Part I of the award-winning series:
Someone discovered my blog by searching for Universal Building Fargo apartment.
I don't know who searched for this, whether it's a he or a she, a teen or a retiree. I don't know if they're looking for a place to live or a place to drop out of society. Maybe it's for a child, maybe for themselves. The Universal Building doesn't make the news much. I haven't been to Fargo in five years. I don't know if it's even an apartment building anymore, or even any kind of building at all. When it does make the news, it's for stories like "Biggest recent fires in Fargo," which ran in The Forum last month after a massive apartment fire, which recalled the horrific fire and murder in the UB in 1999.
I moved in about a week before Thanksgiving in 2000. It took several months before I moved out of the bedroom and took up permanent night-time residence on the already-furnished couch. The reason? My neighbor, Pappy. That wasn't his real name, I don't think. Probably a nickname from the second World War or something his fellow cell-block mates called him in the winter of '71. One morning someone pounded on my door for five minutes before I finally opened it. The elderly man standing there with his hat in his hands said he was looking for "Pappy." The blank look on my face didn't give him the answer he needed but as he started to ask again, the door to the apartment next to mine flew open and another elderly gentleman stuck his head out.
"Pappy, you son of a bitch!" the knocker yelled, before walking down and hugging his long-lost...brother? Platoon mate? Partner in crime? Pappy. So that was the man who moved in a week earlier.
I returned to bed but not for long. The thin walls refused to mute their conversation, which the men conducted at a decibel level most people use only when yelling at a speeding car that just ran over their left foot. Until that day, Pappy had lived a lonely life for a week, the type of monastic existence I think you were required to live the moment you signed a lease at the Universal Building. Very few couples lived in the building. Mostly single men, many likely hiding out from federal marshals, others plotting crime sprees that would almost certainly violate the conditions of their parole. A couple lived a few doors down for a brief time. Each afternoon when I left for work I heard the woman - a twentysomething gal - screaming at her no-good boyfriend. He was a jerk, a prick, inconsiderate, selfish and thoughtless. At night I'd return and as I exited the elevator it became clear she had forgiven the man's sins as her screams again filled the hall, though the words were - aside from an enthusiastic and possibly faked Yes! - mostly unintelligible.
But for the most part it was middle-aged men with thousand-yard stares and old guys who spent their money on Wonder Bread and lottery tickets. And Pappy. Over the next few months I greeted Pappy in the hall on several occasions and each encounter shortened my life by six months, thanks to the secondhand smoke that wafted from his jacket. At this stage in Pappy's life, his internal organs very likely resembled the inside of a cigarette. If you had cut him, smoke would have billowed out, followed by some leaking tar. It turned out he had a daughter, who visited about once a month and engaged in fights with her father that usually ended with her slamming the door while calling Pappy the same name his friend used the first time I saw him in the hall.
Pappy's domestic problems didn't run me out of my bedroom, though; his snoring and morning bathroom stops did. Remember the scene with Frank Drebin in the bathroom in The Naked Gun, after the press conference? That wasn't over-the-top; it was based on Pappy's morning ritual. That woke me up, after I'd spend each night struggling for sleep as Pappy's snoring threatened to set off car alarms in Grand Forks. It's a sound I'd never heard before, and one I hope to never hear again. If a doctor heard it they would have sent him to an emergency room and notified next of kin, but not before drawing up a three-page outline for an article in a medical journal.
Eventually I surrendered. I started sleeping on the couch, an uncomfortable piece of furniture that didn't contain my 6-3 frame but was at least in the living room, giving me some breathing room away from Pappy's abnormal breathing. The bedroom became a storage space, a cursed place to throw books and basketballs. One night, at the end of a blind date that the referee should have stopped in the first round, I took the couch while the lucky lady - who was stranded by a blizzard - took the bed. I felt bad, knowing she'd be haunted by internal regrets and Pappy's nightmarish sounds.
Still, she got a free dinner out of the deal and she got to flee the next morning. The next night, I'd still be in the Universal Building. And so would Pappy.
Showing posts with label Memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memories. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
Sacrificing minnows for seventh-grade science
Discovered some papers in a crate in the basement. It's Box No. 10, according to my mom's impressively detailed catalogue of the junk room's possessions. School papers, graduation stuff, the results of my driver's test, taken on July 19, 1991. I pretty much aced it, scoring "good" in every category except for right turns, where I performed poorly when approaching and entering the lanes. How did I screw up one of the easiest things on the test? I don't recall.
Driver's training had been challenging. We took a class in the fourth quarter of our freshman year and received on-the-road training during the summer. I was partnered up with a kid who'd been driving since he was like 11 years old, when he stole a car and took a joy ride around town. He became something of a rebel legend after that incident. He had such confidence behind the wheel. I envied him. He all but cruised the bad streets of Janesville with his right arm draped around our instructor's neck, as if the teacher was his girl on a Friday night date. The kid owned moves behind the wheel Earnhardt Senior couldn't have pulled off. My car experience consisted of bumper cars at the Janesville Hay Daze - which once ended with a carnie rescuing me because I couldn't operate the vehicle - and a disastrous incident where I backed my parents' car out of their tiny garage and drilled the driver's side door as my dad stared in disbelief and, well, fury.
But by the time the driver's test came a year later, I had conquered my demons, and the exam.
The box in the basement also holds all of the science experiments I conducted in seventh-grade. There was a "soil lab report," which I decorated in blue cardboard paper and a front-page drawing that looks like something scribbled by a blind child or a troubled one. My group concluded that "our soil was sand. Day six was the ribbon test. Our soil did not make a ribbon which also means it's probably sand. Our texture again was gritty." Salk's seventh-grade reports showed similar insights. We scored a B, due to some shoddy explanations, though our final conclusion was absolutely correct. It was sand, damn it.
There was an experiment involving a hamster and a maze. Again, a B, as we didn't adequately explain how "Martha" learned over the course of 20 trials. Without interviewing Martha, how exactly were we supposed to discover her thought process?
Finally there's a report I conducted alone. I titled the paper "Good Vibrations," an homage to the Beach Boys and lovers of bad puns. On the cover I drew a rough facsimile of a minnow, complete with a thought bubble that read, "Oh no it's the dreaded telesacoil." A telesacoil? Google telesacoil. There's no such thing. Did I mean a Tesla coil? I don't know. The other materials for this experiment were "1 minnow, 2 paper towels, faucet, soap." Thankfully, I spelled all of those words correctly in my paper, though I did break AP style by using figures for numbers under 10.
The extent of the paper:
PROBLEM: To see if the Minnow will react to electricity. (Why did I capitalize minnow?)
INFORMATION: The minnow is a small river fish. It's used for bait and trout food. It has small scales shaped like tiles. (I'm assuming all of that's true, but after seeing telesacoil littering my paper, who knows what other information I made up.)
HYPOTHESIS: I believe that the fish will die when it's shocked with electricity. (Heh.)
PROCEDURE: Step one: Take the minnow out of the jar and lay the minnow on the paper towel. Step two: Take the telesacoil and test it on the faucet then shock the minnow every minute. Step three: record the results. Step four: Clean up.
The fish died. It took eight minutes of torture. He was survived by 445 siblings and a poorly punctuated science report.
Minnow showed no reaction after a minute, before finally beginning to "wiggle around" in the third minute. At minute five, "there is the first sign of blood on the minnow." Blood appears on the head at the seventh minute. Dies at eight. That's it, that's the paper. If I had ever been arrested as a juvenile, the prosecutor would have presented this paper as proof that I needed to be locked up until I turned 21.
"Look at how he enjoys torturing animals, your honor. Yes, we consider the minnow an animal. He even used a perverted version of the scientific method and documented his findings. He combined science and sadism. He needs help."
But this was a real paper. The teacher - the school's volleyball and softball coach who was sort of my nemesis, while also being my family's friendly neighbor - gave me an A-/B+. He liked the work, at least better than my breakthrough studies on sand and mazes.
My conclusion:
"I accept my hypothesis although after the first few minutes I didn't think the minnow would last as long as it did because the minnow was showing no reaction after the first few shocks, but after several other shocks the minnow started to show signs of reacting to the shocks such as bleeding and wiggling around so my final conclusion is that the fish died."
A sixty-five word sentence, with one comma. I was in seventh grade when I wrote that. I was 12 years old, but that writing would be below-average for an 8-year-old. Was a classmate shocking me with a "telesacoil" when I penned my conclusion? Yet I got an A-/B+, which makes me wonder just how bad some of my classmates' experiments and papers were if they received Cs or even Ds. Did my Good Vibrations title impress my teacher so much he ignored my paper's countless faults and questionable taste? On the back of my paper I again drew a fish - poorly - with the words "May He Rest In Peace" written above. I was obviously glib about my involvement in the torture and death of the minnow. My paper even had a dedication page, which I used to thank my friend Brandon, who apparently gave me the idea for the experiment (I don't recall the conversation or setting when he first brought up this idea. Were we watching a documentary on Ted Bundy at the time?).
I'm glad I still have this paper and my other groundbreaking reports. They bring back good memories. But this minnow one might have to be destroyed. I still don't want any prosecutors having access to it.
Driver's training had been challenging. We took a class in the fourth quarter of our freshman year and received on-the-road training during the summer. I was partnered up with a kid who'd been driving since he was like 11 years old, when he stole a car and took a joy ride around town. He became something of a rebel legend after that incident. He had such confidence behind the wheel. I envied him. He all but cruised the bad streets of Janesville with his right arm draped around our instructor's neck, as if the teacher was his girl on a Friday night date. The kid owned moves behind the wheel Earnhardt Senior couldn't have pulled off. My car experience consisted of bumper cars at the Janesville Hay Daze - which once ended with a carnie rescuing me because I couldn't operate the vehicle - and a disastrous incident where I backed my parents' car out of their tiny garage and drilled the driver's side door as my dad stared in disbelief and, well, fury.
But by the time the driver's test came a year later, I had conquered my demons, and the exam.
The box in the basement also holds all of the science experiments I conducted in seventh-grade. There was a "soil lab report," which I decorated in blue cardboard paper and a front-page drawing that looks like something scribbled by a blind child or a troubled one. My group concluded that "our soil was sand. Day six was the ribbon test. Our soil did not make a ribbon which also means it's probably sand. Our texture again was gritty." Salk's seventh-grade reports showed similar insights. We scored a B, due to some shoddy explanations, though our final conclusion was absolutely correct. It was sand, damn it.
There was an experiment involving a hamster and a maze. Again, a B, as we didn't adequately explain how "Martha" learned over the course of 20 trials. Without interviewing Martha, how exactly were we supposed to discover her thought process?
Finally there's a report I conducted alone. I titled the paper "Good Vibrations," an homage to the Beach Boys and lovers of bad puns. On the cover I drew a rough facsimile of a minnow, complete with a thought bubble that read, "Oh no it's the dreaded telesacoil." A telesacoil? Google telesacoil. There's no such thing. Did I mean a Tesla coil? I don't know. The other materials for this experiment were "1 minnow, 2 paper towels, faucet, soap." Thankfully, I spelled all of those words correctly in my paper, though I did break AP style by using figures for numbers under 10.
The extent of the paper:
PROBLEM: To see if the Minnow will react to electricity. (Why did I capitalize minnow?)
INFORMATION: The minnow is a small river fish. It's used for bait and trout food. It has small scales shaped like tiles. (I'm assuming all of that's true, but after seeing telesacoil littering my paper, who knows what other information I made up.)
HYPOTHESIS: I believe that the fish will die when it's shocked with electricity. (Heh.)
PROCEDURE: Step one: Take the minnow out of the jar and lay the minnow on the paper towel. Step two: Take the telesacoil and test it on the faucet then shock the minnow every minute. Step three: record the results. Step four: Clean up.
The fish died. It took eight minutes of torture. He was survived by 445 siblings and a poorly punctuated science report.
Minnow showed no reaction after a minute, before finally beginning to "wiggle around" in the third minute. At minute five, "there is the first sign of blood on the minnow." Blood appears on the head at the seventh minute. Dies at eight. That's it, that's the paper. If I had ever been arrested as a juvenile, the prosecutor would have presented this paper as proof that I needed to be locked up until I turned 21.
"Look at how he enjoys torturing animals, your honor. Yes, we consider the minnow an animal. He even used a perverted version of the scientific method and documented his findings. He combined science and sadism. He needs help."
But this was a real paper. The teacher - the school's volleyball and softball coach who was sort of my nemesis, while also being my family's friendly neighbor - gave me an A-/B+. He liked the work, at least better than my breakthrough studies on sand and mazes.
My conclusion:
"I accept my hypothesis although after the first few minutes I didn't think the minnow would last as long as it did because the minnow was showing no reaction after the first few shocks, but after several other shocks the minnow started to show signs of reacting to the shocks such as bleeding and wiggling around so my final conclusion is that the fish died."
A sixty-five word sentence, with one comma. I was in seventh grade when I wrote that. I was 12 years old, but that writing would be below-average for an 8-year-old. Was a classmate shocking me with a "telesacoil" when I penned my conclusion? Yet I got an A-/B+, which makes me wonder just how bad some of my classmates' experiments and papers were if they received Cs or even Ds. Did my Good Vibrations title impress my teacher so much he ignored my paper's countless faults and questionable taste? On the back of my paper I again drew a fish - poorly - with the words "May He Rest In Peace" written above. I was obviously glib about my involvement in the torture and death of the minnow. My paper even had a dedication page, which I used to thank my friend Brandon, who apparently gave me the idea for the experiment (I don't recall the conversation or setting when he first brought up this idea. Were we watching a documentary on Ted Bundy at the time?).
I'm glad I still have this paper and my other groundbreaking reports. They bring back good memories. But this minnow one might have to be destroyed. I still don't want any prosecutors having access to it.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Books from the basement, Volume I
Visiting the family in Minnesota. Have already hit the Dairy Queen. Whined about Dick Bremer. Complained about the humidity. And tonight I engaged in my twice-a-year trip to my parents' basement, where you can find birth certificates, obituaries, congratulations on graduations and sympathies for deaths. There are tax forms, toys, golf clubs and magazines. And books.
Boxes of my parents' books. And boxes of my own books. I still have about eight or nine boxes crammed with hardcovers and paperbacks taking up space in the back area known simply as the junk room. Junk is such a harsh word, though. And misleading, especially when it comes to the books. Someday we'll have to take these back and find space for them and Louise might curse that day, but for now they still sit where they've been for half a decade, safe and secure in their cardboard homes. On every trip back to the Midwest, I like to dig through them for lost treasures and old memories. Sometimes I'll take one home. Usually I read it and return it.
