Reflection

 In November of my fiftieth year, I realized that the time was proper to perform an act of contemplation and self reflection, or at least I should attempt to do so. I set out to measure fairly, as well as I was able, those parts of my life which I deemed to be of value, and pause there, committing no act of self condemnation for the parts I found lacking, nor did I intend to crown myself with olive branches for any meritorious aspects of my life. I wished to discover some truth about myself, to better know who I was and, if possible reflect on the path I had taken to come to this place.

Some time went by while I tried and failed to complete this small task. It would not strain my schedule to commit some time to my goal and it didn’t seem to overtax my mental capacity, nor did I fear the outcome. It just did not sit well and I was vexed. The problem was that the task, as I thought of it, sounded like something Thoreau might have done while he sat and contemplated Walden Pond and I could not commit myself to plagiary. I know I am not burdened with an overabundance of original thought so much of my life is most probably a reenactment of some deceased persons life, but I do not do so intentionally. I do not think of myself as a plagiarist at heart, and I have not, as far as I know, copied an other's work without proper attribution and I will not start now.  Perhaps the great man did not commit an act of self-analysis such as I contemplated but it sounded like something he probably would have done, therefore; I could not commit either the act of plagiarism itself, or the act of potential plagiarism, since Henry, at least to my mind, probably did do it.  Or could have.  Had he thought of it.

However, I do profess to conduct myself, in word and deed, on the goodly side of the mean, so I can hardly walk away from the battlefield unchallenged and still claim victory. So, I cast aside my goal of self reflection and moved on to something at bit more productive. I do then claim these newish postulates for my life;

I choose to live my daily life better, to more perfectly complete the remaining portion of my life, as far as I may, in the hope that, should I someday complete an act of honest reflection, be then proud of the person I have been, lacking in all shame or regret.

For my children, I elect to offer a better example of how one might choose to live intentionally, with both unrestrained zeal and full definition of purpose. I further resolve to let my children lead lives that they chose instead of causing them to relive mine.

As my profession had become a nuisance to my life, an act I pursued partially and with reservation, I elect to perform to a higher level, completing at the end of each day such acts as would, if possible, be judged exceptional, leading when leadership is called for, following when appropriate, I chart a new course for that portion of my life.

Concerning my life that I shared with my wife, I vow to recommit myself to being a man worthy of her affections, to become that which she envisioned at the birth of our marriage. Given that I am incapable of glorious acts on the world stage, I admit that this effort may be insufficient of all that she deserves, but I would strive for some degree of sufficiency and hope for success as best I may.

I understand my failure to discover forgiveness for those wrongs I perceived to have been committed against me, so as an act of contrition, I vow to offer service to others.

Above all, my failure to honor my God in thought and deed has been a source of shame and would therefore attempt some small measure of undefined restitution.

apple cup

Reprinted without permission


Why We Hate The University of Washington, by GoCougsBaby

Virtually every major sports team has a rival. Most of the time, the basis for these rivalries are mere geometric proximity or a particular historical event. For some fans on both sides of the Apple Cup line, the rivalry starts and ends there: it’s just a game between cross-state rivals with a long history.

But for some WSU fans it goes a little deeper than that. They hate the University of Washington. They hate their coaches. They hate their administrators. They hate their fight song. They hate their colors. They hate their admissions department. They hate their budget office. They even hate their museum if you can believe it. They loathe the basic premise, philosophy, and modus operandi of the institution.

In a different situation, such disdain might be misplaced. But in the case of the University of Washington, the school seems to do everything possible to earn this ire.

THE HISTORY

The origins of the diametric differences between WSU and UW can be traced the to the shear bipolar makeup of the State of Washington itself. Whether you are talking political, economic, ecological, or geological composition; eastern and western Washington could not be more contrary. In that light, it was surely inevitable that the two halves would go on to house rival academic institutions.

But the differences have grown well beyond that original framework.

Washington State University, a landgrant institution built in the middle of nowhere (even by Eastern Washington standards) was charged with educating the masses. It has functioned ever since out of an emphasis on necessity.

The University of Washington, which exists today on one of the most expensive pieces of property in the state, was founded in order to boost the prestige of the city of Seattle and educate the sons of the local elite. It has functioned from the very beginning on an emphasis of prestige.

The UW bears no geographic relationship to the original grammar school campus that founded in 1861, which closed its doors three times without graduating a single student through 1876, and had only grade school aged students. But the university still clings to this older date for the sole purpose boosting its legacy as being “the oldest public institution of higher learning west of the Mississippi.”  The original school which had students a young as seven years old, issued its first official “bachelor's degree” to a seventeen year old girl who promptly went on to attend actual college at the University of California at Berkley which was founded decades earlier.

THE ARISTOCRACY

Few public institutions encompass a greater air of aristocracy than the UW. In that light, it is no accident that in 1892, when the students faced with the choice of its school colors being red, white and blue (the colors of George Washington's flag); or purple and gold (the colors of royalty), they overwhelmingly voted in favor of the latter, citing a poem by Lord Byron as their inspiration. Likewise it is entirely appropriate that the school song would later become, "Bow Down to Washington." From the earliest days, the UW clung to a blue-blood mentality and little has changed.

THE GREED

Today University of Washington is the largest recipient of federal subsidy for its research of any public university, a distinction it has held since 1974. The school wears this distinction with pride as a symbol of the quality of researchers it has, but the academic community grumbles that it is more sign of a school who has learned how to exploit the system and is more concerned with the grant writing potential of its professors than their teaching ability.

THE FRAUD

The UW’s tendency towards entitlement and greed has been on display more clearly over the past few years.

In 2004, the UW medical school spent $25 million in legal fees to defend hundreds of members of its staff in the largest Medicare fraud case in U.S. history. It paid the federal government a settlement of $35 million for running a “criminal enterprise,” of overbilling, with a “conscious and deliberate decision to ignore the facts before them.”

One medical school professor, who was previously been brought on sanctions for allowing his students to see tightly guarded test booklets for national medical exams, was found guilty of obstruction of justice during the investigation, and for creating an “atmosphere of fear and intimidation” within his department. Rather than terminating this professor with ample cause, the university paid him $3.7 million before he was sent to prison.

THE THEFT

In 2005, a peer-conducted investigation of prestigious paleontology collections at the UW’s Burke Museum of Natural History, concluded nearly all of the fossil specimens had been collected illegally from federal lands without permits. Of greater concern was the fact that no field research notes were kept by UW professors or students, with the exception of a few “torn pieces of brown paper bags.” The only maps kept were little more than pencil dots on road maps, of “unusable scale, outdated, or unrelated to any known collecting areas,“ and unusable for any research purposes. What data was collected was found to have “errors not within a reasonable margin of error.” With suggested recorded collection points were many miles off from any probable locations. One particular fossil, which “if its presumed stratigraphic occurrence is correct,” is the “last fossil primate known in North America, placed the locality on a highway in Oregon.” The study concluded that “fossil collection in the Burke Museum cannot be relied upon for its accuracy or its precision,” was collected and recorded with “a disregard for completeness and accuracy, either though carelessness or deliberate falsification,” and that “their significance to modern paleontology may have been drastically and perhaps irretrievably reduced.” In other words, the UW has an ill-gotten multi-million dollar dinosaur trophy room, and destroyed it academic value in the acquisition of it.

THE DISLOYALTY

In 2012 the UW announced that in order to boost revenues, it will be admitting fewer in-state students. The UW desires the higher out-of-state tuition rates (even at reduced academic admittance requirements) over educating the more qualified Washington residents. WSU announced it would admit more in-state freshmen to help cover the gap.

In Olympia, UW student lobbyists argued with legislators to raise their tuition rates to boost revenues for their school. WSU student lobbyists (along with the other 4 public universities) argued strenuously for lower tuition rates to help financially struggling students.

In 1917 the UW got a law passed outlawing any other medical schools from being opened in the State of Washington. Faced with criticism for the tremendous shortage of physicians in Washington, particularly in rural areas, UW argues it only has the resources to train the 140 students they currently admit. WSU under the leadership of Elson Floyd, convinced the legislature to revoke UW's monopoly, and with heavy opposition from the UW Medical, won approval to pursue funding for its own medical school in Spokane. The school will open in 2017 and projects to be able to accommodate 120 students by 2021.

