Trying To Keep a Low Profile in Paris

The sign read, "Regardez-vous ici!" I looked, but couldn't see anything. So I tried to look even closer.



The gendarmes de L'Hotel des Invalides told me I was the first person to fall for their little trick in a long, long time. One visit from paramedics and one stern warning by the Paris police later, and we were on our way.



The morning after the aforementioned dinner at Georges. The waiter had warned me that the veal might give me gas, but had I known how MUCH, I'd have steered clear. We don't know yet how much the repairs will cost me.



But seriously. Forties, balding, fatting(?). You thought I was kidding?



dassall!

Un Americain dans Paris

This is a shot of one of the many statues "carved" into Notre Dame, near the left-side door as you look at it from my earlier photo. I know it's supposed to be viewed somberly, but it just tickled me. Had to take the shot and share.




Georges Pompidou Center, home of the Musee National d'Art Moderne, and of the restaurant, Georges, where a smaller group of us had dinner Thursday evening. We had a great waiter, Julian, who spoke great English. I know, it sounds very arrogant of me, but the French I've studied to this point has not carried me very far. I had the veal chop. It was okay, but the soup and the chocolate "cake" I had, before and after, respectively, were quite, quite yummy!




A view of the city from the top floor of the Georges Pompidou Center, through a window. Here you can see the Eiffel Tower and, atop it, the huge searchlight the French army uses to find citizens trying to escape the city without their berets and cigarettes. Those who are caught are tied to a post in a public square where they are clubbed with a baguette, and taunted by an Englishman.




This photo, taken at the entrance to Le Chateau Versailles, marks the debut of my image on my blog. I know it looks like I've suffered muscle atrophy in my left hand, but I'm just waving to the camera (not the one in my other hand) while holding on to a handkerchief. As you can see by the photo, the sun was shining brightly and it was very warm outside


elsewhere.


dassall...more later!

Into Paris

We arrived in Paris three hours late thanks to American Airlines’ inability to provide us with an airworthy plane. It took them three tries, and we had already been loaded onto the first one! Not a great confidence builder!

The flight sucked, and for someone who travels on airplanes a lot, it takes quite a bit to earn the description "sucked." The seats were uncomfortable, they showed two movies – October Sky and Ice Princess. I mean, come ON! October Sky is like six years old! And Ice Princess?! It’s a Disney movie. And not even a good one!

Since we were so late, our prearranged shuttles to our hotels were gone. The company with whom transport had been arranged sent a bus to take us all and drop us at our respective hotels. My wife and I and two of my co-workes are at au Manoir Saint Germain des Pres. I would post a photo, but you can Google their website and see much better photos than I could provide. It’s a decent place, certainly not a luxury hotel, but the rats aren’t so big as to be of concern.

I’M KIDDING! They’re HUGE!

Our first organized event was dinner at Altitude 95 on the Eiffel Tower. It was fairly standard fare, but “fairly standard” by Paris terms is pretty good. We had an appetizer of gravlax. I love salmon, but I’m not a huge fan of smoked salmon. This smoked salmon, however, was outstanding! The best description I can formulate is “creamy.” It melted in my mouth. The main course was beef tenderloin with haricots vertes. The filet was pretty good; I’ve had better. The green beans tasted like they were sautéed in a pound of butter…and that means they were fantastic! Dessert was an upside-down apple pie with ice cream (French vanilla, of course!) It was okay.

The owner of our company then invited us all up to the top of the Tower for an after dinner sojourn. We made it to the second level, froze our nipples off, and decided that we had enough.

Today, Wednesday, my wife and I scoped out tonight’s activity and restaurant location, and then took a leisurely stroll – well, as leisurely a stroll as one can take when one’s nipples, frostbitten from the previous evening, are freezing once again – to Notre Dame. I had been there in 2002 on a work trip and had only seen the outside. Today my wife and I went inside to look around and take photos. They caught us and made us put the photos back. I am atheist, but for some reason I love cathedrals. There must be an architect’s blood mixed in the soup running through my veins.

This evening’s event was a Seine river tour on Les Bateaux Vedettes, where we chugged past the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, to mention but a couple, and dinner was at Ze Kitchen Galaries. I had roast piglet. Cooked baby bovine has the name “veal,” but I don’t know what baby pig is. The menu read “porcelet.” It was good, but the taste of the fish my wife had made me sorry I ate off the land.

That’s the first two days of our trip. I hope to send more. Time has been an issue, and I’m only able to post now because I couldn’t sleep tonight.


dassall!

And we're off!

Leaving the house in minutes for the airport and to Paris. I will try to post a journal -- hopefully with photos, even -- as we go along!

Au revoir!

The Feast

I am not a cook. I can grill a mean salmon filet. I can rotisserie the spit out of a chicken. If it's nuke-able, I can nuke it. But when it comes to the skill to actually blend flavors and make sauces and do French things like sauteé and flambé...WITHOUT destroying the kitchen in a violent fireball, that ain't me.

So, when I said to my wife as this holiday season approached that I wished to honor the invitation to my sister's home on Christmas day, she said she wanted to be able to see her family this holiday season, too. It was agreed that we would gather with her family on Christmas Eve. At our house. Since her brother was making ham for his family on The Day, we had to come up with something other than ham, and since we all had Thanksgiving leftovers that lasted until a week ago, nobody wanted turkey. A thought swam up into my head and I suggested Cornish hens.

"Hey! Great idea!" she said. "Haven't had that in a long time," she said. "You cook," she said.

The local grocery mega-chain, to my good fortune, had them on sale. Using my fingers I determined how many mouths we had to feed, so I bought ten birds, which, if every person ate one, would leave one for sandwi... ehrm, for a sandwich ...later.

I consulted our copy of The Joy of Cooking for some idea as to how I was going to do this. My wife has the knack, has the experience to grab a handful of spices, fling them into the pan, and ZOOT! whatever was in the pan with the spices comes out tasting like the grand prize winner at a cooking contest! Me, I have to read the ingredients list intently and measure to the letter. Or number, I guess, in this case.

On top of choosing an entree I had never tried to cook before, I had decided I wanted a basic bread stuffing with it. Again, the wife said, "Good idea...you do it."

So, on Christmas Eve morning I began preparations for creating this meal I call havoc. Of course the first event was the scavenger hunt for the spices. My wife squirrels them away in three different places. Parsely, sage, thyme. No, no rosemary, but you're humming that tune, now, aren't you? So was I. Cut up the loaf of Italian bread. Throw the chunks into the oven to toast. Chop up the onion and the celery. I couldn't find any ground black pepper, so when she came down from her sprucing, my wife told me she usually grinds pepper fresh with our dinner table pepper mill. She ground up the 1/4 teaspoon I needed and afforded me the opportunity to sample how much fresher it smelled freshly ground.

Imagine this. You've just finished chopping up a whole onion, your eyes are burning and watering like crazy, and your beloved spouse sticks a teaspoon of pepper under your nose and says, "Smell how fresh?"

Cook up the onion and celery in butter. Mix cooked savories into the toasted bread in a bowl. Add chicken stock. Okay, we had broth. My wife has explained the difference to me on several occasions. It's like learning a language with no verbs. Apparently the difference makes no difference, at least in this recipe. According to my wife.

Prepare a rub for the birds. Salt and pepper thyme. Salt, pepper and thyme, that is. Scoop the stuffing into the birds. Tie their little legs over the hole. I had never done this, and, after a few unsuccessful tries at getting the string to hold, I developed a neat method that works pretty easily. Of course, after I proudly showed my wife how clever I am, she showed me the section in The Joy of Cooking that explains how to properly truss a bird. Well, their legs stayed shut all the same. Baste the birds with melted butter. I am still amazed at how quickly butter melts in a microwave!

Then came the dilemma. Well, two. Two dilemmas. Dilemmae? Ten birds. One oven. Three baking pans, one of three-bird capacity, the others of two each. My wife boldly announced to her family that we would be eating in shifts.

We had put in the first two without stuffing - we didn't think we had enough - while we worked on stuffing and trussing the rest. They came out with the proper temperature and clear fluids, but one of them still had some pink when it was cut open. This went on for most of the afternoon, these damn birds lying to us with their selectively clear fluids running from where we pierced them, but then trying to inflict serious gastric difficulties on my in-laws at table. I began to fear they thought it was my intent!

Otherwise all went well. The kitchen had no blast traces. Wife and I ate in the last shift, which, it turns out, was actually a relaxing way to do it. The pressure to get everything on the table, cooked and ready, all at once, was off of us. The responsibility to leave our plates to retrieve forgotten items or guests' drink requests was gone. We were first servants who then were allowed to dine with the guests. And we had the added treat of extra stuffing left over, enough to have filled two of the little birds!

