On the job, I’m a model of concentration. For the most part what I do is interesting, if only to me. The work involves staring for long periods at chromatic, pulsating lights and trying not to convulse, or pass out.  My concentration is like that of a three-year old repeatedly smacking a cinder block with a butter knife. Intense, purposeful, not useful to society at large. When the sun sets on each day of work (which I wouldn’t realize, because we don’t have windows in the basement), my mind wanders. Not necessarily to the novel I’ve been bragging about not working on, or family activities about to take place. Nope. My automatic go-to daydream, my raison d’Walter Mitty, starts with the Waltons. More specifically, what would the Waltons do if you took them out of the Great Depression and plunked the entire shoeless family down in Mid-town Manhattan. 

The Waltons was a 1970’s TV show depicting the life and hard times of a rural Virginia family during the Depression and World War II.  The show was the creation of Earl Hamner Jr., the man also responsible for the 1963 Henry Fonda cinematic chestnut, Spencer’s Mountain. Basically, the Walton clan couldn’t get out tragedy’s way and weekly would experience a house fire, barn fire, general store fire, mattress fire, or some combination of all of the above along with the family cow spontaneously combusting like a Spinal Tap drummer. My mind, like aggravated gelatine, constantly goes back to “What would the Waltons think?” Sometimes at work, griping about DOS programs, I’ll say to myself “Well, at least this software would blow John Boy’s mind.” Okay, my thoughts wander a little at work.  You can’t just apply this time machine game to any old TV show. Every “What would they have done on Little House on the Prairie?” question, for instance, ends up with Nelly Olson being mowed down by a car. I try not to play this game very often, resting in the knowledge that they’d end up like everybody else. Wearing shoes and constantly on Facebook saying good night to each other.

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#1970's TV #Earl Hamner Jr. #John Boy #Little House on the Prairie #Nelly Olson #Spinal Tap Drummers #The Waltons #Walter Mitty

Today the doctor told me that I can start a regular running program again. This announcement hit in much the same way that the news of pitchers and catchers reporting to baseball training camps does each winter. I looked out the window at the wind blowing snow through the tree branches and clucked “Reeeaaallly?” It didn’t take long to start to embrace the idea of running. The current temperature may be a whopping 7° degrees, but in my mind it’s always summer and I’m perpetually careening across people’s lawns with my tongue hanging out. On some those occasions I’m actually running, as well.  Heading back to work, I was in pretty good spirits. Never mind the weather, I was planning core strengthening and treadmill workouts. I basically returned to work from the doctor’s office with the car travelling sideways, because of the wind, but…whoo hoo, running! The car has a nifty feature in which the back hatch doesn’t close. In high wind the hatch acts as a sail and propels the car in unusual directions. Merrily I sailed to work, clouds of exhaust fumes making snowflakes dance around the car. The magic of winter in Michigan mixed with the early stages of asphyxia.

Returning to work was a good Up-With-People training for my not-always positive self. The furnace that heats our kitchen and offices had blown the last of its furnace-y cache of good will and left the staff cold. Even Blodgett ovens aren’t enough to heat a subterranean hash house during the single digit days of January. I, like most of my ancestors before me, dress for work in the traditional garb of the ancient clan of Poindexter. This means that even if the outdoor temperature is in the low nothings, I wear a short-sleeved, pocketed dress shirt. That’s okay, ‘cuz their snazzy.  I may freeze at my desk, but it will have been done proudly in the garb of a food service accounts payable nerd. Alas, all of this will one day lead to running. Fresh air, sunshine, freedom. A time when I can ascend the stairwell from my basement office, remove my short-sleeved dress shirt and run. Or at least wallow in the sun. If my predictions are right, this could happen as soon as six months from now. Yippee!

#Postaday January in Michigan postaday Running

 Today is Friday! Halleluiah! Here is a video in which former MST3K actors rip on a movie about killing people in order to make a really swell reality show. Enjoy!

#RiffTrax Hunger Games #The Hunger Games #Youtube Jennifer Lawrence MST3K Mystery Science Theater 3000 RiffTrax

Last night our family made the long anticipated trek into the forest to select the perfect Christmas tree. Well, not so much the forest. We drove over to Home Depot and wandered around the deserted garden department where the trees were unceremoniously stacked according to type and price. The only staff out in the 30 degree chill was a forlorn looking twenty-something year old clerk, sitting on a folding chair staring into space. The seagulls circled above, because no one told them to shut their beaks and find another place to paint with poo. In the end, we found a Scotch Pine that was reminiscent of our family tree (leaning over in a  lazy way, not enough branches). The forlorn girl perked up and helped us load the tree into our waiting Chrysler Partsmobile. I started to perk up myself, thinking that this had gone better than holiday decorating forays when I was a kid.

