Factory Defects

On Facebook this morning I ran across the image to the right. My usual routine is to read a comment or two before moving on with the more important duty of finding something truly deserving to be righteously indignant about.

This comment from Daryl caught my eye:

" Without it we cannot think, ........ "

Daryl was right of course. At first I felt a twinge of annoyance at the fact he felt it necessary to point out the obvious.  

My response were the first words that came to me after my knee jerked:

"Apparently there are many of us walking around with it either not installed or not turned on."

I would not normally share the off the cuff remarks I made on some social media site, but my words stuck with me. 

This meme helped me find some clarity regarding the current period of rampant stupidity that has apparently befallen the Human Race. I decided four decades ago that while technology was always going to innovate, the Human Species was not.  We were trapped in an evil spiral of devolution which has created a revolving scenario that causes us to make the same mistakes time and time again.

And now finally, I know why. We are re-populating the species with factory defects. Many are being born with no brains installed or the brains installed are not turned on before deployment. Either way means disaster unless headquarters gets it shit together. Time is running out.

Later ............................................

Erie, Pennsylvania, or How I Got My Handle

The ELO tour had become a real grind. Between the winter weather and number of shows crammed into so few weeks, I was ready to take a break when we hit the Spectrum in Philadelphia on February 12th, 1977 for a two night stand. 

I had over two days free from driving coming so I invited old college friends from the DC/Baltimore area up for some memory swapping, substance abusing, and general all around mayhem. The seven of us shared my single room at the Philadelphia Hilton for 36 hours. Incredibly, the room was immaculate when we left compared to the usual mess I left behind. It had to be because there were girlfriends involved; one of whom in particular was not fond of guys and their messes. She kept us straight.

I scored back stage passes for the second night’s show. ELO were hot that night and the concert was excellent. The after-partying at my room ran until five or six AM before the last loose dog finally passed out. Around noon, we hit the hotel restaurant for a great brunch of crepes, omelets, bacon, scrapple, home fries and Bloody Mary’s. We spent the next few hours visiting the Liberty Bell and being booted out of Independence Hall for being a tad too rowdy. Apparently Independence Hall is a somber place meant for serious reflection on our country’s noble past and not on our then all too rowdy present. The security guys were friendly and laughed with us as they showed us the door. Damn Kids.

My friends slipped away home by late afternoon leaving me over sixteen hours to make it to Erie for the 10:00 AM stage call the next day. I should have left then, but after my shower, I made the mistake of falling asleep on the bed. I woke up in a panic around midnight. Still plenty of time, but I couldn’t screw around. I hooked up my trailer and headed to I-76 west and then onto I-79 north.

After fifty or so miles of I-79 north I ran into a freezing mist. The super slab had become slicker than snot on a doorknob. I crossed my first bridge in the mist and watched in my mirror for what the trailer was doing.

Pennsylvania roads have always favored bad transitions between the varied surfaces that make up their highways. Not sure why, but it seems to be state policy. Regardless, the truck jumped from the transition and the trailer began to twitch some to the right. I compensated to the same side and my front wheel hit the transition between the roadway and the shoulder. I did not appreciate the height differences between the road surface and the shoulder. Once I had the trailer under control, I just steered back onto the highway and then all Hell broke loose.

My mistake was not easing back. My steering tires caught the uneven transition and in an instant I was jack knifing the other way and headed toward a guardrail on the median with a ravine on the other side. I almost regained control when my left front wheel caught the guardrail as it came out of the ground. At that point, I was off to the races. All I could do was take my hands off the steering wheel and ride it out.

NOTE – a lesson learned a month earlier in Canada saved me from serious injury. I was heading east on Hwy17 between Toronto and Montreal. I was maybe 60 yards or so behind a Canadian truck and we were both scooting along happy as if we had brains. Just as I saw the pavement was iced, the truck ahead of me jack knifed hard in both directions. The driver tried fruitlessly to control his rig. When his truck finally stopped, I ran up to his rig and opened the crunched driver door. Inside, the driver was laid out on the doghouse with his head hanging down on his seat. His failure to wear the seatbelt provided caused him to be tossed around the inside of that cab like a rag doll. I am guessing no body part escaped at least some kind of indignity. He was bleeding hard from several wounds to his head. Thankfully he was conscious and in decent spirits when the ambulance hauled him away.

I had never worn a seat belt up to that point in my life. When I got back in my rig that morning, I began to use the one that had previously hung empty before. Wearing the seat belt kept me behind the steering wheel when it came my time to jack knife. I was not tossed around like that poor SOB in Canada. All I received injury wise was a sore left side of my head, some bruising from the belt, and a dinged right knee.

I remember being jostled hard up, down, and all around as terrible sounds of metal being punished in ungodly ways emphasized the damage being done. All was suddenly quiet and I realized I was okay. I had been listening to Aerosmith’s “Long Train Running” before I jacked and it was still playing when the rig finally came to a halt. To this day, I won’t play that song and drive at the same time.

I sat for a few seconds or more and contemplated my situation. At some point I decided to jump out of the cab. When I did, I sank into snow up to my neck. All the winter snow that had been plowed into the ravine that winter cushioned the final moments of the crash. Between the seat belt and the deep snow, I was very lucky.

It took several minutes of thrashing and some help from folks who stopped to get me up and out of that deep snow. It was then I was able to see the trajectory of my crash and the third stroke of luck I had that day. The tractor and trailer had torn up many feet of guardrail as it went into the ravine. Luckily for me and the tour, the trailer wheels hooked up on the guardrail and kept the truck and trailer from going deeper into the gully.

Within 20 minutes the crash site had become a circus. Many state cops, ambulances, and numerous rubber neckers clogged the highway; all for a one vehicle accident. I realized I was screwed. The show in Erie would have to be canceled. I began to wrap my brain around the idea that my dream driving job was over before it really got started. And it was my fault.

A Pennsylvania State Police commander showed up. He took charge, made sure his boys were directing traffic to the right lane and the shoulder. Then he found me being checked out by an EMT doing his best to get me to agree to go to a hospital while I kept insisting I would not. The ambulance left without me.

The cop and I talked. He was not happy about what I had done to his highway. I explained to him that while I admitted fault, weather and the poorly constructed transitions of the road contributed greatly to the accident. I was not cited. I will always remember him looking at my miserable self and nodding his head. And then he told me it might be a few days before they could yank the trailer out. But right now they were going to lift the trailer and set it on the inside of the guardrail so traffic could pass unimpeded. Our conversation went something like:

“So, you are going to call a wrecker out now,” I asked? “And then lift and leave it in the ravine?”

“Uh, yes that is the plan.”

I thought about what he was telling me and suddenly it dawned on me that more than just the concert in Erie was threatened. The foreseeable future of the tour could be in danger. I felt sick to my stomach. My screw up just magnified tenfold.

“Would it be possible to yank the tractor and trailer out today? I have show equipment on board and if I don’t make it to Erie, 5000 fans will be some disappointed tonight.”

He looked at me and began shaking his head. The look on my face must have been pitiful enough that he stopped and said, “How much money do you have driver? Cash money, not credit cards.”

Suddenly I felt a glimmer of hope. As it turns out, every SHOWCO driver was expected to have at least $2000 in cash on them at all times. The honches in Dallas did not want a tour disrupted because of a lack of money for unforeseen emergencies like this crash.

