Professor tagged everybody with this meme in an effort to embarrass everyone over the amount of classic literature we’ve never read - not to mention some contemporary standouts worth… uh …mentioning, too. And she succeeded. It’s pretty damn embarrassing.
But there it is. And when you get to the bottom, be sure to look and see if you’re one of those I feel like tagging with this one.
Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you want to read. Don't alter the ones that you aren't interested in.
1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) - atheist that I am, I found this a delectable read!
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) - I think I read this for a h.s. assignment…or maybe I just saw the movie?
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) - minus one glaring error, another delectable read!
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) - the only Irving I’ve read is Cider House Rules and it blew me away, so I’d definitely read another Irving
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King) - this one clued me in on the secret…forget his straight horror stuff - Stephen King is simply a fantastic writer!
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) - not even in school, believe it or don’t!
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) - UGH! High school required reading. A sure cure for insomnia if I ever saw one! (Professor left no instructions how to label it if you only read some of it!)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom) - heard Mr. Albom speak at one of our clients’ conventions. Good stuff!
31. Dune (Frank Herbert) – I really, really tried to read this one, but never could get through Chapter 1 awake.
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) - if the movie is half as good as the book, then I don’t need to read it; the movie wrecked me big time!
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell) - in h.s., though don’t remember much of it
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) - because Professor gushed about it, so I’s curious
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) - though, being atheist, and all, I gather the premise of this one would be hard to swallow
45. Bible – have I mentioned the atheist thing, yet?
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) - because I love, love, love the sandwich!
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt) - I heard a lot of buzz about this one
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) - another h.s. assignment; remember little about it except the retarded guy kills a puppy and doesn’t realize it…and then… a woman? Hmmm. What’s that say about me? I remember the puppy dying, but not sure about a woman…
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) - ?? in h.s., maybe?
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) - I keep hearing more and more about this author…gotta give him a look
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) - the movie confused the hell out of me…I only hope the book is better
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones's Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White) - when I was a kid…stoopid book made me cry
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) - woops…or was THIS the one with the retarded guy and the puppy and maybe the woman?
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) - h.s. again (shiver)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) - this one is sitting on my shelf, waiting for me
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) - I think. In h.s.
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce
The choices to put on this list are seemingly infinite, I realize, but there are some great classics missing, like Dracula (Bram Stoker), for instance. That book was way ahead of its time for its imagery and graphic detail, WAY better than any film, classic or modern, that ever attempted to retell the story. And what about The Green Mile (Stephen King)? I know, it’s not a classic in the… uh …classic sense, but it’s a damn fine read! And I highly recommend The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.
Have you read this far? TAG! You’re it!
Sunday, November 25, 2007
The Flip
In my many hundreds of thousands of miles traveled to many dozens of places across half the globe, I’ve come to observe one constant: omelet chefs.
Despite the many varieties of cuisine and the many schools of culinary thought, by looking at any omelet chef one might think they had all learned at the same cooking school. They all seem to use the same pan, the same burner, the same technique of getting the liquid egg to hit the hot pan and become solid egg…
They make it look easy. Well, they ought to…isn’t it what they do all day? Of course, their most difficult job is probably in the preparation – cutting up all the omelet fixins in order to have them at their fingertips, knowing how much they need on hand for the coming feeding frenzy at whatever hotel or event they’re working.
To me, the most dazzling part of the breakfast-on-the-road ritual is The Flip. In my personal cooking experience, any time the food has left the pan during the actual cooking has meant a serious diversion from the instructions and an emergency clean-up, so to see a chef separate food from pan, to send the food flying into the air on purpose is just enough thrill for me of an early morn! And I'm not the only one; many a fellow on-the-road-omelet-eaters watching with me has made the comment, “Well, if it were me, I’d be cleaning egg off of the floor/ceiling/sink/refrigerator/dog/whatever.” But, like any professional at his or her job, they do make it look easy. Watching any number of chefs do this I’ve only ever seen one botch The Flip, and then it was only a slightly less than perfect execution. He still got it in the pan, with only a few bits of fixins bouncing over the edge of the pan and onto the floor.
More exciting than the omelet flip is the eggs-over-x flip. It’s one thing to flip eggs that have already been scrambled – you don’t have to worry about breaking the yolks. I think it takes just a little more skill to flip eggs with yolks intact and keep them that way when they return to the pan. The typical hotel omelet chef can do this without effort as well.
This morning I decided I wanted 2 eggs, fried, over-medium, which, to you non-egg-eaters, means yolks intact, flipped over so that the egg-white is cooked thoroughly on both sides, but the yolks are still liquid (for dunking the toast!), and there’s no runny, gooey, clear fluid oozing about.
The catch? I’m not on the road.
The omelet chef is me. Is I? Am. is.
I got me these non-stick skillets, one 10-inch, the other 8-inch, at Target shortly after I moved into my apartment. Following the example of The Omelet Chef I’ve seen hundreds of times, now, I set the 8-incher on the stove (though I think The Omelet Chef uses a smaller one, even), fired up the gas and threw in a pat of butter. I cracked the eggs into a bowl, and when the butter was melted and bubbling in the pan, I deposited the eggs into it.
I perhaps had the flame a little too high, the pan a little too hot, so the whites turned white pretty quickly. I swished the pan around a little just to make sure the eggs were not sticking. Since I always seem to wait too long to turn the eggs I cook, I made a conscious effort to ignore the internal admonition to wait a little while longer. I took the pan and mentally prepared myself for The Flip. I turned and held the pan over the sink (it’s great to have confidence, idnit?). I’d flipped scrambled before, but with a slightly sticky pan that was a little too big, to mixed results.
I dipped the forward edge of the pan down and, just as the eggs slid toward the edge, I lifted and leveled the pan quickly. The eggs went up about six inches and came down… exactly as they had been when they left the pan – sunny-side up. No flip.
