Musings of an Aging Yuppie

Eating Disorder

2011-11-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

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.

Remembering Earline

2011-09-19T18:50:00.001-07:00

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.

Meeting History

2011-01-17T12:08:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-16T12:22:00.000-08:00

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.

How Hard Could It Be?

2010-01-30T10:00:00.000-08:00

“You really should think about buying some new jeans.”, my wife told me a few days ago. That’s wife code for “ Your jeans make you look like you just got exhumed.”

“ Why? These still fit.” I argued.

“ They are wearing dark blue ones now. Yours are light blue. “ she said, in an apparent attempt to make the idea of shopping for clothes somewhat imperative.

“Who are ‘they’?” I asked.

“Well, you know…. normal people.” Well, that did it. Obviously, at the age of sixty-two, when I can’t remember to zip my pants until I feel a draft, I should become more concerned about peer pressure regarding my jeans.

I hate to shop for clothes. I have become quite inventive over the last few years in my efforts to avoid it completely. A couple of weeks ago I saw a photo of myself holding our older daughter at the age of approximately one year. ( Her, not me. ) The sport coat I was wearing in the photo is still in my closet. Shannon is thirty-two. After seeing the photo, I walked into my closet to try the sport coat on, and can you believe it had shrunk?! I guess if you keep clothes too long, they will shrink. I never knew that.

Anyway, back to the jeans. I agreed to drive to Jackson and look for some new jeans. I thought about asking my wife to go with me and help, but I figured “how hard could it be?” I drove by the mall, noticing Belk, Macy’s and Sears, but from looking at the storefronts I couldn’t tell whether there were any jeans inside or not, and not wanting to waste time, I decided to go to Walmart and look for a new watch instead. I still had the watch my parents gave me for high school graduation, and it told time just fine, but it was getting a little rusty, and green, hair-like fuzzy stuff was growing on the band, so I thought I would just upgrade to a watch that would look cool with the new jeans I was being tormented into buying.

I approached the watch counter and began looking at the array of choices. Honestly, they didn’t really look like watches. Well, some of them sort of looked like watches but most looked more like something Captain Kirk would hold up to his mouth and say “Beam me up, Scotty” into. One even had an antenna!

A young lady ( I think… it had an earring stuck through its eyebrow ) approached me saying, “May I help you sir?”

“Yes you may, young la…er…uh…. yes, you may.” I replied. “Are these watches?”
“Yes, they are.” He/she said, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a snicker.
“ Well, they don’t look like watches. Do they tell time?”

“Yes sir.” Another snicker. ( condescending little twirp )

“Well where are the hands? Does the thing TALK?” I asked, totally serious.

“I think it does talk but this isn’t my department. I’ll have to look at the instruction book.”

He/she pulled a piece of paper about one inch square out of the box and unfolded it to something the size of a roadmap. I began to look around for Allen Funt. This had to be Candid Camera.

After searching the instruction sheet for a language with which he/she was familiar, he/she finally informed me that the watch did not talk, but did have a chronograph, digital chronometer, chronophyle, stop watch, polygraph, hyper-link transponder and and wi-fi capabilities. It also took photographs, but not movies. I expressed concern about the lack of movie capabilities just to be a smarty, but she wasn’t fazed.

“Those are on aisle ten,” she replied and walked away, apparently returning to the Earring In Your Eyebrow Department. I decided my watch was just fine and returned to my car to give the mall another drive-by.

On the way there, I deduced that going home without a new pair of jeans would not be conducive to marital bliss. There was no use in avoiding the inevitable, so I elected to embrace the horror and actually pull into the mall parking lot and get out of the car. I tried Belk first. That’s where I bought my last jeans in 1987. I liked their selection then. Why try a risky new place?

I found the jeans department and was shocked to see that I had gone into the wrong store! Apparently, Goodwill had opened a new store in the mall. All the jeans had holes and shredded legs. Some even had holes in the seat. I could get the draft without forgetting to zip my pants! I thought times must really be hard. Usually, Goodwill won’t take jeans in this condition.

I was approached by another teenage creature of undetermined gender, this time with a rhinestone stud stuck through its tongue.

“May I help you, thir?” The tongue stud must have been new.

“Yes, I must have come into the wrong store. I’m looking for the jeans department at Belk. They had a nice selection of jeans there in 1987,” I said, pointing to mine.

“Thith ith Belk, thir, and theth are the jeanth.”

“OK, but I’m looking for the new, unused jeans. These must have been involved in an airplane crash or fell into one of your blenders in the appliance department.

“Theth ARE new, thir. Thith ith what they are wearing now.” he/she explained. I wondered if it was referring to the same “they” that my wife had mentioned earlier. The same “they” that a couple of hours ago were wearing dark blue jeans. No, probably a different “they”.

“Well, thanks anyway, “ I said. “ I need some that I could actually wear in public. My dad would have thrown these in the gully behind the house long ago,” I retorted and walked back to my car.

I had come to Jackson to spend some money and by golly, I wasn’t going home empty handed. I had been hearing about those new cell phones and I decided to go by a cell phone store and get me one.

“How hard could it be?” I thought.

Domestic Gods

2009-06-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

Some things that should be very easy are actually quite difficult for men. If it isn’t difficult, we will expend huge amounts of energy making sure that it becomes difficult. Housekeeping for instance is reasonably straight forward. If it’s dirty, clean it and if it’s in the wrong place, put it where it belongs. If it’s raw, cook it. Simple, right? No, men can take the simple and turn it into the impossible and not even know they are doing it.

