I was 8 years old, and the whole family was “Up North” at my Aunt Jane’s cottage on Lake Margrethe in Michigan. My older cousin Kim had been advocating for us kids to learn to use the “surf board” – basically a flat board towed behind a boat – as a first step towards learning to water ski. You hang onto a rope tied to the front of the board and the boat pulls you over the water. I was keen to do this only because my older brother and sister – Tom and Sue – had already done it, and I didn’t want to be left behind. Otherwise, I was scared crapless. The water was deep on that lake. The life preserver felt soggy. If I even got up on the board, I’d be hurtling over the water and into the Great Unknown, and I wasn’t consoled at all by the knowledge that my Sibs had done it successfully and said it was a breeze.
So when my time came I froze. “No, I’m not ready!” I shouted to Cousin Kim, who was driving the boat. My Dad was standing next to me in waist-deep water, offering advice and encouragement. He had already gone through the pre-launch checklist: “You kneel on the board, pull real tight on the rope as the boat takes off, and once you get going, you just stand up”. Death grip on the sides of the board, I yelled “no, I’m not ready!”
“Son”, my old man said, “I’ve got you. You get up on the board, I’ll hold it steady until you take off; you’ll do fine”. “But what if I fall?” “Then you fall, no problem, you’ll do fine”, he said. “I’ve got you. When you’re ready, tell Kim to ‘hit it’.” Taking a deep breath, I yelled the fateful words, the monstrous in-line six cylinder Mercury roared to life, and the boat took off; Dad held the board steady, the line grew taught and pulled the board over the water. I knelt up straight, stood up, and immediately took a Header off the board. A moment of panic as I plunged under water, bobbed to the surface gasping for breath, panicky about the crappy life preserver. Turns out I survived. I was fine.
Kim came round and towed me back to shore. Round Two: “Dad, do you have me?” “I’ve got you, Son. I’ll hold it, you get going, then stand up, then hang on”. The boat got going, I stood up, I held on. Success.
My Dad died Tuesday, October 25th at 7:40pm at age 83, peacefully, with all his kids in attendance. It had been a long road. I can report with pride and more than a little amazement that he stood up until the very last day of his life. More about that later.
Dad’s life changed dramatically in 1995, when our Mom passed away from complications of Hepatitis, contracted when she had received massive blood transfusions after the still-birth of our brother Johnny 45 years earlier. He and Mom had only just retired a half-dozen years before Mom died. On his own for the first time in decades, Dad learned a whole new batch of domestic skills: cooking, cleaning, and more than a little Feng Shui. If you’re not familiar with the term, it refers to a household being in Harmony. Dad would have scoffed at the concept, but his place always was: Mom’s Hummel collection arranged on the shelves just so, the perfect coordination of furniture, pictures and the modest collection of things he and Mom had accumulated. His place was always spotless, cupboards always stocked, plants well maintained and – according to Sister Jane - a garage floor you could eat off of.
The Emphysema that took him started shortly after that, and he battled with it for 15 years. Despite the illness, his independence was important to him. He drove his car until just the last few months of his life, even tethered to oxygen, and he got out of the house to visit until just the last few weeks. All of this happened with timely assists from Jane, Sue and Marilyn of course, but Dad fought for that independence, that self-sufficiency, literally until the day he died.
There were a lot of things that impressed me about my Dad, his endurance for one. Growing up, Dad worked over a decade of shifts on the Detroit Police Department, alternating a month of Days, a month of Afternoons, and a month of Midnights. Then he would start over again. It kept us Kids sharp, as we could never keep track of whether he was in the house or not, asleep or not. Years after we were grown, Dad would tell stories of seeing Tom or me pedal out to our paper routes, with him coming off a shift. I remember one of my chores a couple winters in the ‘60s was to light a Coleman lantern before I went on my route and put it on the passenger side of the VW Beetle that Dad drove to work when he was on Days. It really wasn't to warm up the interior though. It was to warm up the car enough so that it would start. He proclaimed it the best $25 he had ever spent. It was a big responsibility, though, and I took it seriously. If the Old Man was going to slog to work in some Beater with holes in the floorboards, I could take the time to make sure it would start.
Suffice to say, physical courage was a strong point with the Old Man. He worked the most dangerous jobs throughout his police career in Detroit, and in some of the nastiest precincts, including the 1st, 12th and 13th. Dad’s assignments included working patrol, as well as all the precursors to what is now known as SWAT. Those units went by various names: The Cruiser, TMU (Tactical Mobile Unit) and PSU (Precinct Support): All the same weapons, none of the body armor. He finished his career as a Sergeant in an undercover team called STRESS (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets). Many was the occasion when Dad would come back from work banged up in some fashion: stitches over the eye, battered forearms or shins. The last two were fairly regular occurrences, the price cops paid to neutralize a suspect, frequently hopped up on drugs. During the ’67 riots, Dad went to work every day dressed for combat – again minus body armor - which didn’t exist at that time. I can only imagine how that affected our Mom, but she never showed any fear to us kids. Neither did Dad.
Like wolves, Mom and Dad mated for life. After Mom died, there was no question as to whether he would date again. It just didn’t happen. Dad was content with the memories of his wife around him, including her treasured Hummel collection, which he maintained as if she might show up at any time. More about that later too.
My Dad retained the mental snap of a man 30 years younger, even as his health declined over the past decade and a half. His memory for names and details even in the past year was, as usual, ten times better than mine. My Dad was also the funniest person I ever met, and during his trials his sense of humor never failed him. Wry, understated, more than a little sarcastic on occasion:
- Day Five of our visit, and Dad needed help getting out of bed. I braced him under the arms as we stood up. Halfway up he said "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I let him sit back down and stepped back, asking "What's the matter?" Dad looked up and said very matter-of-factly “Son"; “Yes Dad”; "You’re standing on my foot"; I was, still. “Sorry Dad”.
- Day Seven, again trying to help him out of bed. Normally I had been on his left side with one of my sisters or my wife on the right. This time I braced him on the right. Unmindful that I was on his bad side, hearing-wise, I called out “one, two, three, Go!” “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Dad said. “What’s the problem, Pop?” “Son, you don’t start on ‘three’! What the hell happened to the ‘one’ and ‘two’?” “Sorry Dad, my bad. What say you count?” He did, and that was our drill going forward, and successful every time.
- Day Eight, and Dad needed a little more light in his room so as to see his medications, all neatly lined up on a TV table. He wanted to do a thorough inventory of all of them so as to determine whether or not he was going to take them. I moved the prized Hummel lamp from the dresser down to the TV table. “Easy son. Easy with the Hummel lamp”, he admonished. “I got it Dad. Just wanted to get it down lower so you could see each med”. “Good show, Son”.
Then, the Inquisition began. Knowing full well what each of his pills was for, he nonetheless forced Janey to describe in detail each med, and its purpose. “This one is potassium, Smitty”. “Forget that; too big. What’s next?” “Mucinex to loosen your chest.” “We’ll see; next.” “You’re due for an Updraft treatment too”. “We’ll see. What else?” And so it went. Knowing that his Kids were still committed to him taking his medications, he slow-rolled us, endlessly dragging out each round, loitering over each pill or inhaler for many minutes, picking them up, putting them down, picking them back up again. After the first round, I realized that however many of his kids were in attendance, that our heads would all bob and weave in unison as he picked up a pill, brought it up for scrutiny, rested his hand on his knee, looked at the pill again, put the pill back on the table.
Next pill, repeat. All heads moving as if attached to a string. Son of a bitch, I thought. He’s enjoying this.
And why not? He’d already committed to not taking certain life-saving pills that were hastening his demise regardless of how faithfully he took others. Dad was letting us off the hook for the hard decisions that had to be made about cutting off his medications, wearing us down and eventually forcing us to give up. Feel-good meds (Morphine and Atavan)? No problem. Everything else? Nope, not likely. The Old Man was in control, playing the role of parent one last time. If he could have a little fun with his Kids in the process, all the better.
Back to the lamp. Once we were done and he had blown off most of his meds, I went to move the Hummel lamp back up to the dresser. Dad was perched on the side of the bed, as he had been for the past hour. “Easy son. Easy”. “I got it Dad.” Unfortunately what I had not secured was the Hurricane lamp next to it, which tipped over, the glass container shattering on top of the Dresser. This was a classic moment for Dad and me, as I was the Clumsy Child, and renowned for breaking things. Throughout my life, I was never punished for breaking anything, but my exploits were the grist of many a humorous anecdote the Old Man would tell throughout my adult years. Funnier still was that Mom was in on it, sometimes offering comments so as to make me look less goofy, but other times gleefully providing details that Dad might have overlooked.
Having broken the Hurricane lamp, I looked over at the Old Man, sitting on the side of the bed, calmly observing the carnage, hands resting on his knees. Our eyes met, and, deadpan, he said “Son”; “Yes Dad”; “Easy on the lamps”; “OK Pop”.
- Day Eight at the dinner table, and Dad was loitering over dinner. Sister Jane asks Dad “are you chewing on something?” Dad calmly replies “are my jaws moving?” “Yes Smitty.” “Then yes, I’m chewing.”
Dad was always on top of his condition. That turned out to be important over the past several years when his health would take a turn, as his doctors would advocate for a variety of surgeries and other interventions that he ended up vetoing. On that count, his doctors batted about .500. Unusual in this day and age, the Old Man was making all of his medical calls, including at the end, and I honor him for it. I can only hope to keep my wits about me so keenly.
Six weeks ago his health took one of those turns - for the worst – and Dad was hospitalized. Quickly enough, his Docs were advocating for a fresh round of therapy and an extended hospital stay, and this time Dad said no, I’m going home. My Sisters got him home and he almost immediately went downhill. Early Saturday, October 14th, Dad advised the Girls, and Father Prus was called in from St. Jimmy's to administer last rights. Jane called me in Arkansas and turned on her speakerphone so I could hear the proceedings. The simple service was beautiful, and the Padre said all the right things. At the end, he and my Dad started bantering. Over Jane’s speakerphone, and a thousand miles away, I heard Father Prus and my Dad get into a lively debate over the merits of the Ecumenical Council and all the changes to the liturgy. Not your typical Last Rights, but so typical of my Dad. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Father Prus and my Dad became lifelong friends right there.
And as Jane explained to me later, Dad spoke to her directly after that and said to make sure that Father Prus also presided over “the Thing”, that being Dad’s modest description of his funeral service. That wish was granted.
After Janey called me, and hearing the Last Rights, Sharon and I jumped in the car and headed North, expecting the worst. His condition didn’t change much over the 24 hours it took us to get to Detroit, and we were out of touch with the Sibs for the last few hours before we arrived at Dad’s place. Imagine my surprise to walk in Sunday afternoon and see him holding court in the dining room, weaker for sure, but otherwise the same man I had greeted every time I came to visit from Houston.
The next ten days were amazing. Dad weakened, then rallied, then weakened again. He got out of bed frequently, and when he didn’t feel well enough to sit in the wheelchair, he would sit on the side of the bed for long periods of time, one or more of his kids at his side. He fought through the fog of his illness and the medications provided for his comfort, kept up his end of conversations, amused us, encouraged us, and got into his wheelchair and came out to the living room almost every day, including the day before he died. By an almost supreme act of will, he also got out of bed and stood up at least once every one of those last ten days, including the morning of the day he died, when he was transferred to an easy chair by the Hospice nurses.
Sharon and I had the opportunity to help my sisters help him stand on those occasions, which got increasingly more difficult for him as he weakened. Timing was everything, and Dad would stress if he wasn’t able to stand erect immediately. We’d hold him from either side until – as he put it - he “could get his legs underneath him”. Despite the pain and discomfort, he would make light of his trouble standing.
In the last couples days when he went off most of his medications and his illnesses started to claim him, he was in and out of consciousness. Dad frequently called out Mom’s name those last couple of days, as if she was just in the next room, and in a sense, she was. My sisters and I were amazed and gratified to hear this. To witness such a thing was a Gift. Who’d of thought we’d get to hear Dad share a moment with Mom, just one more time? Despite the heavy drugs that kept him mostly unconscious, he was seeing clearly in those last hours, at least for the things that mattered.
My last moment with Dad when he was with it was early the morning of Oct 25th. He was stirring and restless, so I took him a syringe of morphine and Atavan. I put my hand on his arm and he focused almost immediately. “I got some feel-goods for you, Pop”. We were all well past the point of sugar-coating things. “Good show, Son”, and he patted my hand. He laid his head back after a sip of water, and he was spent. Still, I got a brief grin, as we all did repeatedly those last few days, Dad’s shorthand way of telling us that everything was alright.
When the end came later that night, Janey, Sue, Marilyn, Sharon and I were all there, all with a hand on his arm, or hand. At one point his breathing got very shallow, and it wasn’t but a few minutes later that he died. As he drew his last few breaths, the most amazing thing happened: a train whistle started blasting in the distance, clearly drawing closer. It got louder and louder, Dad’s breathing stopped, and then the noise of the train trailed off into the distance. We all looked at each other, eyes wide. The moment might not have been anything other than a pleasing coincidence to most families, but it was way more than that to us. See, our Grandfather - O.R. Smith - was a locomotive Engineer for 40 years on the Grand Trunk Railroad, and my Sisters all agreed that they had never heard a train whistle so close to Dad’s place, much less at that time of the evening. O.R. had come to pick his son up, pure and simple.
Dad’s funeral service was that Saturday, with Father Prus presiding over the mass. He recounted many aspects of Dad’s life, but as is the nature of such things, there was so much that would not be spoken of, including the near-countless small moments the family got to have with Dad in the last two weeks of his life. For me, what mattered most was the opportunity in those last days to observe him at his absolute best. The qualities that made him a good father and husband sustained his Kids as we watched him die. His bravery, his conviction, his sense of humor: all made it easier for us.
Dad was not the most expressive person in the world, but I fondly recall the ways that he was. For one example, if you ever had occasion to walk across a street or parking lot with him, you would likely find that, regardless of your age, Dad had locked onto the back of your arm or the back of your neck, and wouldn’t let go until you were safely across. The final flourish would be a slight shove those last few feet, propelling you safely onto the sidewalk, just Dad’s way of saying “I’ve got you; It’s going to be alright.” I was glad to have had the opportunity to repay the favor in a small way that last ten days of his life, helping my Sisters give him his medication and tending to him in other ways. In those last days when standing up got more difficult, we'd have to reassure him after he got on his feet until he felt secure holding on to his Walker:
"Hold the phone, hold the phone. I'm leaning too far forward. Hold me up for a minute". “We’ve got you, Pop. We've got you."
"Good show, Son. Good Show."
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Welcome To The Club, Herman Cain
It's official: OffHisMeds has gotten over his snit at Herman Cain for race-pimping Rick Perry last month over the presence of the word "niggerhead" painted on a rock at the Perry family's hunting camp some 25 years ago. Notwithstanding that Cain jumped to conclusions as to Perry's involvement in the presence of that word, recent events have given Cain a similar taste of the Democrat Demagoguery that descends on any conservative who threatens the status quo, with Cain as the most recent focus of their malevolence. OffHisMeds believes this object lesson in Liberal gutter politics will make him more circumspect about using similar tactics against his opponents in the future.
Why should this matter to Cain? This year's not-so-big secret in presidential politics is that the electorate craves authenticity in a candidate. Witness Perry's meteoric rise in the polls after he declared Social Security a Ponzi Scheme. In a similar vein, Herman Cain has benefited from his unambiguous contempt for the Washington Establishment and his unabashed enthusiasm for radical tax reform. And it is no coincidence that Perry faltered in the eye of the public precisely when he started equivocating on those strongly held positions.
OHM's theory is that the Electorate is way more sophisticated than what the Establishment gives them credit for. As a prime example, witness the disdain in which the Tea Parties are held, despite their completely non-violent, thoughtful and eloquently expressed opposition to the status quo, and never more evident than when compared to the actions of the Occupy Wall Street crowd, replete as they are with instances of attacking cops, burning buildings, defecating in municipal flower beds and their non-stop incoherence. Despite the best efforts of Katie Couric and her ilk, the Tea Parties thrive and the OWS crowd looks like a bunch of petulant children.
Like I said, the Electorate craves authenticity.
Herman Cain resonates with all Voters, not because they necessarily agree with him, but because he does not deviate from his strongly held beliefs. If he continues to blow off his consultants and stays real, he'll be a credible threat to Romney, and would crush Obama in a general election.
Which brings us to the topic du jure: the sexual harassment scandal. OffHisMeds doesn't buy any of it, mostly because OHM has himself been formally accused of sexual harassment. The story the MSM does not want to tell is that accusations of sexual harassment against male bosses are not the exception, they're the rule. It happens literally thousands of times per day across America. It's as American as Apple Pie.
The script is the same as the one levered against Bill Cosby and Clarence Thomas when they went off-plantation, daring to threaten the credibility of the White Massas that run the Democrat Party. In each case, the White Massas mobilized the Media to not just attack these prominent black conservatives, but to attack them in an explicitly racist fashion, by smearing them as sexual predators, playing to the public's lesser angels in their Fear Of Black Men. Let's face it: nobody would have cared had Cosby and Thomas been accused of, say, gambling, and the same is true of Herman Cain. In fact, it's a tribute to Cain that this was the opening gambit. If this fails, the Jackals have no fallback to assassinate his character in the future.
Back to the history. Against both Cosby and Thomas, the accusations were tissue-thin and easily discredited. In each case, the charges were given legs for months, with the Media dribbling out information from anonymous sources that could not be proved or disproved. In each case, there was an attempt at a "coup de gras", a so-called credible "victim" who came forth much later in the narrative. In Thomas's case, it was the execrable Anita Hill, her of the "pubic hair in my Coke" fame. Much as Monica Lewinsky was forever soiled by a semen-stained dress, Hill was likewise discredited by her bizarre claims that Thomas used this as a come-on line.
Ironically, Lewinsky was at least provably molested by Bill Clinton, our First Black President, albeit that he managed to suppress the results of the IQ test administered to her that would have proven his offenses to be statutory. Don't fall all over yourself waiting for the MSM to pick up on that angle though. Democrats are not only immune to charges of sexual impropriety, they generally thrive on it.
As to the sexual harassment charges against Cain, don't lose any sleep waiting for the punch-line, which is that the alleged "harassment" won't have anything to do with Cain using his position to force himself sexually on these women. Rather, the one or two "provable" instances will be found to be the complainants' "discomfort" with Cain allegedly treating them differently because of their gender, which is the basis of most sexual harassment charges. Not near as sexy as Cain, say, trying to diddle them in the elevator, which is why the stories being leaked are so uniformly fact-less.
On a related note, did it strike any of you (OHM's three faithful readers) as more than passing strange that in the Perry scandal the term "niggerhead" was actually printed in most newspapers - and with wild abandon - by the mainstream media? Whatever happened to propriety? Whenever Kanye West uses the term in concert and it is remarked upon, the Media all use the standard "N----r" form, so as not to offend its reading public. Let the story be about a Republican, though, and we're right back down on the plantation, and the word "nigger" passes as freely from the lips (or pens) of righteous white Liberals as in the glory days of their ancestors.
On another note, it was passing strange that the Cain campaign blamed Perry for leaking the sexual harassment story, since this one has Mitt Romney's Machiavellian fingerprints all over it. Notwithstanding Perry's desire for payback after Cain jumped on the Niggerhead bandwagon, one need only look at who has benefited from both controversies, and that's our pal Mitt, putative Republican nominee, Establishment figurehead and soon-to-be Democrat punching bag.
Do you suppose he'll be surprised and dismayed (upon securing the Republican nomination) when Democrats and the Media start flogging his Mormonism? If Romney does win the nomination, Obama will win a second term: absolutely no doubt about it.
In all likelihood Cain will weather this storm, and the sooner he trots out his "high tech lynching" rebuttal, the better OffHisMeds will like it.
Why should this matter to Cain? This year's not-so-big secret in presidential politics is that the electorate craves authenticity in a candidate. Witness Perry's meteoric rise in the polls after he declared Social Security a Ponzi Scheme. In a similar vein, Herman Cain has benefited from his unambiguous contempt for the Washington Establishment and his unabashed enthusiasm for radical tax reform. And it is no coincidence that Perry faltered in the eye of the public precisely when he started equivocating on those strongly held positions.
OHM's theory is that the Electorate is way more sophisticated than what the Establishment gives them credit for. As a prime example, witness the disdain in which the Tea Parties are held, despite their completely non-violent, thoughtful and eloquently expressed opposition to the status quo, and never more evident than when compared to the actions of the Occupy Wall Street crowd, replete as they are with instances of attacking cops, burning buildings, defecating in municipal flower beds and their non-stop incoherence. Despite the best efforts of Katie Couric and her ilk, the Tea Parties thrive and the OWS crowd looks like a bunch of petulant children.
Like I said, the Electorate craves authenticity.
Herman Cain resonates with all Voters, not because they necessarily agree with him, but because he does not deviate from his strongly held beliefs. If he continues to blow off his consultants and stays real, he'll be a credible threat to Romney, and would crush Obama in a general election.
Which brings us to the topic du jure: the sexual harassment scandal. OffHisMeds doesn't buy any of it, mostly because OHM has himself been formally accused of sexual harassment. The story the MSM does not want to tell is that accusations of sexual harassment against male bosses are not the exception, they're the rule. It happens literally thousands of times per day across America. It's as American as Apple Pie.
The script is the same as the one levered against Bill Cosby and Clarence Thomas when they went off-plantation, daring to threaten the credibility of the White Massas that run the Democrat Party. In each case, the White Massas mobilized the Media to not just attack these prominent black conservatives, but to attack them in an explicitly racist fashion, by smearing them as sexual predators, playing to the public's lesser angels in their Fear Of Black Men. Let's face it: nobody would have cared had Cosby and Thomas been accused of, say, gambling, and the same is true of Herman Cain. In fact, it's a tribute to Cain that this was the opening gambit. If this fails, the Jackals have no fallback to assassinate his character in the future.
Back to the history. Against both Cosby and Thomas, the accusations were tissue-thin and easily discredited. In each case, the charges were given legs for months, with the Media dribbling out information from anonymous sources that could not be proved or disproved. In each case, there was an attempt at a "coup de gras", a so-called credible "victim" who came forth much later in the narrative. In Thomas's case, it was the execrable Anita Hill, her of the "pubic hair in my Coke" fame. Much as Monica Lewinsky was forever soiled by a semen-stained dress, Hill was likewise discredited by her bizarre claims that Thomas used this as a come-on line.
Ironically, Lewinsky was at least provably molested by Bill Clinton, our First Black President, albeit that he managed to suppress the results of the IQ test administered to her that would have proven his offenses to be statutory. Don't fall all over yourself waiting for the MSM to pick up on that angle though. Democrats are not only immune to charges of sexual impropriety, they generally thrive on it.
As to the sexual harassment charges against Cain, don't lose any sleep waiting for the punch-line, which is that the alleged "harassment" won't have anything to do with Cain using his position to force himself sexually on these women. Rather, the one or two "provable" instances will be found to be the complainants' "discomfort" with Cain allegedly treating them differently because of their gender, which is the basis of most sexual harassment charges. Not near as sexy as Cain, say, trying to diddle them in the elevator, which is why the stories being leaked are so uniformly fact-less.
On a related note, did it strike any of you (OHM's three faithful readers) as more than passing strange that in the Perry scandal the term "niggerhead" was actually printed in most newspapers - and with wild abandon - by the mainstream media? Whatever happened to propriety? Whenever Kanye West uses the term in concert and it is remarked upon, the Media all use the standard "N----r" form, so as not to offend its reading public. Let the story be about a Republican, though, and we're right back down on the plantation, and the word "nigger" passes as freely from the lips (or pens) of righteous white Liberals as in the glory days of their ancestors.
On another note, it was passing strange that the Cain campaign blamed Perry for leaking the sexual harassment story, since this one has Mitt Romney's Machiavellian fingerprints all over it. Notwithstanding Perry's desire for payback after Cain jumped on the Niggerhead bandwagon, one need only look at who has benefited from both controversies, and that's our pal Mitt, putative Republican nominee, Establishment figurehead and soon-to-be Democrat punching bag.
Do you suppose he'll be surprised and dismayed (upon securing the Republican nomination) when Democrats and the Media start flogging his Mormonism? If Romney does win the nomination, Obama will win a second term: absolutely no doubt about it.
In all likelihood Cain will weather this storm, and the sooner he trots out his "high tech lynching" rebuttal, the better OffHisMeds will like it.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Triangulators
In a succession of debates and in other public forums in the past six weeks, Republican presidential candidates Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum in particular have repeatedly attacked fellow Republican Rick Perry, while curiously silencing their criticism of the other leading Republican candidate, Mitt Romney. This is curious, since Perry is clearly more in sync with the views of Bachman and Santorum, both as a social and a fiscal conservative.
It's hard not to conclude that both Bachman and Santorum have looked at their own moribund campaigns for the presidency and decided to audition for Mitt Romney as potential vice presidential candidates by attacking his only credible opponent, Rick Perry. Romney's big problem is that - despite his efforts to appear otherwise - he is Establishment to his core. He has none of the qualities that most Republicans look for in a candidate: a record as a fiscal conservative or a willingness to stand up to the pathological desire of Democrats to meddle in every aspect of our lives, much less their desire to steal all of our money and give it to their friends.
And don't even get me going on the gigantic elitist stick Romney apparently had shoved up his ass at birth. You know the one I'm talking about: It's the stick that makes him incapable of loosening up. Not that he hasn't tried, with disastrous results. A month ago, he deigned to roll the sleeves of his $140 custom fitted shirt up to his elbows, or more likely had his manservant do it for him. On another occasion about two months ago, he actually ventured out amongst the Hoi Polloi and ate a hot dog. That was a one time deal by the way. There is no public record of Romney having eaten a hot dog before or since.
Romney's real problem is that the stick up his ass is the only thing in him that approximates a backbone. And thus the convergence of Romney's ambitions and those of, say, Bachman and Santorum. For an electorate that craves authenticity, a politician that speaks his mind and damn the torpedoes, the likes of Romney is anathema. He is the ultimate Triangulator: a Shape Shifter who can pass ObamaCare in Massachusettes out of one side of his mouth, and castigate it two years later out of the other.
He needs authenticity. Enter Bachman and Santorum. Both have the credentials if only because they have devoted a large portion of their political capital to speaking their minds, gigging Democrats, and calling a spade a spade. In other words, their candor (up to this point) has been balm to the soul of a weary electorate, and the one quality above all others that would endear them to the Tea Parties.
How strange then, to see them both take their primary asset, and pimp it out to a guy who is indistinguishable from, say, George Herbert Walker Bush.
And how sad.
It's hard not to conclude that both Bachman and Santorum have looked at their own moribund campaigns for the presidency and decided to audition for Mitt Romney as potential vice presidential candidates by attacking his only credible opponent, Rick Perry. Romney's big problem is that - despite his efforts to appear otherwise - he is Establishment to his core. He has none of the qualities that most Republicans look for in a candidate: a record as a fiscal conservative or a willingness to stand up to the pathological desire of Democrats to meddle in every aspect of our lives, much less their desire to steal all of our money and give it to their friends.
And don't even get me going on the gigantic elitist stick Romney apparently had shoved up his ass at birth. You know the one I'm talking about: It's the stick that makes him incapable of loosening up. Not that he hasn't tried, with disastrous results. A month ago, he deigned to roll the sleeves of his $140 custom fitted shirt up to his elbows, or more likely had his manservant do it for him. On another occasion about two months ago, he actually ventured out amongst the Hoi Polloi and ate a hot dog. That was a one time deal by the way. There is no public record of Romney having eaten a hot dog before or since.
Romney's real problem is that the stick up his ass is the only thing in him that approximates a backbone. And thus the convergence of Romney's ambitions and those of, say, Bachman and Santorum. For an electorate that craves authenticity, a politician that speaks his mind and damn the torpedoes, the likes of Romney is anathema. He is the ultimate Triangulator: a Shape Shifter who can pass ObamaCare in Massachusettes out of one side of his mouth, and castigate it two years later out of the other.
He needs authenticity. Enter Bachman and Santorum. Both have the credentials if only because they have devoted a large portion of their political capital to speaking their minds, gigging Democrats, and calling a spade a spade. In other words, their candor (up to this point) has been balm to the soul of a weary electorate, and the one quality above all others that would endear them to the Tea Parties.
How strange then, to see them both take their primary asset, and pimp it out to a guy who is indistinguishable from, say, George Herbert Walker Bush.
And how sad.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
LTE: Tragic flight
Regarding "Horrific scene at air show" (Page A1, Saturday), throughout the various early reports of the P-51 fighter plane that crashed in Reno, Nev., that killed or injured scores of people, the pilot has been portrayed as a hero.
Various observers have reported that he made every effort to avoid the stands before crashing to the ground, and that there may have been some mechanical failure. The unasked question is: What was a 74-year-old man doing pulling high g-force maneuvers at 400-plus miles per hour in a 70-year-old airplane?
For decades, professional aviators in the military have been routinely taken out of the cockpit as early as age 40, and none are allowed to simulate combat maneuvers after 50, acknowledging that time takes its toll on the physical and mental faculties necessary to fly such aircraft.
At age 74, this pilot had no business being in the cockpit of any plane doing high performance maneuvers, much less in a plane manufactured during World War II.
- Pete Smith, Cypress
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Health-care-books-crash-2178524.php
Various observers have reported that he made every effort to avoid the stands before crashing to the ground, and that there may have been some mechanical failure. The unasked question is: What was a 74-year-old man doing pulling high g-force maneuvers at 400-plus miles per hour in a 70-year-old airplane?
For decades, professional aviators in the military have been routinely taken out of the cockpit as early as age 40, and none are allowed to simulate combat maneuvers after 50, acknowledging that time takes its toll on the physical and mental faculties necessary to fly such aircraft.
At age 74, this pilot had no business being in the cockpit of any plane doing high performance maneuvers, much less in a plane manufactured during World War II.
- Pete Smith, Cypress
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Health-care-books-crash-2178524.php
Thursday, July 21, 2011
LTE: Much to-do about Roger; Cite the owners
In all the hubbub of Roger Clemens' trial for lying to Congress, it's interesting to note that none of the people who profited from the scandal - Major League Baseball owners - was subject to prosecution, much less questioning by the Mitchell Commission or Congress.
Baseball was in the doldrums starting in the early '90s, when the use of steroids became prevalent. Home run kings Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire - to name two - grew from regular-sized men to massive steroidal giants, and their home run production in the late '90s grew as well. The fans came flocking back, but the owners looked away, refusing to adopt even the mild regulations that the NFL had adopted all the way back in 1987.
That was inevitable, given that the owners were allowed to form the Mitchell Commission and then control the proceedings - as clear a case of the inmates running the asylum as you could imagine. If you ask me, Drayton McClain has a lot more to answer for than Roger Clemens.
- Pete Smith, Cypress
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Much-to-do-about-Roger-1479358.php
Baseball was in the doldrums starting in the early '90s, when the use of steroids became prevalent. Home run kings Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire - to name two - grew from regular-sized men to massive steroidal giants, and their home run production in the late '90s grew as well. The fans came flocking back, but the owners looked away, refusing to adopt even the mild regulations that the NFL had adopted all the way back in 1987.
That was inevitable, given that the owners were allowed to form the Mitchell Commission and then control the proceedings - as clear a case of the inmates running the asylum as you could imagine. If you ask me, Drayton McClain has a lot more to answer for than Roger Clemens.
- Pete Smith, Cypress
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Much-to-do-about-Roger-1479358.php
Sunday, July 10, 2011
What My Brother Taught Me
One of my earliest recollections of my brother Tom was when I was six and he was nine, with me begging him to let me go snow shoveling with him at the start of Detroit’s winter in 1960. I was hazy on the concept, but had managed to figure out that my brother had a regular route of customers in the neighborhood that would pay him money to shovel their snow. The money was awesome from my perspective: never less than a quarter, most frequently fifty cents and occasionally as much as a buck. Do a couple of sidewalks per Snow Day, and you’re talking real money.
Tom had been at this for a couple of winters before he let me come along. For the first of many times, he did what Big Brothers are so frequently burdened to do: he shrugged his shoulders, said “OK, you can come”, pointed his finger at me and said “but you better do exactly what I tell you to do”. I will never forget the direct eye contact, and I instinctively understood that while Big Brothers may be generous, failure under these circumstances was not an option. There would be consequences, most likely the dread “why are you slapping yourself in the face with your own hands?” Shtick, where my brother would pin me down, take my own hands and slap me in the face with them. All strictly for fun, you know, and judiciously exercised.
That January morning, we bundled up and were off. His preferred territory covered our street, Omira, and the next street over, Yacama, between State Fair Avenue and Eight Mile. The first house we got a hit on was on Yacama close to Eight Mile. Tom negotiated the deal: one dollar, but we had to do everything, including removing a foot of snow from the tops of their two cars. Oh yeah; and the cars would stay in the driveway. I cratered fast. One foot of snow when you’re 4 foot tall was daunting. My brother gave me one of my more memorable pieces of advice, and the first that I recollect from him: “Shovel off the top half of the snow, then shovel what’s underneath”.
It worked. Rejuvenated, I finished the sidewalk while Tom did the walkway, the steps, the porch, the driveway and the cars. I stopped at one point, tired, and marveled at the continuing downpour of snow, and my brother, a relentless silhouette from the light of the nearby streetlight, fighting back the snow from our customer’s property, flurries building on his stocking cap, scarf, gloves and coat. I was cold after a half hour, but my brother taught me the second lesson of the day: endurance. Sure, I could have left when I got cold, but to do so would have meant disappointing him. “Keep moving”, he would say; “you’ll stay warm”. He was right.
I hung in for the whole job. We got paid. Tom cut me in for a third.
It’s Friday, July 1st around 1:30am. Sharon and I have just gotten into Detroit, having gotten the word of Tom’s death early Wednesday. He had just turned 60 the week before he died, and left behind his wife Marilyn, his sons Tom, Tim and Brian, our Dad, two sisters, Susan and Jane, hundreds of other relatives and friends, and me. His health hadn’t been good in the past few years, but to say that his death was a shock to me was an understatement. Tom was my Big Brother, and to me he had been a rock since my earliest memories. To see him work as I have so many times in my life, you would have thought him indestructible regardless of what health problems were thrown his way later in life. Paul Bunyan and Babe The Blue Ox got nothing on Tom, and so it was the last time I saw him before he died; more about that later.
Besides Work, the other thing that defined Tom was his devotion to Family, and to Tom, the two were opposite sides of the same coin: The Family ruled; hard work allowed the Family to flourish. It was that simple. “Family” included not only the one Tom grew up in, but the one he created with my sister-in-law Marilyn, and the extended family that sprouted up like so many branches off a massive tree over the past thirty eight years, with the roots planted in the Smith house on Lewiston Ave in Ferndale. From the beginning, Tom and Marilyn’s house was the Landing Zone for not only their siblings and parents, but various other relatives, countless of their sons’ friends, and later, those friends’ girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands - and in the past several years - children.
My Brother got a paper route with The Detroit Free Press when he was ten, scoring the same two streets that described his territory for yard work. As usual, I would beg him to let me ride with him and after a couple years (once my parents would allow it), he did. After a few months of this, Tom invited me to take over half the route. I was nine. My Brother offered me a simple deal: He would deliver the four days the papers were heavy: Sunday, Monday, Thursday and Saturday; I would deliver Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and do all the Collecting. This was not a problem for me. The “Heavy” days were not only heavy, but almost impossible to fold.
We did this for a year, and once I was ten years old, a route opened up just south of State Fair. Jake, our Station Manager, was doubtful that I could do it since I was on the scrawny side, but Tom put in a good word for me, and promised Jake he would help me deliver on Sundays or whenever I needed help, and he did. For the next few months, Tom would do his route and then come help me do mine, and not just for Sundays; there was many a Thursday where he helped me out as well. Soon enough, I was flying solo, but I’ll never forget the sense of accomplishment. I’ll also never forget that this would never have happened without my Big Brother’s help, which included instructing me in the art of dividing up the 75 pounds of Sunday papers on my bike between the front bags and the rear.
It’s Friday morning, and the entire extended Family is either in attendance at the funeral home for the Viewing, or en route from various points around the country. This includes virtually all of the surviving Smiths, Anconas and Malkowskis, numerous of the Boys’ lifelong friends, their spouses and kids in tow, co-workers from decades’ past, high-school friends, aunts, uncles and dozens of cousins. The throng at the funeral home competed with the ever-growing number of floral arrangements for space in the main room. Nobody minded the crowd, or the fact that we had overwhelmed the building’s air conditioner. Tom was in the House, hosting his last and best Family gathering.
I do believe the manager got a little flustered by the sheer number of children on that first day. They were well behaved, but they were numerous. Tom was undoubtedly pleased to see them there, and it reminded me of how little ones gravitated to him. This would not have been entirely expected. See, the Smith family’s idea of a great family gathering was to gather around the dining room table for a nice dinner, clear the dishes, and then commence to arguing. It was generally the men, voices would get loud, many an accusation would be hurled, the women would get everybody to quiet down, and then we would do it again the following weekend. It was recreation. My Brother was generally in the thick of it, larger than life, with the youngsters stationed in the living room or otherwise within earshot. It didn’t seem to matter. Be it baby or toddler, his size and volume had no effect on them. There just purely was nothing more amusing than to watch this giant bear of a man babble gibberish at a baby, or play peek-a-boo with a two year old. However gruff and intimidating he appeared to be, Kids had his number. They knew it. He knew it. They knew he knew it.
I marvel, in retrospect, at the number of times I followed in my Brother’s footsteps, at first shoveling snow, raking leaves and cutting grass - every season offering a different opportunity. After Tom scored work around the neighborhood, I scored work around the neighborhood; after Tom got a paper route, I got a paper route; after Tom got a job as a Caddy, I got a job as a Caddy; after Tom got a job in Construction out of High School, I, uh, well, let’s just say I punted on that one.
At age twelve, Tom started Caddying at the Detroit Golf Club and gave me his paper route, which was literally our neighborhood. He biked the two miles to DGC at 5:00am every morning during the summer and queued up to Caddy for the rich folk. He got there early so he could score an early “Loop” (group of golfers) so as to score another one directly after lunch. At DGC, a rare honor bestowed on very few Caddies when they were short on bodies during the weekend was to pull a “Double”, literally, one Caddy for two Golfers through one round of 18 holes. This involved not only carrying the bags but tracking two balls and hustling the bags to both shots, inevitably on opposite sides of the fairway. Repeat that process for however many shots it took both Golfers to get to the green. By age 13 my brother not only pulled more Doubles than any Caddie at DGC, he often pulled two Doubles in a single day; Tom would return home, sun-burnt but fresh around 7pm on a Saturday, and frequently repeat the process on Sunday.
Suffice to say that once I reached age twelve, I wanted to Caddy too. Tom introduced me to the Caddy Master, who had the same doubts as Jake, given my size. A good word from Tom – who was a “Captain” in the ranks of Caddies after his first year – and I was in. I remember in my first year being hustled at cards – as were many of the Newbies in the Caddy Shack – by some of the older boys. The Ring Leader was a Caddy named Hybor. He was two years older than my brother at this point, who was 14. I was too ashamed to tell Tom that I had lost ten bucks (the entire day’s earnings) playing poker, but he found out anyhow. He took me aside, called me a dumb ass, and then patiently explained how the older boys cheated, using marked cards and spotters that would signal the strength of your hand. He also pointed out that they knew how to play cards, and I didn’t. He went back to the Caddy Shack the next day and had a talk with Hybor. My brother could be very persuasive, and thereafter, Hybor and various of his Toadies swore off gambling, or at least with the younger Caddies, and I learned another valuable life lesson.
It’s Saturday morning, July 2nd, and the funeral is set for 11am. Sharon and I are staying with Marilyn, so she, the boys and we bustle out just before 10am. The funeral home is only two minutes away, and we all go in for a final visit with Tom before Folks start arriving. Within minutes of our arrival, Friends and Family were flooding in, and the place was practically full a half-hour before the service.
After high school, Tom worked Construction, picking up the variety of mechanical skills that would serve him later in life. Over the years, in addition to his regular job Tom would do side jobs, usually concrete. He was also the de facto concrete guy in the family, and did work on all of our houses: driveways, patios, you name it. Tom could single-handedly excavate, form, pour and finish a driveway in one day, and do it all with hand tools. I know, because he used to hire me to help him on some jobs, with my contribution mainly being propping a form or getting him the tools he needed. Until you’ve formed and finished concrete by hand, you don’t know what work is, especially since there’s this tiny window to get it all done before the concrete sets.
There was a school of thought that maintained you could extend your work time by watering the concrete. Tom would have none of that, claiming it cheapened the end result, so we worked hard and worked fast, and nobody more so than him.
From my perspective, if his work life didn’t kill him, nothing would. Family. Work. Everything else takes care of itself. My brother first and foremost taught me the value of work, an ethic we picked up from our Dad and which Tom – through his example - handed down to me. My Brother demonstrated to me what was possible. Over the years we would talk about our jobs. Overtime was a frequent topic, and he made it clear how important OT was. I remember one time squawking about working a Sunday at the supermarket where I unloaded trucks and stocked shelves. “How much are you making on Sundays?”, he asked. “$12.50 an hour”, I replied. “Peter, that’s a hundred bucks in one day. Work as many of those damn things as you can get”. After that, my Sundays were fixed in my mind as a “hundred dollar day”. I worked 26 of them a year until I got a job in the telephone business.
There was a steady stream of Folks going up to the casket. When it came Sharon’s and my turn to go up to the casket, I felt at peace. Sad, but at peace. I watched as several of my nephews’ friends struggled with his death as if a member of their own family had died. The place was packed to over-flowing, including tons of kids, who all had their opportunity to walk up to the casket and see Tom one more time. This has been a much-discussed topic amongst the adults of my acquaintance. When are they old enough? How will it affect them? Watching the Kids, it occurred to me that there was no age at which they’re too young, no effect other than a good one. Tom had one last thing to give, one last lesson to teach.
The funeral service finished, and there was an announcement of a wake at the Oxford Inn, the Family’s favorite place for dinner. In true Irish/Italian style, this was a Wake with a capital W, and I suspect exactly as Tom would have liked it: Family and Friends all gathered together, having a good time, reconnecting, and celebrating with food and drink.
Just a few months before he died, I happened to score a work assignment in the Detroit area. Of course, I stayed with Tom and Marilyn. The morning after I arrived, there was a foot of fresh snow on the ground. Tom and Marilyn bundled up for their regular ritual, which included clearing snow not only on their own lot, but that of several of their neighbors. Of course, I joined in on the fun. Tom muscled the snow blower out of the shed and pulled it backwards through the snow in the yard, and once again I marveled at his strength. Tom worked the Blower, Marilyn and I worked the shovels. An hour later, three houses were cleared but at that point I had to leave for my regular job. As I rounded the corner of their house towards my car, I could see Tom and Marilyn, still methodically clearing snow at a house across the street. It’s strange to think that one of my last impressions of my Brother was also one of my first: him battling the snow on a bitter cold day, clearing walks and driveways, the discharge from the snow blower collecting on his hat, shoulders and other portions of his massive frame. When we were kids we were clearing the neighbors’ snow for profit. Fifty years later, we were clearing the neighbors’ snow for free.
Family. Work. Take care of those things and everything else takes care of itself.
I miss him.
Tom had been at this for a couple of winters before he let me come along. For the first of many times, he did what Big Brothers are so frequently burdened to do: he shrugged his shoulders, said “OK, you can come”, pointed his finger at me and said “but you better do exactly what I tell you to do”. I will never forget the direct eye contact, and I instinctively understood that while Big Brothers may be generous, failure under these circumstances was not an option. There would be consequences, most likely the dread “why are you slapping yourself in the face with your own hands?” Shtick, where my brother would pin me down, take my own hands and slap me in the face with them. All strictly for fun, you know, and judiciously exercised.
That January morning, we bundled up and were off. His preferred territory covered our street, Omira, and the next street over, Yacama, between State Fair Avenue and Eight Mile. The first house we got a hit on was on Yacama close to Eight Mile. Tom negotiated the deal: one dollar, but we had to do everything, including removing a foot of snow from the tops of their two cars. Oh yeah; and the cars would stay in the driveway. I cratered fast. One foot of snow when you’re 4 foot tall was daunting. My brother gave me one of my more memorable pieces of advice, and the first that I recollect from him: “Shovel off the top half of the snow, then shovel what’s underneath”.
It worked. Rejuvenated, I finished the sidewalk while Tom did the walkway, the steps, the porch, the driveway and the cars. I stopped at one point, tired, and marveled at the continuing downpour of snow, and my brother, a relentless silhouette from the light of the nearby streetlight, fighting back the snow from our customer’s property, flurries building on his stocking cap, scarf, gloves and coat. I was cold after a half hour, but my brother taught me the second lesson of the day: endurance. Sure, I could have left when I got cold, but to do so would have meant disappointing him. “Keep moving”, he would say; “you’ll stay warm”. He was right.
I hung in for the whole job. We got paid. Tom cut me in for a third.
It’s Friday, July 1st around 1:30am. Sharon and I have just gotten into Detroit, having gotten the word of Tom’s death early Wednesday. He had just turned 60 the week before he died, and left behind his wife Marilyn, his sons Tom, Tim and Brian, our Dad, two sisters, Susan and Jane, hundreds of other relatives and friends, and me. His health hadn’t been good in the past few years, but to say that his death was a shock to me was an understatement. Tom was my Big Brother, and to me he had been a rock since my earliest memories. To see him work as I have so many times in my life, you would have thought him indestructible regardless of what health problems were thrown his way later in life. Paul Bunyan and Babe The Blue Ox got nothing on Tom, and so it was the last time I saw him before he died; more about that later.
Besides Work, the other thing that defined Tom was his devotion to Family, and to Tom, the two were opposite sides of the same coin: The Family ruled; hard work allowed the Family to flourish. It was that simple. “Family” included not only the one Tom grew up in, but the one he created with my sister-in-law Marilyn, and the extended family that sprouted up like so many branches off a massive tree over the past thirty eight years, with the roots planted in the Smith house on Lewiston Ave in Ferndale. From the beginning, Tom and Marilyn’s house was the Landing Zone for not only their siblings and parents, but various other relatives, countless of their sons’ friends, and later, those friends’ girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands - and in the past several years - children.
My Brother got a paper route with The Detroit Free Press when he was ten, scoring the same two streets that described his territory for yard work. As usual, I would beg him to let me ride with him and after a couple years (once my parents would allow it), he did. After a few months of this, Tom invited me to take over half the route. I was nine. My Brother offered me a simple deal: He would deliver the four days the papers were heavy: Sunday, Monday, Thursday and Saturday; I would deliver Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and do all the Collecting. This was not a problem for me. The “Heavy” days were not only heavy, but almost impossible to fold.
We did this for a year, and once I was ten years old, a route opened up just south of State Fair. Jake, our Station Manager, was doubtful that I could do it since I was on the scrawny side, but Tom put in a good word for me, and promised Jake he would help me deliver on Sundays or whenever I needed help, and he did. For the next few months, Tom would do his route and then come help me do mine, and not just for Sundays; there was many a Thursday where he helped me out as well. Soon enough, I was flying solo, but I’ll never forget the sense of accomplishment. I’ll also never forget that this would never have happened without my Big Brother’s help, which included instructing me in the art of dividing up the 75 pounds of Sunday papers on my bike between the front bags and the rear.
It’s Friday morning, and the entire extended Family is either in attendance at the funeral home for the Viewing, or en route from various points around the country. This includes virtually all of the surviving Smiths, Anconas and Malkowskis, numerous of the Boys’ lifelong friends, their spouses and kids in tow, co-workers from decades’ past, high-school friends, aunts, uncles and dozens of cousins. The throng at the funeral home competed with the ever-growing number of floral arrangements for space in the main room. Nobody minded the crowd, or the fact that we had overwhelmed the building’s air conditioner. Tom was in the House, hosting his last and best Family gathering.
I do believe the manager got a little flustered by the sheer number of children on that first day. They were well behaved, but they were numerous. Tom was undoubtedly pleased to see them there, and it reminded me of how little ones gravitated to him. This would not have been entirely expected. See, the Smith family’s idea of a great family gathering was to gather around the dining room table for a nice dinner, clear the dishes, and then commence to arguing. It was generally the men, voices would get loud, many an accusation would be hurled, the women would get everybody to quiet down, and then we would do it again the following weekend. It was recreation. My Brother was generally in the thick of it, larger than life, with the youngsters stationed in the living room or otherwise within earshot. It didn’t seem to matter. Be it baby or toddler, his size and volume had no effect on them. There just purely was nothing more amusing than to watch this giant bear of a man babble gibberish at a baby, or play peek-a-boo with a two year old. However gruff and intimidating he appeared to be, Kids had his number. They knew it. He knew it. They knew he knew it.
I marvel, in retrospect, at the number of times I followed in my Brother’s footsteps, at first shoveling snow, raking leaves and cutting grass - every season offering a different opportunity. After Tom scored work around the neighborhood, I scored work around the neighborhood; after Tom got a paper route, I got a paper route; after Tom got a job as a Caddy, I got a job as a Caddy; after Tom got a job in Construction out of High School, I, uh, well, let’s just say I punted on that one.
At age twelve, Tom started Caddying at the Detroit Golf Club and gave me his paper route, which was literally our neighborhood. He biked the two miles to DGC at 5:00am every morning during the summer and queued up to Caddy for the rich folk. He got there early so he could score an early “Loop” (group of golfers) so as to score another one directly after lunch. At DGC, a rare honor bestowed on very few Caddies when they were short on bodies during the weekend was to pull a “Double”, literally, one Caddy for two Golfers through one round of 18 holes. This involved not only carrying the bags but tracking two balls and hustling the bags to both shots, inevitably on opposite sides of the fairway. Repeat that process for however many shots it took both Golfers to get to the green. By age 13 my brother not only pulled more Doubles than any Caddie at DGC, he often pulled two Doubles in a single day; Tom would return home, sun-burnt but fresh around 7pm on a Saturday, and frequently repeat the process on Sunday.
Suffice to say that once I reached age twelve, I wanted to Caddy too. Tom introduced me to the Caddy Master, who had the same doubts as Jake, given my size. A good word from Tom – who was a “Captain” in the ranks of Caddies after his first year – and I was in. I remember in my first year being hustled at cards – as were many of the Newbies in the Caddy Shack – by some of the older boys. The Ring Leader was a Caddy named Hybor. He was two years older than my brother at this point, who was 14. I was too ashamed to tell Tom that I had lost ten bucks (the entire day’s earnings) playing poker, but he found out anyhow. He took me aside, called me a dumb ass, and then patiently explained how the older boys cheated, using marked cards and spotters that would signal the strength of your hand. He also pointed out that they knew how to play cards, and I didn’t. He went back to the Caddy Shack the next day and had a talk with Hybor. My brother could be very persuasive, and thereafter, Hybor and various of his Toadies swore off gambling, or at least with the younger Caddies, and I learned another valuable life lesson.
It’s Saturday morning, July 2nd, and the funeral is set for 11am. Sharon and I are staying with Marilyn, so she, the boys and we bustle out just before 10am. The funeral home is only two minutes away, and we all go in for a final visit with Tom before Folks start arriving. Within minutes of our arrival, Friends and Family were flooding in, and the place was practically full a half-hour before the service.
After high school, Tom worked Construction, picking up the variety of mechanical skills that would serve him later in life. Over the years, in addition to his regular job Tom would do side jobs, usually concrete. He was also the de facto concrete guy in the family, and did work on all of our houses: driveways, patios, you name it. Tom could single-handedly excavate, form, pour and finish a driveway in one day, and do it all with hand tools. I know, because he used to hire me to help him on some jobs, with my contribution mainly being propping a form or getting him the tools he needed. Until you’ve formed and finished concrete by hand, you don’t know what work is, especially since there’s this tiny window to get it all done before the concrete sets.
There was a school of thought that maintained you could extend your work time by watering the concrete. Tom would have none of that, claiming it cheapened the end result, so we worked hard and worked fast, and nobody more so than him.
From my perspective, if his work life didn’t kill him, nothing would. Family. Work. Everything else takes care of itself. My brother first and foremost taught me the value of work, an ethic we picked up from our Dad and which Tom – through his example - handed down to me. My Brother demonstrated to me what was possible. Over the years we would talk about our jobs. Overtime was a frequent topic, and he made it clear how important OT was. I remember one time squawking about working a Sunday at the supermarket where I unloaded trucks and stocked shelves. “How much are you making on Sundays?”, he asked. “$12.50 an hour”, I replied. “Peter, that’s a hundred bucks in one day. Work as many of those damn things as you can get”. After that, my Sundays were fixed in my mind as a “hundred dollar day”. I worked 26 of them a year until I got a job in the telephone business.
There was a steady stream of Folks going up to the casket. When it came Sharon’s and my turn to go up to the casket, I felt at peace. Sad, but at peace. I watched as several of my nephews’ friends struggled with his death as if a member of their own family had died. The place was packed to over-flowing, including tons of kids, who all had their opportunity to walk up to the casket and see Tom one more time. This has been a much-discussed topic amongst the adults of my acquaintance. When are they old enough? How will it affect them? Watching the Kids, it occurred to me that there was no age at which they’re too young, no effect other than a good one. Tom had one last thing to give, one last lesson to teach.
The funeral service finished, and there was an announcement of a wake at the Oxford Inn, the Family’s favorite place for dinner. In true Irish/Italian style, this was a Wake with a capital W, and I suspect exactly as Tom would have liked it: Family and Friends all gathered together, having a good time, reconnecting, and celebrating with food and drink.
Just a few months before he died, I happened to score a work assignment in the Detroit area. Of course, I stayed with Tom and Marilyn. The morning after I arrived, there was a foot of fresh snow on the ground. Tom and Marilyn bundled up for their regular ritual, which included clearing snow not only on their own lot, but that of several of their neighbors. Of course, I joined in on the fun. Tom muscled the snow blower out of the shed and pulled it backwards through the snow in the yard, and once again I marveled at his strength. Tom worked the Blower, Marilyn and I worked the shovels. An hour later, three houses were cleared but at that point I had to leave for my regular job. As I rounded the corner of their house towards my car, I could see Tom and Marilyn, still methodically clearing snow at a house across the street. It’s strange to think that one of my last impressions of my Brother was also one of my first: him battling the snow on a bitter cold day, clearing walks and driveways, the discharge from the snow blower collecting on his hat, shoulders and other portions of his massive frame. When we were kids we were clearing the neighbors’ snow for profit. Fifty years later, we were clearing the neighbors’ snow for free.
Family. Work. Take care of those things and everything else takes care of itself.
I miss him.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
LTE: French elites called out
I thoroughly enjoyed Stephen Clarke's op-ed "French elites appalled by treatment of one of their own" (Page B7, May 21). He perfectly describes my impression of elites like Dominique Strauss-Kahn abusing those perceived to be of a lesser station.
Pete Smith, Cypress
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Israelis-vs-Palestinians-1684011.php
This sense of entitlement, however, doesn't begin and end with molesting the help. It also includes abusing taxpayers — particularly American taxpayers - who among other things paid for Strauss-Kahn's $3,000 per night hotel rooms.
It's ironic to think that what he spent in just two weeks on hotel rooms as head of the International Monetary Fund can easily finance his stay for a year at an American prison, should he be convicted.
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Israelis-vs-Palestinians-1684011.php
Thursday, May 26, 2011
LTE: A-OK with Grier
Jennifer Mathieu Blessington writes that she is leaving HISD for imposing assessment tests that measure students' — and teachers' - performance. I note with interest that Blessington, while criticizing the status quo of assessment tests, offers no alternative for measuring teacher performance other than to note that "in years past my colleagues and I were allowed to create our own tests to see how our students were doing."
Pete Smith, Cypress
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Teachers-and-leadership-1690907.php
It's ironic that she would reminisce fondly about the complete lack of accountability in years past that contributed to the failure of our school systems in the first place. That reminds me of the attempt by education reformers more than a decade ago to have teachers in Texas take a high school equivalency test in order to qualify to teach. The teachers' unions protested loudly, and it disappeared. I thought it strange to think that teachers would object to proving that they have the barest minimum of education in order to be allowed to teach our kids, but it's consistent with their insistence to be held to no standards at all.
If teachers like Blessington want to be taken seriously, they should come up with rigorous performance standards already common to most other professions, instead of complaining when others like Superintendent Terry Grier fill the vacuum by imposing standards on them.
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Teachers-and-leadership-1690907.php
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
MS-150 Chronicles, Part Three
SATURDAY, April 16, 2011
Saturday Dark Thirty in the morn, and about now, 13,000 Riders (or thereabouts) are lined up at various staging points in West Houston, Katy and scores of other points in between to start the MS150 ride to Austin. Meanwhile, I head out before sunrise on the last leg to a work assignment in Chicago in possession of a large coffee, hash browns and a Jack-In-The-Box Sourdough breakfast sandwich, basically an Egg McMuffin on steroids and on sourdough bread. Served all day. I will never eat McDonalds again if there's a Jack-in-the-box in the neighborhood. I had actually given up on McDonalds some months back, and as I roll down the road, I wonder how they survive at all.
There's a variety of reasons to abhor McDonalds. It's not just their unchanging, Stalinesque menu, or their measly portions, or a nitwit staff that gets the order wrong 50% of the time, or $2.29 for a glass of orange juice from concentrate, or even the rampant hiring of Illegal Immigrants right under the noses of ICE and the Justice Department. The number one reason not to patronize McDonalds? We'll get to that in a second. In the meantime, I thought I would share some honest-to-god conversations I have had with McDonalds' personnel in the past four months, from all four borders of this great nation, and generally speaking through the drive-through window:
- “You got my order wrong, you got my two partner's orders wrong. No, we didn't switch bags. None of us have what we ordered.”
- “I asked for ketchup, salt and pepper. You didn't give me any.”
- “OK, can I get more than one ketchup, one salt, and one pepper?”
- “What do you mean, your 'jefe no está aquÃ'? I don't know what that means, but I'm pretty sure it's not taking care of my problem.”
- “I asked for three creams and three sugars on the side. You put them in my coffee.”
- “Look, my bill is six dollars and 41 cents. I gave you eleven dollars and 41 cents. All you need to do is give me a five dollar bill in change.”
- “You just handed me my order; my hamburger is cold. How is that even possible?”
- “What part of 'don't put any whipped cream in my milk shake' did you not understand?”
All the other hassles aside, what is worst about McDonalds is their policy of not serving you breakfast after 11am (10am in some markets). Pull up to the drive-through station at 11:01, and you are made to feel like an idiot for not bothering to have checked your watch beforehand, all the more galling inasmuch as the message is delivered by somebody who can't make change in their head and requires pictures on the register to tally your order. McDonalds is as full of themselves as Microsoft was, say, back in the 90s when they thought they could do no wrong while simultaneously providing crap product, their Mission Statement based on the premise that their customers are cattle and must be controlled.
More or less the operating premise of the Democrat Party.
I continue to push North to St. Louis and start to look for the interesting little towns that dot America like so many exclamation marks. I'm not disappointed, soon crossing Lebanon, St. James and Cuba. I zip through St. Louis, hit the Illinois state line, and in my path lay Mt. Olive, Divernon and Farmersville on my way to Springfield, IL, Abraham Lincoln's home. More about America's third most popular president later.
Settling in for a long, fairly boring stretch through Illinois, I start messing with my GPS, a reliable source of entertainment when neither satellite radio or the countryside offers any. For example, you can amuse yourself by doing a GPS search for Food, and it will offer you different categories: Mexican, Italian, American, French, German, Fast Food, etc. There's even a search option for "British Isles". Seriously? The mind boggles as to what British delicacies one might find in one's travels through America: Bangers and Mash, Shepherd's Pie; Corned Beef and Cabbage, Boxty, Haggis, Black Pudding, Lobscouse & Spotted Dog......
How to explain the Brits' lack of concern about the stuff that they eat and the near retardation of the British palate since their earliest days? My theory is that Her Majesty's subjects simply had other priorities. See, the Empire had to devote so much in terms of resources to the Admiralty and the Trading Companies so as to maintain their world domination, that there was nothing left to devote to the finer virtues, such as cooking, the arts, and music. So, the French did the cooking, the Italians did the Art, and the Germans did the music. Sadly, a century ago, America took over dominion of the world, whilst British cooking continued its long stagnation.
Says the guy who lives in the country that gave the world McDonalds.
The skies cleared some in the morning. I was up just prior to first light, and after a couple of cups of coffee I stepped outside with the dregs of my cup and a fresh ciggie. My room was on the lee side of dawn, but that was no big loss, as the Early sky was a uniform grayish white mass almost totally lacking in the texture you expect from clouds. By mid-morn the mass to the West had divided itself into some righteous clusters, while the bulk to the East and overhead remained an amorphous blob. The result as the sun rose was sunlight that didn't hit the ground, but did increasingly illuminate the clouds to the West as it sifted right to left. The effect was cool. Darkness to the right, a riot of activity overhead, and clear almost laser-beam like rays populating the skies to the West. This could only mean that the amorphous blob couldn't have been so terribly high as to block the sun from its cousins, particularly in the early portion of sunrise. The effect was interesting and again, something of a novelty.
You see so much more of weather when you're driving.
I roll out from the Motel and head north. As if on cue the clouds all draw back together and once again, steady rain comes down. This is nothing like the Tornadic conditions of the day before and this rain falls straight from the sky, spreading itself evenly across my windshield, each droplet exactly the same size. I set the stroke on my intermittent wipers, and I don't need to change it for the next hour.
As I drive, I'll also mix things up by changing the language on the GPS from British Isles to, say, German. You just haven't lived until you've heard that female German GPS voice – I call her Helga - command you to "Rechts Abbiegen!", or inform you that you are “Ankunft am Bestimmungsort!”. You can almost picture Helga in spiked heels, leather and fishnet stockings, a whip in her right hand, a peaked SS Officer's hat framing her blonde locks, lipstick as red as blood. Suffice to say, while German is not the language of love, it is arguably the language of S&M. It gives me some insight into ze Germans. “Helga, Paddel mein Hintern!”.
I try not to dwell on ze Verführerin and shift my focus to other things. To honor the impending nuptials of Prince William and Kate, I reprogram the voice on my GPS to “English”. The voice is of course female, but with none of the complexity of Helga. I name her Fanny, and contemplate the sheer triviality of my GPS including an English accented voice in its repertoire. Speaking of the Royal Wedding, I'm amazed at Americans' continuing fascination with the royal family. Thomas Paine must be rolling in his grave, if not spinning like a centrifuge, but my overall impression is that the institution, while mostly harmless, is hardly blameless.
One need only look at the serial embarrassments of the current British royal family to sense the urgent need for change: the inbred homeliness, the infidelity, the murderous intrigue, the Oedipus Complex. And that's just Prince Charles. Not that he hasn't been provoked into a lot of his bad behavior. The deal he had with his mother was that if he married Diana and produced heirs, that she would surrender the crown to him. Then she went and Welshed on the deal (pun intended), and now Prince Charles approaches his dotage, less likely than ever to be addressed as King Charles. What to make of all this?
I have a theory. I believe that Queen Elizabeth – belying her kindly persona – has decided that she likes being Queen too much to surrender it to anybody, and as time goes on and her mental faculties dwindle, her hold on the throne has become ever-more vise like. The only question is: has she always been like this, or did she get like this over time? My money is on the former. Monarchy has always been a pretty cut-throat business, as the process of Succession in Britain has proven over the centuries. Think Henry the Eight, for example. But the current state of affairs may provide an opportunity for the very fundamental change necessary to rejuvenate the Crown, and what better way for that to occur than a good old fashioned Coup? Queen Elizabeth needs to be overthrown. Further, I think Prince Charles thinks he's just the man to do it. In his idle moments – which are many - don't tell me he doesn't have this checklist running through his head:
- Finance improvements for the Tower of London.
- Declare Self the Pope of the Anglican Church.
- Imprison Mother and other family members as necessary.
- Ascend to the throne.
- Banishment and executions as necessary.
But that it were true. Can you even imagine the royalties on that reality TV show?
As I drive out of Springfield, IL, I pass Atlanta, Normal and Pontiac on my way to Joliet, just outside of Chicago. I'm just about there when the ZZ Top classic "Jesus Just Left Chicago" comes on the radio. Spooky. Not that I have a Jesus complex, but having just visited Abraham Lincoln's home in Springfield, IL on the heels of my extended meditation about royalty, I'm struck by the other ways that Americans celebrate royalty, in this case, Abraham Lincoln. Earlier in the day I had stopped into the Abraham Lincoln Residential museum, as worshipful a shrine as one could imagine, and staffed with about a dozen of Forest Service guides, all equally as worshipful of Honest Abe. Left to nobody's influence other than theirs, I would conclude that Lincoln was, if not Jesus Christ reincarnated, at least worthy of a regard not generally due to mere mortals.
Dressed in their Forest Service parkas, the Guides would shepherd groups of twenty through the Lincoln residence. The tour was informative and fun, but the reverence was palpable, so much so that our Guide failed to remark at all on the Lincoln Outhouse, which consisted of one stall and three stools, with the middle stool a mini-throne compared to the other two. It occurred to me that the only reason to have one stall but three stools is that those three would on occasion be used simultaneously. The mind boggled at the possibilities: family-time? business meetings? And why not three different stalls? It's not like he lacked the funds.
Not wanting to be a buzz-kill, I keep my questions to myself, but take pictures for posterity's sake.
Now, average Folk in America don't much cotton to deification, are not prone to hyperbole, and generally disdain the elevation of any person much above anybody else. But that is not to say that there is not a segment of society that does not devote itself to such notions, and these folks are generally are in the employ of the federal government, and inclined to ascribe to other government employees such as Lincoln a stature that allows them to sustain their own sense of self-worth. And so it was that I was forced to endure a battalion of Lincoln worshipers in the near proximity of his home, not to mention my trajectory towards Chicago.
The Visitor's Center was my first clue. Lincoln mugs, Lincoln key chains, Lincoln coasters, Lincoln frig magnets – a vast trove of Lincoln plunder in the gift shop. Next to the 1/64th scale recreation of Springfield were statues of his head and hands cast from plaster impressions taken some time during his presidency. Next to them was a sign inviting visitors to touch the Great Man's head and hands. I wander over to the library section, and wonder whether or not Abe in the Afterlife was chagrined by the – count them – fifteen thousand books written about him in the wake of the Civil War, much less any invitation to fondle his extremities?
There is a school of thought that says that Old Abe brought much of the hero worship Vibe upon himself. This was the guy who stood for having his head encased in plaster, after all, and as History has recorded, was more than inclined to the Florid and Self-Sacrificial Speech. Lincoln was prone to agonize, publicly and privately, over his every decision and its import, with all of it methodically recorded for posterity. And is it just me, or was Abe Lincoln cognizant of the fact that even his private utterances, whether recorded by himself or others, would eventually be revealed - and in just the right sequence - so as ensure his place in history?
Me, I think old Abe has a few things to answer for in that regard, but is otherwise OK. I rank him third on our list of Presidents behind Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge, both of whom I hold in high regard for their modesty and lack of concern for their legacy, traits shared by only a few other American presidents.
I do a search on the GPS for Fast Food and there's an address for The Gyro Shack in Joliet. Score. Ten minutes later, I'm walking into a cramped little, well, shack: counter seating for - I kid you not - three. Trying to make my Daddy proud, I have made a point of pronouncing "Gyro" correctly. Since our earliest trips to Greektown in Detroit, he would admonish me to pronounce it "Yeer-oh, with the emphasis on the first syllable. Don't disrespect these guys by pronouncing it any other way". We would then be served one of the best things you could ever eat, shaved pieces of lamb heaped on a puffy flat bread and dressed with onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and sour cream sauce.
"I'll have a Yeer-oh sandwich with fries", I says. "OK" says the burly counter guy, in classic Chicago-ese, "what kind of Pop you want with that Jeer-oh?" You can't make this stuff up. Two minutes later I've got a Gyro the size of a small fireplace log, fries and Pop, in this case a diet Pepsi. Total: $6.40. I had also asked him for some extra sour cream on the side. He said, "trust me, you won't want any sauce on the side"; he was right. My Gyro was laden with the stuff, oozing out of the sides, making a happy mess on my fingers and dripping onto the wrapper.
I read the Chicago Tribune as I eat, watch a hockey game on the TV and shoot the breeze with the guy to my left, who is also eating a Gyro, reading a paper, watching hockey and talking to a complete stranger to his right, standing up at the counter built for three patrons. I contemplate the Quantum inferences until I realize that this guy, inexplicably, has a side of extra sour cream sauce.
Minutes later, I'm out of there with the uneaten half of my Gyro stored in the cooler. I head slightly East and start looking for a motel. By this time, the MS150 Riders are all in to LaGrange. I wonder how things are going, and if even Heartache's tent at Schlumberger could possibly be serving anything better than a Joliet Gyro.
Saturday Dark Thirty in the morn, and about now, 13,000 Riders (or thereabouts) are lined up at various staging points in West Houston, Katy and scores of other points in between to start the MS150 ride to Austin. Meanwhile, I head out before sunrise on the last leg to a work assignment in Chicago in possession of a large coffee, hash browns and a Jack-In-The-Box Sourdough breakfast sandwich, basically an Egg McMuffin on steroids and on sourdough bread. Served all day. I will never eat McDonalds again if there's a Jack-in-the-box in the neighborhood. I had actually given up on McDonalds some months back, and as I roll down the road, I wonder how they survive at all.
There's a variety of reasons to abhor McDonalds. It's not just their unchanging, Stalinesque menu, or their measly portions, or a nitwit staff that gets the order wrong 50% of the time, or $2.29 for a glass of orange juice from concentrate, or even the rampant hiring of Illegal Immigrants right under the noses of ICE and the Justice Department. The number one reason not to patronize McDonalds? We'll get to that in a second. In the meantime, I thought I would share some honest-to-god conversations I have had with McDonalds' personnel in the past four months, from all four borders of this great nation, and generally speaking through the drive-through window:
- “You got my order wrong, you got my two partner's orders wrong. No, we didn't switch bags. None of us have what we ordered.”
- “I asked for ketchup, salt and pepper. You didn't give me any.”
- “OK, can I get more than one ketchup, one salt, and one pepper?”
- “What do you mean, your 'jefe no está aquÃ'? I don't know what that means, but I'm pretty sure it's not taking care of my problem.”
- “I asked for three creams and three sugars on the side. You put them in my coffee.”
- “Look, my bill is six dollars and 41 cents. I gave you eleven dollars and 41 cents. All you need to do is give me a five dollar bill in change.”
- “You just handed me my order; my hamburger is cold. How is that even possible?”
- “What part of 'don't put any whipped cream in my milk shake' did you not understand?”
All the other hassles aside, what is worst about McDonalds is their policy of not serving you breakfast after 11am (10am in some markets). Pull up to the drive-through station at 11:01, and you are made to feel like an idiot for not bothering to have checked your watch beforehand, all the more galling inasmuch as the message is delivered by somebody who can't make change in their head and requires pictures on the register to tally your order. McDonalds is as full of themselves as Microsoft was, say, back in the 90s when they thought they could do no wrong while simultaneously providing crap product, their Mission Statement based on the premise that their customers are cattle and must be controlled.
More or less the operating premise of the Democrat Party.
I continue to push North to St. Louis and start to look for the interesting little towns that dot America like so many exclamation marks. I'm not disappointed, soon crossing Lebanon, St. James and Cuba. I zip through St. Louis, hit the Illinois state line, and in my path lay Mt. Olive, Divernon and Farmersville on my way to Springfield, IL, Abraham Lincoln's home. More about America's third most popular president later.
Settling in for a long, fairly boring stretch through Illinois, I start messing with my GPS, a reliable source of entertainment when neither satellite radio or the countryside offers any. For example, you can amuse yourself by doing a GPS search for Food, and it will offer you different categories: Mexican, Italian, American, French, German, Fast Food, etc. There's even a search option for "British Isles". Seriously? The mind boggles as to what British delicacies one might find in one's travels through America: Bangers and Mash, Shepherd's Pie; Corned Beef and Cabbage, Boxty, Haggis, Black Pudding, Lobscouse & Spotted Dog......
How to explain the Brits' lack of concern about the stuff that they eat and the near retardation of the British palate since their earliest days? My theory is that Her Majesty's subjects simply had other priorities. See, the Empire had to devote so much in terms of resources to the Admiralty and the Trading Companies so as to maintain their world domination, that there was nothing left to devote to the finer virtues, such as cooking, the arts, and music. So, the French did the cooking, the Italians did the Art, and the Germans did the music. Sadly, a century ago, America took over dominion of the world, whilst British cooking continued its long stagnation.
Says the guy who lives in the country that gave the world McDonalds.
The skies cleared some in the morning. I was up just prior to first light, and after a couple of cups of coffee I stepped outside with the dregs of my cup and a fresh ciggie. My room was on the lee side of dawn, but that was no big loss, as the Early sky was a uniform grayish white mass almost totally lacking in the texture you expect from clouds. By mid-morn the mass to the West had divided itself into some righteous clusters, while the bulk to the East and overhead remained an amorphous blob. The result as the sun rose was sunlight that didn't hit the ground, but did increasingly illuminate the clouds to the West as it sifted right to left. The effect was cool. Darkness to the right, a riot of activity overhead, and clear almost laser-beam like rays populating the skies to the West. This could only mean that the amorphous blob couldn't have been so terribly high as to block the sun from its cousins, particularly in the early portion of sunrise. The effect was interesting and again, something of a novelty.
You see so much more of weather when you're driving.
I roll out from the Motel and head north. As if on cue the clouds all draw back together and once again, steady rain comes down. This is nothing like the Tornadic conditions of the day before and this rain falls straight from the sky, spreading itself evenly across my windshield, each droplet exactly the same size. I set the stroke on my intermittent wipers, and I don't need to change it for the next hour.
As I drive, I'll also mix things up by changing the language on the GPS from British Isles to, say, German. You just haven't lived until you've heard that female German GPS voice – I call her Helga - command you to "Rechts Abbiegen!", or inform you that you are “Ankunft am Bestimmungsort!”. You can almost picture Helga in spiked heels, leather and fishnet stockings, a whip in her right hand, a peaked SS Officer's hat framing her blonde locks, lipstick as red as blood. Suffice to say, while German is not the language of love, it is arguably the language of S&M. It gives me some insight into ze Germans. “Helga, Paddel mein Hintern!”.
I try not to dwell on ze Verführerin and shift my focus to other things. To honor the impending nuptials of Prince William and Kate, I reprogram the voice on my GPS to “English”. The voice is of course female, but with none of the complexity of Helga. I name her Fanny, and contemplate the sheer triviality of my GPS including an English accented voice in its repertoire. Speaking of the Royal Wedding, I'm amazed at Americans' continuing fascination with the royal family. Thomas Paine must be rolling in his grave, if not spinning like a centrifuge, but my overall impression is that the institution, while mostly harmless, is hardly blameless.
One need only look at the serial embarrassments of the current British royal family to sense the urgent need for change: the inbred homeliness, the infidelity, the murderous intrigue, the Oedipus Complex. And that's just Prince Charles. Not that he hasn't been provoked into a lot of his bad behavior. The deal he had with his mother was that if he married Diana and produced heirs, that she would surrender the crown to him. Then she went and Welshed on the deal (pun intended), and now Prince Charles approaches his dotage, less likely than ever to be addressed as King Charles. What to make of all this?
I have a theory. I believe that Queen Elizabeth – belying her kindly persona – has decided that she likes being Queen too much to surrender it to anybody, and as time goes on and her mental faculties dwindle, her hold on the throne has become ever-more vise like. The only question is: has she always been like this, or did she get like this over time? My money is on the former. Monarchy has always been a pretty cut-throat business, as the process of Succession in Britain has proven over the centuries. Think Henry the Eight, for example. But the current state of affairs may provide an opportunity for the very fundamental change necessary to rejuvenate the Crown, and what better way for that to occur than a good old fashioned Coup? Queen Elizabeth needs to be overthrown. Further, I think Prince Charles thinks he's just the man to do it. In his idle moments – which are many - don't tell me he doesn't have this checklist running through his head:
- Finance improvements for the Tower of London.
- Declare Self the Pope of the Anglican Church.
- Imprison Mother and other family members as necessary.
- Ascend to the throne.
- Banishment and executions as necessary.
But that it were true. Can you even imagine the royalties on that reality TV show?
As I drive out of Springfield, IL, I pass Atlanta, Normal and Pontiac on my way to Joliet, just outside of Chicago. I'm just about there when the ZZ Top classic "Jesus Just Left Chicago" comes on the radio. Spooky. Not that I have a Jesus complex, but having just visited Abraham Lincoln's home in Springfield, IL on the heels of my extended meditation about royalty, I'm struck by the other ways that Americans celebrate royalty, in this case, Abraham Lincoln. Earlier in the day I had stopped into the Abraham Lincoln Residential museum, as worshipful a shrine as one could imagine, and staffed with about a dozen of Forest Service guides, all equally as worshipful of Honest Abe. Left to nobody's influence other than theirs, I would conclude that Lincoln was, if not Jesus Christ reincarnated, at least worthy of a regard not generally due to mere mortals.
Dressed in their Forest Service parkas, the Guides would shepherd groups of twenty through the Lincoln residence. The tour was informative and fun, but the reverence was palpable, so much so that our Guide failed to remark at all on the Lincoln Outhouse, which consisted of one stall and three stools, with the middle stool a mini-throne compared to the other two. It occurred to me that the only reason to have one stall but three stools is that those three would on occasion be used simultaneously. The mind boggled at the possibilities: family-time? business meetings? And why not three different stalls? It's not like he lacked the funds.
Not wanting to be a buzz-kill, I keep my questions to myself, but take pictures for posterity's sake.
Now, average Folk in America don't much cotton to deification, are not prone to hyperbole, and generally disdain the elevation of any person much above anybody else. But that is not to say that there is not a segment of society that does not devote itself to such notions, and these folks are generally are in the employ of the federal government, and inclined to ascribe to other government employees such as Lincoln a stature that allows them to sustain their own sense of self-worth. And so it was that I was forced to endure a battalion of Lincoln worshipers in the near proximity of his home, not to mention my trajectory towards Chicago.
The Visitor's Center was my first clue. Lincoln mugs, Lincoln key chains, Lincoln coasters, Lincoln frig magnets – a vast trove of Lincoln plunder in the gift shop. Next to the 1/64th scale recreation of Springfield were statues of his head and hands cast from plaster impressions taken some time during his presidency. Next to them was a sign inviting visitors to touch the Great Man's head and hands. I wander over to the library section, and wonder whether or not Abe in the Afterlife was chagrined by the – count them – fifteen thousand books written about him in the wake of the Civil War, much less any invitation to fondle his extremities?
There is a school of thought that says that Old Abe brought much of the hero worship Vibe upon himself. This was the guy who stood for having his head encased in plaster, after all, and as History has recorded, was more than inclined to the Florid and Self-Sacrificial Speech. Lincoln was prone to agonize, publicly and privately, over his every decision and its import, with all of it methodically recorded for posterity. And is it just me, or was Abe Lincoln cognizant of the fact that even his private utterances, whether recorded by himself or others, would eventually be revealed - and in just the right sequence - so as ensure his place in history?
Me, I think old Abe has a few things to answer for in that regard, but is otherwise OK. I rank him third on our list of Presidents behind Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge, both of whom I hold in high regard for their modesty and lack of concern for their legacy, traits shared by only a few other American presidents.
I do a search on the GPS for Fast Food and there's an address for The Gyro Shack in Joliet. Score. Ten minutes later, I'm walking into a cramped little, well, shack: counter seating for - I kid you not - three. Trying to make my Daddy proud, I have made a point of pronouncing "Gyro" correctly. Since our earliest trips to Greektown in Detroit, he would admonish me to pronounce it "Yeer-oh, with the emphasis on the first syllable. Don't disrespect these guys by pronouncing it any other way". We would then be served one of the best things you could ever eat, shaved pieces of lamb heaped on a puffy flat bread and dressed with onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and sour cream sauce.
"I'll have a Yeer-oh sandwich with fries", I says. "OK" says the burly counter guy, in classic Chicago-ese, "what kind of Pop you want with that Jeer-oh?" You can't make this stuff up. Two minutes later I've got a Gyro the size of a small fireplace log, fries and Pop, in this case a diet Pepsi. Total: $6.40. I had also asked him for some extra sour cream on the side. He said, "trust me, you won't want any sauce on the side"; he was right. My Gyro was laden with the stuff, oozing out of the sides, making a happy mess on my fingers and dripping onto the wrapper.
I read the Chicago Tribune as I eat, watch a hockey game on the TV and shoot the breeze with the guy to my left, who is also eating a Gyro, reading a paper, watching hockey and talking to a complete stranger to his right, standing up at the counter built for three patrons. I contemplate the Quantum inferences until I realize that this guy, inexplicably, has a side of extra sour cream sauce.
Minutes later, I'm out of there with the uneaten half of my Gyro stored in the cooler. I head slightly East and start looking for a motel. By this time, the MS150 Riders are all in to LaGrange. I wonder how things are going, and if even Heartache's tent at Schlumberger could possibly be serving anything better than a Joliet Gyro.
Friday, May 6, 2011
MS150 Chronicles, Part Two
Friday, April 15, 2011
I arrived in Gravette without event on Friday morning, still scratching my head over the revelation that April 15 was not the day that Americans needed to submit their tax returns. It appears that the entire country was given until the following Monday because the official Washington, DC holiday of Emancipation Day - normally scheduled for April 16th but falling on a Saturday - had been rescheduled to the 15th so as not to cheese all of the residents of DC out of an extra day off from work. Dumbfounded at the boundless capacity of government workers to reward themselves days off not granted to the lesser mortals of the Private Sector, not to mention their capacity to overpay themselves for same, I roll into the parking lot at HQ, check in, talk to all the Necessary People, check out another van, Tool up and start hoofing it to Chicago Friday afternoon. The skies are clear of clouds but overcast to the horizon, the light a diffuse white, but still the kind that made sunglasses mandatory. Heading north out of Gravette, I cross the state line into Missouri, and quickly run through Noel, Ginger Blue and Saginaw on my way to Joplin, then bear East towards Springfield.
Settling in for a long and oft-travelled stretch through Missouri, I turn on my recently-acquired Sirius satellite radio and scroll through the hundreds of options. For all of its early misadventures and strange history, satellite radio is a boon to the traveling worker, the preferences of some of my weird Early Adopter friends notwithstanding. I'm talking about you, Mike Mullally, who has an individual button programmed for every genre, happily flitting from Jazz to Reggae to Blues. Me, I settle onto the narrow range of channels devoted to Rock & Roll and Right Wing Talk Radio, and throw in BBC for some variety, as well as for the ability to keep track of the impending Royal Wedding. More about that later.
I continue to run through my choices on Sirius radio and discover that there's a channel devoted strictly to Pearl Jam. Seriously. Pearl Jam Radio, 24 by 7. This is great news, not because I'm a Pearl Jam fan - quite the contrary. The reason this is good news is that if Sirius Radio sees fit to devote an entire channel to a bunch of lightweights from Seattle whose sole accomplishment was to outlive Kurt Cobain, then there just HAS to be a channel devoted to the Motor City Madman himself, Ted Nugent. One frustrating hour later, I find that there is no channel devoted to the Nuge. What is more grating is that, over time, I discover that the only place Sirius plays Ted Nugent is on a channel called “Hair Nation”. I hope for Ted's sake that he does not know this.
Soon enough, most of my pre-sets are programmed. Those buttons do not include Howard Stern or The Playboy Channel, not that I didn't check both of them out. Stern had hugely amused Sharon and me some 15 years ago on a driving vacation, and I had to admit to some fascination over how Playboy would project itself in a non-visual medium. As it turns out, The Playboy Channel is nothing but a bunch of addle-brained bimbos, all vying to drop the F bomb as much as possible and in as many forms – adjective, verb, adverb and noun – as possible before they run out of things to say in the hour allotted to them. This gaggle is talking to a Rapper I've never heard of who invites them to visit him at “one of his houses in Houston”. Turns out he has three, and one of them is in The Woodlands. I'm struck by the incongruity of a Rapper having a house in The Woodlands, much less boasting about having three in Houston. See, Houston isn't exactly a Hot Bed of Hip Hop (at least not since the days of Willie Dee and the Geto Boys), and bragging about owning three homes in Houston makes even your average Houstonian wonder why one is not enough.
This bit of entertainment aside, there's little else to hold my attention on The Playboy Channel, so I surf for Howard instead. I find him quickly enough, curious about whether his radio show is as vile as his TV show used to be, as I've not listened to him on the radio since 1996. The modern Howard on the radio gets real old, real quick. The same infantile obsession with women's body parts as the TV version, only now Howard gets to drop the F Bomb however and whenever, and once again in as many forms as possible, as if there's a competition between him and the Playboy Bunnies on Channel 99. I move on once Stern starts recounting his most recent session with his psychotherapist, who is treating Howard for - amongst other things – an addiction to Porn. Stern revels in the gory details, including his obsession with Porn involving women dressed up as nurses. I change the channel and put Howard on my Celebrity Suicide Watch-list, along with Charlie Sheen, Rosie O'Donnell and Bill Maher.
Strange to think that these Celebrity Nut Cases should have so much in common, all of them not just world-class Haters, but Self-Loathers to boot. I give them a year before one of them puts a gun in their mouth, and wonder what Group Therapy would look like, was this the Group. Of the four of them, my money is on Charlie to actually pull himself together, with Maher as the odds-on favorite to do himself in, and O'Donnell a close second. Howard's making too much money not to be consoled by it, at least for now.
By early evening I'm in mid-state Missouri, having passed by the Missouri State Highway Patrol Eternal Flame. Seems that the MSHP, or perhaps some do-gooder legislators, have conspired to erect a quasi-religious shrine to fallen state troopers. I'm conflicted on this point. For one thing, Eternal Flames are problematic at best, since I'm pretty sure none of them stays lit perpetually, as has been proven by the several that have gone out in a very public fashion. And what happens when they do go out? Do you just relight the damn thing, no harm, no foul? Does somebody just reset the clock?
Don't get me wrong: I've got no truck with honoring the fallen dead, and Missouri State police have done me a considerable kindness by honoring my 11% Rule, which states that a motorist can safely exceed the posted speed limits by 11% without fear of being pulled over. I have for this reason always had a tender spot in my heart for State Police across the land, all of whom seem more devoted to public safety than revenue generation, and all of whom observe the 11% rule. There is one caveat to this rule: when you go zipping past them at 78 mph on a highway posted 70, you must show them respect by slowing your vehicle until you're out of eyeshot.
Back to the Eternal Flame. In addition to the cost (natural gas doesn't grow on trees, and even sacred cows like, say, the EPA have – if only technically – a half-life), I'm struck by two things: 1) the underlying pessimism of such a project, assuming as it does that public safety will never improve to the point that an Eternal Flame would become irrelevant, and 2) the elevation of one group of Folks over another. I mean, why not a Security Guard Eternal Flame? For sheer volume of candidates to honor with an Eternal Flame, you can't beat an industry that puts an individual in harm's way without benefit of guns or body armor, much less one that lacks the backup of a vengeful and motivated fraternity such as that available to your typical cop, all mobile, and all armed to the teeth.
Plus, statistically, it's a no-brainer: Per capita, Security Guards drop like flies. Were we to extrapolate that criterion, it occurs to me that there's any number of groups deserving of Eternal Flames; Convenience Store Clerks, for example. Why, in Southwest Houston alone, we could stock a Convenience Store Shrine and keep it refreshed indefinitely, or at least until Plexiglas enclosures become the rule, and not the exception.
The clouds have grown thicker and are moving progressively closer to the ground. I'm rolling through foothills, and the clouds are touching the tops of the hills. It's a neat effect, as I can still see far into the distance between the hills, but only underneath the immense layer of clouds that stretches to the horizon both West and East and occupies the sky like a dome in my forward vision. To the East a piece of it actually appears to curve to the ground, obscuring the north end of a short stretch of farmland between the hills. The bottom of this cloud layer is otherwise flat as a pancake, and offers me some perspective on the succession of hills I see ahead of me. I'm rolling up an alley of sorts, and my GPS indicates that I'll be on this generally northeasterly route for some time. Behind me I catch the remnants of clear skies in my rear view mirror, almost cheerily bidding me “adieu, good luck, enjoy your trip up Tornado Alley!”.
As the winds get a little pushy, lightning starts to dance between and within the clouds. I notice with interest that the clouds turn blood red just a second before a lightning bolt. I've not seen that particular phenomenon before, so that is pretty cool. When it shoots from one cloud to another, the originating cloud turns red, and then a second later the receiving cloud, and then the lightning crosses between them. The lightning show continues for the next fifty miles. As I drive through this valley, I try to take several pictures, but none of them come out.
Satellite radio is not offering much in the way of local news and information, so I switch over to normal radio and try to pick up a weather report, without much luck. Soon enough I am rolling through yet another tollbooth, and the operator cheerfully volunteers that “there's tornadoes straight ahead!”, and that “if you run into any hail, you might want to pull over and seek shelter!”. She's so chipper about the whole thing, it ticks me off a little bit. If there's the likelihood of tornadoes, shouldn't she be sternly warning me to seek shelter? I'm not entirely sure I want to get all the way to the “running into hail” stage before I start looking for them. I decide to be less of a pussy about it after I realize that the Toll Booth operator was happily dispensing change and receipts in a driving rainstorm out of a structure about as sturdy as your typical Outhouse, or at least the variety typically found in your less affluent trailer parks.
I continue on for another ten miles or so, and side winds push the car violently to the right some three times in the space of a mile. I'm due for a fill-up, so I drop off of the highway and head a half mile East into a nearby gas station. By this point, the rain is coming down in sheets, something that had not escaped my attention, as I had dialed up the intermittent wipers about once every ten seconds in the mile just prior to getting off the highway. I pull up to a pump, start the gas and run inside to use the bathroom. I know, I know, you should never leave your gas hose unattended, because anything can happen, including the failure of the auto-stop feature on the nozzle, but since that hasn't happened since Dallas some six months ago, I'm thinking hey, what's the likelihood? I finish my business and hustle back out to the car. By this time, the rain has gone from a vertical deluge to a horizontal one, and I'm drenched head to toe in the time it takes me to replace the gas nozzle and grab my receipt.
I head West back to the highway, and within seconds I've driven into a fierce hail storm. With the lightning and the rain, I can't see the hail at all, but the sound as it rattles off the company car is unmistakable. Luckily, I come up on a highway overpass and tuck myself into the last available spot up front on the right shoulder, mere feet from the downpour of hail, which is clear to see now. I'm transfixed for a few minutes as it comes down in sheets, half the size of golf balls and maintaining it's round shape even after striking the ground. A shift in the winds pushes the hailstorm over my van and for five seconds it strikes the front seemingly a thousand times. About then a cop car pulls in front of me. His backup lights advertise that he has thrown it in reverse, and would not look unkindly on any effort of mine to back up so as to provide him some shelter. I look in my rear view mirror and see that the guy behind me has backed up, creating some room. I do likewise, and the cop pulls safely under the bridge.
The hail storm lasts another twenty minutes, coming and going in sheets. Five minutes after that, the hail and rain have practically stopped, and the skies ahead have actually cleared to a dirty yellow. I pull out with the cop and other drivers, roll on another twenty miles, find a motel and call it a night. Curiously, I've not felt the need to listen to satellite radio for the previous two hours.
I arrived in Gravette without event on Friday morning, still scratching my head over the revelation that April 15 was not the day that Americans needed to submit their tax returns. It appears that the entire country was given until the following Monday because the official Washington, DC holiday of Emancipation Day - normally scheduled for April 16th but falling on a Saturday - had been rescheduled to the 15th so as not to cheese all of the residents of DC out of an extra day off from work. Dumbfounded at the boundless capacity of government workers to reward themselves days off not granted to the lesser mortals of the Private Sector, not to mention their capacity to overpay themselves for same, I roll into the parking lot at HQ, check in, talk to all the Necessary People, check out another van, Tool up and start hoofing it to Chicago Friday afternoon. The skies are clear of clouds but overcast to the horizon, the light a diffuse white, but still the kind that made sunglasses mandatory. Heading north out of Gravette, I cross the state line into Missouri, and quickly run through Noel, Ginger Blue and Saginaw on my way to Joplin, then bear East towards Springfield.
Settling in for a long and oft-travelled stretch through Missouri, I turn on my recently-acquired Sirius satellite radio and scroll through the hundreds of options. For all of its early misadventures and strange history, satellite radio is a boon to the traveling worker, the preferences of some of my weird Early Adopter friends notwithstanding. I'm talking about you, Mike Mullally, who has an individual button programmed for every genre, happily flitting from Jazz to Reggae to Blues. Me, I settle onto the narrow range of channels devoted to Rock & Roll and Right Wing Talk Radio, and throw in BBC for some variety, as well as for the ability to keep track of the impending Royal Wedding. More about that later.
I continue to run through my choices on Sirius radio and discover that there's a channel devoted strictly to Pearl Jam. Seriously. Pearl Jam Radio, 24 by 7. This is great news, not because I'm a Pearl Jam fan - quite the contrary. The reason this is good news is that if Sirius Radio sees fit to devote an entire channel to a bunch of lightweights from Seattle whose sole accomplishment was to outlive Kurt Cobain, then there just HAS to be a channel devoted to the Motor City Madman himself, Ted Nugent. One frustrating hour later, I find that there is no channel devoted to the Nuge. What is more grating is that, over time, I discover that the only place Sirius plays Ted Nugent is on a channel called “Hair Nation”. I hope for Ted's sake that he does not know this.
Soon enough, most of my pre-sets are programmed. Those buttons do not include Howard Stern or The Playboy Channel, not that I didn't check both of them out. Stern had hugely amused Sharon and me some 15 years ago on a driving vacation, and I had to admit to some fascination over how Playboy would project itself in a non-visual medium. As it turns out, The Playboy Channel is nothing but a bunch of addle-brained bimbos, all vying to drop the F bomb as much as possible and in as many forms – adjective, verb, adverb and noun – as possible before they run out of things to say in the hour allotted to them. This gaggle is talking to a Rapper I've never heard of who invites them to visit him at “one of his houses in Houston”. Turns out he has three, and one of them is in The Woodlands. I'm struck by the incongruity of a Rapper having a house in The Woodlands, much less boasting about having three in Houston. See, Houston isn't exactly a Hot Bed of Hip Hop (at least not since the days of Willie Dee and the Geto Boys), and bragging about owning three homes in Houston makes even your average Houstonian wonder why one is not enough.
This bit of entertainment aside, there's little else to hold my attention on The Playboy Channel, so I surf for Howard instead. I find him quickly enough, curious about whether his radio show is as vile as his TV show used to be, as I've not listened to him on the radio since 1996. The modern Howard on the radio gets real old, real quick. The same infantile obsession with women's body parts as the TV version, only now Howard gets to drop the F Bomb however and whenever, and once again in as many forms as possible, as if there's a competition between him and the Playboy Bunnies on Channel 99. I move on once Stern starts recounting his most recent session with his psychotherapist, who is treating Howard for - amongst other things – an addiction to Porn. Stern revels in the gory details, including his obsession with Porn involving women dressed up as nurses. I change the channel and put Howard on my Celebrity Suicide Watch-list, along with Charlie Sheen, Rosie O'Donnell and Bill Maher.
Strange to think that these Celebrity Nut Cases should have so much in common, all of them not just world-class Haters, but Self-Loathers to boot. I give them a year before one of them puts a gun in their mouth, and wonder what Group Therapy would look like, was this the Group. Of the four of them, my money is on Charlie to actually pull himself together, with Maher as the odds-on favorite to do himself in, and O'Donnell a close second. Howard's making too much money not to be consoled by it, at least for now.
By early evening I'm in mid-state Missouri, having passed by the Missouri State Highway Patrol Eternal Flame. Seems that the MSHP, or perhaps some do-gooder legislators, have conspired to erect a quasi-religious shrine to fallen state troopers. I'm conflicted on this point. For one thing, Eternal Flames are problematic at best, since I'm pretty sure none of them stays lit perpetually, as has been proven by the several that have gone out in a very public fashion. And what happens when they do go out? Do you just relight the damn thing, no harm, no foul? Does somebody just reset the clock?
Don't get me wrong: I've got no truck with honoring the fallen dead, and Missouri State police have done me a considerable kindness by honoring my 11% Rule, which states that a motorist can safely exceed the posted speed limits by 11% without fear of being pulled over. I have for this reason always had a tender spot in my heart for State Police across the land, all of whom seem more devoted to public safety than revenue generation, and all of whom observe the 11% rule. There is one caveat to this rule: when you go zipping past them at 78 mph on a highway posted 70, you must show them respect by slowing your vehicle until you're out of eyeshot.
Back to the Eternal Flame. In addition to the cost (natural gas doesn't grow on trees, and even sacred cows like, say, the EPA have – if only technically – a half-life), I'm struck by two things: 1) the underlying pessimism of such a project, assuming as it does that public safety will never improve to the point that an Eternal Flame would become irrelevant, and 2) the elevation of one group of Folks over another. I mean, why not a Security Guard Eternal Flame? For sheer volume of candidates to honor with an Eternal Flame, you can't beat an industry that puts an individual in harm's way without benefit of guns or body armor, much less one that lacks the backup of a vengeful and motivated fraternity such as that available to your typical cop, all mobile, and all armed to the teeth.
Plus, statistically, it's a no-brainer: Per capita, Security Guards drop like flies. Were we to extrapolate that criterion, it occurs to me that there's any number of groups deserving of Eternal Flames; Convenience Store Clerks, for example. Why, in Southwest Houston alone, we could stock a Convenience Store Shrine and keep it refreshed indefinitely, or at least until Plexiglas enclosures become the rule, and not the exception.
The clouds have grown thicker and are moving progressively closer to the ground. I'm rolling through foothills, and the clouds are touching the tops of the hills. It's a neat effect, as I can still see far into the distance between the hills, but only underneath the immense layer of clouds that stretches to the horizon both West and East and occupies the sky like a dome in my forward vision. To the East a piece of it actually appears to curve to the ground, obscuring the north end of a short stretch of farmland between the hills. The bottom of this cloud layer is otherwise flat as a pancake, and offers me some perspective on the succession of hills I see ahead of me. I'm rolling up an alley of sorts, and my GPS indicates that I'll be on this generally northeasterly route for some time. Behind me I catch the remnants of clear skies in my rear view mirror, almost cheerily bidding me “adieu, good luck, enjoy your trip up Tornado Alley!”.
As the winds get a little pushy, lightning starts to dance between and within the clouds. I notice with interest that the clouds turn blood red just a second before a lightning bolt. I've not seen that particular phenomenon before, so that is pretty cool. When it shoots from one cloud to another, the originating cloud turns red, and then a second later the receiving cloud, and then the lightning crosses between them. The lightning show continues for the next fifty miles. As I drive through this valley, I try to take several pictures, but none of them come out.
Satellite radio is not offering much in the way of local news and information, so I switch over to normal radio and try to pick up a weather report, without much luck. Soon enough I am rolling through yet another tollbooth, and the operator cheerfully volunteers that “there's tornadoes straight ahead!”, and that “if you run into any hail, you might want to pull over and seek shelter!”. She's so chipper about the whole thing, it ticks me off a little bit. If there's the likelihood of tornadoes, shouldn't she be sternly warning me to seek shelter? I'm not entirely sure I want to get all the way to the “running into hail” stage before I start looking for them. I decide to be less of a pussy about it after I realize that the Toll Booth operator was happily dispensing change and receipts in a driving rainstorm out of a structure about as sturdy as your typical Outhouse, or at least the variety typically found in your less affluent trailer parks.
I continue on for another ten miles or so, and side winds push the car violently to the right some three times in the space of a mile. I'm due for a fill-up, so I drop off of the highway and head a half mile East into a nearby gas station. By this point, the rain is coming down in sheets, something that had not escaped my attention, as I had dialed up the intermittent wipers about once every ten seconds in the mile just prior to getting off the highway. I pull up to a pump, start the gas and run inside to use the bathroom. I know, I know, you should never leave your gas hose unattended, because anything can happen, including the failure of the auto-stop feature on the nozzle, but since that hasn't happened since Dallas some six months ago, I'm thinking hey, what's the likelihood? I finish my business and hustle back out to the car. By this time, the rain has gone from a vertical deluge to a horizontal one, and I'm drenched head to toe in the time it takes me to replace the gas nozzle and grab my receipt.
I head West back to the highway, and within seconds I've driven into a fierce hail storm. With the lightning and the rain, I can't see the hail at all, but the sound as it rattles off the company car is unmistakable. Luckily, I come up on a highway overpass and tuck myself into the last available spot up front on the right shoulder, mere feet from the downpour of hail, which is clear to see now. I'm transfixed for a few minutes as it comes down in sheets, half the size of golf balls and maintaining it's round shape even after striking the ground. A shift in the winds pushes the hailstorm over my van and for five seconds it strikes the front seemingly a thousand times. About then a cop car pulls in front of me. His backup lights advertise that he has thrown it in reverse, and would not look unkindly on any effort of mine to back up so as to provide him some shelter. I look in my rear view mirror and see that the guy behind me has backed up, creating some room. I do likewise, and the cop pulls safely under the bridge.
The hail storm lasts another twenty minutes, coming and going in sheets. Five minutes after that, the hail and rain have practically stopped, and the skies ahead have actually cleared to a dirty yellow. I pull out with the cop and other drivers, roll on another twenty miles, find a motel and call it a night. Curiously, I've not felt the need to listen to satellite radio for the previous two hours.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
MS150 Chronicles, Part One
PROLOGUE
Well now, it seems things don't always work out how you planned. Having returned from an extended contract job in San Diego, I had been home for a week, got reacquainted with Sharon, and was primed and ready to go for the MS150 ride on April 16th. Road Bike preventive maintenance? Check. Training Rides? Check. Official MS150 certification of road bike? Check. In this case, the word “Check” means that I have done none of these things, but see, having done 10 of them in the past, including nine in a row, I have come to the realization that training, preventive maintenance and certifications are so much Fooferall, if not a downright obstacle to the mission at hand: riding 175 miles over a weekend with 13,000 other folks, including a statistically significant percentage of which are on prescription medication for Hyper Attention Deficit Disorder.
Not that that doesn't make them nice persons.
Anyway, this year, things did not go as planned, and I was called back to work 36 hours before the start. I took solace in the fact that, even though I wasn't going to be able to do the ride, my Friends and Family had come through for me with almost $1,400 in donations. So, my MS150 Chronicles will not be a recounting of the Ride, but the Road; specifically, from Houston to Chicago over the MS150 weekend.
THURSDAY
Regretting however temporarily the circumstances that had decided that my course lay not in a generally westerly direction from Houston towards Austin on my trusty Bridgestone road bike, but in the company vehicle northbound for Chicago, I rolled from Houston towards our home office in Gravette, AR Thursday afternoon. Gravette is centrally located to something on at least three points of the compass: go ten miles North and you hit Missouri, where you can purchase alcohol; go ten miles East and you come to Bentonville, AR, WalMart's corporate headquarters; go ten miles West and you hit Oklahoma, where you can purchase alcohol.
Not sure if there's any point in ever heading south of Gravette, except to drive home.
The drive Thursday is unremarkable, except for the fact that the GPS has routed me via Hwy 59, skimming the border of Louisiana, instead of the usual route straight up I-45 through Dallas. No complaints here. Pre-GPS, I had intentionally taken the more Easterly routes to Gravette so as to avoid I-45, given that it is devoid of scenery and necessitates driving through Dallas, best described as one vast Speed Trap, its downtown an incoherent jumble of concrete and glass, unpleasing to the eye and made even more-so by those godawful colored lights they use to outline their skyscrapers. What's up with the red, green and white anyway? Kind of makes you wonder why they didn't form a Committee before they started Tarting up their skyline, and that's saying a lot for any of you who know me, as I am no lover of Committees. Plus, there's not a restaurant in the Metroplex that's worth a damn any closer than Ft. Worth.
My travels on what I've come to call the Eastern Route include an assortment of colorful town names, and I'm zipping up Hwy 59 through Lufkin and then Nacodoches, then past the municipalities of Kilgore, Naples, Detroit and Idabel, and that's before I even break Latitude on the aforementioned Metroplex. The country is beautiful: rolling hills with beautiful ranches on either side of the road. I'm surprised at the amount of land given over to livestock as opposed to crops, but then, this is Texas.
Now is as good a time as any to tell my story about Dallas' Overpasses. Seems that several of my fellow Contract employees hail from Dallas, and at least three of them – apropos of absolutely nothing - have volunteered in conversation that Dallas is home to the biggest highway overpasses in the country, and specifically the “High Five”. I did not know what the High Five was prior to this, so I looked it up on the Internet, and according to Wikipedia, it is an “award winning five-level Stack Interchange”. Now, I don't know if Dallas is home to the biggest overpasses in the country, as Houston has several with all the elevation and velocity of a world-class Roller Coaster. What I do know, though, is that we don't consider it a particular source of civic pride, and nobody in Houston goes around bragging on them as if they're the Sistine Chapel.
I also suspect that attendance to whatever awards ceremony it is that hands out statues to Five Level Stack Interchanges is likely not Standing Room Only, except perhaps in Dallas, TX, devoid as they are of culture.
I cross over into Oklahoma and continue my border skimming route, this time with Arkansas mere miles to my right. Even though Arkansas is the objective, I must run through a significant portion of Oklahoma before I make the inevitable jog to the East. I move through Broken Bow and quickly pass Heavener, Shady Point and Panama. But, let us say more about Dallas.
Whatever its other deficiencies, as a matter of principle, I avoid Dallas primarily because it is home to two of the biggest, greediest, most self-aggrandizing Assholes in professional sports franchise history: Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys and Mark Cuban of the NBA Mavericks. Not that Houston hasn't had our share of greedy, self-aggrandizing professional sports franchise Assholes, mind you. As Exhibit A, I give you Bud Adams - the man who took the Houston Oilers to Tennessee after ripping off the city for $90 million dollars. The difference between Houston and Dallas is that we had the good sense to drive our Asshole out of town, whereas Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban not only wander the streets of Dallas as free men, but are celebrated by Dallas High Society, are frequently invited into the homes of decent people and even allowed within 500 feet of elementary schools, playgrounds and daycare centers.
But I digress.
I make it through Texas, a sliver of Oklahoma and then on into Arkansas without incident, stopping about two hours south of Gravette. It's a pretty low mileage day as these trips go, but I'm not due in until 9am on Friday. I find a Notel Motel for the night and settle in, intending to hit the road around six in the morn.
Well now, it seems things don't always work out how you planned. Having returned from an extended contract job in San Diego, I had been home for a week, got reacquainted with Sharon, and was primed and ready to go for the MS150 ride on April 16th. Road Bike preventive maintenance? Check. Training Rides? Check. Official MS150 certification of road bike? Check. In this case, the word “Check” means that I have done none of these things, but see, having done 10 of them in the past, including nine in a row, I have come to the realization that training, preventive maintenance and certifications are so much Fooferall, if not a downright obstacle to the mission at hand: riding 175 miles over a weekend with 13,000 other folks, including a statistically significant percentage of which are on prescription medication for Hyper Attention Deficit Disorder.
Not that that doesn't make them nice persons.
Anyway, this year, things did not go as planned, and I was called back to work 36 hours before the start. I took solace in the fact that, even though I wasn't going to be able to do the ride, my Friends and Family had come through for me with almost $1,400 in donations. So, my MS150 Chronicles will not be a recounting of the Ride, but the Road; specifically, from Houston to Chicago over the MS150 weekend.
THURSDAY
Regretting however temporarily the circumstances that had decided that my course lay not in a generally westerly direction from Houston towards Austin on my trusty Bridgestone road bike, but in the company vehicle northbound for Chicago, I rolled from Houston towards our home office in Gravette, AR Thursday afternoon. Gravette is centrally located to something on at least three points of the compass: go ten miles North and you hit Missouri, where you can purchase alcohol; go ten miles East and you come to Bentonville, AR, WalMart's corporate headquarters; go ten miles West and you hit Oklahoma, where you can purchase alcohol.
Not sure if there's any point in ever heading south of Gravette, except to drive home.
The drive Thursday is unremarkable, except for the fact that the GPS has routed me via Hwy 59, skimming the border of Louisiana, instead of the usual route straight up I-45 through Dallas. No complaints here. Pre-GPS, I had intentionally taken the more Easterly routes to Gravette so as to avoid I-45, given that it is devoid of scenery and necessitates driving through Dallas, best described as one vast Speed Trap, its downtown an incoherent jumble of concrete and glass, unpleasing to the eye and made even more-so by those godawful colored lights they use to outline their skyscrapers. What's up with the red, green and white anyway? Kind of makes you wonder why they didn't form a Committee before they started Tarting up their skyline, and that's saying a lot for any of you who know me, as I am no lover of Committees. Plus, there's not a restaurant in the Metroplex that's worth a damn any closer than Ft. Worth.
My travels on what I've come to call the Eastern Route include an assortment of colorful town names, and I'm zipping up Hwy 59 through Lufkin and then Nacodoches, then past the municipalities of Kilgore, Naples, Detroit and Idabel, and that's before I even break Latitude on the aforementioned Metroplex. The country is beautiful: rolling hills with beautiful ranches on either side of the road. I'm surprised at the amount of land given over to livestock as opposed to crops, but then, this is Texas.
Now is as good a time as any to tell my story about Dallas' Overpasses. Seems that several of my fellow Contract employees hail from Dallas, and at least three of them – apropos of absolutely nothing - have volunteered in conversation that Dallas is home to the biggest highway overpasses in the country, and specifically the “High Five”. I did not know what the High Five was prior to this, so I looked it up on the Internet, and according to Wikipedia, it is an “award winning five-level Stack Interchange”. Now, I don't know if Dallas is home to the biggest overpasses in the country, as Houston has several with all the elevation and velocity of a world-class Roller Coaster. What I do know, though, is that we don't consider it a particular source of civic pride, and nobody in Houston goes around bragging on them as if they're the Sistine Chapel.
I also suspect that attendance to whatever awards ceremony it is that hands out statues to Five Level Stack Interchanges is likely not Standing Room Only, except perhaps in Dallas, TX, devoid as they are of culture.
I cross over into Oklahoma and continue my border skimming route, this time with Arkansas mere miles to my right. Even though Arkansas is the objective, I must run through a significant portion of Oklahoma before I make the inevitable jog to the East. I move through Broken Bow and quickly pass Heavener, Shady Point and Panama. But, let us say more about Dallas.
Whatever its other deficiencies, as a matter of principle, I avoid Dallas primarily because it is home to two of the biggest, greediest, most self-aggrandizing Assholes in professional sports franchise history: Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys and Mark Cuban of the NBA Mavericks. Not that Houston hasn't had our share of greedy, self-aggrandizing professional sports franchise Assholes, mind you. As Exhibit A, I give you Bud Adams - the man who took the Houston Oilers to Tennessee after ripping off the city for $90 million dollars. The difference between Houston and Dallas is that we had the good sense to drive our Asshole out of town, whereas Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban not only wander the streets of Dallas as free men, but are celebrated by Dallas High Society, are frequently invited into the homes of decent people and even allowed within 500 feet of elementary schools, playgrounds and daycare centers.
But I digress.
I make it through Texas, a sliver of Oklahoma and then on into Arkansas without incident, stopping about two hours south of Gravette. It's a pretty low mileage day as these trips go, but I'm not due in until 9am on Friday. I find a Notel Motel for the night and settle in, intending to hit the road around six in the morn.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Vengeful Clerks - US Gov't vs. Roger Clemens, Pt II
OffHisMeds cannot help but laugh at the prescience of his recent Roger Clemens post, coming as it does a couple of weeks before this article from the AP: "House panel: Clemens can't see its files for trial". In my April 1 post, I posited that Congress and Major League Baseball were in cahoots to deny Roger Clemens a fair trial.
In this article, the congressional committee that oversaw the Mitchell Commission report on Performance Enhancing Drugs in Major League Baseball attempts to deprive Roger Clemens from having access to the notes and testimony that they used to conclude that he had lied to Congress and a Grand Jury when he asserted that he had never knowingly taken steroids or Human Growth Hormone.
What is remarkable about this is the attempt by our Legislators to claim privacy privileges normally reserved for criminal defendants, who are granted various extraordinary rights so as to establish the level playing field our legal scholars thought necessary to prevent the incidental conviction of an innocent man or the use of our criminal legal system as a tool of oppression by the State. This concept is enfranchised in such other policies as Double Jeopardy, the Exclusionary Rule, the recitation by police of Miranda Warnings before the testimony of the defendant can be taken, and - most significantly to this case - the substantial right of the defendant to have access to evidence that might imply the innocence of the defendant.
What is even more remarkable about this assertion of privilege was the contorted logic the House panel used to assert its right to privacy, that "being forced to turn over its internal material for Clemens to use in federal court would violate the constitutional principle of separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches. That principle is embodied in the Constitution's speech or debate clause".
Well, I guess that settles that. Heaven forbid that the tender sensibilities of Congress should be affronted by something as simple as a Freedom Of Information request. We all know how Congressmen view those pesky attempts by the Public to have access to what they are actually saying or doing whilst cashing their paychecks. And Heaven forbid that the constitutional rights of Congress should be interpreted on any basis except one which favors them.
All OffHisMeds knows is that every time Establishment politicians start talking reverentially about any "principle embodied in the Constitution", much less one as irrelevant as the "speech or debate clause", they're usually trying to cover their own asses. Recall that Nixon asserted similar privileges as regards his presidential papers and those damned recordings.
But let's take their argument at face value, shall we? First, they assert the right to hide their notes and testimony from the person they're attempting to destroy based on a separation of powers clause between Congress and the Judiciary. The glaring problem is, of course, that the Judiciary is not the entity seeking to procure this information, Roger Clemens the Defendent is. Second is the jarring inconsistency between the charter of this congressional committee and their claim of privilege: unlike, say, criminal prosecutors, their stated mission was not outcome based, but to get to the truth of PEDs in pro sports, whatever it might be. As such, they had even less rights - legal or moral - than prosecutors to protect their evidence from the public, and arguably a greater obligation to provide that information to the defendant, seeing as how it wasn't just his reputation that was on the line, but his very freedom.
What is ironic about this is that these same folks asserted for themselves the absolute right to know anything and everything about Roger Clemens that they wanted to know, as well as their right to pursue and publicize any and every thread - regardless of how irrelevant - such as questions as to whether Clemens' wife had taken HGH before a photo shoot. Such information may or may not have been admissable at trial, but it served the purpose these ham-handed Camera Hogs intended, which was to try and convict Clemens in the Court of Public Opinion long before they got around to the niggling formalities of an actual trial.
So, what is it that they're trying to hide? That one is simple: before the Mainstream Media decided to jump on the "Clemens Is Guilty" bandwagon, there was substantial reportage on the behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Mitchell Commission and Clemens' trainer Brian McNamee, and it did not portray Congress in a favorable light.
As a point of reference, you may recall that in the Eighties Major League Baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti conducted similar extra-legal negotiations with various bookies connected to Pete Rose so as to concoct a scenario most damning to Rose, and all outside the pesky constraints of Due Process. The Bookies in question were all provided immunity from prosecution or at most a hand-slap for their serial felonies not only - and allegedly - with Rose, but various others as well. The result was of course Rose's conviction, incarceration and a lifetime ban from Baseball.
This latest attempt by the Baseball Establishment and their toadies in Congress has the same smell as the Giamatti affair, and lends credence to claims that the Mitchell Commission colluded with McNamee by offering him immunity in return for testimony that would damage Clemens. Not coincidentally, McNamee obliged by telling exactly the story that the Commission wanted to hear, a story that he most adamantly had refused to tell until prior to the Commission's meetings with him behind closed doors, and out earshot of the Public, reporters, or anybody else devoted to the truth of the matter.
What is most damning to OffHisMeds, though, is how the statements by the congressional committee contradict themselves. At first, they wrap themselves in the sacred cloak of the Constitution, claiming that "being forced to turn over its internal material for Clemens to use in federal court would violate the constitutional principle of separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches". Fine and dandy. If that is the rule, that is the rule, and they would need to offer no further explanation. That didn't prevent them from shooting themselves in the foot, though, offering as a petulant aside that Clemens was "on a fishing expedition," and that "Whether or not such documents exist, Mr. Clemens will have ample opportunity to examine Messrs. McNamee and Pettitte, as well as Ms. Pettitte, at trial".
So, which is it: Protecting the constitution or deflecting "fishing expeditions"? This would seem as good a time as any to trot out "OffHisMeds Razor", which states "whenver anybody offers more than one excuse for their actions, they are lying". These guys aren't exactly covering themselves in glory, and their over-reaction has about it an air of desperation. You can literally smell the sweat coming off them, and along with it, the lies.
If Clemens walks - and I believe he will - how long will it be before a Vengeful Media, pissed at how their own reputations had been sullied, descends on the Vengeful Clerks who brought this prosection? Not too long, I suspect.
Of greater significance, though, is their reason for the cover-up: the whole story will reveal the extent to which Congress purposefully avoided investigating MLB Owners and management, who didn't just ignore the use of Steroids and HGH, but at least passively - and possibly actively - promoted it.
In this article, the congressional committee that oversaw the Mitchell Commission report on Performance Enhancing Drugs in Major League Baseball attempts to deprive Roger Clemens from having access to the notes and testimony that they used to conclude that he had lied to Congress and a Grand Jury when he asserted that he had never knowingly taken steroids or Human Growth Hormone.
What is remarkable about this is the attempt by our Legislators to claim privacy privileges normally reserved for criminal defendants, who are granted various extraordinary rights so as to establish the level playing field our legal scholars thought necessary to prevent the incidental conviction of an innocent man or the use of our criminal legal system as a tool of oppression by the State. This concept is enfranchised in such other policies as Double Jeopardy, the Exclusionary Rule, the recitation by police of Miranda Warnings before the testimony of the defendant can be taken, and - most significantly to this case - the substantial right of the defendant to have access to evidence that might imply the innocence of the defendant.
What is even more remarkable about this assertion of privilege was the contorted logic the House panel used to assert its right to privacy, that "being forced to turn over its internal material for Clemens to use in federal court would violate the constitutional principle of separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches. That principle is embodied in the Constitution's speech or debate clause".
Well, I guess that settles that. Heaven forbid that the tender sensibilities of Congress should be affronted by something as simple as a Freedom Of Information request. We all know how Congressmen view those pesky attempts by the Public to have access to what they are actually saying or doing whilst cashing their paychecks. And Heaven forbid that the constitutional rights of Congress should be interpreted on any basis except one which favors them.
All OffHisMeds knows is that every time Establishment politicians start talking reverentially about any "principle embodied in the Constitution", much less one as irrelevant as the "speech or debate clause", they're usually trying to cover their own asses. Recall that Nixon asserted similar privileges as regards his presidential papers and those damned recordings.
But let's take their argument at face value, shall we? First, they assert the right to hide their notes and testimony from the person they're attempting to destroy based on a separation of powers clause between Congress and the Judiciary. The glaring problem is, of course, that the Judiciary is not the entity seeking to procure this information, Roger Clemens the Defendent is. Second is the jarring inconsistency between the charter of this congressional committee and their claim of privilege: unlike, say, criminal prosecutors, their stated mission was not outcome based, but to get to the truth of PEDs in pro sports, whatever it might be. As such, they had even less rights - legal or moral - than prosecutors to protect their evidence from the public, and arguably a greater obligation to provide that information to the defendant, seeing as how it wasn't just his reputation that was on the line, but his very freedom.
What is ironic about this is that these same folks asserted for themselves the absolute right to know anything and everything about Roger Clemens that they wanted to know, as well as their right to pursue and publicize any and every thread - regardless of how irrelevant - such as questions as to whether Clemens' wife had taken HGH before a photo shoot. Such information may or may not have been admissable at trial, but it served the purpose these ham-handed Camera Hogs intended, which was to try and convict Clemens in the Court of Public Opinion long before they got around to the niggling formalities of an actual trial.
So, what is it that they're trying to hide? That one is simple: before the Mainstream Media decided to jump on the "Clemens Is Guilty" bandwagon, there was substantial reportage on the behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Mitchell Commission and Clemens' trainer Brian McNamee, and it did not portray Congress in a favorable light.
As a point of reference, you may recall that in the Eighties Major League Baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti conducted similar extra-legal negotiations with various bookies connected to Pete Rose so as to concoct a scenario most damning to Rose, and all outside the pesky constraints of Due Process. The Bookies in question were all provided immunity from prosecution or at most a hand-slap for their serial felonies not only - and allegedly - with Rose, but various others as well. The result was of course Rose's conviction, incarceration and a lifetime ban from Baseball.
This latest attempt by the Baseball Establishment and their toadies in Congress has the same smell as the Giamatti affair, and lends credence to claims that the Mitchell Commission colluded with McNamee by offering him immunity in return for testimony that would damage Clemens. Not coincidentally, McNamee obliged by telling exactly the story that the Commission wanted to hear, a story that he most adamantly had refused to tell until prior to the Commission's meetings with him behind closed doors, and out earshot of the Public, reporters, or anybody else devoted to the truth of the matter.
What is most damning to OffHisMeds, though, is how the statements by the congressional committee contradict themselves. At first, they wrap themselves in the sacred cloak of the Constitution, claiming that "being forced to turn over its internal material for Clemens to use in federal court would violate the constitutional principle of separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches". Fine and dandy. If that is the rule, that is the rule, and they would need to offer no further explanation. That didn't prevent them from shooting themselves in the foot, though, offering as a petulant aside that Clemens was "on a fishing expedition," and that "Whether or not such documents exist, Mr. Clemens will have ample opportunity to examine Messrs. McNamee and Pettitte, as well as Ms. Pettitte, at trial".
So, which is it: Protecting the constitution or deflecting "fishing expeditions"? This would seem as good a time as any to trot out "OffHisMeds Razor", which states "whenver anybody offers more than one excuse for their actions, they are lying". These guys aren't exactly covering themselves in glory, and their over-reaction has about it an air of desperation. You can literally smell the sweat coming off them, and along with it, the lies.
If Clemens walks - and I believe he will - how long will it be before a Vengeful Media, pissed at how their own reputations had been sullied, descends on the Vengeful Clerks who brought this prosection? Not too long, I suspect.
Of greater significance, though, is their reason for the cover-up: the whole story will reveal the extent to which Congress purposefully avoided investigating MLB Owners and management, who didn't just ignore the use of Steroids and HGH, but at least passively - and possibly actively - promoted it.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Vengeful Clerks - US Gov't vs. Roger Clemens, Pt I
Check out this recent picture of Roger Clemens, now four years removed from pro Baseball. Looks like the same old Roger, doesn't he?
Now compare that to present-day pictures of Barry Bonds, who looks as if he's suffered from a tapeworm since leaving pro ball himself in 2007. Bonds is a mere shadow of his former self, as are dozens of other pro athletes suspected of steroid use. OffHisMeds' question is: if Roger was on steroids or Human Growth Hormone, why didn't he shrink?
Only a government employee could love the whole premise for the Feds pursuing criminal charges against the likes of Clemens. It goes something like this:
"Sure, Major League Baseball Owners looked the other way while Sluggers took steroids and jacked home runs to the moon, and yes, we looked the other way too, mostly because the Owners were big campaign contributors and otherwise promised to hire our worthless relatives and provide us box seats in their taxpayer-subsidized palaces.
But see, we all got our tit in a wringer when the Public started asking questions, so we had to do something. So what we did was to knock the dust off of yet another retired and near-fossilized Democrat Senator and let him head up a commission to get to the bottom of this whole thing. And so the Mitchell Report was born.
This whole thing could have been swept under the rug if we had been allowed to make an example of a handful of high-profile players when some genius pointed out that it looked like we were picking on Hitters. So as to balance the scales we needed a Pitcher to kind of even things out. Where things got all bunged up was when Clemens decided to get all ornery and refuse to admit that he used Performance Enhancing Drugs.
After he publicly denied using steroids, we figured we'd ratchet up the pressure by forcing him to submit to subpoenas and grand jury testimony, but then he went ahead and didn't say what we wanted him to say, which left The Public with only three possible conclusions: 1) We were in the pocket of the Owners; 2) We were bumbling idiots; 3) Roger Clemens was a criminal for lying to the Federal government.
And here we are in yet another pickle, but as fate would have it, our own moral turpitude and imcompetence provided yet another opportunity to milk the taxpayer like a dairy cow, thus ensuring the future employment of hundreds if not thousands of teat-sucking bureaucrats, enfranchised to create and sustain yet another oversight committee, in perpetuity.
So all in all, we took some lumps, but came out smelling pretty good."
Roger Clemens is far from a role model morality and ethics-wise speaking, but at least the things that come out of his mouth don't make you laugh out loud, as do the proclamations of the Windbags that are prosecuting him.
It is also of excrutiating significance that not a single Owner, President of Operations or Manager has been called before Congress or a Grand Jury to testify under oath as to whether they promoted or enabled the consumption of Performance Enhancing Drugs by MLB players.
The politicians pursuing this and the Baseball Owners hiding behind their skirts deseve to be held in the greatest comtempt. They are a bunch of Mutts, and unless they can completely rig this game, as they did baseball during the Steroid Era, Clemens will not be convicted.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
I Agee With President Obama
Well crap. OffHisMeds never expected to be forced into the position of agreeing with President Obama on anything, since he's given us literally no reason to ever agree with him on anything. $1.2 Trillion Stimulus program? Insanity or evil, take your pick. Two plus year apology tour to the rest of the world for the USA? Craven. Manifest lies about the cost of Obamacare? Please.
That said, I can't fault his reticence to commit the USA to military action against Libya in the slightest. The hyperventilation of my Right Wing Homeys notwithstanding, committing yet more of America's Blood and Treasure to yet another war front with absolutely no commitment by either our European allies or the sundry Middle Eastern Potentates who will benefit from Muammar Gaddafi's discomfort makes no sense to me.
If Obama had boldly committed to dethroning Colonel Gaddafi without an international consensus, is there any doubt at all that France, Germany, England and all the other European Suspects would have simply sat on their hands and let us haul the load? After all, these are the countries whose GDP exceeds our own, but whom collectively have contributed only 10% of the Treasure and 5% of the Blood to our Middle East military interventions. Meanwhile, they have been the craven yet mute beneficiaries of America's collosal sacrifice.
Amnerica is well into its second century of supporting a Europe that has grown accustomed to letting us pay their bills. Obama is the first American president to require them to step up to the plate, and amazingly, they have. France and England have taken the lead in calling for a No-Fly zone over Libya, and are providing at least some resources to enforce it. Sundry Middle Eastern Potentates have also given their sanction to defeating Gaddafi, and committed planes to the effort.
Is OffHisMeds the only one to appreciate this historic turn? Requiring our allies to carry their own load ought not to be extraordinary. In this case at least, President Obama - with his response - has made that clear.
So, shut your pieholes Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, John Bolton and sundry congressional Republicans. You should have been on Obama's side on this issue, since it speaks to the common-sense constiuency so vital to your own well-being, otherwise known as the Tea Party.
It's time for you to walk this one back, quickly.
One final note: This riff is not to say that Obama does not have blood on his hands. He stood by for two years - as did all of Europe - while the forces of a Muslim dictator in Sudan murdered hundreds of thousands of non-Muslims in Darfur.
Of course, I'd probably be accused of conspiracy was I to point out that Sudan has no oil.
That said, I can't fault his reticence to commit the USA to military action against Libya in the slightest. The hyperventilation of my Right Wing Homeys notwithstanding, committing yet more of America's Blood and Treasure to yet another war front with absolutely no commitment by either our European allies or the sundry Middle Eastern Potentates who will benefit from Muammar Gaddafi's discomfort makes no sense to me.
If Obama had boldly committed to dethroning Colonel Gaddafi without an international consensus, is there any doubt at all that France, Germany, England and all the other European Suspects would have simply sat on their hands and let us haul the load? After all, these are the countries whose GDP exceeds our own, but whom collectively have contributed only 10% of the Treasure and 5% of the Blood to our Middle East military interventions. Meanwhile, they have been the craven yet mute beneficiaries of America's collosal sacrifice.
Amnerica is well into its second century of supporting a Europe that has grown accustomed to letting us pay their bills. Obama is the first American president to require them to step up to the plate, and amazingly, they have. France and England have taken the lead in calling for a No-Fly zone over Libya, and are providing at least some resources to enforce it. Sundry Middle Eastern Potentates have also given their sanction to defeating Gaddafi, and committed planes to the effort.
Is OffHisMeds the only one to appreciate this historic turn? Requiring our allies to carry their own load ought not to be extraordinary. In this case at least, President Obama - with his response - has made that clear.
So, shut your pieholes Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, John Bolton and sundry congressional Republicans. You should have been on Obama's side on this issue, since it speaks to the common-sense constiuency so vital to your own well-being, otherwise known as the Tea Party.
It's time for you to walk this one back, quickly.
One final note: This riff is not to say that Obama does not have blood on his hands. He stood by for two years - as did all of Europe - while the forces of a Muslim dictator in Sudan murdered hundreds of thousands of non-Muslims in Darfur.
Of course, I'd probably be accused of conspiracy was I to point out that Sudan has no oil.
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