I was convinced that I could persuade a Florida newspaper to take me on as a reporter. I had very little to base this on. I was an English major who took some journalism courses. I had a work-study job in University of Florida Information Services where I snapped photos of no-neck linemen, worked in the darkroom, and wrote press releases. I worked for two semesters as a general assignment reporter at the Independent Florida Alligator. I had clips from two free-lance articles I did for national publications.
That seemed sufficient. But I had lots of competition. 1976 was a heyday for newspapers. Two young investigative reporters for the Washington Post had brought down a president (imagine that now). Newspaper unions were strong. Most cities boasted at least two papers, some more. Newsrooms had yet to be invaded by computers. I figured that there was at least one paper that needed an eager and creative writer. My colleagues at the Alligator were getting on with the Miami Herald and Cocoa Today which grew up to be USA Today.
I decided to approach my job application as a fiction writer. In my 30 months at UF, I had completed three creative writing courses, one taught by the brilliant and enigmatic Harry Crews. I had submitted scores of stories and received lots of harsh critiques. I felt that I was ready for the rough-and-tumble world of the daily newspaper. I wrote an application letter in the third person. The normal approach was first person, as in "I am the greatest thing to happen to journalism since Gutenberg's press." Instead, I wrote "Michael Shay is the greatest thing to happen to journalism since Gutenberg's press." I typed the personalized letters on my Smith-Corona portable, using plenty of White-Out. I fired them off and awaited positive results.
I waited and waited. I got some form-letter responses, thanks but no thanks. I might have called some editors but my roommates and I didn't have a phone. Our landlady, Stormy, whose notable forebears had one of Florida's largest counties named after them, had the phone. Her house behind us was in worse shape than ours. Looking at it from the front, it seemed to lean. We kept expecting it to fall. When Bob or Bob or I got a call, Stormy would yell at us from her front door. We tried not to be summoned too often as we were afraid of her dog, Joe, who gave us the evil eye. And that's all he had, one eye, as he'd lost the other one in a fight.
I waited some more. A personal response came. It wasn't good news. The editor of the Pensacola paper had accepted my challenge and responded with a letter in third person. I can't remember the exact wording but it went something like this: "The editor of the Pensacola News Journal was thrilled to received the job application of Michael Shay. The cover letter was very creative and gets an A for effort. As the editor read, he was not so impressed, as it included at least one factual error, a typo and several run-on sentences that were more Faulkner than Hemingway. The editor has marked-up these errors as we do in the newsroom and hopes that the applicant takes them to heart as he continues his job search. For now, this newspaper will continue looking for an experienced reporter." It was snarky and well done, with no typos or bad grammar. I was embarrassed. I always prided myself on sharp, clean writing. How many of my mistake-ridden job apps were floating around the Sunshine State?
A few weeks later, the editor at the Lake City paper called and offered me a job. I asked if I needed a car as I did not have one. He said that I would need a car and I would be covering the county. I said I would see what I could do. It seemed hopeless. I'd had a car earlier that year, a black Ford station wagon I bought for $150 from my friend Mike, a Vietnam vet who worked as a bouncer at a strip club. Mike and I took visiting writer Nelson Algren to the strip club one night and he seemed to have a pretty good time. I got about $150 worth out of the station wagon and sent it to the scrap heap. My girlfriend had a car but she was a full-time student and also had a job. One of my roommates owned a car but he needed it. I had no money - student loans were gone and I'd finished my work-study jobs. I pondered my situation. Lake City was a small cracker town where nothing significant ever happened. I turned down the job.
About this same time, a one-time law student who looked like an aging frat boy was working his way through the West, from his home state of Washington to Colorado. He raped and murdered women. He was arrested twice and escaped twice, in both Aspen and Glenwood Springs, Colorado. In 1978, Ted Bundy came South and cruised north Florida roads in search of victims. In February 1978, he kidnapped, raped and killed a 12-year-old girl in Lake City. The girl's body was found in a pig farrowing shed near Suwanee River State Park, where I had spent many hours swimming, canoeing and hiking. I always thought that I might have covered the Bundy story had I been able to come up with a car and taken the reporting job in that one-horse town. It's gruesome to think about but it could have happened. Bundy had raped and murdered two sorority sisters and beat up two others that January at FSU in Tallahassee where two of my sisters and many of my nieces and nephews attended college. He was caught later in Pensacola, tried and then executed in Florida's Raiford Prison in 1989. Prison guards celebrated with a raucous party and fireworks. He was cremated in Gainesville and his ashes scattered in Washington's Cascade Range.
I might have written the book on Bundy. That would have entailed me looking hard into Bundy to see what caused one man to become a savage. It would have made me a different person, one I might not have liked. As a free-lancer in Denver in 1982, I wrote a story for an alternative weekly about Colorado cold cases. Some were women who had been kidnapped, raped and murdered in the mountains when Bundy was on the prowl. They fit the killer's M-O. I was surprised to learn later that investigators knew about 30 murders by Bundy but suspected him in dozens of others, maybe as many as 100.
It snowed in Gainesville in January 1977 and our pipes froze. In February, I borrowed a car and went on a job search in Orlando, Tampa and St. Petersburg. I stayed with friends along the way. I did not return with a job. The money was gone so I moved from Gainesville back home. I was blue. If Florida had basements, I would have been moping in the basement. As it was, I moped in the spare bedroom. I eventually rallied, got a job with a construction industry magazine, and moved out.
Looking back, I see a creative person trying to get a job. Stories surrounded me but I didn't know that yet.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Monday, October 08, 2018
Far from the MAGA crowd: Democrats invite you to Oct. 18 chili cook-off and fundraiser
These are the times that try men's and women's souls, especially if they have souls. From a press release:
Greetings Fellow Democrats:
After the last few months of Trump and Kavanaugh and McConnell and daily assaults on our psyche, Dems need a safe place to gather and vent. Are you tired of the MAGA crowd? Need a safe place to share like ideas? Looking for some talking points for those upcoming Thanksgiving dinners with conservative relatives?
The LCDGC welcomes you to its semiannual chili cook-off and fundraiser at the Kiwanis Community House in Lions Park, Cheyenne, Wyo., on Thursday, October 18, 6-9 p.m. Bring your hand-crafted chili, salsa, and desserts to enter into the contests. Winners will receive a fancy certificate which boasts of your cooking skills and Democratic credentials. Suitable for framing and posting on your office wall, further stoking the paranoid delusions of the MAGA crowd fearful of encroaching immigrants, PC liberals, feminist protesters, African-American ex-presidents, and LGBTQ cake bakers.
Candidates will be on hand to speak about the issues of the day and answer your questions and just in general talk some common sense.
For further information, contact Joe, 307-630-6192. See you there!
Sponsored by Laramie County Democrats and the Laramie County Democratic Grassroots Coalition.
I also can answer questions about the event. Comment below.
Meanwhile, get out there and vote for Blue Wave candidates.
Tuesday, October 02, 2018
Part VI: The Way Mike Worked -- How I Almost Became a Nurse
The five-year-old boy from New Hampshire didn't talk much. He held up his right hand as the nurse dressed his wounds and I stood by to assist. The tiny hand was imprinted with concentric circles and looked as if someone had given the boy a special tattoo, although he was much too young. The reality was much worse. An adult, his mother, had punished the boy by pressing his hand into a hot electric stove burner. Third-degree or "full thickness" burns. The top layer of skin (epidermis) is destroyed as is the bottom layer -- the dermis. So are the nerve endings. Because the epidermis and hair follicles are gone, new skin cannot grow. The burn must be treated and then skin grafts are applied. This boy was a long way from skin grafting.
He would be in the burn unit for awhile, which is OK because everything was paid for. This was a Shriners Burns Institute (now Shriners Hospital for Children's--Boston), supported by millions raised by the guys with funny hats who drive funny cars in your local Fourth of July parade. I lived with my girlfriend Sharon in a walk-up one-bedroom on the poor side of Beacon Hill. It was winter and very cold. I wished I was on a Florida beach where I had been this time last year. I was cold yet fascinated by the work I did and observed as a nursing assistant/orderly at the hospital.
One morning, as I was getting off of work, the head nurse asked to see me. She asked me if I was interested in becoming a nurse. The hospital would pay for my education. I was stunned by the offer. I was torn, too. Just recently this dropout and former marine biology major had decided to go back to school and major in English and become a notable writer or at least one who got his stuff published. What to do? A secure future in the medical field? Insecure future with the other thing? I chose the other thing.
But not before I discussed it with Sharon. She was pondering the same thing, going back to school to major in nursing. Maybe we could go to the same school, University of Connecticut in Storrs, the place where she'd started college three years earlier -- she also was a dropout. Most of the people we knew were dropouts who went on to do interesting things with their lives. The Shriners staff wanted me to go to school in Boston. What to do?
As I pondered, I walked to my graveyard shift at the hospital and Sharon rode the MTA to her graveyard shift job at Deaconess Hospital in the burbs. She looked good in white. She looked good in anything. She told me stories of "rubbers," the guys who rubbed against women on the subway. One day she waited for her train when a young guy emerged half-naked from the shrubbery and began to masturbate in front of her. Those stories made me want to punch somebody, anybody. It made me want to ride with her every morning and every evening, to protect her. She was good at what she did and knew it. I was good at what I did but didn't know it. The die had already been cast. I just didn't know it.
Two years earlier, I had screwed up my chance of a military career. I know now that it was an act of sabotage. My mentors had lined up to promote my brilliant career. I failed them, on purpose. I didn't want to tell them no. Inside, I said no-no-no. Had I also failed myself? I guess, at 22, I didn't know. Here was another opportunity. It looked mighty good to a young man with no prospects.
When the night was slow, I gathered in a break room with the other nursing assistants. We stayed awake by drinking tea and eating chocolate. Some of the others were already in nursing school and spent the time starting IVs on each other. It kind of creeped me out but who was I to judge? I ran blood samples over to the Mass General lab through a spooky underground tunnel. I'm sure that it was well-used during the day. But at night? There was a camera and squawk box at each end. I pushed a button at the Mass General end and someone would eventually come on the line and asked my identity. I was admitted into the hospital basement. I skipped riding up the freight elevator because it smelled like formaldehyde. "That's where they bring up the dead animals, you know, for the med students to practice on. Human corpses, too. The morgue's down in the basement" The graveyard shift guy in the lab liked to pull my chain. At least I think he was pulling my chain.
Some of our young charges died at night. Burns can be horrific. House fires. Electrocutions. Accidents. Burns do terrible things to a body. Third degree burns with lung damage were bad. Very, very bad. Sometimes children are trapped in fires. Old people, too. Not only are their skins less dense, but their lungs are especially vulnerable. Kids' lungs are still developing. Oldsters' lungs are sensitive to everything.
I bugged out of Boston in March. Sharon and I pledged our love and promised to keep in touch. I hitched up to Connecticut a month later to see her and we drove out to the Cape. She came down to Florida in May and we drove to the Keys and camped. By the end of the summer, we were no longer a couple. I went back to school at the local community college. Sharon went to UConn. I sometimes wonder if she became a nurse or something else. What long and winding road did she take?
He would be in the burn unit for awhile, which is OK because everything was paid for. This was a Shriners Burns Institute (now Shriners Hospital for Children's--Boston), supported by millions raised by the guys with funny hats who drive funny cars in your local Fourth of July parade. I lived with my girlfriend Sharon in a walk-up one-bedroom on the poor side of Beacon Hill. It was winter and very cold. I wished I was on a Florida beach where I had been this time last year. I was cold yet fascinated by the work I did and observed as a nursing assistant/orderly at the hospital.