“I have over $2000 in my wallet and I will spend it all to try and make the show in Erie.”

“Sit tight Driver, I’ll make some calls. No promises. We’ll see.” He disappeared back towards his vehicle.

Apparently that state cop knew who to call. In under an hour, two huge wreckers showed up with a crew of guys in overalls carrying shovels, chains, and one guy had a repair truck complete with torch and welding rigs on board. If this crew could not make it happen, no one would.

It was now almost 10:00 AM. I asked the head cop to get hold of my boss in Dallas and let him know what happened. He would then get hold of the folks on the tour cooling their heels up at the Erie County Fieldhouse.

With the crew in overalls and myself helping where I could, six or so tough hours later, two wreckers successfully yanked my rig out of the ravine and moved it to the next exit on the northbound side of I-79 at Stonboro. My tractor was cranked up backwards behind one tow truck and the trailer rode high in a fool’s web of cable and straps on the back of the other wrecker. One of the fuel tanks was torn open and dangling and the corner of the cab was seriously crunched. The trailer had a good sized hole where the tractor nailed it, the under carriage had been mangled and the damaged landing gear had been cut off to allow the tow cables unencumbered movement pulling the trailer out of the ravine. 

I was about to send the wrecker with the trailer ahead to the venue when a single axle GMC cabover showed up. It was the state cop commander’s brother in law. He was an owner operator from nearby and happened to be home for some off time. For $500 he would haul my trailer for the foreseeable future. The wrecker crew dropped the trailer onto Gerald's tractor and we headed to Erie.

All in all, that day was probably my best day ever behind the wheel of a truck. I ended up the hero and not the zero by finding some way to allow the show to go on. The concert started 2 hours late, but it started. The crowd went wild when the trailer showed up. We could hear them roar at the announcement from outside as Gerald backed into the loading dock. I never saw SHOWCO roadies work so fast as they did that night setting up the sound equipment from my trailer.

The two wreckers and repair crew cost a touch over $1000 ($4500 in 2021 dollars). Gerald, the owner operator, stuck with the tour for several shows while my tractor was repaired at a garage near the Green Shingle Truckstop outside Erie. Gerald pocketed my $500 and a sizable bonus from the Lead engineer on the tour for the use of him and his tractor for a week.

I have thought about this accident many times in the last forty plus years. I have vacillated back and forth between taking credit and giving credit to the fine people who rallied on my behalf so that the show could go on. I have decided any credit I deserve would be limited to my being a pain in the ass to the folks who actually pulled it off for me and ELO. I was not going to accept failure. And it worked out. My job was saved.

And last but not least, I decided that my CB handle from that day forward would be “Guardrail”, as it was later determined that Lloyds of London, our insurance carrier, was charged for replacing 100 feet of Pennsylvania guardrail at a rate of $100 per foot.

Keep it ‘tween the ditches ………………………..

__________________________________________

@ 2100 words

Potato Nightmares

Maine Spuds

I had run into some legal trouble driving for SHOWCO when we were in Michigan in late 1978. I was on a Black Sabbath tour. I was snagged having too much fun in public. The trouble was enough of a head’s up that I decided to take a break from Rock n Roll and go back home to Maryland where life was less fast lane and more slow lane.

A friend hooked me up with a smallish freight hauler out of Salisbury on the Eastern Shore. The carrier was Wheatley Trucking. They delivered mostly processed food stuffs and fresh produce on the back hauls up and down the Atlantic seaboard.

Being the low man on the totem pole, I was issued a very tired International Transtar with a 250 Cummins engine that was barely able to get out of its own way. The steering wheel had 8 inches of dead play from center. There was serious side to side motion when I checked the front wheels. It was filthy. But it meant I had a job, so I cleaned it up and drove it.

The other negative of being the "new guy" was I picked up the runs none of the other drivers wanted. Mostly they were loads that were not skidded and had to be loaded by hand. At the big distribution centers like Hunts Point, I could hire some help to load or unload, but since the per mile pay was so lousy, I often just toughed it out alone.

I only mention my experience with Wheatley because of two specific back hauls I suffered through. The first one came in my third week. 

I had delivered canned soup to Hunts Point in the Bronx. My back haul was a load of potatoes to be picked up in Aroostook County, Maine over 600 miles from Hunt's Point. Empty miles were not paid at the same rate as loaded miles. I whined some about the distance and managed to talk them out of a cent or two more per mile. Dispatch though contended the loaded miles coming back would be excellent. I never did see excellent miles at any point with Wheatley.

I headed to Maine to find Aroostook County. I had an address and a phone number but that was it. At that time much of Aroostook County had few official towns. They were designated as unorganized townships (TWP with a number). I ended up lost on a dirt road that ran from nowhere to more nowhere and offered nowhere to turn around. So I backed up for what seemed like miles though it probably wasn't. I don’t know why a truck backing up covers more ground relative to truck moving forward.

I finally spotted a local Mainer in overalls who was quite helpful and got me back on track. I found the farm. Farmer guy was waiting at the gate. I was going to have to back in from the black top he told me. The ground around the barn was too soft to circle. I was sure to get stuck. I looked at his home and barn about a 1/4 mile away in the middle of a harvested potato field and realized that of course I will have to back in. That was how my day, my week , my life was going at the moment. I backed in to a makeshift dock at his barn around 3:00 PM. Farmer guy points to a huge pile of potatoes packed in 25 pound bags and says, "There's your load bub. I would help you but I'm off to fix the potato harvester. I can't stop the harvest now. And by the way, the load needs to be in Hunt's Point by 3:00 PM tomorrow afternoon."

And off he went to do his farmer guy stuff while I hopped up in the trailer to ready my pallets and pallet jack.

I have to say looking at that pile of potatoes in 25 pound bags was one of the most dejection filled moments in my life to that point. But I bore down, hustled and had all those potatoes on skids and the doors of the trailer closed by 10:00 PM. I then collapsed in the sleeper, waking in a panic around 1:00 AM. Then it was off to Dysarts in Bangor for some grub and fuel and then hammer time it to NYC. I landed at Hunt's Point with 30 minutes to spare.

The off load ended up being an anticlimactic event. Normally I would have muscled the load off with my pallet jack. Instead, I hired a fellow for $30 to fork lift that load out of my life while I collapsed in the sleeper for forty winks.

Sweet Potatoes from North Carolina

The final straw and last bit of evidence that I was not meant to haul food stuffs of any kind, either raw or processed, came on the last day I drove for Wheatley. I was to pick up my back haul that trip in the form of loose sweet potatoes loaded by a conveyer belt in Tabor City, North Carolina. Then all I had to do was bring the load the 400 or so miles back to the yard in Salisbury, Maryland on the Eastern Shore. Drop the trailer, park the truck and head back to Baltimore for a much needed 3 day break.

Sounded easy enough. And it should have been. But as I was cursed, it turned into a nightmare. I landed in Tabor City at dark thirty in the A.M.. I had been told if the dock was empty I could back in and hit the rack. Someone would wake me when it was time to load.

Around 8:00 AM or so someone pounded on my door. I woke up, rubbed the sleep crap out of my eyes and walked in the door next to my truck. There waiting to load my trailer was the coolest looking set up of multi conveyor belts stretching off into the dark nether regions of the warehouse. A guy wearing a hard hat asked me how much of load I wanted. I remember that I was still groggy and mumbled something about Oh whatever is the usual. Load er up. I cannot remember if he looked at me funny, but in retrospect I am sure he did. He punched the big green button and my trailer started to fill up with sweet potatoes.