THE DISHONESTY

Top leaders at UW Medicine appeared to use the tragic shooting at Pilchuck high school for a PR stunt, when it issued sharply worded criticisms of the competence of Providence Regional Medical Center and their use of local ambulance services and EMTs for the shooting victims. UW Medicine, which owns and operates Airlift Northwest, claimed that they had helicopters hovering over the high school and local paramedics waived them off. These helicopters did not exist, and when local firefighters and medical personnel wrote UW Medical and begged them to set the record straight, they were responded with ridicule. UW committed to this fallacy for for five months until freedom of information act requests acquired the flight logs which proved no helicopters were anywhere near the high school, and any trips to Harborview Medical Center would have involved a full 30 minute trip, rather than the 12 minute ambulance ride to Providence. UW Medicine issued an apology for the error, but no explanation why they released misleading information about helicopters being turned away, nor failed to correct it when Providence was under heavy criticism from families and the media. The letter of apology states that UW Medicine had been trying set the record straight for months, but email chains from administrators directly contradict this claim, and show administrators were very pleased with the level of criticism Providence was receiving in the media.

THE CHEATING AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR

Then there is the athletic department, who’s ethical track record is almost beyond belief. Issues revolving cheating, recruiting violations, and protecting felonious behavior of players goes back generations.  For the purposes of maintaining some degree of brevity, we will focus primarily on the last 30 years.

October 1985: Former UW player Michael Kay Green is arrested after a two-month spree in which he attacked nine women and children. He is convicted of several robbery charges, rape at knife point, abduction, and murder charges. He blames addiction to steroids from his time at UW for his violence.

May 1987: UW runningback Trevin Moore is arrested in connection with the knifing and robbery of a Seattle woman, and is also convicted in three other attacks on Seattle women. He is given an “exceptionally light sentence of one year,” according to the Seattle Times.

December 1987: UW linebacker Jay Roberts is one of three men participating in a rape at a Seattle apartment. One of the men is convicted but Roberts is released after a retrial when the victim refused to testify.

May 1987: UW star Reggie Rogers is charged with a gross misdemeanor assault on his former girlfriend. The following year he would kill three people in Michigan while drunk driving.

February 1993: UW football player Michael Darrow receives a deferred sentence for sexual assault on a 13 year old girl.

August 1993: The Pac-10 penalizes UW football for a scheme involving paying players for summer jobs they do not attend. Don James resigns in protest.

October 1993: UW wide receiver Jason Shelley is expelled after being arrested in Eugene, Oregon for breaking into an UO dorm and raping an 18 year old. UW football player Doug Barnes and basketball player Prentiss Perkins are also charged. The charges are later reduced to third degree sexual abuse, a misdemeanor.

1996: Police respond on five separate occasions to calls of domestic violence at the home of UW football player Curtis Williams. One of those times Williams is charged with misdemeanor assault. The final time he is arrested again for misdemeanor assault the police note a puddle of blood in the bedroom and his wife was badly beaten. The wife had previously suffered a broken arm while she was pregnant and later acknowledges Williams was responsible. Charges were dropped in lieu of counseling, which he never attends. Four days later the wife calls the police again saying he had choked her and cut her face.

September 1997: Williams is convicted of 3rd degree assault and sentenced to time served.

December 1997: Williams is breaks a no contact order and arrested for a fifth time for domestic violence. His wife says he threatened to kill her if she left him.

1998: King County prosecutor Norm Maleng refuses to pursue charges against 3 UW players who were witnessed beating a UW student as a crowd gathered around.

April 1998: UW recruit Jerramy Stevens assaults and hospitalizes an already unconscious classmate. A UW lawyer negotiates of misdemeanor plea and he is sentenced to time already served.

1999: King County prosecutors drop charges against three UW football players for trashing a fraternity and assaulting several members. One player receives a ten day sentence.

1999: A witness sees Jerramy Stevens raping a semi-conscious woman in an alley behind a fraternity.

January 1999: New head football coach Rick Neuheisal makes improper phone calls to former Colorado players, numerous illegal phone calls to recruits during the quiet period, and athletic assessment of a recruit on a visitation.

October 1999: UW linebacker Jeremiah Pharms’ wife calls police to say he assaulted her. He is arrested and released.

January 2000: Police investigate a shooting victim who says Jeremiah Pharms broke into his apartment, shot him, and stole his drugs.

July 2000: Jerramy Stevens is arrested and charged with rape. He is one of at least 14 different players who will be represented by UW booster Mike Huntsman during the 2000 season.

October 2000: Multiple witnesses identify Jerramy Stevens, his truck, and its license plate in at hit and run on a vehicle with multiple children inside.

October 2000: King County prosecutor Maleng drops rape charges against Jerramy Stevens despite victim testimony, eyewitness testimony, and DNA match to semen in her anus and vagina. The victim was determined not to be a credible witness because she was either drugged or drunk at the time.

October 2000: Stevens is cited for speeding in the hit and run case and receives a $119 ticket.

December 2000: Jeremiah Pharms’ neighbor contacts police about concerns over the pitbulls he is raising in his back yard, the bloody rags everywhere, and the lack of food and water for them. Police take some of the dogs to a shelter where they are described as “all bony” and with heavy chains and padlocks around their necks and having been drinking from a gutter drain. He is written up for having unlicensed dogs and more dogs than allowed. Pharms never returns for the dogs after the Rose Bowl.

April 2001: His football eligibility now gone, UW linebacker Jeremiah Pharms is finally arrested for shooting and robbing his drug dealer 14 months earlier (now 3 months after UW’s trip to the Rose Bowl). 14 months prior, UW police collect Pharms bloody fingerprint and football glove from the crime scene and take interviews from the victim who personally knows Pharms and identifies him as the shooter. Pharms is convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.

May 2001: Jerramy Stevens’ pickup drives through the side of a nursing home and knocks a dresser onto a bed where a 92 year old woman is sleeping. His vehicle is stuck and he gets out and uses his textbooks for traction where a witness sees him and gets his license plate number before he drives away. After lying to police he eventually pleads guilty and receives a suspended 90-day sentence.

2002: Stevens receives multiple citations for reckless driving and one DUI arrest.

October 2002: Assistant basketball coach Cameron Dollar and Lorenzo Romar admit to 26 different recruiting violations, most involving illegal early contact with recruits.

January 2003: Rick Neuheisal is censured by the American Football Coaches Association for recruiting violations.

June 2003: NCAA launches an investigation into Rick Neuheisal betting on college basketball.

2003: Unable to make any progress with criminal charges in Norm Maleng’s office despite police recommendations, three different women file civil suits against UW football players Roc Alexander and Eric Shyne accusing them of rape. The lawsuits were settled and all records are sealed.

October 2003: Dr. William Scheyer, aka Dr. Feelgood, UW Softball’s team doctor, admits to state medical investigators that he had improperly passed out and failed to track “thousands of doses of narcotic pain pills, muscle relaxants, and testosterone steroid gels,” to players.

May 2003: Zach Tuiasosopo is arrested for breaking the windows, windshields, doors and interiors of four vehicles by the wharf in Seattle. He is convicted and sentenced to community service and alcohol treatment.

March 2004: Defensive End Manase Hopoi is arrested for punching a security guard.

May 2007: UW basketball player Artem Wallace is arrested for hit and run after his car hit a motorcyclist. Police described him as extremely intoxicated.

January 2009: Football coach Steve Sarkisian and Nick Holt violate recruiting rules over James Boyd.

January 2009: Football coach Steve Sarkisian admits to recruiting violation over Desmond Trufant.

March 2010: Defensive End Andru Pulu is arrested for assault. The victim suffered a fractured skull when he tried to break up another fight, and police noted a bootprint on his temple. No charges were ever filed.

January 2011: UW basketball player Venoy Overton is arrested and charged with raping two 16 year old girls.  The charges are later reduced to contributing alcohol to a minor.

March 2011: Venoy Overton starts for coach Lorenzo Romar in the NCAA tournament.

