Once in a while, like every few hours, my wife and I enter into a discussion about what to eat and what not to eat. It is my contention that if God had not intended for us to eat something, He wouldn’t have made it. As far as I am concerned, if it’s considered food by at least 50% of the population then it should be eaten. I do have standards however. I don’t eat anything with more than four legs and I don’t eat anything that frogs sit on. I also won’t eat anything with “brussel” in the name, but that’s about all the rules I have about eating.
Nancy loves to cook and I love to eat, so it’s a match made in heaven. She produces the food and I consume it. I call this production/consumption cycle “culinary capitalism”, and I firmly believe that it goes a long way toward making America great. Why do you think the Pilgrims started Thanksgiving? It was to institute an American tradition of culinary capitalism and gluttony, of course. Well, to kick off the Christmas season too, but I digress.
Our most recent discussion regarded the recent health fad of “juicing”. First of all, to be perfectly clear, juice is meant to be a drink, not a meal. Meals should contain meat and potatoes. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against juice. I drank gallons of Hi-C grape drink while I was in college and I’m reasonably sure there must have been some juice in it. We also stopped for orange juice at the Florida Welcome Center both times we went to Disney World. Don’t tell me I don’t like juice. We bought an expensive juicer that turns almost anything into juice. I didn’t even know that spinach HAD juice. I have a sledgehammer in the garage that would have done the job much cheaper, but as anyone who has watched Gallagher knows, that can get a bit messy.
“Look what happened to Jack LaLanne, “ I pointed out. “He was a vegetarian and a juicer, not to mention an exercise guru, and look what happened to him! He died!”
“ He was 96!” My wife countered.
“ Really? Oh….. well, he probably would have made it to 100 if he had rested more and had more meat in his diet.” I thought that was a great comeback. She doesn’t know who she is messing with. (Actually, that should be “ she does not know with whom she is messing”.) When Winston Churchill was corrected for ending a sentence with a preposition, he retorted “ that is a ridiculous rule up with which I shall not put.” Well said, Winston.
“ I have an idea, why don’t you just go to a pizza buffet and eat until your upper lip starts to sweat,” Nancy said, her words dripping with sarcasm and just a hint of disgust.
“ That’s a great idea,” I said. “ I figure if I eat just the right amount of pizza over my lifespan, I will die before I have to go to a nursing home. Goodness knows I don’t want to wind up in a nursing home. Want to go with me?”
She must not have heard me because she just turned and walked away. I think her hearing is getting worse.
Nancy eats and drinks a lot of really healthy and unidentifiable things. She eats a grey thing called tofu that I tried once. It tasted like water, but not as thirst quenching. She also eats something called hummus. It looks very much like tofu, but with a bit more of a brown tinge and not as rubbery. I have not yet tasted hummus and have no immediate plans to do so. I haven’t seen a hummus grazing in a pasture, or a hummus plant growing in a field. Seriously. What IS this stuff? I have to be very careful what I put in my body. Who knows where this hummus had been?
We eat eggs high in omega 3 that come from chickens that are not kept in cages. Nancy says that chickens that are free ranging are happier than caged chickens and produce healthier eggs. I’m still working on this one. I am afraid to buy eggs anymore. It’s just too much pressure to remember that they must be rich in omega 3, from cage free chickens, AND not be broken! I suppose I should also eat only hamburgers made from cows that died from natural causes? I’m certain that their slaughterhouse experience must have been quite emotionally traumatic.
I appreciate that Nancy is trying to keep me healthy. But I do sometimes wonder if it’s because there is a bunch of paperwork going on around here involving numbers and she doesn’t want to be left with it.
Several months ago, my wife brought home something called “Ezekiel Bread”. It was more like drywall, but didn’t taste as good. I was brought up to believe that bread should be soft, and when it was no longer soft, the birds got it. When I was a kid, we used Hart’s bread. When you chewed up a mouthful of Hart’s bread it would turn into a big ball of goo in your mouth. Now who wouldn’t like a soft warm ball of goo? A similar mouthful of Ezekiel bread felt more like chewing sandpaper. I threw it out and even the birds wouldn’t eat it. I think they were insulted. I should have been more sensitive.
I happen to love cold cereal in milk. First, I was goaded into skim milk, but it was so weak I doubted that it actually existed. I rebelled and eventually settled on 2% milk. This is supposed to keep me alive longer and therefore save Nancy from tons of number-intensive paperwork. I thought I had adjusted to the thin tasteless milk pretty well, until I was informed that “organic” 2% milk was even better for me. Who would have thought? And what makes milk organic in the first place? Do the cows eat only organic grass? And what makes the grass organic? I don’t think I want to go there. In fact, I’m a little concerned about this organic milk. It has a much longer expiration date, but doesn’t seem to have all the good preservatives and hormones that real milk has. I am hesitant to bring it up to Nancy though. I know she is trying. One day recently, Nancy informed me that cold cereal has absolutely no nutritional value.
I said, “So? What’s your point?” She walked away without answering. I really am concerned about her hearing.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
Remembering Earline
Jimmy flung open the rickety screen door on the front porch and jumped off the steps into the yard. The porch was only three steps tall, but it was a big leap for a five-year-old. The screen door slammed hard and rattled to a stop almost drowning out Jimmy’s voice.