Next attempt. Forward edge down. Come on Farrago, this is easy. Eggs slid to the edge. You can do it, boy! Pan up! Eggs up! And…
SUCCESS! I had completed The Flip, no emergency clean-up necessary, both yolks intact! Just a few more seconds back on the heat, and then I plated the eggs.
As a meal, it was so-so. I still don’t have a toaster, so I dunked cold, “raw” bread. The eggs themselves were okay – they indeed could have used a little more time on a slightly lower flame, but they looked and smelled great!
So, am I ready to tackle a cheese soufflé?
Nah. I’ll stick with flippin’ eggs for a while.
Despite the many varieties of cuisine and the many schools of culinary thought, by looking at any omelet chef one might think they had all learned at the same cooking school. They all seem to use the same pan, the same burner, the same technique of getting the liquid egg to hit the hot pan and become solid egg…
They make it look easy. Well, they ought to…isn’t it what they do all day? Of course, their most difficult job is probably in the preparation – cutting up all the omelet fixins in order to have them at their fingertips, knowing how much they need on hand for the coming feeding frenzy at whatever hotel or event they’re working.
To me, the most dazzling part of the breakfast-on-the-road ritual is The Flip. In my personal cooking experience, any time the food has left the pan during the actual cooking has meant a serious diversion from the instructions and an emergency clean-up, so to see a chef separate food from pan, to send the food flying into the air on purpose is just enough thrill for me of an early morn! And I'm not the only one; many a fellow on-the-road-omelet-eaters watching with me has made the comment, “Well, if it were me, I’d be cleaning egg off of the floor/ceiling/sink/refrigerator/dog/whatever.” But, like any professional at his or her job, they do make it look easy. Watching any number of chefs do this I’ve only ever seen one botch The Flip, and then it was only a slightly less than perfect execution. He still got it in the pan, with only a few bits of fixins bouncing over the edge of the pan and onto the floor.
More exciting than the omelet flip is the eggs-over-x flip. It’s one thing to flip eggs that have already been scrambled – you don’t have to worry about breaking the yolks. I think it takes just a little more skill to flip eggs with yolks intact and keep them that way when they return to the pan. The typical hotel omelet chef can do this without effort as well.
This morning I decided I wanted 2 eggs, fried, over-medium, which, to you non-egg-eaters, means yolks intact, flipped over so that the egg-white is cooked thoroughly on both sides, but the yolks are still liquid (for dunking the toast!), and there’s no runny, gooey, clear fluid oozing about.
The catch? I’m not on the road.
The omelet chef is me. Is I? Am. is.
I got me these non-stick skillets, one 10-inch, the other 8-inch, at Target shortly after I moved into my apartment. Following the example of The Omelet Chef I’ve seen hundreds of times, now, I set the 8-incher on the stove (though I think The Omelet Chef uses a smaller one, even), fired up the gas and threw in a pat of butter. I cracked the eggs into a bowl, and when the butter was melted and bubbling in the pan, I deposited the eggs into it.
I perhaps had the flame a little too high, the pan a little too hot, so the whites turned white pretty quickly. I swished the pan around a little just to make sure the eggs were not sticking. Since I always seem to wait too long to turn the eggs I cook, I made a conscious effort to ignore the internal admonition to wait a little while longer. I took the pan and mentally prepared myself for The Flip. I turned and held the pan over the sink (it’s great to have confidence, idnit?). I’d flipped scrambled before, but with a slightly sticky pan that was a little too big, to mixed results.
I dipped the forward edge of the pan down and, just as the eggs slid toward the edge, I lifted and leveled the pan quickly. The eggs went up about six inches and came down… exactly as they had been when they left the pan – sunny-side up. No flip.
Next attempt. Forward edge down. Come on Farrago, this is easy. Eggs slid to the edge. You can do it, boy! Pan up! Eggs up! And…
SUCCESS! I had completed The Flip, no emergency clean-up necessary, both yolks intact! Just a few more seconds back on the heat, and then I plated the eggs.
As a meal, it was so-so. I still don’t have a toaster, so I dunked cold, “raw” bread. The eggs themselves were okay – they indeed could have used a little more time on a slightly lower flame, but they looked and smelled great!
So, am I ready to tackle a cheese soufflé?
Nah. I’ll stick with flippin’ eggs for a while.
First Attempt at Wordsmiths (click here)
Roar
“Hello, Dali,” he heard himself say. Janus looked around as his voice reverberated briefly in the oak paneled gallery to make sure no one else heard him. He had been talking to himself a lot lately, ever since the accident. No one heard him. Or if they did, they didn’t care to acknowledge it.
Now that his wife was finally dead, Janus could get out and do things again. That was a horrible way to put it, he thought, but that’s how it crossed his mind. The coma, the respirator, the hours of talking to Miriam with no response, not even a twitch, had taken its toll on him. The so-called quiet moments, with the maddening cadence of the machine, its tube down her throat, filling her lungs with air, and then letting gravity force the air back out, haunted his wretched sleep.
And when she was gone… well, she was gone months before – drained from the body like some precious fluid… but when the heart that had owned him stopped beating despite the doctors’ best efforts, and they had shut off the machinery and the electronics, and they had left him alone to spend a few last moments with the body that, dead, looked no different than it had looked alive for the prior months, true silence rushed in with a roar that frightened him.
And then, after so many months of effort to keep her alive, everyone suddenly seemed terribly eager to bury her, as if to hide their mistakes, or their mistaken belief that they could save her, despite the months-long gray line drawn on the black monitor screen suspended above her bed.
And as Janus had quieted the clatter and wheeze of the respirator with his own voice, so did he quiet the roar.
He stared at the Dali. “Interesting,” he said aloud, again to no one’s ears but his own. Interesting indeed that he would venture out for the first time in months and, on a whim, divert into the art museum, and wind up here.
Warrior, the placard read.
Janus identified with him – the gaunt face, the distant, tired eyes that reflected… what? The faces of those he conquered? Of the one? Of her?
Janus looked around again. Had he said that out loud?
“No, I didn’t,” he said out loud.