May 2011: UW basketball player Venoy Overton is arrested and pleads guilty to promoting prostitution (pimping) of an 18 year old girl.  According to court documents.  Overton provided detailed instructions on how to work as a prostitute.  Driving her to particular locations, teaching her how to walk, what prices to charge, and how many tricks to turn before calling him to pick her up.

November 2012: Jerramy Stevens is arrested for assaulting Hope Solo, but no charges are pressed.

July 2012: Shots were fired in the direction of police from Venoy Overton's car.  An associate of Overton is  charged with felony weapons charges.

2013: Head Football coach Steve Sarkisian is reimbursed for $1023 for alcohol tabs for two staff outings. The bills involved mostly shots of tequila, an athletic department spokesmen classified them as legitimate business expenses.

August 2012: Former UW Soccer star Hope Solo is cited for use of banned substances by the US Anti-Doping Agency.  She will be involved with multiple domestic violence disputes with husband Jeremy Stevens during their marriage.

January 2013: UW football player Zacchery Fogerson arrested for robbing an 18 year old woman at gunpoint.

March 2013: Starting Tight End Austin Seferian-Jenkins arrested for Drunk Driving.  He is suspended for one game.

July 2013: Starting Wide Receiver Kasen Williams pleads guilty to drunk driving and driving under the influence of marijuana.  He misses no playing time for coach Sarkisian.

December 2013: UW Defensive Line Coach Tosh Lupoi was discovered to have made cash payments hidden in coffee cups totally $4500 to Mike Davis, coach of UW recruit Andrew Basham for private tutoring.  Basham fails to qualify academically.  Lupoi is paid $300,000 in a mutual separation agreement.

June 2014: Hope Solo is indicted for assaulting her half-sister and 17 year old nephew with a broomstick. Police found the victims to have visible injuries. Courts ordered her to stop drinking alcohol.

June 2014: Former UW football coach Jim Lambright is arrested for assaulting his 23 year old granddaughter. Lambright's wife and two granddaughters requested a no-contact order, saying they feel threatened by his “escalating level of aggression.” Lambright works as a consultant for Turner Construction, who received the contract to renovate Husky Stadium two years ago.

February 2014: Following Seattle's first ever Super Bowl win over Denver, Quarterback Cyler Miles and wide receiver Demore'ea Stringfellow were identified by multiple Seahawk fans who were assaulted during post game celebrations.  One man was punched repeatedly and a woman who was seen taking pictures was knocked unconscious and her camera was thrown into a bonfire.  An hour later another man was punched twice and chased for several blocks.  Stringfellow was eventually charged with two counts of assault and one count of malicious mischief. Miles, a native of Denver, Colorado who grew up Bronco fan received a one game suspension.

January 2015: Jerramy Stevens is arrested (and later convicted) for DUI while driving the US Women's National Soccer team van with the headlights off. Hope Solo who was also drunk and in the van, became belligerent with police and was suspended by US Soccer.

THE CONCLUSION

This is not just another rivalry. Washington State University, its alumni, its administrators, and athletic fans have legitimate beefs with the University of Washington that go beyond the traditional rivalry metrics. They don’t like their philosophy, and they don’t like the way they do business. To the degree that our rivalry is lopsided is that regard is of little concern to them.

This is not another example of the poor school envying the rich school. It’s a loathing of a rich school’s refusal to live within its rather ample means, and furthermore, often seeking out supplemental ill-gotten loot from the public.

This is not another example of the remedial school resenting the smart kid school. It’s a loathing of an academic institution who values its prestige over its duty to educate its own citizens.

This is not another small football program bitter at getting beat by the bigger one. It’s a loathing of an athletic department endowed with every single economic, numerical, and regulatory advantage still opting to cheat to get an edge.

This is not an alumni admonishing the warts and troublemakers of its rival, while blatantly ignoring their own. It’s a loathing of an institution which has repeatedly breached serious ethical boundaries; and beyond merely covering them up, has excused and even encouraged major federal crimes of its teachers, players, and students while keeping themselves above the law.

This is why, if our small, slow, weak, under-trained, and under-equipped army of courageous young football players manages to kick the snot out of the University of Washington this Saturday, it will be with a personal level of satisfaction the likes of which Husky fans will never know.

For we bow down to Washington....but only so we can spit on their shoes.

https://www.facebook.com/WSUCougars/videos/10156217617560457/?pnref=story

Guilty Back Sweat

The following is a true story as I remember it. If any facts are in dispute, it is only because others with dissenting views remember it wrongly. My view is accurate and, should they be called to testify, I fully expect the Canadian contingent of  relatives and non-relatives to offer corroboration to the facts related here. We are talking international cooperation here, folks. Let's call it detente in the Americas.  I left out names of specific individuals just in case any stray paperwork still exists requesting the appearance of myself or my kin before the provincial magistrate to answer for our transgressions.

Background - Seventeen Days Until the Party

My Aunt and Uncle celebrated a wedding anniversary in Saskatchewan in '74  and they decided to throw a party for a few friends and family.  Some three or four hundred folks showed up and I know for a fact that not everybody in attendance was in possession of a valid invitation.  I believe the invite list started with a few friends and assorted family, then it multiplied like bunnies snorting viagra.  That event was the social highlight of the Canadian central plains that year and even today, it lives on in local lore.  

I had twenty or thirty relatives, all on my Moms side, that were scattered between British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan and had threatened to attend, so my Mom decided my family wasn't going to be the only no-show.  It was the only time I can remember that she made a decision on her own like that, without Dad signing on first.  She said we were going and that was the end of it.   Good for you Mom.  Good for you.

My Mom was patient, loving and in all ways a great Mom but I have to admit she was somewhat geographically challenged.   When I asked how long it would take to get there, she said "It's not that far, it will be fun, you just wait and see!"  It wasn't fun.  Three days in the car with my Dad was bad news.  I going to get yelled at and hit in the ear by my Dad for three days straight and so, I didn't want to go but Mom did and so we went.

I was fourteen at the time and I didn't yet have a vote at the polls or family matters.  I was told to get in the back seat and shut up.  At that point in my life, I was just beginning to experiment with social rebellion and different ways to piss off my Dad, so for three solid days, I did exactly that.  As soon as we hit the road, I started to piss off my Dad.  If there was a sign on the road that said "roadside attraction", I asked if we could stop and see the two-headed cow.  If there was a sign that said "rest stop ahead", I said I had to pee.  I didn't have to pee, I was fourteen and could go all day and not pee but I wanted to see my Dad swing his right arm behind him over the seat back of the family car, trying to reach my ear with his knuckles while he drove.  The car always swerved into the oncoming lane when he did that.  At seventy miles an hour my Dad could reach his right hand around and cuff me on the ear and at the same time ask me if I heard the instructions to not speak.

 

In those days I was an active participate in the non-verbalist movement that was sweeping the junior high schools in the western half of the country.  I didn't say much but when I did, it was something guaranteed to piss off Dad.   He offered to stop the car and discuss things further if I got the answer wrong.  "Ya.  I got it.  And I still gotta pee."

The Trip – Fourteen Days Until the Party

My Dad hooked up a borrowed travel trailer behind the family truckster for us to sleep in for duration of the trip, so we drove ten hours a day, then camped on the side of the highway at night. I see pictures of families traveling now and there is this new invention called a hotel with a swimming pool.  Who knew?  They must have come out with it sometime after we drove to Saskatchewan because I never stayed in a hotel with a swimming pool until I threw my own kids in the backseat for a road trip and had to reach back and cuff one on the ear and tell them to shut up.

The travel trailer was maybe fifteen or eighteen feet long and was about ten thousand pounds heavier than the truckster could comfortably tow. We did eighty downhill and thirty uphill across three states and two provinces. The smell of hot brake pads, burnt engine oil and unending cigarette smoke filled my nostrils for three days. I feel nauseous now just thinking about that smell.  My dad was a Marlboro man.

Mom and Dad took the master suite in the trailer, which was ill named since it was barely big  enough for one person and the natty mattress was sadly situated on one thin piece of plywood above the septic tank.  That tank had a slow leak and smelled like an outhouse on a hot day.  My sister slept on the kitchen table that folded down and doubled as a bed while I slept on the floor, which was OK.  I liked the floor.  I believed then, as I do now, that sleeping on the floor builds character. 