Figuring they had control, I walked back to my truck and went back to sleep.

Again, someone pounding on my door brought me back to the present. I crawled out of the sleeper and while I was putting on my shoes, another fellow without a hard hat but wearing a tie hopped up on the step of the truck and pushed a clipboard in my direction. I signed off, took my receipt and fired up that awesome 250 Cummins engine and warmed her up. After my my pre-trip inspection, I climbed back in the cab, released the brakes and slipped the transmission into first.

I expected some resistance as the truck was now loaded and backed in a downhill loading position against the dock. But when I tried to pull away it was as if I had been nailed in place. The truck and trailer were not moving, no way, no how, not anytime soon.

I jumped out of the truck and headed toward the door. Standing in the door was the guy wearing the hard hat and the guy wearing the tie. And both of them were laughing. It did not take an Einstein to know it was me they were laughing at.

I passed them both and looked into the back of the trailer. There were loose sweet potatoes piled to within a foot of the ceiling near the front and tapering down to about six feet high near the rear.. I immediately understood what had happened. I was overloaded and not just a little overloaded, I was in deep overloaded trouble.

I looked at the two jerks who loaded me. They were still grinning hard, snickering and just having a good ole boy laugh at my expense.

“So how much weight do you two clowns figure I have on now?”

Hard hat guy says, “Well, we don’t know exactly but you are at least 40,000 extra pounds over that line there.” And he pointed to a faded black line at waist high that apparently marked the standard 40,000 pound load.

And then he follows up with, “You may have the record. If you can get the load back to Wheatley, we’ll know then.”

“Can I use your phone”, were the last words I spoke to those chuckleheads.

When I called dispatch up in Maryland, there was silence on the other end of the phone after I described how many sweet potatoes were on my trailer. I heard some muffled cursing, some heated verbal exchanges and then nice and calm as if it was just another day on the planet,”Driver, do you think you can make back here with the load?”

“If I can pull it off the dock I might.”

“Okay, call me back when you get it off the dock and on flat ground.”

It took some doing, some serious smoke and bucking, but I managed to inch that trailer off the dock and onto the level black top surrounding their warehouse. Once I had the doors closed, instead of stopping and calling my dispatch, I kept going out onto the two lane country road and headed north. It took that underpowered 250 Cummins engine several miles on the flat to break 50 mph. About 10 miles into it, I spotted a restaurant with diesel pumps out back. I pulled up to the pumps, got out and went in to grab some breakfast and call Wheatley back.

The dispatcher was apologetic. This situation had occurred before in Tabor City. He forgot I was brand new in produce. The yahoos there thought it was funny to seriously overload inattentive drivers. And I was certainly inattentive. I had no clue and naively trusted the people who were in charge.

Anyway, I spent many minutes on the phone getting instructions on how to bring the load back to Salisbury without getting caught. I was to travel all back roads to Norfolk and then jump on the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel. The scale there would be no problem he assured me. At this point I had lost confidence in any reassurances.

It took me 16 hours to make it back to Salisbury. The back roads of North Carolina and Virginia had towns strategically placed so that as soon as I broke 50 mph, I had to start gearing down for the next little burg. And so it went, 5 miles to gain some speed and a couple of miles of downshifting and light braking to slow down.

Before I hit the scale at the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel, I considered parking the truck and catching a bus I was so angry. But I drove up onto the scale. It seemed an eternity but then I heard over the speaker, “You’re Okay driver, move along.”

I looked over to the window of the scale house and the guy looking at me had a very odd look on his face. It was a kind of grin but his eyes had widened like he could not believe what he was seeing.

I made it the rest of the way to Salisbury without incident, landing there about two in the morning. Instead of dropping the trailer as instructed, I left the tractor and trailer blocking their scale and left a note on the driver’s seat, “I quit.”

A week later I became a Teamster hauling Lever Brothers product coast to coast on a weekly schedule. Best money I ever made as a truck driver. 

Post Script –In the end, the scale weight at Wheatley was over 110,000 pounds GVW. Based on the legal GVW limit at the time of 72,500 pounds, I was seriously overweight. I never did it again.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ........................................

_________________________________________________

I Got Around

1977-Philly-W/college friends - ELO Tour
~ The next day- jack knifed my truck into a ravine

I have always been interested in turning the clock back and enjoying the memories of times gone by.  Whether they were good times or bad times, it really did not matter. I enjoyed the respite from the drudgery of the here and now.  Combine this love of my past with my love of writing and it is understandable I have now written over 50,000 words recording my trips down memory lane.

The compilation is a hodge-podge collection of stories and tales that follow no discernible timeline and often appear to be nothing but sadly constructed rhymes looking for a reason. But throughout all of them is a taste of what I was back then, whenever then was.

I have always endeavored to write the truth and barring that, mimic it at the least.  Some of my stories are fictional narratives based on real events and/or people. But most are written down as I remembered them with only enough embellishment to keep the flow going. I have strived hard to nail down specific facts from my past that really put me in that place, that time, that situation.

In my effort to be true to the stories of my life, I have acquired a taste for researching basic data from my past.  Real dates, old addresses, old friend’s names, old schools, etc. I went to 14 schools before college, and lived in 18 different locations before I was out of my 20’s. That’s a lot of crap that was easy to forget back in the day once I had moved on to the next burg on my map. Just locating tangible information of where I existed and with who only helped to add weight  to the stories I was telling.

What made me think of my crazy assortment of adventures, trials, and tribulations was the meme from Facebook about a guy who got around. He had a most interesting life and shared parts of it with people worthy of note. As I read the meme, I realized that I too had gotten around. And like him, I also occasionally ran in the same circles inhabited by the famous and beautiful.

So, as I sit here at age 69 and troll my past for some of the adrenalin I wasted and left behind, I realize I had lived a lifetime before I lived the lifetime that is now approaching an uncertain time limit in my future. I have experienced two different lives, one as a solo act; the other as a member of an ensemble cast. And I would not trade one for the other. They are both what made me what I became and for better or worse, at least I got around and have lived long enough to put it down in writing. 

Later Gator ...................................................

_________________________________________

 (465 words)

Covidiots

 

Biting Off Their Nose to Spite Their Face

So, I have tried hard to not lose myself in a rant about anything Covid. It was easy at first. I just blew off any extended focus on the ring of stupidity that surrounded the pandemic. It was just more mindless madness kept in play by the Trump Death Cult.

You know them. They are the bozos who insist on using stupidity to make a point that will somehow own us. They would rather own us and put us in our place by using their right to be stupid. Common Sense has long since vacated their cranial voids. Getting over on the rest of us is more important than their own health, their loved one's health, or the health of the community they exist in. An almost “Kill us all, God will sort us out later" kind of mentality.

What it shows me, well, I gave up trying to figure that out. They are now just selfish lunatics on the wrong side of the fence as far as I am concerned.

For too long I have tolerated Covidiots with their stupidity, their embracing of hearsay bullshit, and general Fuck You selfishness over communal health. My tolerance and understanding quiver is now empty. I can no longer concern myself with what happens to the No Vaxers. Any trouble, pain, or disrespect they receive now is their own fault. They are brain dead to me.

Day in and day out, common sense information saturates the many media platforms pointing out the obvious benefits to everyone if everyone gets vaccinated. Other than extreme cases, there is no reason that even approaches being a sane reason to not be vaccinated.