But fear gripped him. He backed away from the painting. Could others read his face as he had read the Warrior’s? He had fought long and hard. He had survived. Could they see her in his eyes? Could they see the freedom he saw, at the top of the ladder on the other side of the door, in the crimped hose clenched in his fist?
“You were a fraud, Dali!” The sound of his voice reverberating in the gallery made Janus aware he had shouted, to the dismay of the others who heard him.
Janus fled to his home where he fought to drown out the silence with his own voice.
“Hello, Dali,” he heard himself say. Janus looked around as his voice reverberated briefly in the oak paneled gallery to make sure no one else heard him. He had been talking to himself a lot lately, ever since the accident. No one heard him. Or if they did, they didn’t care to acknowledge it.
Now that his wife was finally dead, Janus could get out and do things again. That was a horrible way to put it, he thought, but that’s how it crossed his mind. The coma, the respirator, the hours of talking to Miriam with no response, not even a twitch, had taken its toll on him. The so-called quiet moments, with the maddening cadence of the machine, its tube down her throat, filling her lungs with air, and then letting gravity force the air back out, haunted his wretched sleep.
And when she was gone… well, she was gone months before – drained from the body like some precious fluid… but when the heart that had owned him stopped beating despite the doctors’ best efforts, and they had shut off the machinery and the electronics, and they had left him alone to spend a few last moments with the body that, dead, looked no different than it had looked alive for the prior months, true silence rushed in with a roar that frightened him.
And then, after so many months of effort to keep her alive, everyone suddenly seemed terribly eager to bury her, as if to hide their mistakes, or their mistaken belief that they could save her, despite the months-long gray line drawn on the black monitor screen suspended above her bed.
And as Janus had quieted the clatter and wheeze of the respirator with his own voice, so did he quiet the roar.
He stared at the Dali. “Interesting,” he said aloud, again to no one’s ears but his own. Interesting indeed that he would venture out for the first time in months and, on a whim, divert into the art museum, and wind up here.
Warrior, the placard read.
Janus identified with him – the gaunt face, the distant, tired eyes that reflected… what? The faces of those he conquered? Of the one? Of her?
Janus looked around again. Had he said that out loud?
“No, I didn’t,” he said out loud.
But fear gripped him. He backed away from the painting. Could others read his face as he had read the Warrior’s? He had fought long and hard. He had survived. Could they see her in his eyes? Could they see the freedom he saw, at the top of the ladder on the other side of the door, in the crimped hose clenched in his fist?
“You were a fraud, Dali!” The sound of his voice reverberating in the gallery made Janus aware he had shouted, to the dismay of the others who heard him.
Janus fled to his home where he fought to drown out the silence with his own voice.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
November, As Intended
It’s rare when a day as gray as today was here in Chicago can fill a soul with joy and excitement. No gifts arrived. No unexpected loved ones showed up. Nothing special happened really, other than the true arrival of autumn.
If ever there is supposed to be a day like today, it is in the month of November. It was as if the dreary clouds descended upon the earth like they were tired of flying and needed a rest. Everything was lightly wet and cast in misty shades of gray, lending the feeling that I existed for the day in a Frank Capra movie. What bright colors did dare to shine were decisively muted by the mood of the fog.
Chicago – all of the upper Midwest – is a four-season place. They transmogrify almost seemingly to suit the desires of us fickle humans: in winter, when we’re fed up with the cold and snow, it all changes; in the spring it’s not getting warm fast enough; in the summer it’s just too damn hot! And now, fall, in all its glory, has arrived just in time.
Oh, sure, the leaves all turned colors weeks ago, but that’s just their final fanfare, their fancy farewell before they abandon the trees and head “south” for the winter, leaving them as we’ll see them for several more months. Bare trees in bright sunlight just don’t look right. A naked tree needs a blank, gray sky behind it to accentuate its stark exposure, to bring home the point that winter’s coming, and winters in the Midwest are cold and snowy and unforgiving, the way winter is supposed to be, and if you don’t like it, if you want trees to be green and happy and pretty all the time, then you need to move to Costa Rica or some steamy tropical place like that.
Just keep your eyes peeled for anacondas and those flies that drink the mucus from your eye sockets and lay eggs in your skin.
If ever there is supposed to be a day like today, it is in the month of November. It was as if the dreary clouds descended upon the earth like they were tired of flying and needed a rest. Everything was lightly wet and cast in misty shades of gray, lending the feeling that I existed for the day in a Frank Capra movie. What bright colors did dare to shine were decisively muted by the mood of the fog.
Chicago – all of the upper Midwest – is a four-season place. They transmogrify almost seemingly to suit the desires of us fickle humans: in winter, when we’re fed up with the cold and snow, it all changes; in the spring it’s not getting warm fast enough; in the summer it’s just too damn hot! And now, fall, in all its glory, has arrived just in time.
Oh, sure, the leaves all turned colors weeks ago, but that’s just their final fanfare, their fancy farewell before they abandon the trees and head “south” for the winter, leaving them as we’ll see them for several more months. Bare trees in bright sunlight just don’t look right. A naked tree needs a blank, gray sky behind it to accentuate its stark exposure, to bring home the point that winter’s coming, and winters in the Midwest are cold and snowy and unforgiving, the way winter is supposed to be, and if you don’t like it, if you want trees to be green and happy and pretty all the time, then you need to move to Costa Rica or some steamy tropical place like that.
Just keep your eyes peeled for anacondas and those flies that drink the mucus from your eye sockets and lay eggs in your skin.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Reuniting and Reminiscing: A Weekend of Looking Back
This weekend brought something that I had been anticipating for 5 years, and looking forward to for about 6 weeks. Because just about everyone my age is in the midst of trying to raise 2.3 healthy children with their heads screwed on straight, or trying to secure as much capital to sustain them in their Golden Years when Social Security has been cashed out by the politicians, nobody in my high school graduating class was interested in taking on the daunting task of organizing our 25-year class reunion.
But then, sometime in the middle of September I received a notice in an e-mail that we were having an informal, unofficial, hastily assembled reunion on November 10. WOO HOO!
It was held at a sports bar down in the same Chicago south suburb where we all attended high school, a bar which, as it turns out, is co-owned by one of our classmates!
I can’t even begin to describe the joy of seeing so many familiar faces, as well as some faces not so familiar until I read the name tags! There were a couple of people there who had missed the 10- and the 20-year reunions, so it was doubly fun to see them for the first time in 25 years.
As I now live approximately 55 miles from the town where I grew up, and I was certain that I would leave the venue at a late hour, and there was likely to be more than a little alcohol on my breath, I decided to make a weekend of it. I booked a hotel room in the area and planned to spend the night there after the reunion, and then to spend Sunday visiting my father, who is living in a nursing home.
And that’s just how it worked out, except I didn’t exactly spend the night in the hotel room, but more like the morning, as I didn’t get back into my room until a little past 3:30 a.m!
The good thing was that check-out time was noon, and a mere 30 steps away (give or take) from the hotel is a honkin’ huge Cracker Barrel Restaurant! Another good thing was that in eight hours of partying, I drank a grand total of three beers, so the only thing threatening my drive back to the hotel was fatigue…and the freak November thunderstorm that struck while I drove, and there wasn’t even a hint of hangover.
•------••------••------••------••------••------••------••------••------••------••------••------•
I slept in just a little this morning, arising around 9:40am. Breakfast at Cracker Barrel was quick and yummy, and soon I was checked out and on the road to visit Dad. Since I was in another suburb a few miles west of where the reunion was held, I followed a different route than I usually would follow to get to Dad’s.
I’ve driven down Illinois Route 50 certainly hundreds of times throughout my life. And if I go far enough south, through and past the town of Monee (pronounced moe-NEE), heading toward Peotone (pronounced PEE-uh-TONE), my mind fires to life with childhood memories. Mom had an aunt and uncle who owned a farm just off of Route 50, where they raised pigs and chicken (and probably more, but all I remember are the pigs and chickens) and, during the summer, especially, Dad and Mom, just about once every two weeks, would throw two or three of us kids in the back seat, and we’d ride through just a little bit of country until we got to the farm. I’m sure Mom got the family discount on eggs, as we always returned home with about three-dozen!
If my life depended on it, I couldn’t find that farm again today…if it even still exists. I don’t remember which road it’s on from Route 50, or even how far to go along that road.
But there’s another memory along Route 50, one that is more precious and more vivid than any of the rides to the “egg farm.”
With Dad off on Mondays, he would often lift the burden of watching me on summer days from one of my siblings – as Mom had gone back to work – and take me with him on his errands and visits to friends around town. Every couple of weeks it was to Joliet, where he would get his hair cut by the barber under whom he had apprenticed. Other times it was off to the junkyard to drop off brass and copper he had scavenged or had collected from handyman jobs he had done for friends around town. Once in a while we picked up barber supplies.
But one particular Monday morning – I was around age eight or nine, my best guess – he said to me, “Let’s go fishin’.” I climbed into his blue Ford F-150 pickup truck and watched our little world go by as he worked through the gears of the “three on a tree” to get the truck up to speed and out to Illinois Route 50.
We hummed along the Route for a few minutes and then he pulled to the side of the four-lane road, essentially in the middle of farmland. I looked around and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Dad just said, “We’re here.”
I climbed down out of the truck and looked around. There was no lake or pond to be seen in any direction.
“We’re where?”
“Just follow me,” said Dad, and I did.
He grabbed the poles and handed me the can of earthworms we had picked up at a bait shop, and he led me away from the pavement and into the tall grass beside the road, down the embankment and into a small gulley, actually a dry creek bed that bent and ducked under the road. He pointed in the direction away from the road and said, “Through there.”
I looked to where he was pointing and saw what, to me at that time, was one of the coolest sights ever: a concrete spillway underneath a concrete arch bridge supporting the Illinois Central Railroad over the creek – only I didn’t know those things then. It was just the coolest thing!
“I hope there’s water back there,” he said as he ambled over the loose river rocks.
In the moment, I took him to mean that he had never been there before, and that we were both discovering it together. But since then, I realize it’s possible that he wasn’t sure if it was as dry back there as the creek bed where we stood. I followed him through the tunnel formed by the archway, over the smooth concrete floor. Out the other side I saw that there was a small pond and, at my feet, a ledge where I could sit and dangle my legs over the water while our bobbers stood sentry over our worms dying below, savage hooks rammed through their bodies, and drowning to add the final insult to their injury. The water was clear enough to see minnows and the occasional larger small fish swimming around near the shallows and near our ledge, so Dad was encouraged and confident we’d catch something.
Dad had even packed a lunch – his favorite, and sometimes mine – hard salami on buttered Italian bread.
We did catch a few fish that day, but they were all tiny and not worth taking home. We left empty-handed though not unhappy, but I unwittingly brought with me a memory I would have, it turns out, for a lifetime.
On Sunday, as I passed through the other side of Monee, those memories along Illinois Route 50 fired up again. I drove past what I thought might be the turnoff to the “egg farm,” and, as the landscape rolled under me, my surroundings told me I was close to that special spot to where Dad had brought me that fine summer day so long ago.
I had tried to find it once before, one summer day; I think heavy foliage on the side of the road had obscured it from view and, at 55 miles per hour…or faster…I just missed it. But today, since November has stripped the trees of their camouflage, after doubting such an idyllic spot could remain after so many years, I was able to spot the tunnel with ease!
I drove on past it, but nostalgia nagged at me to turn back, to gaze upon the archway, to take photos with the camera I had brought with me to capture reunion shots! So I did. I returned, finally, to the spot that has decorated my memories like cherished photos in an oft-opened shoebox.
I stood on the bridge that carries the cars over the creek, and I gazed upon the hole beneath the train tracks.
I was in no hurry. Dad didn’t know I was on my way to see him. Nothing else was on my agenda. So down the embankment I went!