My best friend in high school and I both decided to become optometrists. The local optometrist seemed to have a good life. He worked warm in the winter, cool in the summer and he was dry when it rained. He appeared to make a decent living that provided the amenities that make life fun, like eating every day. At eighteen, my needs were simple. I wanted to have a lot of stuff without having to perspire to get it, so optometry seemed the perfect profession. Besides, people called you “doctor”, and that had to impress the girls.

So, in the fall of 1967 off we went to Memphis to attend Southern College of Optometry. We rented a two-bedroom apartment on South Willett that housed mostly medical and dental students. It cost $62.50 a month and we split that. Ah, the good old days. Of course, we lacked about fifty dollars having any money at all, so it all comes down to perspective in the end.

My mother had stored some old dishes in the attic and secured us an ample supply to take with us to Memphis. This was really funny, because neither of us knew anything about cooking. We could open a can, pour the contents into a pot and set it on a stove eye. When we saw smoke we assumed it was done. That was about it. Needless to say, she didn’t pack a lot of measuring cups, mixers or cooking thermometers. Our kitchen inventory consisted mostly of glasses, plates, bowls and eating utensils. She sent a can of something called "Pam" with us, but we tried spraying it on several foods and it tasted awful! Mom also threw in an iron skillet hoping that one of us would want to experiment with actually cooking something. We tried it once. We fried some pork chops ( this was before I learned they will kill you ). We took turns scraping the burned residue of the bottom of the skillet for the next three days. Apparently, you are supposed to spray something on the bottom of the skillet before you cook anything in it. Looking back, we should have tried spraying that awful tasting "Pam"on the skillet. It surely wasn't good for anything else. Anyway, we had learned our lesson, and the skillet stayed on the top shelf in the cupboard until we found it when we moved.

The first time I went home, I told my mother that we needed more dishes. She looked a little puzzled, but she went back to the attic and found more dishes for us. I had been reasonably responsible during my growing years, ( well, except for the summer of ’63 ) so she knew that if I said I needed more dishes, she should find more dishes. When she and Dad came for their first visit to our apartment she learned why we needed more dishes. We were washing them on Saturday. As long as we had a clean dish, we didn’t see any reason to wash more. Conveniently, we always seemed to run out about Saturday when we had time to wash them. We had grown accustomed to the smell of milk souring, and the moldy things in the bottoms of the cereal bowls became like household pets. One weekend, we got really busy and had to skip the Saturday dish washing. The mold had time to evolve to the point that they took on individual personalities. We felt like we should name them. I don’t really think mold evolves. I just thought that sentence was kind of funny. Maybe they do though. Who knows what mold does when we’re not watching them? Anyway, my mom seemed to think that our Saturday dish washing was a bad idea and I recall her mentioning something about a plague. We told her that we would do better and asked if she, by chance, had brought any more dishes.

Actually, we did experiment with several different food procurement methods over the next three years. There was a cheese-like food that came in an aerosol can that you could spray directly into your mouth without creating any dirty dishes to lie around until Saturday. We found it to lack a certain dining ambiance, but it couldn’t be beaten for convenience. Of course you had to pre-chew the crackers and have some Hi-C grape drink handy to chase it down, because it was a bit on the gummy side just on its own.

After a full year of Hi-C grape drink, we decided that making tea couldn’t be that hard. We figured you just put a tea bag in a pot of water and boil it a while until tea happened. It tasted like pond water, and the tea bag would usually disintegrate in the boiling water and we had all these little tea granules and tea bag parts in our pond water. We didn’t know how to solve the problem, but we knew it wasn’t right. We gave up and decided to live on soft drinks.

After two years of spraying cheese-like food into our mouths, we decided that we should experiment with the oven. We swept out the cob webs with a broom, ( of course we had a broom. Do you think we were Neanderthals? ) and put in two chicken pot pies. After about three weeks of chicken pot pies, we learned that if we left them in the little tin pans that came with them, they would hold together better and we wouldn’t have chicken parts and little mini-carrots all over the bottom of the oven to clean up on Saturday. And Mom thought we might not do well on our own! Ha!

25 More Things about Me

2009-02-27T14:37:00.000-08:00

1. I don’t like to make small talk in groups of casual acquaintances. “How’s the
wife and kids?” “Where are you working now?” “How ‘bout them Vols?” I
much prefer to have one-on-one discussions about them Vols.

2. I once saw Elvis in concert for $12.50. I am an expert on how Elvis looked from
the back.

3. I learned I could draw pencil portraits at the age of 53. I expect to learn that I
can play piano just any day now.

4. My life hasn’t really been much different no matter who was president. I think
that is about to change.

5. I once played the rabbi in “Fiddler on the Roof” on stage. Now I can look old
without the makeup.

6. I listened to a lot of southern gospel music as a teenager. I listened to albums
recorded by The Messengers ( my cousin sang with them ). I was in awe of
Tommy Bray, the bass singer. Now I sing in a “revival version” of The
Messengers with Tommy Bray whom I once “idolized”. Pretty cool.

7. I was a clinical instructor and lecturer at Southern College of Optometry before
I decided to go into private practice. Turns out there was no money in THAT
either.

8. I once avoided a mugging in Memphis by bluffing the would-be mugger. I was
young and stupid. Now, I’m old and stupid. I would just give him the money.

9. I have gotten three speeding tickets in my life and deserved every one. I tried to
talk my way out of one of them by claiming I had to go to the bathroom, but it
didn’t fly.

10. Initially, I moved to Alabama to go into practice with a college friend. It wasn’t
home and I hated their football team.

11. I am very annoyed by people who let their ideologies cloud their ability to see
truth. I, of course, would never let that happen to me.