The Farm – Ten Days Until the Party

After three days of hard driving and enough stress to induce a heart attack, we pulled into the farmyard on my Uncles farm in Saskatchewan, at which point Dad kicked my sister and I out of the travel trailer.  My sister moved into the main house while I moved into the cabin with my cousins. At the time, I didn't know why my parents were so willing to let me move out of the travel trailer, but I do now. Parents will do anything to get the kids out of the domicile for some "adult time".  My Dad gathered up all of my clothes and my toothbrush and handed them to me before he shut the engine off.  For me, getting kicked out of the trailer was a stay of execution. I thought I was condemned riding in the backseat of the truckster with a bleeding ear, under the careful watch of my Dad the prison warden, but my Mom the governor interceded on my behalf and let me move into a run down cabin with my cousin John.  I didn't realize it then but my Mom saved me from Dad dozens of times.  I think the reason I can hear out of both ears now is because Mom sent me out on a chore right before Dad whacked me on the ear. 

My cousin John was a revelation to me.  My other cousins were great too but John and I were almost the same age and I wanted to be just like him.  He smoked cigarettes. He played rock music too loud by some band I had never heard of called Led Zeppelin. He snagged the unused alcohol from his parents house and let me drink some. He had a stack of magazines with pictures of naked girls. He had a crappy cabin with brown shag carpet and a lava lamp. If you look up the word happy in any dictionary printed in '74 or '75, it shows a picture of me in that cabin with my cousin.

Prior to that trip, my musical background was mostly Burt Bacharach, Johnny Cash, maybe some Boots Randolph if I was lucky.  My parents had a Boots Randolph album that they turned up loud when they threw a party.  I can still hear Boots playing "Yackety Sax" and it was actually pretty good, but somewhere in there, I missed a large part of my rock-n-roll youth.  When I showed up at my cousins cabin, I didn't know who Led Zeppelin was.  I had never listened to Chicago.  I wasn't allowed to listen to The Doobie Brothers, for obvious reasons.  For my thirteenth birthday, my Mom bought me a Carpenters album.  I have nothing against The Carpenters, but it just wasn't me.  Something was missing, but I didn't know what it was until I found it in a dirty, poorly lit cabin in Saskatchewan with a leaky roof and brown shag carpet.

The cabin is where "no-good" happens. When somebody asked my Mom what I was up to, she always said I was “up to no-good”, which was kind of weird.  She had no idea what a fourteen year old buy might do for some no-good.  I'm not sure but I think my Mom meant that when I was up to no-good, I was staying up past ten.  I had a longer, much more varied list of things to do for some no-good.  I didn't have the heart to tell her the truth so, when she asked what I did in the cabin, I admitted with a guilty frown that we stayed up until eleven or eleven thirty watching television.  I admitted that I would rather go to bed at ten, my regular bedtime, but John seemed to be a night owl and I didn't want to be rude and go to bed early so I stayed up late too.  I think she bought it.  The cabin is the place I wanted to be and I was hoping for a lot of no-good to happen that had nothing to do with bedtime.

Girls just showed up at the cabin, and I don't mean my girl cousins showed up. I mean girls that I didn't share genetic history with just showed up at the cabin. I don't remember the girl's name with black hair that showed up one day but she was willing to sit with me and talk and she had breasts, which was a real bonus for me.  I thought she was an angel when she just showed up one day and walked in the cabin without knocking or anything.  She just walked in and smiled at me. She was fifteen and I was fourteen and I fell in love in a cabin, with Led Zeppelin playing. What was her name? Crap, I can't remember.  She taught me to smoke.  She taught me to drink beer. She taught me...some other stuff.  I'll call her Angel because I cant remember her name.  Angel was awesome.  She wiggled when she walked.

The Car – Seven Days Until the Party

My cousin John had a really nice piece of crap car that only ran when it was warm outside. I don't think John had a valid drivers license, but he had a car and we drove it around looking for some more no-good. John drove and my job was to look out for cops.  I never stopped to consider what to do if I spotted one, but I was an eagle eyed lookout in that car.  John wanted it to look like a dragster so we cut some notches in some 2x4's and jambed them in between the body of the car and rear axle. That lifted the rear end up about six inches. It looked really good but it rode a little rough. Trouble started when we hit a bump and broke one of the 2x4's and the car started to lean. I think the car rode better that way.

We drove that car to a park by a lake and drank beer and smoked and listened to Led Zeppelin and Angel was there.  She smelled like strawberries and she talked to me and she had really big eyes.  What the hell was her name?  I think about her less frequently now than I used to.  I used to think about her ten times a day, every day.  I could see her with dark hair and dark eyes and I could just smell her strawberry lipstick.  I wonder what she looks like now.  Probably still hot.  What was her name?  I just can't remember.  Shit.

The RCMP and Me – One Day Until the Party

One day before my Aunt and Uncle's anniversary party, I went to a small party at a house owned by a friend of Johns.  I think my cousin John told my Aunt and my Mom that we were going to a church party and we were going to drink milk and listen to some religious music and read the bible verses about Moses and maybe pray for a couple hours if we had extra time.  My Mom bought the story so I got to go.  John could really spin a story.

The party was in some guys house that I didn't know and they had shag carpet and lava lamps and rock music turned up way too loud and everybody was smoking hand rolled cigarettes. I don't think Angel was there but some other girl was there and she smiled a lot and she had breasts too, just like Angel, so everything sort of worked out.  She didn't wiggle like Angel but she talked to me and smiled and touched my shoulder.  That's kind of how stuff happens sometimes.  A bad thing happens, like Angel not going to the party but a good thing happens like this other shoulder touching girl is at the party and and it just all works out.  I don't remember her name either but she knew Angel and she was willing to talk to me and smile.  Like I said, things just work out sometimes.  

Everybody at the party was at least a year or two older than I was so I was feeling mucho mature and cool so I sort of wandered around the house and ended up in the basement.  There was some dude in the corner with a girl on the couch, arms and legs were flying everywhere and who knows what shenanigans were about to happen but I was feeling so cool I just kept wandering when I saw my first black light poster.  I couldn't stop looking at it.  There was a big snake wrapped around a nearly naked girl.  In black light.  I was amazed.  Oh ya, when I get home, I gotta get me one of them.

We ran out of beer at about ten or eleven, so a couple guys I didn't know said they were going to get some more and they threw me in the backseat of a dodge four-door.  They didn't need me but they just took me along.  They didn't exactly kidnap me, since I wanted to go, but they didn't ask if I wanted to go either.  They just grabbed me and threw me in the car.  It was like I was a mascot but I didn't care, I was up to no-good.

Other than getting a beer out of the fridge for my Dad, this trip was my first beer run. The big guy with a mustache like a Mexican bandit and long hair that fell past his shirt collar drove. I decided to grow my hair out just like him and get a mustache just like his as soon as I got home.  His car was just a rusted out brown car with a leaky exhaust and a good stereo and he said that I needed to keep at least one window open all the time or we would all be asphyxiated.  I think he was serious because I could smell the exhaust so I kept one window open.  I didn't care, I was fourteen years old and on my first beer run.  

The other guy talked non-stop about his girlfriend and how she dumped him for some loser that worked at a tattoo place and it wasn't right and on and on... who cares for fuck's sake? Shut up already and turn up the Led.  I started to think about the new girl I met at the party, who wasn't as pretty as Angel, but she had breasts just like Angel so I wanted to get back to the party to see what she was all about.  I sort of felt guilty because maybe Angel would be jealous but then I forgot about Angel and started to think about the new girl touching my shoulder again.  Maybe if new girl saw me walk in to the party with beer she know know how much of a bad-ass I was and would let me kiss her. Or whatever.

We ended up at the backdoor of a bar, the driver with the foo-man-chu jumps out and five minutes later, he walks back to the car with a case of beer, opens the back door and hands it to me. We start the drive back to the party while I balance a case of high-test Canadian beer on my lap and I am thinking how awesome this was.  No way would this happen at home.  In twenty minutes I was going to carry that case of beer in the party, everybody would praise my bravery and the new girl would slaughter me with kisses and maybe some no-good.  This was awesome.

