Posts (page 2)
You know what it smells like outside in Michigan today? It smells like fall circa 1985 and I'm walking home from school at 15.
We lived within walking distance of my elementary school when I was growing up. I would later attend junior high in the same building that housed the high school. The school board at that time must've been higher than Willie Nelson because this curriculum scheduling plan made no sense.
It started in sixth-grade. The school's administration staggered the high school and junior high school class schedules. The high schoolers began their day at 7 a.m. and ended at 1 p.m. We began our school day at 11 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m. Evidently, they were comfortable with that two-hour crossover. It was weird, at age 11, to be in same hallways as 16- and 17-year-olds. That experiment lasted for a year.
When I entered the seventh-grade, the school's administration lopped off the sixth-grade classes and sent them, appropriately, to their own junior high buildings as those structures became available. That year, both seventh- and eighth-graders, and the high schoolers, had the same hours, from 8 a.m.-2 p.m., but they divided the school itself in half. My classes were on the east side of the building, my brother and his friends on the west. As eighth-grade year commenced, they lopped off the seventh-graders and put them with last year's sixth-graders, leaving a weird arrangement of grades 8 through 12 in one building. By the time I entered my freshman year, the junior high component in the high school building was fully eliminated and the building itself was strictly ninth-, 10th-, 11th-, and 12th-graders, as it should be. So, by the time I graduated, I had attended junior high and high school classes in the same building for 7 years.
And through all of those years, I was always walking home, either in the rain or through the snow, or in the dark, until I received my driver's license as I headed into my senior year. But before that, I was always walking, sometimes with friends; for an entire year with a girlfriend; and other times picking up a group a block ahead of me, or simply walking alone.
But I remember fall the most, with a recall so vivid it forces my soul to grin. Those in fields psychological call them imprints, an indelible memory that, for whatever reason, you just can't shake. It can be the color of a shirt someone wore to a picnic 30 years ago, the sound a car made when you were a kid, or the way that eggroll tasted a decade ago. The clarity of these memories is uncanny and generally not easy to explain. I have several, but arguably the most pleasant, the most striking, is simply walking home from school when I was 15.
Shuffling through leaf-strewn sidewalks on Johnson Street, ambulating home at 2:30 on a Friday, not at all regretful in knowing that I would be making the return trip 4 hours later for that night's football game, it's as clear right now, at age 40, than it was when it went down. It smelled like soil, like crisp, frozen ground despite the reality that winter, at this point, was only in a pending stage. It was a parade of adolescents, because at 2:30 in the afternoon, most adults are at work.
It wasn't like winter, where the trek required so much more effort, or you could occupy your non-thoughts by making and heaving snowballs. I remember one day with my long-time, I grew-up-with-that-guy friend of mine, Bear, jawing at a rival set of friends across the street about 2 houses ahead of us. "Fucking pussies!" we'd yell at them, and they would return fire with some vitriol that was every part dramatic but toothless in any practical application. Back in eighth-grade, I would sometimes be carrying home my band instrument, a device on which I never practiced but always managed to hold second chair. And this would be the story of my adult life for a great stretch, sacrificing effort in exchange for second-rate status. Shit, most kids I knew, if they didn't even try, ended up in the band room's last chair or with D's and E's on their report cards. I barely put forth an effort and managed with B's on the academic front, and in the shadow of Janet Barrett and her kickass trumpet-playing skills in the performing arts realm. My teachers at conference would tell my mother the same thing: He could be a top student if he just applied himself a little, and stopped dicking around in class all day trying to get a laugh out of everyone within earshot. But I never changed. It always stayed that way, even when I tried to be diligent and focused. I would take the B's and the second-chair every time. Are you fucking kidding me? If that's my score for barely trying? I could spend the rest of the time most would devote to attaining excellence by fine-tuning this fucked-up imagination of mine.
And I see Halloween like I did last weekend and I think of my first pull off a joint, one wrapped in leopard-print rolling paper; or the BB-gunfight Bear and I had between cars on a dark street after running around all Halloween night at age 14 -- one-pump rule, otherwise you could get hurt.
It was sweaters and boots, and swinging an ax in the backyard to cut the massive wood pile my father and brother had accumulated all summer. It reeked of five-on-five football in the street with button-hooks and slant patterns -- mapping out the play in the palm of your hand in the huddle, breathy and red-cheeked. Or when we played in a nearby field, blueprinting the complexities of the play in the dirt with a stick or fingertip, and then quickly erasing the diagram with a swift swipe of a dirty high-top Nike, a requisite subterfuge in the event your opponent tried to cross the line of scrimmage to eavesdrop on the play. It was that rare feat of punting the ball way past the corner in front of Sutter's house.
I draped myself like a couch in heavy flannel and hoodies, years before anyone had heard of Seattle-based music genres. You didn't need a calendar. When the nets came down at the tennis courts, you knew the throes of Fall had you, and had you very tight enough to nearly immobilize you. Breezy rides on BMX bikes; jammed fingers from basketballs too cold and hard to dribble; the aromatic goodness of leaf fires a block away.
I see leaves and I see 15 again, and I catch continued whiffs of that soil air, and I ache because I just want to cram it all into the kind of tank you see affixed to the emphysemic, strap on one of those rubber masks, crank it to high, break off the lever, and just suck it all in. I see this every October and November, and was stunned by it as it was happening then, and now continue to rile myself up with glee every season afterward because of it.