When it was over, when our guests had gone home, I could not believe how tired I was. At the same time, there was this great, relaxing sense of accomplishment. Of course, I don't know if it was because of a dinner well served, or because of the diamond earrings with which I surprised my wife and the knowledge that, no matter what time we turned in for the night, we wouldn't be going to sleep any time soon!!

And I think I have the distinct pleasure today of knowing that I am the only of my currently small circle of blogging friends to have blogged on christmas day. What does that mean? Everybody else has better things to do today!


dassall!

NastyGram

At the request of Mr. Schprock, and for little more reason than I have not thought of anything to blog about since last week, I post this slightly altered version of my first draft of the letter I will send to the dealership who didn't fix my SUV in my moment of need. As I warned Mr. Schprock, it's probably anti-climactic, and, in any regard, I will edit it further before I send it, so it may arrive at the dealership completely different from what you see below. The names have been changed to protect my ass:




Farrago T. Farragi
123 Notyer Street
Chicago, Illinois 60600




Mr. Bill N. Scruhum
Parts and Service Director
Dumschitz Nissan
4444 West Irving Park Road
Chicago, Illinois 60641

December 12, 2005


Dear Mr. Scruhum,

On Thursday evening, December 8, 2005, I suffered a minor mishap, resulting in a broken tail-light on my 2002 Nissan Xterra, which my wife and I purchased at Dumschitz Nissan in December, 2001. As I had to work the next day, I did not wish to risk incurring a traffic citation by driving the vehicle in its damaged and illegal condition.

On Friday December 9, 2005, at approximately 8:40 a.m. I called our usual auto repair establishment, Reliable Auto Repair Center, hopeful that they could get my vehicle in that morning. I was, however, informed that they were too busy to fit me in. As this was a minor emergency, I then called the Service Department at Dumschitz Nissan at approximately 8:45 a.m. I had hoped to salvage at least half the day and be in to work by early afternoon. I inquired of the young man on the other end of the phone line, whom I know only as Stosh, if your service department could get my vehicle in the same day for the repair. Stosh consulted a schedule and confirmed that Dumschitz’s Service Department could indeed get me in that same morning. He asked me when I could get the vehicle to your location, and I told him I could have it there by 9:30.

After I arrived at Dumschitz Nissan, and my Xterra was being processed into your system, I noticed the sign on the wall that informed customers of your “inspection fee” of $95. I understood what the sign meant and, as this was an emergency for me, I accepted it. Since I had the vehicle there, I also asked Stosh to have someone take a look at the driver’s door switch, as it no longer indicates when the headlights have been left on or when the keys are in left in the ignition. I was explicit with him that I wanted only an estimate where the door switch was concerned.

When Stosh completed the inspection order, I asked him if I should wait in the Dumschitz Nissan customer lounge, or if it would be a wait substantial enough that I should go home. He indicated that it could be quite a long wait, so I decided to take public transportation home.

At approximately 11:30 a.m. Stosh called and informed me that the part needed to repair my Xterra, a right side tail-light assembly, was not in stock at your location, nor was it in stock anywhere in the vicinity of Dumschitz Nissan, and that, due to the recent heavy snow of December 8, getting the part delivered to Dumschitz Nissan would take until Tuesday of the following week at the earliest.

Stosh’s news troubled me deeply. That I would not make it in to work at all that day, there was no doubt. But there were responsibilities and obligations that I could not miss on Monday and Tuesday. I asked Stosh if there was absolutely no way around this, and he told me that indeed there was not.

Feeling on the verge of panic, I once again called Reliable Auto Repair Center and, hoping against hope, I asked them if they could possibly get their hands the part I needed for my Xterra. After a few moments on hold, Andy, the owner, came back to me and said that he could get the part, “No problem.”

Thinking he had some secret supply system, I told him that I was amazed, for I had just been told by Dumschitz Nissan that there was no such part within easy reach until Tuesday or Wednesday of the next week.

Andy laughed out loud and told me that when he had put me on hold, he had called Dumschitz Nissan to inquire about the part, and Dumschitz had told him they had it in stock. He told me that he would have the part delivered on Saturday morning, and he could get me in then to install it.

I returned to Dumschitz Nissan where I was charged $105 for the inspection of the faulty “smart entrance control unit”: the $95 inspection fee plus $7.60 for “shop supplies” and $1.87 for “EPA waste removal.” I understand and accept the charge of $95 to pay for your technicians’ time, but SHOP SUPPLIES? WASTE REMOVAL? What consumable supplies are required to determine that a switch or a circuit is operating improperly? What waste that would concern the Environmental Protection Agency is generated by determining that a switch or circuit is operating improperly? Did you charge me for a technician’s bathroom break? Were it not for my emergency, and Stosh’s promise that he could get me in that morning, I would not have bothered with getting the “smart entrance control unit” checked. I spent the better part of the day confident that my more immediate problem was being solved, but instead it was wasted waiting for you to tell me that you didn’t have a part that it turns out you had all along.

The next day, Saturday December 10, 2005, I took my Xterra to Reliable Auto Repair Center where Andy, who had received the right rear tail lamp assembly from Dumschitz Nissan earlier that morning, replaced my damaged tail lamp within two minutes of my arrival.

I notice on the tail lamp replacement estimate from Dumschitz Nissan that the price you charge for the part is $161, and the labor to replace it is $48. Reliable Auto Repair Center charged me only $122.68 for the same part, and $10 labor to install it. It appears not only that you charge mysterious and unnecessary shop fees, but you apply at least a 30% surcharge to your service customers for items from your own parts store, and your labor charges are extortive.

Mr. Scruhum, when my wife and I bought our Xterra at Dumschitz Nissan, it was the most pleasant car buying experience either of us has ever been through. But this most recent “service” has soured our opinion of the entire operation at 4444 West Irving Park Road. You missed your “#1 Goal” by 100%. Unless you can give me a coherent, viable explanation of why your service department wasted my time by telling me that the replacement part my vehicle needed was unavailable when, the very next day, my preferred -- that's PREFERRED -- mechanic was able to have it delivered FROM DUMSCHITZ NISSAN'S PARTS STORE, then you can look upon the $9.47 of frivolous fees you charged me as the last Dumschitz Nissan will ever get from us, and you can count on my recommendation to others to steer clear of your operation.

Sincerely,
Farrago T. Farragi



dassall

The (Lack of) Service Department

So, after my Thursday evening garage mishap, I called Friday morning to my local, favorite auto repair place to see if they could get me in to repair the tail light. The owner of the place said that they were too busy to get me in. Try Saturday. I should have just waited and taken it to him on Saturday.

Instead, I called the dealer from where we bought the vehicle. I asked if they could get it in the same day, and the young man in the service department on the other end of the line consulted his schedule and determined that, yes, he could indeed get me in. When could I bring it in? I looked at the clock on the microwave. 8:47am. "I can have it there by 9:30." Nine-thirty it is, then, he said. See you then.

I drove over to... for fear of potential legal repercussions, let's call them Dumschitz Nissan (but I will tell that they're the only Nissan dealer in Chicago on Irving Park Road between N. Kenneth Ave. and N. Kilbourn Ave). As they were processing my car -- writing down the VIN, license plate number, counting the tires -- I noticed this sign above the service desk that reads, in essence, that, no matter what they do to my car, there will be a minimum "inspection fee" charge of half the flat labor rate of $95. Okay, well, this IS an emergency. I needed the car back on the road by Monday. I also asked them to take a look at a little annoyance with the driver's side front door dome-light button. Seems the car won't tell me when I still have the keys in the ignition when I open the driver's door. They said they'd take a look at it.

About two hours went by before the service dude at Dumschitz called me. But since I'd taken the day off, I'd gotten back into my jammy pants at home, so my phone rang unnoticed on the belt of my jeans upstairs. About two hours after he called I noticed, so I called him back. "Yes, sir, we don't have that part in stock right now, and nobody in the area has one. Even if they did, the roads as they are (we just had a big snowstorm) makes it really tough. We won't be able to get it in until next week, Tuesday or Wednesday. Would you like me to order the part for you and schedule you for service next week, sir?"

I told him to wait. I called my favorite place and asked the question I SHOULD have asked when I called him the first time (but I had thoughts that I could make it in to work by noon), "Can you get me in tomorrow?" I've known they have Saturday hours since I started bringing our cars there. I also asked him, "Can you get your hands on an '02 Xterra right side tail light?" He said to hold on a minute. When he came back on the line he said that, yeah, he could get the part no problem. So I said, "That's funny. The guy at Dumschitz Nissan said nobody in the area had it." Then he laughed. He told me that Dumschitz is the place he just called, and they said they have it!

He told me to come in Saturday morning and he would take care of it. I took public transportation back to Dumschitz Nissan, paid $105 for them to tell me they didn't have the part and that the problem with the door switch is the most expensive of the potential problems. Then this morning I went to the reliable guy who had the part from Dumschitz Nissan, and, embarrassingly, he replaced the tail light housing outside in the freezing cold, in full view of everyone in the lobby, in approximately one minute.