One morning, as I was getting off of work, the head nurse asked to see me. She asked me if I was interested in becoming a nurse. The hospital would pay for my education. I was stunned by the offer. I was torn, too. Just recently this dropout and former marine biology major had decided to go back to school and major in English and become a notable writer or at least one who got his stuff published. What to do? A secure future in the medical field? Insecure future with the other thing? I chose the other thing.
But not before I discussed it with Sharon. She was pondering the same thing, going back to school to major in nursing. Maybe we could go to the same school, University of Connecticut in Storrs, the place where she'd started college three years earlier -- she also was a dropout. Most of the people we knew were dropouts who went on to do interesting things with their lives. The Shriners staff wanted me to go to school in Boston. What to do?
As I pondered, I walked to my graveyard shift at the hospital and Sharon rode the MTA to her graveyard shift job at Deaconess Hospital in the burbs. She looked good in white. She looked good in anything. She told me stories of "rubbers," the guys who rubbed against women on the subway. One day she waited for her train when a young guy emerged half-naked from the shrubbery and began to masturbate in front of her. Those stories made me want to punch somebody, anybody. It made me want to ride with her every morning and every evening, to protect her. She was good at what she did and knew it. I was good at what I did but didn't know it. The die had already been cast. I just didn't know it.
Two years earlier, I had screwed up my chance of a military career. I know now that it was an act of sabotage. My mentors had lined up to promote my brilliant career. I failed them, on purpose. I didn't want to tell them no. Inside, I said no-no-no. Had I also failed myself? I guess, at 22, I didn't know. Here was another opportunity. It looked mighty good to a young man with no prospects.
When the night was slow, I gathered in a break room with the other nursing assistants. We stayed awake by drinking tea and eating chocolate. Some of the others were already in nursing school and spent the time starting IVs on each other. It kind of creeped me out but who was I to judge? I ran blood samples over to the Mass General lab through a spooky underground tunnel. I'm sure that it was well-used during the day. But at night? There was a camera and squawk box at each end. I pushed a button at the Mass General end and someone would eventually come on the line and asked my identity. I was admitted into the hospital basement. I skipped riding up the freight elevator because it smelled like formaldehyde. "That's where they bring up the dead animals, you know, for the med students to practice on. Human corpses, too. The morgue's down in the basement" The graveyard shift guy in the lab liked to pull my chain. At least I think he was pulling my chain.
Some of our young charges died at night. Burns can be horrific. House fires. Electrocutions. Accidents. Burns do terrible things to a body. Third degree burns with lung damage were bad. Very, very bad. Sometimes children are trapped in fires. Old people, too. Not only are their skins less dense, but their lungs are especially vulnerable. Kids' lungs are still developing. Oldsters' lungs are sensitive to everything.
I bugged out of Boston in March. Sharon and I pledged our love and promised to keep in touch. I hitched up to Connecticut a month later to see her and we drove out to the Cape. She came down to Florida in May and we drove to the Keys and camped. By the end of the summer, we were no longer a couple. I went back to school at the local community college. Sharon went to UConn. I sometimes wonder if she became a nurse or something else. What long and winding road did she take?
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Library's Sept. 28 Hands-on History Expo explores "The Way We Worked"
"The Way We Worked" exhibit is up and running at the Laramie County Public Library. This Smithsonian-sponsored traveling exhibit features interactive displays on various aspects of working in the U.S. Technology plays a major role, as you might guess. Assembly lines, automated farm equipment, telephone switchboards, manual typewriters, and the dawn of the computer age.
On the library's third floor is a display board that addresses organized labor's struggle through the years. Under a photo of two little boys operating a dangerous looking machine is a selection of labor songs you can select for your listening enjoyment. I chose one of my favorites, "De Colores," which I had to be reminded was an organizing song. So many great songs and poem came out of the labor struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2018 America, we may need to sing some of the old songs and compose some new ones for Trump's Gilded Age.
For several weeks, I have written a series of posts about "The Way Mike Worked." The most-read one if about the bygone days of paperboys. I've barely scratched the surface of the many jobs I have had in my 67 years, 55 working years. I will keep writing to bring myself up to the present. If you are looking for poems, stories and essays about work, I suggest you check out the anthology "Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams," published by Coffee House Press and edited by Detroit's M.L. Liebler. One of my short stories is included. I wrote about the anthology here and here when it came out in 2010.
On Friday, Sept. 28, 6-7:30 p.m., the library hosts a Hands-on History Expo. Come out to take a look at an antique tractor and a well-digging machine. Watch a weaving demonstration. You might have a chance to type on a manual typewriter and explore an original library card catalog. Ponder those fast-food jobs of your teens and jobs you had as an adult, and maybe ones you wish you had.
On the library's third floor is a display board that addresses organized labor's struggle through the years. Under a photo of two little boys operating a dangerous looking machine is a selection of labor songs you can select for your listening enjoyment. I chose one of my favorites, "De Colores," which I had to be reminded was an organizing song. So many great songs and poem came out of the labor struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2018 America, we may need to sing some of the old songs and compose some new ones for Trump's Gilded Age.
For several weeks, I have written a series of posts about "The Way Mike Worked." The most-read one if about the bygone days of paperboys. I've barely scratched the surface of the many jobs I have had in my 67 years, 55 working years. I will keep writing to bring myself up to the present. If you are looking for poems, stories and essays about work, I suggest you check out the anthology "Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams," published by Coffee House Press and edited by Detroit's M.L. Liebler. One of my short stories is included. I wrote about the anthology here and here when it came out in 2010.
On Friday, Sept. 28, 6-7:30 p.m., the library hosts a Hands-on History Expo. Come out to take a look at an antique tractor and a well-digging machine. Watch a weaving demonstration. You might have a chance to type on a manual typewriter and explore an original library card catalog. Ponder those fast-food jobs of your teens and jobs you had as an adult, and maybe ones you wish you had.
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Part V: The Way Mike Worked -- Serving Fish 'n' Chips in Shrimp 'n' Grits Country
We called her Mom. She insisted. Never found out her real name. Her husband Tally called her "dear" or "hon" in the Southern way. She was younger than Tally by a decade or so, or so she seemed. Tally walked a limp that we thought came from the war, World War II, the one that all of our father's fought in. He said it came from a gunshot, a disagreement among bootleggers during Prohibition. We had no reason not to believe him.
We met at Long John Silver's Fish and Chips across from the University of South Carolina campus. Mom was the manager. She had replaced our first manager who had been skimming a bit off the top of the nightly deposit. One day he was our boss. And then he was gone.
In October of 1970, I was one of a half-dozen employees, mostly students, at this fast-food restaurant named for the fictional pirate in "Treasure Island." Color scheme was the brown of "a dead man's chest" and the gold of new doubloons. Everything was fried in vats of hot grease that was a shimmering gold when new and a dark brown when old and ready to be refreshed but it was almost quitting time and the day crew could do it. All of us wore grease-spatter splotches on our arms. Meals were served in cardboard replicas of a chest of gold. Sides were fries and hush puppies. Condiments were tartar sauce and malt vinegar that the Brits allegedly used on the fish and chips they bought at street corner vendors in London. My co-workers and I tried to cook up extra food at the end of the night so we could carry some home for late-night greasyspoon snacks.
Fish-and-chips were a new concept in the South. Some customers ordered and then wondered why they got fries instead of chips. We had to explain that in England, fries were called chips. The potatoes were a bit chunkier over there, not flat or curved or crispy, but they still were called chips.
After avoiding work and most of my classes my freshman year, I decided that I needed a job. I had premonitions of bad juju to come. I could read the tea leaves that we used in our sweet tea. I could divine the stars. I also could read the grade reports sent home by the university. I was on probation after a lackluster freshman year. I swore to the Navy ROTC unit's marine major that I was going to do better, really I was. He looked at my grades and the report of my lackluster performance on my first-year summer cruise. I had sailed to Guantanamo Bay and back on the USS John F. Kennedy. I had neglected my duties.
I did, however, distinguish myself during a 1970 Fourth of July weekend leave in D.C. when my BFF Pat and I rescued his younger sisters and grandmother from a stampeding crowd at the Honor America Day Concert at the Washington Monument. The riot wasn't a reaction to another sappy tune by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or another joke by Bob Hope. But a cloud of tear gas launched to disperse the Yippie-sponsored smoke-in at the monument. Pat's and my quick action didn't save any lives but we were proud of it nonetheless. Too bad that didn't show up in my midshipman record. I might have received a medal. "For valor in rescuing civilians threatened by a cloud of tear gas fired on pot-smoking hippies." Something like that. Later, Pat and I and his older brother Mike smoked a joint and talked about what a weird night it was.
When I returned to Norfolk, just before our ship sailed to Cuba, I called my girlfriend and she broke up with me.
I was looking for a new girlfriend when I returned to campus in the fall. I had a crush on one of my fish-and-chips coworkers. Kaley was pretty, blonde and had a wicked sense of humor. She also had a boyfriend, a Vietnam vet named Tim whose hair got longer and shaggier every time he came to pick Kaley up from work. The duo invited me to a party one night. I hung around Kaley and Tim as I didn't know anyone and my short haircut fueled my paranoia and everyone else's, or so it seemed. Tim broke out a syringe and prepared it, junkie-style. He shot up Kaley and then held up the syringe for me. I was almost stoned enough to say yes. But I didn't. Tim proceeded to minister to himself. They were soon in la-la land and didn't notice as I slipped out of the house and walked several miles back to my dorm.
The U.S. Navy revoked my scholarship in January and I was on my own. I could finally grow my hair and major in English. I kept working at Long John Silver's. When spring sprang, Mom and Tally asked me to come to their house and mow the lawn. Mom would feed me lunch. I agreed. It was the first of many trips to their house. By summer, the mowing of the lawn was an ordeal, with sweat streaming off of me and me pining for AC and a cold drink. One afternoon, stunned by Carolina heat, I went into the house. Heading for the bathroom, I opened the wrong door into a bedroom. It had a single bed, a shelf with photos and football trophies. The photos showed a young man in football uniform, in graduation gown, in army uniform.
"Our son Tom." Startled, I turned to see Mom in the doorway. She wore a sad face, unusual for her. She walked in and stood next to me. She picked up the photo of her son in uniform. "Missing in action. Vietnam. We kept his room ready for him but he hasn't come back. Three years now. Our only child." She replaced the photo. "Lunch is ready." She walked out and I followed. Mom and Tally were the same talkative duo they always were. Now that I am an old man, I recognize the relentless nature of sorrow. Sometimes, small talk over lemonade and sandwiches with tomatoes fresh from the garden are the only things for it.
A few weeks later, a traveling circus troupe came to town with a batch of purple haze fresh from the octopus's garden. We had a wonderful time. The circus people left town but I found my jacked-up self in the campus cafeteria babbling over breakfast to a group of exchange students from Hong Kong. They were very polite. And then I was at the university infirmary, knocked down by thorazine.
At the end of USC's summer session, I ended my college career and quit my job as a fish-and-chips wrangler. I left town. My plan was to live at my parents' house and surf until I got drafted.
We met at Long John Silver's Fish and Chips across from the University of South Carolina campus. Mom was the manager. She had replaced our first manager who had been skimming a bit off the top of the nightly deposit. One day he was our boss. And then he was gone.