“Earline’s here!”, Jimmy yelled at the top of his lungs. Jimmy loved Earline. Earline was a black domestic whom his dad had hired to help take care of the family. Each morning Jimmy’s dad picked up Earline in the family’s ’50 Chevrolet Belair and brought her to the house. She always rode in the back seat and entered through the back door.
The Edwin Carter family lived on the corner of Elm and Magnolia Streets in McKenzie, Tennessee. They moved there when Jimmy was one year old. On one corner of the intersection was the Carter home, a frame house with a wrap- around screened porch and a smokehouse out back. On another corner was Edwin’s grocery store/gas station, and on the other was the Log Cabin, owned by Edwin and run by Clifford and Tommie Sutton. The Log Cabin was a short-order restaurant that catered to teenagers.
During the time Earline worked for the Carter’s, the elderly and invalid parents of Clella Mae, Jimmy’s mother, were living in the home. The grocery store was open six days a week and Clella Mae taught mathematics at McKenzie High School. Jimmy’s teenage brother, Harold, was at home also. Needless to say, a little help around the house from Earline was much needed.
“ Mornin’ Jimmy!” Earline hollered back from across the yard.
“Come hea young’un”, Earline half- growled. “Lemme see. Did you wash behin’ yo ears and brush yo teef this morning’?”
“Not yet Earline. I’ll go do it right now.”
“Yo betta git yo’sef in there ‘fo I gits a chance to look fo’ mysef!”
With his father at work all day at the store across the street and his mother teaching until the middle of the afternoon, little Jimmy had formed a very tight bond with Earline. She was by necessity and proximity his care provider. She prepared his meals, washed his clothes and bandaged his skinned knees. She scolded him when he did wrong, and loved him like her own.
Earline was of undermined age, possessed a no-nonsense manner and always sported a white do-rag atop her matronly frame. Earline knew her station in life as a black woman in the south during the 1950’s. She served the family first and after everyone was finished she would retire to the kitchen and eat alone. She was never told to do that. That was just the way it was done. She referred to her employers as “ Mr. and Mrs. Carter”. To everyone else in the household, including Jimmy, she was “Earline”. That too, was just the way it was done.
For all of Earline’s efforts on behalf of the Carter family, she was paid six dollars a week. Her husband, Tommie T, worked as a saw filer at Southern Star Lumber Company across the railroad tracks from the Log Cabin. He, along with a little help from Earline’s meager wages, made just enough to scrape by and provide the necessities for his family.
Edwin crossed the street to begin his day at Carter’s Grocery. As soon as his helper, JD Wilson arrived, things started hopping on Elm Street. The little store was not much over three hundred square feet in size, but there was no shortage of customers.
When Edwin counted the money from the day’s business each night, Jimmy would often sneak into the room, slither around behind the couch and pretend to “steal” some of the money. His dad would always see or hear him sneaking into the room, and sometimes would catch him and pretend to be mad. Jimmy thought this was great fun. Some of the time his dad would pretend not to see Jimmy and later feign confusion saying, “There’s some money missing! Who’s got my money?” Jimmy would run into the room beaming and waving the cash, proud that he had pulled one over on his dad. This was a game that played itself out almost every night at the Carter home. It became something of a tradition. One night the fun took an unexpected twist.
Before his dad had left for work, Jimmy had donned his overalls in preparation for the new day. He wore them over and over until someone noticed they were dirty and made him put on clean ones. Usually this someone was Earline.
“Come ova heah youngun.” she demanded, her fists planted firmly on her ample hips.
“Lemme see dem overalls. Didn’t you have dem on yestiddy?”
Her fat cheeks quivered as she shook her head in mock disgust. If Jimmy had not known she loved him, he would have been scared to death.
“They ain’t dirty, Earline! See?” Jimmy took a step back and placed his thumbs under the straps of the overalls and pushed them forward as if he were strutting like a peacock. Earline suppressed a laugh as she looked at the little boy pooching out his chest like he had just won the Nobel Prize.
It was then that she noticed a tiny bit of green protruding from the pocket in the bib. She moved over to Jimmy and reached down with her large fleshy hand. She pulled the object out of the bib just an inch or so, and in a lightning-like move that startled Jimmy, she pushed the object back into the bib and let out a whoop.
“Laud, Laud!! Precious Jesus!” she exclaimed, and took Jimmy by the hand and led him out of the house. The screen door clattered once more and Jimmy thought that Earline was going to jump off the steps the way he had done a few minutes before. She did not, but Jimmy had to run to keep up with her. He had never seen this matronly woman move so fast! Earline led him across the street to his dad’s store, where she burst through the door with uncharacteristic boldness. Edwin was waiting on a customer and at first didn’t notice the drama about to unfold. Earline stopped short and just stood there as if waiting her turn, huffing and puffing out of breath, all the time fidgeting and wringing her hands in her apron. Her white eyes, wide with fear, bulged out from under her white do-rag in sharp contrast to her dark face.
“Why Earline! You look like you seen a ghost!” Edwin said, turning momentarily from the customer.
“Wus den dat, Mista Catta! Wus den dat! Look what dis baby done got in his pocket! This is gui’n be the death of me!”
Ed was beginning to become a bit concerned, but he saw that Jimmy was with her and seemed to be fine.
“Well, what is it, Earline? Show it to me.”
“Oh, no suh!” Earline begged. “I best not touch it! You best get it outen a’ his bib yo’sef, please suh!”