Tomorrow I will spend part of the day crafting my nasty letter of complaint to the service manager at Dumschitz Nissan. It's a shame, too, because they were the best new car dealer experience my wife and I have ever ...um... experienced.

Random Thoughts

Screaming Fuck
I did this to our SUV last night. After driving 25 miles in heavy snow over mostly unplowed roads, and avoiding contact with the hundreds of cars sharing the roads with me, I finally got home, safe and sound, only to back into the garage -- quite literally! The SUV is an '02 model with almost no dings or scratches otherwise, so you can imagine how loudly I was screaming "FUCK!"

So I had to take a sick day off from work so I could get the damn taillight replaced so I don't get pulled over and ticketed. In a world where other people drive with one
headlight missing and the other dangling out of its socket, with red saran wrap stretched over the brake lights, and they seem never to be seen by the cops, I know damn well that if I put this off for one minute, the next time I'm on the road I'll get pulled over.

And of course, there's the damage to the garage. It's minor -- very minor -- but it still means calling a handyman out to fix it, and then paying the guy. I could try to do it myself, but those in the world who have ever seen me use a saw and hammer and nails know that the finished job in my hands could come out looking worse than the original damage!

I should consider myself lucky that it wasn't worse, as it could have been. I could have hit our other car, the "little" car. Or I could have been squashed by a plane sliding onto the roadway outside the perimeter of an airport. Or I could have had a fatal heart attack as the car burst into flames around me, igniting the garage, burning it and the other car and me to cinders and molten metal. So, yeah. I know it could have been worse.

Scary World
This morning, as I walked toward public transportation after dropping my car off at the dealer from whom we bought it to get the taillight replaced (which I have since discovered they can't do until next week!), I happened upon a restaurant and, having had no breakfast, I decided to pop in for a bite. I ordered corned beef hash and eggs, but they didn't measure up. As I sat there, however, I looked out the window and noticed a black man outside on the sidewalk wearing a backpack on his back. It was a large pack, seemingly quite full of whatever. He entered the restaurant and made his way toward the back of the place to a table there, I presume, though he may have headed for the bathroom. No one in the place aside from me, as I am aware, took notice of him. By itself, it was a non-incident. But, taken in the context of today's news headlines, specifically a recent one from the island paradise of Bali, it makes one realize how truly vulnerable we are to the actions of even just one crazed, determined individual. The sort of suicide bombing of the likes of those in Bali and daily in Iraq have not occurred here, but I fear it is just a matter of time. It is enough, it is too much, that attacks the likes of 9/11 DID happen here, but I don't think we've seen the last of terror within our borders.


dassall

The Call of the Road

As my faithful readers, you know that my job calls for a lot of travel. In some senses it’s my dream job. When I didn’t have a job that required travel, and I encountered someone – my brother, for instance – who did, I was deeply envious of that person. Whenever I applied for a job that promised or threatened “some” or “frequent” travel, my mouth watered and my palms got sweaty. It must be borne of my youth when, as one of a poor, large family, we traveled only rarely, and then only by car. I thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the back seat looking out the window at the world surrounding the interstate, and I thought about how fantastic it must be to work as a truck driver, to be able to see the country as a by-product of your profession. It was one of the jobs I wanted to have as a little boy dreaming of when I’d be a grown-up.

The emotional zenith of my teenage years is the day I earned my driver’s license. I had spent my youth in the passenger seat of my father’s pickup truck watching as he manipulated the stick-shift, the “three-on-the-tree,” as the steering column-mounted manual gear-shift was known. By the age of ten I knew how to drive a stick-shift. I never drove a car until I was 16, but I played make-believe enough in my father’s truck to know I had the rhythm down. When I received my license I couldn’t wait to drive a car with a manual transmission. I couldn’t wait to make a road trip on my own. I always volunteered my (parents’) car and to drive when my high school friends were gathering, and we’d pile eight or nine of us into it to get to a cast party or our favorite pizza place.

In the military I couldn’t volunteer fast enough to train on the “deuce‘n a half,” the workhorse two-and-a-half ton truck, the 44-passenger bus (think typical school bus) and later, the M-925 five-ton truck, even though it has an automatic transmission. The opportunities to drive were few, but the desire was strong

During the down-time I would decompress on the road. I’d hop into my car and drive for hours, just seeing the environs, willingly getting lost on my way to finding my way back to where I started.

After a few episodes of real-world driving, the luster of a truck driving career wore off a little when I learned first-hand that maneuvering one of those lumbering beasts through narrow German streets and heavy traffic was a certain sweat-inducer, that backing into a narrow spot was mentally akin to an unpleasant dental procedure, and I grew a new respect and awe for the guys who drive trucks every day.

As things go, my interests evolved into the realm of the creative. I grew more comfortable surrounded by things electronic rather than things mechanic. I was consumed by the visual arts and was determined to make my mark on the world in that manner.

My post-military strategy broke down into an hierarchy of plans, each subsequent one contingent upon the failure of the antecedent: Plan A - to be discharged honorably from the military and then enroll at a university and earn my degree, and then embark on a career in television. Plan B: embark on a career in television, degree be damned! Plan C: become a police officer. Plan D: truck driver. So the itch never fully left me. Plan A would suffice provided I could drive to work every day.

As I lived Plan A I slowly drifted from any interest in driving a truck for a living, even if the bottom were to fall out of my life. Then, when I started my current job, there was stated a requirement that I study, test for, and earn my commercial driver’s license for the purpose of driving the company’s large box-truck (think the biggest furniture store delivery truck you’ve seen, and then add six feet of length). I was all for it until I had a glimpse of the future in which the job for which I was hired was subjugated to the company’s need for their truck and its contents to be two time zones away in a matter of days. I didn’t take the job so I could drive a truck, so I reneged on the truck part of the deal, and dragged my feet on getting the permit until they dropped the idea.

That was four years ago.

Today, in a fluke series of events, I wound up riding shotgun on a local errand in the very truck in which I was supposed to train lo, those many years ago. The man driving is new to the task, so I gave him as much advice as I could remember from my few moments of driving in the military and of my stunted training with this company. I looked out the windscreen, and it was as though that gray strip of asphalt before us had reached up into my gut and beckoned me forward, teasing me into the desire to grip that steering wheel, feather that clutch, and head for the wind-blown tundra for exploits untold. The reality would be ugly, but the dream is all about the moment, the thrill of being, the joy of driving, the innocence of a young boy’s vision of the world around him as every experience is new and every turn of the wheel brings a fresh adventure.

The Ache

I was blog surfing and came across this blog, and the entry for 12/5/05 got me to thinking.

Her name was Linda. She was in the year behind mine in high school. She had kind of a big nose and straight, flat, blond hair. Pretty, but I guess not the most attractive girl in her class. I don't know what she had or what she did, but she had me hooked. Of course, she wasn't trying to hook me...as a matter of fact, she didn't WANT to hook me. But there I was, drooling over her like a puppy hoping for a treat.

It went on like that for two and a half years. I had even gotten up the courage to ask her out at the end of my sophomore year, but she said no. Still, I couldn't shake the feelings. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. As a hormone-soaked teenage boy, I couldn't even fantasize about her, so pure was my love for her. I reserved those fantasies for a girl named Jane who, believe it or not, was pretty plain. Jane hated me, so I did really nasty things with her and to her...in my fantasies. But Linda was always kind to me, laughing at my jokes and my silliness, stoking that flame that burned for her deep inside my aching chest.

During my senior year she started dating a boy from her own class, someone who participated in the same extra-curricular activity that Linda and I and all my closest friends did. He was already near the bottom of the list of people I liked, so when they started dating he was easily transferred to my list of enemies.

Midway through the second semester they broke up. I had started seeing a girl, but the feelings just weren't there for me. When Linda became free again (I like that... free "again" at 16) I was that drooling puppy all over again. But it was different. I was different. I had become the image of my pain: brooding, sullen, withdrawn. One day Linda asked me "What's the matter?"

My answer really threw her: "You."

That touched off a long conversation about how I felt about her and, a few days later, while driving her home after an activity, she grabbed my hand on the car seat. And the ensuing five months were a daily reminder of how mismatched we really were. I was jealous, suspicious. She was still pining for her previous boyfriend. No, really, she was. That's the only part I was right about. We went to the Prom together. We made out a few times, a couple of frantic gropes, and then we barely saw each other the entire summer after I graduated.

I had begun the unfortunate habit of driving past her house -- or worse, sitting in front of her house -- every night as a result of my waiting for her to call me, which she never did, until one evening when I saw her get into the car of her previous boyfriend. This prompted a call to her the next day -- my birthday -- during which I confronted her about it, and she admitted it, and we broke up.