The creek bed was dry – the past summer’s drought had probably kept it dry for months. I ambled over perhaps the very same individual rocks Dad’s and my shoes had touched those 35 years ago!
I walked through the tunnel and came out the other side and… it’s exactly the same! My educated and experienced eye updated my memory and I now understand that the pond where we caught and tossed back a handful of fish is actually a sort of flood basin. The embankment beyond the pond shows evidence of some quite fierce water flow where man -- long before Dad and I were there -- has manipulated the earth to forcibly divert the creek through the tunnel, under the rail bed, under the roadway, and off through the farmland. In the spring, this is probably a very dangerous place to be!
I don’t remember the strangely constructed pipeworks, evidently drainage from somewhere, and the water appears now to be quite filthy. I saw no fish swimming about. It could be contaminated by pollution, or it could just be that the pond spent too much time unrefreshed by rains and creek flow, and its population went extinct in the stagnant water.
But it’s still there! That idyllic spot from my memory exists relatively intact! Autumn has taken away most of the foliage, and today’s gray November sky painted everything in drab, but physically, the spot is exactly as I remember it.
I drove on to visit Dad at the nursing home. He’s 84 now. His condition may not have worsened, but he certainly hasn’t improved. His mind is still pretty sharp, but he doesn’t recall the day he took me fishing in that secret, special spot so many years back, not even after I showed him the photos.
I’m neither surprised nor upset that he doesn’t remember it, or that it didn’t resonate with him as such a monumentally special, memorable moment with his youngest child. That day I think he just wanted to catch some fish!
The funny part of it all is that I can’t stand fishing. I’ve always hated it.
But I love my dad. And that day was a perfect, golden, special time for me, with him.
But then, sometime in the middle of September I received a notice in an e-mail that we were having an informal, unofficial, hastily assembled reunion on November 10. WOO HOO!
It was held at a sports bar down in the same Chicago south suburb where we all attended high school, a bar which, as it turns out, is co-owned by one of our classmates!
I can’t even begin to describe the joy of seeing so many familiar faces, as well as some faces not so familiar until I read the name tags! There were a couple of people there who had missed the 10- and the 20-year reunions, so it was doubly fun to see them for the first time in 25 years.
As I now live approximately 55 miles from the town where I grew up, and I was certain that I would leave the venue at a late hour, and there was likely to be more than a little alcohol on my breath, I decided to make a weekend of it. I booked a hotel room in the area and planned to spend the night there after the reunion, and then to spend Sunday visiting my father, who is living in a nursing home.
And that’s just how it worked out, except I didn’t exactly spend the night in the hotel room, but more like the morning, as I didn’t get back into my room until a little past 3:30 a.m!
The good thing was that check-out time was noon, and a mere 30 steps away (give or take) from the hotel is a honkin’ huge Cracker Barrel Restaurant! Another good thing was that in eight hours of partying, I drank a grand total of three beers, so the only thing threatening my drive back to the hotel was fatigue…and the freak November thunderstorm that struck while I drove, and there wasn’t even a hint of hangover.
•------••------••------••------••------••------••------••------••------••------••------••------•
I slept in just a little this morning, arising around 9:40am. Breakfast at Cracker Barrel was quick and yummy, and soon I was checked out and on the road to visit Dad. Since I was in another suburb a few miles west of where the reunion was held, I followed a different route than I usually would follow to get to Dad’s.
I’ve driven down Illinois Route 50 certainly hundreds of times throughout my life. And if I go far enough south, through and past the town of Monee (pronounced moe-NEE), heading toward Peotone (pronounced PEE-uh-TONE), my mind fires to life with childhood memories. Mom had an aunt and uncle who owned a farm just off of Route 50, where they raised pigs and chicken (and probably more, but all I remember are the pigs and chickens) and, during the summer, especially, Dad and Mom, just about once every two weeks, would throw two or three of us kids in the back seat, and we’d ride through just a little bit of country until we got to the farm. I’m sure Mom got the family discount on eggs, as we always returned home with about three-dozen!
If my life depended on it, I couldn’t find that farm again today…if it even still exists. I don’t remember which road it’s on from Route 50, or even how far to go along that road.
But there’s another memory along Route 50, one that is more precious and more vivid than any of the rides to the “egg farm.”
With Dad off on Mondays, he would often lift the burden of watching me on summer days from one of my siblings – as Mom had gone back to work – and take me with him on his errands and visits to friends around town. Every couple of weeks it was to Joliet, where he would get his hair cut by the barber under whom he had apprenticed. Other times it was off to the junkyard to drop off brass and copper he had scavenged or had collected from handyman jobs he had done for friends around town. Once in a while we picked up barber supplies.
But one particular Monday morning – I was around age eight or nine, my best guess – he said to me, “Let’s go fishin’.” I climbed into his blue Ford F-150 pickup truck and watched our little world go by as he worked through the gears of the “three on a tree” to get the truck up to speed and out to Illinois Route 50.
We hummed along the Route for a few minutes and then he pulled to the side of the four-lane road, essentially in the middle of farmland. I looked around and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Dad just said, “We’re here.”
I climbed down out of the truck and looked around. There was no lake or pond to be seen in any direction.
“We’re where?”
“Just follow me,” said Dad, and I did.
He grabbed the poles and handed me the can of earthworms we had picked up at a bait shop, and he led me away from the pavement and into the tall grass beside the road, down the embankment and into a small gulley, actually a dry creek bed that bent and ducked under the road. He pointed in the direction away from the road and said, “Through there.”
I looked to where he was pointing and saw what, to me at that time, was one of the coolest sights ever: a concrete spillway underneath a concrete arch bridge supporting the Illinois Central Railroad over the creek – only I didn’t know those things then. It was just the coolest thing!
“I hope there’s water back there,” he said as he ambled over the loose river rocks.