To get from the bar to the farm where the party was takes about ten minutes driving on long, flat, straight gravel roads. If you haven't been to Saskatchewan, you wont understand. These roads are flat. These roads go straight. Forever.  You could grow old on those roads, driving in a straight line.  There is one barn and farmhouse on the left, and one barn and farmhouse on the right, spaced about a mile apart.  Between the farmhouses are cows and hay and wheat. That's it, there is nothing else there, nothing but cows and wheat and that one Royal Canadian Mounted Police guy with a bad attitude and a flashy red light on top.

We are doing fifty on a dirt road at midnight, the Mountie is a half mile ahead of us, sitting in his car in the middle of the road waiting to arrest a fourteen year old foreign national that doesn't shave. He sees us coming and turns on his flashy red light. My back starts to sweat.  This is a career moment for the officer.  His first international arrest.  He is going to be a hero back at HQ.  He had quite a few domestic arrests to his credit, but this was his first foray into the the career boosting field of cross-border incarceration.  

Likewise, this event was a big deal for me.  I had never been arrested in Canada before so this would be a first.  I think I was the only one in the car without an arrest record and while I did want to fit in with my new kidnapper friends, I didn't really consider the potential hazards of a beer run until I saw that red flashy light and the mountie with the gun. 

Arrested – Dday Minus One

My bandito driver with the hair and the foo-man-chu starts to slow the car down, but he doesn't stop. That's weird.  I think to myself "the Mountie wants you to stop, dude."  Then he tells me to throw the case of beer out the window into the ditch.  I thought about it and I just froze. I wanted to explain that we had a logistical problem but I didn't have time to explain.  The cop had his flashy red light on and everything was happening too fast. There is only one window rolled down and its the one on the drivers side.  I wanted to scream at him that when he told me to keep one window down so we could breath, he didn't say which one, so I rolled down the one on the drivers side and if I throw the beer out that window, its gonna land in the middle of the road, but I didn't have time to explain it.  I panicked and throw it as far as I can, but throwing a full case of beer out the rear window of a moving Dodge four door with exhaust leaks is harder than it sounds. The best I can do is push it over the edge of the window and hope it rolls in the ditch. I think a case of Canadian beer must be heavier than American beer because it didn't make it to the ditch, it landed almost in the center of the road. The car stopped, the case of broken beer bottles sat there in the middle of the road, mocking me, testifying to my guilt and lack of arm strength.  My shirt is soaked with sweat from my back.  Guilty back sweat. I was promptly arrested and interrogated.  I started to think about what happens to fourteen year old boys in Canadian prisons.  

In the glow of the red flashy light on top of the RCMP car, the seven foot tall mountie with a huge gun on his hip asked for my name and I answered.  The mountie asked for my place of birth, and I answered. The Mountie made me promise to appear in court within a week to answer charges, so I said OK and signed the paper he stuck in my face. He gave me a copy of the paper, which I was going to tear into shreds as soon as I could.  I mean seriously, what did he expect?  He didn't know what my Dad would do when he saw that paper.  My Dad would find out I lied about the party so he would beat me.  He would find out I promised to read bible verses about Moses and pray and drink milk and I lied about that too and he would drop a fist into both ears.  Then I know he would find out about me watching the guy and the girl on the couch and I would get beat for that.  And the black light poster?  No way would I get a black light poster when I got home after this screw up.

I was so scared, I didn't read the paper the Mountie offered me, I just signed it.   As far as I know, it was a contract to buy a condo in Florida.  The red flashy light from the police cruiser glared in my eyes, driving satanic inspired light into my skull.  I knew I was guilty and going to prison.  I knew I was going to hell and my Mom was going to be so ashamed and cry for days on end and Dad was going beat the shit out of me for days on end.  Dad is going change me from a baritone to a tenor.  I am in it right up to my eyeballs.  Guilty back sweat is running down into my shoes.  I looked around for someplace to run.

Then the weirdest thing happened.  He let us go.  I mean, after he arrested us and took our beer and made us sign our own death warrant, he let us go.  I thought of a movie where the cop let the guy go, only to shoot him in the back as he ran and I knew, I just knew I was going to get a bullet in the back from a Mountie.  The Mounties on TV are nice but this seven foot tall monster was a hell-spawned back shooter.  But he didn't shoot us in the back like I knew he would, he just let us go.  I was looking around for a helicopter with a sharp shooter in the door and some salivating german shepherd dogs that are trained to bite the wiener off of American underage felons as they are led off to prison.  But it didn't happen.  He just let us go.  We got back in the car and drove off.  How weird is that? We arrive back at the party, defeated and beerless. Everybody was gone.  Nobody cared.  I crossed my River Rubicon and survived and nobody cared.  And the new girl had gone home.  I felt cheated. Shit.

I wasn't there, but I know for a fact that several days later, in a dimly lit courtroom in Regina, the county seat where the crime was committed, a team of law enforcement professionals were denied in the issuance of justice.  In that courtroom sat a judge, a stenographer and a mountie with a gun and a pair of german shepherd dogs trained to bite the wiener off of foreigners.  In that courtroom, a name was called to answer for crimes committed, but no one answered.  An arrest warrant was then issued, but never served.  Someday, when I can no longer withstand the burden that guilt lays upon me, I plan to drive to Regina, go to the courthouse, find the courtroom and answer the call. Someday.  Maybe someday.

Life With Angel – Dday

The anniversary party came and I was there, freshly showered after my near miss with the Canadian penal system.  There was food and decorations and a band and several hundred well-wishers eating the free food and enjoying the warm, summer evening.  And Angel was there, and we danced and she kissed me and I silently planned our lives together.  I wanted to live with her in the cabin with my cousins and smoke and drink and browse the magazines and listen to Led Zeppelin and do some no-good with Angel a couple times a day.  She would laugh at my jokes and bake chocolate chip cookies and tell me she loved me.  It didn't work out. She had loftier goals I guess and, and... crap, what the hell was her name?  I almost asked her to get married and I can't remember her name.  Shit.

Running the Border – The Last Day
I went home in the backseat of my Dad's truckster, silent and thinking of my experiences, smiling when I thought of the good stuff and feeling guilty back sweat run down into my underwear when I thought of my transgressions.  As we journeyed south towards the border I thought of the armed SWAT team waiting for me at the border, ready to arrest me with guns and handcuffs and trained german shepherd attack dogs that bite your wiener off.  The closer we got to  the U.S./Canadian border, the more I worried.  The more I worried, the more I sweat.  I silently rehearsed a speech that I planned to give to my Mother, apologizing for the life of crime I had been living.  She deserved better.  I knew it was wrong but I couldn't help myself.  Crime came easily to me and I was suited to no other occupation that I knew of so even though I wanted to be a veterinarian, treating sick and wounded animals with kindness, I was doomed to a life of robbing banks and other, mean spirited affairs.  I admitted I was a prison lifer, just waiting for a bunk to open up on Alcatraz.  I was so sorry.  

The worst part was I knew how disappointed she would be.  I cried silently at how she would surely turn her back on me when she learned I was such a low sort.  She would cry and shake her head and hug my sister close and whisper to her "Don't look at your brother.  Don't think about him ever again.  He just turned out bad.  So bad."  I cried at how my Dad would beat the living hell out of me as he dropped me off at prison, shouting to the guards "You take him, I don't want him."

We drove south, towards the border, towards my own personal doom, where the guards certainly knew of my crime and were just waiting to arrest me.  I started to hyperventilate.  Then as the border came into view, I started to make low moaning noises. I couldn't help it. I think John Dillinger made those same noises right before the FBI shot him dead.  I could feel the back sweat run down my back then between my butt cheeks.  As we got within a mile of the border, I started looking for the flashy red light on the take-your-ass-to-prison car and the tall RCMP officer, waiting to point one long finger directly at me and say "That's him there, the chubby kid with the dim look.  Set the wiener eating dogs loose."   I briefly considered running, moving only at night, sleeping in a ditch during the day, making my way back to the cabin.  I would be safe there, with Angel, but the opportunity didn't present itself.  I sat tight and waited for the hangman's noose.  As it turned out there was a communication gap between the RCMP and the guys with guns at the border because they didn't stop me.  One of the border guards did ask my Dad if I was ok when he noticed the puddle of guilty back sweat running out the door of the truckster.  My Dad reached around and cuffed me on the ear while saying "I told you to be quiet."  I guess I was making that Dillinger moaning noise again.  Watching me get hit on the temple seemed to please the border guard because he nodded approvingly at my Dad, then he waived us through.