So the wall went up around my heart. And it stayed there for a solid year before I tried to let anyone in. And then I trusted no one, expected everyone to abandon me, and this way affected every relationship I hoped would become intimate until one day, sixteen years later, I destroyed a relationship -- hell, it was barely a friendship yet -- in fantastic fashion simply through suspicion and mistrust. The wall had a gate, and the gate finally closed. It was settled. I was meant for no one, and no one was meant for me. I had given up.

And that's precisely why I'm married today. The internet re-acquaintance with someone I had known since the eighth grade was something which, in the past, I would have tried to cultivate, develop, and then, because it wasn't going the way I thought it should, would foster suspicion and jealousy, and then I would destroy and think it wasn't my fault. This time I kept my distance. But in staying back I was able to relax and be myself, which won HER heart.

But this isn't about my wife. I love her dearly, trust her deeply, and I'm not the least bit worried about her straying. It's a wonderfully nice feeling to be secure. But secure isn't that heady, first hill on a roller-coaster sensation that makes you think you'll scream, cry, or wet your pants.

What this is about is first loves. I'm in my 40s now and, as you could probably tell by my telling (?!), the events with Linda are to me as though they occurred yesterday. The pain and the heartache, the anger and despair I felt as a kid then still bubble up when I recall the image of her getting into that car. I should hate her for what she did to me, but I don't.

I often find myself wondering what she's doing today. What became of her? Who did she marry? How many kids? I wonder if she ever thinks about me, if she allows herself not to think of me as a stalker, as the term applies today, but rather that sweet, sad, dumb kid who didn't know anything about how to make her happy. The kind of happy I hope she is now.

What this reminiscence about first love does for me, however, is make me realize that, though Linda was the first girl I loved, my wife is the first (and only!) girl that ever loved me. After Linda and about a half dozen girls on whom I blamed my faults, I never thought I'd find someone who fills me, who completes me, who makes me feel right.

But here I am.

Indie Flick

Okay, so my favorite blogger posted one of these on her blog, and I was compelled by envy to do the same.

The Movie Of Your Life Is An Indie Flick

You do things your own way - and it's made for colorful times. Your life hasn't turned out how anyone expected, thank goodness! Your best movie matches: Clerks, Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

At least I'm not a horror flick. Or gay porn.


dassall!

Paris inattendu

I work at a small company. The owner of this company is fairly aloof and secretive, especially around the topic of the other companies he owns or owns parts of. He's a very focused man. If what you have to say doesn't apply directly to the situation of the moment, he doesn't listen to you. He doesn't even hear you. It is difficult at times to work with him or for him. But he owns the company, on payday he moves the money from his account to ours, and the checks have never bounced. And, in the 5 years that I've been here I've discovered that he bonuses us in our 401(k) plans when times are good (and they've been good), and he's given us life insurance policies on his dime. But still, it's difficult to like the man.

He has owned this company for over 25 years, starting as a very young man. Yet he made very little mention of his longevity in an industry that has largely dried up in Chicago. Then one day in early November of 2004 he acted strangely. It was a Friday, and I had been asked to drop off a package to one of our clients whose offices were sort of on my way home. They closed their doors a half hour before we close ours, so I had to leave the office early, and my supervisor had given the okay for me to just head home after the delivery. I walked past the owner's office and, rare as it was, his door was open. I poked my head in and said an obligatory, "Good-bye," and "Have a nice weekend," and he became very animated.

"Are you leaving now?" he asked.

He's a bit of a stickler for putting in your time. He hates clock-watchers, those who come in right on the dot at 8:30 and leave on the dot at 5:30, so, as it was 4:30, I felt compelled to tell him I was dropping off something for a client.

He brushed that off. "Don't leave, yet. I have something for you to take home. I'll meet you at your car."

When you have no history of personal interaction with somebody, and then suddenly he's arranging private time with you, you might get a little nervous, like I did. I went out to the car, but then realized I had forgotten something at my desk, so I went inside. He saw me and thought I was being impatient, and he repeated that he would meet me out in the parking lot.

It was an unseasonably warm day for November, so I sat in the car with the windows open, wondering if he had devised a really new, different, exceptionally cruel way of firing me. He walked up, placed a small, green, lunch-sized bag on the passenger seat, and said "Don't open this until you get home. Then, when you open it, call me."

WTF?! He's going to fire me by bag? I drove to the client's office building, walked the half-mile from the parking garage to their office, dropped off the package, and finished the mile round trip back to the car. I got in and stared for a few moments at the bag and thought to hell with it! I opened the bag and inside was an envelope and a book about Maui. We had been to Maui on the job earlier in the year, so I thought nothing of it, perhaps something from the client as a thank you. I opened the envelope to find a card inside. The first printed paragraph read something to the effect that in order for a company to survive for 25 years, it takes good, loyal, hard-working people. The second paragraph read "You are invited to join [my wife] and me in Maui December 27th to January 1...."

As noted earlier, it was an unusually warm day for November, so when I got back in the car I had rolled the windows down again, which allowed my exclamation of "HOLY FUCK!" to echo and reverberate throughout the entire parking garage! It was awfully close to quitting time, so someone must have heard me. My hands flew up to my mouth when I heard my voice coming back to me. I reread and reread the card to make sure I understood it clearly, that it wasn't referring to "The Maui Gardens" restaurant in some hokey northern Illinois town.

I arrived home and showed my wife the bag, which I had repacked as original, save for the opened envelope. Her reaction was quiet disbelief. She was waiting to hear the "but," the punchline to the joke. The only "but" was that there wasn't one. He was taking all of his employees and their immediate families to Maui for a week at New Year's!

I called him, as instructed, and he told me that he felt he had the best staff now than he ever had since he started the business. This was a one time deal to celebrate 25 years of success, a huge thank you to the people who worked hard, kept the company together, and who happened to be here on its 25th birthday.

The trip was cool. There were company-hosted dinners, but activities were on our dime. My wife and I got his 'n hers mani- & pedicures, caught an awesome, if distant, shot of a whale breaching, and took a stupid, crazy, funny, COLD drive up to Haleakala Crater. My wife, who had never been there prior to the trip, definitely wants to go back in the future.

Sooner than we wanted, the trip was over, and we went back to our regular lives.

This year I was looking forward to our usual holiday dinner, hosted by my boss and his wife, usually at some nice, out of the way place, where we're free to order anything on the menu, and drink just about as much as we dare. Then one day this past October, after one of our work trips, I took a Monday off. Something occurred at the office that required me to come in briefly to take care of it. I stopped at my desk and found resting atop it a colorful box, the kind that folds closed at the top to form a little handle. I opened it and discovered inside little chocolates and cookies wrapped in packages with designer-type names on them. And a card.

I opened the card only to discover two messages, each printed on paper and pasted onto the inside of the card, facing each other, each in French. The others in the office had already gotten theirs, and someone had already run the text through an online translation site, and handed me the transcript. One was a poem, the other was the message of import. It basically read, "Thank you for another tremendous year. Without the hard work and dedication of our staff, we couldn't do it. Please come with us for a week in Paris December 26th to January 2...."

I looked at my co-worker and said, "You gotta be fuckin' kidding me! What happened to the 'one-time deal?'" My worry is that the boss will establish a precedent, and next year, when we just go back to the holiday dinner, people will be pissed off that we're not going someplace exotic or romantic or cool. But, in the meantime, we're going to Paris! (and yes, the one in France, not Illinois). In a job that requires a heavy travel schedule, one might think the gift of travel would be hard to swallow.

It's getting difficult not to like the man.



dassall

...and children listen to hear sleighbells in the snow...

The holidays came too early this year. I'm not ready for there to be holiday music on the radio and in TV commercials BEFORE Halloween. However, inspired by the sight of an overnight dusting of snow on our back yard lawn, the "spirit" hit me this morning in the shower when I heard the words of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" issuing from my own pipes.

I'm not a religious or spiritual person. Okay, I'll say it at risk of losing my new blogger friends: I am atheist. I'm not militant about it. Christians, Jews, Muslims... you can all worship freely around me. It's just not my bag. Part of me thinks I should write it "X-mas," but the holiday was not named for a fictional/real person named "X." But that's not what this post is about.

I'm not religious. The "Christmas Spirit" within me harks back to my childhood when the brainwashing had its hold of me and I believed, and my parents were young and my siblings were all living at home and we'd wake up in our pajamas and sprint to the Christmas tree to see what Santa had left under it, and surely there was a Santa because our parents couldn't afford to buy us so many toys! I still have warm thoughts about that holiday because that's when the family gets together for a huge meal. Everyone's together, laughing, smiling, digesting. That's Christmas for me. Togetherness.

It's interesting that probably the most famous modern song to commemorate the Christian holiday was written by a Jew! He captured the heart of the holiday in his lyrics, the spirit of the holiday without being spiritual. The Santa side of it instead of the Christ side of it. But what this post is about is literally the title of the post. Have you ever heard the sleighbells during a gentle snowfall? I have.