When I was 11, my parents decided we needed to invest in a new tree. We were  solidly fake tree Democrats in those days. Mom and Dad had me get the Sears catalog and phoned in for a respectable fake shrub. When we got to Sears receiving, the clerk brought us the wrong tree. An electrified Blue Spruce. Gorgeous, according to the package photo. When I tried to protest, dad and mom simultaneously elbowed me in the stomach. They weren’t fessing up. We owned no vehicle, and Dad knew we couldn’t put the tree on top of a cab. We ended up lugging the boxed tree onto a city bus. If it wasn’t humbling enough to put the tree on the wheelchair lift, I learned humility by having to pay an extra .50 ¢ tree fare. Embarrassing, or not, there’s no tree like the one in my folks living room (that they never paid full price for).

#Christmas #Christmas Trees #Home Depot #Scotch Pine #Sears #Sears Catalog

Life in a parallel universe is proving to be interesting. The only reason I say this is because my daughter is excited to head back to school on the Tuesday after Labor Day. This excitement could only exist in some alternate reality. The world I know, the real world, would normally contain no such eagerness to begin the school year. The idea of being legally required to attend an eight-hour per day, unpaid desk job never appealed to me. When I was ten, there were tons of projects I felt had to be done, and none of them involved going to sit with other pointy headed kids in a drafty, vomit scented building, eating bologna sandwiches. That year I went so far as to fail a grade. The windows in my classroom  faced an Oldsmobile assembly plant, and I felt it was a better use of my time to figure out how to make crappy, inefficient cars.

I am glad and actually relieved that my child has not inherited my spirit of flunkitude and has a desire to learn through the school process. None of her father’s poor scholastic traits have manifested themselves in her DNA. School was divided into two distinct eras for me: B.G. (Before Girls) and W.N.? (What Now?). During the B.G. years, I spent time learning to break  things. B.G. was the instructive part of school, because I learned the art of completely implausible denial. If, for instance, the jungle gym just happened to fall apart or the trash dumpsters rolled into traffic there wasn’t even any point in trying to deny it. I’d Make up a story involving aliens, gorillas and Margaret Thatcher and then go mute. The What Now? years were more difficult. I was too busy trying to figure out the nature of women to concentrate, let alone break anything. By college, a third era of enlightenment opened up and I stopped trying to figure out women, or destroy objects with just the power of my mind. I  briefly studied. Why Not? Oldsmobile had quit production and I was out of distractions.

#Back To School 2012 #Elementary School #Oldsmobile #Oldsmobile Assembly Plant Lansing Michigan #School

The tiny, non-starter irritations in life are always the ones I get stuck on. The other morning, I awoke and turned on the TV in time to see some unctuous spokes-models wandering through a wheat field touting the virtues of a brand of breakfast cereal. The beautiful people rattled and prattled for thirty seconds about this wonderful, natural sort of cereal. The food is supposedly natural because it’s shaped like something once found in nature and healthy because of some purported relationship with the earth. Blah, Blah, Blah. Never mind that the product is doused in malt syrup and makes its own gravy when covered in milk. The commercials used to employ a preachy testimonial from some world-famous chef, but models meandering through wheat fields dreamily expounding on the blessings of cereal must have seemed more relatable to advertising executives. Poor, hunky, famous chef. He’s probably gone back to slinging oatmeal in a hotel dungeon somewhere.

There isn’t much natural about breakfast cereal. If there was, we’d all be eating bowls of fertilizer (“All the best to you each morning!”). Rice grains impregnated with superheated air, rolled oats covered in sugar and stuck together with dyed and dried cranberries. I actually enjoy the completely unnatural. Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch. At least when I eat PBCC, I know that it’s not even an imitation of real food, the same as I know that it hasn’t travelled with actual pirates.

Arrr…we’ll forgo the booty and take the peanut butter crap food with us. Sure beats cow manure…

I’d love to make a new kind of cereal that embodies the all-American breakfast. Coffee, cigarettes and resentment. The new breakfast treat might be called Smoldering Java Anger Flakes. The advertising would feature combat boot wearing lunchroom cooks wandering through Walmart shouting the virtues of eating compost. Every box would feature a hairnet at the bottom as a sort of prize. You know, I might change course and start eating some of that unctuous, whole grain cereal. It might regenerate the brain cells killed off by years of Cap’n Crunch.