In the moment, I took him to mean that he had never been there before, and that we were both discovering it together. But since then, I realize it’s possible that he wasn’t sure if it was as dry back there as the creek bed where we stood. I followed him through the tunnel formed by the archway, over the smooth concrete floor. Out the other side I saw that there was a small pond and, at my feet, a ledge where I could sit and dangle my legs over the water while our bobbers stood sentry over our worms dying below, savage hooks rammed through their bodies, and drowning to add the final insult to their injury. The water was clear enough to see minnows and the occasional larger small fish swimming around near the shallows and near our ledge, so Dad was encouraged and confident we’d catch something.
Dad had even packed a lunch – his favorite, and sometimes mine – hard salami on buttered Italian bread.
We did catch a few fish that day, but they were all tiny and not worth taking home. We left empty-handed though not unhappy, but I unwittingly brought with me a memory I would have, it turns out, for a lifetime.
On Sunday, as I passed through the other side of Monee, those memories along Illinois Route 50 fired up again. I drove past what I thought might be the turnoff to the “egg farm,” and, as the landscape rolled under me, my surroundings told me I was close to that special spot to where Dad had brought me that fine summer day so long ago.
I had tried to find it once before, one summer day; I think heavy foliage on the side of the road had obscured it from view and, at 55 miles per hour…or faster…I just missed it. But today, since November has stripped the trees of their camouflage, after doubting such an idyllic spot could remain after so many years, I was able to spot the tunnel with ease!
I drove on past it, but nostalgia nagged at me to turn back, to gaze upon the archway, to take photos with the camera I had brought with me to capture reunion shots! So I did. I returned, finally, to the spot that has decorated my memories like cherished photos in an oft-opened shoebox.
I stood on the bridge that carries the cars over the creek, and I gazed upon the hole beneath the train tracks.
I was in no hurry. Dad didn’t know I was on my way to see him. Nothing else was on my agenda. So down the embankment I went!
The creek bed was dry – the past summer’s drought had probably kept it dry for months. I ambled over perhaps the very same individual rocks Dad’s and my shoes had touched those 35 years ago!
I walked through the tunnel and came out the other side and… it’s exactly the same! My educated and experienced eye updated my memory and I now understand that the pond where we caught and tossed back a handful of fish is actually a sort of flood basin. The embankment beyond the pond shows evidence of some quite fierce water flow where man -- long before Dad and I were there -- has manipulated the earth to forcibly divert the creek through the tunnel, under the rail bed, under the roadway, and off through the farmland. In the spring, this is probably a very dangerous place to be!
I don’t remember the strangely constructed pipeworks, evidently drainage from somewhere, and the water appears now to be quite filthy. I saw no fish swimming about. It could be contaminated by pollution, or it could just be that the pond spent too much time unrefreshed by rains and creek flow, and its population went extinct in the stagnant water.
But it’s still there! That idyllic spot from my memory exists relatively intact! Autumn has taken away most of the foliage, and today’s gray November sky painted everything in drab, but physically, the spot is exactly as I remember it.
I drove on to visit Dad at the nursing home. He’s 84 now. His condition may not have worsened, but he certainly hasn’t improved. His mind is still pretty sharp, but he doesn’t recall the day he took me fishing in that secret, special spot so many years back, not even after I showed him the photos.
I’m neither surprised nor upset that he doesn’t remember it, or that it didn’t resonate with him as such a monumentally special, memorable moment with his youngest child. That day I think he just wanted to catch some fish!
The funny part of it all is that I can’t stand fishing. I’ve always hated it.
But I love my dad. And that day was a perfect, golden, special time for me, with him.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Movie Meme
It’s been a while since anybody’s tagged me, but tagged I am – this time by Professor. This one was tough for me because I can probably count on two hands the number of movies I’ve watched in the last two years. I know there are movies that have really reached me throughout my life, but I’ll be damned if I can remember the best ones. Well, here goes, and remember to pop on over to check out what Professor has to say at her blog.
Popcorn or Candy?
Popcorn. Candy you can buy anywhere, for lots cheaper. Popcorn anywhere other than the theater you have to make, or nuke, or buy cold with fake “butter flavor” powder on it, which just doesn’t get the popcorn all marvelously soggy four to twenty hours later when your lips are no longer numb from the salt and you’re ready for more snackin’!
Name a movie you’ve been meaning to see forever.
Deep Thro… no, wait… American Pie. Everyone I’ve spoken to who’s seen that flick has told me I’m an idiot for not having seen it…even people over the age of 15 have told me this. Some have told me I'm an idiot without even mentioning a movie…. Hmmmm….
Steal one costume from a movie for your wardrobe.
I guess it would have to be the fedora and leather jacket Harrison Ford wore in the Indiana Jones films, because I already have the gingham dress and the ruby slippers from The Wizar... oops. Next Question?
Your favorite film franchise is…
Jeez, I don’t know. I guess I’d have to go with the Star Wars saga, though I’d have to say that the Bourne films and the Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen movies are close behind.*
Invite five movie characters over for dinner. Who are they? Why’d you invite them? What do you feed them?
1) Mary Hatch because she’s so sweet and pretty and, well, that phone call with George Bailey and Sam Wainright is the hottest love scene shot from the shoulders up EVER!
2) Tia Russell, because I finally saw that movie a few weeks ago after it had been out only 17 years(!) and I absolutely fell in love with her. Please disregard the whole she-was-only-17-when-she-made-the-movie thing… she’s staying after dinner is over and everyone else has left…except Mary Hatch!
3) Frank Bullitt because after dinner he’s gonna let me take his 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback for one helluva spin …with Tia Russell and Mary Hatch! And then he's leaving!
4) Willy Wonka, because I want to see how long it takes before Frank Bullitt punches his lights out.
5) Professor Julius Kelp/Buddy Love, and I want him to bring his potion along with him and take it so we can all see his transformation. Also, I want him to bring enough potion for all of us just so we can see what each of us becomes after taking it.
I’m taking everyone to White Castle because I know everybody will like it (except, maybe, Tia Russell, but she and I will discuss that after dinner ;D ). Besides, if I cook for everyone, someone’ll be dead before morning.
What is the appropriate punishment for people who answer cell phones in the movie theater?