Tonight I pawed through some old sports ones. I found several copies of the old The Complete Handbook of Pro Basketball, which came out every year, profiled each team and player, provided predictions and presented feature stories from NBA writers around the country. I think I bought one every from 1985 through at least 1991. Before each NBA season, I'd scour the Mankato B. Dalton bookstore for the latest issue. As far as I know they're no longer published. Zander Hollander edited the books. The biographies of each player were always my favorite section. These bios praised the greats and buried the worthless. The tone was sarcastic and snarky, long before the latter word became the default setting for way too many writers.
The one I'm looking at now is the 1989 edition. Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas grace the cover. They're kissing. It's a picture from the previous year's finals, when the two guards and then good friends shocked many with their Morganna-like greetings before each contest. The handbook features stories on Mark Jackson, who was an outstanding point guard long before he started rattling off increasingly annoying phrases involving words like "momma," "there," "goes," "that," and "man." There's a story on great love matches in athletic history, a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the Magic-Isiah coupling. There's a fun collection called the All-Flea Market team, Jan Hubbard's picks for various teams, such as the All-Big-Mac team, which was filled with large fellas like John Bagley, Pearl Washington and Antoine Carr.
The experts picked the Lakers to defeat the Celtics in the Finals, but the Pistons and Magic Johnson's balky hamstring dashed those predictions.
The biographies of each player were the highlight of every handbook. Behold:
Bill Wennington: A great cheerleader. Has excellent technique waving his towel from the bench. Now you know why we don't go to Canada to look for more basketball players.
Uwe Blab: They say he's a long-term project. At the rate he's progressing, he'll be ready to contribute in the league right about the time he qualifies for Social Security. A matching bookend of uselessness for the last two years with Bill Wennington on the bench.
Joe Barry Carroll: A prolific promulgator of polysyllabic palaver. In other words, he likes to use big words. Fancies himself as a real intellectual. It would be nicer if he just worked harder at playing basketball.
Allen Leavell: Like a bad cold, he keeps coming back. As long as he is a starter or a significant performer, then you know his club cannot contend for a championship.
But the profiles gave credit when required. For Michael Jordan, coming off a season where he averaged 35 a game but a few years before everyone started calling him the best ever, the editors wrote, "Words don't do him justice. No one on this team should ever grumble a syllable about him." (Yes, sometimes teammates grumbled about Saint Michael). In Magic's section, it reads, "There is Magic and there is Larry Bird and nobody else is in their class." (that nobody, at the time, included Jordan.)
Still, it's always more fun reading ridicule:
Benoit Benjamin: Sometimes you get the feeling that you'd be better off with the Statue of Liberty playing center.
Jon Sundvold: He looks so cute and lovable, you want to hang him from your rear-view mirror. He'd probably do about as much good there as he would making any NBA club a real contender.
Artis Gilmore: Should hang it up before someone gets killed.
The books really disliked bad centers - Artis, Benoit, Wennington, Blab, Joe Barry - and they had a lot to choose from. Like...
Granville Waiters: This guy never got off the bench in the playoffs. Bulls were eliminated. A connection? Be serious. He's slow, can't jump and is not aggressive. Was a free agent and the Bulls came to him last summer. "They said they needed me," he said. They never said for what.
Greg Dreiling: Stiffer than Julius Caesar. Should be a law passed prohibiting people from wasting seven feet of height.
Stuart Gray: See Greg Dreiling and wasted height. (Gray and Dreiling both played for Indiana at the time. Not that the Pacers had a thing for drafting tall, white guys, but their first-round draft pick that year? Rik Smits. At least Smits could play.)
Danny Vranes: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Santa dresses as an NBA businessman and hands out $520,000 contracts to guys like this who average 2.1 points a game.
There was a player named Bob Thornton. He played for Philadelphia when this book came out. He wasn't good. The bio: "Now starting for your Minnesota Timberwolves..."
The Timberwolves were still a year away from joining the league. And, in 1991, Bob Thornton played 12 games for the Wolves. I think the book also predicted the career of Ndudi Ebi.
How can I ever throw a book like this away? I can pick up this 1989 version - or any of the basketball ones, or any of the baseball and football editions - and entertain myself for 90 minutes, reading about bad white centers and below-average middle infielders who should have stayed on a bus in Double-A ball.
No, I'll never toss them, though Louise might do just that some day. It'd be a crime to discard these books, as the world would lose the immortal entry:
Keith Lee: Mr. Disappointment. He didn't play a minute all year with leg injury that resulted in surgery. Probably his best season as a pro.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
The torture of contact lenses
After falling asleep for a two-hour nap this evening, I woke up and started watching Fury on Turner Classic Movies. I'll watch anything with my name in it. Louise interrupted the Spencer Tracy flick after about 10 minutes, asking, rather loudly, "What are you doing with your eyes?"
Up to that point, I didn't realize I'd been doing anything with my eyes. She imitated the look I apparently wore: one eye closed, one eye open, looking very much like someone who's getting ready to peer into a microscope. I explained that my contacts had gone dry while sleeping. It would take awhile before they felt comfortable again. Until then, I'd be blinking more than normal or closing one eye while keeping another open, anything to relieve the discomfort. At the end of the movie I finally scraped them out and put on my eyeglasses.
I've been wearing contact lenses for 20 years now, and I'm sure there will be a study released any day now that says decades-long contact lens use leads to blindness. Hopefully I'm able to read the report. I started wearing glasses in eighth grade, the victim of genetics - both parents have long worn specs. The first glasses I had were a bizarre pair of white ones. To the best of my knowledge I've destroyed every picture anyone took of me in them, with the exception of a couple from an unfortunate birthday party. Someone - the doctor, a receptionist, a fellow customer with a big heart, a parent - should have stepped in before I picked those out. For God's sake, I could not see when choosing them. I was legally blind.
Contacts entered the picture in 10th grade. When playing basketball, the rim was now only visible when I shot a layup. I could still tell my teammates apart because of the different colored jerseys, but I couldn't distinguish faces. I refused to wear glasses - or rec specs - when playing sports. Refused. Pictures of my dad in his high school basketball uniform, black glasses perched on his adolescent face, haunted me. So we went to an eye doctor in the old Madison East mall in Mankato and got some contacts. The first night back home I practiced putting them in. It took me an hour and a half to get one in. My hand shook violently each time my finger neared my eyeball. It felt like open-heart surgery. I couldn't believe that people actually did this every day. I resolved to leave them in permanently if I ever succeeded. But of course they both had to come out that night.
My first contacts were hard ones. Each night I "cleaned" them by putting them in a small contraption that baked them. I didn't understand the technology and I'm pretty sure the doctor didn't either.
On the court, during practices, everything came into focus. I could see again! Then the games began. In the first one, a contact fell out in the first quarter. I picked it up, ran back into the locker room and tried putting it back in. It took several minutes. My re-emergence out of the locker room and onto the court was not exactly greeted with the enthusiasm Willis Reed received before Game 7 in 1970. Staring up into the stands, I could see my dad shaking his head, the look he usually reserved for a bad pass, a traveling violation or giving up an offensive rebound off of a missed free throw. I played terrible the whole game and blamed the contact fiasco. I could see, yes, but now I could see my mistakes even more clearly. Second game, same as the first. A contact fell out in the first quarter, dropping to the filthy floor in tiny Medford, Minnesota. Even with the one good eye, I could see my dad again shaking his head in the stands. Once again I emerged a few minutes later and played the rest of the game while praying the contact lens stayed lodge onto my eyeball. No wonder I struggled again.
After the game I was told that the contacts were done for basketball, it'd be glasses. God, no. Yes, I loved Kurt Rambis with the Showtime Lakers, but I sure as hell didn't want to look like him. Goggles were always an option, an accessory that has looked good on two players in basketball history: Kareem and James Worthy. Desperate, we found a new eye doctor, who changed me to soft contacts. They worked. The next game, they stayed in and my shot returned.
And that's what I've worn since the winter of 1990. Occasionally I think about whether I should look into Lasik surgery, but no matter the success rate with that procedure, I still fear being a statistic, being the one guy who ends up blind or wearing a patch.
I still fight with them, just in a different way than I did while playing B-squad basketball. The current batch of lenses tears easily, a flaw I'm sure the company deliberately designed so I'd have to buy more boxes. My current eye doctor is a friendly woman who seems very knowledgeable. She replaced an older doctor at the same practice, who I only saw once. When we went into the building, the temperature had to be near 100. Children screamed, parents pouted. The girl behind the counter said the air conditioning had died. We sat in the waiting area for 15 minutes, melting. When the doctor finally emerged, another customer complained to him about the heat - and the humidity.
"Well, it's a hell of a lot hotter where Hitler is, I can tell you that!"
Uh, yes, I suppose it is (by the way, Hitler supposedly refused to allow the public to see pictures of him wearing glasses). That did little to help the situation and did not inspire me with confidence in his ability to diagnose glaucoma. I suppose the heat finally got to him, or maybe it was just an existential crisis, as he felt inadequate about the decades spent peering into people's eyes while coming within an inch of their face, all the while holding that tiny light. How many times can you tell someone "blink," or, "Is it clearer here...or now," without going insane?
I long ago became an expert at putting contacts in. While it took nearly two hours that first night I had them, today I only need seconds to get them in and can do it anywhere - on a sidewalk, an airplane bathroom during turbulence, an airplane seat or in a car going down a gravel road. I don't even need solution, just a little water, maybe some spit. Mishaps still occur. I've put one contact right on top of another, after forgetting which eye I'd already worked on. Very blurry. But that's not as bad as pulling on my eyeball and realizing I already took the contact out. Very painful.
Forty years from now I'll probably still be putting them in every morning and taking them out every night. I've had a parent complain about me wearing them playing basketball and a wife complain about how I look while watching TV with them. If I'm lucky, someday I'll have a grandkid talk about how gross it is watching me put them on my eye each morning.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Anniversaries and memories
In a few weeks we're going to Minnesota for a 10-day stay. It'll have been a year since I was last home, the longest time I've ever been away from the Midwest. Wonder if I lost my accent. Will I remember how to say ya? Will I still appreciate the taste of a well-done hotdish?
For the first time in 34 years, I didn't experience a single month of Minnesota winter. Can't say I missed that part. But I am looking forward to going home, to see my folks and sister and my niece and four nephews and my aunts and uncles.
Since 2004, whenever we went back to Minnesota, we always made plans to "get to Fulda" so we could see my grandma. This will also be the first year our trip doesn't involve a trip to see her. She died last May 19, at the age of 91. A stroke. We flew back on May 21 last year for her funeral. This year, we're flying to Minnesota on May 21. It's purely a coincidence, not a plan. At the same time, May 21, 2009 has become one of those days where I'll always remember what I did, the same way I'll always remember hearing about grandma's stroke and death two days before.
Two days ago was another one of those anniversaries. On April 30, 1999, my grandpa died at the age of 86. He had been sick for a year. He died in a hospice. That was a day of double heartbreak. One of my uncle's best friends, my former basketball coach Mike Augustine, lost his father on the same day, just hours after my grandpa died. My uncle coached the women's basketball team at Minnesota West, Augie the men. On the same morning, both lost their fathers.
April 30, 1999 was a sad, devastating day, but it's not a sad, devastating anniversary. The same will be true for May 19. I thought about grandpa quite a bit on Friday, but even though it was the anniversary of the day he died, I thought about his life. But then, I think about him often, every day of the year, not just on April 30.
I think about him when I read a story about a veteran. Grandpa won a Silver Star in World War II. Growing up, I never heard him talk much about his service. I'd hear from my parents that grandpa suffered nightmares, ones where German soldiers came up from the lake at the farm. But like so many veterans, particularly of that war, he didn't talk a lot about his service or his heroics, only to say he never got mad after the war - a somewhat dubious claim. I only heard about the specifics of his service two months before he died, when I interviewed him for a newspaper story related to the Silver Star and some other medals, including the Purple Heart, he received in a ceremony while he lived in the hospice. I spent two days at his bedside, listening to him talk and replay those years. He talked about the men he served with, ones who died and those who made it back with him. He talked about his training. He talked about Patton. He talked about the incident that led to the Purple Heart.
The only thing he didn't talk about in depth was the event that led to his Silver Star, when he took out a German machine gun nest.
He kept those details to himself for more than 50 years of his life and held them close two months before his death. Those nightmares he suffered proved the memories of those German soldiers who had been in that nest never left him.
After Germany's surrender, grandpa volunteered to serve in Japan for the expected invasion, saying the sooner the war ended, the quicker he'd get home. The atomic bomb kept him from the Pacific.
I often think about grandpa when watching baseball, his favorite sport. He was a standout player, but that, of course, was way before my time. He still played with us in the large open area at the farm, where family games often broke out. One year, when I was maybe seven or eight, grandpa patrolled the outfield while I played short. A hit got through him and grandpa, in his 70s, took chase. A bit too slowly for my taste.
"Come on old man, go get the ball," I yelled. Grandpa finally picked it up and fired it back to me. Most of the family laughed while others were probably a bit horrified at my demands on the ol' ballplayer. But grandpa just laughed. He wasn't offended by my...uh, youthful exuberance. Besides, he knew better than anyone the importance of getting the ball to the cutoff man.
I think about him when watching basketball. I can picture him sitting in the top row of whatever gym I played in, watching quietly from above, the same scene he repeated while watching my cousins and my uncle's college team.
I remember his days in the hospice, the months he spent there, dying, surrounded by caring workers and other dying residents. But when I picture him, and when I dream about him, he's not in the hospice bed. He's wearing his ever-present bib overalls, sitting at the the kitchen table at the farm or in his chair in the living room.
I think about all of those things throughout the year. I don't need an anniversary to remember him, but each year April 30 does remind me of what we lost, while also making me appreciate what we had.
I'm sure the same feelings will come on May 19. Just like with grandpa, I think about grandma all the time. Being home for the first time since her death will be strange, possibly a bit upsetting. But the memories of the life she led overwhelm the memories of hearing she died.
My maternal grandpa died when I was 9. My memories of him are limited, fleeting visions that become harder to remember with every passing year. My paternal grandma died nearly eight years before I was born. I also think about both of them often, but with them it is more about their deaths, only because I didn't have the chance to enjoy their lives.
Everyone deals with these types of things differently. Some people remember the exact time their loved one died, others might not even recall the day. In the end, it's ultimately not that important what you do or how you remember the anniversaries. There's no right way. But it's not surprising that for many people those are difficult days to get through - it's the day the person stopped providing memories and instead became one.
But for me, last Friday wasn't a sad day. This May 19 won't be, either. Those days remind me of their deaths, but more importantly, they make me think about grandpa and grandma's lives. And those memories don't make me sad. They make me grateful.