Jimmy decided he would just end this drama once and for all. In fact, he was about ready to find out what was in his bib himself. He had been drug across the street at breakneck speed and hadn’t had time to investigate. He reached into his bib and to the surprise of everyone present including Jimmy, he pulled out a crisp new one-hundred-dollar bill!
“Well, would you look at that!”, his dad exclaimed.
“I knew something was wrong last night, but gave up on finding it. Thanks for finding it Earline.”
“Thank you suh…yes suh.”
“ You could’ve kept this money and no one would’ve ever known.”
Earline looked down at her feet self-consciously, and shook her head.
“Oh, No suh, Mista Catta. I’d a knowed it! Dat’s yo’ money!”
That one-hundred-dollar bill was probably more money than Earline had ever seen in one place and she wouldn’t even touch it.
After Clella Mae’s parents died and Jimmy started first grade, the family no longer needed Earline’s help. Several years later she developed diabetes and had to have both her legs amputated. She spent the rest of her life in a small frame house on Randle Street in an area of town we called “Rannell Town”, named such after Randle Street which ran through the heart of the black community. She rarely left the house those last years. Edwin and Clella Mae never forgot about Earline. They always remembered her at Christmas and helped her with other financial needs from time to time.
Jimmy asked his dad many years later about the dollar a day that was paid to Earline. The change in his countenance when asked the question told Jimmy that his dad had never given it any thought.
Edwin hesitated, searching for an answer to a question that had no answer. “That’s just the way things were done back then.” he said, then he dropped his head a bit and stared at the floor.
Jimmy went to visit Earline on the weekend he had to escape Memphis following the shooting of Martin Luther King. When he entered her room, she was sitting in her bed watching television reports about the shooting and she was crying. As soon as she saw him, she said,
“ They done shot Dr. King. What my people gonna do now?”
Jimmy struggled for words that would not come.
Finally, he said simply, “ I don’t know Earline…. I don’t know.”
He hugged her and they cried. It was the last time he saw her.
Notes from the author:
Yes, Jimmy was me. The events depicted here are true as told to me by my parents through the years. Of course, much of the dialogue was made up. Much has changed. My parents and Earline are gone. I grew up and became “Jim”. While things are not right yet, they are better than they were.
The telling of this story is a bit shameful for me. While Earline was loved by my family and never mistreated in any way, she was nevertheless considered a second-class citizen.
I have given much thought to that time in history and how things were then between the races. I have come to the conclusion that for the Carter family at least, we really never did give it any thought. My parents were not known for thinking outside the box. It was, I believe, as Dad told me, “just the way things were done then.” I think that in later life, as southern culture changed, my parents experienced some remorse for the manner in which Earline was paid and how things were. Perhaps their willingness to help her in later years was in some way penance for the past. I never asked and I will never know.
For me, as a five-year-old child, I didn’t care what color Earline was. I just knew she loved me and I loved her. That was enough for me. I will always wonder if it was enough for her.
“Earline’s here!”, Jimmy yelled at the top of his lungs. Jimmy loved Earline. Earline was a black domestic whom his dad had hired to help take care of the family. Each morning Jimmy’s dad picked up Earline in the family’s ’50 Chevrolet Belair and brought her to the house. She always rode in the back seat and entered through the back door.
The Edwin Carter family lived on the corner of Elm and Magnolia Streets in McKenzie, Tennessee. They moved there when Jimmy was one year old. On one corner of the intersection was the Carter home, a frame house with a wrap- around screened porch and a smokehouse out back. On another corner was Edwin’s grocery store/gas station, and on the other was the Log Cabin, owned by Edwin and run by Clifford and Tommie Sutton. The Log Cabin was a short-order restaurant that catered to teenagers.
During the time Earline worked for the Carter’s, the elderly and invalid parents of Clella Mae, Jimmy’s mother, were living in the home. The grocery store was open six days a week and Clella Mae taught mathematics at McKenzie High School. Jimmy’s teenage brother, Harold, was at home also. Needless to say, a little help around the house from Earline was much needed.
“ Mornin’ Jimmy!” Earline hollered back from across the yard.
“Come hea young’un”, Earline half- growled. “Lemme see. Did you wash behin’ yo ears and brush yo teef this morning’?”
“Not yet Earline. I’ll go do it right now.”
“Yo betta git yo’sef in there ‘fo I gits a chance to look fo’ mysef!”
With his father at work all day at the store across the street and his mother teaching until the middle of the afternoon, little Jimmy had formed a very tight bond with Earline. She was by necessity and proximity his care provider. She prepared his meals, washed his clothes and bandaged his skinned knees. She scolded him when he did wrong, and loved him like her own.
Earline was of undermined age, possessed a no-nonsense manner and always sported a white do-rag atop her matronly frame. Earline knew her station in life as a black woman in the south during the 1950’s. She served the family first and after everyone was finished she would retire to the kitchen and eat alone. She was never told to do that. That was just the way it was done. She referred to her employers as “ Mr. and Mrs. Carter”. To everyone else in the household, including Jimmy, she was “Earline”. That too, was just the way it was done.
For all of Earline’s efforts on behalf of the Carter family, she was paid six dollars a week. Her husband, Tommie T, worked as a saw filer at Southern Star Lumber Company across the railroad tracks from the Log Cabin. He, along with a little help from Earline’s meager wages, made just enough to scrape by and provide the necessities for his family.
Edwin crossed the street to begin his day at Carter’s Grocery. As soon as his helper, JD Wilson arrived, things started hopping on Elm Street. The little store was not much over three hundred square feet in size, but there was no shortage of customers.