So what reasoning does that leave the Typhoid Trumpers for their resistance? What is left is a disorganized cluster fuck of idiotic mealy mouthed claims of rights violations and unproven conspiratorial allegations. What is really going on is that being stubbornly stupid is in their minds their path to religious and patriotic Heaven. God and/or Trump have shown them the way.

What a bunch of rubes.

It does appear there is an easing of the Anti-Vaxers inflexible grip on Stupidity as it relates to Covid. The Delta Variant of Covid 19 is winning converts among the empty minded minions of the Right. The Delta Variant is ripping the unvaccinated a new asshole. And now the foxhole they were sure only God existed in is making room for Bill Nye the science guy. The result is a rise in vaccinations over the previous plateau stubbornly supported by the stupid. And this a good thing, but I am past handing out any "atta boy's". Stupid does not deserve any kind of reward or encouragement.

I know, I know. Existing here on the empathetic side, the do gooder side, the limp wristed, pinko commie and PC side, I should respect the Stupid's right to be stupid. Respect from me needs to be earned. Being stupid does not make the grade.

Keep it 'tween the Ditches ...................................

______________________________________________

Ok Boomer

Though Jeff and I are FB friends and tend to lean the same direction politically, we often clash. It’s like we are both on the same team but choose to shout at each other from different ends of the bench. We have engaged in heated and sometimes hurtful exchanges.

I ran across this Facebook meme on the left on Jeff’s page. It asks an unrelated question based on suppositions not even alluded to in the body of the rant. 

A 26 year old millennial is complaining about the planet sized shit bag they are expected to own now that they are productive members of our society. These are predictable complaints with a few new ones I had not considered thrown in for good measure. He is not impressed with what is being handed off. He is in no way indicating his generation would like to die.

I have to agree with him. It must suck to be facing the looming disasters that lurk in the not so distant future. He and his generation will be required to face the many bad results of previous generations’ poor choices and lousy stewardship of the planet.

So, rather than get huffy over the fact they are casting their evil eye on me, the Boomer who is leaving them the shit show of their futures, I just smile and nod my head. They are right to be pissed, put upon, and letdown.  It seems to be one of the predictable results for every generation to be disappointed in the generations that preceded them. They are wrong though if they feel they are the only generation to inherit dangerous problems and headaches.

The World and all that is in it has always been a dangerous place. There will never be an end to the disasters, mayhem, and mistakes waiting in the shadows to take us out.  Human kind has always been its own worst enemy. That will never change. Every generation is faced with challenges they either choose to address or ignore.  Most seem to take on a few yet kick the can down the road on others unless that problem has become too prominent and full of disaster to not address.

My generation addressed many wrongs back in the day.  Sadly, many of the wrongs and world ills they at least identified became nothing more than guilty footnotes instead of positive action.  Like the many generations before them, my generation aged out of idealistic youth and was forced to face Reality full on. The “what we should be doing stuff” was relegated to guilty after thoughts overshadowed by meeting mortgages and raising the generational ingrates of the future.  It is a never-ending loop humans cannot escape.  We cannot expect to get off scot free when the kids we weaned grow up and see us for who we really are, flawed and not the pinnacles of stability they knew us to be when they were eight.

Regardless, I am more optimistic now than I was 30 years ago about a generation and the one following it.  Finally after a blank of 60 years since Boomers actually did work for positive change, Millennial’s and the younger Gen Z kids seem to be as serious about how screwed up the world is as I was when I was their age.

The world I lived in when I was 26 seemed just as hopeless at times as it does now. And by all accounts, it has not gotten better. But that is Life sometimes. To survive, we have to dig in while we bitch and complain.  The rule is piss and moan all you want, just do not give up.

I look at living as a battle to defeat Life and the inevitable misery that is part of it.

Keep it ‘tween the ditches …………………………….

Friendship

Blog Fodder is a blogging friend I have had for over a decade. We have never met face to face.  He is not a friend from my youth, my bike shop, or a neighbor in my hood.  He is a persona who claims to live in Ukraine and is from Canada originally.  He also claims to be an expert on all things bovine related.  He’s one of the guys who wrote the book so to speak.

Allen is his supposed real name. After a decade of swapping thoughts, ideas and laughs with him, I believe he is real.  But more than that, I do not care if he is or isn’t. He and I have formed a connection that transcends physical verification. We have become friends and from my point of view, the best of friends.

So Blog Fodder posted a piece on his blog about the notion of who is a friend and how do we categorize them. Good friends? Best friends? Fair weather friends? And where do we separate friends from the massive numbers of assholes we have dealt with over the years.

The notion of friendship can become an evil pit of never ending frustration as I try to find convenient cubby holes for the many friends I have had over the last 69 years.

There are my first friends. My playground best buds. My pinky swear allegiance friends for life.  My drug friends. My college friends. There have been so many friends float in and out of my life, I sit here in a daze trying to put the ones who manage to float to the top in perspective.

What about the friends I always got in trouble with? The friends who always helped me avoid trouble?  This whole notion of breaking down friends and friendships Is overwhelming……….. (Take a breath Mike……. Settle down asshole, and break it down so it makes sense in that void you charitably call your mind).

The first thing I guess I know about friendship is that it is a fluid thing. A good friendship has many challenges that stresses the commitment and still ends up a solid relationship.  The fluid part is the constant weeding process of friendships that do not stand up to those stresses. We have friends for life, but at the same time have many different “best friends” who share our trip from the cradle to the grave either briefly or are there for the duration.

I would call the friends who have hung in for life as my true best friends.  Of those, I have few left it seems.  Now as an old fart, many friends that I thought gone and forgotten have found me again and we picked up right where we left off.  So for me, at the top of the “Best Friend” list is one who can stand the test of time. The next friend in the “Best” category is one who had a major impact on my life at and during a certain period of my life.

But because I ultimately want to bake things down to simple notions my mind can actually comfortably handle;

A good friend is someone I think of and smile at the same time.

A bad friend does not exist.  Bad friends are just the assholes we have to sort out while we plod our way to the horizon.

Keep it ‘tween the ditches ……………………………………..

____________________________________

Image by "One Line"

The Newichawannock Canal

The Newichawannock Canal connects Great East Lake and Horn Pond. The canal defines the state border of New Hampshire and Maine hereabouts.

Its construction marked the beginning of a consistent water source meant for the mills downstream in Somersworth. More mills would pop up over the years in Rochester, Milton, Milton Mills and Acton. The first stones of this canal were laid without mortar in 1850.  Because of the Civil War, it was not finished until the mid to late 1860s. The canal and the bridge have existed mostly intact since.  And now finally, 170 or so years later, the bridge has been replaced.  Not bad for a stone bridge made by hand with no concrete except what was laid on top of it.

I first came to know this canal and bridge when I was a child visiting my Aunt Hellie and Uncle Herb Sibley at “Half Way Up Farm” in Acton several hundred yards away on the Maine side of the border.  My uncle would sit on some dead fall or a rock edge of the canal, smoking his pipe and keeping an eye on my eight year old self as I fished for brookies and chased craw daddies.  I saw my first otter there.

It was my time with Uncle Herb and Aunt Hellie that opened my eyes to a life without asphalt, millions of cars and the cookie cutter suburban existence I suffered most of the year further south. I never wanted to leave this peaceful exciting place.