After

For years, I thought my feelings for Angel were mutual and I expected her to show up at my door, asking for my hand in marriage.  That never happened and honestly, I was sort of surprised that it didn't.  I really thought she wanted to marry me as much I ... well, I guess it doesn't matter now.  

Every time I thought of her, my mind wandered a bit, recalling our time together, smelling her smoky breath, and I could see her dark hair, her big eyes and of course her breasts, but then that red flashy light intruded, then I saw the wiener eating dogs and my dream was ruined.  It all made my back sweat.  Guilty back sweat.

Where You Live

Where you live

There will I live also

The place that you call home

There will I find rest

The air that you exhale

That air will I breath in
What you see, I will also see

That which you think, I will know too  

What you ask, that will I obey

Your heartbeat commands me

The grace of your glance consumes me

The scent of you is a sonnet sung only to me

I lust deeply for your embrace
I thirst to hear you call my name

To feel your quickened breath
To feel your full embrace

My life is gray rendering without you
Color first-born when you are near

The Cigar Box

I am not a sentimental person. With few exceptions, I cast emotion aside and discard everything that isn't useful to me at this moment. I purge. Rather than keep an item to see if I might need it a year from now, I throw it out. I have never really understood people who save letters or birthday cards. They just don't make sense. “When in doubt, throw it out.”  Wise words.

That isn't to say I don't keep any memorabilia. My cousin Steve played for the Oakland Raiders in 1973 and he gave me a football signed by the team.  I really like that ball. All of the Raider fans I have met have been absolute freaks, but in a nice way.  If you are a Raiders fan, you know what I am talking about.  That autographed ball is a big deal and I have strong feelings about it, but honestly I would sell it for the right price.

I caught a ball at a Mariners playoff game against the hated Yankees in 1995. I still have that ball but I would sell it for maybe twenty bucks. I don't care that much about the ball, but I do care about the twenty bucks.

I never met my grandfathers.  One died before I was born and while we don't talk about him much, everybody says he was a good guy.  My other grandfather ran off, abandoning his family.  We never talk about him.  I didn't know my maternal Grandmother well, she passed when I was young, but my paternal Grandmother, "Gram", was a fixture in my life up through my early twenties.  She was like a third parent to me and I think about her often.  It's funny now to admit how much of an impact she made on me, but I didn't realize it until about ten years after she passed.

I have stuffed into the back corner of my closet a small cardboard box that contains Gram's white gloves that she wore once in a while.  Gram didn't wear the gloves often, she only broke those out for Easter and Christmas. I don't know how I ended up with the gloves, but the last time I opened the box, they smell of lavender and mildew and I plan on keeping those until the end of my days.  The gloves are all I have left of Gram that means anything and I cherish them.

I can still see Gram in my fading memory, walking my Sister and I the four blocks from her small house on 10^th avenue to First Presbyterian church Sunday mornings, rain or shine. It was a three minute walk, but Gram would drag it out to ten or fifteen minutes, depending on who she bumped into. There was always a wandering herd of eighty year old ladies migrating to the church for the 7:00 AM service and some of them were slow movers. Almost all sported an aluminum cane or walker. Gram fell in with that crowd and it took a while to get to the service.

She usually wore the same outfit, a sensible all-black skirt and jacket combo, with sensible shoes and a little black hat pinned to her steel-grey wig that she wore to church and the odd funeral home event. The hat seemed to make the whole ensemble work.

Gram was from the generation where appearances mattered. She was a card-carrying member of "clean and ironed" guild where the unwritten rule was you wore your old clothes with pride, as long as they were clean and freshly ironed.  She was a true zealot with the laundry.

Gram taught me that we didn't want to put on airs like Gladys from down the street did.  Gladys was maybe 80 years old and lived in a one room flat but she wore a new dress to Sunday service almost every year.  Gram and I didn't think much of that.  We despised Gladys and her ostentatious behavior.  I was maybe eight or nine years old when I learned that the path to heaven was certain if we wore second hand clothes that were clean and ironed.

I used to have a cigar box that my Mother gave me, but I lost it some years ago. I used to look for that lost box once in a while, but I stopped; I finally admitted that it is gone for good. The box was where she kept her acquired treasures from when she was a teenager. It was a standard sized cigar box, perhaps 10 inches long and was tan or brown with an faded orange shade acquired over the thirty or forty years that she owned it. Since my Mother came from a family of moderate means, I know she had few things that she valued, but what she did own, she kept in that cigar box.  She never said it, but I think the box, or the contents of the box meant the world to her at one time. It was just a cheap wooden box with odds and ends gathered by a young girl who was given little, but I could tell it meant something and she chose to give it to me, to keep safe so that those treasures it contained would endure where she could not. 

Inside the box, my Mother had lined the bottom panel with a purple, velveteen fabric of some kind. Over the years, the fabric had come lose in one corner and had become natty and worn. I am just guessing here, but I think she borrowed or stole or was gifted that fabric from her own Mother. Maybe it was left over fabric from a dress or a pillow that her Mother made, or maybe she found it.  Whatever it was, I could tell that the fabric was there to cushion and display the contents and it was made by my mother, when she was a girl.  Then, except for a single item that was in the box, I lost it all.

My Mother kept several items in the box, but I only remember two. First, she had an old knife. It wasn't exactly a real knife, it was more of a carving tool. It was made of metal and had a heavy red plastic handle and a crescent moon shaped blade. The handle was fluted so that it wouldn't slip, even if it was wet. It felt solid and substantial and if you have ever held a good tool in your hand, no matter what the tool was for, it felt like that.  If you have bought an 'exacto' knife in the past twenty years or so, it was probably light weight aluminum stamped out in a factory somewhere in Asia. Those exacto knives are sharp, but feel weak and inaccurate in your hand. At least, that is how they feel to me. My mothers cutting tool was made to be held and used over and over. It was a good tool. The blade was old and dull from use.  It was all used up and wouldn't cut butter, but it felt good to hold and to use. If you had to pick between the dull blade on the good handle, or the sharp blade on the flimsy aluminum stick, you would take the dull one every time.

The other thing in the box was a broken bar of soap. My Mother had cut the bar with the carving tool, a small bit at a time. You could tell she spent a lot of time on it. It had incredible detail. It might sound silly, but she had carved a sheep out of the bar of soap. It was an amazingly good depiction of a sheep. Sometime before she gave the box to me, the sheep's head had broken off, so the sheep only looked like a sheep when you stuck the head back on. The soap is sticky enough that if you pushed the two pieces together firmly, it would stay stuck for a minute or two. It fell off again when you bumped it.

That sheep was amazing to me. It was amazing both because it must have been hard to make a sheep out of a bar of soap and it was amazing that anybody would try. Who would do that? You put a lot of time doing something so I assume you would want it to last. Soap doesn't last. I think now maybe the soap was all she had to work with. I think now that the choice of material was a window into my Mother's life. She didn't have clay or stone or a good piece of wood. She had a carving tool and a bar of soap, so she did the best she could with what she had. That says a lot about who she was and where she came from.

Over the years, the box got bumped around and the velvet lining was soapy and the cutting tool was a filmed with the soap. And the head broke off the sheep.

Anyway, my Mom was a talented artist, and she tried to pass it on to my sister and I.  I don't know what she did to interest my Sister in art, but my Mother tried for years to get me to fill the artists apprentice position that she was creating, but I didn't inherit the artistic gene. I tried but eventually, Mom felt sorry for me and excused me from further indentured service. She could see that I had no talent. I feel bad now because art was so important to my Mother and she wanted one of her children to share it. 