For the first time in 34 years, I didn't experience a single month of Minnesota winter. Can't say I missed that part. But I am looking forward to going home, to see my folks and sister and my niece and four nephews and my aunts and uncles.
Since 2004, whenever we went back to Minnesota, we always made plans to "get to Fulda" so we could see my grandma. This will also be the first year our trip doesn't involve a trip to see her. She died last May 19, at the age of 91. A stroke. We flew back on May 21 last year for her funeral. This year, we're flying to Minnesota on May 21. It's purely a coincidence, not a plan. At the same time, May 21, 2009 has become one of those days where I'll always remember what I did, the same way I'll always remember hearing about grandma's stroke and death two days before.
Two days ago was another one of those anniversaries. On April 30, 1999, my grandpa died at the age of 86. He had been sick for a year. He died in a hospice. That was a day of double heartbreak. One of my uncle's best friends, my former basketball coach Mike Augustine, lost his father on the same day, just hours after my grandpa died. My uncle coached the women's basketball team at Minnesota West, Augie the men. On the same morning, both lost their fathers.
April 30, 1999 was a sad, devastating day, but it's not a sad, devastating anniversary. The same will be true for May 19. I thought about grandpa quite a bit on Friday, but even though it was the anniversary of the day he died, I thought about his life. But then, I think about him often, every day of the year, not just on April 30.
I think about him when I read a story about a veteran. Grandpa won a Silver Star in World War II. Growing up, I never heard him talk much about his service. I'd hear from my parents that grandpa suffered nightmares, ones where German soldiers came up from the lake at the farm. But like so many veterans, particularly of that war, he didn't talk a lot about his service or his heroics, only to say he never got mad after the war - a somewhat dubious claim. I only heard about the specifics of his service two months before he died, when I interviewed him for a newspaper story related to the Silver Star and some other medals, including the Purple Heart, he received in a ceremony while he lived in the hospice. I spent two days at his bedside, listening to him talk and replay those years. He talked about the men he served with, ones who died and those who made it back with him. He talked about his training. He talked about Patton. He talked about the incident that led to the Purple Heart.
The only thing he didn't talk about in depth was the event that led to his Silver Star, when he took out a German machine gun nest.
He kept those details to himself for more than 50 years of his life and held them close two months before his death. Those nightmares he suffered proved the memories of those German soldiers who had been in that nest never left him.
After Germany's surrender, grandpa volunteered to serve in Japan for the expected invasion, saying the sooner the war ended, the quicker he'd get home. The atomic bomb kept him from the Pacific.
I often think about grandpa when watching baseball, his favorite sport. He was a standout player, but that, of course, was way before my time. He still played with us in the large open area at the farm, where family games often broke out. One year, when I was maybe seven or eight, grandpa patrolled the outfield while I played short. A hit got through him and grandpa, in his 70s, took chase. A bit too slowly for my taste.
"Come on old man, go get the ball," I yelled. Grandpa finally picked it up and fired it back to me. Most of the family laughed while others were probably a bit horrified at my demands on the ol' ballplayer. But grandpa just laughed. He wasn't offended by my...uh, youthful exuberance. Besides, he knew better than anyone the importance of getting the ball to the cutoff man.
I think about him when watching basketball. I can picture him sitting in the top row of whatever gym I played in, watching quietly from above, the same scene he repeated while watching my cousins and my uncle's college team.
I remember his days in the hospice, the months he spent there, dying, surrounded by caring workers and other dying residents. But when I picture him, and when I dream about him, he's not in the hospice bed. He's wearing his ever-present bib overalls, sitting at the the kitchen table at the farm or in his chair in the living room.
I think about all of those things throughout the year. I don't need an anniversary to remember him, but each year April 30 does remind me of what we lost, while also making me appreciate what we had.
I'm sure the same feelings will come on May 19. Just like with grandpa, I think about grandma all the time. Being home for the first time since her death will be strange, possibly a bit upsetting. But the memories of the life she led overwhelm the memories of hearing she died.
My maternal grandpa died when I was 9. My memories of him are limited, fleeting visions that become harder to remember with every passing year. My paternal grandma died nearly eight years before I was born. I also think about both of them often, but with them it is more about their deaths, only because I didn't have the chance to enjoy their lives.
Everyone deals with these types of things differently. Some people remember the exact time their loved one died, others might not even recall the day. In the end, it's ultimately not that important what you do or how you remember the anniversaries. There's no right way. But it's not surprising that for many people those are difficult days to get through - it's the day the person stopped providing memories and instead became one.
But for me, last Friday wasn't a sad day. This May 19 won't be, either. Those days remind me of their deaths, but more importantly, they make me think about grandpa and grandma's lives. And those memories don't make me sad. They make me grateful.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Janesville Hay Daze: Zipper, carnies and the world's smallest pony
Here's the world's smallest horse. Maybe. The pinto stallion - named, for some reason, Einstein, perhaps because it's the same size as the scientist's oversize brain - is 14 inches tall. He weighed six pounds at birth. Guinness will check out the horse tale to determine if it breaks the record currently held by Thumbelina, a 17-pound horse.
He's cute. And creepy, like something that randomly appears in a nightmare. But I question whether he's the smallest in the land, no matter what the gatekeepers at Guinness eventually rule. Because about 18 years ago, in Janesville, I saw the world's smallest pony at the annual Hay Daze celebration. That's what the hand-written sign declared:
WORLD'S SMALLEST PONY!
If true, it'd be a coup for Janesville. A worldwide attraction! Maybe the little guy would find a permanent home on Main Street, earning a spot in town lore along with the doll in the window. The sign caught the attention of my cousin Matt, as we patrolled Main Street on Hay Daze Friday.
In reality, the world's smallest pony was an average-size dog. The not-so-great beast stood in its tiny pen, sadly looking out at passersby. His hair had been styled to look something like a pony's 'do, but this was no foal. He appeared severely depressed or sedated. We laughed, but the joke was on us, since we had paid a couple of bucks to see the stunning exhibit. I'm assuming someone eventually called PETA.
Just another night at Hay Daze. It's Janesville's week-long celebration, which always takes place in June and always ends with three days of fun on the midway, as the carnival rolls into town with its poorly maintained rides, rigged games, and occasional freak show - like the world's smallest pony.
As a kid, I counted down the days until Hay Daze. It was a holiday. Anticipation rose as school ended and mid-June approached. It's the kind of festival you find all over small towns in Minnesota. Last year there was actually a mini...I don't know, controversy is too strong a word - conflict, over the dates of Hay Daze. Neighboring Waterville - a rival in high school sports - had their Bullhead Days at the same time as Hay Daze, as Janesville shifted its celebration to accommodate the visiting carnival that earned rave reviews the year before. It's the type of thing that can spark civil war.
Kids look forward to Hay Daze, teens eventually mock it, people who have recently moved away roll their eyes while remembering some of the rides, and folks who have been away from the town for several years miss the event and want to eventually return. Or at least I do.
The carnival always arrived early in the week. In the days before the Friday opening, I'd check the weather report religiously, like Eisenhower monitoring the forecasts before D-Day.
The carnies immediately began setting up the rides. We anticipated what they'd bring along, knowing that staples like the merry-go-round and Ferris Wheel always made an appearance. But would they have the bumper cars? How about the Hurricane? And, please God, is the Zipper in the arsenal? The carnival hired local kids to help with the construction, another reason to question the safety record of each ride. So the kid who stole a car when he was 15 is now in charge of putting the screws into the roundabout?
I was about 8 years old the first time I operated a bumper car. Unfortunately, my driving skills resembled those of an 80-year-old woman from New York who never learned how to drive but decides to go for her license after losing her husband. The controls confused me and the steering wheel overpowered me. Eventually the worker wandered through the carnage to my stranded vehicle. With a look of disdain on his face and tobacco jammed in his mouth, he guided me to safety while standing along the side and leaning down to steer.
We lived a block from Main Street, a block from the carnival. I always walked the same route, past the kids' rides on a side street and emerging on Main Street at the merry-go-round. The zipper stood at one end of the street, the Ferris Wheel on the other. The rides didn't extend all the way down Main Street, as Highway 14 went through town. So passing cars gawked at the local yokels as we enjoyed our cotton candy and lost dollar after dollar on the basketball game that a state gaming commissioner should have shut down.
I hated that basketball game, with its small hoop and large ball. Pistol Pete couldn't have hit three in a row on that basket. Yet every year I threw down my dollar bills in a desperate attempt to win a pen, which I could convert into an oversize crayon, which I could then convert - about 50 dollars and a hundred shots later - into a 10-foot tall stuffed animal that would be forgotten about and eventually land in the basement. The only other game with more questionable logistics was the ball toss game, where you had to throw a baseball into a tilted wooden container. The world's leading physicists couldn't have figured out the proper angle and velocity needed to land the ball in the bucket, but everyone kept trying. It's a great way to impress girls. That, and getting into drunken fights, another Hay Daze tradition.
The main big-ticket rides were the Zipper, the tilt-a-whirl, the scrambler and sometimes the Hurricane, a large ride with small cars that made gigantic WHOOSHING sounds as it went up and down, sounds we could hear from our house throughout the night. I always expected one of those cars - put together under the careful eye of Merriam's finest mechanics - to go flying off, landing on the neighboring bowling alley. Hasn't happened. Yet.
The carnies, of course, reigned over all of this. To a snot-nosed kid, carnies are the object of mockery and occasionally admiration. "Wow, what a fun life, getting to be around the bumper cars all of the time!" The more idiotic youth enjoy baiting the workers with verbal taunts, which the carnival folk return. You don't think about how tough of a life most of the people in the carnival probably had before signing up. No one's dreaming of being a carny. But every year they show up and put on a good show, which always proved safe, no matter how unsafe the whole operation always seemed. When I was 10, I somehow got involved in a little tiff with some workers while shooting baskets at the local park, where a host of them gathered. They said they'd beat me up. I believed them. I mean, they wore black shirts. One guy sported brass knuckles. My aunt and uncle were visiting so for the next few days I walked down to the park accompanied by my uncle, an intimidating figure who stands about 6-6. The carnies eyed me but didn't make a move. Looking back, I'm sure they weren't going to do anything, but that didn't stop my imagination from running wild. I saw the headlines: CARNIES PUMMEL LOCAL BOY, STUFF HIS FACE WITH YEAR-OLD MINIDONUTS
Janesville always had a beer garden. And a dunk tank. Lots of food options, including foot long hot dogs, and the firemen made the best burgers and onion rings in the county. They always tasted even better on the way up after a stint on the tilt-a-whirl. There's a "fun run" and there's occasionally a softball tournament.
But there's always a parade. Sunday afternoon. This might be the main event of any small town celebration. The quality varies from town to town. In my parents' hometown of Fulda, the locals pride themselves on putting on a standout parade, which always features numerous local marching bands. Janesville always has a better carnival, but Fulda gets the edge in parades (again, this is for bragging rights in small towns). The Janesville parade always went past our house. We sat on the porch or near the street as the bands and tractors rolled by. People put their blankets out early on our yard, like tourists getting ready hours ahead of time for a space shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral.
And thanks to youtube, the whole world can now enjoy the parade. This is from 2008, but it could have been from 1978. And this will probably be what it looks like in 2028.
The video starts with some large farm equipment. Then the normal floats supporting local businesses. People throw candy, which kids fight to the death over. At the 3:25 mark, one of the main attractions every year: the Shriners. Usually they ride in motorcycles, an overweight, ground version of the Blue Angels. They perform impressive driving feats that delight the crowd. I always wondered how long they had to practice their stunts, and how many Shriners never made it through training. Was it like the Navy SEALS? In this particular parade, they rode in their mini-cars instead of the cycles, which were never quite as visually stunning.
There aren't any marching bands on this video. As I wrote, the Hay Daze parade didn't attract as many groups as other towns. Making things worse, for years the JWP high school band didn't march. Instead, they'd ride on the back of a large flatbed truck, tooting their songs as the crowd grumbled. They complained because many of them - including my mom - were old marching band performers themselves. They felt...offended. To them it was ridiculous that a high school band sat and played, instead of sweating in large costumes and marching up and down the city streets. People applauded, but never as loudly as they did for the marchers.
The parade always ended mid-afternoon on Sunday. People took their kids uptown for another hour or two on the rides. The beer garden hosted one more band.
The carnival leaves town late Sunday and early Monday, sneaking away in the dead of night like the Colts out of Baltimore. From my bedroom I could hear them taking everything down. It was always sad. Another Hay Daze gone. By the next morning, they were all gone and Main Street was again unoccupied, although a stray ride occasionally lingered, stationed near the city park.
I've probably been to one Hay Daze weekend in the last 10 years. But the memories remain. After all, how can anyone forget seeing the world's smallest pony?
Saturday, March 20, 2010
My life at McDonald's
McDonald's received another dose of great publicity this week when a Colorado woman revealed that a Happy Meal she left out for a year maintained the same shape and look for 12 months. It didn't age and, though she didn't try this, probably tasted the same as it did the day she walked it out of her local restaurant.
It brought up the normal criticisms of McDonald's and its preservatives, as people everywhere wondered what fries and a burger do to your body if they don't decompose when left out in the open (to me that's a good sign; maybe the ingredients preserve livers, kidneys and stomachs as well as they preserve dollar burgers). It could be a hoax but it seems believable, despite some obvious flaws in her methodology.
I read this news and shrugged, the same reaction to every documentary, book and article I read about the horrors of McDonald's. No doubt all of these - from the movie Super Size Me to the book Fast Food Nation - are full of startling truths and disgusting anecdotes. But like a smoker who knows that the Surgeon General isn't lying, I continue to enjoy everything that's offered under the Golden Arches (it is a bit different than smoking, since very few people have gotten sick from secondhand grease).
Yesterday I told some friends that the more negative news I read about McDonald's, the more I crave its food. It's not a rebellious move, simply conditioning. When I hear the word McDonald's - even if it's used in a sentence that includes words like "higher rates of cancer" or "clogged arteries" or "diabetes" - my brain pictures the crispy McNuggets, or even soggy ones. I remember the unique smell that emanates from any McDonald's. God I love that smell - I wish it could be bottled and put into cologne form.
My love for McDonald's started in childhood, sustained by weekend trips to my grandparents'. We'd leave on Friday after my parents got off of work and always stop to eat in Mankato. Sometimes it was at Hardee's, but often it was McDonald's. As a kid I ordered a simple cheeseburger and small fries. Eventually the order grew along with my body and the order turned into a quarter-pounder and medium fries, before ultimately giving way to a double quarter-pounder, large fries and, just occasionally, a nine-piece Nugget. I'd wash it down with a large drink and a chocolate shake, counting on my genes to keep me from spilling outside my jeans.