And I guess I made a vow to come back and never leave.  I don’t know for sure if I did, but after some years spent working the wiggle worm out of myself, I finally settled in Acton in 1981. I have been here as a permanent resident for the last 40 years.  I married and raised a family here. I chose to make my last stand here.

I wouldn’t change a thing. 

Keep it ‘tween the ditches ………………………………..

_____________________________________

2 Images of old Canal Bridge

By Magicpiano - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44278565

Moderators Are Nazis

I was called a nazi this morning by a very upset poster on a FB page I moderate. I was not singled out per se. His parting shot before another moderator put him out of our misery was, "we shouldn’t allow 10 n@zi to run this page."

I do appreciate that he thinks there are ten of us Nazis when there are actually only a few doing the work of ten. No, that is a lie. Moderating this page is a cakewalk rural outing. I sleep through most of it. Pretty much everyone minds their P's and Q's and life imitates art.  Idyllic and sane, yeah sure, that is how it is ...... right.

The FB page I moderate is a town page owned by a local fellow. It is by far the most popular of the several pages focused on our area. His rules are simple. Be nice, no politics, no over commercialization, no profanity, and ferchrisakes, pay attention to the flagged words not allowed by FB. That limits me somewhat, but I am guessing my world champion grasp of the many ways profanity can elevate a person spiritually may be one reason I was asked to help. Hire the criminals if you want the best protection.

I was directly responsible for the initial dust up this A.M. Our righteously indignant friend of Acton made a claim about Covid and a local business without supporting evidence. I deleted the comment and forgot about it. In less than an hour of escalating enraged comments, he called on the owner to fire us 10 Nazis while shoving something unnamed where the Sun don't shine.  And with his parting, ride off into the sunset remark, what he meant to say was the perfect opposite of what he ended up saying:

“We live in America and have the freedom of speech you are trying to distinguish that and it’s disgusting."

Word ……………………………………………

Issues From My Periphery

Now that I am sitting in the nose bleed seats, Life has become both bemusing and amusing all at the same time. Life Truths I once considered facts of living are now often suspect or downright wrong in the cultural mindset unfolding here in the twenty-first century. So many of the norms I grew up with, lived my life with, and often fought against are no longer considered relevant.

Some of the norms from my youth were nasty evil things that did not work to separate us, they did separate us, legally and for some, morally. We all existed in the same country but not in a comfy ya'll come back, we'll grill some brats and tip some beers kind of way. I learned that early as I was always a stranger and never one of the up and coming group of good ole boys. My family moved around too much.

The invisible wall between me and whatever bo-dunk town I lived in at the time was often tough on my childhood feelings. Overall though, I think having the outside looking in perspective gave me a leg up in my adult life. As an adult I have been more malleable and less entrenched in old ways. I have been able to embrace changes in the country easier than many of my Boomer peers.

But I have to face facts. The world is spinning faster now. It is getting harder and less important for me to try and keep up. The larger issues, I am still working on. But the ones I have ranked as issues from the periphery are no longer of any interest to me other than for entertainment purposes.

For instance, End Times. If the planet is about to go belly up in some way,i.e., Zombie Apocalypse, World Wide Plague, Nuclear Street Fight, or whatever scourge that might bring us to the gateway of a new Dark Ages, well, I just cannot be bothered worrying about it. I have had a good run and would hope to check out with a smile on my face.

And then there is the clusterfuck of symbols, letters, and pronouns that have become part and parcel of the LBGTQ, etc. movement. I have been a supporter since before gays were called gays. My father made sure I understood they were just people. Sexual preference was a stupid tool to judge the worth of another human. His experience working for a homosexual in college taught him that.

I continue to support anyone to declare whatever they want or need to with regards as how they identify. I just cannot keep up with the newer rules and don't intend to. Identify however or as whoever you want. You can also use whatever pronouns you want. All I care about is your name. I will identify you as that.

"Oh, that goof ball? That's Fred." ...... " Uh what? How does Fred identify? Shit, I don't know. ..... You need to ask Fred that."

And that is how I am going to stop worrying about pronouns and identifiers.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ..............................................

My Second Email to Ted

To: Theodore Kryzak(R) - State Representive, District 20, Maine

Ted,

I received your Happy Fourth of July meme on Facebook yesterday.What a nice gesture from you and the local GOP. Thank you for that. You are a marvel when it comes to empty gestures.

It has been over a week since I emailed you and asked you about your vote on LD 557 and where you stand on the Jan 6 insurrection or the legitimacy of the November presidential election. I have not heard back from you. I am not going to let this go. Now that you are on my radar, you have become the bone this old dog wants to chew on.

Your failure to respond to my initial email has given me more time to acquaint myself with your record up in Augusta. Frankly Ted, I am less than impressed.  I was beginning to think you only knew the one word, Nay, when voting; then I saw that you had voted "YEA"  Jan 20th, 2020 to allow candidates to include a nickname on ballots. Sir, that must have been a tough decision. I applaud your courage. 

Below is a compilation of your votes over the last two years regarding elections in Maine:

• 6/4/2019 - NAY - Voted against setting up a presidential primary system
• 6/5/2019 - NAY - Voted against automatic voter registration
• 6/19/2019 - NAY - voted against increases in rank choice voting
• 1/20/2020 - YEA - voted for allowing nicknames on ballots
• 3/10/2020 - NAY - voted against allowing more time to process absentee ballots
• 6/7/2021 -   (LD557) voted for photo ID when voting

Now that I see your voting record on election related issues, I no longer wonder about how you feel. You have no interest in making the voting process easier, more accessible and user friendly. You are nothing but another GOP lackey following the edicts passed down from Trump and his cronies who now control the spineless Republican Party.  If I am wrong, please set me straight.  But at this point, I don't think I am wrong.

I don't want to over burden you with things to think about. So I will close with just two questions you should answer, if for no other reason than to separate you from the rest of your spineless Republican cohorts. Be a man. Speak your mind honestly. I just snickered when I wrote that.  Honesty and politicians are not two images that mingle well in most minds these days.  But please, give it a shot.

• Do you feel Biden won the election fair and square? If not, why? I am so waiting for a Republican to create a coherent defense for the stupid and fraudulent claims the party supported regarding the last presidential election.
• Was the invasion of the Capitol on Jan 6 an assault on our form of government or not?

These two questions are not complicated nor are they "gotcha" questions.  They only become "gotcha" questions when you continue to refuse to answer them. By not answering them, you allow any conclusion one wants to make to be floated as a true rendering of your opinion.  Sort of like what I have concluded about your negative actions regarding voting rights and how you want to restrict them rather than expand them.

So far Mr. Kryzak your silence is deafening and telling at the same time.  I am beginning to think of you as a very, very sad excuse of a legislator.  And that is probably unfair, but there it is. Your silence gives me no choice but to come to that conclusion.

Change my mind.

Sincerely,

Michael Macrum, Acton

__________________________________

Contact Info for Theodore Kryzak - Legislative District 20, Maine

Mail:

2 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04330

Email:

Theodore.Kryzak@legislature.maine.gov

Legislative Office:

(207) 287-1440

______________________________

Happy 4th of July

So it's the Fourth of July, the day that celebrates our nation's creation.  Beyond this one fact of the date, much of what we believe about how we came about is buried in mounds of myth and bullshit.  Our beginnings were precipitated on noble ideas, but the functional parts of the noble cause were anything but noble.  It was an ugly situation to be embroiled in a revolution.  Thankfully King George decided he had other fish to fry and pulled out.  He could have dragged it out like we have recently in the Middle East.