Except for the odd soapy sheep. my Mother was a painter. She had both a technical appreciation for the art of painting and the talent to create. I am no expert, but I think that is a rare combination. One day, she and I were alone in the house and she pulled out a book with hundreds of pictures of the great works by Rembrandt, Picasso, whoever. I didn't get it. To me, it just looked like a bunch of really well done paintings.  I mean, I could tell they were really well done but that was about it.  We sat together for an hour while she leafed through the book, pointing out this interesting aspect of that important painter, highlighting some historical fact about each. My Mother spoke with reverence about some of the painters. She obviously liked them. Others, she passed by. I have no idea which was which or why she didn't like some of the painters. I was less than impressed and found something important to do outside like wash a car or walk the dog. How hard would it have been to spend an hour and enjoy her appreciation for something like that? Nope. I wasn't listening.

She did mostly pictures of old people and faces and hands. She told me once that faces and hands are the hardest to draw. It sort of makes sense. If you draw a guy walking and his knee is bending backwards, or he had a hunchback, you might explain it with some garbage about how the light is hitting the subject from a funny angle, or maybe you meant for his knee to bend backwards or he was suppose to be a hunchback, but here is the thing:  Hands and faces, you can't fake. The detail required to get some realistic impression is too demanding. You need talent to draw faces and hands. Mom could do that.

My Mother painted with a knife. It wasn't a sharp cutting knife, it was a bent flat metal blade made for painters. It sounds funny now, trying to describe using a knife to paint, but that is how she did it. It was shaped like the kitchen tool you use to get the pie out of the pan, only a lot smaller and narrower. I thought everybody used a knife to paint until I was twelve or fourteen when I saw a movie about some joker using a brush while he painted a pot of flowers. That is wrong on at least two levels, First, nobody painted with a brush, as far as I knew. Real artists use a blade. My Mother used a blade. Second, my Mother thought artists who painted pots of flowers were all frauds. There is no technical requirement. If the pot is really ten inches high, and you paint your pot six feet high, it's still right. You can screw up all you want and claim victory if you paint pots of flowers. A lack of skill is no impediment to pot painters. I digress into that snippet of criticism because it shows you the difference between an artist and the rest of us. The rest of us see a painting of a pot of flowers and think it looks OK. My Mother could see more because her point of view was more correct. A well painted pot of flowers should be of no particular value to anybody. I walk through a store now and see paintings of flowers and laugh to myself. Who would buy that crap?

When Mom painted, she would dab dab dab the knife on her palette that had small piles of different colored paint. Four piles of slightly different colored brown, a yellow, a red and three blues surrounded a big pile of white and another big pile of black. She would pick up a little of this color and a little of that color then mix mix mix to get the color she wanted, then she would scrape one two three times onto the canvas. I can still hear the sound of the knife roughly sliding on the canvas. That sound was there for those years when I was growing up and my Mom was painting, but I didn't remember it until a few days ago. The sound of the knife on the canvas, I can't get it out of my head now.

“Dab dab dab mix mix”, then the “scrape” on the canvas. It was such a light sound and you practically had to be sitting in her lap to hear it. To me it meant nothing at the time, I didn't even know that I remember that sound until I started to write this down, but now, the memory of that sound means the world. You had to be quiet to hear it. You had to be paying attention. You had to sit still. If you tried to talk, or the radio was on, or a car passed by, you missed it. Life is like that. If you just stop and listen, you might learn something.

“Dab dab mix mix scrape”.

“Scrape”.

“Scrape”. The knife ground against the fibers of the canvas, spreading paint. Creating something out of nothing.

“Scrape.”

Picking up bits of this and that, mixing on the palette, then onto the canvas.

“Scrape”. The guy in the movie with the brush was, to me, a complete falsehood. You can't get the good stuff onto the canvas without a steel blade and a steady hand.

Remember the cigar box? The one I lost? I felt bad about that over the years. I felt I lost something of value that my Mother tried to pass to me, but now, I feel great about it. It was just a stupid box with a broken bar of soap. My Mother didn't give me a broken bar of soap. And she didn't give me an old cigar box. She gave me the knowledge she gained in her time. She showed me the tools she used over the years. She taught by example. She just showed me which tools she used, how she used them, what she was creating when she used the tool. What was being created? It didn't matter, the lesson was the same. A bar of soap, a painting or a person? First she showed me the carving tool, to shape the soap. Or shape the soul. Or shape the life that hasn't yet chosen a path to follow. Then the blade, to mix the paint, to scrape on the colors of life, and create depth, to be the catalyst for a greater good.  She spent a lifetime building some worth where none existed before.
“Dab dab mix mix scrape”.
"Scrape".
"Scraaaape".

Capture Life

The cascade of life expresses itself in each of us in different ways.  Some walk the land as Atlas reincarnate, without fear or self doubt.  I have known some of those people and I wish I were more like them.  They never look back, they see the future as their own personal domain.  I stand in awe.  

I do things differently.  I often find myself erratically flailing my limbs, like a bird too young to fly, trying to pull away from the earth, trying to fulfill the genetic imperative.   This happens more often than not and while I may be somewhat surprised at the time it happens, I find in reflection a pattern emerges which reveals itself in the aggregate.   Each turbulent event is in itself unremarkable, while the shear quantity of failures is revealing.

As an example, I drove my old truck for 296,000 miles and at the end of it's duty cycle, it was mostly blemish free.  Sure, it had a few scratches, but for the most part, it was like new when it died at the age of 15 years.  My new truck I have driven into the wall of the garage, ran over the curb, hit a brick wall with the fender and it only has 13000 miles on it.  I don't know why I do dumb stuff.  I just do.

On the other hand, I sometimes am surprised to find I have stumbled into a moment of perfect lucidity. It sneaks up on me like an earthquake.  On those rare occasions, if I am sober enough, I try to capture that moment in time as a memory.  It's like I hit "print screen" at that single moment.  The image of course fades over time, but I know I do it from time to time and it's a beautiful thing.

Years ago, my kids were playing soccer in the local park league.  If you don't know, the park league is where the kids who weren't invited to play in the club league are made to play a sport by their athletically frustrated parents.  It's cute.  My kids were 5 and 7 years old, they displayed no particular excess of talent in the sport, but they seemed to enjoy it at least as much as playing with the dog in the back yard.  Good enough.

I remember one particular October day, it had rained all week, but on that Saturday morning the sky stopped flooding and the sun almost broke through.  The kids were wearing their brightly colored t-shirts with a team logo printed on the front, shin guards strong enough to deflect bullets and soccer shoes with plastic cleats to allow them to more efficiently track grass into the living room.

My roommate and I loaded up our soccer playing spawn in the family cargo-van, then we stopped at Starbucks to get a coffee for the adults and hot chocolate for the kids.  From there, its a short drive to the soccer park where some masses of somebody else's children were disappointing their parents.  Our kids ran to the warm up area, met with their teammates and discussed the weighty matters that pre-teens discuss on a Saturday.  Then, the games started.

Our kids didn't score and, thankfully, they rarely touched the ball.   The team wandered the field in a pack, following a ball that was kicked simultaneously by six or eight kids at a time, moving inches with each stroke.  

If you have ever seen a youth soccer match, its cute.  Some of the kids try really hard, but sadly, as they have no plan of action, they don't accomplish much.  I have to admit, my kids did run a good bit from the van to the field because there was a long line of parents and kids at the Starbucks and we were late, but other than that, not much happened.  Halftime found my youngsters sucking down water like they just ran the marathon.  It was 43 degrees tops, it had rained all night and they were dying of thirst.

The other item that I feel must be discussed is the obligatory over supply of oranges at youth soccer matches.  My kids would eat, under other less supervised circumstances, perhaps one orange a year.  My daughter might eat two.  She don't eat meat.  But.  However.  On the other hand.  At youth soccer matches, the parents must pool their money and buy oranges by the truckload because those little soccer phenoms are ravenous for oranges at halftime.  The oranges are always sliced by a loving parent into perfect, kid friendly sections and all the kids scramble to grab a bucketful, biting and swallowing the juice like a lion eats an antelope.

It doesn't sound like much, but that day was a great day, I remember it still.  I think I reached my pinnacle as a parent and a roommate on that day.  It has been downhill since then.

Thankful For It All

When I was nine years old, I was involved in two bad accidents. The first accident was a car wreck which was serious enough that I was in the hospital for almost three weeks. I don't know for sure, but I think I was pretty close to cashing in my chips. I probably should know how serious it was, but I don't because I wasn't really awake for a couple weeks. I think they had me on some good drugs and I missed most of it after getting chucked out of the crashing jeep and landing in the street.  