In October of 1970, I was one of a half-dozen employees, mostly students, at this fast-food restaurant named for the fictional pirate in "Treasure Island." Color scheme was the brown of "a dead man's chest" and the gold of new doubloons. Everything was fried in vats of hot grease that was a shimmering gold when new and a dark brown when old and ready to be refreshed but it was almost quitting time and the day crew could do it. All of us wore grease-spatter splotches on our arms. Meals were served in cardboard replicas of a chest of gold. Sides were fries and hush puppies. Condiments were tartar sauce and malt vinegar that the Brits allegedly used on the fish and chips they bought at street corner vendors in London. My co-workers and I tried to cook up extra food at the end of the night so we could carry some home for late-night greasyspoon snacks.
Fish-and-chips were a new concept in the South. Some customers ordered and then wondered why they got fries instead of chips. We had to explain that in England, fries were called chips. The potatoes were a bit chunkier over there, not flat or curved or crispy, but they still were called chips.
After avoiding work and most of my classes my freshman year, I decided that I needed a job. I had premonitions of bad juju to come. I could read the tea leaves that we used in our sweet tea. I could divine the stars. I also could read the grade reports sent home by the university. I was on probation after a lackluster freshman year. I swore to the Navy ROTC unit's marine major that I was going to do better, really I was. He looked at my grades and the report of my lackluster performance on my first-year summer cruise. I had sailed to Guantanamo Bay and back on the USS John F. Kennedy. I had neglected my duties.
I did, however, distinguish myself during a 1970 Fourth of July weekend leave in D.C. when my BFF Pat and I rescued his younger sisters and grandmother from a stampeding crowd at the Honor America Day Concert at the Washington Monument. The riot wasn't a reaction to another sappy tune by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or another joke by Bob Hope. But a cloud of tear gas launched to disperse the Yippie-sponsored smoke-in at the monument. Pat's and my quick action didn't save any lives but we were proud of it nonetheless. Too bad that didn't show up in my midshipman record. I might have received a medal. "For valor in rescuing civilians threatened by a cloud of tear gas fired on pot-smoking hippies." Something like that. Later, Pat and I and his older brother Mike smoked a joint and talked about what a weird night it was.
When I returned to Norfolk, just before our ship sailed to Cuba, I called my girlfriend and she broke up with me.
I was looking for a new girlfriend when I returned to campus in the fall. I had a crush on one of my fish-and-chips coworkers. Kaley was pretty, blonde and had a wicked sense of humor. She also had a boyfriend, a Vietnam vet named Tim whose hair got longer and shaggier every time he came to pick Kaley up from work. The duo invited me to a party one night. I hung around Kaley and Tim as I didn't know anyone and my short haircut fueled my paranoia and everyone else's, or so it seemed. Tim broke out a syringe and prepared it, junkie-style. He shot up Kaley and then held up the syringe for me. I was almost stoned enough to say yes. But I didn't. Tim proceeded to minister to himself. They were soon in la-la land and didn't notice as I slipped out of the house and walked several miles back to my dorm.
The U.S. Navy revoked my scholarship in January and I was on my own. I could finally grow my hair and major in English. I kept working at Long John Silver's. When spring sprang, Mom and Tally asked me to come to their house and mow the lawn. Mom would feed me lunch. I agreed. It was the first of many trips to their house. By summer, the mowing of the lawn was an ordeal, with sweat streaming off of me and me pining for AC and a cold drink. One afternoon, stunned by Carolina heat, I went into the house. Heading for the bathroom, I opened the wrong door into a bedroom. It had a single bed, a shelf with photos and football trophies. The photos showed a young man in football uniform, in graduation gown, in army uniform.
"Our son Tom." Startled, I turned to see Mom in the doorway. She wore a sad face, unusual for her. She walked in and stood next to me. She picked up the photo of her son in uniform. "Missing in action. Vietnam. We kept his room ready for him but he hasn't come back. Three years now. Our only child." She replaced the photo. "Lunch is ready." She walked out and I followed. Mom and Tally were the same talkative duo they always were. Now that I am an old man, I recognize the relentless nature of sorrow. Sometimes, small talk over lemonade and sandwiches with tomatoes fresh from the garden are the only things for it.
A few weeks later, a traveling circus troupe came to town with a batch of purple haze fresh from the octopus's garden. We had a wonderful time. The circus people left town but I found my jacked-up self in the campus cafeteria babbling over breakfast to a group of exchange students from Hong Kong. They were very polite. And then I was at the university infirmary, knocked down by thorazine.
At the end of USC's summer session, I ended my college career and quit my job as a fish-and-chips wrangler. I left town. My plan was to live at my parents' house and surf until I got drafted.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Part IV: The Way Mike Worked -- This job stinks!
"This job stinks," I complained to Ronnie.
He looked at me over a pile of dirty laundry. Smoke from a Marlboro wreathed his face. He removed the cigarette and exhaled a big cloud. "Do what I do."
I stared. I was dense. "What?"
He unrolled the pack of cigs from his T-shirt sleeve and popped one out. He walked over to me, stuck the cigarette in my mouth and lit it with his Zippo. "Inhale," he said.
I inhaled. I'd smoked a few cigarettes before, usually late at night at a beer bash when anything seemed like a good idea: smoking cigarettes, skinny dipping in a gator pond, driving on sidewalks. In the summer of '69, I was a latecomer to nicotine. My parents smoked, as did most of their friends. Some of my buddies smoked. But I was a jock in high school and coach commanded that we not smoke. I wanted to do what coach said.
"Watch me," Ronnie said in his Tennessee drawl. He gripped the end of the rolling container with its mound of laundry. You could almost see the fumes coming from the sheets and towels accumulated in 24 hours at the nursing home. "Let the smoke drift up into your nose -- that knocks out the smell." He pushed his cart out the laundry room doors and down the corridor, smoke trailing behind him. I followed with my load. Smoke rose from my mouth to my nose to my eyes. Within seconds, my eyes watered. I kept close to Ronnie, lest I run over one of the dazed oldsters wandering the halls. I was getting it -- the smoke blocked the smell. It also burned my nose and eyes, but it was a small price to pay for not smelling the smells of incontinent old people. I was 18, Ronnie my elder at 25. We were usually not burdened with inconvenient odors unless we let loose with a fart as we drove to our appointed rounds for the Acme Laundry (not its real name) of Holly Hill, Florida. But that was different. We were not old.
When we finally wheeled our loads up a ramp into the step van, our smokes were burned down to nubs. We tossed the butts on the ground as we returned to the truck cab. My eyes still watered as we continued on our rounds. Ronnie was already on another smoke. "See how easy?" he said.
I just nodded.
I became Ronnie's assistant one hot Florida July afternoon. I worked in the laundry, loading washers and dryers with towels and sheets from old folks homes, beachside motels, and other businesses. I had left my job as bagboy at the Pantry Pride grocery store because I needed to make more money for my upcoming college expenses. The laundry doubled my salary. The work was tougher and sweatier than hauling housewives' groceries out to their station wagons. I hated the laundry, doubted I could make it to the end of August. One day, after Ronnie delivered a load to us peasants chained to our machines, he came over and introduced himself. He was a big guy with Elvis-style hair and tattoos. He looked like something out of 1955 instead of 1969. I probably did too, with my Howdy Doody face and short haircut.
"My helper just quit," he said. "Want the job?"
"When do I start?"
"Tomorrow at 6."
"Six in the morning?"
He laughed. "See you then."
He laughed. "See you then."
What a reprieve! Riding with Ronnie started an hour earlier but I didn't care. We hit the mainland businesses first as the laundry only started piling up in the late morning at the beach motels as the housekeeping staff worked their way through the rooms. Sometimes Ronnie picked me up in his muscle car as I had sold my own car as it was a POS after three years of hard use. We knocked off at 3 just as the world really heated up or burst into an afternoon thunderstorm.
Ronnie just got out of the Navy the year before. He served a stint on a ship off of Vietnam and had accumulated some tattoos and a dose of the clap in the Philippines. He got a kick out of the fact that I was off to be a Navy ROTC student, someone who one day might be an officer giving orders to the likes of swabs like him. For now, he was the one giving orders. "You ain't no officer yet," he'd say if he caught me loafing. "Yes sir," I'd say. His response: "I ain't no sir -- I work for a living. That's what my chief used to say."
I think about my 18-year-old self. I was excited and scared to be off to college. I was sad to leave my girlfriend behind -- she was attending a school 300 miles from me. I loved her and I said so and she loved me, or so she said. What did we know? Our family home burned down that summer but all 11 of us survived. We lived in a small place while waiting to rebuild. Problem was, all the clothes I'd collected for college burnt up in the fire or were impregnated with smoke. Early in the summer my surfboard had been stolen and, for the first time in four years, I felt left out of the beach scene.
About a week before I quit the laundry, Ronnie took me to his trailer for lunch. He wanted me to meet somebody. We got out of the step van and walked to the door. A woman answered. Ronnie introduced us..
"Hello ma'am," I said.
The woman wore long gray hair pulled back in a braid, a pleasant face etched with tiny lines around the mouth and eyes. "Don't call me ma'am -- I'm Shirley."
"OK, Shirley."
Ronnie planted a kiss on her lips and I suddenly realized this was his wife. I'd called her ma'am because I thought she was his mother. I was surprised and a bit embarrassed for me and for Ronnie. Shirley served us tomato and mayo sandwiches and lemonade. She as nice and had a good sense of humor. She wasn't really that old, maybe in her late 30s or 40s. Old enough to be my mother but not Ronnie's. As we ate at the trailer's tiny table, she asked about me, what I liked to do, my plans for the fall.
"You got a girl?" She smiled.
"Yes ma'am..."
"Shirley."
"Shirley, I have a girlfriend."
"She's pretty, too," Ronnie said as he chewed. "Drives a Firebird."
"It's her dad's," I said.
"Your girl going to the same college?"
"No. We plan to see each other for football games, and during school breaks.,"
"That's good, hon," she said. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." She explained that she and Ronnie met at a Daytona bar after she left Georgia after a bad divorce.They hit it off and married after a few weeks. "Newlyweds," she said.
Earlier I had caught a glimpse of an unmade bed at the far end of the trailer. I imagined the two of them in that bed. I didn't want to but I couldn't help it. The trailer began to close in around me and I was relieved when Ronnie said it was time to get back to work. We said our farewells and that was the last time I saw Shirley.
As we returned to our route, Ronnie, as if divining my thoughts, said, "She makes me happy."
I just nodded. He drove the rest of the way in silence.
"You got a girl?" She smiled.
"Yes ma'am..."
"Shirley."
"Shirley, I have a girlfriend."
"She's pretty, too," Ronnie said as he chewed. "Drives a Firebird."
"It's her dad's," I said.
"Your girl going to the same college?"
"No. We plan to see each other for football games, and during school breaks.,"
"That's good, hon," she said. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." She explained that she and Ronnie met at a Daytona bar after she left Georgia after a bad divorce.They hit it off and married after a few weeks. "Newlyweds," she said.
Earlier I had caught a glimpse of an unmade bed at the far end of the trailer. I imagined the two of them in that bed. I didn't want to but I couldn't help it. The trailer began to close in around me and I was relieved when Ronnie said it was time to get back to work. We said our farewells and that was the last time I saw Shirley.
As we returned to our route, Ronnie, as if divining my thoughts, said, "She makes me happy."
I just nodded. He drove the rest of the way in silence.
