Of Big Boys, Bad Boys, Little Boys, and Life

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."

My stepson, bless his heart, has had a hard time of it of late. He is, as we used to say in the Air Force, "all thrust and no vector" (used in its single-dimensional if non-lexicographic sense of direction only without magnitude). He cannot control himself. He is not angry or malicious, mind you.  That phase passed long ago, the inevitable result of a world turned upside down by divorce.  No, this version of non-existent self-control is more driven by curiosity, over-abundant energy, above-average intelligence, and a disposition to disregard all boundaries of space and property.  I awoke Saturday morning to find his bed empty and the tiny man downstairs, in the study, where he knows he's not to be, playing on not one, but two computers, both verboten. His repeated random keystrokes and who knows what else had vexed mine right into the blue screen of death. Not an auspicious beginning to the day, and it went downhill, in the Tiny Man's case, from there right through Sunday evening when, after dealing out consequence as dispassionately as I was capable of for nearly 36 straight hours without much detectable effect on behavior, I was granted parole to go see a movie in the interest of my sanity.

The movie is not important.  Important is that, as I was putting on my coat to go, having had mostly only attention in the form of one consequence after another for the better part of two days, around the corner came a tiny man with a surprisingly flattering request: "Can I come with you?"  "No son.  Good night."

A brief exchange, it's true, but weighty.  I needed a break.  He needed . . . me.  Never mind that other than a brief six-hour respite at work I had been on his case like white on rice for two days. I had thought he'd be as glad for the break in constant surveillance as I, but no.  Nor did it change this morning.  Out of bed nearly an hour before he should be, he was sent back to it, but chose instead, to avail himself of the pre-dawn darkness to rummage his sister's room while she slumbered.  Busted yet again, his last sight of me this morning was exasperatedly tucking him in, kissing his brow, and closing the door to his room.

Fast forward through a long day at work where sometimes even the grown ups, when they don't get their way, are a trial more akin to rearing a four-year-old.  Fast forward to bed time, and a calm conversation about consequence, about why again tonight there will be no Wii for the young hacker.  And once there, freeze frame.  Freeze on a bundle of four-year-old boy sitting in a half-century of lap, cradled, protected, nurtured, and loved, and listening calmly, and answering correctly when asked, "Why is there no Wii for you tonight son?"
"Because I went in the study and I played on the pooters."
"And why did you lose blanky this morning?"
"Cause I was in sissy's room playing wif her stuff."
"And who has control of how these things go son?"
"I do."
"That's right."
"I got blanky back."
"So I see.  For putting away all your clean clothes in their right drawers I hear.  Very good, son.  I'm proud of you."
"Will you carwy me downstairs?"
"Carry you?"
"Please."
"Okay.  Let's go."

Zoom in to angelic face of featherweight boy bundle snuggled into broad, man shoulders with blanky for pillow, arms around neck, tiny head tucked against bearded chin.  I thought I might melt.  The import, really, of "Will you carwy me?" is simply this: "I'd prefer my feet never hit the floor again tonight.  I like here."  Velcro.  Even the squirms mostly worn out of him by a rambunctious day.

So down we go to rocking chair in living room.  Man, boy, blanket, BlackBerry.  Why BlackBerry?  Simple: music.  For the next thirty minutes, we snuggled and surfed.  We worked our way through a series of music videos on YouTube, tiny hands holding the boy-sized screen as we worked our way through songs, me singing with most of them, each ending in the same refrain: "Can we do anover one?"  Half an hour like this until, eyelids droopy, we headed up to brush teeth, don jammies, and be tucked in for the night.

Who needs whom most at the end of such a day is never really clear, not really even relevant, perhaps not even answerable.  We empty our boy and man pockets on a common table: security, vulnerability, strength, fragility, age, youth, wisdom, innocence, calculation, impetuousness, anticipation, trust, and love.  It works, this sharing.  He's tall already, but in these moments he fits still in the crook of an arm.  Safe.  Calm.  At home.

What I offer below is a list of those videos, that music.  Soundtrack of a life.  Witness to the wisdom of a license plate: love wins.

25 Random Things About My Father

I mentioned once before, just in passing, John Eldredge's claim, in Wild at Heart, that every man is wounded somehow by his father. I implied in that earlier post that such wasn't the case with me. Today, Father's Day, I want to state it outright.

I do not believe I suffered any psychic wounding at the hands of my father, ever.

Honestly, that's no small claim. I've watched other men and their dads. I've watched women and their father's too. I had acquaintances long ago that couldn't return home when they left the Air Force Academy they hated because their fathers told them not to come home if they quit. I had a so much more than friend, who will likely read this, who went there for a year, because her father told her if she would try it for that long, he would foot the bill for college elsewhere--she did; he did not. I've heard fathers say things to children in public that made my heart ache.

I had and have the best father I know. I know a couple more who are right up there with him (my new father-in-law among them), and I have friends who think or thought the same of their fathers. We are lucky people, those of us in this club, and today is a day we celebrate that luck.

Not all that long ago, I posted 25 Random Things About Me. Today, I'm going to take a shot at publishing another 25 about him. Wish me luck.