I was in fifth grade. It had to be December, likely less than a week before Christmas. The sixth grade bully, Tim Pfeiffer (pronounced "PY-fer"), had threatened me with a pummeling after school when he and I tangled going after a ball at recess. I had made every effort to get out the doors as quickly as possible to be out of sight by the time Tim remembered he was scheduled to flatten me. He had quite a busy fight schedule, did Tim. But something happened to delay me, and I was trembling from the fear of facing him. I had a friend with me who was there for moral support more than anything. Someone to wipe up the blood and call an ambulance when the fists stopped flying. I can't remember today who that friend was. It must not have been my best friend because at the time he was fearless. He would have taken on a moving car if he thought he had heard it threaten him or one of his friends. No, this friend was there to watch, take notes for the school newspaper, and make splints.

The only non-violent, defensive move I could think of at the moment was to leave through a different door than I usually did, this one being the school's main entrance. It had started snowing earlier in the day, and by the time school let out, there was about an inch or two of accumulation, on the sidewalks as well as on the grass, so this was a real snowfall. My friend and I walked outside and there was no Tim Pfeiffer. Instead, out there was a calm I had seldom experienced in that small suburb of Chicago. The snowflakes drifted silently to the others that had preceded them to create the white blanket beneath our feet. And either traffic and wind had ceased moving everywhere within a half-mile radius of the school, or the snowfall was so quieting that I could hear myself breathing a sigh of relief that I wasn't being battered by a pair of sixth-grader fists.

And then I heard them. Call it the magic a 10-year-old feels in a white landscape as the white still falls around him, but I heard them. I stopped breathing in order to make sure I heard them. Sleigh bells. Somewhere off in the distance, in no particular direction, a jing-jing-jingling that almost wasn't there, somewhere. Convinced I was hearing things, I stepped forward to go home, my feet crunching on the fresh snow, when my friend said, "Stop! SHH!" I froze. He stood with his arms out at 45-degree angles, appearing to try to still the air with his hands as he listened. "Do you hear that?"

"The bells?" I said.

"Yeah!"

It was ghostly. They faded away, and then back in again, just to the outer edges of our hearing, and finally they were gone. The streets had been plowed, nobody in the area that I was aware of owned horses, let alone a sleigh. And who would ring sleighbells from their front yard while the snow fell?

I don't know if Mr. Berlin meant the same thing when he wrote that line in that perhaps most famous of his songs, or if he simply meant that there really were sleighbells ringing for the children to hear. But when that moment from my childhood came back to me this morning in the shower as my lips formed the words, when I realized that once, just once, I was one of those children who listened to hear sleighbells in the snow, and I heard them, the Christmas Spirit and all of its childhood magic was upon me.

Happy holidays to you, whichever of them you choose to celebrate, however you choose to celebrate them.


dassall


(...and I never got that beating. Tim Pfeiffer had forgotten about me. He must have had more important kids to thrash in his busy beating schedule.)

The Best Corned Beef Hash and Eggs Breakfast In America Project

In one of his more recent posts, The Sort of Stuff You Think About, Mr. Schprock made reference to one of his earlier posts, to which he provided a link, about his Saturday morning breakfast spot, thus making me read TWO of his posts for a full understanding.

But, at risk of appearing as though I can’t formulate an original thought, his earlier post about his favorite breakfast spot got me to thinking about my favorite breakfast spot.

During my brief tenure at a previous job, coworkers of mine acquainted me with a small diner about a half-block from our office building. Mac’s restaurant is a narrow, rectangular space in a small, one-story, commercial tenant building of narrow, rectangular spaces. My colleagues of the time had brought me there for lunch that one day, but they normally chose local fast-food restaurants for lunch-time jaunts, so we went to Mac’s together only once. As a mass-transit commuter, I sometimes had the good fortune to catch a bus within seconds of arriving at the stop, and then arriving at the train platform as a train pulled into the stop, which allowed me as much as 20 minutes of extra time when I got off the train at my destination. Being a big breakfast fan (and I mean “big breakfast fan” in all three possible meanings), and relegated to foot travel, I decided to drop in on the people at Mac’s to see what kind of breakfast they could do me.

Mac’s is your typical “greasy spoon” type of diner. You enter the building on the southwest corner and find yourself facing the south end – “the smoking section” – of the straight counter, and between the long row and the short row of booths juxtaposed at a right angle to each other, with a break at the corner entrance. The counter seats twelve patrons, six at each half of the counter on either side of a break in the middle to accommodate the waitresses as they work. That first morning at Mac’s was a cold, Chicago winter day, and as I entered I saw a sign that read something to the effect of, “As a courtesy to all of our customers, lone patrons please sit at the counter during peak business hours.” There were several booths open. “The smoking section” was full, which suited me just fine. There was an available stool at the north end of the north counter, way at the back of the dining room, with the adjacent stool also empty, so I wouldn’t have to sit immediately next to another patron. As I sat I was warmed by the heat collecting over and around the large griddle directly in front of me across the counter and against the east wall, where the lead cook, a stocky, 30s-ish Mexican man worked at a feverish pace. The waitress for my section approached from the business side of the counter brandishing a full, glass Bunn coffee pot and said, “Morning. Coffee?”

“Certainly,” I said as I turned my coffee cup upright in its saucer. The waitress handed me the menu and my eyes stopped on “Corned Beef Hash and Eggs.” I don’t know when I started liking corned beef hash, but I do. I seem to recall that the first time I ever ordered it was because it sounded good. And it was. So I decided to try Mac’s version of corned beef hash and eggs.

And so it went for the next year or so, stopping in once every week or two and, having approved heartily of Mac’s rendition on that first cold morning, breaking fast on corned beef hash and eggs, over medium, with a side of home-fried potatoes, and toast.

As time went on I learned that the owner of the place is not named Mac, nor does anyone named Mac even work there. It seems that Mac sold his old diner to Perry, a young son of a Greek immigrant. I’m sure it’s Perinakos or some really thick-sounding Greek name, but he introduced himself as Perry. I learned that Perry employs his father, whom I know by no name other than “Pop,” in the kitchen. I learned that the highly-efficient lead cook is named Joe. He speaks with a fairly strong Spanish accent, but instead of José, he introduces himself as Joe. He emigrated here from the Michoacan region of Mexico. He learned my name within a few visits, and within a few visits more he understood that, with only rare variation, my breakfast is corned beef hash and eggs, over medium, a side of potatoes, and toast. I learned that Joe has Mondays off, and on Mondays Perry cooks. I learned that breakfast is always, always, ALWAYS served to you within two minutes of ordering, but it goes all the way up to three minutes when they’re really busy. I learned that the best place to sit at Mac’s Diner is at the far north end of the counter, at the back of the dining room, because Joe knows me and my “usual,” starts cooking my breakfast before the waitress takes my order, and serves it directly to me when it’s ready. On top of that, it’s nice and toasty warm back there, away from the entrance, on a cold and windy winter morning. And I learned that “the smoking section” is a figurative term because the place is so small that, if “the smoking section” is full, and everyone in it is smoking, no matter where I sit at Mac's, I might as well be sitting in “the smoking section.”

Not much later I quit my job at the place half a block from Mac’s Diner, but, to my good fortune, my current place of employment has me driving right past my old place of employment and, subsequently, Mac’s Diner, so, though not as frequently as when it was a three-minute walk away, I still stop in occasionally for a morning bite.

With the new job came a lot of travel, a lot of stays in hotels in a wide assortment of cities. In many of these places I tried the locals' corned beef hash and eggs, only to be disappointed. I also made my first attempt at losing the extra weight I had put on from all that traveling and eating restaurant food. So my corned beef hash and eggs order at Mac’s changed slightly to include only a half order of potatoes (and it’s still a lot of potatoes!), and rye toast, which, I discovered the first time I ordered it, I like better than wheat or white.

My epicurean exploits across the country have inspired me to initiate an experiment, which I call The Best Corned Beef Hash and Eggs Breakfast In America Project. See, it’s not just about the best corned beef hash. It’s about the whole plate. I hate when a restaurant serves the eggs on top of the corned beef hash. Yes, I know that there are little chunks of potato in the corned beef hash, but there has to be a pile of home fries or hash browns with it, whether as part of the dish or ordered on the side. And it’s nothing without toast. I like my eggs “dunky.” Call it the last hold-out of my childhood habits, but I have to be able to “dunk” the toast in the semi-cooked egg yolk or I might as well just have a bowl of Cheerios. Once the yolks have been “dunked” out, I then use the fork, tines flat against the plate, to finely chop the egg white, just like my mother used to do. Yeah. That’s it. It’s a paean to my dear departed mother, so don’t make any smart-ass comments about my dunky-choppy eggs! And then I mix the chopped eggs, potatoes and corned beef hash all into one big pile of hash to scoop up by the forkful and eat with a bite of toast. YUM!