On my last day at work, Ronnie and I sat in the step van in a motel lot watching the waves break. A half-dozen surfers bobbed in the line-up.
"Those good waves?" he asked.
"Pretty good."
"We could have brought your surfboard with us on some of our runs. You could have done some surfing."
I told him that my board had been stolen.
He nodded. Handed me his Zippo. On its side was a U.S. Navy emblem. "Going-away present."
"Thanks," I said. "I may try to give up smoking."
"No matter. You can light some of your marijuana cigarettes with it."
I laughed. "They're called joints, Ronnie."
"No matter. All you kids smoke it. My shipmates did. A lot of the guys in Vietnam. I tried it a few times. Just made me tired. I'll stick with beer and whiskey."
I thanked him again.That afternoon, I said my farewells to Ronnie and the laundry. My girlfriend picked me up. A week ;later, we said our own forlorn farewells during a last walk on the beach.
Somewhere along the line, I lost the lighter and I lost my way. Shall I pin the blame on marijuana cigarettes? It's more complicated than that.
Somewhere along the line, I lost the lighter and I lost my way. Shall I pin the blame on marijuana cigarettes? It's more complicated than that.
Blogger's Note: I changed the names of the characters in this piece and the name of the laundry. I had to reconstruct the dialogue because it was 49 years ago and I wasn't taking notes. Most of the rest of the story is true.
Another blogger's note: The Laramie County Public Library kicks off the fall season with the Smithsonian exhibit, "The Way We Worked." Sponsored by Wyoming Humanities, the exhibit "engages viewers with a history of work." It opens Sept. 22 and runs through Nov. 13. Grand opening is a "Hands-on History Expo" on Sept. 28 where you can "dial a rotary phone, draw water with a hand pump, enjoy old-fashioned refreshments (make your own ice cream!) and much more." You can see antique tractors, a wheat-washing machine and an old-fashioned library card catalog. I viewed the exhibit-in-progress yesterday. Great display of tools used to mine, log, and build railroads and dwellings in the West. I finally understood the difference between a dugout and a sod house or "soddie." One thing I know -- I would have gone stark-raving mad living in either one.
Another blogger's note: The Laramie County Public Library kicks off the fall season with the Smithsonian exhibit, "The Way We Worked." Sponsored by Wyoming Humanities, the exhibit "engages viewers with a history of work." It opens Sept. 22 and runs through Nov. 13. Grand opening is a "Hands-on History Expo" on Sept. 28 where you can "dial a rotary phone, draw water with a hand pump, enjoy old-fashioned refreshments (make your own ice cream!) and much more." You can see antique tractors, a wheat-washing machine and an old-fashioned library card catalog. I viewed the exhibit-in-progress yesterday. Great display of tools used to mine, log, and build railroads and dwellings in the West. I finally understood the difference between a dugout and a sod house or "soddie." One thing I know -- I would have gone stark-raving mad living in either one.
Thursday, September 13, 2018
Part III: The Way Mike Worked -- Never Take Your Eyes off of the Cash Box
My first and only job on the beach lasted one day.
I walked from our family's house on Hartford Avenue to a float stand near the Daytona Beach Boardwalk. A couple miles. Daytona is known for its hard-packed beaches that you can drive on. A float stand exists every half mile or so. They offered most items needed by a vacationing family in 1965 Florida: inflated rubber rafts, umbrellas and beach chairs. You rent by the hour or the day. Mom and Dad sit under the umbrella's shade as the kids ride the waves and try not to drown. Lifeguards are spaced in red towers every few hundred yards to keep an eye out.
My float stand was owned by a crusty old codger who probably was in his 40s when this 15-year-old worked for him. Can't remember his name, probably Bob. He wore shorts and his skin was the color and texture of cured leather. A no-nonsense guy with a few employees my age, We were tasked with charging the tourists (cash only in those days) and setting up their equipment. Most customers were in pretty good spirits --they were on vacation after all -- although many were still a bit jangled after a two-day drive from Detroit in an un-air-conditioned station wagon with six yelping kids. We were tolerant of their gruffness and stupid questions. Is the beach open at night? Any sharks in the water? Where can I buy suntan lotion?
We were happy to answer in the least snarky way possible. Later, we could make fun of them. That was a hobby of anyone who worked on the beach. Plus-sized men and women in too-small bathing suits, their skin so white you knew they would end up in the ER burn unit by the end of the day. We knew better, or thought we did. Here in the 21st century, I spend an inordinate amount of time at the dermatologist checking on my sun-damaged skin.
Bob was a taskmaster. He taught me the ropes and turned me loose with customers. His cardinal rule was "Never take your eyes off of the cash box." You rent the gear, stash the cash box, and help the tourists set up. We had a device like a big corkscrew to dig holes in the hard sand for umbrellas. A typically busy summer day. Many high school girls to ogle. Many grumpy parents to assuage. At one point, I left to install an umbrella and returned to find the cash box missing. Uh oh. I frantically searched for it. Bob came up and asked what I was doing. I told him. Concern creased his face. "What's rule number one?" he asked. "Never take your eyes off the cash box." My fellow helpers looked on with bemusement. After Bob let me search for a few minutes, he finally reached under a beach chair and produced the metal box. "Let that be a lesson to you." So my task was clear -- at the point of paranoia -- never take my eyes off of the cash box. I didn't know it at the time but my fate was sealed. At quitting time, Bob paid me what I'm sure was a princely sum for 1965 and told me I was fired. "What's rule number one?" I was tempted to say, "Never curse at a leathery old man who tricks you." But I didn't. I just took the money and headed home.
The sand heats up by the end of the day. Although my feet were as leathery as Bob's face -- barefoot is the usual summer state-of-being -- I walked through the shallows. I scattered the shore birds, watched the sand fleas dig into the sand. I watched older teens power their muscle cars down the beach. If I had thought about it, I might have stopped and looked behind me, watch as the waves obliterated my footprints. My life, already, was being born and was disappearing. I had walked on this beach dozens of times and would walk on it hundreds more. I was here with my parents and brothers and sisters. That first day, just moved from Colorado, with my mother shouting at us not to go out too far as a hurricane was coming. I walked the beach with my Irish grandfather, Me, hung over from my brother's bachelor party. my 80-year-old grandfather outpacing me, leaving behind shoe prints from the black Oxfords he wore. I ran the beach. Bicycled it. Played Frisbee on it. Walked it with girls from Kentucky I just met and a hometown girl who would eventually be my wife. I walked the beach in a February chill, taking a break from my dying father's bedside. My kids' footprints are down there, too, during our rare visits to Florida from Out West. Our family's Irish setter Shannon, her paw prints as she chased the gulls and sandpipers, the animal control officer hot on her trail.
All those footprints.
On that June day in 1965, I contemplated the lesson of the day: don't work for a jerk. I knew that my parents would not be pleased. They weren't, just urged me that night to find another job. I did. The following week, I was a new busboy at the Village Inn Pancake House and Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurant. I worked pancakes and chicken all through high school. More about that later...
I walked from our family's house on Hartford Avenue to a float stand near the Daytona Beach Boardwalk. A couple miles. Daytona is known for its hard-packed beaches that you can drive on. A float stand exists every half mile or so. They offered most items needed by a vacationing family in 1965 Florida: inflated rubber rafts, umbrellas and beach chairs. You rent by the hour or the day. Mom and Dad sit under the umbrella's shade as the kids ride the waves and try not to drown. Lifeguards are spaced in red towers every few hundred yards to keep an eye out.
My float stand was owned by a crusty old codger who probably was in his 40s when this 15-year-old worked for him. Can't remember his name, probably Bob. He wore shorts and his skin was the color and texture of cured leather. A no-nonsense guy with a few employees my age, We were tasked with charging the tourists (cash only in those days) and setting up their equipment. Most customers were in pretty good spirits --they were on vacation after all -- although many were still a bit jangled after a two-day drive from Detroit in an un-air-conditioned station wagon with six yelping kids. We were tolerant of their gruffness and stupid questions. Is the beach open at night? Any sharks in the water? Where can I buy suntan lotion?
We were happy to answer in the least snarky way possible. Later, we could make fun of them. That was a hobby of anyone who worked on the beach. Plus-sized men and women in too-small bathing suits, their skin so white you knew they would end up in the ER burn unit by the end of the day. We knew better, or thought we did. Here in the 21st century, I spend an inordinate amount of time at the dermatologist checking on my sun-damaged skin.
Bob was a taskmaster. He taught me the ropes and turned me loose with customers. His cardinal rule was "Never take your eyes off of the cash box." You rent the gear, stash the cash box, and help the tourists set up. We had a device like a big corkscrew to dig holes in the hard sand for umbrellas. A typically busy summer day. Many high school girls to ogle. Many grumpy parents to assuage. At one point, I left to install an umbrella and returned to find the cash box missing. Uh oh. I frantically searched for it. Bob came up and asked what I was doing. I told him. Concern creased his face. "What's rule number one?" he asked. "Never take your eyes off the cash box." My fellow helpers looked on with bemusement. After Bob let me search for a few minutes, he finally reached under a beach chair and produced the metal box. "Let that be a lesson to you." So my task was clear -- at the point of paranoia -- never take my eyes off of the cash box. I didn't know it at the time but my fate was sealed. At quitting time, Bob paid me what I'm sure was a princely sum for 1965 and told me I was fired. "What's rule number one?" I was tempted to say, "Never curse at a leathery old man who tricks you." But I didn't. I just took the money and headed home.
The sand heats up by the end of the day. Although my feet were as leathery as Bob's face -- barefoot is the usual summer state-of-being -- I walked through the shallows. I scattered the shore birds, watched the sand fleas dig into the sand. I watched older teens power their muscle cars down the beach. If I had thought about it, I might have stopped and looked behind me, watch as the waves obliterated my footprints. My life, already, was being born and was disappearing. I had walked on this beach dozens of times and would walk on it hundreds more. I was here with my parents and brothers and sisters. That first day, just moved from Colorado, with my mother shouting at us not to go out too far as a hurricane was coming. I walked the beach with my Irish grandfather, Me, hung over from my brother's bachelor party. my 80-year-old grandfather outpacing me, leaving behind shoe prints from the black Oxfords he wore. I ran the beach. Bicycled it. Played Frisbee on it. Walked it with girls from Kentucky I just met and a hometown girl who would eventually be my wife. I walked the beach in a February chill, taking a break from my dying father's bedside. My kids' footprints are down there, too, during our rare visits to Florida from Out West. Our family's Irish setter Shannon, her paw prints as she chased the gulls and sandpipers, the animal control officer hot on her trail.
All those footprints.
On that June day in 1965, I contemplated the lesson of the day: don't work for a jerk. I knew that my parents would not be pleased. They weren't, just urged me that night to find another job. I did. The following week, I was a new busboy at the Village Inn Pancake House and Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurant. I worked pancakes and chicken all through high school. More about that later...
Saturday, September 08, 2018
Part II: The Way Mike Worked -- The Paperboy and the Bully
The Smithsonian exhibit, "The Way We Worked," arrives in Cheyenne later this month. I thought about my jobs during 55 years, from neighborhood newspaper delivery to arts administration. That history tells me a lot about myself and about the changing workplace.
I didn't have a paid job until I was in sixth grade. I helped my buddy Bill deliver the afternoon Wichita paper. Not sure how much I made. Some of it went toward buying Boy Scout uniforms. I probably spent the rest frivolously. Bill did most of the collecting, the most odious part of the job. I sometimes accompanied him on his rounds.