That time in the hospital is just a blur.  I do remember not being able to talk since my broken jaw was wired shut so that was pretty awesome.  I also remember looking in the mirror a few days before I got to go home and being shocked at my own appearance.  I was pale and had bright red scars and stitches running down the side of my face.  I hit the pavement pretty hard when I got thrown from the jeep and it tore a lot of skin on my face.  It was pretty gruesome.  Kids are sensitive about their appearance and when I saw my reflection, I rode an emotional elevator of self-esteem to the bottom floor.  I felt sorry for myself.  

After they released me from the hospital, my Mom picked me up in a borrowed car of some kind to go home but first we had to pick up my Sister who was at a play for kids at Davis auditorium.  It was one of those school sponsored events where the kids get out of school for half a day and go to a play or an event of some kind.  I don't know what the play was but it seemed to be pretty popular because a flood of kids came streaming out of the auditorium looking for their parents.  All the parents were just parked on the street, waiting for their kids.  When my Sis saw us she came over and opened the door to get in, then she saw me and screamed.  She didn't mean to hurt my feelings but I kept that movie of her reaction looped in my memory for a decade.

Several months later, the second accident that year involved a shower door on the Forth of  July.  My Sister and I spent the day at Kenny and Pinky Paxton's house, running through the barn and the alfalfa fields so we were kind of a mess.  Dirt hung on us like the kid on the "Peanuts" cartoon with the clouds of dust that linger no matter where he goes . We went home at three or four in the afternoon because Mom and Dad had some folks coming over for a Forth of July celebration and since we were filthy, they sent my Sister and I to shower. We had one shower, so we showered at the same time. We were kids.  It wasn't weird until I had to explain it.  Now it just seems kind of creepy.  

I don't think my Sister and I ever spoke a kind word to each other until we were in our twenties, so it isn't surprising that we were fighting in the shower. She got mad and turned the water on hot and jumped out, threw the shower door closed and held it closed.   I didn't get burned by the hot water, but I was really mad, so I threw my shoulder into the door to push her back. I broke the door, glass flew everywhere and I was cut badly. This was many years ago, before safety glass, so when the glass door broke, it broke into dozens of long, razor sharp glass shards that slashed me open from bow to stern. I was squirting blood from a dozen holes. I had cut skin, muscle, tendons and arteries.

My sister saw the blood and got scared and started to run in place and scream. I remember her feet were dancing up and down while she screamed. Since there was glass all over the floor, she was cut pretty badly too and she screamed non-stop. I don't blame her, it must have been a scary thing to see me squirting blood like a firehose. My Dad heard the fighting and the screaming and came running into the bathroom, saw my sister and I naked, wet from the shower and bleeding everywhere, and he just stopped. I think he was in shock, because he stood there for a few seconds. He may have said something, I don't know, but I do know nobody should have to see their kids in that much blood. I feel bad that he had to go through that.

My Mom heard the screaming, she comes down the hall, scared out of her mind, whispering 'What's wrong?  Mert?  What's wrong?'. Mom's voice or my sisters screaming cut through Dad's shock and he told Mom "Don't come in here, call the ambulance".  Of course Mom can't follow decent directions to save her life so she peeks her head around the bathroom door and screams like Fay Wray.  Dad finally got her moving in the direction of the phone to call the ambulance and she ran off.

Dad saw that my Sister was mostly OK, compared to me, so he sent her to the neighbors.  He could only deal with one of us at a time.  She had hunks of glass jammed into her feet, but she took off like a shot, naked, to go hang out at the neighbors while Dad tried to save me. She ran though every room in the neighbors house, leaving little girl bloody footprints everywhere. The running just pushed the glass further into her feet, bringing up more blood, so the footprints had to be a sight to behold. I never saw them as I was otherwise occupied.  If your kid had the cuts on her feet that my sister did, you would fly in surgeons from the furthest reaches.  She was pretty cut up.

Dad picks me up and carries me to the front door, naked and bleeding, to wait for the ambulance. I was too weak to lift a finger. We sat there together, he cradled me in his arms, on the threshold of the front door. I remember being too week to put my hand over my privates. From the front door, it was only forty or fifty feet to the street and I could see cars slow and stare at us and then drive off.  Nobody stopped to help.  How weird is that?  There was a man holding a naked bleeding boy in the doorway of a house and they don't offer to help?   They just slowed and drove past. How is that possible that they didn't try to help?  Crazy.

I was getting tired and Dad was afraid if I passed out, I might not wake, so he kept trying to make me talk. I lost so much blood that I was dizzy, but I tried not to pass out. I don't know if I passed out or not. The ambulance fetched me and took me to the hospital. I do remember that they hit every freakin bump possible. It's just rude.

That story is gross and it makes me uneasy to tell it but it is actually just the prologue.  Here is the real story: I relate the following in the hope that it really happened, but honestly I don't know. I was so loopy from loss of blood that I could have imagined it, I have no way to know for sure. The point is that it is real enough for me. To this day, I believe it is real, but even if it didn't happen, it is lodged in me like just like my lungs or my heart. 

I was in the hospital, laying on a gurney, getting prepped for surgery or just getting out of surgery, I don't know which. I was in in no pain, or more accurately I was in much less pain than I had been so I guess they had me on some good meds. They had a lot of sewing to do.  So I was on a gurney in a hallway, being pushed by a nurse, then she stopped pushing me and just left me.  I was alone and scared. Maybe she left me there for a few seconds or maybe it was a few minutes or maybe longer, I don't know for sure. Maybe she needed to fetch something, I don't know that either, but I do know I was alone in the middle of a hallway, laying on a gurney, looking up at the ceiling. The walls were covered in shiny enamel white paint that must have been scrubbed clean every day.   The ceiling lights were the long tube type that were spaced out a bit, leaving ten or fifteen feet between lights and as the nurse rolled me down the hall, each time I went under the lights, they seemed really bright and made my eyes hurt, but they were spaced out enough so between the lights it wasn't too bad.  The place the nurse left me was more dark than light, shadows lay over the walls and floor and it was creepy.  It was creepy like a Stephen King book.  

I remember that I was scared but I wasn't in distress, if that makes any sense.  I also remember I was feeling sorry for myself. I was alone, and I had just been cut to crap and it wasn't my fault and I wanted my Mom. A lot of self pity there, I know, but considering the circumstances, I don't expect much of a critique on that count.

Then I noticed a boy a year or two older than myself lay on a gurney next to me. He was getting pushed down the hall too, but in the other direction, and he was abandoned by his nurse too.  We were two kids, about the same age and we were both a mess.  I assume he either had been operated on or was going to be operated on shortly, but I don't know for sure. I think he had been in a car wreck and he was screaming. He kept saying 'Please, make it go away!, It hurts, please help me, make it go away!' He was screaming this over and over and I just wanted him to stop. I felt sorry for him, but I wanted him to stop screaming. It scared me. His screams echoed down the hall and nobody was there to help.  I don't remember anything after that.  I passed out.

Years go by and I forgot this whole thing, or to be completely truthful, I chose not to think of it   I put it out of  my mind for these many years, until recently.  It comes to mind now, from time to time.  I think of the boy on the gurney, asking for help, I think he was in worse shape than I, and I think I don't know if he made it out of that hospital alive.  I don't know why,  but I think he died.  I think that I couldn't help him, but I could have tried to get somebody else to help him and I did nothing. I think that I didn't know his name, I didn't even ask. 

Self reflection is something I can do pretty well and when I think of that day, it reminds me that no matter how bad I have it, my life is blessed beyond any reasonable level. Others have it worse and I have been given so much. No matter how bad it gets, other are worse off.  I think that self pity is a thing that can consume you, and in my life I tend to be consumed by almost anything.  

Like I said, the part about the other boy on the gurney may not be true, but I remember it like it did happen, so for me, it is true.  I  hope that the other boy didn't die that day, but if he did, I hope he went someplace where he wasn't in pain,  and if he did make it out of the hospital, I hope he forgives me for not helping him.