Some places have served me homemade corned beef hash, with succulent chunks of meat cut from a side of corned beef and mixed with potatoes and some kind of spices. It was quite impressive and really quite flavorful. But the strong flavor of the corned beef has to be tempered by the other ingredients in the hash. They didn’t do that. And they screwed up by having some new-age presentation of the eggs, poor preparation of the potatoes, and the corned beef got stuck in my teeth. ‘A’ for effort, ‘D’ for execution. Other places seem to think that any old corned beef hash from a can will suffice. It doesn’t. Grade = ‘F’.

The Best Corned Beef Hash and Eggs Breakfast In America Project is far from scientific. Sometimes on the road my interest in just having a decent breakfast steers me away from the chance that the corned beef hash will suck, thus disappointing me and making me wish I had ordered the country fried steak and eggs. So sometimes I opt for that. Or the stack o’ pancakes. Or the Cheerios. Thus far in my experience, there is yet to be found in the USA a corned beef hash and eggs breakfast to rival that at Mac’s Diner.

So, my dear readers …all three of you… if you’re ever traveling on I-90 to or through the near northwest suburbs of Chicago, near O’Hare airport, and you happen to find yourself at the corner of Cumberland Avenue and Higgins Road, look to the northeast corner of the intersection, at the first building on Higgins, just east of the gas station. It won’t take you long to find the current home of The Best Corned Beef Hash and Eggs Breakfast In America, Mac’s Diner. And if you decide to stop in, look over to the customer seated in the last counter stool at the back of the dining room. If it’s the right time of day and he’s 40ish, balding and, fatting(?), and he’s polishing off a corned beef hash and eggs breakfast, he just might be me!

Note: A law passed recently in Illinois now bans smoking in public establishments, so there is no longer a smoking section in Mac's. Or anywhere, for that matter!
-2 January 2011


dassall

Secrets

About 15 years ago my wife bought our house, which was built around 1900. About two weeks ago work was started on the installation of central air conditioning. The first step was done by a lone man, Greg. In the basement, while cutting holes for what were to be the first floor registers, Greg had to contend with sections of wallboard that a previous owner of our home had nailed to the floor joists in order to make a civilized ceiling for the basement. As he pulled down one of these sections of wallboard, he discovered this old toy tractor, covered in who knows how many years of dust and dirt, squirreled away there. We went online and referenced the only available evidence the toy provided for us, "Arcade Toys" and "McCormick Deering," and the best we could determine is that the tractor is missing a nickel plated farmer holding a steering wheel that fits onto the long shaft protruding up at an angle from the tractor, and that the cast iron toy was manufactured and sold between the 1920s and the 1940s.

But I couldn't help but wonder who hid it up there and why. Was it a father punishing a misbehaving child, convincing him with a bluff that toys not put away are thrown away; was it a mean child hiding the toy from a sibling; was it perhaps a selfish child beset by the turmoil of relatives moving into the house protecting his assets from curious cousins' hands; in any case, forgotten for eternity? Or, just maybe, was it a previous owner who had spent the best years of his life in this house, perhaps coming of age here, who, upon setting out into the world on his own, couldn't bear to separate the two old friends and hid the toy in his old home's guts in hopes that they'd never be separated?

Did whoever put it where it was found ever as an adult think back to this toy and wonder whatever happened to it? Or worse, did that person ever think back to it and realize that, when the family moved, he forgot it up in the floor joists above the basement where he hid it?

Is this person even alive today?

Whoever you are, we found your toy, and we think it's just the neatest thing. If you show up on our doorstep and ask for it back, we would gladly give it to you.


dassall

A Brief Taste of Power

A new blogger friend I read, Chloe, recently added a post to her blog that triggered a memory from my high school days. I have many memories, most of them happy, but this particular incident gave me a brief look at another side of existence that I had not to that point ever visited, nor did I think I could handle should I have ever visited again.

I was a lanky, uncoordinated kid in high school, with no athletic ability to speak of, unless you consider bowling a sport. And falling. I could fall down like nobody's business. I wasn't the fastest runner, but I wasn't the slowest, either. Because I have an older brother who thought, when I was 10, that he could turn me into the talented baseball player that he had been by screaming at me and dragging me to the park to practice when I just wanted to play in my front yard with my Matchbox cars, I actually had some ability above others in gym class at catching and throwing a ball, but it did me no good to lord that over the girls in the class. Well, MOST of the girls. And, for ability with a bat, I was close to the bottom of the gym class.

Juniors and seniors at our school had the luxury to pick elective gym classes for the last two years of their compulsory schooling, and because I had somehow missed the first day of sign-up for the electives, I wound up with second-semester leftovers fencing, badminton and floor hockey.

Ms. Beeman was the woman who taught us and then oversaw fencing...or should I say who taught us the two most basic moves in fencing and then took a three week working vacation -- some say sleeping off the breakfast booze -- while we hacked away at each other with thin steel rods!

I was embarrassed when badminton started, because the school actually fielded a badminton team...and it was all girls. I thought for sure I would be the only boy in badminton, but there was Gary Block, one year ahead of me as a senior. If I was the Prince of Geeks, Gary was the King. Sorry Gary, if you happen to be reading this (HAH! I kill me! I don't think any of the two of you is Gary Block!). Sadly enough, he fit the stereotype: uncoordinated both physically and socially, excelling in science and Mathletes. I think he was in the Chess Club, too. Fuzzy, almost afro-like hair. And large-framed glasses.

I couldn't understand why the badminton courts had the lines like a tennis court (only smaller). I always thought of baminton as that silly little poof game you played at the beach and at picnics, batting the little cone-shaped "birdie" back and forth over the volleyball net. And that's another thing. Why was the badminton net the same as the tennis net? Everybody in the class seemed to think of badminton the same way as I did. Everybody, that is, except for Gary Block. I learned this when I so gaily batted the birdie across the net toward him and suddenly had to duck as the thing nearly took my eye out on his return! Then I began to understand. Badminton is tennis for people who don't like to chase after the ball when it goes out of bounds! Before long Gary Block and I were the only people in the class who took the game seriously. Leave it to the only two boys in class to make it a competition! The only prblem was, no matter how good I was at it, I could never beat that pipsqueak, that badminton powerhouse, Gary Block! And then, just as I felt the tables turning, as I began a surge that would inevitably result in Gary Block's badminton demise, we switched electives. To floor hockey.

Kids were scattered in all directions, so it wasn't all of us from badminton going to floor hockey. But some others besides me did. Tony Zomparelli was in the floor hockey class. Tony was one of those kids who was very well physically coordinated, but didn't feel the need to show that to people on a playing field in organized, competitive play. His true forte was soccer, but he was not at all shabby at maneuvering a ball at the end of a hockey stick from one end of the hockey floor to the other. And when I say he was not too shabby, I mean he was fantastic. The down side? I was considered the second best. A far distant second best. I always wound up as the center (forward? The guy who got to run anywhere on the floor (help me, Chloe!)), opposite Tony Zomparelli in the same position on the other team. The guy could run circles around me. I mean that literally. I mean, he literally did that to me one day. And my team always lost. No matter who was on it, if Tony Zomparelli wasn't on my team, my team lost.

Then one day the teacher decreed that Tony Zomparelli would be the goalie for his team. I was the (center? forward?) for my team, as usual (ugghh!). So his team had to re-organize, and as their forward/center, they chose none other than Gary Block! I swelled with pride and bravado. I had this guy beat. I was a faster runner, I was better with stickwork, and I was more agile. And I had a score to settle!

Near the end of the game the score was close, thanks to a goal or two scored by Tony Zomparelli, from his position as goalie!! It was down to the last few plays before the class bell would sound. The teacher/referee dropped the ball for our faceoff at center court. Gary and I slapped sticks and managed to knock the ball toward the left side of the court (according to my intended direction of travel). He and I sprinted after it, and I watched as he fell behind in the race. I had the height. I had the legs. I had the speed. Gary, however, had this little aversion to losing, so he aimed his stick right at my knees and thrust it right between them. With the sudden stop of my legs, I quite literally launched into the air and somersaulted, landing on my back, with Gary's stick and my stick launching into the air again as if for an encore. Gasps echoed throughout the gym. My momentum carried me through the roll and I wound up rolling up onto my feet in a crouch.

(When I wrote earlier that I was good at falling, I mean that I excelled at pratfalls. I knew how to throw myself to the floor and make it look like I didn't mean it, and yet I never (okay, seldom) got hurt. I wasn't the most graceful, but I knew how to tumble. And this skill lent itself to times when I really fell. It had become instinct, and when I did lose my balance or my feet, I was able to turn it quickly into a tumble and roll out of it, to witnesses who knew me thinking I had done it on purpose.)

So I sprang back up onto my feet in a crouch, and I was more than a little perturbed at Gary Block for the dirty trick he had just pulled. I didn't think to clobber him or kick him or wring his neck, but I was angry, and my eyes found him. He literally turned sheet white, jumped backwards and put his hands up to his mouth, and he shouted, "Oh, my god! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!"