Let's harken back to the days of two-newspaper towns. Remember those? It's not ancient history. Denver was home to the Post and the Rocky Mountain News. When I moved from Florida to Denver in 1978, the tabloid News was the morning paper and the Post was delivered in the afternoon. They both went to morning delivery in the 1980s. The News no longer exists. The Post is held captive by a hedge-fund group and is rapidly shedding its editorial staff in favor of fat profits.
I am old enough to remember the golden age of newspapers, an era that ended with the Internet although its death knells could be heard with the advent of network TV news and, later, the dawn of the personal computer.
Newspapers were big employers in every city. Reporters gathered the news, photogs shot the pictures, and editors edited. In newsrooms of 1978, you could call for a copy boy or copy girl to come get your typed (in triplicate) story and take it to the editors' desk. Hot copy was set by typesetters who wore boxy paper hats. Route Men delivered papers and paperboys (and a few girls) threw them on porches. Each paper had a physical clip morgue and a staff to do research. Advertising fielded a big staff to keep subscribers happy. There were ad designers and artists. The Post building was located where the convention center hotel is now. Hundreds of people worked there. All those hungry people patronized area restaurants. You wouldn't be surprised to learn that local saloons did a booming business. The same was true at the News with offices on Colfax.
In 1962 Wichita, Kan., the early risers delivered the Eagle in the morning and my friend Bill and I delivered the Beacon in the afternoons after school. Trucks delivered the papers to Bill's house and I came over to fold and deliver. On most days, the papers were not huge. Most days, Bill and I folded the newspapers without using rubber bands. You would think that the package would be become undone as we tossed them to anxious customers. But they didn't. At least, that's how I remember it. I remember Bill and I sailed them like mini-Frisbees onto porches in the tree-lined College Hill neighborhood. It was a given that papers must land on every customer's porch. Sometimes, the elderly asked us to put it inside their front door or in the milk box that sat under the mail box. That was a wooden box that held the milk delivered by the milkman at about the same time early-rising paperboys were delivering the Eagle. Milkmen finished their rounds by the time the sun rose. They often had a friendly relationship with the woman of the house. This gave rise to a joke about some kids looking more like the milkman than their daddy. Sixth-graders liked these type of teasing jokes, put-downs if you will, throwing shade as the kids say now, or they did last week, anyway. Sometimes it was the mailman, and it was always a man back then. Sometimes it was the handyman or the furnace man or the repair man. The women were at home. The men were there to take care of the home's various needs. Sounds quaint, now, doesn't it? A well-ordered universe, one that conservatives dream about. If only it were that simple.
Lots of paperboys delivered by Schwinn. We walked our paper route. The bungalow-style homes were built at the turn of the last century and were closely spaced. Often, they were perched at the top of a six-foot rise. It was easier for us to walk the route, taking shortcuts along the way. Out in the suburbs, developers were building ranch homes with breathing room which caused many a paperboy to deliver via bicycle. And porches? There might be one, but usually it was a concrete slab that led up to the front door. Most family activity was moving to the big fenced-in backyard.
We sometimes delivered papers to porches where the occupants were out front, maybe watering the flowers or catching a breeze on a hot day or just waiting for the news of the world or, at least, Wichita. We were obligated to hand deliver then. Old folks, then and now, were anxious to chat as they might be alone all day and anxious for human contact. We had to make it quick, as papers had to be delivered on time. The old folks who wanted to chat were usually those who complained if the paper was late. As a 12-year-old, I only had a vague idea of the lives of the elderly. I was a kid. These people were born in the last century, before airplanes and TV and Elvis. What could I learn from them?
I had one challenge. A bully circulated in our neighborhood. His name was Jack Weird. I didn't make that up -- that's how I remember the name. Maybe my memory has clouded, he may have had the nickname Weird Jack which is entirely possible. But Jack was gunning for me and I never knew why. I would be walking don the street, papers stuffed in my canvas Beacon bag, and around the corner came Jack. Sometimes he was with a bully friend. Other times he was alone. I knew what was coming but just kept on making my rounds. Bill was on the other side of the street or the next block. That was a shame because Bill had a rep as a fighter and Jack Weird never bothered him. Jack closed on me and I could see his evil leer. When he got even with me, he shoved aside my bag, punched me in the stomach, and kept walking. Now, I have to admire his economy of movement. No time wasted on verbal abuse or actually pounding me into the ground, which would take time and effort. Just one punch -- Bam! -- and on he went. Until the next time he saw me walking down the street, on the way to school or a Scout meeting. But only if I was alone. If I was with anybody, he walked on by. If he was with someone, he punched me and kept on walking. Odd what you remember. I often wonder what happened to Jack Weird.
I served a year as an assistant paperboy. Our family moved that summer, 1963, to the suburbs, closer to the air force base where my father was a civilian employee. I had no paper route. I transferred to a Catholic school, St. Francis. I had a crush on a neighbor girl. I began playing basketball because, for the first time, a coach asked me to go out for the team. I knew so little about the game. One blustery winter day I wore my long johns to a game. I rolled them up so they would be invisible under my shorts. As I jogged down the court, one of the long john leggings unraveled, much to the delight of the other team. I made a quick repair but my teammates teased me about it the rest of the season. I put up with it, I suppose, because that's what teammates did. You could be bullied, teased, cajoled, punched. That's the way it was. It's a different world now.
My only job in the 'burbs was to take care of my brothers and sisters. My mom had delivered twins in June and was more than busy with them. I made my siblings sandwiches. Took them outside to play. Fixed their cuts and scrapes. My brother Dan helped with the first aid. We were both Scouts and proud of our lifesaving skills. We could rescue a careless swimmer. We could make splints and tourniquets. We knew what to do in case of rattlesnake bite. The Shay kids were the safest kids on the block.
JFK was murdered in November 1963. In the new year, Dad was transferred back to Denver. We lived in a motel while waiting for renters to move out of the house we left in 1960 when Dad hauled us off to Washington state and then Kansas. Again, my job was watching my siblings. I was going to get a job, maybe a paper route, but fate intervened when my dad was laid off by his aerospace conglomerate. He found a job with GE in Florida. Florida? Jeez, we were moving all over the damn place. Snakes and alligators! Hurricanes! But, we were mostly excited to live by the ocean. Mostly.
Next: Teen jobs in Florida.
I didn't have a paid job until I was in sixth grade. I helped my buddy Bill deliver the afternoon Wichita paper. Not sure how much I made. Some of it went toward buying Boy Scout uniforms. I probably spent the rest frivolously. Bill did most of the collecting, the most odious part of the job. I sometimes accompanied him on his rounds.
Let's harken back to the days of two-newspaper towns. Remember those? It's not ancient history. Denver was home to the Post and the Rocky Mountain News. When I moved from Florida to Denver in 1978, the tabloid News was the morning paper and the Post was delivered in the afternoon. They both went to morning delivery in the 1980s. The News no longer exists. The Post is held captive by a hedge-fund group and is rapidly shedding its editorial staff in favor of fat profits.
I am old enough to remember the golden age of newspapers, an era that ended with the Internet although its death knells could be heard with the advent of network TV news and, later, the dawn of the personal computer.
Newspapers were big employers in every city. Reporters gathered the news, photogs shot the pictures, and editors edited. In newsrooms of 1978, you could call for a copy boy or copy girl to come get your typed (in triplicate) story and take it to the editors' desk. Hot copy was set by typesetters who wore boxy paper hats. Route Men delivered papers and paperboys (and a few girls) threw them on porches. Each paper had a physical clip morgue and a staff to do research. Advertising fielded a big staff to keep subscribers happy. There were ad designers and artists. The Post building was located where the convention center hotel is now. Hundreds of people worked there. All those hungry people patronized area restaurants. You wouldn't be surprised to learn that local saloons did a booming business. The same was true at the News with offices on Colfax.
In 1962 Wichita, Kan., the early risers delivered the Eagle in the morning and my friend Bill and I delivered the Beacon in the afternoons after school. Trucks delivered the papers to Bill's house and I came over to fold and deliver. On most days, the papers were not huge. Most days, Bill and I folded the newspapers without using rubber bands. You would think that the package would be become undone as we tossed them to anxious customers. But they didn't. At least, that's how I remember it. I remember Bill and I sailed them like mini-Frisbees onto porches in the tree-lined College Hill neighborhood. It was a given that papers must land on every customer's porch. Sometimes, the elderly asked us to put it inside their front door or in the milk box that sat under the mail box. That was a wooden box that held the milk delivered by the milkman at about the same time early-rising paperboys were delivering the Eagle. Milkmen finished their rounds by the time the sun rose. They often had a friendly relationship with the woman of the house. This gave rise to a joke about some kids looking more like the milkman than their daddy. Sixth-graders liked these type of teasing jokes, put-downs if you will, throwing shade as the kids say now, or they did last week, anyway. Sometimes it was the mailman, and it was always a man back then. Sometimes it was the handyman or the furnace man or the repair man. The women were at home. The men were there to take care of the home's various needs. Sounds quaint, now, doesn't it? A well-ordered universe, one that conservatives dream about. If only it were that simple.
Lots of paperboys delivered by Schwinn. We walked our paper route. The bungalow-style homes were built at the turn of the last century and were closely spaced. Often, they were perched at the top of a six-foot rise. It was easier for us to walk the route, taking shortcuts along the way. Out in the suburbs, developers were building ranch homes with breathing room which caused many a paperboy to deliver via bicycle. And porches? There might be one, but usually it was a concrete slab that led up to the front door. Most family activity was moving to the big fenced-in backyard.
We sometimes delivered papers to porches where the occupants were out front, maybe watering the flowers or catching a breeze on a hot day or just waiting for the news of the world or, at least, Wichita. We were obligated to hand deliver then. Old folks, then and now, were anxious to chat as they might be alone all day and anxious for human contact. We had to make it quick, as papers had to be delivered on time. The old folks who wanted to chat were usually those who complained if the paper was late. As a 12-year-old, I only had a vague idea of the lives of the elderly. I was a kid. These people were born in the last century, before airplanes and TV and Elvis. What could I learn from them?
I had one challenge. A bully circulated in our neighborhood. His name was Jack Weird. I didn't make that up -- that's how I remember the name. Maybe my memory has clouded, he may have had the nickname Weird Jack which is entirely possible. But Jack was gunning for me and I never knew why. I would be walking don the street, papers stuffed in my canvas Beacon bag, and around the corner came Jack. Sometimes he was with a bully friend. Other times he was alone. I knew what was coming but just kept on making my rounds. Bill was on the other side of the street or the next block. That was a shame because Bill had a rep as a fighter and Jack Weird never bothered him. Jack closed on me and I could see his evil leer. When he got even with me, he shoved aside my bag, punched me in the stomach, and kept walking. Now, I have to admire his economy of movement. No time wasted on verbal abuse or actually pounding me into the ground, which would take time and effort. Just one punch -- Bam! -- and on he went. Until the next time he saw me walking down the street, on the way to school or a Scout meeting. But only if I was alone. If I was with anybody, he walked on by. If he was with someone, he punched me and kept on walking. Odd what you remember. I often wonder what happened to Jack Weird.