When Edwin counted the money from the day’s business each night, Jimmy would often sneak into the room, slither around behind the couch and pretend to “steal” some of the money. His dad would always see or hear him sneaking into the room, and sometimes would catch him and pretend to be mad. Jimmy thought this was great fun. Some of the time his dad would pretend not to see Jimmy and later feign confusion saying, “There’s some money missing! Who’s got my money?” Jimmy would run into the room beaming and waving the cash, proud that he had pulled one over on his dad. This was a game that played itself out almost every night at the Carter home. It became something of a tradition. One night the fun took an unexpected twist.
Before his dad had left for work, Jimmy had donned his overalls in preparation for the new day. He wore them over and over until someone noticed they were dirty and made him put on clean ones. Usually this someone was Earline.
“Come ova heah youngun.” she demanded, her fists planted firmly on her ample hips.
“Lemme see dem overalls. Didn’t you have dem on yestiddy?”
Her fat cheeks quivered as she shook her head in mock disgust. If Jimmy had not known she loved him, he would have been scared to death.
“They ain’t dirty, Earline! See?” Jimmy took a step back and placed his thumbs under the straps of the overalls and pushed them forward as if he were strutting like a peacock. Earline suppressed a laugh as she looked at the little boy pooching out his chest like he had just won the Nobel Prize.
It was then that she noticed a tiny bit of green protruding from the pocket in the bib. She moved over to Jimmy and reached down with her large fleshy hand. She pulled the object out of the bib just an inch or so, and in a lightning-like move that startled Jimmy, she pushed the object back into the bib and let out a whoop.
“Laud, Laud!! Precious Jesus!” she exclaimed, and took Jimmy by the hand and led him out of the house. The screen door clattered once more and Jimmy thought that Earline was going to jump off the steps the way he had done a few minutes before. She did not, but Jimmy had to run to keep up with her. He had never seen this matronly woman move so fast! Earline led him across the street to his dad’s store, where she burst through the door with uncharacteristic boldness. Edwin was waiting on a customer and at first didn’t notice the drama about to unfold. Earline stopped short and just stood there as if waiting her turn, huffing and puffing out of breath, all the time fidgeting and wringing her hands in her apron. Her white eyes, wide with fear, bulged out from under her white do-rag in sharp contrast to her dark face.
“Why Earline! You look like you seen a ghost!” Edwin said, turning momentarily from the customer.
“Wus den dat, Mista Catta! Wus den dat! Look what dis baby done got in his pocket! This is gui’n be the death of me!”
Ed was beginning to become a bit concerned, but he saw that Jimmy was with her and seemed to be fine.
“Well, what is it, Earline? Show it to me.”
“Oh, no suh!” Earline begged. “I best not touch it! You best get it outen a’ his bib yo’sef, please suh!”
Jimmy decided he would just end this drama once and for all. In fact, he was about ready to find out what was in his bib himself. He had been drug across the street at breakneck speed and hadn’t had time to investigate. He reached into his bib and to the surprise of everyone present including Jimmy, he pulled out a crisp new one-hundred-dollar bill!
“Well, would you look at that!”, his dad exclaimed.
“I knew something was wrong last night, but gave up on finding it. Thanks for finding it Earline.”
“Thank you suh…yes suh.”
“ You could’ve kept this money and no one would’ve ever known.”
Earline looked down at her feet self-consciously, and shook her head.
“Oh, No suh, Mista Catta. I’d a knowed it! Dat’s yo’ money!”
That one-hundred-dollar bill was probably more money than Earline had ever seen in one place and she wouldn’t even touch it.
After Clella Mae’s parents died and Jimmy started first grade, the family no longer needed Earline’s help. Several years later she developed diabetes and had to have both her legs amputated. She spent the rest of her life in a small frame house on Randle Street in an area of town we called “Rannell Town”, named such after Randle Street which ran through the heart of the black community. She rarely left the house those last years. Edwin and Clella Mae never forgot about Earline. They always remembered her at Christmas and helped her with other financial needs from time to time.
Jimmy asked his dad many years later about the dollar a day that was paid to Earline. The change in his countenance when asked the question told Jimmy that his dad had never given it any thought.
Edwin hesitated, searching for an answer to a question that had no answer. “That’s just the way things were done back then.” he said, then he dropped his head a bit and stared at the floor.
Jimmy went to visit Earline on the weekend he had to escape Memphis following the shooting of Martin Luther King. When he entered her room, she was sitting in her bed watching television reports about the shooting and she was crying. As soon as she saw him, she said,
“ They done shot Dr. King. What my people gonna do now?”
Jimmy struggled for words that would not come.
Finally, he said simply, “ I don’t know Earline…. I don’t know.”
He hugged her and they cried. It was the last time he saw her.
Notes from the author:
Yes, Jimmy was me. The events depicted here are true as told to me by my parents through the years. Of course, much of the dialogue was made up. Much has changed. My parents and Earline are gone. I grew up and became “Jim”. While things are not right yet, they are better than they were.
The telling of this story is a bit shameful for me. While Earline was loved by my family and never mistreated in any way, she was nevertheless considered a second-class citizen.
I have given much thought to that time in history and how things were then between the races. I have come to the conclusion that for the Carter family at least, we really never did give it any thought. My parents were not known for thinking outside the box. It was, I believe, as Dad told me, “just the way things were done then.” I think that in later life, as southern culture changed, my parents experienced some remorse for the manner in which Earline was paid and how things were. Perhaps their willingness to help her in later years was in some way penance for the past. I never asked and I will never know.