12. I have been on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. I have no
desire to go to Antarctica.

13. Other than my friends and family, I couldn’t care less what anyone thinks about
me. That is a great place to come to. Very liberating.

14. I don’t like flying. I’ll do it when I have to, but I don’t like it. I think it has
something to do with flying 600 mph at 25,000 feet in a machine built by the
lowest bidder.

15. When it comes to protecting my family and close friends from physical harm,
I’m not afraid of anything that walks.

16. I have over 15,000 names in a genealogy file on my computer. My ggggmother
was scalped by the Cherokees and lived. I guess I got my baldness from her.

17. I have recurring dreams about being ready for a David Johnson Chorus
concert and I have forgotten my tux. That has never actually happened, but
I expect it at any time.

18. I once bowled 279. A nine-pin spare in one frame….the rest strikes. My bowling
partner that day ( a friend home from college ) bowled his highest game ever at
the same time. (255). That was the first and last “zone” I was ever in.

19. I once sang “Love Me Tender” at a karaoke party and a friend accused me of
lip-syncing. I wasn’t. Really!

20. I have been inside the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid of Cheops. One of
my best days.

21. I am very tolerant of those who have opinions that differ from mine, unless of
course they are idiots.

22. In college I was a very good ping pong player. Only one person in the whole
school could beat me consistently. He wasn’t really better than me. He just
had the ability to get inside my head. I’ve slowed a bit, but still give can make
the young’uns work up a sweat.

23. I was dating a multi-millionaire’s only daughter when I met my future wife. I
have no regrets, but I have to admit that never ever having to work would have
had it’s advantages.

24. I have seen sunrise on the Matterhorn, but Nancy had to wake me up and
make me look.

25. I believe that I have been privileged to grow up and live in the most exciting
century that has ever been, in the best country that has ever been. Every age I
have experienced has been my best age. I have had a roof over my head, and
plenty to eat. I have a wonderful family and great friends. I consider myself
very fortunate.

Grocery Shopping For Dummies

2009-02-18T15:58:00.000-08:00

I was seventeen when my dad went back into the grocery business, and I didn’t share his interest in growing the business. My primary goal in 1964 was to hang out with my friends as much as possible, and to see if I could get Mary Beth Rogers, or any other girl for that matter, to like me. However, with total disregard for my wishes, my dad put me to work. I was checker, sacker, bookkeeper, stock boy, delivery boy, janitor and butcher. I could cut up a chicken in 29 seconds flat, and you could still recognize some of the pieces.

After seven years of twelve-hour Saturdays and working until 7:00PM after school during the week, I had learned more about the grocery business than I ever wanted to know. In 1971, Dad sold the business again, and over the next thirty-seven years I didn’t enter a grocery store unless it was an absolute necessity.

Soon after my marriage in 1973 it became apparent to my wife that I needed to stay out of the kitchen as much as possible. I think it was the burned jello that put her over the edge. We decided that I would be responsible for procuring money for food and that she would select and cook it. I was also placed in charge of food disposal; a task that came naturally for me. To assuage my guilty conscience, I would often help with cleanup,and I would occasionally be in charge of my own meal which usually consisted of nuking a frozen Twinkie in the microwave, but that was about it. I soon learned how many times I had to press “fresh muffin or roll” to heat whatever I wanted at the time. For example, you had to press “fresh muffin or roll” 27 times to warm a plate of left-over spaghetti. I never quite figured out all the other settings and options. If Nancy had allowed me in the kitchen more often, I think I could have become more proficient with the microwave. But why be bitter after all this time?

Having never being adept at leaving well enough alone, after 35 years of marriage I decided to try something new. A few days ago, I was planning a run to Walmart, and noticed a short grocery list on the fridge. Hum…. this would be a great way to earn some brownie points, I thought. I looked over the list; apples, cottage cheese, ground beef, and Rice Krispies. I thought, how hard could it be? I’ll just knock off this list while I’m at Walmart and she will praise me from the rooftops!

I strode confidently into the produce section feeling fully in charge considering the depth of my experience in the grocery business. In Dad’s store, we had apples, oranges, bananas, and lemons. That seemed to be enough choices for his customers. At Walmart, the produce section was larger than Dad’s whole store. There was a display about twenty feet long of just apples! Red Delicious, Yellow Delicious, Granny Smith, Jonagold. The list went on and on. I called Nancy’s cell phone.

“What kind of apples do you want and how many? They have more than one kind of apple here." I said.
“ You aren’t trying to buy groceries, are you?” she said with not a small amount of alarm in her voice.
“Well, yes, I thought I would pick up your list since I was here anyway.”
“Well, get a dozen Jonagolds and go home!” She hung up.

I got the Jonagolds, and stopped to puzzle over some kind of fruit called a “kiwi”. I had never seen one before and decided that it had to be the result of someone’s failed attempt to genetically engineer an edible tennis ball. I wondered if there might be more kiwis in the sporting goods department…. cross-marketing, you know. Undaunted and feeling rather smug over my successful purchase of Jonagold apples, with only one “assist”, I continued to the dairy case.

Next on the list was cottage cheese. What is the deal here?! There was low-fat, no-fat, regular fat, 4% milk-fat, too much fat, small curd, large curd, medium curd and organic. And that was just one brand! I called Nancy’s cell phone.

“What kind of cottage cheese do you want?”
“ I thought I told you to go home.” she said.
“ I’m just trying to help,” I said in the most pitiful voice I could muster.
“ Eight-ounce, small curd, low-fat,” she replied. ( How does she KNOW this stuff??) “Now go home, and I mean it this time.”

I picked up the eight-ounce, small curd, low-fat cottage cheese and proceeded to the cereal aisle. After locating the Rice Krispies, I immediately collared a clerk.