I served a year as an assistant paperboy. Our family moved that summer, 1963, to the suburbs, closer to the air force base where my father was a civilian employee. I had no paper route. I transferred to a Catholic school, St. Francis. I had a crush on a neighbor girl. I began playing basketball because, for the first time, a coach asked me to go out for the team. I knew so little about the game. One blustery winter day I wore my long johns to a game. I rolled them up so they would be invisible under my shorts. As I jogged down the court, one of the long john leggings unraveled, much to the delight of the other team. I made a quick repair but my teammates teased me about it the rest of the season. I put up with it, I suppose, because that's what teammates did. You could be bullied, teased, cajoled, punched. That's the way it was. It's a different world now.
My only job in the 'burbs was to take care of my brothers and sisters. My mom had delivered twins in June and was more than busy with them. I made my siblings sandwiches. Took them outside to play. Fixed their cuts and scrapes. My brother Dan helped with the first aid. We were both Scouts and proud of our lifesaving skills. We could rescue a careless swimmer. We could make splints and tourniquets. We knew what to do in case of rattlesnake bite. The Shay kids were the safest kids on the block.
JFK was murdered in November 1963. In the new year, Dad was transferred back to Denver. We lived in a motel while waiting for renters to move out of the house we left in 1960 when Dad hauled us off to Washington state and then Kansas. Again, my job was watching my siblings. I was going to get a job, maybe a paper route, but fate intervened when my dad was laid off by his aerospace conglomerate. He found a job with GE in Florida. Florida? Jeez, we were moving all over the damn place. Snakes and alligators! Hurricanes! But, we were mostly excited to live by the ocean. Mostly.
Next: Teen jobs in Florida.
Saturday, September 01, 2018
Part I: The Way Mike Worked
The Laramie County Public Library kicks off the fall with the Smithsonian exhibit, "The Way We Worked." Sponsored here by Wyoming Humanities, the exhibit "engages viewers with a history of work." It opens Sept. 22 and runs through Nov. 13. Grand opening is a "Hands-on History Expo" on Sept. 28 where you can "dial a rotary phone, draw water with a hand pump, enjoy old-fashioned refreshments (make your own ice cream!) and much more." You can see antique tractors, a wheat-washing machine and an old-fashioned library card catalog.
This is what libraries are for -- education and fun. Reading itself is a joy. Those facts alone are a bulwark against the Trumpists' war on truth, learning, creativity, and the free press. So come out to the library this fall and see what it was really like when your grandparents were kids. Dial a rotary phone. Man, I want to do that as it's been awhile. Wonder what memories that will provoke? And the library asks us for our memories, stories about what kind of work our forebears did, what we do (or did) for a living, what we want to do when we grow up.
Some grow up knowing what they want to do with their lives. They are the lucky ones or the cursed ones, depending on how it all works out. Should I follow a predictable path, or take the road less traveled? Nothing more quickly provokes an eye roll from a high school grad than the question, "So what are your plans?" You can really punk your elders with wise-ass replies. I don't have any plans. I'm going to surf/snowboard until someone comes along and offers me a job. What's a plan?
I remember my elders asking similar questions at my 1969 high school graduation. What you going to do, Mike? I replied that I was attending the University of South Carolina in Columbia on a Navy ROTC scholarship and major in marine biology. I would serve my term as a naval officer, hopefully in places close to good surf spots. I then would become a marine biologist with a job close to good surfing spots. Oh yeah, I was going to get married, too, to my high school steady although maybe I wouldn't say that out loud because we hadn't discussed it yet. I was going to play serious basketball pick-up games as long as I could.
I really had no basis for any of this. Except the surfing part -- that I really loved. I loved the ocean, too, as a place that produced waves for me to ride. Did I spend my free time studying the ocean currents and plant/animal life? Did I dream of seagoing adventures on famous oceanography vessels?
Where was my passion?
I read. I loved books. Some of my favorite novels were set on the ocean, those about Captain Horatio Hornblower, for instance. I devoured the novels written by Alistair MacLean, specifically "HMS Ulysses" and "Ice Station Zebra." I read books about World War II, my father's war. I read historical fiction and sci-fi and mysteries. I was an omnivore, reading-wise. I read the cool books, ones that people talked about such as "Catch-22," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Slaughterhouse Five." I wondered about the authors, how they got their start, how they sat down at a desk and typed all day. I never met a living author. I knew they existed but none of them came to my hometown, as far as I knew. None of them ever visited my small Catholic high school.
I had a clear picture of the ocean and the ships that sailed upon her. I had no clear idea of the world of writing. Thing is, I was much more attracted to the latter than the former. But how do you tell your Depression-era and WWII parents that you want to do something as ethereal as writing for a living? My father was an accountant with a well-stocked library. My mother was a nurse who read all of the time. My parents birthed nine children, and I was the eldest and the one who was supposed to be an example to them all. We did not grow up poor but budgets were always tight. My father bought breakfast cereal and macaroni-and-cheese by the case at the precursor of Sam's Club. My mother cooked fifties dishes, such as tuna casserole, that I never want to see again. My father changed jobs a lot and my mother worked, a rarity at the time.
So I had to plan my own trajectory. And how did that work out?
Stay tuned for details in my next installment of "The Way Mike Worked" series. Coming soon!
This is what libraries are for -- education and fun. Reading itself is a joy. Those facts alone are a bulwark against the Trumpists' war on truth, learning, creativity, and the free press. So come out to the library this fall and see what it was really like when your grandparents were kids. Dial a rotary phone. Man, I want to do that as it's been awhile. Wonder what memories that will provoke? And the library asks us for our memories, stories about what kind of work our forebears did, what we do (or did) for a living, what we want to do when we grow up.
Some grow up knowing what they want to do with their lives. They are the lucky ones or the cursed ones, depending on how it all works out. Should I follow a predictable path, or take the road less traveled? Nothing more quickly provokes an eye roll from a high school grad than the question, "So what are your plans?" You can really punk your elders with wise-ass replies. I don't have any plans. I'm going to surf/snowboard until someone comes along and offers me a job. What's a plan?
I remember my elders asking similar questions at my 1969 high school graduation. What you going to do, Mike? I replied that I was attending the University of South Carolina in Columbia on a Navy ROTC scholarship and major in marine biology. I would serve my term as a naval officer, hopefully in places close to good surf spots. I then would become a marine biologist with a job close to good surfing spots. Oh yeah, I was going to get married, too, to my high school steady although maybe I wouldn't say that out loud because we hadn't discussed it yet. I was going to play serious basketball pick-up games as long as I could.
I really had no basis for any of this. Except the surfing part -- that I really loved. I loved the ocean, too, as a place that produced waves for me to ride. Did I spend my free time studying the ocean currents and plant/animal life? Did I dream of seagoing adventures on famous oceanography vessels?
Where was my passion?
I read. I loved books. Some of my favorite novels were set on the ocean, those about Captain Horatio Hornblower, for instance. I devoured the novels written by Alistair MacLean, specifically "HMS Ulysses" and "Ice Station Zebra." I read books about World War II, my father's war. I read historical fiction and sci-fi and mysteries. I was an omnivore, reading-wise. I read the cool books, ones that people talked about such as "Catch-22," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Slaughterhouse Five." I wondered about the authors, how they got their start, how they sat down at a desk and typed all day. I never met a living author. I knew they existed but none of them came to my hometown, as far as I knew. None of them ever visited my small Catholic high school.
I had a clear picture of the ocean and the ships that sailed upon her. I had no clear idea of the world of writing. Thing is, I was much more attracted to the latter than the former. But how do you tell your Depression-era and WWII parents that you want to do something as ethereal as writing for a living? My father was an accountant with a well-stocked library. My mother was a nurse who read all of the time. My parents birthed nine children, and I was the eldest and the one who was supposed to be an example to them all. We did not grow up poor but budgets were always tight. My father bought breakfast cereal and macaroni-and-cheese by the case at the precursor of Sam's Club. My mother cooked fifties dishes, such as tuna casserole, that I never want to see again. My father changed jobs a lot and my mother worked, a rarity at the time.
So I had to plan my own trajectory. And how did that work out?
Stay tuned for details in my next installment of "The Way Mike Worked" series. Coming soon!
Saturday, August 18, 2018
No switcheroo at the polls for this city boy in cowboy country
Every eight years election cycle, Democrats in Wyoming are faced with a dilemma. For the August primary, should we change our registration from D to R as in Republican and vote for the least offensive of the R candidates?
Wyoming permits voters to change their registration up to the Aug. 21 day of the primary and vote accordingly. After voting, you can change back and be on your way, your conscience clear that you may have helped keep the more odious conservative gubernatorial candidates from running against the Democratic candidate in November. WYO is a party preference state, so at the polls you get a D or R ballot based on your registration. Up to 10 percent of voters in the state register as unaffiliated. To vote in the primary, you have to switch to D or R. Most will choose R in this overwhelmingly Red State.
In 2010, this tactic ensured that moderate Matt Mead was the R on the ballot against the D, Leslie Petersen of Jackson. Petersen was the superior candidate. But it was 2010, the Tea Party year, and she didn't have a chance in the general. Mead's opponents were Tea Party regressive Ron Micheli, the wishy-washy Colin Simpson, and former state auditor Rita Meyer.
Local Democrats gathered the night of the primary to nosh and and drink and gab and listen to the results on the radio, just as our ancestors did in days of yore. Micheli and Meyer exchanged early leads. Mead crept up and passed them both by the time all the precincts were in. We went home secure in the knowledge that our guy had a snowball's chance in hell of winning and that Mead would guide us for the next eight years. This was important to me because I was a state employee and the Gov was my boss. I would work with him and his staff on issues important to the arts in WYO. I wrote the annual "State of the Arts" speech. Sometimes that speech was uttered almost verbatim at the Governor's Arts Awards in February. More often, however, the Gov's speechwriters got their hands on it and mangled it beyond recognition. As a corporate and government writer/editor, I learned long ago that anything I do is a rough draft. Actually, I discovered that as a fiction writer, too. I am never edited when I write in my journal or when I write this blog. The only time I revise my blog post-post is when I make a mistake, particularly a factual error. Blogs are notoriously cavalier with the facts, be you prog-blogger or wingnut from the Right. I attempt to be accurate.
Mead won in 2010 and 2014. He's a super nice guy as is the First Lady. Mead was so nice for eight years that he almost never got his way with the Republican majority in the state legislature. Mead now says that he is going to retire to his Albany County ranch and chill, and who can blame him? We thought he would jump right into a Congressional race. Maybe in 2020. Maybe not.
Have I ever crossed over the Rubicon on primary day? No. Will I do it this time? No. The Dems have a terrific gubernatorial candidate in former legislative minority leader Mary Throne. She's a Gillette native, an attorney, a mom and a cancer survivor. Nobody on the Republican side can match her. Mark Gordon comes closest. He's the current state treasurer and a moderate compared to the others. He grew up on a ranch and continues to ranch, as you can see in his many folksy TV ads. He's up against some dedicated crazies but, at least in governor races, the moderate R usually has the advantage. Even now, in Trump times. Where you get the real crazies are in races for the gerrymandered legislature. I've documented some of their worst transgressions. Sometimes I get sad and give up. Then I get mad again...
No switcheroo at the polls Tuesday for this cowboy. Actually, I'm not a cowboy. I'm a Dem and a city boy who's worked in the arts. As a kid, I used to suffer violent asthma attacks when adjacent to livestock. When I ride horses now, I look like the dude that I am. Kind of like Foster Friess, although much younger. Somehow, I learned how to survive and thrive in cowboy country without betraying my liberal social justice background. How about you?