For me, as a five-year-old child, I didn’t care what color Earline was. I just knew she loved me and I loved her. That was enough for me. I will always wonder if it was enough for her.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Meeting History
As we get older, the finite quality of our existence begins to weigh on our minds more so than before. In my own mind, I am very much aware that my life will someday come to an end, but I do not dwell on it. I suppose I am shutting out the brutal truth of the reality by considering my demise to occur at some time in the distant future. A couple of years ago, I decided it was important to make a list of things I would like to do before I am no more on the Earth.
In my youth, I was an avid follower of the space program. I knew all the astronauts' names, the missions they flew, and such. They were heroes to most adolescent boys in America, and I was no exception. I suppose I admired, (and still do) the sheer, unadulterated bravery displayed by anyone who would climb atop thousands of pounds of flammable rocket fuel and allow someone to ignite it.
The ultimate adventure in my opinion, then and now, was to go to the moon. It obviously followed that one of my goals would be to meet someone who had walked on the moon. When I set this goal, I did not think it likely attainable. The moon walkers have settled into regular society, and are not particularly deified at this point in time, and it was unlikely that one of them would have West Tennessee on his itinerary.
I placed this “bucket list” item on the back burner until I saw in the local newspaper that on June 4, 2000, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, was scheduled to appear in Jackson at a book signing at Davis-Kidd bookstore. I immediately bought two of his books called "The Return", and eagerly awaited his visit. I have to admit that even though I am fifty-three years old, I was like a kid waiting for Christmas.
Nancy went with me, not so much because she wanted to meet Aldrin, but to share the experience with me. She knew it was a big thing to me and wanted to be there.
We were early in line, and it took only about ten to fifteen minutes to get to him. So many people who sign autographs have rather large egos to go with their fame, and will not even make eye contact with the "ordinary person". Not so with Buzz Aldrin. He took the book from his assistant and signed it. Then he looked up at me, said, "Thank you for coming" and extended his hand. I said, "It's an honor to meet you sir. Thank you." He did the same for everyone else in line. He is apparently a class act, and understands how "ordinary people" feel about meeting someone like him.
So, all you descendants out there, your great-great-whatever-granddad met and shook hands with a man who walked on the moon. I don't know what your world will be like and how hard you will be to impress, but I thought it was great.
June 8, 2008
In my youth, I was an avid follower of the space program. I knew all the astronauts' names, the missions they flew, and such. They were heroes to most adolescent boys in America, and I was no exception. I suppose I admired, (and still do) the sheer, unadulterated bravery displayed by anyone who would climb atop thousands of pounds of flammable rocket fuel and allow someone to ignite it.
The ultimate adventure in my opinion, then and now, was to go to the moon. It obviously followed that one of my goals would be to meet someone who had walked on the moon. When I set this goal, I did not think it likely attainable. The moon walkers have settled into regular society, and are not particularly deified at this point in time, and it was unlikely that one of them would have West Tennessee on his itinerary.
I placed this “bucket list” item on the back burner until I saw in the local newspaper that on June 4, 2000, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, was scheduled to appear in Jackson at a book signing at Davis-Kidd bookstore. I immediately bought two of his books called "The Return", and eagerly awaited his visit. I have to admit that even though I am fifty-three years old, I was like a kid waiting for Christmas.
Nancy went with me, not so much because she wanted to meet Aldrin, but to share the experience with me. She knew it was a big thing to me and wanted to be there.
We were early in line, and it took only about ten to fifteen minutes to get to him. So many people who sign autographs have rather large egos to go with their fame, and will not even make eye contact with the "ordinary person". Not so with Buzz Aldrin. He took the book from his assistant and signed it. Then he looked up at me, said, "Thank you for coming" and extended his hand. I said, "It's an honor to meet you sir. Thank you." He did the same for everyone else in line. He is apparently a class act, and understands how "ordinary people" feel about meeting someone like him.
So, all you descendants out there, your great-great-whatever-granddad met and shook hands with a man who walked on the moon. I don't know what your world will be like and how hard you will be to impress, but I thought it was great.
June 8, 2008
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Rebel Without a Clue
At some point in the life of an adult male, he is going to want either a motorcycle or a twenty-year-old girlfriend. After a brief discussion with my wife, during which she failed to express any rudiment of enthusiasm for either option, we decided that the motorcycle would be the less dangerous choice. My wife didn’t think I would make it to next Tuesday with a twenty-year-old girlfriend. In her view, the motorcycle didn’t get me much further into the week. Most wives understand that at some point in the marriage a man is going to develop a state of mind which will necessitate some careful guidance on her part. The goal is not to assist the man in navigating through this difficult time of life, but rather to prevent him from making a fool of himself.
The stage of life where a man’s thoughts turn to motorcycles is called “mid-life crisis”. Personally, I have been in my mid-life crisis for about twenty-eight years now, with no end in sight. Mid-life crisis is not to be confused with male menopause, which is characterized by an enlarged nose, saying “what?” when someone speaks to you , having to shave your ears and the top button of your pants not being buttoned. Just as a matter of clarification, neither mid-life crisis nor male menopause has anything at all to do with the fact that I have been tempted to place a Folger’s coffee can beside my bed at night. That is a totally separate matter.