#Postaday Breakfast Foods Curtis Stone Great Grains Preachy Advertisements Models Selling Cereal Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch postaday Sugared Cereals

I was out buying bed sheets tonight. To you this might seem ultra trivial and mundane, but in my case it always becomes an exercise in an area of domestic life I want no part of. My bedding requirements are simple and are as follows:

1. Is there a bed? No? I’ve slept on floors, couches, beaches, friend’s kitchens, acquaintances doorsteps. I’m glad for the bed, but it isn’t a deal breaker.
2. What is sleeping with me, or in my vicinity? Dogs are okay, but seeing-eye ponies, domesticated rodents and undomesticated persons (or rodents) are deal breakers.

There are things about buying sheets that I get, but don’t want to get into. Thread count seems to be a big deal. Suddenly I have to become Count Threadula, Emperor of Bedding in order to buy sheets. I’m in the store, squinting to see if I can count the threads. “There’s one! Wah ha ha! One thread!” I get distracted too easily to buy home products, anyway. A classic Z.Z. Top song came on over the store’s p.a. system and I stopped counting threads and listened more carefully than I’d ever to what my wife had explained to me about sheets. Cheap Sunglasses started to play and all thoughts of domestic tranquility fled my slipping mind. Instead, I began to envision a summer project. Each June I give in to the urge to tackle  improvement (my own, or someone else’s). This year, instead of losing weight, or cutting my cholesterol,  I decided while  Sunglasses was rockin’  that I’d grow an awesome beard like the one Z.Z. Top’s Billy Gibbons wears. Sure it’ll be tough to hide the beard around the office. Maybe if I go all out for the boogie and blues, the beard will just look less crazy and more a natural extension of whatever personality is trying to get out of me. Oh, and the sheets? I bought black. Rock, roll and common sense, because they hide dirt in their many black threads.

#Billy Gibbons #High Thread Count Sheets #Self Improvement #Z.Z. Top

One of the parts about parenting that I never really get used to is the amount of structure required in children’s lives. My pre-teenage daughter is starting a second week of musical theatre camp tomorrow, an activity that follows a summer of other meaningful childhood activity. This is the case with many of my friends kids. We pay to keep them on the road, year-round, like a worn out rock band. This may have been common when I was a kid, but I have no recollection of much wholesome activity. I was a fairly unsophisticated kid. My friends and I would go outdoors and play something called “Funny People” for hours on end. The object of the game was…well there wasn’t an object, because the game was just stupid. One participant would punch the other.  The puncher would fall down and writhe on the ground while the punchee would stand and laugh, while showing no effects of having been hit. There were several aspects of Funny People that puzzle me to this day:

1. Parents and educators would encourage us to go outdoors and punch each other in the head (“Why don’t you go find your friends and punch each other in the head?”)
2. For all of the blows to the skull, many of us managed to grow into responsible, caring adults. There are those in every group of friends who wind up in jail, or with uncontrollable twitching, I imagine. I’d speculate more, but my left leg keeps independently kicking the right one.

My parents would tire of all the whining about skull fractures toward mid-summer and shell out $15 dollars to send me for a week at sleep-away camp. This was about as structured as life got, because my friends and I would spend our daylight hours making wallets and license plates in a makeshift compound, deep in the north woods of Michigan. My favorite project was making knife holsters. What 8-year old boy doesn’t want a carrier for his homemade shank? Each morning started with some old geezer sidling up to me in the chow line, asking “der yer warnt ah wiskerr ruub?” My love of the marathon began right there, because I learned to run from unshaven camp geezers. Yeah, now that I’ve purged those memories, maybe driving my child around to her sophisticated activities is a good thing. Let me go get my camp wallet so I can pay whatever amount structure requires.

#Childhood Memories #Having Kids Changes Everything #Sleep Away Camp #Sophistication of Modern Childhood #Structured Kids Activities #What a Difference Having Children Makes

The nice thing about losing one’s mind (and there are nice things. I’m not a glass half empty person, preferring to drink straight from the bottle) is that you can function in society for quite a while before anybody comments on the situation. My mind started playing tricks last week and I began to hear phrases in the night coming from the kitchen. I’d wake in the wee hours of the morning (so-called, because that’s when middle-aged men have to get up and go) and hear phrases uttered from across the house.  Indecipherable mutterings arising for no reason. Only after a few days of hearing  voices did I realize  the voice was that of a Happy Meal give-away toy and that I’d never find the culprit. The offending toy would keep jabbering until the battery went dead. It hasn’t yet.