Wyoming permits voters to change their registration up to the Aug. 21 day of the primary and vote accordingly. After voting, you can change back and be on your way, your conscience clear that you may have helped keep the more odious conservative gubernatorial candidates from running against the Democratic candidate in November. WYO is a party preference state, so at the polls you get a D or R ballot based on your registration. Up to 10 percent of voters in the state register as unaffiliated. To vote in the primary, you have to switch to D or R. Most will choose R in this overwhelmingly Red State.
In 2010, this tactic ensured that moderate Matt Mead was the R on the ballot against the D, Leslie Petersen of Jackson. Petersen was the superior candidate. But it was 2010, the Tea Party year, and she didn't have a chance in the general. Mead's opponents were Tea Party regressive Ron Micheli, the wishy-washy Colin Simpson, and former state auditor Rita Meyer.
Local Democrats gathered the night of the primary to nosh and and drink and gab and listen to the results on the radio, just as our ancestors did in days of yore. Micheli and Meyer exchanged early leads. Mead crept up and passed them both by the time all the precincts were in. We went home secure in the knowledge that our guy had a snowball's chance in hell of winning and that Mead would guide us for the next eight years. This was important to me because I was a state employee and the Gov was my boss. I would work with him and his staff on issues important to the arts in WYO. I wrote the annual "State of the Arts" speech. Sometimes that speech was uttered almost verbatim at the Governor's Arts Awards in February. More often, however, the Gov's speechwriters got their hands on it and mangled it beyond recognition. As a corporate and government writer/editor, I learned long ago that anything I do is a rough draft. Actually, I discovered that as a fiction writer, too. I am never edited when I write in my journal or when I write this blog. The only time I revise my blog post-post is when I make a mistake, particularly a factual error. Blogs are notoriously cavalier with the facts, be you prog-blogger or wingnut from the Right. I attempt to be accurate.
Mead won in 2010 and 2014. He's a super nice guy as is the First Lady. Mead was so nice for eight years that he almost never got his way with the Republican majority in the state legislature. Mead now says that he is going to retire to his Albany County ranch and chill, and who can blame him? We thought he would jump right into a Congressional race. Maybe in 2020. Maybe not.
Have I ever crossed over the Rubicon on primary day? No. Will I do it this time? No. The Dems have a terrific gubernatorial candidate in former legislative minority leader Mary Throne. She's a Gillette native, an attorney, a mom and a cancer survivor. Nobody on the Republican side can match her. Mark Gordon comes closest. He's the current state treasurer and a moderate compared to the others. He grew up on a ranch and continues to ranch, as you can see in his many folksy TV ads. He's up against some dedicated crazies but, at least in governor races, the moderate R usually has the advantage. Even now, in Trump times. Where you get the real crazies are in races for the gerrymandered legislature. I've documented some of their worst transgressions. Sometimes I get sad and give up. Then I get mad again...
No switcheroo at the polls Tuesday for this cowboy. Actually, I'm not a cowboy. I'm a Dem and a city boy who's worked in the arts. As a kid, I used to suffer violent asthma attacks when adjacent to livestock. When I ride horses now, I look like the dude that I am. Kind of like Foster Friess, although much younger. Somehow, I learned how to survive and thrive in cowboy country without betraying my liberal social justice background. How about you?
Sunday, August 12, 2018
This Baby Boomer grew up hating Nazis -- and still does
The Nazis are in D.C. this weekend.
Sounds weird, doesn't it -- Nazis in our nation's capital city? Last time we contemplated Nazis roaming through D.C. was in "Man in the High Castle," and that was sci-fi. Before that, it was George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, demonstrating in front of the White House against President Eisenhower's effort to send military aid to Israel. Nazis don't like Jews -- you probably heard about that. Rockwell thought there was a Jew in every boardroom and behind every tree. He should have been concerned about members of his own organization -- one of them gunned him down outside an Arlington, Va., laundromat in 1967.
Prior to World War II, Nazis curried favor inside the beltway. They found isolationists and white supremacists willing to listen. As Philip Roth envisioned in "The Plot Against America," Charles Lindbergh and his Nazi sympathizers did not get into the White House in 1940 and keep the U.S. out of the war and the Nazis in power.
Baby Boomers grew up hating Nazis. Our fathers fought in World War II and they hated Nazis. Movies and TV shows extolled the virtues of killing them. Until "Hogan's Heroes," which transformed concentration camp life into comedy. My father refused to watch the show. "None of that is funny," he would say. We kind of know what he was mad about but we did think it was funny. "I zee nuthing!" Oh, Schultz. Ha ha.
Nazis tried to kill my father. Not him, specifically, just any G.I. that wandered into France in June 1944. If they had succeeded I would not be here, in this form, anyway. I might be a grandmother in Belarus. I might be a Pacific Ocean sea slug. As in George Bailey's alternate universe, I may not have ever been born.
At the heart of my Nazi hatred is what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil." Hitler and Goebbels and Eichmann were easy to hate. But what about the millions of Germans who followed Hitler? Those who worked as low-level bureaucrats tallying the amount of gold yanked from dead people's mouths at Auschwitz and Birkenau? Someone had to keep those records. How far along are we with The Final Solution? Halfway? Two million more Jews to go!
Most of Hitler's support came from the compliant. This will always be Germany's shame. "We thought that smoke from Buchenwald was a barbecue." We were proud of bringing down this rotten regime.
Now we have our own rotten regime. Arendt would recognize the signs of totalitarianism. Trump is a liar and a braggart. His followers are true believers. Bad combination.
The Nazis march in D.C. today. Would I kill a Nazi just for being a Nazi? I don't think I have it in me. Would I punch a Nazi? Too old for that. Do I oppose everything that these people stand for? Absolutely. I wish I could be in D.C. this weekend at what are being called "counter-protests." Thing is, how can you counter such a rotten philosophy? This is a white pride rally. A bunch of goofballs, including KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, who say that the white race is superior and your Indian/Somali/African-American/Nicaraguan neighbors are inferior. This cannot be as you have seen the proof with your own eyes. Your neighbors from India shoveled your snowy sidewalks after your heart attack. You watch the Academy Awards with your Somali friend who had no movie theater in his village. You've been a member of NAACP and seen the good works on this organization and the stalwart stance it has taken against white supremacy. Your Syrian cardiologist saved your life. And so on.
The Nazis marching today in Washington aren't worth spitting on. Same goes for their leader, Donald Trump. They are beneath contempt but we must be ready to fight them with the tools we have. Truth. The Free Press. Poetry. Maybe violence, if it comes to that. It did once.
Sounds weird, doesn't it -- Nazis in our nation's capital city? Last time we contemplated Nazis roaming through D.C. was in "Man in the High Castle," and that was sci-fi. Before that, it was George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, demonstrating in front of the White House against President Eisenhower's effort to send military aid to Israel. Nazis don't like Jews -- you probably heard about that. Rockwell thought there was a Jew in every boardroom and behind every tree. He should have been concerned about members of his own organization -- one of them gunned him down outside an Arlington, Va., laundromat in 1967.
Prior to World War II, Nazis curried favor inside the beltway. They found isolationists and white supremacists willing to listen. As Philip Roth envisioned in "The Plot Against America," Charles Lindbergh and his Nazi sympathizers did not get into the White House in 1940 and keep the U.S. out of the war and the Nazis in power.
Baby Boomers grew up hating Nazis. Our fathers fought in World War II and they hated Nazis. Movies and TV shows extolled the virtues of killing them. Until "Hogan's Heroes," which transformed concentration camp life into comedy. My father refused to watch the show. "None of that is funny," he would say. We kind of know what he was mad about but we did think it was funny. "I zee nuthing!" Oh, Schultz. Ha ha.
Nazis tried to kill my father. Not him, specifically, just any G.I. that wandered into France in June 1944. If they had succeeded I would not be here, in this form, anyway. I might be a grandmother in Belarus. I might be a Pacific Ocean sea slug. As in George Bailey's alternate universe, I may not have ever been born.
At the heart of my Nazi hatred is what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil." Hitler and Goebbels and Eichmann were easy to hate. But what about the millions of Germans who followed Hitler? Those who worked as low-level bureaucrats tallying the amount of gold yanked from dead people's mouths at Auschwitz and Birkenau? Someone had to keep those records. How far along are we with The Final Solution? Halfway? Two million more Jews to go!
Most of Hitler's support came from the compliant. This will always be Germany's shame. "We thought that smoke from Buchenwald was a barbecue." We were proud of bringing down this rotten regime.
Now we have our own rotten regime. Arendt would recognize the signs of totalitarianism. Trump is a liar and a braggart. His followers are true believers. Bad combination.
The Nazis march in D.C. today. Would I kill a Nazi just for being a Nazi? I don't think I have it in me. Would I punch a Nazi? Too old for that. Do I oppose everything that these people stand for? Absolutely. I wish I could be in D.C. this weekend at what are being called "counter-protests." Thing is, how can you counter such a rotten philosophy? This is a white pride rally. A bunch of goofballs, including KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, who say that the white race is superior and your Indian/Somali/African-American/Nicaraguan neighbors are inferior. This cannot be as you have seen the proof with your own eyes. Your neighbors from India shoveled your snowy sidewalks after your heart attack. You watch the Academy Awards with your Somali friend who had no movie theater in his village. You've been a member of NAACP and seen the good works on this organization and the stalwart stance it has taken against white supremacy. Your Syrian cardiologist saved your life. And so on.
The Nazis marching today in Washington aren't worth spitting on. Same goes for their leader, Donald Trump. They are beneath contempt but we must be ready to fight them with the tools we have. Truth. The Free Press. Poetry. Maybe violence, if it comes to that. It did once.
Thursday, August 09, 2018
Poet Anya Silver bids farewell with righteous rage
Nicole Cooley wrote a Facebook post about her friend, poet Anya Silver, who died this week. She included a poem by Silver that expresses the anger we feel at the premature death of a loved one. This is the raw anger that we would like to turn loose but don't. We are angry and sad but sad rules out because that is what we feel and what we are expected to feel. If we indulged in the anger that Silver writes about, well, we would upset the others who are equally sad and angry as hell. It is a moment of solemnity, not rage. But rage belongs. Find more of Silver's poems at the Poetry Foundation web site.
Metastatic
by Anya Silver, 1968-2018
I’d like a long braid to lasso my rage away,
to stand on a stage in a garter belt
and thigh-high boots and stamp my feet
through the floor, like to put my face
right up against someone else’s face and scream
until the scream knocks me to my knees, coughing.
I could become an arsonist, delicious click of the lighter.
Every time someone I love dies, I’d like a diamond
to line the hilt of a dagger, or tip an arrow.
I’d like to shoot the whole God damned universe
through its infinite starry center, and watch it suck
into itself, scattering the suns and galaxies
over each other like a jar of tipped glitter.
Don’t tell me not to be angry. Do you know
how close I am to flinging my whole animal body
at you, how little I care about being hit
back, or spat on, or bruised? Humiliation
means nothing to me. I have nothing to lose.
If you push me off a building, I’ll sing.
I’d jump in front of a bullet if I could.
I’d let someone wring my neck if only
I knew it would hurt God just one bit to watch me die.
to stand on a stage in a garter belt
and thigh-high boots and stamp my feet
through the floor, like to put my face
right up against someone else’s face and scream
until the scream knocks me to my knees, coughing.
I could become an arsonist, delicious click of the lighter.
Every time someone I love dies, I’d like a diamond
to line the hilt of a dagger, or tip an arrow.