25 Random Things About My Father

1. He has taken up the drums. At least, he bought a drum set months ago, and for a while at least, he was playing them. This is especially interesting to me because a little less than four years ago, I took drum lessons for a short while. Neither I nor my father knew this about one another, which is a good segue to the next point:
   
2. My father's life has mirrored mine in so many ways that it's genuinely eerie, especially romantically. I could elaborate, but I'm going to leave it at that for now.
3. I suspect my father of being a closet adrenaline junkie. He owned a motorcycle from the time my parents split up until well into his second marriage. And he was, after all, a volunteer fire chief for over a decade.
4. When I left for the Air Force Academy, over three decades ago, the last thing I remember him saying to me as I walked out of Charlotte's Douglas Airport to climb the stairs to a waiting jet, other than, "I love you," is, "If you get there and you don't like it, son, you know you can always come home." It put staying there all on my shoulders. No expectation, no threats, no rebellion value in leaving (not that I ever felt any need to rebel). It made it possible to stay even during the months that I hated it most and seriously thought of leaving. Having options makes almost any task less onerous.
5. In all the years of my youth, he gave me only one spanking I hadn't genuinely earned. That one time, he was acting on misinformation from my Sunday school teacher. I didn't forget, but I didn't really hold it against him either. I just never liked that teacher much after that.
6. I've seen him pitch nearly perfect games of horseshoes. At Five Forks ball park in China Grove, NC, I watched him and Lee Smith, on their way to winning first place in a church league, throw ringer after ringer from one end to the other. It was awe inspiring.
7. He taught me gun safety at an early age, and how to shoot birds on the wing, to drain a rabbit's bladder before putting it in your hunting coat, how to build a rabbit trap, and how to enjoy the beauty of good bird dogs working a field.
8. He also taught me, by example, to think of all men as equals, at least equal in worth and rights, vehemently disdaining all the petty prejudices that so many fathers so sadly wean their children on. The stories in this regard are almost legend and fodder for longer posts at a later date. I'll simply say here that had Harper Lee known him, and if you knew him and her novel, you would think him her model for Atticus Finch.
9. He blames a long tour in Alaska, at Gambell Air Base, on St Lawrence Island, for the early loss of his hair. His seven brothers each kept theirs most of their lives.
10. His children have always come first in his life. Whatever other ambitions he may have had, I truly believe that being a good father was the ruling goal of his existence. God knows, he put up with more, and sacrificed more, for our sake than any other man I know would have.
11. Right behind Atticus Finch, the character from fiction that he is most like would be Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry. He was, for all practical purposes, the unspoken mayor of the small town in which I grew up. Smaller than Mayberry.
12. He can teach anyone to waterski and he was always good at it himself. For the most part, when anyone learned to waterski with us, they learned to slalom, right out of the gate.
13. He plays a wicked game of hopscotch. He always played with us on the shore during our annual vacations at Windy Hill Beach, SC, and I have since played more than a few times with my own daughters.
14. He loves tractors. He may think we haven't caught on to that, but he does. I'm not entirely certain there isn't a frustrated farmer trapped in him somewhere.
    
15. His two greatest shots in golf may have been his hole-in-one and his blind eagle. The hole-in-one was so dead on that it bent the base of the pin going into the hole. In basketball lingo, he "stripped the net." His blind eagle I was there for--a par-four on which he'd hooked the ball into the adjacent fairway, hiding the green from him behind a set of pines dividing the two holes. He hit the ball over the pines on his second shot and into the hole. I found it there. He was still looking everywhere else.
    
16. His dedication to golf during my youth was such that my youngest sister once recited the days of the week as, "Sunday, Monday, Golfday, Wednesday, Thursday . . . " He worked all day on Saturdays until he retired, but only half a day on Tuesdays. He is as good a golf coach as he is a ski coach. I should have tried out for the golf team at the Academy instead of wasting my time with track.
17. He would still like to learn to fly. He says he's let that ambition go, but I think I know better.
18. He can fix or build just about anything.
19. So far as I know, he has never cultivated any of the vices that other men, including myself are prey to. He doesn't swear, drink, or smoke, and yet he doesn't begrudge other men those "pleasures." I think he is simply cautious of the genes he carries, having had a father, grandfather, and more than one brother for whom these things were problems.
20. He is fiercely and poignantly patriotic. I remember him once calling me to the window over our kitchen sink, pointing to the flag flying at the fire station he helped found about a quarter mile away, and saying, "Isn't that beautiful?"
21. In our family business, he was all about Total Quality Management and focusing on the customer long before TQM became a watchword for the rest of the world. I remember trying to figure out what the fuss was about when the Air Force tried to institute TQM because I had always thought those principals were common knowledge. I've learned better since.
22. He is a true gentleman--gentle and yet fiercely strong. He is always polite. He opens my stepmother's car door, holds her chair, helps her with her coat.
    
23. He's more or less ambidextrous. He plays sports left-handed, yet he writes right-handed. It makes him very handy to have around when your ball is up against a tree and you really need a left-handed club to swing.
24. What he lacks in distance these days, he more than makes up in accuracy. I've been able to outdrive him since college, but I've never outscored him on the links.
25. I love him. I admire him. And I still want to be like him when I grow up.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Starbucks Meets Hooters

On a day when I was explaining to someone how I have no TV service nor newspaper anymore, and get my news almost entirely online, I find this article in a USA Today I picked up at lunch, and I wonder what else I may be missing. My favorite line: "I think it's kind of like Starbucks meets Hooters."

Father-Daughter Night: Hooters, Taken, and Flat Aidan

Hooters

One of the advantages of living in Charleston is being able to meet my oldest daughter, a student at UNC-Wilmington, for dinner every few weeks. Last night we met up in Myrtle Beach at the Hooters that hooked the rest of my family on Hooters's wings. (I can almost hear the audible gasps: "You take your daughters to Hooters!?" Take them? We've had birthday parties there, graduation parties, informal gatherings. After the first time they tried the wings there, during a visit following a day of outlet shopping at the beach, a visit to the very place we ate last night, I had to be sure we got there in time for the afternoon specials to avoid breaking the bank. Trust me. No other wings like them.)

Taken

Following dinner, we headed to the mall next door to see Taken. If you need a Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, lone wolf sort of action thriller, this will fill the bill. Just be sure to pull the circuit breaker on your reality filter. It's not that any of the action sequences are over the top. No, they're well enough done. It's not that the whole kidnapping for sex slavery thing is overdone. No, that happens often enough to require an annual briefing on it to everyone in the Air Force. It's the other things that films like this consider unimportant that make such films utterly forgettable.

It opens with the obligatory "let's show who he is" scenes. He's a guy with close friends from his past life as a "preventer." These are guys who visit for a cookout and invite him along on a contract job, to remind them and us he "still has the edge." These are the guys he can call on to analyze the tapes once his daughter has been taken. The guys that will tell him he only has 96 hours to find his daughter and then wish him luck doing it all on his own. What?! Speaking purely figuratively, I have gay friends with bigger balls. In fact, my female friends have bigger balls. If anyone in that line of work called a "friend" and said, "They've taken my daughter. I'm going to get her back," the reaction from the other end would be, "Party! Rock and roll baby! Where should we meet you?" Not this movie. So long as that fairly significant break from reality doesn't bother you, you'll be fine.

And if that one gets by without causing any problems, you should be fine when he gets his daughter home. That would be the seventeen-year-old who's been kidnapped, drugged up, tramped out for auction, kept as a virgin for a particular type of clientele, but no doubt "schooled" in a few things, and then (spoiler alert) rescued at the last second by daddy, unlike the now dead girlfriend she went to Paris with. If you're okay with him having to run the whole op on his own, then you'll be fine with her arriving back in the states after her less-than-96-hour adventure all cheerful and bubbly like she's been away at cheerleading camp. I'm sure that won't bother you anymore than it did me. Even the man who gave us Rob Roy has to eat, and all that well-choreographed stuff in the middle that stretches incredulity so much less does somewhat satisfy every father of daughters' secret longing to run rampant through the entire high school or college male population of would be defilers of his princesses. Catharsis. Get some.

Flat Aidan

Lastly, remember Flat Jackson? Well, now it's time for Flat Aidan. I pulled him from yesterday's mail just in time to make the trip to Myrtle to see his cousin and get a money shot with the Hooters Girls. :-D


And my sister, Aidan's mother, thinks I mind this why? Looking back, I see a trend. I have a Chief Female Associate (CFA) beyond compare, so this new awareness does me no good whatsoever, but listen up guys: If you can't borrow a baby or a puppy from your friends who have one, get out the black construction paper and the white marker, and work on your back story. Trust me on this. And ladies, don't even think about giving me a hard time. We have to work with what God gave us. All you have to do is toss your hair.

"Why, Oh Why Didn't I Take the Blue Pill"

You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes. --Morpheus

It's bad form for a blogger to beat up on his commenters. They really are his friends, for the most part, even the one's he's never actually met. They keep him intellectually honest, or at least they try. On the other hand, male "conversation" can take an awful lot more in-your-face disagreement than most women think and suffer no ill effects to the friendship. It's an undeniable gender difference that was repeatedly driven home to me every time my ex asked, "So, are you and (fill in the blank with opponent from spirited "conversation" at that night's gathering) still friends?" For the longest time, I didn't understand the question. Finally I recognized that the male openness with disagreement--a mode of interaction actually founded on mutual respect--is vastly different from the pretended concurrence that marks many estrogen-driven interactions. The men would get it all out, have the next best thing to a fist fight (enjoying ourselves immensely all the while) and part the best of friends and looking forward to the next round. Meanwhile, the women would conceal and contain their true opinions, part with kisses and hugs, only to say as soon as the car door closed, "I don't care if I never see that b-tch again! Do you know what she said?" The man who dares suggest that his partner should have said something to the offending party at the time will learn rather quickly that he'll fare better if it tries to stop a train in the mode of Hancock.

But, I digress. Both the dumbing down of America and the warming up of the world seem to have seeded conversations on this blog in interesting ways. And though I might have answered in the comment thread that spawned the thoughts which follow, they seem to have general enough applicability to merit their own post. Brace yourself. I'm going to take a stand. You may not like it. (Of course, I look at the paragraph above and think, "I've probably already crossed that line.") Feel free to say so.

In my opinion, arguing that anthropomorphic climate change is "controversial" or "theoretic" is like taking the same stance on evolution by natural selection. If you're comfortable with it, fine. You're in the right country for that. Outnumbered in the developed world in that stance, but hardly lonely in America, where nine of ten adults can't explain what radiation is and how it affects the human body, and where, staggeringly, one in five adults believes the sun revolves around the earth.

If you find comfort in the increasingly minority opinion that our continued pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere can possibly be without consequence, then lucky you. To borrow a phrase from my college physics text, some things should be "intuitively obvious to even the casual observer." I think perhaps the best thing about Gore's movie may have been its title. When even the truth that we can intuit is "inconvenient," we develop an interest in grasping at straws. I should remember how to do that. Many was the time in my undergraduate days when Air Force was down by over three touchdowns with less than two minutes to play and our cheerleaders were frantically trying to convince us all, "We can still win!" Right.

Who needs forests or clean energy or a balanced budget? I think for many the most important question seems to be, "Will the bill come due in my lifetime? Will I see the consequences?" When the answer is "No," it becomes easier still to believe the convenient construction of things, to swallow as it were, the blue pill. For some, it's not even a choice, but a necessity.

We never free a mind once it's reached a certain age. It's dangerous. The mind has trouble letting go. --Morpheus

Related Links

• An Inconvenient Truth
• The Matrix 101

Now where else can you find those two links together? :-) Deconstruct that one, Buck. ;-)

Beer Launcher

If I just had one of these, I could get through grading these essays so much faster.

From the made me laugh out loud bin:

Hat tip: JPL

Dear Santa, Jet Pack, Please!