The guy honestly thought I was about to pummel him and, according to the bylaws of The Guy Code, I had every right to pummel him. And I think he knew that, too. It was the first time, the only time, I ever instilled abject, menacing fear in someone, and it felt good. It tasted good. But, somehow, it sufficed. He apologized, quite profusely I might add, and his demeanor let me know that he knew he had done wrong, and he was truly sorry. Had it been one of the many class tough-guys who I had rolled up and shot that look at, there would have been a fight, and I probably would have been the one who was pummeled, cause I ain't no tough-guy.

Inside, I knew Gary's fear at that moment. I had been in his shoes, and for much lesser infractions, cowering before bullies and toughs. I had been there, so with the tables turned, after that first sweet taste of power, I didn't want to be one who made others feel impotent.

He did something stupid, I got angry, he apologized. He almost wet his pants, but he apologized. What was there left to do? So I ran and got my stick, slapped the ball toward the goal, and Tony Zomparelli stopped it. And he probably shot from there and scored on us, and we probably lost.

I should have ripped the guy's tongue out of his head.

Thanks, Chloe, for helping to bring this fond memory to the surface!


dassall

A Brief (VERY!) Respite...

Not much writing lately. Been busy...and lazy...last week or so. Saw my favorite blogger put one of these up and so I decided to participate likewise.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	6.6
Mind:	6.2
Body:	5.5
Spirit:	4.3
Friends/Family:	5.6
Love:	7.3
Finance:	7
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I'd go step in front of a bus, but I just missed it.


dassall

Reunion Part Deux

This has been a good year for finding myself headed to cities where old friends live who I have not seen in many years. This trip is to Greenville, South Carolina, where I had the opportunity to see Vince, another with whom I was stationed at Wüschheim Air Station in (what was at the time West) Germany.

Vince was one who had his head screwed on straight, even way back at age 20. Very devout Christian, very straight-laced, and what I characterized as "uptight." In that regard, little has changed, except the "uptight" part. He fell victim to the schoolboy mentality those of us employed who thought we were better than anybody we felt didn't fit. We thought he was uptight. We thought he was geeky. We poked endless fun at him, both in and out of his presence. But of all of us, he was probably more secure in his being than any of us was in our own. He refused to suffer our childish behavior and so seized every opportunity to avoid it, and was thus branded a loner.

While I was hanging out with friends, each of us trying to outdo each other in "cool," Vince was out in his car, traversing the countryside, touring Europe, visiting friends, both German and American, with every free moment he had available to him.

When Vince was in our midst, suffering our barbs and jokes, he was there not because he wanted to be, but because he had to be. He wanted not to be there not because he didn't like us, but because we didn't give him anything to like. One on one he and I got along together, but when the gang was around, I disappeared into the group mentality and was one of the voices from which he shrank. And yet he and I maintained, if not a friendship, at least a healthy acquaintanceship.

Thanks to Classmates.com (this is not a plug, just a statement of fact) these 20-odd years later, Vince and I were able to contact each other again. And, as luck would have it, my travels brought me to within a few miles of his home.

At a local restaurant we shared dinner and memories, and I amazed him with my recall of names, though I'm sure most of them were incorrect. And again I was awed to learn that I had so misjudged someone back in my youth that I now regret I didn't spend more time getting to know him. Of course, his devotion to his faith, and my lack of same would eventually have caused friction then. But I've grown much more tolerant of that sort of thing. Vince is in the middle of studies to become a minister, so he knows now that he will have his day to proselytize, and to those eager to hear him. This evening, despite the fact that I brought up the topic of the progress of his studies, and my curiosity about why he follows this path, never once did he utter the icon after which his faith is named. Was that out of respect for me?

After dinner we retired to his home where I met his lovely wife and kids, and where we shared more laughs, more names and more memories.

Where I felt remorse for "Rudy" and the life he led as a young airman, and for how much he realized he missed while under the influence of alcohol, I left Vince feeling remorse for myself, for being a stupid kid who thought I was more than I was, for thinking I was more than anybody was, and for missing an opportunity to embrace a friendship that could have shown me more about life than I already knew.

To my friend, Vince, very devout Christian, very straight-laced, but definitely not uptight.


dassall

Rainbows

As we ooze into adulthood, too many of us lose that sense of wonder we had as children. For, as children, the everyday humdrum is not so everyday, nor so humdrum, as we have experienced very little beyond our front doors. But we grow up. We get out of the house. We go to school. We learn about the science and technology that make up the world around us.

We learn how everything works that ever made us stop and scratch our heads, or made us say, “Aw, COOL!” And as the knowledge enters our brains, the wonder leaves.

Today started off as the typical Monday. It wasn’t a usual Monday as we had workers coming over to start a project at the house, and they were late. I had to wait for them to arrive to go over the areas where they were to work, pose and answer questions and whatnot. But they were late, making me late for work, to deal with rain-crazy traffic, which made me later for work, and that is the typical Monday.

But as traffic cleared and I headed northwest, the sun peeked out, giving promise to the day. I noticed something in the sky ahead of me to my left: a band of colors canted at an angle, floating in the sky. “Prism effect of the sun through the rain,” my brain automatically reminded me. But then, when I looked forward I had the illusion of driving toward a vast archway. I looked up and there it was, arching from the ground way off to the left of the highway, over the road, and down to the ground way off to the right, a complete rainbow! I hadn’t seen one of those in at least thirty years. I looked around at the drivers on either side of me, but no one seemed to have noticed my rainbow. It lasted a good three or four minutes, and I continuously marveled at it as I hurtled along the highway at 75 miles per hour (but that’s okay, as I am the world’s best driver).

I returned momentarily to an amalgam of all of my grade school classrooms, imagining the voice of a teacher explaining the science of a rainbow. “Blah blah blah sunlight blah blah blah refraction blah blah blah prism blah blah.” But once you’ve seen one in all its glory, the scientific explanation doesn’t seem sufficient. It became very easy to understand the origins of the folklore of rainbows, as they are so magnificent, people of centuries ago must have desired to touch them, to see them up close. The area where it “touched” the ground seemed to be illuminated in a sort of spotlight, but I’m sure it was more trick of the mind than trick of the eye. Nonetheless, it lent to the sense of magic that I experienced.

All too soon it was gone and I was once again aware that I was headed to work. On a Monday. And a rainy Monday at that. Any magic that rainbows may possess, now or during my childhood, disappears with the rainbows, as my Monday turned out to be worse than the average Monday. Unless the magic of the rainbow is the smile worn on your soul, no matter how lousy is your day, when the image of the rainbow arches across your memory.


dassall

The Gift of Music

Taken out of context, the title I've chosen for this post can be interpreted in several ways: a gift certificate from Amazon.com? A CD wrapped in pretty paper and given at a birthday? An innate talent for creating sounds pleasing to the ear? Yeah. That's it. That last one's close.

I would love to say that I'm talking about me, but I'm not. Musical ability is an untapped undercurrent in our family. My paternal grandfather was a professional musician back in the Italian immigrant heyday of the early 1900s. To say he was a professional does not mean he made his living at it, rather, he toiled in a steel mill by day in order to support his passion. I don't really know much about the man; he died at age 42 when my father was a tender age 4...in 1928. What I do know is that he was a talented musician, and he played the accordion. I have photos. This talent was evident in my oldest brother who took accordion lessons and was able to play quite well on an instrument which was dying with the immigrant culture it rode in on.

I, too, have a talent for creating music, but it was a talent I discovered late. When I was a kid we had this cheap chord organ, basically a toy, but it was my first access to a musical keyboard. My older brother introduced me to "Chopsticks," and a love was born. In the 36 years hence I have dabbled with keyboards - the chord organ; pianos at schools, churches, community theatre auditoriums; and, yes, my oldest brother's old accordion - never creating anything terribly sophisticated, yet still creating. I never learned to write, so the things I created were committed to, and played back from, memory. Most have also been lost. Music has never been my number one passion, and with no training and no sophisticated outlet, the talent I possess has remained nascent. My love has remained the keyboard, and I purchased an expensive cheap one about ten years ago. It's a Casio I purchased as a demo model from some electronics and appliance store. It came with no instruction manual, no box, not even a power supply. It features an array of buttons that can create a bazillion sounds and rhythms. With it I have created my most sophisticated tunes, but, don't be mistaken, they are far from sophisticated.

As possessor of a new iMac G5, I discovered a little program that comes installed on it called "Garage Band." I haven't yet delved deeply into the program, but basically it enables anyone from an accomplished musician to someone like, say, ME to compose music. Shortly after I discovered "Garage Band," I discovered a Mac compatible, Plug-N-Play USB MIDI Controller musical keyboard. I won't go into the laundry list of its features, but I will simply say that its purchase rendered my old Casio obsolete.