McDonald's asks for so little - maybe six bucks - and gives so much in return, including an increased risk of dropping dead while shooting hoops with a grandchild at the age of 57.
So many McDonald's, so many memories:
FAVORITE MCDONALD'S
There's one in Lakeville off of I35 that we always went to after trips to the metropolis, especially after Twins or Timberwolves games. Nothing perks up a depressed person who's just watched Brad Lohaus or Rich Becker like the aroma of McDonald's fries. If we didn't stop at this one, it was still another hour to Janesville and an hour of waiting for food. The food didn't taste any different, of course, but its location moves it to the top spot, despite the fact the bathrooms occasionally looked like they hadn't been cleaned since Ray Kroc was alive. The arches called us from the interstate and I'd start salivating the second we took the exit and then turned left for McDonald's.
MY BIG MAC BINGE
The only time I've ever ordered a Big Mac was during the brief time I worked at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as a wheelchair attendant. For whatever reason, during my brief time in that position, I always bought a Big Mac during my short lunch break. I'd order one every day - a value meal was an hour's pay - and find a seat at an unoccupied gate. Occasionally a passenger would stare at me, as if offended by the idea airport peons take breaks. Perhaps I was subconsciously punishing myself for being unable to land a newspaper job out of college and I didn't think I deserved the old reliables: quarter-pounders and chicken sandwiches. When I got hired at a newspaper and quit the airport, I also quit Big Macs and haven't had one since. There's something psychological at work here, though I don't want to know what it is.
MIDWEST BIAS
Even after six years, I still don't quite trust New York City McDonald's. There seems to be something different about the taste compared to the ones back in Minnesota. Maybe I'm influenced too much by the hairnets worn by workers, something I'd never seen until moving out East. In theory this should be reassuring, but it makes me wonder: what follicle catastrophe happened that necessitated the move? How many hairs have to fall into shakes before a mid-level manager sends out a memo demanding hairnet use? And if the hairnets have stopped that problem, what other ones are lurking, waiting to be discovered by a hidden camera and an investigative reporter looking for a big scoop?
One of my go-to places on the Upper West Side also commits the cardinal sin of refusing to put ketchup dispensers out in the open. They don't even have a box filled with the insulting ketchup packets. Instead you have to ask the cashier for some. The workers dole them out with brutal efficiency, as if they're docked 10 bucks from their paycheck for every one package they distribute. Ketchup wasn't rationed like this during the world wars, why start now? Two packets are not enough for a medium order of fries and three aren't enough for a large.
Sidebar. Here's Letterman manning the drive-thru at McDonald's.
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT
How deflating is it to watch a worker grab an order of fries that have been sitting under those harsh lights for five minutes? No, please, no. I can see that the fresh ones will be done in the fryer in 30 seconds. Please, wait. The limp fries land on the tray with a thud and the meal's off to a bad start even before you've taken the first bite. Everything usually evens out and the next trip will include the hot, crisp fries that have become so famous.
OVERDOSE
I say this without pride or exaggeration. During my sophomore year of college, I ate at McDonald's every day, with the possible exception of maybe 10 days. That's nine months and about 270 days. So figure about 300 meals, since I'd often hit it for lunch and dinner and rarely - just rarely - breakfast. None of the five people in our house cooked, so we single-handedly kept the Worthington franchise alive for nine months. During basketball that season, we'd often eat there before and after games. Our coach warned us not to eat milkshakes before games, as they would weigh us down while running up the court. I often ignored this plea, one reason my feet never seemed to move the way I wanted them to on defense.
Before I moved to New York and got married, I ate at McDonald's probably four times a week. It wasn't like the college days, but wasn't much better. But then I discovered the beauty of home-cooked meals. Now I eat there a few times a month. About six months ago, Louise noticed I always got headaches after eating at McDonald's, either the same night or the following morning. She immediately diagnosed the problem with a certain amount of glee: too much sodium from McDonald's, along with not enough water. I scoffed at the idea. I'd been eating McDonald's for most of my 34 years and had never suffered a side effect, although as Louise points out, I have been suffering from headaches most of my life (I saw no correlation). Eventually I could no longer ignore the evidence. Now I make sure to drink plenty of water before a trip to McDonald's. I have to prepare my body before ingesting their food, which is humbling and vaguely humiliating.
But I still go there. If documentaries, best-selling books and bizarre experiments don't eliminate my love of McDonald's, a few headaches won't either.
My love of McDonald's will last forever, just like their food.
It brought up the normal criticisms of McDonald's and its preservatives, as people everywhere wondered what fries and a burger do to your body if they don't decompose when left out in the open (to me that's a good sign; maybe the ingredients preserve livers, kidneys and stomachs as well as they preserve dollar burgers). It could be a hoax but it seems believable, despite some obvious flaws in her methodology.
I read this news and shrugged, the same reaction to every documentary, book and article I read about the horrors of McDonald's. No doubt all of these - from the movie Super Size Me to the book Fast Food Nation - are full of startling truths and disgusting anecdotes. But like a smoker who knows that the Surgeon General isn't lying, I continue to enjoy everything that's offered under the Golden Arches (it is a bit different than smoking, since very few people have gotten sick from secondhand grease).
Yesterday I told some friends that the more negative news I read about McDonald's, the more I crave its food. It's not a rebellious move, simply conditioning. When I hear the word McDonald's - even if it's used in a sentence that includes words like "higher rates of cancer" or "clogged arteries" or "diabetes" - my brain pictures the crispy McNuggets, or even soggy ones. I remember the unique smell that emanates from any McDonald's. God I love that smell - I wish it could be bottled and put into cologne form.
My love for McDonald's started in childhood, sustained by weekend trips to my grandparents'. We'd leave on Friday after my parents got off of work and always stop to eat in Mankato. Sometimes it was at Hardee's, but often it was McDonald's. As a kid I ordered a simple cheeseburger and small fries. Eventually the order grew along with my body and the order turned into a quarter-pounder and medium fries, before ultimately giving way to a double quarter-pounder, large fries and, just occasionally, a nine-piece Nugget. I'd wash it down with a large drink and a chocolate shake, counting on my genes to keep me from spilling outside my jeans.
McDonald's asks for so little - maybe six bucks - and gives so much in return, including an increased risk of dropping dead while shooting hoops with a grandchild at the age of 57.
So many McDonald's, so many memories:
FAVORITE MCDONALD'S
There's one in Lakeville off of I35 that we always went to after trips to the metropolis, especially after Twins or Timberwolves games. Nothing perks up a depressed person who's just watched Brad Lohaus or Rich Becker like the aroma of McDonald's fries. If we didn't stop at this one, it was still another hour to Janesville and an hour of waiting for food. The food didn't taste any different, of course, but its location moves it to the top spot, despite the fact the bathrooms occasionally looked like they hadn't been cleaned since Ray Kroc was alive. The arches called us from the interstate and I'd start salivating the second we took the exit and then turned left for McDonald's.
MY BIG MAC BINGE
The only time I've ever ordered a Big Mac was during the brief time I worked at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as a wheelchair attendant. For whatever reason, during my brief time in that position, I always bought a Big Mac during my short lunch break. I'd order one every day - a value meal was an hour's pay - and find a seat at an unoccupied gate. Occasionally a passenger would stare at me, as if offended by the idea airport peons take breaks. Perhaps I was subconsciously punishing myself for being unable to land a newspaper job out of college and I didn't think I deserved the old reliables: quarter-pounders and chicken sandwiches. When I got hired at a newspaper and quit the airport, I also quit Big Macs and haven't had one since. There's something psychological at work here, though I don't want to know what it is.
MIDWEST BIAS
Even after six years, I still don't quite trust New York City McDonald's. There seems to be something different about the taste compared to the ones back in Minnesota. Maybe I'm influenced too much by the hairnets worn by workers, something I'd never seen until moving out East. In theory this should be reassuring, but it makes me wonder: what follicle catastrophe happened that necessitated the move? How many hairs have to fall into shakes before a mid-level manager sends out a memo demanding hairnet use? And if the hairnets have stopped that problem, what other ones are lurking, waiting to be discovered by a hidden camera and an investigative reporter looking for a big scoop?
One of my go-to places on the Upper West Side also commits the cardinal sin of refusing to put ketchup dispensers out in the open. They don't even have a box filled with the insulting ketchup packets. Instead you have to ask the cashier for some. The workers dole them out with brutal efficiency, as if they're docked 10 bucks from their paycheck for every one package they distribute. Ketchup wasn't rationed like this during the world wars, why start now? Two packets are not enough for a medium order of fries and three aren't enough for a large.
Sidebar. Here's Letterman manning the drive-thru at McDonald's.
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT
How deflating is it to watch a worker grab an order of fries that have been sitting under those harsh lights for five minutes? No, please, no. I can see that the fresh ones will be done in the fryer in 30 seconds. Please, wait. The limp fries land on the tray with a thud and the meal's off to a bad start even before you've taken the first bite. Everything usually evens out and the next trip will include the hot, crisp fries that have become so famous.
OVERDOSE
I say this without pride or exaggeration. During my sophomore year of college, I ate at McDonald's every day, with the possible exception of maybe 10 days. That's nine months and about 270 days. So figure about 300 meals, since I'd often hit it for lunch and dinner and rarely - just rarely - breakfast. None of the five people in our house cooked, so we single-handedly kept the Worthington franchise alive for nine months. During basketball that season, we'd often eat there before and after games. Our coach warned us not to eat milkshakes before games, as they would weigh us down while running up the court. I often ignored this plea, one reason my feet never seemed to move the way I wanted them to on defense.
Before I moved to New York and got married, I ate at McDonald's probably four times a week. It wasn't like the college days, but wasn't much better. But then I discovered the beauty of home-cooked meals. Now I eat there a few times a month. About six months ago, Louise noticed I always got headaches after eating at McDonald's, either the same night or the following morning. She immediately diagnosed the problem with a certain amount of glee: too much sodium from McDonald's, along with not enough water. I scoffed at the idea. I'd been eating McDonald's for most of my 34 years and had never suffered a side effect, although as Louise points out, I have been suffering from headaches most of my life (I saw no correlation). Eventually I could no longer ignore the evidence. Now I make sure to drink plenty of water before a trip to McDonald's. I have to prepare my body before ingesting their food, which is humbling and vaguely humiliating.
But I still go there. If documentaries, best-selling books and bizarre experiments don't eliminate my love of McDonald's, a few headaches won't either.
My love of McDonald's will last forever, just like their food.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Stephen King on film: floating children and killer clowns
Today the oddly spelled SyFy channel played a couple of miniseries based on classic Stephen King books. First up was The Tommyknockers, followed by The Stand. The TV series are entertaining marathons, but the books were classics, two of my favorites by King. Pretty much all of King's work - especially his earlier books - were turned from manuscripts into screenplays and adapted to the big screen or small. Some people are surprised at a few of the movies that actually emerged from King's mind. Running Man, for instance, was a King story, though he wrote it as Richard Bachman and probably didn't imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger mumbling in the title role. The best movie to be made from a King story is Shawshank Redemption, which is actually based on King's novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. Stories like that - and The Green Mile - show King's range. But he remains best-known for his horror tales, and those are the ones that have made his work so attractive to Hollywood.
Two TV adaptations were probably the most frightening: Salem's Lot and It.
I've previously written about how Salem's Lot and The Shining scarred me as a kid, wounds that are probably still pummeling my subconscious. Here, again, the most infamous clip from the original Salem's Lot miniseries. Damn you, Danny Glick.
Raging and sensitive vampires are all the rage now, but they no longer interest me. Thankfully, they also no longer terrify me. Salem's Lot gets the majority of the blame, as does a thin, hardcover book in the Janesville Public Library I read countless times while growing up, which was a dumbed-down version of Bram Stoker's original. The Lost Boys also freaked me out. At carnivals I often found myself looking toward the sky, searching for a marauding gang of high-flying, hungry, ill-tempered and poorly behaved teenage vampires in desperate need for parental authority. Another frightening one: The Night Stalker, a 1972 TV movie that I caught late one weekend night.
It starred Darren McGavin, who's probably best remembered as being the dad who loves the leg lamp in A Christmas Story.
But look at that scene above, watch how part of the confrontation takes place on long steps. When we moved into our new house, the bedrooms were at the top of the steps. I'd hear creeks and picture a vampire creeping up the carpeted steps. That's what I imagined while sitting in my bedroom at night, or when we'd visit my grandpa on the farm in the old house that might have been haunted, at least according to family relatives who should no better but apparently enjoy terrorizing young people. My bedroom was the closest to the steps, meaning the demon of the night would take me before moving on to my sister and my snoring parents.
When a light came on and I could analyze the situation logically, I was able to tell myself, why would a vampire be coming up the steps, when it could simply fly through the window, or scratch the window and use his mastery of the dark powers to lure me outside? That thought process helped alleviate all my childish childhood fears, until the night my sister's boyfriend fired rocks at my window with the power of a Nolan Ryan fastball, not realizing he was attacking my room instead of alerting Lisa that it was safe to sneak out of the house for the night. So there I was, trying to sleep, as a loud thud kept hitting the window. Pitch-black outside, even darker inside. And all I hear is an overwhelming rattle at the window. I saw the undead floating outside, at least in my mind. Instead it was a teenage boy trying to corrupt Lisa.
At a certain point I came up with what I thought was the perfect plan to avoid the vampires that would one day rule the country with an iron, and frozen, fist. I vowed to become rich enough to buy a Concorde. Then, I'd use the jet to constantly fly to countries where it happened to be daylight. So if I was in Minnesota and the vampires came out at 9 p.m. on a warm summer night, I'd hop onto the Concorde, fly to California and be safe, since it'd only be 6 at night there with plenty of sunlight. If I happened to be caught in New York at 2 a.m. and the vampires were closing in, I'd call up my pilot Dominic, a former Blue Angels pilot - in the fantasy I didn't have my pilot's license, though that would have simplified the process. Dominic jetted us to London, where it'd be 8 a.m. and we'd have twelve hours of freedom and safety. I really couldn't find a single flaw with the plan, since I didn't have much respect for the flying ability of vampires.
All of that paranoia started with Salem's Lot. Blame Danny Glick's floating corpse and my own immaturity. Stephen King's imagination did that to me. Eventually I outgrew the fear, or maybe my own imagination simply dulled, to the point where I no longer visualized a world where people rose from the grave to haunt small-town children. Still, the original Salem's Lot - and not the Rob Lowe remake from 2004 - remains one of the best movie versions of King's work.