Dear Santa,

I'd like a jet pack and a cool GoFast jumpsuit. Please. I promise, I've been a really good boy this year.

There was a backup plan if things went wrong Monday when a man attempted to fly 1,500 feet across the Royal Gorge using a jet pack.

But it wasn't a good one.

"There is no parachute, there is no safety net," said the pilot, 45-year-old former stuntman Eric Scott, minutes before takeoff. "There is just 800 horsepower that should be able to get me there."

That was plan A. Plan B, if 800 horsepower didn't prove enough, involved falling short of the canyon rim, plunging into the shadowy abyss and trying to smash into one of the higher ledges to keep from hurtling the full 1,100 feet to the raging river below.

"I'm hoping I don't have to use those plans," Scott said.

Yeah. I'll bet. The rest of the story is here, including more photos.

And for anyone interested, here's an earlier flight:

When You Think of It That Way . . .

Last night I was enjoying what will be one of the final evenings on my front porch with the friend who's really taught me the most about appreciating a good cigar. It was one of those windless nights after a sweltering day, but it was cool enough to be comfortable. He usually brings along whatever book he's enjoying at the moment. These days, one of the three books I'm reading (always at least that many at once) is The Art of Racing in the Rain, a recommendation I got from the same friend about a month ago when we met for breakfast.

Last night, he brought along Merle's Door, another book centered on dogs (The Art of Racing in the Rain is narrated by a dog). When I asked how he learned of Merle's Door, he replied that he'd read about it in Bark, "my dog magazine."

"Let me get this straight: You don't own a dog, but you subscribe to a dog magazine?"

Without even a blush, he nodded and said, "Yeah."

Then I thought about it for a second. I remembered that there were plenty of months in college and immediately after that I'd not had a girl friend, or even the prospect of a date. Yet, the entire time, my best friend and I made a birthday tradition of giving one another subscriptions to Hugh Hefner's monthly celebration of "the girl next door." I said as much to my friend, and then said, "So, when you think of it that way, I guess if you love dogs there's really nothing odd about subscribing to a dog magazine even when you can't claim the daily companionship of one."

That said though, as my friend is just beginning what promises to be a contentious divorce, I will worry about him if he subscribes to Modern Bride any time soon.

:-)

"At least it's my aspirational peer group!"

Over at Enrevanche, Barry posted a snippet from James Fallows and a link to a post meant to be rather sadly revealing about, as Fallows titled it, "Our American Media Landscape." Reading the whole Fallows post though, I was struck by a different chord.

For reasons too odd to contemplate, a quick, business-related, out-and-back trip from Beijing airport to.... Newark! With stay at an airport hotel designed to make me newly grateful for the environmental pleasures of Beijing. Surrounded on three sides by freeways. On the fourth, by check-cashing storefronts, pawn shops, liquor stores, tattoo parlors, car-auction sites. Kind of disappointed not to see some gun shops in there too.

All the other occupants of the hotel that I have seen are flight crews on Newark layovers. At least it's my aspirational peer group! Get to sit with the grizzled pilots in the bar and talk about "there I was...."-type flying tales and which airline will fold next.

I'm sure Fallows's description of the conversation here was every bit as accurate as his sad truth about the NYT (go read). Sadly, it reminded me of another piece of "humor" I received lately from a pilot friend--one that struck way too close to home. I'll share it, because a) it's funny; and, b) every aviator will recognize a piece of himself in there somewhere. I've no doubt whatsoever it's a pretty accurate description of some poor guy's life, start to finish. I know there's some of me there--ahead of the time line in some places, behind in others. One more good reason to make the move to academics as a profession. ;-)

'Life as a Pilot'

22 years old: Graduated from college. Go to military flight school. Become HSJP (hot shit jet pilot). Get married.

25 years old: Have 1st kid. Now hot shot fighter jock getting shot at in war. Just want to get back to USA in one piece. Get back to USA as primary flight instructor pilot. Get bored. Volunteer for war again.

29 years old: Get back from war all tuckered out. Wants out of military.

30 years old: Join airline. World is your oyster.

31 years old: Buy flashy car, house and lots of toys. Get over the military poverty feeling.

32 years old: Divorce boring 1st wife. Pay child support and maintenance. Drink lots of booze and screw around while looking for 2nd wife.

33 years old: Furloughed. Join military reserve unit and fly for fun. Repeat above for a few more years.

35 years old: Airline recall. More screwing around but looking forward to a good marriage and settling down.

36 years old: Marry young spunky 25 year old flight attendant.

37 years old: Buy another house. Gave first one to first wife.

38 years old: Give in to second wife to have more kids. Father again. Wife concerned about 'risky' military Reserve flying so you resign commission.

39 years old: Now a captain. Hooray! Upgrade house, buy boat, small single engine airplane and even flashier cars.

42 years old: 2nd wife runs off with wealthy investment banker but still wants to share house (100%).

43 years old: Settle with wife # 2 and resolve to stay away from women forever. Seek a position as a check Captain for 10% pay override to pay mounting bills. Move into 1 bedroom apartment with window air conditioners.

44 years old: Company resizes and you're returned to copilot status. 25% pay cut. Become simulator instructor for 10% override pay.

49 years old: Captain again. Move into 2-bedroom luxury apartment with central air conditioning.

50 years old: Meet sexy Danish model on International trip. She loves you and says you are very 'beeeeg!'

51 years old: Marry sexy Danish model for wife #3. Buy big house, boat, twin engine airplane and upgrade cars.

52 years old: Sexy model wants kids (not again). Resolve to get vasectomy.

54 years old: Try to talk wife out of kids, but presto, she's pregnant. She says she got sick after taking the pill. Accident, sorry, won't happen again.