Bean him/her/them repeatedly in the back of the head with Ju-Ju-Bees or Sno-Caps (keeping the popcorn in my bucket where it belongs (see paragraph above).
Choose a female bodyguard:
Hmmm. “Large Marge”? Or Owen’s momma? Or Angelina Jolie? Oh, what I could do with those lips! I’m gonna have to go with Angelina Jolie on this one, and I’ll be a most inappropriate employer!
What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen in a movie?
Stephen Hawking.
Your favorite genre (excluding “comedy” and “drama” ):
Action-Adventure
You are given the power to greenlight movies at a major studio for one year.
A few of… ah, hell! ALL of my own story ideas are developed, completed and released. Tom Hanks is doing silly comedy again. Drew Barrymore, Tom Cruise and Vin Diesel (to name a few) are out of work, as they should be. The formula for action-adventure is thrown out the window and re-invented. The studio loses a TON of money, and I’m run out of town on a rail. But I have fun while it lasts, and why not? It’s all about me, right?
Bonnie or Clyde?
Are we talking the real Bonnie, or as played by Faye Dunaway? Point’s moot, ‘cause I ain’t taking Clyde under any circumstances.
***---***---***---***---***---***
Okay, if you're reading this, you're tagged...unless you're Professor or one of the others she tagged with this meme. Git writin'!
*I’m only kidding. I only meant Mary Kate and Ashley.
Popcorn or Candy?
Popcorn. Candy you can buy anywhere, for lots cheaper. Popcorn anywhere other than the theater you have to make, or nuke, or buy cold with fake “butter flavor” powder on it, which just doesn’t get the popcorn all marvelously soggy four to twenty hours later when your lips are no longer numb from the salt and you’re ready for more snackin’!
Name a movie you’ve been meaning to see forever.
Deep Thro… no, wait… American Pie. Everyone I’ve spoken to who’s seen that flick has told me I’m an idiot for not having seen it…even people over the age of 15 have told me this. Some have told me I'm an idiot without even mentioning a movie…. Hmmmm….
Steal one costume from a movie for your wardrobe.
I guess it would have to be the fedora and leather jacket Harrison Ford wore in the Indiana Jones films, because I already have the gingham dress and the ruby slippers from The Wizar... oops. Next Question?
Your favorite film franchise is…
Jeez, I don’t know. I guess I’d have to go with the Star Wars saga, though I’d have to say that the Bourne films and the Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen movies are close behind.*
Invite five movie characters over for dinner. Who are they? Why’d you invite them? What do you feed them?
1) Mary Hatch because she’s so sweet and pretty and, well, that phone call with George Bailey and Sam Wainright is the hottest love scene shot from the shoulders up EVER!
2) Tia Russell, because I finally saw that movie a few weeks ago after it had been out only 17 years(!) and I absolutely fell in love with her. Please disregard the whole she-was-only-17-when-she-made-the-movie thing… she’s staying after dinner is over and everyone else has left…except Mary Hatch!
3) Frank Bullitt because after dinner he’s gonna let me take his 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback for one helluva spin …with Tia Russell and Mary Hatch! And then he's leaving!
4) Willy Wonka, because I want to see how long it takes before Frank Bullitt punches his lights out.
5) Professor Julius Kelp/Buddy Love, and I want him to bring his potion along with him and take it so we can all see his transformation. Also, I want him to bring enough potion for all of us just so we can see what each of us becomes after taking it.
I’m taking everyone to White Castle because I know everybody will like it (except, maybe, Tia Russell, but she and I will discuss that after dinner ;D ). Besides, if I cook for everyone, someone’ll be dead before morning.
What is the appropriate punishment for people who answer cell phones in the movie theater?
Bean him/her/them repeatedly in the back of the head with Ju-Ju-Bees or Sno-Caps (keeping the popcorn in my bucket where it belongs (see paragraph above).
Choose a female bodyguard:
Hmmm. “Large Marge”? Or Owen’s momma? Or Angelina Jolie? Oh, what I could do with those lips! I’m gonna have to go with Angelina Jolie on this one, and I’ll be a most inappropriate employer!
What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen in a movie?
Stephen Hawking.
Your favorite genre (excluding “comedy” and “drama” ):
Action-Adventure
You are given the power to greenlight movies at a major studio for one year.
A few of… ah, hell! ALL of my own story ideas are developed, completed and released. Tom Hanks is doing silly comedy again. Drew Barrymore, Tom Cruise and Vin Diesel (to name a few) are out of work, as they should be. The formula for action-adventure is thrown out the window and re-invented. The studio loses a TON of money, and I’m run out of town on a rail. But I have fun while it lasts, and why not? It’s all about me, right?
Bonnie or Clyde?
Are we talking the real Bonnie, or as played by Faye Dunaway? Point’s moot, ‘cause I ain’t taking Clyde under any circumstances.
***---***---***---***---***---***
Okay, if you're reading this, you're tagged...unless you're Professor or one of the others she tagged with this meme. Git writin'!
*I’m only kidding. I only meant Mary Kate and Ashley.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
The Other Way
When I was a kid we rarely all went somewhere together. As a family of seven children on our budget, we couldn’t possibly have fit all the kids in our one car without someone killing someone else.
On those rare occasions that a portion of us did pile into the car, it was always Dad at the wheel. Mom never had a driver’s license until 1973 – when she was 45 years old – so I’m sure it was an unspoken mistrust of her driving skills, as well as her preference, that placed Dad behind the wheel.
I don’t know if it’s something that comes with age, or at a certain specific age, but Dad never seemed to be in much of a hurry to get anywhere. He has spoken of the foolish things he did as a young man involving cars and excessive speed, but by the time I, “The Caboose,” came along there was nothing left of that foolish young man, and we made our way to every destination at or below the posted speed limit.
Even worse, Dad never liked to use the “expressways,” as they’re known here in the Midwest. Much to my sisters’ chagrin, no matter the distance to a destination, certainly if it was local, Dad would chart a course on the map in his brain for the “back roads” route, usually the most direct – but not the quickest – way to get there.