Some other notables:
It: The book is a thousand-page masterpiece, while the 1990 movie was a two-parter remembered primarily for the terrifying performance by Tim Curry as the killer clown Pennywise. It's a solid adaptation, only slightly harmed by some odd casting choices. Richard Thomas, aka John-Boy on The Waltons, played Bill Denbrough while John Ritter portrayed Ben Hanscom. Call them victims of typecasting, but neither guy could escape the past while playing the adult leaders of the Losers Club. But the movie did have Pennywise. I imagine 7-year-old kids who watched It were terrified into their teens, the same way Salem's Lot damaged me. Actually, the scary clown probably frightened just as many adults.
* Pet Sematary. Again, not as good as the book - standard disclaimer when discussing 98 percent of all movies converted from books - but still enjoyable, primarily because of another creepy, evil, cute child. Dad puts the little bastard down at the end, but dear ol' Mom makes a final visit.
* Misery. Outstanding book, superb movie, highlighted by Kathy Bates' stalker and James Caan as the writer trapped in her rural home. The most memorable scene is certainly the hobbling, which is ruined every time the movie is played on network TV or TNT or TBS, as they invariably cut away before Paul Sheldon's feet bend in a way usually seen on a football field while an announcer tells the audience to look away.
Oddly, that's not the scene I remember best. I saw the movie in the theater with a group of friends in 1990. Early in the movie, Caan drives down a mountain through a snowstorm. His car's headlights appear on the big screen. At that moment, a member of our group, Martin, who acted as our chauffeur because he got his license before anyone else and had a Suburban that could fit the whole gang, bolted up out of his seat and proclaimed, "I left my lights on!" It was a very strange association but ultimately saved his vehicle's battery, as he scrambled out of his seat and the theater to turn off his truck's headlights.
* Creepshow. One of the more underrated movies, it contained five short stories. One of the most memorable starred Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen, before Danson became a star on Cheers and Nielsen earned fame in the Naked Gun movies. In the movie, Danson's sleeping with Nielsen's wife, so Nielsen had Ted and the gal drowned on the beach and sadistically tapes it so he can enjoy it later in the comfort of his own home. The movie's an early plug for the effectiveness of VCR's. Ted and the gal return - as if they were buried in Pet Sematary and not the beach - and give Nielsen the same treatment.
The most disgusting story in Creepshow involves a man who's more terrified of cockroaches than I was of vampires. Eventually they get the best of him, crawling out of his mouth, ears and every other place. This scene was easier to watch before I moved to New York City, the cockroach center of the world. Blech.
* Cujo. Not one of King's most memorable books and the movie's also fairly forgettable. An evil St. Bernard sick with rabies is still sort of lovable, even when slobbering on a dead body. King himself has said he barely remembers writing the book as he was drinking heavily at the time. To me, the book's memorable because after reading it, my mom swore off Stephen King books. She stopped reading him for nearly a decade. This was actually an official announcement; shortly after, I started reading him. The reason she quit? The little boy dies at the end of the book. Little kids aren't supposed to die, of course, unless they're evil and have popped out of a Pet Sematary. The kid lives in the movie. My mom was aware that it was a fiction book, but she gave up on the horror master for several years, though she eventually returned. But I think she still held a grudge.
Today most of King's books or stories become TV series, instead of big-screen films. I don't think he's any less popular with Hollywood, it's just that his more recent books aren't as easily adaptable. But in 10 or 15 years, TNT or FX or USA will remake Salem's Lot or It and another generation of children will be scarred. And I'll look into the feasibility of bringing the Concorde out of retirement.
Two TV adaptations were probably the most frightening: Salem's Lot and It.
I've previously written about how Salem's Lot and The Shining scarred me as a kid, wounds that are probably still pummeling my subconscious. Here, again, the most infamous clip from the original Salem's Lot miniseries. Damn you, Danny Glick.
Raging and sensitive vampires are all the rage now, but they no longer interest me. Thankfully, they also no longer terrify me. Salem's Lot gets the majority of the blame, as does a thin, hardcover book in the Janesville Public Library I read countless times while growing up, which was a dumbed-down version of Bram Stoker's original. The Lost Boys also freaked me out. At carnivals I often found myself looking toward the sky, searching for a marauding gang of high-flying, hungry, ill-tempered and poorly behaved teenage vampires in desperate need for parental authority. Another frightening one: The Night Stalker, a 1972 TV movie that I caught late one weekend night.
It starred Darren McGavin, who's probably best remembered as being the dad who loves the leg lamp in A Christmas Story.
But look at that scene above, watch how part of the confrontation takes place on long steps. When we moved into our new house, the bedrooms were at the top of the steps. I'd hear creeks and picture a vampire creeping up the carpeted steps. That's what I imagined while sitting in my bedroom at night, or when we'd visit my grandpa on the farm in the old house that might have been haunted, at least according to family relatives who should no better but apparently enjoy terrorizing young people. My bedroom was the closest to the steps, meaning the demon of the night would take me before moving on to my sister and my snoring parents.
When a light came on and I could analyze the situation logically, I was able to tell myself, why would a vampire be coming up the steps, when it could simply fly through the window, or scratch the window and use his mastery of the dark powers to lure me outside? That thought process helped alleviate all my childish childhood fears, until the night my sister's boyfriend fired rocks at my window with the power of a Nolan Ryan fastball, not realizing he was attacking my room instead of alerting Lisa that it was safe to sneak out of the house for the night. So there I was, trying to sleep, as a loud thud kept hitting the window. Pitch-black outside, even darker inside. And all I hear is an overwhelming rattle at the window. I saw the undead floating outside, at least in my mind. Instead it was a teenage boy trying to corrupt Lisa.
At a certain point I came up with what I thought was the perfect plan to avoid the vampires that would one day rule the country with an iron, and frozen, fist. I vowed to become rich enough to buy a Concorde. Then, I'd use the jet to constantly fly to countries where it happened to be daylight. So if I was in Minnesota and the vampires came out at 9 p.m. on a warm summer night, I'd hop onto the Concorde, fly to California and be safe, since it'd only be 6 at night there with plenty of sunlight. If I happened to be caught in New York at 2 a.m. and the vampires were closing in, I'd call up my pilot Dominic, a former Blue Angels pilot - in the fantasy I didn't have my pilot's license, though that would have simplified the process. Dominic jetted us to London, where it'd be 8 a.m. and we'd have twelve hours of freedom and safety. I really couldn't find a single flaw with the plan, since I didn't have much respect for the flying ability of vampires.
All of that paranoia started with Salem's Lot. Blame Danny Glick's floating corpse and my own immaturity. Stephen King's imagination did that to me. Eventually I outgrew the fear, or maybe my own imagination simply dulled, to the point where I no longer visualized a world where people rose from the grave to haunt small-town children. Still, the original Salem's Lot - and not the Rob Lowe remake from 2004 - remains one of the best movie versions of King's work.
Some other notables:
It: The book is a thousand-page masterpiece, while the 1990 movie was a two-parter remembered primarily for the terrifying performance by Tim Curry as the killer clown Pennywise. It's a solid adaptation, only slightly harmed by some odd casting choices. Richard Thomas, aka John-Boy on The Waltons, played Bill Denbrough while John Ritter portrayed Ben Hanscom. Call them victims of typecasting, but neither guy could escape the past while playing the adult leaders of the Losers Club. But the movie did have Pennywise. I imagine 7-year-old kids who watched It were terrified into their teens, the same way Salem's Lot damaged me. Actually, the scary clown probably frightened just as many adults.
* Pet Sematary. Again, not as good as the book - standard disclaimer when discussing 98 percent of all movies converted from books - but still enjoyable, primarily because of another creepy, evil, cute child. Dad puts the little bastard down at the end, but dear ol' Mom makes a final visit.
* Misery. Outstanding book, superb movie, highlighted by Kathy Bates' stalker and James Caan as the writer trapped in her rural home. The most memorable scene is certainly the hobbling, which is ruined every time the movie is played on network TV or TNT or TBS, as they invariably cut away before Paul Sheldon's feet bend in a way usually seen on a football field while an announcer tells the audience to look away.
Oddly, that's not the scene I remember best. I saw the movie in the theater with a group of friends in 1990. Early in the movie, Caan drives down a mountain through a snowstorm. His car's headlights appear on the big screen. At that moment, a member of our group, Martin, who acted as our chauffeur because he got his license before anyone else and had a Suburban that could fit the whole gang, bolted up out of his seat and proclaimed, "I left my lights on!" It was a very strange association but ultimately saved his vehicle's battery, as he scrambled out of his seat and the theater to turn off his truck's headlights.
* Creepshow. One of the more underrated movies, it contained five short stories. One of the most memorable starred Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen, before Danson became a star on Cheers and Nielsen earned fame in the Naked Gun movies. In the movie, Danson's sleeping with Nielsen's wife, so Nielsen had Ted and the gal drowned on the beach and sadistically tapes it so he can enjoy it later in the comfort of his own home. The movie's an early plug for the effectiveness of VCR's. Ted and the gal return - as if they were buried in Pet Sematary and not the beach - and give Nielsen the same treatment.
The most disgusting story in Creepshow involves a man who's more terrified of cockroaches than I was of vampires. Eventually they get the best of him, crawling out of his mouth, ears and every other place. This scene was easier to watch before I moved to New York City, the cockroach center of the world. Blech.
* Cujo. Not one of King's most memorable books and the movie's also fairly forgettable. An evil St. Bernard sick with rabies is still sort of lovable, even when slobbering on a dead body. King himself has said he barely remembers writing the book as he was drinking heavily at the time. To me, the book's memorable because after reading it, my mom swore off Stephen King books. She stopped reading him for nearly a decade. This was actually an official announcement; shortly after, I started reading him. The reason she quit? The little boy dies at the end of the book. Little kids aren't supposed to die, of course, unless they're evil and have popped out of a Pet Sematary. The kid lives in the movie. My mom was aware that it was a fiction book, but she gave up on the horror master for several years, though she eventually returned. But I think she still held a grudge.
Today most of King's books or stories become TV series, instead of big-screen films. I don't think he's any less popular with Hollywood, it's just that his more recent books aren't as easily adaptable. But in 10 or 15 years, TNT or FX or USA will remake Salem's Lot or It and another generation of children will be scarred. And I'll look into the feasibility of bringing the Concorde out of retirement.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Lent Wednesdays and other altar boy headaches
We live about four blocks from a large Catholic Church. The outside of the Church of Good Shepherd looks stunning, though the inside decorations remain only a rumor to me. Wednesday night I walked past and saw the masses on the street with the familiar ashes on their heads, the instantly recognizable mark Christians carry around on Ash Wednesday.
Lent has arrived. Today that means, well, whatever it means to lapsed Catholics everywhere. Growing up, that meant fish on Fridays and double-duty as an altar boy during the week, as the Wednesday shift followed the inevitable Sunday outing. I became an altar boy in the fifth grade. I stayed in the service much too long, into high school, well past the normal expiration date for servers. By the sad end, the white robes barely came to my knees, a comically absurd look that surely damaged the prestige of the position.
During my reign, I often had to handle all the serving duties alone, especially on those Wednesday nights in the winter. Boys who routinely skipped out on school littered the altar boy roster, so what were the odds they'd fulfill their Sunday morning and Wednesday evening obligations? At that time girls weren't allowed to be servers. Wish they'd been around during my years up on the altar. Girls are more responsible at that age. It would have been a new thing, something exciting. My appearances would have been sliced in half.
My parents, meanwhile, carried a Gehrig-like streak of consecutive Sunday appearances at the local church, which was located only a block from our house, eliminating the weather-excused absences so many others relied on. Week after week, I'd walk in and John - our kind, patient, beloved assistant - would ask me if I could serve, since the scheduled ones hadn't arrived. How do you reject a church worker, especially while your parents are standing a foot away?
During Lent Wednesdays, the routine repeated itself. Wednesday Mass flew by, as it never lasted an hour. It usually lasted about 45 minutes, sometimes not even that. Unfortunately, Wednesday nights were open gym night at the Janesville High School, the night over-the-hill has-beens and those who never were ran up and down the basketball court for a few hours. I tagged along with dad, to play or just practice, except during Lent, which landed right in the middle of basketball season. God trumped hoops. Now, more than 20 years later, I'm the middle-aged guy running up and down the court on Wednesday nights. And, god forgive me, now hoops trumps the big fella.
I often flew solo. It was better to have no second server rather than a bad one. A below-average server dragged down the whole proceedings, a teenage version of the incompetent office worker everyone covers for by working twice as hard.
Back then we had less duties than the servers of today, judging by my occasional visits to the Janesville church during trips back home. Now they have to hold up the Bible while the priest reads, something we never did. They now ring a bell while down in front of the altar, another supposedly traditional act that we managed to avoid. Do I thank Vatican II for that? I was self-conscious enough in my ill-fitting robe, never escaping the feeling that everyone was watching as I sat on the altar. I could feel my classmates's eyes on me, or at least the eyes of the ones who weren't napping. Acting like a Salvation Army volunteer would have only made things worse.
The actual Mass was always a breeze. Light the candles before service. Walk up the aisle, take our positions at the rear of the altar, standing guard like Secret Service agents (at least that's what I sometimes pretended. Like, if someone tried bum-rushing the altar, would I be charged with tackling them? Would I conk them on the head with a chalice?). Handle the water, accept the gifts - graciously. Put everything back in its place. Walk down the steps, kneel, rise and repeat during the Eucharistic Prayer. The Eucharistic Prayer. That's sometimes where trouble started.
Stifling temperatures crushed souls before they could be saved during the summer months. The environment weakened everyone, but only two or three people in the church were outfitted in suffocating robes designed to keep heat in. On a couple of occasions I had to walk out into the little sanctuary, just outside the main area of the church, as I'd feel myself growing faint. No one really cared, though surely everyone noticed. A few years after my time in the service had ended, another altar boy did pass out a handful of times, usually while kneeling during the Eucharistic Prayer. And it might have been my imagination, but it seemed we often had the longest Eucharistic Prayer - Four, perhaps, though I'm probably just making that up since I know that one's rarely used - on the hottest days, as if the priest wanted the congregation to really feel the heat. The kid simply toppled over, like a mannequin falling over in a store. His dad walked up, scooped up the body and the service continued with barely a disruption.