“These prices are mismarked,” I said. “The decimal is in the wrong place. This cereal is marked $3.90. It should be thirty-nine cents”. He looked at me as if I had just asked him to explain the Rieman zeta function in theoretical mathematics.

“The price is correct, sir.” he said after collecting his wits. My dad was "sir" but I didn't get into that.

“No. it can’t be. In my dad’s store in 1969 all cereals were thirty-nine cents except Special K that no one but the rich customers ever bought because it was forty-nine cents,” I explained to the young upstart who obviously had a thing or two to learn about the grocery business.

I decided to give Nancy a call and ask if she had ever had any trouble with improperly marked cereals. Without getting into details of the conversation, let’s just say that I went home without the ground beef.

The contents of this blog are copyrighted and may not be used or published without consent of the author.

25 Random Facts About Me

2009-02-03T20:11:00.000-08:00

1. I don’t like to discuss my favorite color, what my sign is, or what you had for lunch.

2. I don’t plan to wear clothes anymore after I am put in a nursing home.

3. I can’t sit and do nothing very long. (Unless the Vols are playing)

4. If I see a cashew…..it’s history.

5. I look really good in pink shirts.

6. I once worked in a library, and in the auto parts department at Sears.

7. I believe that there has been no good rock music since 1972.

8. I get really mad about every 15-20 years.

9. I’m still coming to terms with the death of Elvis.

10. I rarely remember my dreams.

11. I don’t make a good first impression. I have to grow on you.

12. I am insanely loyal to my friends.

13. I regret all the time I wasted doing what I thought was important.

14. If I could live my life again, I would learn to play one sport really, really well.

15. I appear quiet and reserved, but I am really a ham at heart; a fact that surprises many.

16. I survived a fall while hiking in the Smokies at age 16 that should have killed me.

17. I seriously don’t mind being bald.

18. I hate to prepare food in all its forms, but I don’t mind eating it.

19. I like to go out on the deck at night and smile for satellite photos.

20. I have a tattoo on my &%$#.

21. I wasted the first 25 years of my life taking myself too seriously.

22. I will take way too many dares.

23. I’m an independent, but I’ve never voted for a Democrat for president.

24. My family and friends are my most valued possessions.

25. People often mistake me for some person I’ve never heard of

You Want Me to Fix WHAT?!

2009-01-27T17:59:00.000-08:00

Once in a while it has to happen. That feeling comes over you, and for some reason, you begin to believe that you can fix all those broken things around the house. This happened to me last Wednesday.

It started innocently enough. My wife announced that the camera no longer flashed. I tried to point out that this was a positive development since there would no longer be those annoying red dots where the subject’s pupils were supposed to be. My ploy failed to deter my wife, however, who continued to insist that the camera should flash. I shuffled to the drawer where the camera is kept. My mind was racing. What if I can’t fix it? I’ll look like an idiot!

When I turned the camera on, it looked as if the camera repair gods were smiling on me. The little battery thing was blinking. You know how they put those little icons on everything these days so you don’t have to read? My razor-sharp, analytical mind immediately assessed the blinking icon, and determined that the battery was in its death throes. What a break! I’m going to fix this thing and my wife is going to think I’m terrific! My good fortune continued. I actually had new batteries! I installed the new batteries, and strolled back into the den and flashed the camera in my wife’s eyes to dramatically demonstrate that I had successfully completed my mission. To my dismay, she was not impressed.

At it is so often in life, my success was followed not by critical acclaim, but by another challenge even greater than the previous one. When my wife’s vision returned, she informed me that since I was so smart I should save her the trouble and expense of taking in the vacuum cleaner for repair.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, with my index finger placed thoughtfully on the side of my chin, and a cogitative frown on my face.

“When I turn it on, nothing happens,” she replied.

“Hum. I see. Could be a problem somewhere,” I said as if I had just solved the problem of perpetual motion.

“Fix it.” She said with a look that would stop an advancing glacier.

Again, Lady Luck was in my corner. When I removed the plug from the cord one of those little prongs came off in my hand.
“I bet that’s supposed to be attached,” I thought.
I connected the wire to the loose prong, reassembled the plug, and Behold! The vacuum cleaner worked! By now my wife was beginning to marvel at my unprecedented luck, and I was beginning to think I could disassemble a space shuttle and put it back together again.

Nothing gets you in trouble like a little success. I decided that since I was obviously on a roll, I should tackle the riding lawn mower. The oil had not been changed since the Carter administration, so I surmised that an oil change would be a good place to start.

After staring at the mower for a few minutes while eating a grape popsicle, (which usually works) I decided to locate the owner’s manual. After a frantic search lasting roughly half an hour, I was surprised to find that I had wisely filed it in the file cabinet under “owner’s manuals”. I turned to the chapter called “How to Change the Oil”. The first instruction was “remove the cutting deck (page 45)”. Page 45 began six pages of instructions on how to remove the 250-pound cutting deck. Step one was “start early in the day”. This is not encouraging, I thought.

Undaunted, and believing that I could do anything, I confidently began to follow the steps for removing the cutting deck, certain that someone would be around to help me lift the thing if I did actually get it off. Did you know there was such a thing as metric bolts? I didn’t either. Not to be outdone, I drove to Lowe’s and bought a cheap 40-piece metric rachet set, which I sat on the mower seat. Which I promptly raised to get a better look at the insides of the mower. Do you know how long it takes to pick up forty metric sockets out of the grass and place them in order in a rachet set case? About fifteen minutes.

After stripping the first three metric bolts with my brand new 40-piece metric rachet set, I decided that there must be a better way to change the oil without removing the cutting deck. After staring alternately at the mower and the drawing in the Owner’s Manual demonstrating the location of the oil drain for about ten minutes (approximately one more grape popsicle) I decided to call the store which sold me the mower and ask them which bolt opened the oil drain. Their description was no more helpful than the Owner’s Manual. Not to be outdone, (I can fix anything now, remember?) I drove over to the store to have the man show me the oil drain. It was mildly encouraging to note that he didn’t seem to know where it was either. After a while, we located the bolt that he thought drained the oil, and I returned home ready to show this mower who was in charge.

I place the 40-piece rachet set on the seat of the mower, which I then raised to get a better…..just kidding.

After a lengthly series of unnatural and moderately painful contortions through and around the 250-pound cutting deck, I managed to get one of my sockets over the drain bolt. Giving it a few twists, I was soon rewarded with a trickle of oil down my arm. Then it occurred to me. Maybe I should catch this in something. Especially since I am in the carport. Do you know how many Parkay butter dishes you can fill with the oil from a riding lawn mower? About seven. Do you know where you are supposed to put the oil once you catch it? Neither do I.

I trudged back into the house looking much like Ashley Wilkes dragging himself up the road to Twelve Oaks after the war. I was battered, yet I survived. It was then that my wife notified me that there was a squeak in the bedroom floor.

“Fix it!” I said, with a look that could stop an advancing glacier.

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Tattooed to a "T"

2009-01-27T17:49:00.000-08:00

I really didn’t mean to do it. It just sort of happened. My long-time friend, Pam, started it. During a meeting of the class reunion committee last fall, Pam mentioned that she had a couple of tattoos. She didn’t say where they were, and since I had known Pam for over fifty years, l had the good sense not to ask.

I guess that’s what got me to thinking. What should I do to celebrate my retirement? I had to be so straight-laced all those years or at least thought I had to be. It was time to branch out and do something off the wall. Since going to prison has never been very high on my list of “Things I Want To Do Before I Die”, I decided to keep it legal. That caveat did, however, narrow my options considerably.

Hence the tattoo. They are legal, affordable, readily available, and from what I could learn, not terribly painful unless you decide to have one burned into your eyelids. In reality, “burned” is not the word. Actually, ink is injected into the skin with tiny needles that the tattoo-ee hopes have been sterilized.

After a full day of intensive research which consisted of calling Pam and asking a few questions, I decided to proceed with my plan to permanently disfigure my body. The first plan of action was to decide which emblem, word, or insignia I wanted to employ to provide amusement for my eventual embalmer. I considered the word “MOM” with a bolt of lightning through it, but that had already been done. A butterfly would have put me too close in touch with my feminine side. I also considered the Chinese symbol for “music”, but my innate distrust of tattoo artists led me to think that someone with a sense of humor could give me a Chinese symbol that implied that I like to kiss chickens on the lips while howling at the moon, and I wouldn’t have known the difference.

I finally decided on a University of Tennessee Vols logo. I have been a Vols fan for years and I figured the worst that could happen was that they could go 0-12 and I would have to get it reddened into a University of Texas logo.

The next decision involved where to put it. The largest wide open space on my body, unfortunately, was my stomach, but that didn’t seem quite right. I was concerned that subsequent expansion would render the “T” so distorted as to be unrecognizable, especially around the holiday season. The chest was considered, but there are four chest hairs there that I have no intention of giving up. I wanted it in a place where I could see it, but the rest of the world couldn’t unless they had my permission. Ultimately, I decided upon the second largest wide open space available. My right bun.

The final hurdle to cross was to find a tattooist. More research revealed that most of my friends who had tattoos got them while they were drunk in Destin. That didn’t help me since I had no intention of either getting drunk or going to Florida anytime soon. It also came to my attention that most of the tattoo artists in West Tennessee operate out of condemned buildings. At best, I perceived serious sterility issues.

The problem was finally resolved when I remembered that my niece, who lived in Nashville, had two. I called to ask who did her’s and was told of a very skilled and reputable artist there. One Saturday in January, I decided to go to Nashville and get the tattoo.

My niece, Paula, had to work that Saturday, but her friend Samantha wanted to go with me. She was also thinking about getting a tattoo and wanted to see how much I screamed. The knowledge that I was having it put on my right bun didn’t seem to discourage her, so I figured “what the heck”, and agreed to let her watch the process.

When I entered the shop and spoke to the man at the front desk, I was faced with another important decision. Which artist did I want? I asked who was available, as if I would know either of them, and was given the choice of either Psycho or Fred. Not being a total idiot, I chose Fred. I plunked down two twenty-dollar bills and Fred left to prepare the instruments. Samantha followed me into the room and I am told ( by Fred ) to lower my pants and have a seat on the table with my back to him and Samantha. Next thing I know, Samantha is taking pictures with her camera phone. I asked her to at least wait until the tattooing started.

Bottom line, (sorry ) I was happy with the quality of Fred’s work and the pain was much like listening to opera. It’s something I can tolerate if I have to, but I’m kinda glad when its over. I had the tattoo placed high enough that I don’t have to incense anyone who wants to see it, but low enough that the preacher’s wife probably won’t get a peek. I have made available a Baptist Viewing and a Methodist Viewing, but I won’t get into that.

Now I have to celebrate turning 60. God help us all.

The content of this is copyrighted and may not be reprinted or used without consent of the author.

What To Do With Yourself

2009-01-27T17:39:00.000-08:00

There’s something about a zero on the end of your age that gets you to thinking. Forty is that transition into middle age. At fifty you get invited to join AARP whether you want to or not. At sixty, your former classmates start showing up in the obituaries. From “natural causes”. That’s another way of saying “they got old and died of something.”

A human being is the only living entity on the planet that knows it’s going to die. This can be a blessing as well as a curse. In keeping with my life-long habit of gravitating toward the worst-case scenario, I tend to regard knowledge of my own eventual demise as a curse. I really would rather not know.

“Not being” anymore is not what bothers me. I figure sooner or later I will get old, sick, deaf, blind and bored and happily totter off to the next phase. What bothers me is how I’m going to spend eternity. No, not my soul….my body.

There are basically three choices available when disposing of a body which is no longer needed. Burial, cremation, and donation to science with eventual burial or cremation. I would be much more comfortable if there were more options available. I have serious issues with all three methods.

It’s easy to generate grandiose delusions about donating one’s body to science. One envisions an elderly professor at Johns Hopkins dressed in a long white coat delicately folding back the skin of one’s abdomen to point out all the organs and related structures to a gallery of serious-minded medical students who will be staring with inquisitive and serious gazes while at the same time taking copious notes. They would all be thinking, of course, how great this man was to donate his remains so that they could learn how to save the lives of others.

On the other hand, it is equally easy to generate more realistic portraits in the mind. Unfortunately, one is not given choices as to how one’s body will be used by “science”. Once you sign on the dotted line, all bets are off and the rules are subject to change.

One could be used to investigate the magnitude of damage done to a human groin by a .45 caliber hollow-point slug, or one could be used to determine what happens when a semi-trailor truck hits a Yugo. I can answer that one without using a cadaver. Somehow, the uncertainty of the level of indignity I could experience in the corridors of “science” makes me look at that method of body disposal with a bit of reluctance. I just can’t get past the idea that some red-neck medical student in Alabama might take my spleen home that evening as a doggy treat for Ole Rusty.

Burial has its own set of problems. I have never found the idea of lying in a hole in the ground, gradually decomposing over the next few years very appealing. They say they have air-tight and water-tight caskets, and they can add (for an additional charge of course) concrete vaults for the casket. That’s all a bunch of bullwinkie. You go in the ground… the buffet is open. Period. There is also the likelihood that you will be dug up someday by a bull dozer operator clearing land for a new Walmart. And there you are…on the six o’clock news making half the city say “ Oh yuck!” over their Hamburger Helper. Seems to me, burial is just a good living for the mortician.

Cremation sounds up front like a much less messy way of dealing with remains. All that is left from cremation is about ten pounds of ashes. They are considered sterile by federal and state governments, and can be spread pretty much wherever one wants to spread them, except maybe over pizza. There has even been a cute little word coined to describe the ashes. They are called cremains. Unfortunately, the way a body gets from its worldly state to ashes is anything but neat, so I am having trouble with that method of disposal as well.

I have given serious consideration to being stuffed, but no one seems to take me seriously, and there is a very good chance that would be illegal. I can see myself dressed in a little red jockey suit positioned out by the mailbox. I could be dressed in a Santa suit for Christmas and a bunny costume for Easter. The possibilities are endless. People would drive by my house every few days just “ to see what Jim is this week”. Of course, the downside would be roosting birds and the occasional dog marking my right leg as “his”.

Lately, I have found the idea of composting very appealing. Apparently, this method of body disposal is being considered in Sweden. So, if I am lucky (?) enough to die in Sweden, I might give it a try. Basically, as I understand the procedure, one is freeze-dried, and then hit over the head with a hammer of some kind. This results in being broken into a gazillion little pieces. Actually, I figure the procedure is a little more complicated than I have described here, but for the sake of brevity, that is basically what they do. Then the small pieces are scattered under a tree or other living plant of the deceased’s choice. Thereby, Uncle Joe becomes part of the tree, so to speak, and in a sense “lives on” since his molecules are eventually absorbed into the tree. Of course, the problem of a dog marking you as “his” is still an issue, and one must overcome the stigma of becoming a doggy bathroom if one chooses this method of disposal.

Fortunately for those of us who have serious issues with society’s standard methods of getting dead bodies out of the way, there is another method being studied in … you guessed it .. Sweden. You gotta love those Swedes.

I don’t remember what it’s called but I call it the Final Flush. Again, there is a very complex series of steps which render the body disposable, but again, in the interest of brevity I will cut to the chase. They place the cadaver in a vat of very toxic substances like lye or acetone, or maybe a diet soft drink. I am just picking those out of the air because they sound toxic. I have no idea what substances they really use. That would require research and frankly, I don’t want to take the time.

After an appropriate length of time, the body is liquefied and the resulting material can be simply flushed down the drain. Again, in keeping with my propensity to always find the down side of any issue, I must admit that I have serious safety concerns about the water table. Using the kitchen sink sounds a bit over the edge, and flushing someone down the toilet has certain negative connotations as well. Otherwise, not a bad idea. No muss, no fuss. I can even envision Do It Yourself Kits. “Say kids! Flush Aunt Mildred down the toilet in the privacy of your own home. Four easy payments of $19.95 plus shipping and handling.”

The end result of this mental exercise it to recognize that there are few good ways to die and even fewer good ways to be put away. As for now, I choose stuffing. At least I will still able to provide a little final amusement for my friends. All I ask is that my taxidermist go easy with the turkey baster.

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Say What?!

2009-01-27T17:20:00.000-08:00

OK. Maybe it’s just me, but I find this amusing. I’m browsing through the local newspaper and there it is. “Cow Patty Contest Slated”.

Now, this conjures up old memories of when I used to go to Kentucky as a kid to visit my country cousins. We would play baseball in the cow pasture and use dried cow patties for bases. It took quite a while to get started because we had to find four sufficiently dry cow patties lying roughly in the shape of a diamond, since no one wished to move any of them. The largest one would always be “home”. Inevitably, someone, usually my cousin Max, would accidentally slide into a cow patty that was fresh. Obviously this would end poor Max’s participation in the game by unanimous consensus.

My first reaction to the Cow Patty Contest announcement was to assume that the editor needed a short filler and was having a little fun at our expense. As I began to read the announcement, however, I came to believe that someone out there was serious about this, and that the contest would come off as threatened. My second reaction was almost endless string of questions. How will the contest be judged? Top producer? Largest patty? Will cows be provided, or will we have to bring our own cow? Will anyone show up to watch? What kind of trophy will be awarded? Do cows have trophy cases?

As I read the announcement, one by one, my questions were mercilessly answered. A pasture would be marked off into squares and the squares would be sold for one dollar each. The cow contestants would be marched onto the field and patty production would begin. I suppose someone would give a signal? After a specified amount of time elapsed, the owner of the square with the most patty by weight would be declared the winner. I don't even want to THINK about the weighing process! I suppose the winner would then pay an enormous sum of money to the contest sponsor to NOT have his name printed in the newspaper. Then second place would be awarded to the owner of the square fouled by the second largest deposit, who would also pay an enormous sum of money not to have his name printed in the newspaper either. This would result in an unbelievably successful fund raiser for the Society to Promote Silly Cow Contests.

I was pleased to discover that cows were provided. When you think about it, this is logical. Can you imagine the potential for abuse if one were allowed to bring one’s own cow? Anyone wishing to cheat could have his cow primed and ready to go.

I resisted the temptation to observe the contest. I have a family to think about. I never heard who won, but I will bet the spectators didn’t rush out on the field to congratulate the winner.

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Gene Autry Meets the ACLU

2009-01-27T17:08:00.000-08:00

Gene Autry bursts into the old abandoned mine and immediately begins pummeling the bad guys into submission. Smiley Burnett, the obligatory bumbling sidekick, who hangs out with Gene for no apparent reason, stands to the side and acts as cheerleader for Gene while making wildly exaggerated swings at the air with his fists. One of the bad guys reaches for his gun and is unceremoniously outdrawn by Gene and shot on the spot. The others who have been humiliated by Gene’s fists quickly flee and ride off down the dusty trail. Smiley adjusts his hat, allows that he don’t reckon they’ll see that bunch of scalawags around these parts no more, pulls out a harmonica, and begins playing “Oh, Susannah”. Gene and Smiley receive a hero’s welcome from the townfolk upon their return for finally running the James Gang out of town.

Now for the 21st Century version.

The fleeing bad guys ride straight to the office of the local ACLU and tell their story. The four bad guys had just robbed a bank and had gone into the old abandoned mine to rest when two maniacs entered the mine and began committing mayhem. All had been assaulted and one was dead. One of the assailants rode a horse with silver buckles and rhinestones on the saddle, and was dressed in custom-fitted, wrinkle-free cowboy clothes with tassels, fringe, and more rhinestones. The other was overweight, wore a vacuous smile, and his hat turned up in the front. This unlikely pair is hard to miss, and they are quickly located by local authorities and arrested. The trial begins with Gene on the witness stand.

“Mr. Autry, please tell the jury where you work.”

“Well, I go around the countryside catching crooks and cattle rustlers and the like.”

“No, I mean how do you make a living for your family?”

“Living? Family?” “I just go around helping folks and doing good stuff. I don’t know anything about a family.”

“ Who pays you for helping folks and doing good stuff?”

“ Nobody pays me. I do it ‘cause it’s the right thing to do and I like it. I usually get free drinks when I ride back into town. Does that count?”

“No, that doesn't count. Where do you live?”

“Well, me and Smiley here got these bedrolls, and we just drop 'em down whenever we get tired.”

“So I guess we can say you are homeless and unemployed? Tell me. What law enforce-
ment agency do you work for? By what authority did you enter this mine and commit acts
violence on these men who were simply trying to rest?”

“They robbed a dadgum bank! I don’t have to have a badge to go after bank robbers. Been doing it for years.”

“Mr. Autry. The fact that these gentlemen robbed a bank is irrelevant to this case! I am
sure I can assume that you had no search warrant or warrant for their arrest.”

“Look, see my white hat? Those guys wear black hats. I don’t see the problem. It’s all pretty obvious to me.”

At this point, Gene breaks into a nasal rendition of “Melody Ranch” and has to be removed from the witness stand by the bailiff. Smiley, disappointed that he can’t join Gene in the song, puts his harmonica back in his pocket and sulks. The lawyer for the ACLU approaches the jury box and begins his final argument.

“As you can plainly see, my clients, the James Gang, have had their Civil Rights trampled by this man who, with no warrant or authority, blatantly burst into their hideou...... I mean resting place, and brutally attacked them. By killing the leader, and maiming three others, he has made it all but impossible for these men to continue in their chosen profession. Their lives have been forever scarred by this senseless act of violence.”

“Lets look for a moment at Gene Autry the man. He, by his own admission, has no visible means of support, and has no permanent residence. He has no badge of authority and appears to take matters of law into his own hands without thoughts of the consequences. In short he is a homeless vigilante. Besides, he dresses funny.”

“As for his sidekick, Mr. Burnett, we know that he has used the alias “Frog Milhouse” and likewise has no marketable skills other than playing harmonica and doing silly dances while Mr. Autry sings. It is clear to see that these men are guilty of infringing on the rights of the James Gang to make a living.”