Today is not a day to worry about stupid foreign policy fails.  Today I want to think about that which many folks do not consider when they think of our honorable founding fathers and their alcohol infused hoe down during the second meeting of the Continental Congress in June and July of 1776.

It is a convenient myth that the Founders were inspired by God and what resulted was a democratic and free nation under that god. While most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were men of religious fervor in public, in private, more than a few were anything but. As a matter of fact the main man who is credited with the final draft was not a religious man in the typical norms of the day.  Thomas Jefferson rejected most of the popular Christian tenets at the time.  Jefferson and many others were Deists.

In a nut shell, Deism is a belief that God may have started everything, but that is where God's participation ended. God was not interested in the affairs of Man and was then as God is now, just a spectator.  Deism becoming  popular was a natural result of the Age of Enlightenment, when a growing intellectual class was scrutinizing everything, patrticularly religion.  The draconian days of hard line Christianity were waning, but still held sway among the rank and file.  Deism was considered blasphemous by many leaders, religious and political. They wanted to criminalize its advocacy.  So, many true deists kept their opinions to themselves, went to church, kneeled with the best, and went home to live the rest of their week in heathen joy.

Americans at that point had not known real government that was in theory under their control. They had always been chattels and tied to the whims of a government thousands of miles away.  Many of the early settlements were created by religious dissenters who emigrated from England and Europe. Many of the early colonies were actually set up under local theocratic rules which had unbending and rigid religious based ideas about how one should live their life or pay serious consequences. 

Some modern theologians seem to want to bury the notion that Deism had anything to do with the creation of this country.  Mark David Hall, a professor at the religious university, Fox University in Oregon, wrote a book debunking deism's contribution to the formation of America as we know it.  I only read the first chapter, "The Myth of the Founders Deism".  It was enough to tell me like any less than objective historian, he was interpreting the facts to fit his forgone conclusion.  Nothing wrong with that I guess, but it does not treat the subjects they write about fairly and objectively.

It would have been logical for the new United States to be set up with more religious control than it was.  You can thank the Deists that it was not.  They insisted on keeping the idea of the separation of church and state front and center.  And their first battle was while drafting the original Declaration of Independence.  The real battle came eleven years later when the Constitution took form. Sane men of religion who understood the wisdom of Separation joined forces with the Deists to insist that separation became one of the bedrock notions upon which this country was established.  Without the Deists and their influence, I wonder where and what we would be?

So the next time you go to church, thank God for staying out of the affairs of Man and respecting the Deist way of life.  Snicker, snicker, snicker.

Later ..................................................

An Email to Ted

An email I sent a few minutes ago to my Republican state rep in Augusta

To: Ted Kryzak

Subject: LD 557 – The proposed bill to require photo ID when voting.  The vote was convoluted in that a Nay vote meant the rep was for the required photo ID.

Ted,

I was raised in a very hardcore Republican family.  I broke from the party in 1980 when Ronald Reagan took it over and ruined it.  Call me a spurned lover, a reformed sinner, whatever, but the GOP is no longer the party that looks to protect our country or the ideals it is based on. They have  become the party that wants to serve the people with deep pockets ensconced in boardrooms and gated communities throughout the country. The will of the people means nothing to the GOP.  To them it is the will of some people over the rest.

That said, I will get to my point.  I noticed your nay vote on LD557, the recent photo ID bill presented up in Augusta.  Why would you want to introduce more restrictions to elections in Maine, a state with a history with next to no instances of voter fraud? Is it because you are just another bleating member of the GOP flock? Or do you have a real and sane reason that may make some sense out of your vote.

And, if you are as much of a down the line party man as your recent vote indicates, where do you stand on the Jan. 6 insurrection, or on the legitimacy of the presidential election in general?

Even after leaving the GOP behind, I used to vote for the occasional Republican.  I haven't been able to with a clean conscience since Dubya was in office.  Will you be the Republican who changes my mind? I'll remain skeptical with a dose of hopeful.

Sincerely,

Mike Macrum, Acton, Maine

PS. I am posting this and any future communications on my blog and FB page.  

___________________________

Article explaining it all

Caught Being Stupid - Another Tale in a Long Line

I learned early in life that future scenarios I dreamed up for myself rarely lived up to my self induced hype. So as soon as I had done enough in my life to have created a backlog of memories, I began to look back at what I had experienced instead of trying to worry an unfathomable future into existence.

My trolling past escapades and misdeeds has only become more important now that I am an old fart. And though I have been tempted to use rose colored glasses to interpret my ealier years, I have also tried to remember the oops parts of my life as objectively as possible. Remember fondly but don't gloss it over to hide the many instants of stupidity that were the root causes of said memories.

I garner more enjoyment from recalling those moments when I was performing less than even I expected. Some make me laugh. Some make me shake my head. And some of my less than stellar moments on the planet make me cringe when I pull them up for perusal. Arguably though, many of my favorite blasts from my past are those moments when I was caught being stupid.  Funny now. And often, even funnier then.

I was living off campus in a small brand new rented townhouse with Bean and BeBop in the fall of 1971. The semester was winding down and Christmas was just around the corner. My mom decided she was going to leave Maine and take a road trip to the Washington, DC area to visit my brother D and friends from her past. After a few days down there socializing, she would swing by Towson to pick me up to go home for Christmas.

In the meantime and actually backing up some, I had met George a few months earlier. George was the perfect connection for me and my crew of pot head friends. We no longer had to suffer paying retail prices or suffer the all too frequent dry spells when smoking seeds and stems was all there was. We could score by the pound and become a mini-cog in the bigger cogs of George's burgeoning pot dealing enterprise.

The usual plan was to buy a pound of pot, break it down into enough ounces to recoup our investment and then split what was left. But since my roomates and I did not want to go home for Christmas without a decent stash to see us through until the second semester started in a few weeks, we decided to just split up the pound and take out what we considered enough for ourselves and then stash the rest in the freezer for when we came back from Christmas break.

It was late morning on the day before my mom was to pick me up to go home to Maine. I scooted down to East Baltimore, hooked up with George and then scooted back to the townhouse. As was our habit, after I dumped the brick of pot on the kitchen table, the three of us tore into it to clean out the more obnoxious roughage and waste.  This time George was absolutely right.  We had only a small pile of sticks,stems and loose seeds left when we were done. This was a definite step up from the usual commercial pot he sold.

I had just brought out the triple beam scale to weigh up ounces when the door knocker loudly announced someone's wish to get our attention. I can remember the instant gut wrenching panic I felt. I looked at the pound of pot spread out on the table, then looked at each one of my roomates. I could tell they were not happy either. BeBop hightailed it upstairs and Bean just looked at me with an odd look on his face. We began pointing at each other and silently mouthing at each other, "You get the door".  Neither one of us was very eager to see who was there.  What seemed an eternity passed and then came another knock.

Now, this new cheaply built townhouse we had rented was all hat and no cattle.  It had the facade of class but the soul of a double wide on the outskirts of town.  One of the pretensions was a mail slot on the door set up higher than usual like it's height indicated only classy people lived here.  It was a convenient addition in that it allowed us to flip it open to see who was wisihng to come in. Since I was closest to the door and had resigned myself to being hauled off in handcuffs, I went to the door and flipped up the mail slot cover. 

My mom was not a tall woman, maybe a couple of inches over five feet.  So when I flipped open that mail slot lid, the annoyed face of Mom was glaring right at me. I dropped the slot cover back down and looked at Bean.  A new kind of panic set in. Through the still closed door came a muffled mom voice, "Goddammit Mike, are you going to open the door?"

Bean smiled.  It was instantly funny to him.  I was not so sure myself but went ahead and opened the door.

The previous year was my freshman year. Mom delivered me and a crammed footlocker to West Hall, a dorm on the Towson State campus. The was a mix up somewhere and the guy checking people in showed no Michael Macrum was supposed to be rooming in his dorm.  I was not on his list.  I went back to the car and told Mom.  Two hours later, I was in my new digs in West Hall after several bureaucratic asses had been knawed raw by Jane Macrum.  She raised so much Hell, someone gave her a nickname.  She became know as Mrs.Cannon, a reference to a TV show highlighting the crime stopping antics of a bad ass private detective.

When I opened the door, I prepared myself for the full on assault of Mrs. Cannon.  I was not disappointed.  Bean's smile quickly turned to one of fear as Mom came in swinging a serious attitude.

She started out berating me for not opening the door on command and then she noticed the pot on the table.  That stopped her cold.  Silently she looked at the pot, then looked at me and turned her evil eyes on Bean.  It is funny watching a six foot four man crumble into something sad and pitiful.

"So now you are selling drugs, huh?"

I could not look her in the eye.  I knew there was nothing I could say. The evidence was right there.

"Ah, .... Well yeah Mom. I guess I am.  But, .... but only to friends."  That last part died hard as she aimed a withering stare at me. An uneasy silence descended. For several moments Bean and I stared at the floor and Mom tried to burn us out of our shoes with her eyes.

In an attempt to break the serious mood, I spoke up.  "You are a day early Mom. You weren't supposed to be here until tomorrow.  I haven't even packed."

Mom looked at the pot on the table and said, "Not packed?  Well that's obivious." She turned back to me and said, "I am going to a motel, I'll call with the number after I check in.  Be ready to go tomorrow at 7:00 AM. And leave that crap here.  I don't want it in my house."

And that was the end of it.  At least it was the end of it until the next morning and the silence of the first two hundred miles had worn off.  I was then treated to seven hours of every lecture and disappointment in me she could come up with. Getting arrested might have been easier to take.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ............................................

Allowing Stupidity to Win

A recent comparison poll of Trump voters points up the insanity that currently has the GOP by its short hairs. 19% of the Right Wingers polled had a favorable rating for Vladimir Putin, while only 9% thought the same of Joe Biden.

I don't hold polls in such high regard as to put them on some sort of fact based pedestal. But I do find they often give us a hint of what is going on in the minds of a certain population. The results of this poll plus the admiration GOP leaders had for Putin during Obama's presidency and the absolute disgusting display of Trump sucking up to Vlad has me believing a growing segment of the GOP is finally in the place they have secretly always wanted to be.

They are now openly advocating and pushing legislation that will move us away from any further hint of democracy in our system to a country ruled by autocrats supported by laws dependent on suppression rather than the expansion of rights we hold sacred.

And sadly, I have little faith in the Democratic Party to do what is necessary to thwart the upcoming GOP assaults on our political system. The Democrats are hand wringers, always searching for the consensus. Very rarely do they go on the attack until it is too late. The time for searching for bi-partisanship was over a decade ago.

January 6th was not an aberration. It was a warning. We should heed that warning.

Later .........................................

A Gun in His Ear

Final Exams were over. The boys were celebrating. Mike had just sparked a third joint when the three of them heard Bill up on the third floor. If they could hear Bill on the third floor, it meant Bill was probably having self-control issues again.

Bob looked at Mike, shrugged and motioned him to pass that joint. Tom sat between them on the couch and snickered. He was always useless when he mixed pot and beer.

The boys were not unsympathetic to Bill and his struggles. The guy had just come back from Nam ferchrisakes. They knew he had seen some shit, done some shit and he had night terrors regularly. But tonight was a celebration two extra semesters coming. Two of them finally snagged enough credits to graduate and they wanted to party. Damn Bill and his personal demons. They turned up the stereo.

Sometime later, loud banging on their door broke through their drunken fog. Mike was the first to crack an eye. He wiped the spittle off his chin and rubbed his eyes. He stood and found his footing. Barely awake, he staggered to the door and opened it. It was Bill’s girlfriend wide eyed frantic and incoherent.

“Bill’s threatening to shoot himself.”

Mike leaned into the edge of the door. “What? Bill has a gun? When did he get a gun?” Mike’s return to Reality picked up its pace. He turned and yelled, “Hey assholes, Bill has a gun.”

Mike, with girlfriend in tow, began the trek up to Bill’s apartment.

“I have never seen him this bad. I only wanted to use your phone …… Please, don’t go.” She continued her warnings right up to the moment Mike pounded on Bill’s door.

The door opened. Bill’s six-five, 250 pound body filled the doorway. Mike looked up into his neighbor’s face.

“What are you doing Bill?”

Bill stuck his .45 in Mike’s ear. “I will blow you away.”

Really pissed now, Mike grabbed the gun and pushed it down.

“Meet me in the alley asshole. And leave the gun.”

Mike turned around. With Bill on his heels, they tromped back down the stairs. Bill’s girlfriend followed, her weeping eyes bulging and wondering which one was the craziest.

The drunken warriors passed Mike’s open door. He shouts, “No one sticks a gun in my ear.”

In the alley Mike and Bill faced off. Before Bill could focus, Mike knocked him down, rendered him helpless and pushed his face into the gravel. “Never, ever stick a gun in my face again. Got it asshole?”

Bill mumbled. Mark lifted Bill’s head and said, “What was that? You give up?”

“Yeah”.

Just like that the fight was over. The two of them staggered back to their respective apartments and life returned to normal. The next morning Mike’s roommates asked how it was possible he was able to best Bill. The man was a scary monster ferchriskes. Mike took a moment to answer.

“He was drunker than I was.”

_____________________________________

Mindovermisery - Sunday writing prompt - "Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys 

        Is sticking one's nose in other people's affairs wise?  In this real situation 

        from my college days in the early 1970s, I must have thought so.

I whittled this story down from 763 words initially to the 500 you see now.

BTW - As I wrote this I kept wondering if I was mis-remembering some of the details.  The big moments happened as I wrote them. But now in retrospect, I did mis-remember some things worthy of note and maybe should have been part of the story.  Bill had gone to Nam, but his most recent issues stemmed from his three years as an inmate at a state prison in Jessup, MD. He was on parole when this happened and he was definitely not allowed to own a gun.  No one called the cops and Bill was not put back in jail.  Not sure if that lasted as we were out of that apartment within the next year.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ...........................................

_____________________________________

Cross posted at the BoZone ll

The Barbeque Challenge

In my eight year old mind the ordeal lasted hours. When panic sets in, seconds become minutes, minutes become hours which can soon turn into overnight. In this case it was still daylight when someone finally saved me. So, as to not exaggerate beyond customary norms when I retell it, I say hours. And folks can then infer it was more likely an hour or less, maybe even only minutes. The panic was real regardless of how long I suffered.