This will repeat every fall, until I die and blissfully, honorably become part of the same earthen glory that generates it in the first place.
Each year, I split a partial Detroit Tigers season-ticket package with a friend of mine. As anyone who has read this blog may understand, I embrace many of the professional and college sports teams, especially the ones calling Michigan, or metro Detroit, home. I like my baseball and my football (both college and pro), and I like my hockey and basketball as well.
Attending a professional baseball game, if you're like me, is not always a cost-efficient occasion. Granted, I'm not like many fans who show up, pay $20 for premium parking, have countless premium drinks before the game, blow $30 on food in the park (if you have some kids with you, this is the least of what you'll spend on concessions), buy about $60 worth of merchandise and then call it a night (all the while not being able to name the guys playing infield and their correct positions). No, I direct my monies where I prefer them most. And don't even get me started on the social scene.
Tailgating has never been a big priority for me. I have been invited to some high-end, pregame affairs and, I will admit, they are nice -- a ton of food, shitload of booze and a general sense of mirth. But when you go to games by yourself, or meet friends down there on your own, as is my custom, you find your own way to make your fun. And my fun before a game sure as hell does not look like this:
I don't park in the stadium lot, and I certainly do not bring a goddamn grill with me, either. The baseball glove stays at home, too. And while this doesn't happen with every game I attend, I may frequently grab a tall can of beer to wolf down before entering the game, sometimes just sitting in the car on the street, with the door open, listening to the pregame on the radio, absorbing my city in this unreal sense of Me Time. This was my *tailgate* view on the second-to-the-last game of 2009.
My aforementioned friend and I attended a game several weeks ago on a Saturday. He was sore because his college football team lost that day. And when I pulled up here at 6:30 to park, about 3/4-mile from the ballpark, he asked me what in the fuck I was doing parking so far away, that he would gladly pony up an additional 10 bucks to park closer and not in such a shady area. I complied.
But when it's just me, I don't mind the walk. I like the walk, especially among these blocks, where I've been carousing for decades. I actually like shit like this. Do I wish that eyesore was instead a couple of condensed blocks of active businesses, a couple of restaurants, maybe a historical center committed to the city's glorious baseball past? Something in a brick-and-slate-meets-greenspace? Of course. But this is, well, you know where I am. That is not the reality yet, if at all. So, in the meantime, as I look about me, I appreciate what I see.
Still, other times, I'll drop in at one of the gin mills in the shadow of the ballpark. This is not to be confused, mind you, with the bars that are mainstays for the uninitiated. You won't catch me in Hockeytown, much less Proof, Cheli's or even the State. No knock on the people who like to hang out there; I just crave something a little more well-worn, a venue where you can sit at the bar and read the sports section with relative ease, where you can have a can of beer and a shot of something brown and warm and you won't have to drop a 10 to do it. If there are a hundred people who like hitting a particular bar before a game -- unless I am in the company of a majority who prefer to visit that place -- chances are I will go in the other direction, generally to places like this:
Guy won't fuck with me. I'm leaning up against my car, with a big can of beer in my hand; 240 pounds of American beef. This motherfucker makes his worst mistake ever trying to lay so much as layer of dead skin anywhere near me. But he'll rattle the little girl. And here I stand/lean on a Friday after work, watching part of the world swirl the toilet, copping a cheap buzz before heading in for my nine-inning fix. And still, I would rather be here, on this street, than inside of some fucking place like Bookie's Tavern a half-hour before game time, with the buzz-cut Oakley set, dripping in Under Armour, and smelling kind of funny.
Season's not even over, and I already miss baseball.
Yeah, right. Does this look like the type of room that's even remotely ready to house a baby?
I think with some tweaking, the career of Charlie Daniels could have taken a different path. I like how that, when the devil was looking for a soul to steal, he went to Georgia. What does that say about the Peach State? What, the devil couldn't check first in Tennessee? Buffalo? Medicine Hat?
If anyone does a remake, I offer alternatives to the opening line of his most famous song.
1. The devil went down to Hilton Head/looking for a challenging par-5.
2. The devil went down to Pep Boys/looking for a fuel filter.
3. The devil went down to Fort Wayne/looking for a Komets jersey.
4. The devil went down to Sao Paulo/looking for a zip line instructor.
5. The devil went down to the city clerk's office/looking for building permit guidelines.
Cold and wet on a Monday.
I don't think the conductor was too pleased with me.
And just dump your shit wherever you feel like it.
I would too, if I had to eat dinner every night with, and take parenting/teachable moments from, Dr. Adam Bricker.
This is probably almost as good as "Stoned," starring Scott Baio.
Found somewhere on tumblr.com
What do you think the members of Deep Purple meant when they sang in their song "Let's go/space truckin'/c'mon"?
What is space trucking? Is that some euphemism for getting high? I mean, when you're just engaged in standard, garden variety truckin', I presume he means truck driving, as in an 18-wheel, eastbound and down sort of fashion. You know? Like in a "coz-we-got-a-great-big-convoy-rockin'-through-the-night" sort of way, as made famous in the over-the-road drama starring Kris Kristofferson and Ali MacGraw, and made famous in the song by C.W. McCall?
So, there is that sort of truckin', which is what I assume is the inspiration for the Deep Purple lyric, only they added a more spacey, nebulous component to it. I think.
How does one space truck, exactly? Can you get CDL certification for that?