My 9-year-old daughter has mostly moved past playing with toys, but she still accumulates fast-food freebies with disturbing frequency. Talking things that reinforce nonsensical slogans and jargon for no good reason. For every one that does something interesting (like burp on command, or sit quietly and stare into space) there are dozens that shout stupid drivel. Once we even got a Simon Cowell talking bauble that I had to run over with a car in order to silence. I’m not a hater, and thrive on the absurd, but I draw the line at talking toys. As a teenage McDonald’s employee I used to deep fry them in batches. Needless to say, my career under the arches was brief. Personal kindness and patience shouldn’t extend to talking toys.

I’ve pinpointed the location of the nightly jabbering toy and have been informed by my family that it’s a zebra, inexplicably voiced by Chris Rock. Sorry, I’d rather be crazy.

#Chris Rock #Happy Meal Toys #McDonalds #Simon Cowell

A friend of mine recently spent 4 hours on hold with the phone company. The wait time would have been longer, but the gentleman’s head spontaneously combusted when a call center representative came on the line and asked if he was in any way dissatisfied with the level of service received. Nothing left but smoke and receiver. The phone company is fine with this. They have nothing to lose. Customers are still on hold who’ve been waiting since the Bell System was founded in 1878. Each knows that the sweet heavenly repose of death  awaits  as soon as they get that pesky .3¢ overcharge off the bill. “Today’s expected wait time is between 3 minutes and blehhhhhh.”

Verizon will never be the phone company and it’s pretty safe to say that Magic Jack won’t own that title any time soon. No, the phone company will always be that conglomeration of companies  responsible for preserving antiquities, AT&T. They’ll provide cellular phone service as long as the device is wired to a building. AT&T is a pioneer of successful paperless billing, provided that you remember what you owe and then take a steam engine to the nearest Bell office. To be fair,  AT&T  offers an automated menu to guide callers through problems during wait times. Actually, the menu is just a recording of my Uncle Frank.  Most of the programmed responses sound just like my relatives enjoying fried green tomatoes on a summer evening. “Hmmm…Seems like you’ve called  because you have a problem? Is that correct?” “You’ve called using a telephone today. Do I have that right?” “I think that  I’ve identified the problem. Before I can fix the issue  I’ll need you to tell me what you’re wearing.” I’d tell Frank that I like the automated help, but he’s on hold with the phone company.

# Bell System #AT&T #Home Phone Service #Phone Wait Time Nightmares

0 Hiawatha

Last Wednesday I posted about being a solitary person and having a need at times to step back from life and just think. Over the days that followed, I drove deep into the woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, far past Mackinaw and the pasties, fudge and smoked fish that are meant to lure in us southern dwellers. Even though I am a Michigander by birth, my trips over the bridge to the U.P. have been few. The world of the Yoopers is different. Towns are few and far between and most consist of small grocery stores, or gas and bait shops that cater to hunters and fisherman on their way to lodges. Over a seventy mile stretch of two lane highway, a driver might only encounter five passing lanes. For the most part, if you get stuck driving behind tourists, there will  be a grinding wait before being able to pass the slow vehicle in front of your bumper.

Each morning on my visit to the U.P., I made a habit of waking up at six a.m. and then watching through the window for the first “barely there” strains of dawn. At half past, I’d lace up my running shoes and head out into the woods. After a half mile, I’d reach a paved road that wound its way through the Hiawatha National Forest. There are few times in life when I’ve felt so absolutely alone. The further I’d traipse away from the cabin, the more isolated I began to feel. The trees seemed to grow around and over me, only allowing the sunrise to break just a bit over their tops. I smelled nothing but the cool scent of piney woods wafting on the breeze mingled with the fish smell rolling off of the lakes. Alone in the woods, I wondered what would happen if I ran across a bear. After twenty minutes went by on the road without seeing a car or any dwellings, there arose a flutter of panic in me. Then it vanished. For the first time since living in Grand Teton as a young man, or the year spent roaming the Delaware Water Gap, did I feel truly at home. In emptiness, as well as in quiet, did I find peace and the realization that I am infinitely small in the vastness of God’s world. The world is and will continue to be and my small footprint is just…small.

On its margin the great forest
Stood reflected in the water,
Every tree-top had its shadow,
Motionless beneath the water.
From the brow of Hiawatha
Gone was every trace of sorrow,
As the fog from off the water,
And the mist from off the meadow.
With a smile of joy and triumph,
With a look of exultation,
As of one who in a vision
Sees what is to be, but is not,
Stood and waited Hiawatha. H.W. Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha.