Lots of talk about camps these days. Friends are sending kids to swimming camps. Others are going to basketball camps. Teenagers we know are headed to acting camps. They're all sleepaway camps, a chance for young kids to stay away from home for the first time and an opportunity for teens to leave the nest and enjoy some freedom before returning back to their parents, a nice preparation for life after college.
My parents never had any desire to send me off to any camps other than basketball ones and for that I'm forever grateful. I understand their appeal. City-dwellers pack their little ones off to camps in the country where they see real pigs and real crops. Suburban moms and dads load their kids onto a yellow bus that takes them to a green lake where they get to be around water for the only time all year. They learn how to interact with other kids. They learn, I don't know, woodworking skills, so when they return home they can show off the shabbily made hat rack they constructed at camp. It boosts their self-esteem, at least when it's not being stomped out of them by a goon named Billy and his giggling 11-year-old henchmen.
I dreaded the idea of those types of camps as a kid.
Here's how I spent my summers during my elementary school years:
Shot baskets at the city park for five hours a day. Pepper with friends at the baseball field. Played quarterback or wide receiver in pickup football games. Stood on Mott Street alone, throwing a tennis ball against a rock wall for hours at a time, practicing my fielding. Ran around the tennis court for three straight hours, took a half-hour break, went back for two hours. Rode my bike around Janesville, including trips to Lake Elysian. Bought cheap baseball cards at Wiste's with my friend Brandon. Beat everyone in town who had the guts to challenge me in ping-pong.
And I was supposed to give that up for a week or two or three spent at some lake with dozens of kids, none of whom I knew, many of whom likely displayed sociopathic tendencies when lodged in poorly constructed cabins and supervised by horny teens who look the other way at camp shenanigans while getting to second-base with their fellow counselors? Certainly the fact I was not an outdoorsman played into my perhaps-ignorant disdain for camps. I loved being outside, but not if it involved fishing, hunting, fires, tents, bugs, hikes or treks. I wasn't a Boy Scout, at least not an upper-case one.
Only once did I ever come close to going to a real camp. In the summer before sixth grade, I learned I'd been selected to attend the school safety patrol camp in Legionville, near Brainerd. The camp - which supposedly is the only one of its kind in the United States - lasts a week and teaches kids to be crossing guard captains. It's on a lake. I wanted to remove myself from consideration, but I don't know that anyone had ever been done so in the program's history, which goes back decades.
Crossing guards are apparently a Minnesota invention, like Bisquick and the Green Giant. At the camp you learn safety patrol essentials, although I'm not sure what the essentials are: how to hold the flag, how loud to yell at students who walk outside the lines? You learn how to lead your fellow crossing guards. But you also swim and canoe. The camp apparently works, as does Minnesota's attention to school safety patrol. According to this trooper, "since the school patrol began in 1920, there has never been a fatality at a crossing where the school patrol has been on duty."
It's a great achievement. Still, I'm not sure if the camp deserves all the credit for that great safety record. Specifically, how does canoeing and swimming help the junior safety patrol members? What's the connection? Do they teach crossing-guard training at swimming camps?
I fortunately never found out what exactly happens at the crossing guard camp. My parents had already planned a vacation for the week in question, a trip to Kansas City to see my uncle Jerry. Later I heard some stories about the camp, some of which I believed involved depantsings of weaker children. Instead of spending that week in Legionville, I spent it in K.C., taking in a Royals game in their beautiful stadium, seeing Top Gun on the big screen and watching the Celtics clinch the NBA title. All right, so not everything about the week went well.
I missed the camp and missed out on my chance to be a captain. In fact, I didn't become any type of crossing guard, though I did enjoy their efforts as they helpfully kept us safe on the mean streets of Janesville.
My prejudices weren't restricted to sleepaway camps. For a few years, Janesville's Catholic church, St. Ann's, ran a little camp early in the summer, where we gathered with other little Catholics from other little towns for a week of bible study and games. It was as boring as it sounds - sorry, Mom. And with the church one alley away from our home, I had no chance of avoiding the camp or scripture.
Finally, in the summer before seventh grade, I went to my first sleepaway camp. A Pacesetter basketball camp. A week-long camp where I knew no one and had to show off my Janesville skills in front of southwest Minnesota's young hoopsters. It wasn't too stressful, though. The camp was in Fulda. And instead of sleeping in a bunk bed with a snoring roommate, I stayed with my grandma, in an upstairs bed. Instead of eating burnt marshmallows, I ate French toast and bacon - every morning - and hamburgers, roast beef and chocolate shakes at night. It was the type of sleepaway camp I could handle.
Louise didn't have much time for camps as a kid either. She hated the sports and other activities but did manage to capture one honor - the prestigious Boy Chaser Award. She still has the certificate. As parents, we'll probably ignore our own youths and pack our bawling children off to sleepaway camp, where they'll learn crafts and woodworking and improve their self-esteem. They'll swim and canoe and write letters home, telling us how much they love the camp, or at least that's the letters we'll read once the camp censors are finished with their edits.
Or maybe we'll schedule some family vacations for those weeks.
Showing posts with label Minnesota Memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Minnesota Memories. Show all posts
Monday, June 27, 2011
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Captain Skyhawk, Faxanadau and Baseball Simulator 1.000
An average person spends three years of their life at stoplights. A third of their life is spent sleeping. I think. Or maybe it's six months at stoplights and three years in the bathroom. Those are some of the numbers you often see when people inform us just how much of our lives are spent doing nothing.
I wish a researcher could figure out how much time I spent in my parents' basement. Five years? Six? God, seven? But they weren't wasted years and I don't regret any of the time down there, unless the radon finally gets to me. Everything happened in the basement. It's where I became a self-proclaimed ping-pong god, a title I cling to on every trip home. I improved my fielding skills by spending hours throwing a worn-down tennis ball against the yellow cement wall. I hit the same tennis ball off the same wall with a racquet to improve my forehand. I played basketball with a big ol' Nerf hoop and didn't really improve any skills, except for learning how to dunk on a five-foot hoop. It's where I watched semi-dirty movies with my buddies on Showtime, a poor man's Cinemax. I watched the Twins win Game 7 of the 1987 World Series down there, while ignoring an Industrial Arts school project. I watched countless Lakers games, including Game 4 of the 1985 Finals when Dennis Johnson hit a game-winning jumper at the buzzer and I had to listen to my dad's taunts. I got my revenge two days later. I often ate down there and occasionally slept down there. I played Strato baseball for 576 hours down there.
One time, I even brought a girl down.
And starting in 1990, I spent countless hours in the basement playing video games on my Nintendo, usually in the company of my cousin Matt, next door neighbor Brandon and friend Mike. The basement was my home and over the years it became their home away from home. They came for my mom's Sloppy Joes, but stayed for the cable and video games.
I no longer play video games. I've purchased a couple of PlayStations the last 10 years but I stopped playing about a week after getting them and I eventually tossed them out. I'm not any good at them and they're too complicated for a brain raised on Nintendo. But I'll always have the 8-bit NES memories.
So pop open the game console, grab a cartridge, blow the dust off of it, insert it and hit power. Then hit power again. And now hit the console, no on the right side, because if you hit it there the game eventually starts working. Gently. All right, smack it a little harder, on the left side this time. Use your palm. Curse at it. Okay, maybe try hitting it on the top. Here, put this crusty sock on top of the game, it stabilizes everything. Perfect. Now, hit power again and go back in time, to the days of thin storylines and shaky graphics.
BASEBALL SIMULATOR 1.000
The cause of more fights between our small, sad group than any other subject. Baseball Simulator 1.000 wasn't the most famous Nintendo baseball game. That's probably RBI. But it was the best.
Many people who played it insisted on using the "Ultra" teams, which turned the mild-mannered video game guys into behemoths who were capable of hitting 700-foot homers or throwing 200-mile-an-hour fastballs. Or they could pause a ball in mid-pitch. The Ultra abilities became the video game equivalent of Balco's The Clear. Weaklings became Supermen. Supermen became gods. These abilities were ridiculous and we never used them. Really, if you're trying to determine who's the best video game baseball player, why sully things with the "tremor hit," which caused an earthquake on the field when the ball hit the ground.
So we kept it simple. Creating the teams often proved to be more entertaining than actually playing the games. The game allowed you to name your players, but you only had four letters to work with. So someone named Richard might be Rchd, Rich, Rchr, or maybe just Dick. Kirby Puckett became Puck, or perhaps Krby. We put more thought into our teams' creations than we did our homework from accounting class. I employed a team of JWP teachers called, simply, The Educators. Matt invented the team called People and filled the roster with, well, people. Like Norm from Cheers. We had teams of rock stars - Mick at the plate and Clapton (probably called Clap) on the mound - and one of my greatest creations, The Animators: Bugs Bunny, Wile, Elmer, etc.
Keggers, farmhouse parties, barn parties, girlfriends...we avoided almost all of that, as we pursued the perfect video game baseball team.
Matt came the closest. He called them the Guidos - named after the moniker Matt went by in Spanish class - and they wore green uniforms. If the Celtics didn't convince me that green was the devil's favorite color, then surely the Guidos did. He took the names provided by the computer. The names have haunted me for two decades: Eric, Carl, Ian, Dan. Matt scratched thousands of numbers down in a small notebook until he came up with the perfect formula for his team. The damn notepads looked like something John Nash used. As you edited the rosters, you gave each player specific numbers: Homers, speed, etc. It was all a guessing game, except for Matt and the Guidos. He's had the same lineup for 20 years. We played 5-game seasons, 30-game seasons and 120-game seasons. Didn't matter how long the season lasted, he almost always prevailed. He wasn't gracious in defeat and certainly wasn't humble in victory.
The stadiums were always part of the game's greatness. They had a stadium in space - the players somehow managed to play in their regular uniforms and also avoided floating off toward Pluto and other non-planets - and one along a harbor. They had a well-maintained grass stadium and a boring dome.
Here's a couple of guys playing the game. Unfortunately, they're in Ultra mode. But you get to see some of the frustrations that any player can identify with. The guy with the blue team makes numerous fielding mistakes and at one time the controller messes up, or so he says. I believe him, because I know how it felt to hit the down button to throw home, only to watch in horror as my supposedly fundamentally-sound third baseman fired to first instead. They play in space, which is always cool, and one guy hits a homer near Skylab.
TOTAL RECALL
Total Recall was a confusing, if occasionally entertaining movie, which centered around a pre-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger going to Mars to help out some mutants while fighting a pre-Basic Instinct Sharon Stone. The video game Total Recall proved even more confounding and not at all entertaining. There are impossible scenes in the game, places where your player has no hope advancing. We'd spend hours in the basement, debating how to get past a section where Arnold fights a woman and then attempts to avoid a gun-toting maniac. We eventually gave up and went back to playing Simulator. This guy does not like the game. Warning: vulgar language.
LEE TREVINO'S FIGHTING GOLF
Enjoyable game, even if it was another one Matt dominated. You only had four players: Lee Trevino (or, as he's called on the game, Super Mex), the redundantly named Big Jumbo, Miracle Chosuke and Pretty Amy. Super. Pretty. Miracle. Big Jumbo. Huh. Double entendres and double bogeys ruled. Big Jumbo was a precursor to John Daly, minus the alcohol and ex-wives. Matt took Jumbo and routinely won our head-to-head battles, as I preferred Miracle Chosuke, who was apparently named ironically. You played in the U.S. or Japan. Not much variety there (and how many tournaments do you see from Japan?). On the tee: Pretty Amy.
And there you go, some Nintendo in the early 1990s.Of course, that's just a small sampling. There's P.O.W, Bomberman, Mega-Man, Mario, Hoops, Racket Attack and countless more. And where's Tecmo? Tecmo football is too big to share a post with other games. That will have to be by itself one day, in a 25,000-word post. And then you'll read about Lawrence Taylor's dominance, Steve Grogan's greatness and wretchedness and why Bo Jackson is not the best offensive player on the game.
Younger people reading about these games or watching videos of them and hearing guys like me talk about them must get the same feelings I get when I hear Baby Boomers reminiscing about watching test patterns on the first TVs. These games have almost nothing to do with today's selections, which is one reason I'm completely incapable of playing anything that was made after 1995. I'm getting old and my reflexes have dulled. I'm stuck in the past. I need simple graphics and simpler storylines. I need Simulator. Or a life.
I wish a researcher could figure out how much time I spent in my parents' basement. Five years? Six? God, seven? But they weren't wasted years and I don't regret any of the time down there, unless the radon finally gets to me. Everything happened in the basement. It's where I became a self-proclaimed ping-pong god, a title I cling to on every trip home. I improved my fielding skills by spending hours throwing a worn-down tennis ball against the yellow cement wall. I hit the same tennis ball off the same wall with a racquet to improve my forehand. I played basketball with a big ol' Nerf hoop and didn't really improve any skills, except for learning how to dunk on a five-foot hoop. It's where I watched semi-dirty movies with my buddies on Showtime, a poor man's Cinemax. I watched the Twins win Game 7 of the 1987 World Series down there, while ignoring an Industrial Arts school project. I watched countless Lakers games, including Game 4 of the 1985 Finals when Dennis Johnson hit a game-winning jumper at the buzzer and I had to listen to my dad's taunts. I got my revenge two days later. I often ate down there and occasionally slept down there. I played Strato baseball for 576 hours down there.
One time, I even brought a girl down.
And starting in 1990, I spent countless hours in the basement playing video games on my Nintendo, usually in the company of my cousin Matt, next door neighbor Brandon and friend Mike. The basement was my home and over the years it became their home away from home. They came for my mom's Sloppy Joes, but stayed for the cable and video games.
I no longer play video games. I've purchased a couple of PlayStations the last 10 years but I stopped playing about a week after getting them and I eventually tossed them out. I'm not any good at them and they're too complicated for a brain raised on Nintendo. But I'll always have the 8-bit NES memories.
So pop open the game console, grab a cartridge, blow the dust off of it, insert it and hit power. Then hit power again. And now hit the console, no on the right side, because if you hit it there the game eventually starts working. Gently. All right, smack it a little harder, on the left side this time. Use your palm. Curse at it. Okay, maybe try hitting it on the top. Here, put this crusty sock on top of the game, it stabilizes everything. Perfect. Now, hit power again and go back in time, to the days of thin storylines and shaky graphics.
BASEBALL SIMULATOR 1.000
The cause of more fights between our small, sad group than any other subject. Baseball Simulator 1.000 wasn't the most famous Nintendo baseball game. That's probably RBI. But it was the best.
Many people who played it insisted on using the "Ultra" teams, which turned the mild-mannered video game guys into behemoths who were capable of hitting 700-foot homers or throwing 200-mile-an-hour fastballs. Or they could pause a ball in mid-pitch. The Ultra abilities became the video game equivalent of Balco's The Clear. Weaklings became Supermen. Supermen became gods. These abilities were ridiculous and we never used them. Really, if you're trying to determine who's the best video game baseball player, why sully things with the "tremor hit," which caused an earthquake on the field when the ball hit the ground.
So we kept it simple. Creating the teams often proved to be more entertaining than actually playing the games. The game allowed you to name your players, but you only had four letters to work with. So someone named Richard might be Rchd, Rich, Rchr, or maybe just Dick. Kirby Puckett became Puck, or perhaps Krby. We put more thought into our teams' creations than we did our homework from accounting class. I employed a team of JWP teachers called, simply, The Educators. Matt invented the team called People and filled the roster with, well, people. Like Norm from Cheers. We had teams of rock stars - Mick at the plate and Clapton (probably called Clap) on the mound - and one of my greatest creations, The Animators: Bugs Bunny, Wile, Elmer, etc.
Keggers, farmhouse parties, barn parties, girlfriends...we avoided almost all of that, as we pursued the perfect video game baseball team.
Matt came the closest. He called them the Guidos - named after the moniker Matt went by in Spanish class - and they wore green uniforms. If the Celtics didn't convince me that green was the devil's favorite color, then surely the Guidos did. He took the names provided by the computer. The names have haunted me for two decades: Eric, Carl, Ian, Dan. Matt scratched thousands of numbers down in a small notebook until he came up with the perfect formula for his team. The damn notepads looked like something John Nash used. As you edited the rosters, you gave each player specific numbers: Homers, speed, etc. It was all a guessing game, except for Matt and the Guidos. He's had the same lineup for 20 years. We played 5-game seasons, 30-game seasons and 120-game seasons. Didn't matter how long the season lasted, he almost always prevailed. He wasn't gracious in defeat and certainly wasn't humble in victory.
The stadiums were always part of the game's greatness. They had a stadium in space - the players somehow managed to play in their regular uniforms and also avoided floating off toward Pluto and other non-planets - and one along a harbor. They had a well-maintained grass stadium and a boring dome.
Here's a couple of guys playing the game. Unfortunately, they're in Ultra mode. But you get to see some of the frustrations that any player can identify with. The guy with the blue team makes numerous fielding mistakes and at one time the controller messes up, or so he says. I believe him, because I know how it felt to hit the down button to throw home, only to watch in horror as my supposedly fundamentally-sound third baseman fired to first instead. They play in space, which is always cool, and one guy hits a homer near Skylab.
FAXANADAU
An incredibly frustrating adventure game. When we finally triumphed over this game, there wasn't even any joy. There's one section in the game when a player has to keep going back and forth to get enough gold to buy the proper goods and weapons. Matt would come over to the basement before basketball practice and we'd spend 90 minutes accumulating gold. Factory work along an assembly line provides more mental stimulation. But we trudged along, repeating our mantras - in the game, not in the basement - and fighting evil. Matt tried recently playing this game again but quit in frustration. If we'd done the same 20 years ago, both of us might have had more dates.
Only Faxanadau groupies should watch this entire video. The music alone is enough to drive a man to madness.
An incredibly frustrating adventure game. When we finally triumphed over this game, there wasn't even any joy. There's one section in the game when a player has to keep going back and forth to get enough gold to buy the proper goods and weapons. Matt would come over to the basement before basketball practice and we'd spend 90 minutes accumulating gold. Factory work along an assembly line provides more mental stimulation. But we trudged along, repeating our mantras - in the game, not in the basement - and fighting evil. Matt tried recently playing this game again but quit in frustration. If we'd done the same 20 years ago, both of us might have had more dates.
Only Faxanadau groupies should watch this entire video. The music alone is enough to drive a man to madness.
CAPTAIN SKYHAWK
Pretend to be Maverick. Go into a flat spin and pretend to be Goose. Captain Skyhawk didn't have much going for it. Players controlled a fighter jet and fought an alien invasion while flying past pyramids and palm trees. You dropped bombs and bullets, while avoiding mountains and tracer fire. Occasionally the game put you into a dogfight. That's it, that's the game. I enjoyed this game much more than Matt, whose apparent lack of hand-eye coordination would have kept him out of the Air Force and certainly kept him out of the Captain Skyhawk Hall of Fame. The guy reviewing Captain Skyhawk in this video is entertaining, probably more entertaining than the game itself.
Pretend to be Maverick. Go into a flat spin and pretend to be Goose. Captain Skyhawk didn't have much going for it. Players controlled a fighter jet and fought an alien invasion while flying past pyramids and palm trees. You dropped bombs and bullets, while avoiding mountains and tracer fire. Occasionally the game put you into a dogfight. That's it, that's the game. I enjoyed this game much more than Matt, whose apparent lack of hand-eye coordination would have kept him out of the Air Force and certainly kept him out of the Captain Skyhawk Hall of Fame. The guy reviewing Captain Skyhawk in this video is entertaining, probably more entertaining than the game itself.
TOTAL RECALL
Total Recall was a confusing, if occasionally entertaining movie, which centered around a pre-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger going to Mars to help out some mutants while fighting a pre-Basic Instinct Sharon Stone. The video game Total Recall proved even more confounding and not at all entertaining. There are impossible scenes in the game, places where your player has no hope advancing. We'd spend hours in the basement, debating how to get past a section where Arnold fights a woman and then attempts to avoid a gun-toting maniac. We eventually gave up and went back to playing Simulator. This guy does not like the game. Warning: vulgar language.
LEE TREVINO'S FIGHTING GOLF
Enjoyable game, even if it was another one Matt dominated. You only had four players: Lee Trevino (or, as he's called on the game, Super Mex), the redundantly named Big Jumbo, Miracle Chosuke and Pretty Amy. Super. Pretty. Miracle. Big Jumbo. Huh. Double entendres and double bogeys ruled. Big Jumbo was a precursor to John Daly, minus the alcohol and ex-wives. Matt took Jumbo and routinely won our head-to-head battles, as I preferred Miracle Chosuke, who was apparently named ironically. You played in the U.S. or Japan. Not much variety there (and how many tournaments do you see from Japan?). On the tee: Pretty Amy.
And there you go, some Nintendo in the early 1990s.Of course, that's just a small sampling. There's P.O.W, Bomberman, Mega-Man, Mario, Hoops, Racket Attack and countless more. And where's Tecmo? Tecmo football is too big to share a post with other games. That will have to be by itself one day, in a 25,000-word post. And then you'll read about Lawrence Taylor's dominance, Steve Grogan's greatness and wretchedness and why Bo Jackson is not the best offensive player on the game.
Younger people reading about these games or watching videos of them and hearing guys like me talk about them must get the same feelings I get when I hear Baby Boomers reminiscing about watching test patterns on the first TVs. These games have almost nothing to do with today's selections, which is one reason I'm completely incapable of playing anything that was made after 1995. I'm getting old and my reflexes have dulled. I'm stuck in the past. I need simple graphics and simpler storylines. I need Simulator. Or a life.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Janesville on YouTube
The charms of Janesville aren't easy to capture in a three-minute video. Affordable housing, peace, quiet, good parks, haunted houses. Not the highlights of many highly rated YouTube videos. But Janesville does have a presence online, albeit a subdued one. I've already written about the most exciting videos: the doll in the window and Hay Daze.
Beyond those videos, the offerings are...a bit lacking.
We've got trains.
Trains terrify my mom, owing to being in a car that got drilled by one when she was a kid. She's probably cringing watching this. Even today, when she sees - or hears - one approaching, she shivers. This guy, meanwhile, is a train fanatic. My parents' house is about a block-and-a-half to the left of the tracks in this video. We hear every train that comes through. For decades, the train was one part of an orchestra that included the cars rolling through town on Highway 14. Today the highway bypasses Janesville, slicing the daily traffic. But the trains still thunder by.
Same guy, different train. The poster, a train enthusiast who chases trains from town to town, like a posse on the heels of a Wild West gunman, put up this video of a welded rail train.
Speaking of trains, the Canadian Pacific Holiday train stopped in town. Santa sang a song. This wasn't exactly like seeing the Beatles on tour in 1965, but the band was definitely better than the one we had at homecoming in 9th grade. I'm trying to figure out where they held this. Any answers, Janesvillinians?
There's more to do in Janesville than just watch trains and kids have more options than simply re-creating Stand by Me by attempting to outrun the trains. You can also watch fires. A few years ago, the local volunteer fire department - whose members make some of the best burgers and onion rings in southern Minnesota, at the annual Hay Daze event - set the old stockyards building on fire in order to get some practice. The wind didn't cooperate completely and a house across the street had some of its siding melted.
And here's the most confusing Janesville video.
The description: 2009 Sexy Swimsuit Model Snowmobile Calendar. Zenwaiter visits the swimsuit snowmobile calendar shoot near Janesville Minnesota. Dani is a fabulous sexy girl swimsuit model, and this is the hottest snowmobile video clip I have ever made, all 20 seconds. I guess snowmobilers love sexy women! To contact Dani for modeling work, contact Travis at Double Xtreme Snowmobile Calendar in Janesville, Minn. Tell him Zenwaiter sent ya!
Here's the site for Double Extreme. According to the contact page, it is based out of Janesville. At least, that's where the P.O. box is located. I've never heard of it, but I'm also not a big snowmobile guy - so I'm not up to date on snowmobile calendars, hot or otherwise - and I also haven't lived in town for 15 years. I do wonder if this particular video was shot outside of Janesville. After some digging - in the interest of professionalism - I found some more pictures from the shoot. One caption says the pictures with the lovely - and talented - Dani were taken near Faribault, Minnesota, which is not really near Janesville. This video has more than 224,000 views. The stockyard burning video has a little over a thousand views. Babes trump blazes, when it comes to Janesville videos.
Traveling train bands. Racy snowmobile photo shoots. It's like a hidden world inside the small world of everyday Janesville life. What else am I missing? What else has changed since I grew up in the town of 2,000 people? Are there pagan rituals every Saturday night?
I went to YouTube seeking some insight into Janesville. But now all I have is more questions. Still, this does help explain my dad's sudden interest in snowmobile calendars.
Beyond those videos, the offerings are...a bit lacking.
We've got trains.
Trains terrify my mom, owing to being in a car that got drilled by one when she was a kid. She's probably cringing watching this. Even today, when she sees - or hears - one approaching, she shivers. This guy, meanwhile, is a train fanatic. My parents' house is about a block-and-a-half to the left of the tracks in this video. We hear every train that comes through. For decades, the train was one part of an orchestra that included the cars rolling through town on Highway 14. Today the highway bypasses Janesville, slicing the daily traffic. But the trains still thunder by.
Same guy, different train. The poster, a train enthusiast who chases trains from town to town, like a posse on the heels of a Wild West gunman, put up this video of a welded rail train.
Speaking of trains, the Canadian Pacific Holiday train stopped in town. Santa sang a song. This wasn't exactly like seeing the Beatles on tour in 1965, but the band was definitely better than the one we had at homecoming in 9th grade. I'm trying to figure out where they held this. Any answers, Janesvillinians?
There's more to do in Janesville than just watch trains and kids have more options than simply re-creating Stand by Me by attempting to outrun the trains. You can also watch fires. A few years ago, the local volunteer fire department - whose members make some of the best burgers and onion rings in southern Minnesota, at the annual Hay Daze event - set the old stockyards building on fire in order to get some practice. The wind didn't cooperate completely and a house across the street had some of its siding melted.
And here's the most confusing Janesville video.
The description: 2009 Sexy Swimsuit Model Snowmobile Calendar. Zenwaiter visits the swimsuit snowmobile calendar shoot near Janesville Minnesota. Dani is a fabulous sexy girl swimsuit model, and this is the hottest snowmobile video clip I have ever made, all 20 seconds. I guess snowmobilers love sexy women! To contact Dani for modeling work, contact Travis at Double Xtreme Snowmobile Calendar in Janesville, Minn. Tell him Zenwaiter sent ya!
Here's the site for Double Extreme. According to the contact page, it is based out of Janesville. At least, that's where the P.O. box is located. I've never heard of it, but I'm also not a big snowmobile guy - so I'm not up to date on snowmobile calendars, hot or otherwise - and I also haven't lived in town for 15 years. I do wonder if this particular video was shot outside of Janesville. After some digging - in the interest of professionalism - I found some more pictures from the shoot. One caption says the pictures with the lovely - and talented - Dani were taken near Faribault, Minnesota, which is not really near Janesville. This video has more than 224,000 views. The stockyard burning video has a little over a thousand views. Babes trump blazes, when it comes to Janesville videos.
Traveling train bands. Racy snowmobile photo shoots. It's like a hidden world inside the small world of everyday Janesville life. What else am I missing? What else has changed since I grew up in the town of 2,000 people? Are there pagan rituals every Saturday night?
I went to YouTube seeking some insight into Janesville. But now all I have is more questions. Still, this does help explain my dad's sudden interest in snowmobile calendars.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
How I spent my (1984) summer vacation
I turned 9 years old in June 1984. I'm sure my parents gave me Cowboys clothes and Lakers gear, probably a baseball glove, a basketball, and I think that might have been the year I got an aluminum bat with red lettering on it that might still take up space in a closet. That summer I spent dozens of hours shooting at the too-high hoop in the city park and played countless hours of pickup football and baseball at that same park. I spent the last two months of the summer mourning the Lakers' seven-game loss to the Celtics, devastated in that way only a 9-year-old could be. In other words, I was convinced that loss was the worst thing that had ever happened to me in my life and would be the worst thing to ever happen to me. Obviously that was a misguided reaction, a complete and irrational overreaction. I never would have felt that way if I'd known Ralph Sampson's shot was only two years away.
I didn't spend much time indoors, even though that was the momentous year when cable arrived in Janesville. I spent most of my time with my neighbor and best boyhood friend Brandon.
When we did stay indoors, we spent most of our time poring over that year's Topps baseball cards. We bought a new pack nearly every day at Wiste's grocery store. Now is probably the time apologize to the dent that put in my parents' coin jar those three months.
My folks worked during the day and my sister and her friends seemed to have little interest in hanging out with boys six years their junior, so we had the run of the house. But even with the introduction of cable - Australian Rules Football!, Midnight Madness on HBO! - a pair of records provided the majority of our in-house entertainment. Records. Round things. Used with a player and a needle. You've read obituaries on them. They looked like this.
Our family's record player still sat in the living room that year, already all-but-irrelevant, though not yet officially retired. The collection included the standard classics: Beatles, Neil Diamond, Fat Elvis. But that summer we listened to Cheech & Chong's "Sister Mary Elephant" and "Mr. Jaws" by Dickie Goodman about 275 times. Each. To us, those two records represented the peak of comedic genius. Nothing topped them. And nothing every would. At that supposedly innocent age, we didn't get what Cheech & Chong were really about. I can only imagine how much we'd enjoy listening to the record today if we happened to be using their favorite product.
Wikipedia's synopsis of "Sister Mary Elephant" is 406 words long. That's about how many words make up the entire skit. This proves a couple of things: that Wikipedia entry needs a new editor, and it's impossible to describe the skit in a humorous way. So I won't try. Here's the skit (try to ignore the strange Japanese animation that accompanies the YouTube video. Try, but fail.)
I know. Seems like being high is a requirement for actually laughing at it. I did still smile and chuckle when listening to it for the first time in probably 20 years. I still love the voices and the "I gotta go to the can, man" line and "Young man, give me that knife...Thank you," and everything else. But this is not a record I'd now listen to 15 times a day. I'm not rolling around on the floor, demanding that Brandon replay it. But in 1984, to a 9-year-old and 10-year-old in little Janesville, Minnesota, who spent their time biking around town and playing about four different sports a day, only to retire to the Fury family living room to trade a Don Mattingly card for a Cal Ripken, this record provided the soundtrack to our glorious summer.
That same year we discovered "Mr. Jaws."
To me, this one aged better, even if the songs used in the parody haven't. This still cracks me up, especially "Big boys don't cry, big boys don't cry." To us, picking between "Sister Mary Elephant" and "Mr. Jaws" was like choosing between Lennon and McCartney. Some days we thought "Mr. Jaws" the superior record. Other times it was "Sister Mary Elephant" - "Did you hear that guy ask to go to the can?!!" We always played the records back-to-back-to-back-to-back, until we'd walk back outside to the mean streets of Janesville.
I'm sure at some point during the summer of 1984 I uttered the words "I'm bored." But I'm also certain that state never lasted long. Not when we had "Sister Mary Elephant" and "Jaws" at our disposal.
But one question still remains, 26 years later: what in the hell were my parents doing with a Cheech & Chong record?
I didn't spend much time indoors, even though that was the momentous year when cable arrived in Janesville. I spent most of my time with my neighbor and best boyhood friend Brandon.
When we did stay indoors, we spent most of our time poring over that year's Topps baseball cards. We bought a new pack nearly every day at Wiste's grocery store. Now is probably the time apologize to the dent that put in my parents' coin jar those three months.
My folks worked during the day and my sister and her friends seemed to have little interest in hanging out with boys six years their junior, so we had the run of the house. But even with the introduction of cable - Australian Rules Football!, Midnight Madness on HBO! - a pair of records provided the majority of our in-house entertainment. Records. Round things. Used with a player and a needle. You've read obituaries on them. They looked like this.
Our family's record player still sat in the living room that year, already all-but-irrelevant, though not yet officially retired. The collection included the standard classics: Beatles, Neil Diamond, Fat Elvis. But that summer we listened to Cheech & Chong's "Sister Mary Elephant" and "Mr. Jaws" by Dickie Goodman about 275 times. Each. To us, those two records represented the peak of comedic genius. Nothing topped them. And nothing every would. At that supposedly innocent age, we didn't get what Cheech & Chong were really about. I can only imagine how much we'd enjoy listening to the record today if we happened to be using their favorite product.Wikipedia's synopsis of "Sister Mary Elephant" is 406 words long. That's about how many words make up the entire skit. This proves a couple of things: that Wikipedia entry needs a new editor, and it's impossible to describe the skit in a humorous way. So I won't try. Here's the skit (try to ignore the strange Japanese animation that accompanies the YouTube video. Try, but fail.)
I know. Seems like being high is a requirement for actually laughing at it. I did still smile and chuckle when listening to it for the first time in probably 20 years. I still love the voices and the "I gotta go to the can, man" line and "Young man, give me that knife...Thank you," and everything else. But this is not a record I'd now listen to 15 times a day. I'm not rolling around on the floor, demanding that Brandon replay it. But in 1984, to a 9-year-old and 10-year-old in little Janesville, Minnesota, who spent their time biking around town and playing about four different sports a day, only to retire to the Fury family living room to trade a Don Mattingly card for a Cal Ripken, this record provided the soundtrack to our glorious summer.
That same year we discovered "Mr. Jaws."
To me, this one aged better, even if the songs used in the parody haven't. This still cracks me up, especially "Big boys don't cry, big boys don't cry." To us, picking between "Sister Mary Elephant" and "Mr. Jaws" was like choosing between Lennon and McCartney. Some days we thought "Mr. Jaws" the superior record. Other times it was "Sister Mary Elephant" - "Did you hear that guy ask to go to the can?!!" We always played the records back-to-back-to-back-to-back, until we'd walk back outside to the mean streets of Janesville.
I'm sure at some point during the summer of 1984 I uttered the words "I'm bored." But I'm also certain that state never lasted long. Not when we had "Sister Mary Elephant" and "Jaws" at our disposal.
But one question still remains, 26 years later: what in the hell were my parents doing with a Cheech & Chong record?
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Roving gangs of hooligans are not stalking Janesville. But the Doll still hangs
"An e-mail circulating through the area recently claims that there are gang initiations going on, specifically south of Janesville, that involve a car seat containing a doll. The e-mail goes on to say the gang then waits for a woman to stop and check on the baby, and they then attack her. It makes for a frightening story, if it actually happened." -Waseca County News
I spent a week in Janesville and didn't realize I was in the middle of a war zone, the type of thing Sean Penn and Robert Duvall confronted in Colors. God, I even drove alone a few times. Apparently, an email went around a few months ago claiming gangs - yes, gangs in Janesville - were initiating their new members by preying on female drivers who happened to have the misfortune of driving through town all alone. People - females, in particular, especially those who possess a ticking biological clock - are prone to pull over if they see an abandoned child, leaving them vulnerable to these type of stunts, which seem to spring more from the minds of screenwriters than hoods.
Apparently, though, Janesville, Minnesota, was not the only town with that fortunate name to suffer this unfortunate fate. WREX out of Rockford, Illinois, reported the same story. According to the station, gangs were hitting unsuspecting people in Janesville, Wisconsin. Only, unlike the good folks at the Waseca County News, WREX took the story as gospel, frightening viewers in that special way only TV news stations can - "TONIGHT ON 11. HAVE YOU USED TOILET PAPER RECENTLY? YOU MAY BE EXPOSING YOURSELF TO TUBERCULOSIS OR IDENTITY THEFT." Apparently you can't completely blame the station; the Janesville (Wisconsin) police department, the station reported, "says the emails are true."
"I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work there, Lou."
It's not true. It's an urban legend. Or, in the case of Janesville, Minnesota, a rural legend. Snopes has thoroughly discredited the myth, and anyone who ever forwards a frightening chain email that warns of killer gangs, dangerous hyenas, or United Nations plots should be required by law to visit Snopes to check on the story before ever hitting the send button. If you send these emails - or know a family member who does - bookmark the site immediately. Take a crash course in how to navigate it. Learn to look for key clues in those scary, forwarded missives. Teenagers aren't lobbing Molotov cocktails at cars as they sit at red lights. Hotel room keycards aren't encoded with your social security number. There's no drug made from raw sewage.
The best part of the WREX story is the picture they ran online. It's a muscular man with a gigantic tattoo staining his back. He sports a shaved head. He's apparently behind bars, but ready to be released. This man could be the one who puts the babyseat on the road. Or maybe he's the one who attacks the unsuspecting, helpful driver. They probably took a screen grab from one of those Locked Up shows that MSNBC airs for 44 hours over the weekend. Either way, he's bad news. "BUT YOU'LL ONLY FIND OUT HOW BAD ON CHANNEL 13 AT 10 P.M.! But first, the weather."
Back to the hometown. I'm glad the paper and the police department both picked apart the story. You'd think common sense would win out, but what chance does common sense have against the Internet? Janesville does have crime. In the 1980s there were even a pair of grisly murders. Drunk cowards beat up their wives and kids steal things. People bounce bad checks and brawls can still break out at the bars. But gangs? There are groups of kids who ride their bikes or drive their parents' cars around town and might intimidate freshmen or bully some kids in the halls. These kids have been around for decades. Some of them mature and become successful businessmen. Some of them stay in town and grow up to be adult barflies. Those aren't gangs.
I can't see how wannabe toughs in the town would start up a gang in Janesville. The news would be all over Fury's Barbershop the second two people got together in a basement to form a group. By the time the crew got around to writing a mission statement and purchasing brass knuckles or drawing temporary tattoos on each other's necks, the Sheriff's Department would be breaking down the walls. I suppose the story could have been that gangs from a big city targeted Janesville. Still, seems unlikely. What are the odds that a gang travels down to little ol' Janesville for the diabolical plot? Where are they staying each night as they retire after a long day of work?
Maybe people believed it because there are still people in the area who are convinced evil does exist in the town, in the form of a doll in an old house along old Highway 14.
I wrote about the Doll in the Window before. I finally took a few pictures of the doll and the home - which is a lob wedge away from my parents' house - during my week-long stay. Lived there 22 years and have visited countless times since but I don't think I had ever before actually taken my own photos of the mysterious figure that looms over the highway and the town. I'll get emails from people asking about it, and the doll remains the main thing Minnesotans remember when they hear you're from Janesville (to be fair, that isn't a long list, so we're grateful for at least having one major landmark). Again, no one was murdered in the attic. A little girl didn't hang herself there. It's a little weird and creepy simply because all dolls are a little weird and creepy and if you perch it above a highway people will speculate. But I've walked past it two thousand times in my life and never got the chills. The owner of the house is old now, but remains one of the nicest people you'd ever meet. And, if you live long enough - to 2176, to be exact - you'll find out what it all means, when Janesville opens a time capsule.That's only 166 years away. Maybe things will still be the same in Janesville. The Dairy Queen will still draw in drivers and the doll will watch over travelers and residents alike. And, no matter what you read in your email, the town will still be relatively safe, at least from evil gangs who use infants to prey on Good Samaritans. But just to be safe, stay away from Janesville, Wisconsin.
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.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
What are you going to do, arrest us for watching Basic Instinct 27 times?
On Thursday night we went to Mankato to watch Iron Man 2. I missed much of the dialogue from the first 20 minutes as I discretely checked the Lakers score online. Yes, I hate those people who do that. We all do. I was ashamed (to be fair, I put my hands over it, blocking off the light and only let out a quiet yelp when I saw the Lakers won). But this was a Game 5 in a 2-2 series, always the most crucial game in a best of 7.
We try to get to Mankato for a movie on every trip home. We usually go during the week, almost always to a late show. Most times, the workers outnumber the customers, a welcome break from crowded New York City theaters. It feels like we rented out the whole theater to ourselves. Mankato was my movie home for 25 years. I've seen countless movies there. It's the go-to city in southern Minnesota for those who lived in towns that were often dismissed as places where kids "have nothing to do."
The first one I remember is Star Wars and I cried through most of it and people in the seats next to us probably looked at my parents - and their not-so-adorable baby - with the same looks people reserve for cell phone users in theaters today (the worst movie I ever saw a small child at has to be Saw II. I fully expect to read a story in 15 years about a young man who went on a killing rampage involving dynamite and cryptic clues and blames it on the fact his parents took him to the second Saw movie when he was 4 years old).
For years Mankato had two main theater spots: downtown and the Stadium theaters, across the street from the college formerly known as Mankato State University. Then in the early 1990s, River Hills mall opened and a dollar theater came along with it. The downtown theater - there used to be a fairly popular mall there as well - has always possessed a slightly creepy vibe. You usually parked in a garage, the type of dark structure often used as sets in movies involving serial killers or cities under siege from violent criminals. Something starring Charles Bronson, or Stallone in a Cobra remake.
As a teen we went to movies every weekend. We saw Home Alone in the downtown theater. Great movie for kids. Delightful for parents. Critics adored it, as did Macaulay Culkin's money-hungry parents. Unfortunately, we were all 16 years old. In the pre-Internet age, we didn't even know what the movie was about. One of our friends had heard it was really good. He insisted we go to it. He made it sound slightly dark: "Some kid gets left alone at home and two guys break in and chase him."
We realized it was a mistake - that we weren't quite the right demographic - early, but it probably didn't sink in for sure until the 23rd time Joe Pesci got hit in the head with a frying pan. We didn't listen to Martin's movie recommendations after that night.
But our main moviegoing days coincided with the opening of the dollar theater. A buck. They didn't get new releases, that was the catch. They were second-run movies, so the new ones appeared a month or two after they opened. Today, of course, movies are on DVD about two months after they open and the dollar theater long ago started charging normal prices. But we took full advantage of it as teens.
The dollar theaters kept their movies for weeks, months. As long as they made money, they stayed. Two movies held the record, I think, for longest stay: Wayne's World and Basic Instinct. And we saw each movie at least a dozen times. I'm pretty sure we saw Basic Instinct a few more times, probably around 16 or 17 viewings. Sharon Stone's crotch ultimately had more staying power than Mike Myers' catchphrases - insert obligatory Schwing joke. After the sixth or seventh viewing of Basic Instinct, it became a grim mission, almost as if it was our duty to watch it again. A week passed, we drove to Mankato, entered the theater and scanned the listings.
"Jesus, there's still nothing new."
"Basic Instinct?"
"No, we can't."
"Come on."
"Okay."
We knew every horrific line, including the immortal "He got off before he got offed." We waited for Sharon Stone to uncross her legs while an aroused Newman from Seinfeld stared in glee. By the 13th or 14th viewing, there was nothing sexual about it, even if we were teens with runaway hormones. Oh, there's the crotch. Hot. Come on, get to the ludicrous car chases again. We were addicted to the damn movie. Seeing it that many times felt dirty; it probably made an appearance in one of my Catholic confessions that year. But for a buck, you couldn't beat it.
We mourned when Gus died. Again. We cheered Michael Douglas. We shook our heads at the ending (for years, I wasn't sure that Stone's character was the killer, until finally, one late night in Worthington, my friend John completely convinced me. "Why else would she have the ice pick under the bed? That was the point of that shot. She was the killer. Everyone knows this." But I didn't want her to be the killer, she seemed like such a decent woman caught up in a web of murder, mayhem and laughable dialogue.) To this day, if I see Basic Instinct on TV, I instantly drift back in time to the dollar theater and their overpriced but delicious popcorn.
The dollar theater could delight. One night I went with my cousin Matt. A movie called Fortress caught our eye. Neither of us had ever heard of it. We didn't know anything about the plot or who starred in it. This was always dangerous; we were both still bitter about our Home Alone experience. It turned out to be a futuristic prison movie with Christopher Lambert. He wants to have a baby with his wife, the authorities don't allow it, fighting ensues. We loved it.
We only saw Fortress once. In the end, as entertaining as it was, it was no Basic Instinct. Thank God.
We try to get to Mankato for a movie on every trip home. We usually go during the week, almost always to a late show. Most times, the workers outnumber the customers, a welcome break from crowded New York City theaters. It feels like we rented out the whole theater to ourselves. Mankato was my movie home for 25 years. I've seen countless movies there. It's the go-to city in southern Minnesota for those who lived in towns that were often dismissed as places where kids "have nothing to do."
The first one I remember is Star Wars and I cried through most of it and people in the seats next to us probably looked at my parents - and their not-so-adorable baby - with the same looks people reserve for cell phone users in theaters today (the worst movie I ever saw a small child at has to be Saw II. I fully expect to read a story in 15 years about a young man who went on a killing rampage involving dynamite and cryptic clues and blames it on the fact his parents took him to the second Saw movie when he was 4 years old).
For years Mankato had two main theater spots: downtown and the Stadium theaters, across the street from the college formerly known as Mankato State University. Then in the early 1990s, River Hills mall opened and a dollar theater came along with it. The downtown theater - there used to be a fairly popular mall there as well - has always possessed a slightly creepy vibe. You usually parked in a garage, the type of dark structure often used as sets in movies involving serial killers or cities under siege from violent criminals. Something starring Charles Bronson, or Stallone in a Cobra remake.
As a teen we went to movies every weekend. We saw Home Alone in the downtown theater. Great movie for kids. Delightful for parents. Critics adored it, as did Macaulay Culkin's money-hungry parents. Unfortunately, we were all 16 years old. In the pre-Internet age, we didn't even know what the movie was about. One of our friends had heard it was really good. He insisted we go to it. He made it sound slightly dark: "Some kid gets left alone at home and two guys break in and chase him."
We realized it was a mistake - that we weren't quite the right demographic - early, but it probably didn't sink in for sure until the 23rd time Joe Pesci got hit in the head with a frying pan. We didn't listen to Martin's movie recommendations after that night.
But our main moviegoing days coincided with the opening of the dollar theater. A buck. They didn't get new releases, that was the catch. They were second-run movies, so the new ones appeared a month or two after they opened. Today, of course, movies are on DVD about two months after they open and the dollar theater long ago started charging normal prices. But we took full advantage of it as teens.
The dollar theaters kept their movies for weeks, months. As long as they made money, they stayed. Two movies held the record, I think, for longest stay: Wayne's World and Basic Instinct. And we saw each movie at least a dozen times. I'm pretty sure we saw Basic Instinct a few more times, probably around 16 or 17 viewings. Sharon Stone's crotch ultimately had more staying power than Mike Myers' catchphrases - insert obligatory Schwing joke. After the sixth or seventh viewing of Basic Instinct, it became a grim mission, almost as if it was our duty to watch it again. A week passed, we drove to Mankato, entered the theater and scanned the listings.
"Jesus, there's still nothing new."
"Basic Instinct?"
"No, we can't."
"Come on."
"Okay."
We knew every horrific line, including the immortal "He got off before he got offed." We waited for Sharon Stone to uncross her legs while an aroused Newman from Seinfeld stared in glee. By the 13th or 14th viewing, there was nothing sexual about it, even if we were teens with runaway hormones. Oh, there's the crotch. Hot. Come on, get to the ludicrous car chases again. We were addicted to the damn movie. Seeing it that many times felt dirty; it probably made an appearance in one of my Catholic confessions that year. But for a buck, you couldn't beat it.
We mourned when Gus died. Again. We cheered Michael Douglas. We shook our heads at the ending (for years, I wasn't sure that Stone's character was the killer, until finally, one late night in Worthington, my friend John completely convinced me. "Why else would she have the ice pick under the bed? That was the point of that shot. She was the killer. Everyone knows this." But I didn't want her to be the killer, she seemed like such a decent woman caught up in a web of murder, mayhem and laughable dialogue.) To this day, if I see Basic Instinct on TV, I instantly drift back in time to the dollar theater and their overpriced but delicious popcorn.
The dollar theater could delight. One night I went with my cousin Matt. A movie called Fortress caught our eye. Neither of us had ever heard of it. We didn't know anything about the plot or who starred in it. This was always dangerous; we were both still bitter about our Home Alone experience. It turned out to be a futuristic prison movie with Christopher Lambert. He wants to have a baby with his wife, the authorities don't allow it, fighting ensues. We loved it.
We only saw Fortress once. In the end, as entertaining as it was, it was no Basic Instinct. Thank God.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Minnesota: Hamburger feeds and bird crap
On nearly every trip we take to Minnesota, something odd happens to Louise, as if the state senses that a woman not of this continent or hemisphere has invaded and needs to be dealt with. It's the same types of things that happen to natives of this fine land, but that's not surprising if they've lived here their whole life. But Louise can be here for 10 weeks - or 10 minutes - and something strange or horrifying will dampen her spirit, if just for a few moments. They're the types of things that usually end up as deleted scenes in a Renee Zellweger or Reese Witherspoon fish-out-of-water romantic comedy.
One year it was frostbite. Nothing severe, just a small case of it, in a circular form on her index finger. She'd had real frostbite before on a couple of fingers, an African native unfamiliar with the concept of freezing temperatures and gloves. I told her she'd be fine if she wore gloves in Minnesota. We stepped outside my parents' house one day and walked a single block. On our return, she took off her glove to reveal the frostbite on her finger. We inspected the glove and found a hole in the finger, the exact size as the frostbite. Minnesota didn't need much of an opening to leave a lasting impression.
Today, after a delightful family picnic in the park, we capped off the night with a walk up to the bustling Dairy Queen. A hundred feet from our house, I turned around after hearing Louise squeal. She stood motionless, her arms outstretched. She said nothing for a second. Then, in a South African accent, "I got bird shit on me!"
A Minnesota bird, probably a robin, maybe one of the two bluejays we've seen around the house, had indeed left a disgusting deposit on her face. I'm sure it wasn't aiming for her. Right?
It somehow managed to avoid her curly mass of hair. Instead it hit her hand and near her eye, like it was shot out of a cannon from 50 feet away. My nephews and sister helped out by laughing uncontrollably. I felt terrible, of course, but a bird shitting on someone's head is funny anywhere, in every language, on every continent. It's the equivalent of football in the groin. I escorted her back to the house to get washed up. Minnesota struck again. It gets her during the winter and during the 90-degree spring days. She's not safe here. But, fortunately, she still loves visiting here. Living here, on the other hand...
On Friday, our first night in Janesville, we went uptown for a hamburger feed, which supported youth baseball in the town. Louise acted the way most people do when they learn they've won an all-expenses-paid trip to London. She'd never been to a "hamburger fry." She was like a sociologist, eager to see how us small town folk constructed hamburgers with all the fixins. As hamburger feeds go it was standard stuff. Throw the meat on a bun, top it with some condiments, add a few fries, grab some pickles, sit down on a long table and talk with your neighbors. I looked back in line and saw Louise taking pictures, documenting every drop of ketchup and capturing the atmosphere.
"I've never seen such a thing," she said excitedly. She was more excited than Jane Goodall the first time she went to Tanzania.
New York City people are tough to impress? They've seen it all? I suppose. Until you take them to a hamburger feed in a town of 2,000.
The trip's been everything I want when we return home. Relaxing, but we've also had the chance to already see numerous family members and friends we hadn't seen in way too long. Today we had a picnic in the park and invited everyone from both sides of the family. I got to see people I might not have been able to visit during our 10-day stay. It's great seeing them and it's days like this when I realize how much I do miss them and my friends and my tiny hometown and my home state. But I'm also grateful, and lucky, that I have a great life I love in New York City. Minnesota will always be home, but how many people are fortunate enough to have two places that feel like home?
The night ended with me in the basement watching the Lakers in the playoffs. It was a scene out of 1985 or 1991. My folks and sister upstairs, me in the basement screaming at the latest reffing atrocity or three-point brick from Odom or Artest. At one point my nephew Bronson visited me downstairs to watch a few minutes. I think he might have studied me the same way Louise analyzed the hamburger feed. He must have wondered, how can a calm, mild-mannered easygoing person transform into this grotesque creature? Earlier in the game, when I was still upstairs, I looked around for something to fire across the living room. My dad handed me an old pair of socks, figuring they'd do the least damage. I threw them and added some newspaper flyers for good measure. Out of respect for everyone else in the house, and because I do like to set an example for the younger kids, I refrained from swearing (although it's difficult when watching Robin Lopez play).
It's what I also do in New York City. I'm not proud of the behavior. God no. But it's what I do in our one-bedroom apartment, in the comfort of my home. And it's what I do in my parents' house, in the comfort of my other home.
One year it was frostbite. Nothing severe, just a small case of it, in a circular form on her index finger. She'd had real frostbite before on a couple of fingers, an African native unfamiliar with the concept of freezing temperatures and gloves. I told her she'd be fine if she wore gloves in Minnesota. We stepped outside my parents' house one day and walked a single block. On our return, she took off her glove to reveal the frostbite on her finger. We inspected the glove and found a hole in the finger, the exact size as the frostbite. Minnesota didn't need much of an opening to leave a lasting impression.
Today, after a delightful family picnic in the park, we capped off the night with a walk up to the bustling Dairy Queen. A hundred feet from our house, I turned around after hearing Louise squeal. She stood motionless, her arms outstretched. She said nothing for a second. Then, in a South African accent, "I got bird shit on me!"
A Minnesota bird, probably a robin, maybe one of the two bluejays we've seen around the house, had indeed left a disgusting deposit on her face. I'm sure it wasn't aiming for her. Right?
It somehow managed to avoid her curly mass of hair. Instead it hit her hand and near her eye, like it was shot out of a cannon from 50 feet away. My nephews and sister helped out by laughing uncontrollably. I felt terrible, of course, but a bird shitting on someone's head is funny anywhere, in every language, on every continent. It's the equivalent of football in the groin. I escorted her back to the house to get washed up. Minnesota struck again. It gets her during the winter and during the 90-degree spring days. She's not safe here. But, fortunately, she still loves visiting here. Living here, on the other hand...
On Friday, our first night in Janesville, we went uptown for a hamburger feed, which supported youth baseball in the town. Louise acted the way most people do when they learn they've won an all-expenses-paid trip to London. She'd never been to a "hamburger fry." She was like a sociologist, eager to see how us small town folk constructed hamburgers with all the fixins. As hamburger feeds go it was standard stuff. Throw the meat on a bun, top it with some condiments, add a few fries, grab some pickles, sit down on a long table and talk with your neighbors. I looked back in line and saw Louise taking pictures, documenting every drop of ketchup and capturing the atmosphere.
"I've never seen such a thing," she said excitedly. She was more excited than Jane Goodall the first time she went to Tanzania.
New York City people are tough to impress? They've seen it all? I suppose. Until you take them to a hamburger feed in a town of 2,000.
The trip's been everything I want when we return home. Relaxing, but we've also had the chance to already see numerous family members and friends we hadn't seen in way too long. Today we had a picnic in the park and invited everyone from both sides of the family. I got to see people I might not have been able to visit during our 10-day stay. It's great seeing them and it's days like this when I realize how much I do miss them and my friends and my tiny hometown and my home state. But I'm also grateful, and lucky, that I have a great life I love in New York City. Minnesota will always be home, but how many people are fortunate enough to have two places that feel like home?
The night ended with me in the basement watching the Lakers in the playoffs. It was a scene out of 1985 or 1991. My folks and sister upstairs, me in the basement screaming at the latest reffing atrocity or three-point brick from Odom or Artest. At one point my nephew Bronson visited me downstairs to watch a few minutes. I think he might have studied me the same way Louise analyzed the hamburger feed. He must have wondered, how can a calm, mild-mannered easygoing person transform into this grotesque creature? Earlier in the game, when I was still upstairs, I looked around for something to fire across the living room. My dad handed me an old pair of socks, figuring they'd do the least damage. I threw them and added some newspaper flyers for good measure. Out of respect for everyone else in the house, and because I do like to set an example for the younger kids, I refrained from swearing (although it's difficult when watching Robin Lopez play).
It's what I also do in New York City. I'm not proud of the behavior. God no. But it's what I do in our one-bedroom apartment, in the comfort of my home. And it's what I do in my parents' house, in the comfort of my other home.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Worst cars of all time...and the Zephyr
Peter Cheney is an auto writer in Canada with the Globe & Mail. He put together his list of the 12 worst cars ever built.
People obsessed with cars will have far more insight into each of these vehicles than I would. Cheney wrote, "A bad car can be the product of inadequate engineering, questionable taste, or poor manufacturing quality."
The complete story - with pictures of the offending vehicles - is here.
His list: The AMC Gremlin, AMC Pacer, Bond Bug Three-Wheeler, Bricklin SV1, Chevrolet Chevette, Chevrolet Corvair, Ford Edsel, Ford Explorer, Ford Pinto (just that name makes it sound like a horrendous car, although that might simply be because it's so similar to the name Punto, meaning the car's probably scrappy but ultimately horrible), Pontiac Aztek, Subaru SVX, and the Trabant, an East German car that apparently proved the country could mass produce strong female swimmers but not a decent vehicle.
Readers provided their own top 10 list, which is here:
Lada, Chevrolet Vega, Chrysler K-Car, Ford Mustang II, Rolls-Royce Camargue, Volkswagen Beetle, Hyundai Pony, Cadillac Cimarron, MGB Mark IV and the Hummer.
They're both impressive lists, though I believe there's one glaring omission: the Mercury Zephyr. I'm not sure what year my Zephyr was - early '80s - but it came into my life in 1991, just after I passed my driver's test with a superb display of parallel parking. My parents gave it to me as a gift, and I think it set them back about 500 bucks. The old girl was blue and anyone who drove it or rode in it felt that way.
Still, it was my first car, a momentous occasion for any American youth. We parked it on the curb outside our house on the first day it came into the family. Our neighbor - a classmate - wandered over, looked the car up and down and pronounced, "Nice wheels." The compliment was not a sarcastic one coming from him, as compared to the three- and four-wheeled vehicles that often died and decomposed in his family's yard, the Zephyr could be classified as nice wheels, primarily because it had four working ones.
The car had its strengths. Like, I don't know, in two years I never died in it. Other than that, the car struggled in its second decade of existence. You couldn't go above 50 miles per hour without causing violent shaking from the car, the same thing the space shuttle goes through when it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere. The gas gauge didn't work. In two years I never had any idea how much gas was flowing through the Zeph. I'd put about 8 bucks in it and ride that as long as possible. The idiotic plan failed once, when it rolled to a quiet stop outside a house about 10 blocks from our house. I trudged home, retrieved a gas can, walked down to the local Budget Mart, filled her up and made the humiliating walk back to the car. Thankfully, no girls saw this shameful procession.
Like its owner, the Zephyr wasn't good with numbers. Fifty, as in miles per hour. And seventy. It had a tendency to not run if the temperature rose above 70 degrees. Like many cars it struggled in the Minnesota cold - although anything below 25 degrees was trouble for the Zeph - but even in ideal conditions it had a temperamental spirit, like a young stallion that refuses to be broken, minus that horsepower. One summer night the Zephyr died outside a Baskin-Robbins in nearby Mankato. I knew it had enough gasoline, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and it hadn't been acting strangely. So what happened?
I knocked at the door of a nearby house, ready to play my role in a recreation of every bad horror movie that includes a scene of a stranded motorist being killed and possibly served for dinner by deranged homeowners with a grudge against teens. An older couple lived in the house, which might have been labeled a garbage house if anyone from the county had ever been welcomed inside. Tens of thousands of baseball cards littered the floor. They probably could have bought a summer home by selling the collection. The man of the house sat on the floor pawing them, apparently searching for that one card he misplaced sometime in the early '70s. Nice people. They let me use their phone and served me some water. I called my dad and he made the 20-minute drive to pick me up.