55 years old: Father of triplets.

56 years old: Wife #3 wants very big house, bigger boat and very flashy cars, 'worried' about your private flying and wants you to sell twin engine airplane. You give in. You buy a motorcycle and join motorcycle club.

57 years old: Make rash investments to try and have enough money for retirement.

59 years old: Lose money on rash investment and get audited by the IRS. You have to fly 100% International night trips just to keep up with child support and alimony to wife #1 and #2.

60 years old: Wife #3 (sexy model) says you're too damned old and no fun. She leaves. She takes most of your assets. You're forced to retire due to Age 60 rule. No money left.

61 years old: Now Captain on a non-schedule South American 727 freight outfit and living in a non-air conditioned studio apartment directly underneath the final approach to runway 9 at Miami Int'l. You have 'interesting' Hispanic neighbors who ask you if you've ever flown DC-3's.

65 years old: Lose FAA medical and get job as sim instructor. Don't look forward to years of getting up at 2 AM for 3 AM sim in every god-forsaken town you train in due to the fact your carrier can find cheap, off-hours sim time at various Brand X Airlines.

70 years old: Hotel alarm clock set by previous FedEx crew member goes off at 1:00 AM. Have heart attack and die with smile on face. Happy at last!

Ain't aviation great?

The horse, the cart, the good man

If you had asked me, I'd have told you that getting together with an old friend was always a good excuse to break out the good Scotch and good cigars--Laphroaig in his glass, Johnny Walker Black in mine, and a Fuente Hemingway Short Story for each of us.

What I realize now, after two and a half hours on my porch in the setting sun, is that, really, the Scotch or Bourbon or cigars are really just an excuse to spend time in the company of a good friend and a good man.

Bugatti Veyron vs Eurofighter Typhoon

Just a quick & fun something to share from a friend:

The two will start side by side from a standstill, the car will go 1 mile, slow down enough to turn around on a full width runway, then come back the 1 mile. The fighter will take off as quickly as possible, go straight up 1 mile, turn around and come back down to about 100' off the deck to fly parallel to the car to attempt to cross the Finish Line first.

Who will win? Click on link below

http://www.snotr.com/video/568

Hat tip: JPL

NASCAR

I would have let this go today, but friend Jay, over at The Extended Table, made it nigh impossible. I was going to send him a little comment about why or why not some of us are race fans, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wouldn't be so little, so what the hell . . . .

I grew up in race country. On Saturday nights, I could hear the engines revving from not one, but two different directions: from the west would carry the sounds of Mooresville Drag Strip; from the south, the sounds of either the Concord Motor Speedway or the Charlotte (now Lowe's) Motor Speedway. If we didn't make it to another race all year, we drove the short 20 minutes down the road every year to The World 600 (now the Coca Cola 600).

I won ten bucks in 1975, the first time Richard Petty, already the winningest driver in NASCAR, ever one a race a Charlotte. Having taken the top ten starters' names and dropped them in a hat, we drew them out for a buck a name. I drew Petty and figured I could kiss my buck goodbye, but my Dad, more savvy to the law of averages, told me before the race even started, "Son, he's won more races than any other man alive and he's never won at Charlotte. I'd say he's due. Don't count your dollar lost yet." If memory serves, he finished about a lap and a half ahead of David Pearson's Ford.

Winning the ten bucks wasn't the best part though. The best part was cousin Marty, a Ford service manager at the time, and so a Pearson fan, through and through. Every time Petty would come by our spot in the second turn, Marty would stand and shout "Blow, Petty, Blow!" hoping for a blown engine. Once, as he said it, he slammed his beer can right through the top of his styrofoam cooler, resulting in an innovation later stolen by Coleman in the form of plastic coolers with small built in openings through which you can retrieve a beer without opening the whole lid. But that wasn't the best part. The best part was that I was listening to the race on my transistor radio and had information about parts of the track we couldn't see. So when I told Marty with feigned disappointment, "Petty's into the wall on the backstretch," he bought it. Hook, line, and sinker. He was still dancing on the bench and broadcasting the news to everyone around us when Petty came cruising by a half minute later, smooth as silk, and still a lap ahead of the competition. It's the only time I think I can remember my cousin calling me a son of a bitch. :-D

Dale Earnhardt's original garage was less than a mile from my boyhood home. For years I resented "The Intimidator" for no better reason than that he got more famous faster than I did. I got over it though. His statue stands in the center of town now. Frankly, I think I prefer still drawing breath to that sort of fame. May Dale rest in peace.

With geography like that though, it would be far more of a wonder if I weren't a race fan than that I am.

"Fore!"

My sister was telling me tonight that one of my nephews has a goose egg on his forehead "the size of a walnut! I've never seen anything like it." I don't think they were even able to determine definitively what bonked him. She knows when it happened--loud noise, short silence while child takes first deep breath, or two, or even three, then the really serious cry--but not the exact mechanics of it.

She's out there on the east coast, I'm here in the Rockies, but I know what that goose egg looks like. And not because I can remember the time my oldest daughter decided to spin in circles until she was giggling and dizzy, and then not giggling anymore after the face plant into the corner of the steel shower stall in her grandparents' bathroom. That's not why I know what the goose egg looks like. No. She looked like a Klingon. She dead centered the vertical edge of the shower stall on her own two- or three-year-old forehead and ended up, not with a goose egg, but with a ridge from her nose to her hairline. After we got over the guilt that every parent feels every time their child stubs a toe, we had a pretty good laugh. All we needed was a Star Trek convention and we'd have been set.

No, I know what that goose egg on my nephew's forehead looks like because, I kid you not, I thought I'd killed a man with a golf ball once.