Communion was the highlight of any Mass, an up close look at the dental work of Janesville's proud Catholics. We took our patens - that's what the gold discs are called - out of their protective coverings and stand by the priest and the other Eucharistic ministers. Mostly the patens collected dust, perhaps an occasional crumb. I have to believe the highlight for any altar boy would be rescuing a host in mid-air. In all my years I never had to do that, an unfortunate circumstance because I'd like to think that with my hands and hand-eye coordination, I could have made a spectacular grab. I see the replay in slow motion. The horrified priest watching with wide eyes. The terrified parishioner with bad hands watching in silence, wondering if dropping a host means a stay in purgatory. Then I stick the paten out while falling down, nabbing the host just inches from the carpet. Murmurs of "great catch" would ripple through the congregation. To drop it was unthinkable. It'd be an offense against god, or at least his son's representation in breaded form.
Occasionally we had to help with the incense - not a favorite - or the water the priest threw on the congregation with unusual force. People always blinked their eyes in anticipation; some cowered, helpless.
It all took about an hour and then it was back to the outside world, until the following Sunday or Wednesday.
They were good years and made me feel like a good Catholic youth, even if there were a few too many shifts and too many years of service.
Lent has arrived. Today that means, well, whatever it means to lapsed Catholics everywhere. Growing up, that meant fish on Fridays and double-duty as an altar boy during the week, as the Wednesday shift followed the inevitable Sunday outing. I became an altar boy in the fifth grade. I stayed in the service much too long, into high school, well past the normal expiration date for servers. By the sad end, the white robes barely came to my knees, a comically absurd look that surely damaged the prestige of the position.
During my reign, I often had to handle all the serving duties alone, especially on those Wednesday nights in the winter. Boys who routinely skipped out on school littered the altar boy roster, so what were the odds they'd fulfill their Sunday morning and Wednesday evening obligations? At that time girls weren't allowed to be servers. Wish they'd been around during my years up on the altar. Girls are more responsible at that age. It would have been a new thing, something exciting. My appearances would have been sliced in half.
My parents, meanwhile, carried a Gehrig-like streak of consecutive Sunday appearances at the local church, which was located only a block from our house, eliminating the weather-excused absences so many others relied on. Week after week, I'd walk in and John - our kind, patient, beloved assistant - would ask me if I could serve, since the scheduled ones hadn't arrived. How do you reject a church worker, especially while your parents are standing a foot away?
During Lent Wednesdays, the routine repeated itself. Wednesday Mass flew by, as it never lasted an hour. It usually lasted about 45 minutes, sometimes not even that. Unfortunately, Wednesday nights were open gym night at the Janesville High School, the night over-the-hill has-beens and those who never were ran up and down the basketball court for a few hours. I tagged along with dad, to play or just practice, except during Lent, which landed right in the middle of basketball season. God trumped hoops. Now, more than 20 years later, I'm the middle-aged guy running up and down the court on Wednesday nights. And, god forgive me, now hoops trumps the big fella.
I often flew solo. It was better to have no second server rather than a bad one. A below-average server dragged down the whole proceedings, a teenage version of the incompetent office worker everyone covers for by working twice as hard.
Back then we had less duties than the servers of today, judging by my occasional visits to the Janesville church during trips back home. Now they have to hold up the Bible while the priest reads, something we never did. They now ring a bell while down in front of the altar, another supposedly traditional act that we managed to avoid. Do I thank Vatican II for that? I was self-conscious enough in my ill-fitting robe, never escaping the feeling that everyone was watching as I sat on the altar. I could feel my classmates's eyes on me, or at least the eyes of the ones who weren't napping. Acting like a Salvation Army volunteer would have only made things worse.
The actual Mass was always a breeze. Light the candles before service. Walk up the aisle, take our positions at the rear of the altar, standing guard like Secret Service agents (at least that's what I sometimes pretended. Like, if someone tried bum-rushing the altar, would I be charged with tackling them? Would I conk them on the head with a chalice?). Handle the water, accept the gifts - graciously. Put everything back in its place. Walk down the steps, kneel, rise and repeat during the Eucharistic Prayer. The Eucharistic Prayer. That's sometimes where trouble started.
Stifling temperatures crushed souls before they could be saved during the summer months. The environment weakened everyone, but only two or three people in the church were outfitted in suffocating robes designed to keep heat in. On a couple of occasions I had to walk out into the little sanctuary, just outside the main area of the church, as I'd feel myself growing faint. No one really cared, though surely everyone noticed. A few years after my time in the service had ended, another altar boy did pass out a handful of times, usually while kneeling during the Eucharistic Prayer. And it might have been my imagination, but it seemed we often had the longest Eucharistic Prayer - Four, perhaps, though I'm probably just making that up since I know that one's rarely used - on the hottest days, as if the priest wanted the congregation to really feel the heat. The kid simply toppled over, like a mannequin falling over in a store. His dad walked up, scooped up the body and the service continued with barely a disruption.
Communion was the highlight of any Mass, an up close look at the dental work of Janesville's proud Catholics. We took our patens - that's what the gold discs are called - out of their protective coverings and stand by the priest and the other Eucharistic ministers. Mostly the patens collected dust, perhaps an occasional crumb. I have to believe the highlight for any altar boy would be rescuing a host in mid-air. In all my years I never had to do that, an unfortunate circumstance because I'd like to think that with my hands and hand-eye coordination, I could have made a spectacular grab. I see the replay in slow motion. The horrified priest watching with wide eyes. The terrified parishioner with bad hands watching in silence, wondering if dropping a host means a stay in purgatory. Then I stick the paten out while falling down, nabbing the host just inches from the carpet. Murmurs of "great catch" would ripple through the congregation. To drop it was unthinkable. It'd be an offense against god, or at least his son's representation in breaded form.
Occasionally we had to help with the incense - not a favorite - or the water the priest threw on the congregation with unusual force. People always blinked their eyes in anticipation; some cowered, helpless.
It all took about an hour and then it was back to the outside world, until the following Sunday or Wednesday.
They were good years and made me feel like a good Catholic youth, even if there were a few too many shifts and too many years of service.
Friday, February 12, 2010
A paradise for fans of the Showtime Lakers
A guy on youtube named nonplayerzealot4 (not his given name) possesses a treasure trove of old Lakers videos. Every few weeks he'll post another new gem, an old game or a clip that brings back great memories from the 1980s, when the players wore obscenely short shorts and the teams routinely scored 120 points.
If you don't want to watch the entire 10-minute video, fast-forward to about the 9-minute mark. This was a game from 1988, Lakers at Nuggets early in the year. The game goes to two overtimes. These old Nugget teams could be troublesome, with offensive stars like Alex English playing in Doug Moe's fast-paced system. Especially at home - cue announcers droning on about the effects of the higher altitude - Denver thrived. The ending of this game is one of Magic Johnson's most memorable moments, a game-winning 3 at the buzzer under heavy pressure. It's not the type of shot Magic often hit. He became a standout 3-point shooter later in his career, but most were set shots that came off of passes from the post. He didn't have Kobe's ability to simply pull up with ease from 24-feet out. But he drains this one off the dribble.
The Nuggets had taken a one-point lead with three seconds left when Danny Schayes, who normally played like a stiff and a poster child for NBA nepotism, made a superb up-and-under move that would have impressed McHale or Hakeem.
I listened to this game on the radio. As I've written before, Denver, weirdly, played on a radio station that I could pick up in south-Central Minnesota. It made no sense. Sometimes their signal was clearer than WCCO in the Twin Cities, which often crackled as I listened to Twins games. I listened to this one in my bedroom and my parents' bedroom, alternating because I had to switch radios if one lost the signal. It had Denver announcers, which made their crushing disappointment even more enjoyable.
The Lakers win by an absurd 148-146 score.
Game 4, 1989 Western Conference semifinals. The Lakers led 3-0, as they continued their quest for a third straight championship in Kareem's final season. Seattle - led by Dale Ellis and the bald Xavier McDaniel - come out blazing. They led 32-12 after the first quarter. Early in the second quarter, Seattle led 43-14. Twenty-nine points! Many teams facing 3-0 deficits prevail in Game 4, especially if they jump out to an early lead. The team with the series advantage is often content to take the series back home to clinch. But the Lakers ate away at the lead. They finally catch Seattle in the fourth quarter and earn the sweep.
The Lakers swept the first three series that year. After dispatching Seattle, they crushed an up-and-coming Phoenix squad. They advanced to the Finals, to face Detroit for the second straight season. The Lakers were 11-0 in the playoffs while Detroit had a tough six-game battle with the Bulls in the ECF. As a 14-year-old, I had full confidence that a third straight title was at hand.
Then Pat Riley decided the Lakers needed a week of tough practices so they wouldn't get rusty. He apparently didn't trust that five-time champions would be able to prepare themselves with such a layoff. It's a decision that continues to haunt Lakers fans. Byron Scott hurt his hamstring. He missed the whole series. In Game 1, Detroit's guards dominated. But in Game 2, Magic came out aggressive on offense and the Lakers took a double-digit lead. By the third quarter, Detroit had made its way back into the game. As Magic sprinted downcourt, he pulled up lame. The only thing missing was the announcer solemnly saying he acted "like he got shot." There's a famous shot of him pulling away from Lakers trainer Gary Vitti. Magic knows he hurt his hamstring. He knows the team's dreams of a three-peat ended and that Riley deserved as much blame as two bulky hamstrings. Or maybe that's just what I was thinking.
I'm still bitter about that series 21 years later. I'm not asking for an asterisk by the Detroit title, as injuries are certainly part of the game. But I would like all Detroit fans to stop whining about the 1988 Finals, which many claim Detroit would have won if Isiah had not sprained his ankle in the second half of Game 6. He was hobbled in Game 7, a Lakers victory.
The Lakers got swept, so it seems hard to claim the Lakers had a superior team. But think about this: in each of the last three games, the Lakers had a lead in the fourth quarter. Game 2 and Game 3 came down to the final five seconds. But instead of Magic at point, the Lakers had...David Rivers at point guard. Instead of Byron Scott, they had an unproven, pre-Timberwolf Tony Campbell. Think Magic might have fared better in the fourth quarter than David Rivers?
Yes, still very bitter.
This is the first meeting between the Lakers and Wolves. They played in the Metrodome, where the Wolves would set NBA attendance marks as the Minnesota masses swarmed the stadium for a glimpse of the left-handed genius of Brad Lohaus. There were probably 10,000 good seats in the joint, and 20,000 bad ones. But they kept bringing the fans in, no matter how few victories the team racked up.
This video has the Lakers broadcasters, which means the legendary Chick Hearn and a muted Stu Lantz. Today Lantz talks nearly nonstop on Lakers broadcasts as he often dominates play-by-play man Joel Meyers. But with Chick, Lantz apparently had the speaking abilities of Boo Radley. This is another game I remember listening to on the radio (with all of the games I remember on the radio, I feel like a child of the '50s). This game wasn't televised in Janesville, why I don't know. So I listened to Kevin Harlan, a then-young announcer who went on to become one of the top announcers in the country. But he was unknown when he took over the job for the initial season of Timberwolves basketball. His screams, exclamations, grunts, and jokes helped Wolves fans survive the first decade of irrelevance. He eventually took over TV duties, but here he manned the radio. While I'd eventually enjoy his hysterics, they annoyed me in this game, as the Wolves came out and blitzed the Lakers early. The Lakers fight their way back, tie it on a late shot by Magic and win in OT.
Tony Campbell, who'd struggled in the 1989 Finals with Magic and Scott out, became a star this first season with Minnesota. If he'd played like this in the '89 Finals, the Lakers might have won a couple of games.
His page is here.
Lakers fans should visit frequently, as there are videos from the past and present. Any fans of that era should visit frequently. Celtics fans might want to avoid it, although I'm sure there are plenty of youtube videos devoted to the antics of Larry, Chief, M.L. Carr and other hated men in green.
Some personal favorites, from his collection of more than 100 videos:
If you don't want to watch the entire 10-minute video, fast-forward to about the 9-minute mark. This was a game from 1988, Lakers at Nuggets early in the year. The game goes to two overtimes. These old Nugget teams could be troublesome, with offensive stars like Alex English playing in Doug Moe's fast-paced system. Especially at home - cue announcers droning on about the effects of the higher altitude - Denver thrived. The ending of this game is one of Magic Johnson's most memorable moments, a game-winning 3 at the buzzer under heavy pressure. It's not the type of shot Magic often hit. He became a standout 3-point shooter later in his career, but most were set shots that came off of passes from the post. He didn't have Kobe's ability to simply pull up with ease from 24-feet out. But he drains this one off the dribble.
The Nuggets had taken a one-point lead with three seconds left when Danny Schayes, who normally played like a stiff and a poster child for NBA nepotism, made a superb up-and-under move that would have impressed McHale or Hakeem.
I listened to this game on the radio. As I've written before, Denver, weirdly, played on a radio station that I could pick up in south-Central Minnesota. It made no sense. Sometimes their signal was clearer than WCCO in the Twin Cities, which often crackled as I listened to Twins games. I listened to this one in my bedroom and my parents' bedroom, alternating because I had to switch radios if one lost the signal. It had Denver announcers, which made their crushing disappointment even more enjoyable.
The Lakers win by an absurd 148-146 score.
Game 4, 1989 Western Conference semifinals. The Lakers led 3-0, as they continued their quest for a third straight championship in Kareem's final season. Seattle - led by Dale Ellis and the bald Xavier McDaniel - come out blazing. They led 32-12 after the first quarter. Early in the second quarter, Seattle led 43-14. Twenty-nine points! Many teams facing 3-0 deficits prevail in Game 4, especially if they jump out to an early lead. The team with the series advantage is often content to take the series back home to clinch. But the Lakers ate away at the lead. They finally catch Seattle in the fourth quarter and earn the sweep.
The Lakers swept the first three series that year. After dispatching Seattle, they crushed an up-and-coming Phoenix squad. They advanced to the Finals, to face Detroit for the second straight season. The Lakers were 11-0 in the playoffs while Detroit had a tough six-game battle with the Bulls in the ECF. As a 14-year-old, I had full confidence that a third straight title was at hand.
Then Pat Riley decided the Lakers needed a week of tough practices so they wouldn't get rusty. He apparently didn't trust that five-time champions would be able to prepare themselves with such a layoff. It's a decision that continues to haunt Lakers fans. Byron Scott hurt his hamstring. He missed the whole series. In Game 1, Detroit's guards dominated. But in Game 2, Magic came out aggressive on offense and the Lakers took a double-digit lead. By the third quarter, Detroit had made its way back into the game. As Magic sprinted downcourt, he pulled up lame. The only thing missing was the announcer solemnly saying he acted "like he got shot." There's a famous shot of him pulling away from Lakers trainer Gary Vitti. Magic knows he hurt his hamstring. He knows the team's dreams of a three-peat ended and that Riley deserved as much blame as two bulky hamstrings. Or maybe that's just what I was thinking.
