear (to staunch the bleeding a bit) and to go home. I was wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt, and I did that (without whimpering, I might add) and headed for home. By the time I got home, my sleeve was completely soaked in blood and when my mom opened the door I thought she’d pass out. She was convinced that my arm had been torn off. I’m sure that took another few years off of her life (Did I mention that she only lived until the age of 90?).

Once again, I ended up at the doctor’s office (Emergency rooms in New Jersey were also for real emergencies). After a long wait (the doctor had to patch up some other people before he got to me—it was New Jersey, for crying out loud!) I got my stitches and went home with a big honking bandage on my ear.

I was only 6 years old, but things were off to a pretty interesting start. Things didn’t really let up all that much after that (I won’t even go into running a clothes line pole through my hand or getting hit by a car while on my bike). But I think it was pretty good preparation for having kids of my own. I remember my dad used to talk about kids who were “accident prone,” but he stopped using that phrase by the time I was seven.

Hey, I survived my childhood . . . and I suspect you did, too. And then some of had kids of our own and the cycle started all over again. I don’t think I have the nerve for grandchildren!