Back around 1989, I was playing a course in the Central Valley of California (the Big Valley of TV fame) with several other guys from my office. For 16 holes there hadn't been a soul in front of us. Maybe it was one of those days when the fog was so thick that you'd hit the ball and then three guys watching would all shrug and say, "Not a clue," and the guy who hit it would say, "Felt like the middle of the fairway," and you'd just start walking into the fog and hope. But if it began that way, it was clear by the time we reached Number 17, about a 160-yard par four, water to the left, and vineyard and out-of-bounds to the right.

I was having a pretty good round, and having won the previous hole, I teed up first and cut loose with a solid 7-iron. It flew nice and high and felt like it would have about the right distance, but as soon as I looked up, I knew I'd pulled it enough left to miss the green. Then, all three of the other guys, at the same time, yelled "FORE!" "What?" I said. Remember, there had been no one in front of us all day, and I'd seen no one on the green when I teed up. But looking now to the area left of the green where I knew my ball was coming down, I saw a single man standing near a tree. "FORE!" I echoed.

At that point, that man did the unthinkable. He looked up. The ball hit him square in the head, knocking off a John Deere ball cap. I doubt he ever saw it coming. Probably the brim of the cap kept him from seeing it. I will never forget the sound--like striking a tree trunk with an axe handle. By the time the sound reached us, he'd already raised both arms over his head in precisely the move that might have protected him had he done it a few seconds sooner. As it turned out, the move wasn't entirely futile. A second later, he dropped straight down to both knees, then he pitched forward, face down, into the grass, falling into the elbows now sheltering his face. Then, he didn't move.

We were all running, covering the distance of that fairway in a chorus of "Oh shit"s and "F**k me to tears!" and "Jesus Christ Almighty"s. As we got there and formed a circle around him, he still hadn't moved. He lay face down in the grass, his face resting in the crooks of his elbows, the palms of his hands laying on the back of his head. Just as one of my partners was about to start the sprint to the clubhouse to call an ambulance, the man moaned, then began to draw up his knees and then to stand up, against all our protests.

"What happened?" he asked. "I remember somebody yelling 'Fore!' and I remember looking up and I heard the ball hit the tree and then everything went black."

"Mister, that wasn't the tree you heard the ball hit; that was your skull!" I said, fighting back nervous laughter. And as I said it, two other guys whistled simultaneously and the third simply said, his voice tinged with what could only be termed awe, "Holy shit! I've never seen a knot like that in my life!" More than three minutes couldn't have passed since the ball made contact with this 70-year-old's skull, yet, I swear to you, it looked as though some plastic surgeon had lifted the skin of his forehead, tucked a golf ball under it, then stretched everything back down leaving no obvious point of insertion. I wouldn't even have imagined that skin could stretch like that.

"Mister you'd better let us call you an ambulance, or at least let us call your family to come get you."

"I'm fine." He protested. "I just live right over here in the trailer park. I came over to putt some balls because nobody seemed to be playing today. I'll be fine. Somebody got my cap?"

Someone handed him the green and yellow cap and in a move that made all four of us cringe, he hooked the back of it behind his head and holding it by the bill, screwed the cap left and right as he worked to pull the front part down over that skin-covered golf ball like he didn't feel a thing. I was frankly surprised he could get the cap on.

"I'd feel a whole lot better if you'd let us call somebody," I said. But he was having none of it.

"Ya'll have a good day," he said. "I'll be fine. I just live right over here. Ya'll go on now." And with that, he walked off.

We walked back to the tee, played that hole and the next and went on with our lives. Mostly.

For the next week, I nervously checked the local news and obituaries every day, half dreading to read that some old guy in the trailer park had been taken delirious or worse from his trailer with a knot on his head the authorities couldn't explain.

So, knot the size of a walnut? Add a Titleist dimple pattern imprinted on the skin and I know exactly what that looks like.

Dan Fogelberg, Dead at 56

And just like that, the world becomes a poorer place.

Photo from DanFogelberg.com

If James Taylor was one half of the soundtrack of my young life, then Dan Fogelberg may well have been the other half. One thing Fogelberg had in common with JT was that he sounded much the same in a solo acoustic setting as in a studio production. There are few artists of whom that can be said. He was very definitely one.

I recently put together a compilation that I thought pretty much summed up my life this fall. Two Fogelberg tunes made the list: "Souvenirs" and "There's a Place in the World a Gambler." (I left off "Dancing Shoes." That song has more meaning to me than I can bear.)

Most of the news coverage I've read today has consistently mentioned "Leader of the Band" and "Same Old Lang Syne" as two of his best known works. I'm sure though, that for at least a while in the mid-80's, "Longer" would easily have made a list of top ten wedding songs.

It's sad to think that he's gone. I would be remiss, if I failed to include here a link to his personal message to the rest of us men about getting checked regularly for the disease that killed him.

Here, for anyone not familiar with his music, are two selections from YouTube. Just Dan, a guitar, a microphone, and an audience. Enjoy.

"Leader of the Band"

"Believe in Me"

As I Myself Might Say

Among the books I'm reading is yet another that I want to recommend, not to everyone for their own reading, but to everyone who'll be buying a Christmas present or stocking stuffers for any budding young gentlemen this season. I picked it up and leafed through it at Jos A. Banks the other day and had to bring it home. As a Gentleman Would Say, by John Bridges and Bryan Curtis is meant to be, I think, more of a coffee table book than a reference work--entertaining and informative at the same time. It's not written to be funny, in the manner of the once bestselling Official Preppy Handbook, which invited that crowd and all its imitators to laugh heartily at themselves or risk being shamelessly laughed at. But it is frequently funny, primarily when it offers examples of what not to say. For instance, take this passage that I'm sure I'll never personally find useful, but is illustrative of the whole:

WHEN A GENTLEMAN IS TURNED DOWN FOR A DATE . . .