I’d like to shoot the whole God damned universe
through its infinite starry center, and watch it suck
into itself, scattering the suns and galaxies
over each other like a jar of tipped glitter.
Don’t tell me not to be angry. Do you know
how close I am to flinging my whole animal body
at you, how little I care about being hit
back, or spat on, or bruised? Humiliation
means nothing to me. I have nothing to lose.
If you push me off a building, I’ll sing.
I’d jump in front of a bullet if I could.
I’d let someone wring my neck if only
I knew it would hurt God just one bit to watch me die.
Sunday, August 05, 2018
That old guy peeing in the chair still has stories to tell
The certified nursing assistant (CNA) named Ashley pulls me out of my chair and leads me to the walker so I can get to the handicapped accessible bathroom. It's 4 a.m. on an August Friday and she and the nurse make their rounds. The staff has pumped fluids into me all day and dosed me with diuretics. I fell asleep in the chair so I could be close to the john. The joke was on me. I pissed into my Depends and my gown and into the chair. I had spinal surgery and have trouble walking. I am as helpless as the baby I hear crying over on the pediatric side of this surgical floor.
"Sorry," I mumble.
"It's OK," the CNA says. "It happens."
Not to me it doesn't. That's what I wanted to say. I am a 20-year-old CNA -- we were called orderlies then -- working in a Florida hospital. I peel 67-year-old old men out of chairs they have peed in. I clean them up, help them dress, sop up the mess, and get them back into bed.
"Sorry " they say.
"It's OK," I say. "It happens."
I am a 20-year-old college dropout. I'm not old enough to drink or vote. As I do my chores, I think of the cute blond 20-year-old CNA named Sharon whom I helped earlier in the day. We laughed as we made the bed in an elderly woman's room. The woman sat slumped in the corner as we talked about movies we liked. I wished that this co-worker was not dating my good friend Jim. I sure would like to take her out to one of the movies we talked about. Maybe a drive on the beach. Maybe the surf would be jazzed after work. Maybe I would take some time to think about what to do with the rest of my life.
I'm 67 again. The hospital staff has put me back in my chair, turned off the lights and left. The young CNA is thinking about Friday night, just 12 hours away. The nurse with the braids could be contemplating a weekend with her family camped by a mountain stream. You can see the jagged outline of the Rockies from my fifth floor room.
I am a 20-year-old in a 67-year-old body that is failing. My wife sleeps in the pull-out bed near the window. Some of us suffer in silence. Some of us like company. I wonder what the other young people who keep this hospital working are thinking about tonight. I wonder who other old men are remembering tonight.
I remember this. That cute nurse's aide from that hospital long ago broke up with my friend and I took her to a movie. We spent the next 18 months together. In the summer of 1972, we hitchhiked 10,000 miles around the U.S. we ended up living in Boston where we both found hospital jobs we liked and decided to become nurses together. She became a nurse and I decided to pursue my love of writing. End of our story.
Thursday morning, about 3 a.m., I found myself awake and still a little buzzed from Wednesday evening's surgery. A nurse named Dusty asked if I was ready to pee.
"Need to urinate eight hours after surgery or..."
"Or what?"
"You know what a catheter is, right?"
Dusty accompanied me and my walker around the quiet halls, thinking that might shake up my system. She took me by the veranda that looked over the sleeping town. We chatted. When we got back to the room, she ran water in the sink and I voided. Dusty took a look at my bladder through a scope and found I had urine in there just looking for an excuse to come out. I eventually squeezed out enough to keep the catheters away.
The next night, I turn into Niagara Falls.
At one point, I thought about spending my working life in hospitals. Not peeing in chairs but taking care of those peeing in chairs. In an alternate universe, that is Mike's life. There are many alternate universes. My reality is now.
This won't finish me off. I will be older and incontinent somewhere else. My wife of many years will be gone. My friends will be gone. My grown kids will live far away. I once asked a hospice nurse if people died with their loved ones around them. "Most people die alone," she said.
I leave stories.
"Sorry," I mumble.
"It's OK," the CNA says. "It happens."
Not to me it doesn't. That's what I wanted to say. I am a 20-year-old CNA -- we were called orderlies then -- working in a Florida hospital. I peel 67-year-old old men out of chairs they have peed in. I clean them up, help them dress, sop up the mess, and get them back into bed.
"Sorry " they say.
"It's OK," I say. "It happens."
I am a 20-year-old college dropout. I'm not old enough to drink or vote. As I do my chores, I think of the cute blond 20-year-old CNA named Sharon whom I helped earlier in the day. We laughed as we made the bed in an elderly woman's room. The woman sat slumped in the corner as we talked about movies we liked. I wished that this co-worker was not dating my good friend Jim. I sure would like to take her out to one of the movies we talked about. Maybe a drive on the beach. Maybe the surf would be jazzed after work. Maybe I would take some time to think about what to do with the rest of my life.
I'm 67 again. The hospital staff has put me back in my chair, turned off the lights and left. The young CNA is thinking about Friday night, just 12 hours away. The nurse with the braids could be contemplating a weekend with her family camped by a mountain stream. You can see the jagged outline of the Rockies from my fifth floor room.
I am a 20-year-old in a 67-year-old body that is failing. My wife sleeps in the pull-out bed near the window. Some of us suffer in silence. Some of us like company. I wonder what the other young people who keep this hospital working are thinking about tonight. I wonder who other old men are remembering tonight.
I remember this. That cute nurse's aide from that hospital long ago broke up with my friend and I took her to a movie. We spent the next 18 months together. In the summer of 1972, we hitchhiked 10,000 miles around the U.S. we ended up living in Boston where we both found hospital jobs we liked and decided to become nurses together. She became a nurse and I decided to pursue my love of writing. End of our story.
Thursday morning, about 3 a.m., I found myself awake and still a little buzzed from Wednesday evening's surgery. A nurse named Dusty asked if I was ready to pee.
"Need to urinate eight hours after surgery or..."
"Or what?"
"You know what a catheter is, right?"
Dusty accompanied me and my walker around the quiet halls, thinking that might shake up my system. She took me by the veranda that looked over the sleeping town. We chatted. When we got back to the room, she ran water in the sink and I voided. Dusty took a look at my bladder through a scope and found I had urine in there just looking for an excuse to come out. I eventually squeezed out enough to keep the catheters away.
The next night, I turn into Niagara Falls.
At one point, I thought about spending my working life in hospitals. Not peeing in chairs but taking care of those peeing in chairs. In an alternate universe, that is Mike's life. There are many alternate universes. My reality is now.
This won't finish me off. I will be older and incontinent somewhere else. My wife of many years will be gone. My friends will be gone. My grown kids will live far away. I once asked a hospice nurse if people died with their loved ones around them. "Most people die alone," she said.
I leave stories.
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
A return trip to the Mind Eraser may help me with mobility issues
I can't walk. OK, I can walk but with difficulty. I fell three months ago and the docs finally figured out I sustained some spinal damage that took its time showing up. My fall was a wimpy fall. I lost my balance and fell into s snow-packed gutter. It was the last snow of the season in Fort Collins and I was helping my daughter move. Nobody saw my fall. If they had, I am sure they would have rushed over to help the old guy out of the gutter. So no witnesses. I brushed the snow from my keister and realized I was going to walk around the rest of the day with a cold, wet butt. Five days later, my back began to ache. The ache stretched across the entire lower back. It hurt like hell. I started having trouble walking. I retrieved my cane from the closet and used that to get around until I couldn't and then made the transition to a walker. My fingers began to tingle and I lost coordination in my left arm.
It took three months to get to the "bottom" of the problem. My spine sustained some damage from the wimpy fall. A minor whiplash exacerbated my arthritic spine, and maybe a blow that I had sustained in an earlier fall or a traffic accident from three years ago. Whatever, I needed surgery. That's today. I was bummed to hear I needed spinal surgery but I hunted down a great surgeon for the task. So nervous about it. Excited, too, as this might be the beginning of the end of my decrepitude. The doc says I will probably need therapy to get back the use of my legs and arms. I can deal with that. But not walking? I am an active guy and this frustrates me. Even when I write, I get up and pace. I work out in the gym three days a week and swim two days a week. I love to hike but the mountains have missed me this summer and I have missed them.
I have a friend Tom with MS. We've known each other for 25 years. He was jut diagnosed when we met at our Denver church. I've seen his struggle. I've been part of the group getting him from his van to the wheelchair. I've helped Tom negotiate non-accessible spots, of which there are too many. He no longer walks and has difficulty with his hands and arms and innards. Still, he keeps on. When our boys were teens, we took them to Six Flags Elitch's in Denver. My son Kevin went off to swim with a girl he met and the rest of us decided to ride the Mind Eraser. Tom's son Brian insisted. Riders with a handicapped tag get to go to the front of the line along with their family members. The Elitch's staff members were good about helping Tom into the contraption that looked like a medieval torture device. The ride picked up speed and five minutes later, my mind was totally erased. I screamed the entire time, or at least I think I did. We were shaking when we disembarked but also laughing like fools. Tom needed help getting back in the wheelchair and we enjoyed some of the more sedate rides the rest of the day.
Tom showed courage and grace getting on that ride. I was skeptical he insisted, as did Brian. Tom's mind has remained sharp even while his body did not. He played baseball but now is just a dedicated follower of the MLB, notable his hometown Red Sox and our regional favorite, the Colorado Rockies. I look upon him as an example of what you can do when threatened with one of life's toughest physical and mental challenges. When I had to use the walker, I stopped going out. I didn't want people to see me in such sad shape. After six weeks of that, I was a mess. My wife challenged me to go to our annual Fourth of July party and bocce ball tournament. I sat and kept score while she refereed. A few of the grown men had stopped at the Fireworks Superstore on the way to the party. They set off smoke bombs and twirly, flashy things. No big rockets as fireworks are illegal in this Wyoming town that everyone in Colorado equates with Fourth of July celebrations. I had fun. We all did. At that point, I began to get out of my shell and get back in the world. That's it, isn't it? You have to get out in the world. No excuses.
Following today's surgery, I will be challenged to see what my body can now do. Sure, that's a challenge. But it's the mind that's the real issue. I get to test the strengths and weaknesses of my physical self. But it's my spiritual and mental state that makes the difference.
Maybe I need a return trip to the Mind Eraser.
Tom showed courage and grace getting on that ride. I was skeptical he insisted, as did Brian. Tom's mind has remained sharp even while his body did not. He played baseball but now is just a dedicated follower of the MLB, notable his hometown Red Sox and our regional favorite, the Colorado Rockies. I look upon him as an example of what you can do when threatened with one of life's toughest physical and mental challenges. When I had to use the walker, I stopped going out. I didn't want people to see me in such sad shape. After six weeks of that, I was a mess. My wife challenged me to go to our annual Fourth of July party and bocce ball tournament. I sat and kept score while she refereed. A few of the grown men had stopped at the Fireworks Superstore on the way to the party. They set off smoke bombs and twirly, flashy things. No big rockets as fireworks are illegal in this Wyoming town that everyone in Colorado equates with Fourth of July celebrations. I had fun. We all did. At that point, I began to get out of my shell and get back in the world. That's it, isn't it? You have to get out in the world. No excuses.
Following today's surgery, I will be challenged to see what my body can now do. Sure, that's a challenge. But it's the mind that's the real issue. I get to test the strengths and weaknesses of my physical self. But it's my spiritual and mental state that makes the difference.
Maybe I need a return trip to the Mind Eraser.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)