I'm still bitter about that series 21 years later. I'm not asking for an asterisk by the Detroit title, as injuries are certainly part of the game. But I would like all Detroit fans to stop whining about the 1988 Finals, which many claim Detroit would have won if Isiah had not sprained his ankle in the second half of Game 6. He was hobbled in Game 7, a Lakers victory.
The Lakers got swept, so it seems hard to claim the Lakers had a superior team. But think about this: in each of the last three games, the Lakers had a lead in the fourth quarter. Game 2 and Game 3 came down to the final five seconds. But instead of Magic at point, the Lakers had...David Rivers at point guard. Instead of Byron Scott, they had an unproven, pre-Timberwolf Tony Campbell. Think Magic might have fared better in the fourth quarter than David Rivers?
Yes, still very bitter.
This is the first meeting between the Lakers and Wolves. They played in the Metrodome, where the Wolves would set NBA attendance marks as the Minnesota masses swarmed the stadium for a glimpse of the left-handed genius of Brad Lohaus. There were probably 10,000 good seats in the joint, and 20,000 bad ones. But they kept bringing the fans in, no matter how few victories the team racked up.
This video has the Lakers broadcasters, which means the legendary Chick Hearn and a muted Stu Lantz. Today Lantz talks nearly nonstop on Lakers broadcasts as he often dominates play-by-play man Joel Meyers. But with Chick, Lantz apparently had the speaking abilities of Boo Radley. This is another game I remember listening to on the radio (with all of the games I remember on the radio, I feel like a child of the '50s). This game wasn't televised in Janesville, why I don't know. So I listened to Kevin Harlan, a then-young announcer who went on to become one of the top announcers in the country. But he was unknown when he took over the job for the initial season of Timberwolves basketball. His screams, exclamations, grunts, and jokes helped Wolves fans survive the first decade of irrelevance. He eventually took over TV duties, but here he manned the radio. While I'd eventually enjoy his hysterics, they annoyed me in this game, as the Wolves came out and blitzed the Lakers early. The Lakers fight their way back, tie it on a late shot by Magic and win in OT.
Tony Campbell, who'd struggled in the 1989 Finals with Magic and Scott out, became a star this first season with Minnesota. If he'd played like this in the '89 Finals, the Lakers might have won a couple of games.
As I said, still bitter.
This is a three-minute compilation from a game against the Sonics. It was late in the 1987 season and features a team many consider the greatest in Lakers history. They won 65 games and the title. Showtime was still in full force, although it had slowed down some from the early 1980s. By the next season they broke out the fastbreak destruction on a more selective basis, as everyone's legs - from Magic to Worthy's - had lost just a bit of speed. But this is Showtime at its finest, a highly enjoyable display of passing and unselfishness. Yes, Magic has numerous incomparable passes. Anyone who wonders what Showtime was all about should watch this video, because it's all there. No-look passes by Magic. Worthy, Green and Cooper filling the lane with the precision coaches dream about when they sketch out fastbreak drills to run in practice. Forty-foot bounce passes by Magic, the ones where he threw the ball hard into the ground, as if he was spiking a football after a 60-yard touchdown run. Kareem - the 40-year-old Kareem - running the court like a begoggled, elderly Usain Bolt. A.C. Green blowing layups. It's all there.
Another from 1987. Here the Lakers face the lowly Suns. It begins with a clip of Kareem hitting his first career 3-pointer a game earlier. Magic sat this one out with a minor injury. An early highlight is Chick's commentary. He rips the Lakers. Disgusted with them, he demands that Pat Riley put some new players on the court, guys who "want to play." Another reason Lakers fans loved Chick. He was never afraid to call out the Lakers, no matter how many titles they'd won. This game turns into a Kareem exhibition. If you watch nothing else, go to the 8-minute mark, where Kareem knocks away a pass, scoops up the ball and dribbles coast-to-coast for a clinching slam dunk.
This is a three-minute compilation from a game against the Sonics. It was late in the 1987 season and features a team many consider the greatest in Lakers history. They won 65 games and the title. Showtime was still in full force, although it had slowed down some from the early 1980s. By the next season they broke out the fastbreak destruction on a more selective basis, as everyone's legs - from Magic to Worthy's - had lost just a bit of speed. But this is Showtime at its finest, a highly enjoyable display of passing and unselfishness. Yes, Magic has numerous incomparable passes. Anyone who wonders what Showtime was all about should watch this video, because it's all there. No-look passes by Magic. Worthy, Green and Cooper filling the lane with the precision coaches dream about when they sketch out fastbreak drills to run in practice. Forty-foot bounce passes by Magic, the ones where he threw the ball hard into the ground, as if he was spiking a football after a 60-yard touchdown run. Kareem - the 40-year-old Kareem - running the court like a begoggled, elderly Usain Bolt. A.C. Green blowing layups. It's all there.
Another from 1987. Here the Lakers face the lowly Suns. It begins with a clip of Kareem hitting his first career 3-pointer a game earlier. Magic sat this one out with a minor injury. An early highlight is Chick's commentary. He rips the Lakers. Disgusted with them, he demands that Pat Riley put some new players on the court, guys who "want to play." Another reason Lakers fans loved Chick. He was never afraid to call out the Lakers, no matter how many titles they'd won. This game turns into a Kareem exhibition. If you watch nothing else, go to the 8-minute mark, where Kareem knocks away a pass, scoops up the ball and dribbles coast-to-coast for a clinching slam dunk.
Those are just a few of the classics to bide fans over during the All-Star break. There are dozens of others, like battles against Portland in the 1991 playoffs and the infamous game in 1987 against the Kings, when the Laker scored the first 29 points of the game and led 40-4 after one quarter, the type of score you usually only see in a junior-high girls basketball game.
And so ends this session of Lakers propaganda.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The worst teacher in Walnut Grove history
I mentioned this Little House on the Prairie episode in a previous post on the epic, enjoyable, not-always-faithful-to-the-geography-of-southern-Minnesota show.
This shows Charles Ingalls at his finest. I couldn't find the episode before, but now we can see this man of morals standing up for what's right on the prairie.
Miss Beadle, the blond bombshell, finds herself unable to control the unruly children, including Willie Oleson at his most annoying, a poster child for corporal punishment in the classrooms. The shrill Harriet Oleson reminds Miss B. that "when harvest ends" there will be even larger misbehaving boys for her to handle.
Enter Mr. Applewood, the substitute teacher from every child's nightmares. Throw a spitball at this guy, and it's likely to end up shoved down your mouth.
Poor half-pint. Laura immediately stumbles into trouble because she gets stuck with a note disparaging the new teacher, although the insult is simply a cliched play on the guy's name: Crab-Apple. Walnut Grove children could be brutal, if not witty. He takes out his trusty weapon - a wooden ruler - and whacks her on the hand, seemingly enjoying it a bit too much. Then a juvenile ink prank torments Applewood, leading to more punishment for Laura. In fact, the ultimate punishment: expulsion. The guy might have been a hard-ass but his detective skills were severely lacking. Not only did he ignore the back entrance to the school, but he seems unaware of the likely suspects. Just look into Willie Oleson's eyes and you see the definition of a troublemaker and future delinquent.
One of the odd things in this episode is the three brutes in the background, the terrible trio Miss Beadle was apparently unable to handle. I understand the school was for kids of all grades. But these guys appear to be closer to 30 than 15. If they haven't learned to read at this point and haven't yet figured out how to spell Lincoln, it's time to let them stay in the fields.
Finally, just past the six-minute mark, Charles enters to shut down Applewood's reign of domestic terror. When he walks in on Applewood preparing to hammer Laura again - this time with a much, much larger and more lethal weapon - Walnut Grove's conscience steps in. Charles breaks the instrument, and Applewood's control of the school.
Miss Beadle returns, this time with a better understanding of how to control her middle-aged problem children.
Later, she'd send some of these same children to their death in a classic Minnesota snowstorm. But today was her day to shine.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
The good thing about dangerous blizzards
On Wednesday morning thousands of Minnesota schoolkids will wake up and hear two of the most magical words in their vocabulary: snow day.
Two months after getting the first big snowfall of the year, the state will receive another winter blast, though Minnesotans can't complain too much since people were golfing just last week. But the clubs can be put away now for the next three or four months. Break out the shovels. And the promises to someday move out of the damned state to someplace warm. As much as a foot of snow could fall in the southern part of the state. Strong winds will combine with the snow to create whiteout conditions. Authorities recommend no travel.
It's fairly standard stuff for the state, but if you're in school, getting a hand from Mother Nature never gets old, even if the long winters sometimes do. As a kid, you don't really appreciate just how dangerous a snowstorm can be, at least until getting a driver's license. You don't care about the treacherous commute workers face. All you want to hear is more news about "blowing snow" and its first-cousin, "dangerous drifting." A foot of snow is nice, but not necessarily a school closer. It's usually all about the wind. Two inches can fall but can shut down a school, depending on the wind. Very rarely that wind led to a "cold day," when temperatures and wind chills became so brutal that schools throughout the state closed, occasionally by government decree.
But snow days ruled. Today of course the Internet provides the minute-by-minute updates on school closings. When I was in school we relied primarily on the radio, specifically WCCO, also known as the Good Neighbor. And when the morning anchors delivered news of a late start or a cancellation, they really were being good neighbors, as if they somehow had control over the school names they mechanically recited.
They read them alphabetically, meaning we had to wait a bit before they'd get to the Js. My stomach started churning around the Cs. By the time the announcer had barreled through the Fs, I'd started in with the prayers.
The tension increased as the announcer breezed through each letter, meticulously listing the schools that were an hour late, then those that had a two-hour late start. Finally the highlight of the show: the cancellations. It was like listening to election results over a radio, only with more at stake. The tension increased depending on how little homework a student did the night before. Betting on a snow day could be dangerous.
The tension increased because another school in the state - Paynesville - sounded exactly like Janesville, so if you somehow missed the order and just caught the "esville part" there was always a question about whether it was us or the lucky kids in central Minnesota. Then you had to wait for the announcer to read the entire list again before hearing the good or bad news.
For a time, our school superintendent had a reputation as being the toughest administrator in the state. He made Bud Grant look like a pansy. As the legend went, he'd drive outside of town and into the country to see just how bad the roads had become. If he didn't go into the ditch, we had school. Didn't matter if every other school in the state had called it off, we'd be trudging in, trying to learn through the haze of bitterness. We took it personally, as if he enjoyed sending us out into the harsh winter day. We probably had as many snow days as anyone else, but when we got one we felt like we'd truly earned it.
We did seem to have an inordinately high number of one-hour-late starts, which are nothing but cruel teases. Might as well just send the kids in at the normal time. An hour late? What's that give you? Can't go back to bed, unless it's for maybe a 30-hour nap. The school day is still going to drag on.
Whenever official word of a full-blown cancellation came over the airwaves, a whole range of options opened up. A snow day felt like two regular days off. We were like death row inmates granted a last-minute reprieve. The only question now, how to utilize this freedom? Snowball wars? Of course, provided the snow wasn't too fluffy. Sledding and snowmobiling were near-certainties. In our house, I'd put up a Nerf hoop on the sliding glass door and we'd hold hours-long dunking contests and one-on-one tournaments. We flourished. Snow days often became more productive for students than many school days.
In high school the options increased. Senior year, a snow day led to an epic football game in the yard of a friend who lived on a farm. Emotions ran high as the wind chill plummeted. The only thing missing was some old-school NFL Films music and a John Facenda narration. Controversy erupted when we discovered one of the players, my friend Mike, wore an illegal boot that gave him a decided advantage when running in the snow. What's an illegal boot? It's decidedly lighter than the monstrosities on our feet, which would have served us well on Mount Everest, providing him traction and the chance for more speed. He denied the charge then and still does today. The proof was in our slipping and sliding while he thrived and ran carefree through the snow, like a young Jerry Rice. I'd like to say there were no hard feelings over the boots or the game, but since I still remember that day nearly 17 years later, that would be a lie.
The only downfall to snow days is if a school accumulates too many of them. That leads to having to make them up at the end of the year. But in the midst of a snow day, no one thinks about what's going to take place six months later. It's all about the here and now.
By the end of the snow day, only one question really matters to students. Is this storm bad enough for the rarest of events: back-to-back snow days?
I don't miss Minnesota winters. But how I miss those snow days.
Two months after getting the first big snowfall of the year, the state will receive another winter blast, though Minnesotans can't complain too much since people were golfing just last week. But the clubs can be put away now for the next three or four months. Break out the shovels. And the promises to someday move out of the damned state to someplace warm. As much as a foot of snow could fall in the southern part of the state. Strong winds will combine with the snow to create whiteout conditions. Authorities recommend no travel.
It's fairly standard stuff for the state, but if you're in school, getting a hand from Mother Nature never gets old, even if the long winters sometimes do. As a kid, you don't really appreciate just how dangerous a snowstorm can be, at least until getting a driver's license. You don't care about the treacherous commute workers face. All you want to hear is more news about "blowing snow" and its first-cousin, "dangerous drifting." A foot of snow is nice, but not necessarily a school closer. It's usually all about the wind. Two inches can fall but can shut down a school, depending on the wind. Very rarely that wind led to a "cold day," when temperatures and wind chills became so brutal that schools throughout the state closed, occasionally by government decree.
But snow days ruled. Today of course the Internet provides the minute-by-minute updates on school closings. When I was in school we relied primarily on the radio, specifically WCCO, also known as the Good Neighbor. And when the morning anchors delivered news of a late start or a cancellation, they really were being good neighbors, as if they somehow had control over the school names they mechanically recited.
They read them alphabetically, meaning we had to wait a bit before they'd get to the Js. My stomach started churning around the Cs. By the time the announcer had barreled through the Fs, I'd started in with the prayers.
The tension increased as the announcer breezed through each letter, meticulously listing the schools that were an hour late, then those that had a two-hour late start. Finally the highlight of the show: the cancellations. It was like listening to election results over a radio, only with more at stake. The tension increased depending on how little homework a student did the night before. Betting on a snow day could be dangerous.
The tension increased because another school in the state - Paynesville - sounded exactly like Janesville, so if you somehow missed the order and just caught the "esville part" there was always a question about whether it was us or the lucky kids in central Minnesota. Then you had to wait for the announcer to read the entire list again before hearing the good or bad news.
For a time, our school superintendent had a reputation as being the toughest administrator in the state. He made Bud Grant look like a pansy. As the legend went, he'd drive outside of town and into the country to see just how bad the roads had become. If he didn't go into the ditch, we had school. Didn't matter if every other school in the state had called it off, we'd be trudging in, trying to learn through the haze of bitterness. We took it personally, as if he enjoyed sending us out into the harsh winter day. We probably had as many snow days as anyone else, but when we got one we felt like we'd truly earned it.