I had successfully suppressed the urge to buy a motorcycle for the first twenty-six years of my mid-life crisis, but it was evident that I was weakening, so, one Wednesday afternoon my wife and I drove down to Finger to talk to a man who converts two-wheeled motorcycles to trikes. Trike is another word for a motorcycle with training wheels. Knowing how Harley Davidson owners scorn any non-Harley bike, I can only imagine how they feel about Honda trikes. Once my wife learned that motorcycles came with training wheels, she lovingly encouraged me in that direction. I don’t think she wanted me to die and leave her with a lot of paperwork.
Apparently, as long as I can keep an abundance of paperwork in my life, I have job security.
After a short drive down Highway 45, we arrived in Finger (pronounced Fanger) and turned into the gravel parking lot of the Finger Cycle Shop. It wasn’t hard to find since Finger has only one street and just the first three numbers of a zip code. Printed near the bottom of the Finger Cycle Shop sign were the words, “We trike your bike while you wait.” The proprietor of the shop saundered out to greet us. He was a stocky barrel-chested man with one tooth, named Hershel. Hershel was his name, not the name of the tooth. I can’t say that he had named any of his teeth, although Doyle Ray Scruggs named both of his back in junior high. Hershel looked like he had thoroughly enjoyed being at the top of the food chain. A package of Red Man chewing tobacco protruded from the pocket in the bib of his Big Smith overalls.
My wife and I sized up Hershel and decided that he might not know much about much, but judging from his tattoos and ponytail, we were confident that he knew more about motorcycles than we did. In reality our dog knew more about motorcycles than we did. My wife and I believed we were in good hands. I thought about breaking the ice with a hearty handshake and a boisterous “How ‘bout them Vols?” but we decided to cut to the chase and get our long list of stupid questions out of the way first. We thought that if we found any deal breakers, that would save us, as well as Hershel, a lot of time.
My first question had to do with his sign.
“You don’t really convert bikes while we wait, do you?”
“Sure do, but I reckon you might want to wait at home. It’s likely to take upwards of two weeks.” I liked Hershel already.
“Don’t you get wet when it rains?” I asked, moving on to serious inquiries.
“Yeah, but you dry off pretty fast, ‘specially if you crank ‘er up a bit,” he replied as he spat a long brown stream of Red Man juice.
Next question. “How do you keep from getting hot in all that leather in August?”
“You don’t. It’s hotter than blue blazes, but once you get so hot, it don’t matter no more.” Hershel was grinning. He was enjoying this.
“Do bugs fly into your mouth when you ride?” we asked next.
“Not if you keep your mouth shut”.
“What happens if an eighteen-wheeler hits you at seventy miles per hour?” I already knew the answer. My wife had posed that question along with the answer many times in the last twenty-eight years. I just wanted to see if she had been messing with me. She hadn’t.
“They’ll likely need a spatula to get you off the road.” Hershel answered, spitting out another stream of Red Man juice, just missing his sleeping hound. I wanted to ask if there are a lot of topless women at the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, but I didn’t think my wife would be interested in knowing that, so I let it go. Besides, it probably isn’t a good idea to show up in Sturgis on a Honda trike. I didn’t get this old by being stupid.
Hershel graciously offered me a ride on his trike and I immediately found out that getting on a three-wheeled motorcycle is not as easy as it looks. You can forget throwing the leg over unless you are over seven feet tall. I had to sort of back into the seat, which is really hard because my head doesn’t rotate all the way around anymore and my bifocals throw everything off when I try to look backward. After feeling around with my butt for a few seconds I finally got into position. During the process of mounting the trike, I heard Hershel emit a sound that reminded me of the death cry of a mortally wounded wombat. I have never actually heard the death cry of a mortally wounded wombat, and don’t even know if wombats have death cries, but I figure that if they did, that is probably what they sound like. I must have put my foot on some part of his motorcycle that wasn’t meant for feet. I decided that when it was time to get off the motorcycle I would remove my shoes, stand up on the seat and jump off. I did not want to hear that sound again.
Once I was in position, then came was the matter of the helmet. It felt relatively light when I was holding it in my hand, but when I put it on I was transformed into an aging yuppie bobblehead doll. If I got it balanced perfectly vertical and didn’t move, everything was fine. I was about to find out that holding still is totally impossible when riding down a bumpy country road at eighty miles per hour while screaming at the top of your lungs. Hershel got on in front of me and asked if I was ready. In truth, I was not, but I told him I was. I didn’t want to sound like a city boy who was on his first motorcycle ride. I wasn’t sure exactly how to hold on. I knew that putting my arms around Hershel’s mid-section was out of the question because if I died on a motorcycle, I wanted it to be from a wreck. Neither did it seem like grabbing his ponytail was appropriate. Fortunately, I located some handholds just in time for takeoff. I clasped the handgrips with all my strength and clinched the body of the motorcycle firmly between my knees. I was as ready as I would ever be.
I had never seen a vehicle go from zero to sixty in point-four seconds before. Beam me to the other end of the road, Scotty! Hershel was talking to me through a wireless headset in the helmet that sounded like the speaker at Sonic, where I think I am ordering a Route 44 grape slush and wind up with four cheeseburgers and a forty-pound bag of tater tots. I never understood a word he said and I think he must have had the same problem hearing me. For some reason, Hershel thought I wanted to see how fast the trike would go. Hershel dodged a pothole and negotiated at curve during which I’m sure at least two of our three wheels “caught air”. I made out the words, “highway” and “striped- (garbled) ape”, through the headset. Remembering the euphemism from my childhood, I was able to convey the concept of “no” to Hershel just in time to avoid total freakout.
I had managed to conjure in my brain a motorcycle fantasy that had absolutely no basis in reality. I had imagined myself gliding down the highway on a fire engine red bike accompanied by the soft purr of a finely tuned Honda engine with the wind wafting playfully through what is left of my hair like a gentle tropical breeze. I would be wearing a red jacket with the collar turned up like James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause”. The chicks would drool. There would be snow-capped mountains on one side of the road and a pristine mountain stream on the other. I would be engaged in serious guy conversations with my fellow bikers who would be riding along side me smiling and giving me thumbs up and victory signs.
What is it really like to ride a motorcycle? Imagine being strapped naked to the wing of a 747 during takeoff. I couldn’t tell, but I am reasonably sure that my face was contorting like those guys in centrifuges training to be F16 fighter pilots. I think my eyes got further apart. I spent most of the ride in survival mode, hanging on for dear life and making promises to God. I promised that if I ever got off that thing alive I would stop watching “Baywatch” reruns and become a missionary to the pygmies wherever the pygmies live.
When I dismounted, my legs were like jelly from squeezing the body of the trike as if I had been trying to break a wild stallion. My butt was sore, my eyes were burning, I couldn’t hear and I had a wedgie of Biblical proportions. When I removed the helmet, it made a sound like a brontosaurus pulling its foot out of the mud. My hair was sticking straight out on the sides like I had just removed my finger from a wall socket. I thanked Hershel for the ride, told him I would think about it, threw up in the shrubbery, and headed back to Medina much wiser and more content with my life. On the way home, I decided to accept my life as it is and abandon the foolish notion of regaining my youth by purchasing powerful machinery. My wife was visibly pleased with the outcome of the adventure. Perhaps she could put off all the paperwork for a while longer. When we got about a mile from home, a homemade ultra-lite aircraft flew over. That looks like fun, I thought. I didn’t say anything out loud though. I didn’t get to be this old by being stupid.
At some point in the life of an adult male, he is going to want either a motorcycle or a twenty-year-old girlfriend. After a brief discussion with my wife, during which she failed to express any rudiment of enthusiasm for either option, we decided that the motorcycle would be the less dangerous choice. My wife didn’t think I would make it to next Tuesday with a twenty-year-old girlfriend. In her view, the motorcycle didn’t get me much further into the week. Most wives understand that at some point in the marriage a man is going to develop a state of mind which will necessitate some careful guidance on her part. The goal is not to assist the man in navigating through this difficult time of life, but rather to prevent him from making a fool of himself.
The stage of life where a man’s thoughts turn to motorcycles is called “mid-life crisis”. Personally, I have been in my mid-life crisis for about twenty-eight years now, with no end in sight. Mid-life crisis is not to be confused with male menopause, which is characterized by an enlarged nose, saying “what?” when someone speaks to you , having to shave your ears and the top button of your pants not being buttoned. Just as a matter of clarification, neither mid-life crisis nor male menopause has anything at all to do with the fact that I have been tempted to place a Folger’s coffee can beside my bed at night. That is a totally separate matter.
I had successfully suppressed the urge to buy a motorcycle for the first twenty-six years of my mid-life crisis, but it was evident that I was weakening, so, one Wednesday afternoon my wife and I drove down to Finger to talk to a man who converts two-wheeled motorcycles to trikes. Trike is another word for a motorcycle with training wheels. Knowing how Harley Davidson owners scorn any non-Harley bike, I can only imagine how they feel about Honda trikes. Once my wife learned that motorcycles came with training wheels, she lovingly encouraged me in that direction. I don’t think she wanted me to die and leave her with a lot of paperwork.
Apparently, as long as I can keep an abundance of paperwork in my life, I have job security.
After a short drive down Highway 45, we arrived in Finger (pronounced Fanger) and turned into the gravel parking lot of the Finger Cycle Shop. It wasn’t hard to find since Finger has only one street and just the first three numbers of a zip code. Printed near the bottom of the Finger Cycle Shop sign were the words, “We trike your bike while you wait.” The proprietor of the shop saundered out to greet us. He was a stocky barrel-chested man with one tooth, named Hershel. Hershel was his name, not the name of the tooth. I can’t say that he had named any of his teeth, although Doyle Ray Scruggs named both of his back in junior high. Hershel looked like he had thoroughly enjoyed being at the top of the food chain. A package of Red Man chewing tobacco protruded from the pocket in the bib of his Big Smith overalls.
My wife and I sized up Hershel and decided that he might not know much about much, but judging from his tattoos and ponytail, we were confident that he knew more about motorcycles than we did. In reality our dog knew more about motorcycles than we did. My wife and I believed we were in good hands. I thought about breaking the ice with a hearty handshake and a boisterous “How ‘bout them Vols?” but we decided to cut to the chase and get our long list of stupid questions out of the way first. We thought that if we found any deal breakers, that would save us, as well as Hershel, a lot of time.
My first question had to do with his sign.
“You don’t really convert bikes while we wait, do you?”
“Sure do, but I reckon you might want to wait at home. It’s likely to take upwards of two weeks.” I liked Hershel already.
“Don’t you get wet when it rains?” I asked, moving on to serious inquiries.
“Yeah, but you dry off pretty fast, ‘specially if you crank ‘er up a bit,” he replied as he spat a long brown stream of Red Man juice.
Next question. “How do you keep from getting hot in all that leather in August?”
“You don’t. It’s hotter than blue blazes, but once you get so hot, it don’t matter no more.” Hershel was grinning. He was enjoying this.
“Do bugs fly into your mouth when you ride?” we asked next.
“Not if you keep your mouth shut”.
“What happens if an eighteen-wheeler hits you at seventy miles per hour?” I already knew the answer. My wife had posed that question along with the answer many times in the last twenty-eight years. I just wanted to see if she had been messing with me. She hadn’t.
“They’ll likely need a spatula to get you off the road.” Hershel answered, spitting out another stream of Red Man juice, just missing his sleeping hound. I wanted to ask if there are a lot of topless women at the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, but I didn’t think my wife would be interested in knowing that, so I let it go. Besides, it probably isn’t a good idea to show up in Sturgis on a Honda trike. I didn’t get this old by being stupid.
Hershel graciously offered me a ride on his trike and I immediately found out that getting on a three-wheeled motorcycle is not as easy as it looks. You can forget throwing the leg over unless you are over seven feet tall. I had to sort of back into the seat, which is really hard because my head doesn’t rotate all the way around anymore and my bifocals throw everything off when I try to look backward. After feeling around with my butt for a few seconds I finally got into position. During the process of mounting the trike, I heard Hershel emit a sound that reminded me of the death cry of a mortally wounded wombat. I have never actually heard the death cry of a mortally wounded wombat, and don’t even know if wombats have death cries, but I figure that if they did, that is probably what they sound like. I must have put my foot on some part of his motorcycle that wasn’t meant for feet. I decided that when it was time to get off the motorcycle I would remove my shoes, stand up on the seat and jump off. I did not want to hear that sound again.
Once I was in position, then came was the matter of the helmet. It felt relatively light when I was holding it in my hand, but when I put it on I was transformed into an aging yuppie bobblehead doll. If I got it balanced perfectly vertical and didn’t move, everything was fine. I was about to find out that holding still is totally impossible when riding down a bumpy country road at eighty miles per hour while screaming at the top of your lungs. Hershel got on in front of me and asked if I was ready. In truth, I was not, but I told him I was. I didn’t want to sound like a city boy who was on his first motorcycle ride. I wasn’t sure exactly how to hold on. I knew that putting my arms around Hershel’s mid-section was out of the question because if I died on a motorcycle, I wanted it to be from a wreck. Neither did it seem like grabbing his ponytail was appropriate. Fortunately, I located some handholds just in time for takeoff. I clasped the handgrips with all my strength and clinched the body of the motorcycle firmly between my knees. I was as ready as I would ever be.
I had never seen a vehicle go from zero to sixty in point-four seconds before. Beam me to the other end of the road, Scotty! Hershel was talking to me through a wireless headset in the helmet that sounded like the speaker at Sonic, where I think I am ordering a Route 44 grape slush and wind up with four cheeseburgers and a forty-pound bag of tater tots. I never understood a word he said and I think he must have had the same problem hearing me. For some reason, Hershel thought I wanted to see how fast the trike would go. Hershel dodged a pothole and negotiated at curve during which I’m sure at least two of our three wheels “caught air”. I made out the words, “highway” and “striped- (garbled) ape”, through the headset. Remembering the euphemism from my childhood, I was able to convey the concept of “no” to Hershel just in time to avoid total freakout.
I had managed to conjure in my brain a motorcycle fantasy that had absolutely no basis in reality. I had imagined myself gliding down the highway on a fire engine red bike accompanied by the soft purr of a finely tuned Honda engine with the wind wafting playfully through what is left of my hair like a gentle tropical breeze. I would be wearing a red jacket with the collar turned up like James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause”. The chicks would drool. There would be snow-capped mountains on one side of the road and a pristine mountain stream on the other. I would be engaged in serious guy conversations with my fellow bikers who would be riding along side me smiling and giving me thumbs up and victory signs.
What is it really like to ride a motorcycle? Imagine being strapped naked to the wing of a 747 during takeoff. I couldn’t tell, but I am reasonably sure that my face was contorting like those guys in centrifuges training to be F16 fighter pilots. I think my eyes got further apart. I spent most of the ride in survival mode, hanging on for dear life and making promises to God. I promised that if I ever got off that thing alive I would stop watching “Baywatch” reruns and become a missionary to the pygmies wherever the pygmies live.
When I dismounted, my legs were like jelly from squeezing the body of the trike as if I had been trying to break a wild stallion. My butt was sore, my eyes were burning, I couldn’t hear and I had a wedgie of Biblical proportions. When I removed the helmet, it made a sound like a brontosaurus pulling its foot out of the mud. My hair was sticking straight out on the sides like I had just removed my finger from a wall socket. I thanked Hershel for the ride, told him I would think about it, threw up in the shrubbery, and headed back to Medina much wiser and more content with my life. On the way home, I decided to accept my life as it is and abandon the foolish notion of regaining my youth by purchasing powerful machinery. My wife was visibly pleased with the outcome of the adventure. Perhaps she could put off all the paperwork for a while longer. When we got about a mile from home, a homemade ultra-lite aircraft flew over. That looks like fun, I thought. I didn’t say anything out loud though. I didn’t get to be this old by being stupid.
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