After the trial ended, the judge sentenced Gene and Smiley to 18 months of sensitivity training, and the three remaining members of the James Gang went on to serve in the United States Senate. The lawyer for the ACLU got his own television show.

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It Wasn't About Me!

2009-01-16T14:44:00.000-08:00

They even made a movie about it. “Father of the Bride”. It was a very funny movie too. Funny and scary at the same time. I had no idea.

In early August I received the phone call that every father dreads. Every dad wants to be the “Main Man” in his daughter’s life something like…..forever. Nate, whom my daughter, Kelly, had been dating for two years called and asked for a meeting. Since I am neither deaf, blind nor demented ( yet ), I had a pretty good idea what he wanted to discuss. I had seen that wide-eyed “yearning” look in his eyes when he looked at Kelly. We decided to meet at a local pizza establishment. I like to be load up on carbs, grease and dead animal parts after getting world changing news, so I wanted to get a head start.

Nate gave no indication that he has rehearsed his pitch. He looked me in the eye, told me how he felt about Kelly, and asked for my blessing to marry her. I noticed right off that he had not asked for “permission”. I had tried to spot a weakness in his speech that I could exploit on behalf of the unsuspecting Kelly, who was in eminent danger of spending the rest of her life with another man, but I could find none. Nate didn’t fidget or stare at his napkin and give me an opening. He exuded a confidence that I knew I couldn’t shake. I thought about telling him that the Carter family had a tradition of not consummating a marriage for at least a year, but Nancy seemed to be enjoying this whole conversation so I decided not to push it.
By the time we finished eating, I had resigned myself to the fact that this man would be sleeping with my daughter on a regular basis and that I might as well just make the best of it.

Needless to say, a proposal and acceptance followed soon after the pizza buffet. Both Kelly’s roommates had recently become engaged, which resulted in the decision to proceed immediately with wedding plans. Little did I know how monumental this decision would turn out to be. It saved me months of anguish and frustration.

My friend, Jay, who had recently suffered through two weddings, was a tremendous help to me. I told him what I thought about this and that, and he rapidly and forcefully put everything in perspective.

“It doesn’t matter what you think, you imbecile! It’s not about you. Just shut your mouth and open your wallet”, he told me without the smallest hint of a smile. What a blessing to have such a wise and sensitive friend.

However, in keeping with a long-standing tradition, I ignored Jay’s wise counsel. My first suggestion concerned the food that would be consumed at the reception. Kelly and her mother were discussing a menu that would have depleted the entire fruit and vegetable crop of southern California. I suggested that about fifteen boxes of Little Debbie Treats and a couple of cases of Mountain Dew should do the trick. You would have thought I had just suggested euthanizing little yellow baby chicks. Jay’s words rung in my ears.

Next came the matter of flowers. I pointed out that the wedding would take place in the fall and that no one would be expecting flowers. What a stroke of brilliance, I thought. Didn’t fly. The bridal bouquet alone was going to be $250. I suggested that the elegance of a single rose would provide a striking contrast to Kelly’s brown eyes and that the guests would be dazzled. That didn’t fly either.

The final straw came when I learned that the Maid of Honor’s dress had to match the napkins at the reception, and that my wife, Nancy, was working hard to get her cuticles ready for the wedding. I was clearly out of my league.

So, all you Fathers of the Bride, get over it. It’s not about you or what you think. Logic and practicality have no place in a wedding. But most importantly, I have learned that dancing with your daughter to “My Girl” is a bunch of fun and that son’s-in-law aren’t such a bad thing.

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Where Are the Real Classmates?

2009-01-12T16:49:00.000-08:00

I had my Mirror Epiphany a few weeks after my fortieth high school class reunion. A Mirror Epiphany occurs when you step out of the shower that some idiot contractor has placed directly across from a full-length mirror and see someone that resembles either your dad or the mummy of Rameses II. Your first thought is “When the heck did that happen?”

Of course, what I had observed is what is called in scientific circles the “threshold phenomenon”. I observed the threshold phenomenon in action many times at my recent fortieth high school reunion. I would notice someone heading my way, and the panic would set in.

“It’s got to be one of the last remaining teachers,” I would think. Grey hair, wrinkles, false teeth, that funny old-person smell. Which teacher could it be? Think! Think! She shuffled toward me on a walker with a piece of toilet paper stuck to her shoe. There was a shapeless bulge on her hiney. “Got to be Depends” I thought.

“Hi Jimmy!” ( I was Jimmy in high school ) Then came the two most dreaded words you can hear at a high school reunion, “Remember me?”

“Uh…sorry. Give me a minute. I think my glasses are dirty.” I quickly removed my glasses and cleaned them on my shirt to give credence to the lie.

“It’s Sally! I sat behind you in third grade and you would beg me for cookies from my lunch box.”

My head was spinning. It was a classmate! Not a teacher! But she’s old! This old person claiming to be Sally was very disappointed that I didn’t recognize her, but she had to understand. She looked really old!

“Oh sure…Sally…you haven’t changed a bit!” I lied. She couldn’t be Sally. Sally was young and pretty. She was putting me on, playing some kind of joke. The real Sally was probably hiding in the background laughing her head off. But I played along pretending she really was Sally. I didn’t want her to think she had tricked me!

On and on it went, all night long. Total strangers, an endless parade of geezers, would come up to me pretending to be someone from my childhood. It became very annoying after a while. Where were the real classmates? Some would even pretend not to recognize me! I wasn’t able to figure out why so many people would go to so much trouble just to play a joke on me. We all started drifting off to sleep about 8:30PM, so I never found out what was really going on.

Until a few weeks later. My Mirror Epiphany explained everything.

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