He does not say:
"Okay, then what about next Friday?"
"What's the matter? Am I being to pushy?"
"But I though you said you liked pro wrestling."
"Well, you certainly don't know what you're missing."

But he does say:
"I understand. Maybe we can do something together some other time."

In affairs of the heart, a gentleman attempts, above all else, never to appear desperate. If he senses that he is being given the cold shoulder, he does not continue in pursuit of a person who has little interest in his attentions. If he does sense that there is hope for a second chance, he waits a few weeks and then tries again, making sure not to refer to his previous bad luck.

The book is subtitled "Responses to Life's Important (and sometimes awkward) Situations," and has chapters such as, "On the Job," "Wining and Dining," "In Times of Sadness," and so on. The excerpt above comes from the chapter on "Affairs of the Heart."

It can't, of course, cover everything, nor does it need to. What's important is the mode of thinking it inculcates. Think of it, in its repeated contrasting of what not to say with what to say, as something of an antidote for the overdose of flippancy our culture is awash in through media such as VH1, MTV, text messaging, and so on. Somewhere in McCarthy, one of the characters states that all formal manners have as their goal the prevention of bloodshed. Here's a little book that's a step in the right direction.

I have at least one nephew who's a fine young gentleman already, but he can look forward to a copy of his own this holiday season.

If Everyone Cared

A few days ago, a friend was driving her 15-yr-old son home from school. On his notebook computer was a music video by Nickelback. She found it so moving she asked me to find it and see it. I found it moving enough to share with you. I've had the album since it came out (Nickelback has to be, pretty much, the ultimate guys' band on the air at the moment), but I hadn't seen the video. Enjoy.

Follow Up: Michelle Manhart

Back in the middle of January, I had a short post about the former AF sergeant turned Playboy model, Michelle Manhart (not her real name).

Here's a little video update, from Military Times.

Just Call Me Bob

Oh, there is so nothing in the world to put things in perspective like a good friend. I was bummed last night. I was still bummed this morning. It was in a rather somber mood that I wrote to a friend this morning explaining why. This is what I got back:

Oh, my God. I re-read the Kelly saga. I cannot stop laughing out loud. It is sooooooo funny. Please tell me you could hardly keep from laughing all night long. Your voice today with those words re-telling your thoughts [I'm guessing she meant the Paris remark, but that was so out loud]---oh it was so funny. I'll read that anytime I want to get happy. You have got to write a book. Got to.

"Wrong wrong, wrong," Just too funny, every word of that tale.

Ohhh-kay then. So I tried re-reading it myself. I had tears in my eyes, I was laughing so hard. It is funny now. Hilarious. Last night and this morning I was just too busy licking my wounded ego to see it. So, I'll share. I would change the names, but no one in this town reads this blog anyway, and if Kelly does, hopefully she'll get a laugh too, because God knows I'm not taking a run at those shields again soon.

Last September, John came out and I took him skydiving. That evening, we stopped by a local bar/restaurant. Behind the bar was Kelly. Kelly was friendly. Kelly was a single mom. Kelly seemed like someone who had it all together. She seemed bright. She was in awesome shape. She was energetic, burning more calories per hour behind the bar than I do on a five-mile run. She was a delight to talk to. Right after we all traded names, she went back to the register to do something, and in profile, I saw her say my name. The look on her face, the way she said it, hadn't been matched since my first wife, whose particular way of saying it likely had something to do with my marrying her. That that marriage lasted all of three weeks should have been a warning, but no. I'm apparently a very slow learner. That moment, seeing Kelly say it, took me back to those earlier moments. And the way she said it, not knowing that I was watching, led me to believe that meeting me was as much a delight to her as meeting her was to me. It probably won't spoil the rest of this story to tell you that I was, um, how shall I put this . . . mistaken.

At any rate, I wasn't in a place to do anything about my impressions then. I was busy trying, and actually harboring some hope of success, to finally get it right with the woman I had been very much in love with for over 20 years. I didn't forget that moment though, and at some point, actually months later, I wrote a thank you note, anonymously, that I considered leaving at the bar for her. I never did though.

Then, this summer, I learned that I was really the only person interested in putting any more effort into getting right what 20+ years had amply demonstrated wasn't working. So, I did, finally, drop off that thank you note for Kelly about a week ago, along with my number, and a brief note that some things in my life had changed, and that if she might ever be interested in grabbing a cup of coffee sometime, I hoped she would call. Seemed unassuming enough to me. That she didn't call wasn't so much of a surprise, but it also occurred to me that maybe the person with whom I'd left the card never delivered it.

So yesterday, I called. She was actually quite fun to talk to, and seemed comfortable enough. No she hadn't gotten the card. I told her with whom I'd left it. I invited her, on the phone, to have coffee after work. She couldn't. She had to work until nine. Had to pick up the kids. "Okay. I understand. But you should find that card."

Between the phone conversation and the prospect, late yesterday at work, of a rather challenging adventure with which to fill the next year, I was feeling pretty bulletproof when I left the office, came home, got out of my flight suit, showered, dressed and left to say hello to Kelly in person.

I suppose what I failed to take into account is that Kelly, working behind a bar, must get hit on about a dozen times a night, and not by guys who are actually interested in getting to know her. I had thought I was someone special. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. She asked if I wanted to stay and have a drink. Okay. I did. But then, she made no particular effort to talk to me. Shortly thereafter, I noticed, sadly, that whenever she took any customer's name, she said it aloud--to aid her memory, perhaps, or merely to make a point that her saying mine (remember the Thank You card) was nothing special. Gradually, I became aware that she had more layers of shielding up than the starship Enterprise in full battle dress. I was sitting right under an AC vent blowing cold air, but the more I think about it, the chill was more than that.