It was the fall of 1960. My family had recently settled on Augusta Street in Bethesda, Maryland. If memory serves, we moved there in spring of that year. I had plenty of time to make friends and engage in all sorts of outdoor summer adventures. The two friends I remember to this day was Jimmy, "Can't remember his last name" and Chuckie Doyle. All of us lived on Augusta St. It was a natural bond formed out of geographical and equal age conveniences.

It was on Augusta Street I first learned the rules of playing in the street and what the territorial limit of my wanderings from home were. When a car came, someone yelled, "Car" and as if Moses had just parted the Red Sea, the gaggle of dirt encrusted little tackers would step to the side and let the car pass. And I was allowed to wander as far as Mom's voice could travel. Life was beautiful. I had a grand time that summer.

One of our favorite games was Follow the Leader. Each time, Chuckie, Jimmy or myself would try to outdo each other by pushing our path into increasingly dangerous scenarios. Sometimes it was a tree we climbed. Sometimes a wall to walk on. The choices became more risky and less sane each time we played.

The more we played, the harder to find new challenges became. But it seemed each time; one of us would finally find a dare the other two were not interested in. That day's game was then over and a victor declared.

I cannot remember who was first with the Barbeque Challenge. I am guessing it was Chuckie. He was the craziest of our trio. Plus he was skin and bones, while Jimmy and I favored the chunkier, but ever popular Russian Peasant body style. He knew if anyone could meet this challenge, he could. He was skinny and had the right mindset.

In our travels and investigations of the backyards in our neighborhood, one yard had a very nice natural stone barbeque set up. The grill was huge and the chimney stack was a good size, maybe five feet high. It did not take long to include that barbeque into our regular follow the leader challenges.

At first I am sure it was all about climbing the chimney and standing on top. Once we had all manned up and successfully climbed up, stood up, and then climbed down, there was nothing to do with that barbeque. But then Chuckie noticed the opening of the flue. He looked at it one way from the top. He climbed down and looked at it from the bottom. Satisfied he could make it, he climbed into the fire pit and into the flue.

I imagine Jimmy and I were shocked and wowed when he popped out of the top covered in soot. We most likely said something like, "That was so cool." Chuckie definitely won that day's contest. Eventually Jimmy and myself found the courage to try it and the barbecue became just one of the mandatory obstacles we incorporated into our version of "Follow the Leader". It became so mundane, we even began going down the flue and out of the fire pit. No other kid in the neighborhood would try it. We were bad ass.

Fast forward to the fall. The advancing cold weather drove any thought of barbeque adventures from our minds. That yard quickly became just a connector to the best walking route to school. And the walking route to school quickly became an unpleasant journey of heel scuffing drudgery, especially as the temperature sought lower temps day in and day out.

I remember the day of my ordeal well. It was a rare warm fall day. I was walking home alone. Like every other day I walked home from school, I began to cross the backyard where the barbeque resided. It all gets somewhat hazy at this point.

I remember looking at the barbeque and thinking I ought to climb down the chimney just for old times’ sake. And I proceeded to do just that. Unfortunately I failed to appreciate I was not wearing summer shorts and Tee shirt. I was bundled up in jeans, long flannel shirt and a zip up jacket with a hood. I had become too big to fit down the flue. Just past my waist with my head down was when I realized the ugliness looming in my future.

I have endured moments of panic here and there as an adult. But no panic is more impactful I think than the panic of a child. As soon as I became too wedged to move, I knew I was screwed. And of course my next reaction was to scream and scream loudly. Unfortunately, my screams had to make it down the rest of the flue before the sound of my panic made it out into the light of day.

The older kid who finally found me said later I was lucky he heard my pitiful sobs. All I remember is his laughter and after an eternity, him asking, "Where do you live kid?' I told him and he ran to my house to fetch my mom. It was only after he ran to get her that I remembered she was probably still at work at a department store nearby. My panic level spiked even more.

As luck would have it, Mom had clocked out early at Woodies and she was home. While it felt like forever, she probably was at the chimney in a few minutes. Any notion I had that I was being saved because she loved me went out the window as soon as she opened her mouth. 

"How the Hell did you get in there?" and, “Christ on a crutch Mike, what gave you impression this was a good idea?” The verbal rebuke never stopped as she and the kid struggled to extricate me from the chimney.

Once I had been yanked out and was sitting on the ground rubbing skinned hands and knees, Mom began to laugh. The kid began to laugh also.

I did not laugh. I was just thankful the nightmare was over

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Keep it 'tween the ditches ...................................

The Duke of Puke – The 2nd Yawn is Always the Most Satisfying

I first saw Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band in a tiny bar in the Washington DC area back in the late 1970s. Touted as a cross between the punk experience from England and the great Blues of the South, Rootboy Slim put a jagged edge on contemporary American music. 

 His music was best heard after too many beers and shots in a run down dive with a tiny stage crammed into the corner. His most famous song, "Boogie til you Puke" still ranks as the best binge drinking song ever. One concert at the Varsity Grill in College Park, Maryland turned into a riot that spilled into the streets and onto Rte 1. He was banned by local bureaucrats from playing there ever again. But public pressure brought him back for a coliseum gig a couple of years later. He died in 1993.

What I knew about Root Boy was his public persona. I had no clue of his real world life until I googled it. Raised in what I would assume was upper income circumstances, he misspent his youth getting kicked out of one prep school after another. But he did land a scholarship to Yale and was in the same fraternity with Dubya, a future president. Dubya, as president of the frat, banned Root Boy from ever stepping foot back into their frat house after an apparently raucous night of debauchery when Root Boy came back to campus the year after he graduated. Root Boy was also arrested for climbing the White House fence while way too high on LSD. All this before he formed his band.

I often wonder about guys like Root Boy, Divine, Iggie Pop, and all the other icons of outrageous behavior I enjoyed back in the day. Their music and films maybe did not reinforce my own struggle to come to grips with the white bread culture I found myself in, but their music and films did prove I was not alone in my dissatisfaction with the status quo. It seems that youthful rebellion is woven into our humanity more as a reality check for the rest of us than just the surface pain in the ass it seems to come off as. ..... The Kids know.

I have no clue now why I did some of the things I did as a brain dead punk. I can only guess it had to do with a general cluelessness that accompanies teenage boys as they stumble towards adulthood. Not thinking before they jump is their stock in trade. 

If it felt good, looked good, or seemed like a good idea at the moment, I did it. I still wonder how I survived. Root Boy did not.

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Some Root Boy Tunes you might like or maybe even remember:

~>  Credit Card Woman

~> Mrs Paul, Mrs Paul

 ~>  Too Wrong to be Right

~>  Livin in the Ghetto

 ~>  Boogie Til YouPuke

Tulsa Race Massacre

100 years ago seems like a long time.  And it is.  But 100 years is not long enough for some of the ugliness of our collective past to have faded into the shadows that hide memories long forgotten.  Some tragic injustices will not stay hidden no matter how well they are covered up.

The Tulsa Race Massacre, which began 100 years ago today, is a perfect example of such evil. If America is even half ass serious about changing our future, the nation needs to face its past, warts and all.  No more Pollyanna history books.  No more glossing over the genocide of a native population and certainly we can no longer contend that slavery was no big deal and hasn’t been an issue for 160 years. 

We need to admit to the injustices our country committed as well as the wonderful events that made us a great country.  Until we face our past, good and evil, our true greatness will never be realized.

Later ......................................