My older brother, the one who taught me how to play "Chopsticks," now has two boys of his own, ages 12 and 9. Among their endless sponsored sports and activities they are each studying music, the older trumpet, the younger clarinet. With my recently obsoleted keyboard I thought maybe the boys' musical training would benefit if they had another instument at their disposal. My brother was receptive to the idea, and since I was giving it away there was no obstacle to block the idea.

The boys were typical kids at a keyboard: they simply banged on the keys with open hands just to hear it make noise. As I showed them the features I understand, their interest became more focused. I played a few of the tunes I made up, and I played "Heart and Soul," recording the left-hand, chord progression part, then played it back as accompaniment so I could play the right-hand part. Now the boys were hooked! The older boy was interested in how the keyboard worked, how to access each different sound and rhythm. I spent a long time showing him these things while he repeatedly slapped away the hand of his younger brother who really wanted to get at the keys himself. Their mother retrieved one of their musical instrument lesson books and we tried to show the older boy where the notes on the scale were located on the keyboard...the blind leading the blind!

After a while my brother told his older son that it was his brother's turn on the keyboard. They traded places and, after a few minutes of exploring the more annoying sounds the instrument can make, the boy started poking at individual keys. Suddenly I heard the melody of "Heart and Soul" being plunked out slowly! While the older boy had focused on the mechanics of getting the instrument to make sounds, the younger had focused on how to use it to make music. He had studied his inept uncle's pathetic rendition of "Heart and Soul," and he was able to play it back almost perfectly (as his uncles example!) the first time! He is the more expressive boy, as enthusiastic about doing plays and singing in choir as he is about playing baseball and basketball and soccer and volleyball, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But I am fascinated by how quickly he seized upon a melody, how he studied what he had seen and heard, and then duplicated it. I didn't bestow upon him the talent to play music, I just simply gave an old electronic keyboard. But I gave him a new outlet. I gave him a true gift of music.

His parents have the money and the circumstance to provide the boys with the music and instrument lessons that our parents could not afford. I wish now that I could have had lessons then, even if they had to force me to do them. I hope my brother and his wife will keep their boys on the path to music. I'd like to know that I had something to do with that.


dassall

Is It Treason?

I’m not the world’s greatest baseball fan. But, since I live in Chicago, and I am SOMEWHAT a baseball fan, I have to choose sides.

No. You don’t understand. I have to choose sides.

As a White Sox fan, I would have to say that the White Sox are the best team ever. As a White Sox fan, I would have to say that I’ve died 40 deaths waiting for them to get to the World Series. As a White Sox fan, I would have to say that this has been the season of a lifetime and I was pulling for them all the way.

…

But I won’t say it. I can’t.

I am a Cubs fan.

I am not ashamed to say it. The 40 deaths I’ve died have been for the Cubs. When you’ve grown up in Chicago you learn that there really is no “fan of both teams.” Those who say they are haven’t spent their entire lives in this metropolitan area, or they’re just trying to get along in mixed company. Anyone who says he or she is a fan of both teams, when he is surrounded by true fans of either team, will be deafened by the shouts of, “The HELL you are!”

There’s no discernable reason one becomes a fan of the White Sox or of the Cubs. Neither team has been a dynastic powerhouse in my lifetime. Unlike a team such as the perennial NL East champion Atlanta Braves, the Cubs have had what can be best described as fortunate hiccups in 1969, ’84, ’98, and 2003. The same goes for the White Sox in 1959, ’83, ’93, 2000, and even ’05. If it were down to a decision to pick one team to which to devote your loyalty, there would be no objective standards to follow. It must come down to childhood influences. Maybe something really nice happened to you when you were age two-and-a-half, and the first color scheme you saw in that moment was black-and-white. Maybe when you were four you thought that little baby bear on their shirtsleeves was cute. Or maybe you just like deep emotional pain. And it was all fun until you encountered someone for the other team and the topic of team loyalty came up, and within a minute you were fighting the urge to strangle this guy!

So it’s not a decision to make. It’s in the blood. But it’s not hereditary. My mother was a White Sox fan, as I learned when I was a teenager. But, she said, she loved me all the same. I never fully trusted her again. My oldest brother, age fifty-something, is a White Sox fan, though he says he is a fan of both teams. He also happened to move away from Chicago at age 20, so he just doesn’t get it.

And so I watch with mixed feelings as the White Sox and the Red Sox battle it out in the American League Division Series. Last year I so desperately wanted the Red Sox to beat the Yankees, and then the St. Louis Cardinals, because if the Red Sox could win the World Series after 87 years of tears, then surely it means that my beloved Cubs could win the World Series after 97 years of hard, hard deaths. Oh, wait. Make that 98, now.

This year I find myself staring at my TV, staring at the team I’ve spent a lifetime despising as they play against my favorite American League team for the privilege of advancing to the next round. But I am a loyal fan of Chicago, so I must root for the White Sox. Boston, you finally had that long-awaited moment in the sun. Now go away.

It’s right, but it feels so wrong.

Go White Sox! (RRRRRETCH!)


dassall

A Distant Planet

I was watching PBS last night, and there was a show on about meteor impacts on Earth. The discussions among the scientists came around to the supposed discovery of proof that there at least WAS life on Mars, brough to the attention of science by the discovery of a rock, proved to be a small chunk of Mars that arrived here as part of a meteor shower some time ago, and which had attached to it what appeared to be a fossilized, microscopic, single-celled organism.

This discovery had touched off a flurry of discussions and arguments among scientists regarding the existence -- past or present -- of life on Mars and how some say it's not possible, never was possible, never will be possible, ad nauseum.

But, non-scientist that I am -- I can't even digest food properly -- I came up with a theory of the existence many centuries ago of life on Mars that I have not yet heard anyone else echo, nor have I heard anyone refute...okay, any renown GEOPHYSICISTS refute...or address....

One of the many bits of miscellany that I needlessly remember from my youth is that the universe is forever expanding, and that Earth and all of the other planets of our solar system are moving away from the sun at the blinding speed of approximately 3 inches a year...or something like that. How they're able to measure to the inch is way beyond me, but there it is.

Okay, so I'm a Big Bang evolutionist...swear to god I am...so I belive this theory. I also believe that the earth, as well as the universe, is hundreds of millions of years old. And I believe that, somewhere out there is a life form of a far superior, more advanced intelligence than the inhabitants of this planet. Okay, so, let's just keep it easy and say Earth finally formed a discernible planet with a solid crust exactly 100-million years ago. Spinning happily through space and testing the sun's gravitational limits at three inches a year for 100-million years to this day... comes out to... 300-million inches...divided by twelve, which equals... 25-million feet...divided by 5,280 (feet in a mile), which equals...4,734.85 miles.




Okay, so let's say it's BILLIONS of years old and, without slowing things down with all that pesky math, let's say that in those billions of years of moving three inches away from the sun each year, Earth arrived about 100-million years ago at an orbital "temperate zone," a distance from this particular sun -- not too hot, not too cold -- that allows carbon-based life forms like us and everything else that consumes or produces oxygen to thrive. Okay, accept that into your head as absolute truth, just for this little moment.

So, if Earth slowly traveled out to the temperate zone, and Mars is the next planet out from ours, on average approximately 48-million miles further out and traveling at approximately the same three inches per year, doesn't it seem logical that Mars was once in this temperate zone that we so thoroughly enjoy today?

Okay, so here's where you'll most likely dismiss me as a wack-job, but, let's assume that in roughly 100-million years Earth will be at the outer reaches of the temperate zone. The human species will have advanced quite far by then, provided we haven't discovered an easier way to atomically snuff ourselves out sooner. And with a perpetual winter of deep-space proportions looming quite literally on the horizon, the most advanced minds of our highly advanced species will be working feverishly on getting as many of us as possible and whatever other beings we need to support us off our beloved planet and back sunward to Venus, which will have just about cooled off enough to sustain life after entering the temperate zone a few million years earlier.

Naturally, not everyone will be able to go to Venus; actually very few. But those few who do will arrive at a planet with virtually no facilities. People will have to live in completely primitive conditions, perhaps for eons as they struggle just to survive. Differences will split the groups. Rifts will cause wars, and wars will scatter the people in all directions to form their own civilizations and adapt their own languages. Over the passage of the subsequent eons, our forms will evolve to adapt to the ever-changing terrain of the living planet, as will the forms of the animals we brought with us from Earth, and in that process, we will have forgotten all about Earth and what she was for us until, hundreds and hundreds of millions of years later someone of advanced, evolved intelligence discovers an odd little rock and determines that it's from that distant, withered third planet from the sun and, lo! There's a little microscopic bit on the rock that he insists is proof that the barren third planet which theories suggest may have held oceans, and may perhaps still have water in its ice caps, once supported life.

And, of course, his narrow-minded peers will tell him he's full of shit.


dassall