Eventually, I asked if she might be interested in having coffee sometime.

Her response and change in demeanor was as sudden and only slightly less frightening than Bilbo's reaching for the ring in Rivendell. "You need to get to know me better before you start asking me out." "Sorry. Thought that's what I was trying to do. I wasn't suggesting that we fly to Paris for the weekend. I just thought it might be nice to have a conversation." From there, it just went downhill.

In hindsight, I suppose I was hoping for something like the little twirl that my first wife did 26 years ago when I looked her up two years after first meeting. Kelly twirled alright, but she was swinging a mace when she did. :-{ I could have carried that memory of last September forever, and enjoyed it.

I had left the office feeling like the world was full of promise and ready to take it on. I left the restaurant feeling like I needed to find a hole and crawl into it. I pride myself on having a pretty thick skin, a fairly unassailable ego. Maybe not so much. I can't remember ever, in my life, having been shot down so thoroughly, or having felt so bad afterward. Maybe it was because of the magnitude of the difference between the reception I expected/hoped for and the one I got. Maybe it was the pure shock of having misread something so, so badly. One thing I certainly took away: I'll think long and hard before lifting the dome on a dream or a memory in the future.

And the next time a cute girl behind the bar asks my name, I think it's gonna be Bob . . . just to be on the safe side.

Ron Jeremy Does Colorado College

I attended that debate tonight with a friend from our English department. We made a little bet earlier about what the demographics of the audience would be. He thought more men; I thought more women. The debate over porn is frequently cast as a women's issue, I figured. In the end, it was about even. The house was packed. I attended a talk by Michael Pollan in this same chapel back in February that had only half so large a crowd. Tonight's was overflowing. Chairs outside on the lawn and speakers to pipe the debate out to them. Folks all along the walls.

I've not enough time tonight to sum up the evening. Suffice it to say it was interesting. Instead, I'll offer the saddest thing I heard and the funniest. And I'll point out that, oddly, when the time came for questions, it was the men who thanked Craig Gross (whose anti-porn site is here) and took Ron Jeremy to task; and it was the women who thanked Ron Jeremy and took Craig Gross to task. That, I did not expect.

Saddest thing I heard: Ron Jeremy responding to whether he's ever been in an intimate relationship (meaning romantic). "I've made love five times in my life. I've had sex considerably more."

Funniest thing I heard: A female questioner wanting to know if Jeremy thought he could be in a long term relationship with just one person (i.e., monogamous). "Could you ever see yourself in a long term monotonous relationship." "No, and that's why."

He did qualify that though, to point out that there is such a thing as emotional monogamy, and that, he does believe in.

3:10 to Yuma

I'm tired, Alice. I'm tired of watching my boys go hungry. I'm tired of the way that they look at me. I'm tired of the way that you don't.

One thing Cormac McCarthy fans don't expect is to see a lot of women in his novels. (I know what you're thinking: "What has Cormac McCarthy got to do with 3:10 to Yuma?" Stay with me.) Take All the Pretty Horses, for instance (the book; not the movie). There's Alejandra and the duena Alfonsa. John Grady Cole's mother is a remembered presence, but not a character. Still, for all their absence, women drive men to action, set stories in motion (it is a she-wolf after all, that launches Billy across the border in The Crossing) and a girl that draws his younger brother irredeemably away. But in novels filled with men, doing "manly things," women have incidental, enabling presences, but beyond the duena, few have significant speaking roles.

I couldn't help but notice that this movie was much the same. The two leads, protagonist and antagonist, Dan Evans (Christian Bale) and Ben Wade (Russell Crowe), each owe finding themselves where they are in this movie to women. Ben lingers, unwisely, to make love to (one assumes) and then sketch Emmy Nelson (Vinessa Shaw). Her only role is as foil, to show us Ben's more tender and winning side, and then having lingered with her, he's captured, and she's gone. Nor do we notice her absence.

Dan is driven to his role as escort, ostensibly by an immediate need for money after a bad season has left him in debt and about to lose the ranch, but more profoundly by the quote that opens this post. It echoed in my mind throughout the rest of the movie. A man will only risk so much for money. But Dan believes he has already lost the most important things, the respect of his sons, the admiration of his wife. If he succeeds in this undertaking, he may earn enough money to save the ranch, but more importantly, he will win back those other things, without which, neither ranch nor life itself are worth drawing another day's breath.

I'll say no more about the plot, except that there are serious questions asked about the lines between good and evil, and one particular speech from Wade that might have come from Judge Holden himself, on the nature of man and moral law. Anyone who has read McCarthy's Blood Meridian, won't be able not to notice the echoes here. I've not seen the 1957 film (with Glenn Ford as Wade) nor read the original Elmore Leonard short story on which both films were based, but I will see the one and read the other. Influence interests me. And without having read Leonard's story nor seen the earlier film, it's impossible to know whether the story or film influenced McCarthy, or McCarthy influenced the modern screenwriters. But it is safe to say that those behind the making of the new film are well aware of McCarthy--the following little blurb is from the release notes in the Wikipedia entry on the new film:

3:10 to Yuma was originally slated for an October 5, 2007 release, but Lionsgate moved the film's release a month earlier to September 7, 2007 to beat competing Western filmsThe Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men.

I will be counting down the days to the release of No Country for Old Men. (There is a trailer available at the web site.)

Bottom line: see 3:10 to Yuma. It's well paced, well acted (I've never been a Peter Fonda fan, but this film could change my mind about even that), and well directed. Sure, there's a loose end or two, but it works nonetheless. A-/B+ at least.