We did seem to have an inordinately high number of one-hour-late starts, which are nothing but cruel teases. Might as well just send the kids in at the normal time. An hour late? What's that give you? Can't go back to bed, unless it's for maybe a 30-hour nap. The school day is still going to drag on.
Whenever official word of a full-blown cancellation came over the airwaves, a whole range of options opened up. A snow day felt like two regular days off. We were like death row inmates granted a last-minute reprieve. The only question now, how to utilize this freedom? Snowball wars? Of course, provided the snow wasn't too fluffy. Sledding and snowmobiling were near-certainties. In our house, I'd put up a Nerf hoop on the sliding glass door and we'd hold hours-long dunking contests and one-on-one tournaments. We flourished. Snow days often became more productive for students than many school days.
In high school the options increased. Senior year, a snow day led to an epic football game in the yard of a friend who lived on a farm. Emotions ran high as the wind chill plummeted. The only thing missing was some old-school NFL Films music and a John Facenda narration. Controversy erupted when we discovered one of the players, my friend Mike, wore an illegal boot that gave him a decided advantage when running in the snow. What's an illegal boot? It's decidedly lighter than the monstrosities on our feet, which would have served us well on Mount Everest, providing him traction and the chance for more speed. He denied the charge then and still does today. The proof was in our slipping and sliding while he thrived and ran carefree through the snow, like a young Jerry Rice. I'd like to say there were no hard feelings over the boots or the game, but since I still remember that day nearly 17 years later, that would be a lie.
The only downfall to snow days is if a school accumulates too many of them. That leads to having to make them up at the end of the year. But in the midst of a snow day, no one thinks about what's going to take place six months later. It's all about the here and now.
By the end of the snow day, only one question really matters to students. Is this storm bad enough for the rarest of events: back-to-back snow days?
I don't miss Minnesota winters. But how I miss those snow days.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Mountain life on Little House on the Prairie
The New Yorker might be the best magazine in the country, but it also requires devotion. Many people bemoan how their New Yorkers begin to stack up in a corner, unread, like the unopened bills of a person struggling with debt who's too afraid to look at the mail. I usually read each new issue the week it arrives, but there are times when a small pile forms on a bedside table, requiring me to work through them in a single night. Over the weekend I finally got to the August 10 issue. One of the more fascinating articles is a look at the career of Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose literary career is well-known, even if the face people picture when hearing her name is that of Melissa Gilbert.
She's the author of the Little House stories, the books that eventually were adapted into a 70s TV show and a staple of '80s reruns. Wilder published her first book at the age of 65. Charles and Caroline were her parents, just like on the show. She had sisters named Mary, Carrie and Grace. She married a man named Almanzo. What I didn't realize until reading the New Yorker story is that Wilder's daughter, Rose, is thought by some scholars to be the true artist behind the works. A writer herself, Rose contributed her skills to the series, though there's debate about exactly how much she added. The story's worth a read.
But as famous as the books are, it's the TV show that fascinated me as a kid, for a couple of reasons. First, they had good stories. Also, they were set in southern Minnesota, where I lived. Hey, the Ingalls clan is traveling to Mankato in a covered wagon to get some supplies. We live 15 miles from there! Sleepy Eye, Walnut Grove, all familiar towns.
Not that everything made sense on the show.
For instance, in a famous episode, Laura runs away from home because she blames herself for the death of her baby brother. It's an emotional episode. Heartwarming. Ernest Borgnine plays an old mountain man - possibly homeless, definitely disheveled - who helps Laura find her way through the darkness. Oh, yeah, and he's God. Or simply an angel sent down to Earth, following in the footsteps of Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life. But that's not even the biggest stretch on the episode. Laura runs away...to the mountains! In southern Minnesota. Minnesota's famous for many things, foremost among them its lakes. There's great fishing, perfect farmland. Some hills, woods, forests, plains. Prairies, if you will. But no mountains. Having Laura scale a mountain in southern Minnesota makes as much sense as having a character on Gossip Girl run away to a mountain in Midtown Manhattan.
At the end of the episode, she breathlessly tells Pa about the man who helped her, Jonathan. Except Jonathan's now disappeared. We can only assume he's ascended back up to heaven for a bath and shave. Or perhaps he's running away from the law, finally aware that he wasn't supposed to be within 100 yards of children.
Still, during the final minutes, when Charles finds Laura - with the help of the bearded and ever-present Mr. Edwards - I feel a lump in my throat.
By the way, here's the real Charles Ingalls.
I'm sure it was a tough call, but producers made the right choice by not having Michael Landon look like the real Charles, who had a John-Brown-after-the-slave-revolt look that wouldn't have translated to television.
Charles - on the show - is one of my favorite characters ever on TV. Combining Ali-like fighting skills, the bravery of William Wallace and the moral sense of Ghandi with the parenting skills of Dr. Spock, he was a superman disguised as an everyman.
Even in this episode, Charles cared for his opponent following the fight, an aging boxer taken advantage of by his sleazy promoter.
The guy battled bullies, such as the new male teacher in town who enjoyed slapping kids with a ruler. Charles ended that practice. The guy even confronted Frank and Jesse James, in one of the coolest if ridiculous episodes. The James boys take over a house and hold Mary hostage. The ludicrousness comes from the fact one of the characters on the show is a kid named Ford who, you guessed it, just happens to be the guy who shoots Jesse James years later. At least they didn't hide out in the mountains.
While Charles and Laura often carried the show, Little House also featured superb supporting characters. Some good, some evil.
Nels Oleson was an enigma. A caring, sensitive man who doubled as a valued town leader, the lean, angular merchant has to be docked for marrying the conniving, gossiping Harriet, a nightmare of a woman. During their courting days Harriet must have displayed similar signs, yet Nels forged ahead with the wedding. Together they produced Nellie and Willie, one of the more evil girls anyone's ever seen and a bratty, unattractive, undersized boy who struggled with school and basic logic, as if Harriet dropped him on his head on the mercantile's floor. To top it off, they adopted a little girl named Nancy, a blond brat who filled the evil girl role after Nellie grew up and matured into a nice woman. It seemed to prove that it was nurture, not nature, that screwed up the Oleson children, leading me to believe Nels spent too much time in the store and not enough time with the kids.
She's the author of the Little House stories, the books that eventually were adapted into a 70s TV show and a staple of '80s reruns. Wilder published her first book at the age of 65. Charles and Caroline were her parents, just like on the show. She had sisters named Mary, Carrie and Grace. She married a man named Almanzo. What I didn't realize until reading the New Yorker story is that Wilder's daughter, Rose, is thought by some scholars to be the true artist behind the works. A writer herself, Rose contributed her skills to the series, though there's debate about exactly how much she added. The story's worth a read.
But as famous as the books are, it's the TV show that fascinated me as a kid, for a couple of reasons. First, they had good stories. Also, they were set in southern Minnesota, where I lived. Hey, the Ingalls clan is traveling to Mankato in a covered wagon to get some supplies. We live 15 miles from there! Sleepy Eye, Walnut Grove, all familiar towns.
Not that everything made sense on the show.
For instance, in a famous episode, Laura runs away from home because she blames herself for the death of her baby brother. It's an emotional episode. Heartwarming. Ernest Borgnine plays an old mountain man - possibly homeless, definitely disheveled - who helps Laura find her way through the darkness. Oh, yeah, and he's God. Or simply an angel sent down to Earth, following in the footsteps of Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life. But that's not even the biggest stretch on the episode. Laura runs away...to the mountains! In southern Minnesota. Minnesota's famous for many things, foremost among them its lakes. There's great fishing, perfect farmland. Some hills, woods, forests, plains. Prairies, if you will. But no mountains. Having Laura scale a mountain in southern Minnesota makes as much sense as having a character on Gossip Girl run away to a mountain in Midtown Manhattan.
At the end of the episode, she breathlessly tells Pa about the man who helped her, Jonathan. Except Jonathan's now disappeared. We can only assume he's ascended back up to heaven for a bath and shave. Or perhaps he's running away from the law, finally aware that he wasn't supposed to be within 100 yards of children.
Still, during the final minutes, when Charles finds Laura - with the help of the bearded and ever-present Mr. Edwards - I feel a lump in my throat.
By the way, here's the real Charles Ingalls.
I'm sure it was a tough call, but producers made the right choice by not having Michael Landon look like the real Charles, who had a John-Brown-after-the-slave-revolt look that wouldn't have translated to television.
Charles - on the show - is one of my favorite characters ever on TV. Combining Ali-like fighting skills, the bravery of William Wallace and the moral sense of Ghandi with the parenting skills of Dr. Spock, he was a superman disguised as an everyman.
Even in this episode, Charles cared for his opponent following the fight, an aging boxer taken advantage of by his sleazy promoter.
The guy battled bullies, such as the new male teacher in town who enjoyed slapping kids with a ruler. Charles ended that practice. The guy even confronted Frank and Jesse James, in one of the coolest if ridiculous episodes. The James boys take over a house and hold Mary hostage. The ludicrousness comes from the fact one of the characters on the show is a kid named Ford who, you guessed it, just happens to be the guy who shoots Jesse James years later. At least they didn't hide out in the mountains.
While Charles and Laura often carried the show, Little House also featured superb supporting characters. Some good, some evil.
Nels Oleson was an enigma. A caring, sensitive man who doubled as a valued town leader, the lean, angular merchant has to be docked for marrying the conniving, gossiping Harriet, a nightmare of a woman. During their courting days Harriet must have displayed similar signs, yet Nels forged ahead with the wedding. Together they produced Nellie and Willie, one of the more evil girls anyone's ever seen and a bratty, unattractive, undersized boy who struggled with school and basic logic, as if Harriet dropped him on his head on the mercantile's floor. To top it off, they adopted a little girl named Nancy, a blond brat who filled the evil girl role after Nellie grew up and matured into a nice woman. It seemed to prove that it was nurture, not nature, that screwed up the Oleson children, leading me to believe Nels spent too much time in the store and not enough time with the kids.
Nellie. What a perfect character. Whether taunting a stuttering girl or faking paralysis for sympathy, Nellie proved the perfect foil to Laura. If Nellie existed on TV today she'd be the one ridiculing the 115-pound girl and calling her fat, leading to the gal developing a dangerous eating disorder.
Willie Oleson displayed moments of humanity, despite having the characteristics of the bumbling, dim-witted henchmen on the old Batman shows. In one episode, the kindly, caring teacher, Miss Beadle, sends the children home early on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, a snowstorm blows through the prairie - and over the mountains, I guess - trapping many of the kids. The school turns into a triage center. Children die. A devastated Miss Beadle weeps, blaming herself, as do some townsfolk. The normally delinquent Willie consoles the teacher and strokes her hair.
Little House dealt head-on with numerous tragedies, whether it was that epic snowstorm, the Ingalls' baby boy dying, or Albert's descent into morphine addiction and subsequent sickness (he didn't actually die on the show but it's implied he's well on his way). One of the sadder storylines involved oldest sister Mary's blindness. Who can forget when she told Charles and the doctor (she went to the eye doctor in Mankato - so did I! Another connection), "I can see," when really she couldn't? She gets sent to a school for the blind, where she eventually thrives and has a son. But following through on the apparent anti-baby theme that permeated Little House, the baby boy dies in a horrific fire at the school, set by Albert and a buddy who were smoking. Alice Garvey - wife of football-star-turned-burly-actor Merlin Olsen - dies with the kid, despite smashing windows while clutching the child. These types of scenes resonate with an 8-year-old latch key kid when he watches them at 4 in the afternoon.
One of my favorite episodes involved the first "human forward pass." Albert's football team battles a squad sporting a big, dumb doofus who dominates the field. An unpopular, struggling blind boy plays for Albert's team. In the final scene, Albert steps on the kid's hand as he propels Albert over the angry ogre - Walter Payton-like - for the winning touchdown. Even in the 1800s the play was probably illegal, but it showed a genius and creativity not seen again on a field until Bill Walsh took over in San Francisco.
The show ended in explosive fashion. It's sort of a convoluted storyline, but the bottom line is a greedy tycoon owns the land Walnut Grove sits on and is going to take it over, by force or otherwise. The townsfolk - who have battled everything from Jesse James to typhus - refuse to go away quietly. That Minnesota spirit - and knowledge of illegal explosives - shines through. So everyone places dynamite in each building, blowing everything up as the land grabber looks on in horror.
Little House probably held on a few years too long. People moved to Mankato, the Olesons worked in a casino, Laura became a teacher, various adoptees came and went. But it was a good show. And one of the few shows or movies that was better than the books. Just wish they hadn't put Laura on that mountain.
Little House dealt head-on with numerous tragedies, whether it was that epic snowstorm, the Ingalls' baby boy dying, or Albert's descent into morphine addiction and subsequent sickness (he didn't actually die on the show but it's implied he's well on his way). One of the sadder storylines involved oldest sister Mary's blindness. Who can forget when she told Charles and the doctor (she went to the eye doctor in Mankato - so did I! Another connection), "I can see," when really she couldn't? She gets sent to a school for the blind, where she eventually thrives and has a son. But following through on the apparent anti-baby theme that permeated Little House, the baby boy dies in a horrific fire at the school, set by Albert and a buddy who were smoking. Alice Garvey - wife of football-star-turned-burly-actor Merlin Olsen - dies with the kid, despite smashing windows while clutching the child. These types of scenes resonate with an 8-year-old latch key kid when he watches them at 4 in the afternoon.
One of my favorite episodes involved the first "human forward pass." Albert's football team battles a squad sporting a big, dumb doofus who dominates the field. An unpopular, struggling blind boy plays for Albert's team. In the final scene, Albert steps on the kid's hand as he propels Albert over the angry ogre - Walter Payton-like - for the winning touchdown. Even in the 1800s the play was probably illegal, but it showed a genius and creativity not seen again on a field until Bill Walsh took over in San Francisco.
The show ended in explosive fashion. It's sort of a convoluted storyline, but the bottom line is a greedy tycoon owns the land Walnut Grove sits on and is going to take it over, by force or otherwise. The townsfolk - who have battled everything from Jesse James to typhus - refuse to go away quietly. That Minnesota spirit - and knowledge of illegal explosives - shines through. So everyone places dynamite in each building, blowing everything up as the land grabber looks on in horror.
Little House probably held on a few years too long. People moved to Mankato, the Olesons worked in a casino, Laura became a teacher, various adoptees came and went. But it was a good show. And one of the few shows or movies that was better than the books. Just wish they hadn't put Laura on that mountain.
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