We called our local, trusty mechanic, who eventually diagnosed the problem, vaguely declaring that it would apparently always have difficulties in warmer weather, which he defined as anything over 70. This made no sense, but damn if it wasn't pretty accurate.
The Zephyr didn't just damage psyches, it vandalized school property. I drove to a football game senior year and left the Zephyr in a parking lot next to the school, which was one of our biggest rivals. After watching JWP receive a thorough thrashing on the field, we walked back to the blue bomber. Little did I know that the school had just planted the patch of land where we parked. As we tried driving out on the rainy night, the Zephyr refused to budge. Again, temperamental. After a momentous struggle, I finally fired free from the land, tearing it up in the process as we hauled ass out of town, at a comfortable 48 miles per hour. I kept waiting to read a story in the paper about the damage.
MANHUNT ON FOR LOCAL VANDALS
But the Zephyr escaped. For my defense, I would have simply pointed at it and said, "Sir, look at this car. Do you think this car could do that damage?"
I almost lost the Zephyr the first summer I had it. Birdseye called me in for work. Pouting, I took a back road to Waseca. I lost control, swerved, hit the gravel and went into the ditch. Thankfully the car didn't roll and simply bounced into the ditch before stopping. A fellow Birdseye employee drove by and pulled the car out, helpfully telling me I'd still be able to make my shift in time.
Unfortunately, the accident caused one of the Zephyr's headlights to shoot light about 80 feet up into the air. To me, this was just another humiliation heaped onto me by the Zephyr, though certainly I was more to blame for this one than the car's engineers. Still, whatever chance there was to get a girl inside the car died about the same time the psychotic headlight came to life. My cousin Matt delighted in the development, as in his mind it simply added to the Zephyr's lore. He wanted to make a cutout of a bat signal and put it against the light, meaning, in theory, this bat signal could be broadcast over greater Waseca County, perhaps warning the sheriff that I needed to meet with him on a rooftop. I vetoed his plan, refusing to let the Zephyr's legacy be tarnished anymore than it already was by simply existing. The Zephyr wasn't there to be used as a reliable vehicle, but it sure as hell wasn't going to be a prop.
I ditched the Zeph after high school graduation, trading up for a Beretta. We sold the Zephyr to a construction worker for about 100 dollars. Over the next few years, we spotted it occasionally at various worksites, marveling at the car's durability. The car stayed alive, defying all expectations.
It might not have been the worst car ever built, but it at least deserves to be in the conversation.
People obsessed with cars will have far more insight into each of these vehicles than I would. Cheney wrote, "A bad car can be the product of inadequate engineering, questionable taste, or poor manufacturing quality."
The complete story - with pictures of the offending vehicles - is here.
His list: The AMC Gremlin, AMC Pacer, Bond Bug Three-Wheeler, Bricklin SV1, Chevrolet Chevette, Chevrolet Corvair, Ford Edsel, Ford Explorer, Ford Pinto (just that name makes it sound like a horrendous car, although that might simply be because it's so similar to the name Punto, meaning the car's probably scrappy but ultimately horrible), Pontiac Aztek, Subaru SVX, and the Trabant, an East German car that apparently proved the country could mass produce strong female swimmers but not a decent vehicle.
Readers provided their own top 10 list, which is here:
Lada, Chevrolet Vega, Chrysler K-Car, Ford Mustang II, Rolls-Royce Camargue, Volkswagen Beetle, Hyundai Pony, Cadillac Cimarron, MGB Mark IV and the Hummer.
They're both impressive lists, though I believe there's one glaring omission: the Mercury Zephyr. I'm not sure what year my Zephyr was - early '80s - but it came into my life in 1991, just after I passed my driver's test with a superb display of parallel parking. My parents gave it to me as a gift, and I think it set them back about 500 bucks. The old girl was blue and anyone who drove it or rode in it felt that way.
Still, it was my first car, a momentous occasion for any American youth. We parked it on the curb outside our house on the first day it came into the family. Our neighbor - a classmate - wandered over, looked the car up and down and pronounced, "Nice wheels." The compliment was not a sarcastic one coming from him, as compared to the three- and four-wheeled vehicles that often died and decomposed in his family's yard, the Zephyr could be classified as nice wheels, primarily because it had four working ones.
The car had its strengths. Like, I don't know, in two years I never died in it. Other than that, the car struggled in its second decade of existence. You couldn't go above 50 miles per hour without causing violent shaking from the car, the same thing the space shuttle goes through when it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere. The gas gauge didn't work. In two years I never had any idea how much gas was flowing through the Zeph. I'd put about 8 bucks in it and ride that as long as possible. The idiotic plan failed once, when it rolled to a quiet stop outside a house about 10 blocks from our house. I trudged home, retrieved a gas can, walked down to the local Budget Mart, filled her up and made the humiliating walk back to the car. Thankfully, no girls saw this shameful procession.
Like its owner, the Zephyr wasn't good with numbers. Fifty, as in miles per hour. And seventy. It had a tendency to not run if the temperature rose above 70 degrees. Like many cars it struggled in the Minnesota cold - although anything below 25 degrees was trouble for the Zeph - but even in ideal conditions it had a temperamental spirit, like a young stallion that refuses to be broken, minus that horsepower. One summer night the Zephyr died outside a Baskin-Robbins in nearby Mankato. I knew it had enough gasoline, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and it hadn't been acting strangely. So what happened?
I knocked at the door of a nearby house, ready to play my role in a recreation of every bad horror movie that includes a scene of a stranded motorist being killed and possibly served for dinner by deranged homeowners with a grudge against teens. An older couple lived in the house, which might have been labeled a garbage house if anyone from the county had ever been welcomed inside. Tens of thousands of baseball cards littered the floor. They probably could have bought a summer home by selling the collection. The man of the house sat on the floor pawing them, apparently searching for that one card he misplaced sometime in the early '70s. Nice people. They let me use their phone and served me some water. I called my dad and he made the 20-minute drive to pick me up.
We called our local, trusty mechanic, who eventually diagnosed the problem, vaguely declaring that it would apparently always have difficulties in warmer weather, which he defined as anything over 70. This made no sense, but damn if it wasn't pretty accurate.
The Zephyr didn't just damage psyches, it vandalized school property. I drove to a football game senior year and left the Zephyr in a parking lot next to the school, which was one of our biggest rivals. After watching JWP receive a thorough thrashing on the field, we walked back to the blue bomber. Little did I know that the school had just planted the patch of land where we parked. As we tried driving out on the rainy night, the Zephyr refused to budge. Again, temperamental. After a momentous struggle, I finally fired free from the land, tearing it up in the process as we hauled ass out of town, at a comfortable 48 miles per hour. I kept waiting to read a story in the paper about the damage.
MANHUNT ON FOR LOCAL VANDALS
But the Zephyr escaped. For my defense, I would have simply pointed at it and said, "Sir, look at this car. Do you think this car could do that damage?"
I almost lost the Zephyr the first summer I had it. Birdseye called me in for work. Pouting, I took a back road to Waseca. I lost control, swerved, hit the gravel and went into the ditch. Thankfully the car didn't roll and simply bounced into the ditch before stopping. A fellow Birdseye employee drove by and pulled the car out, helpfully telling me I'd still be able to make my shift in time.
Unfortunately, the accident caused one of the Zephyr's headlights to shoot light about 80 feet up into the air. To me, this was just another humiliation heaped onto me by the Zephyr, though certainly I was more to blame for this one than the car's engineers. Still, whatever chance there was to get a girl inside the car died about the same time the psychotic headlight came to life. My cousin Matt delighted in the development, as in his mind it simply added to the Zephyr's lore. He wanted to make a cutout of a bat signal and put it against the light, meaning, in theory, this bat signal could be broadcast over greater Waseca County, perhaps warning the sheriff that I needed to meet with him on a rooftop. I vetoed his plan, refusing to let the Zephyr's legacy be tarnished anymore than it already was by simply existing. The Zephyr wasn't there to be used as a reliable vehicle, but it sure as hell wasn't going to be a prop.
I ditched the Zeph after high school graduation, trading up for a Beretta. We sold the Zephyr to a construction worker for about 100 dollars. Over the next few years, we spotted it occasionally at various worksites, marveling at the car's durability. The car stayed alive, defying all expectations.
It might not have been the worst car ever built, but it at least deserves to be in the conversation.
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