*** *** *** ***
Each of us spends the first twenty to twenty five years of life refuting the observations of others about how much we look like or take after either or both of our parents. But then we say or do something that drives home the crux of all those third-party observations: we do look like and take after one or both of our progenitors!
I first noticed it in myself when I saw a photo taken of me while helping to dig a drainage trench around my unit’s 13-man tent while on a military exercise in Germany. I was bent over my ridiculously inadequate entrenching tool and pushing its blade into the earth with my foot. My image was frozen on film, hunched over in profile. And there, at the age of 20, I saw both the resemblance to and a trait of my father: in my effort and concentration, I was pursing my lips just like my father does, and I looked EXACTLY like him (except my nose had not (and still has not (yet)) expanded to the proportions of his nose)!
It was one of those rare moments this morning as I drove to Whole Foods Market, a blank-mind moment when thoughts are flying freely in and out while the brain handles the primary task of avoiding the oncoming traffic and the idiots whose brains aren’t working properly. Earlier I had consulted Google Maps for the route to get to Whole Foods Market and, though it recommended I get right on I-90 and take it east to Illinois Route 53, and then take that north to Rand Road, I opted instead to take Barrington Road all the way up to Dundee Road, and then Dundee Road east to Rand Road, where Whole Foods is. I wished to avoid I-90 not because of the speed – which I would exceed – but more because I-90 is a toll road, and I didn’t want to spend extra money on my trip.
It was on the way home that it hit me. I’m my Dad. I’m the “back roads” guy. I was doing it as far back as the mid-1990s, when I lived in southern Illinois. Where the trip home or back was about 4 hours via I-57, I often “explored” alternate routes, taking the state routes down there and needlessly adding 2 hours to my trip.
And since I’ve moved back to Chicago and took the job I have now, I’ve accumulated at least three alternate routes to get home when traffic along I-90 was too heavy, or when I didn’t care to deal with the idiots and the brainless along the way.
Even now that I live only ten minutes from the office, I have been assessing the alternatives for getting there and back.
At the very least, taking the alternate routes means you know the alternate routes, and in emergencies that can be a good thing. At best, taking the alternate route gives you an alternate view and lets you see things you wouldn’t otherwise see. It doesn’t mean much on the daily commute, I guess, but it can give you a whole different perspective on your world when you’re on a road trip somewhere.
Say what you will about Dad; for all his back roads and side trips, he still got to where he was going, and at a calmer pace, yet, and he’s still right where he is now, if that makes any sense. And, if you ask my opinion, I think he’s all the richer for it.
And, frankly, so am I.
On those rare occasions that a portion of us did pile into the car, it was always Dad at the wheel. Mom never had a driver’s license until 1973 – when she was 45 years old – so I’m sure it was an unspoken mistrust of her driving skills, as well as her preference, that placed Dad behind the wheel.
I don’t know if it’s something that comes with age, or at a certain specific age, but Dad never seemed to be in much of a hurry to get anywhere. He has spoken of the foolish things he did as a young man involving cars and excessive speed, but by the time I, “The Caboose,” came along there was nothing left of that foolish young man, and we made our way to every destination at or below the posted speed limit.
Even worse, Dad never liked to use the “expressways,” as they’re known here in the Midwest. Much to my sisters’ chagrin, no matter the distance to a destination, certainly if it was local, Dad would chart a course on the map in his brain for the “back roads” route, usually the most direct – but not the quickest – way to get there.
*** *** *** ***
Each of us spends the first twenty to twenty five years of life refuting the observations of others about how much we look like or take after either or both of our parents. But then we say or do something that drives home the crux of all those third-party observations: we do look like and take after one or both of our progenitors!
I first noticed it in myself when I saw a photo taken of me while helping to dig a drainage trench around my unit’s 13-man tent while on a military exercise in Germany. I was bent over my ridiculously inadequate entrenching tool and pushing its blade into the earth with my foot. My image was frozen on film, hunched over in profile. And there, at the age of 20, I saw both the resemblance to and a trait of my father: in my effort and concentration, I was pursing my lips just like my father does, and I looked EXACTLY like him (except my nose had not (and still has not (yet)) expanded to the proportions of his nose)!
It was one of those rare moments this morning as I drove to Whole Foods Market, a blank-mind moment when thoughts are flying freely in and out while the brain handles the primary task of avoiding the oncoming traffic and the idiots whose brains aren’t working properly. Earlier I had consulted Google Maps for the route to get to Whole Foods Market and, though it recommended I get right on I-90 and take it east to Illinois Route 53, and then take that north to Rand Road, I opted instead to take Barrington Road all the way up to Dundee Road, and then Dundee Road east to Rand Road, where Whole Foods is. I wished to avoid I-90 not because of the speed – which I would exceed – but more because I-90 is a toll road, and I didn’t want to spend extra money on my trip.
It was on the way home that it hit me. I’m my Dad. I’m the “back roads” guy. I was doing it as far back as the mid-1990s, when I lived in southern Illinois. Where the trip home or back was about 4 hours via I-57, I often “explored” alternate routes, taking the state routes down there and needlessly adding 2 hours to my trip.
And since I’ve moved back to Chicago and took the job I have now, I’ve accumulated at least three alternate routes to get home when traffic along I-90 was too heavy, or when I didn’t care to deal with the idiots and the brainless along the way.
Even now that I live only ten minutes from the office, I have been assessing the alternatives for getting there and back.
At the very least, taking the alternate routes means you know the alternate routes, and in emergencies that can be a good thing. At best, taking the alternate route gives you an alternate view and lets you see things you wouldn’t otherwise see. It doesn’t mean much on the daily commute, I guess, but it can give you a whole different perspective on your world when you’re on a road trip somewhere.
Say what you will about Dad; for all his back roads and side trips, he still got to where he was going, and at a calmer pace, yet, and he’s still right where he is now, if that makes any sense. And, if you ask my opinion, I think he’s all the richer for it.
And, frankly, so am I.
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