The lure of the open road

The lure of the open road is as American as apple pie. Driving along a ribbon of highway gives you a real sense of freedom, an optimism about the future which little else can. It speaks directly of potential, of...great. I'm stuck behind a slow moving semi, and I can't pass on this two lane blacktop because there's a line of cars a mile long going the other way. This'll really throw me off schedule...

Stop. That's no good. Start over.

Traversing the highways and byways of our great nation offers a taste of adventure like no other. Motoring along in the hours before dawn, alone with your dreams and expectations, and seeing the endless possibilities before you ignites the imagination. The deep blue sky and the twinkling stars inspire quiet confidence. Headlights illuminate the way through the darkness as the aroma of a freshly manured farmer's field wafts through the window...

No, that's no good either.

You speed along the road, a modern cowboy, literally driving the American economy. The nation runs on your efforts; she survives on your work ethic. Her ideals thrive on your tireless endeavors which make life better for...you gotta be kidding; a red light at 4 in the morning in this hick town? I'd run it but there's probably some redneck county mountie hiding behind a billboard who's nail me for that. Why isn't it flashing yellow at this time of day? I'm really gonna be late now.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm trying to pen an inspirational post and I just don't have it today. I'll try again some other time. Sorry.

Grandpa Joe's work ethic

Me Grandpa Joe was always proud of his willingness to work. Sometimes this led to impressive results; sometimes to the unusual; sometimes to the funny.

He never went more than two weeks without a job, even during the Great Depression. That's considering he would quit a job, when jobs were scarce. Why work for someone or something you didn't like, he reasoned.

Once he and a buddy found themselves working long hours. They decided, in friendly rivalry, to see how long they actually could work (this was before rules and laws forbade such things). The two of them concurrently pulled 61 hour shifts, which only ended when the foreman ordered, "You're both crazy. Get the hell outta here!"

Joe took a new job once while he was already employed; it paid twenty five cents an hour (significant at that time) more than the one he held. While getting his gear together his suddenly former employer begged him to stay, ending his plea with an incredulous, "So you'd leave me for a quarter an hour?"

"Hell, I'd leave ya for a nickel an hour," Joe said simply as he left.

I don't know about you, but I admire the man.

Kids and sports

Note: I first penned this blog several years ago and rediscovered it as I went over some of my old writing. But I like it enough to re-post. Thank you for the indulgence.

Last night was a slow teaching night in my adult education class. We are nearing the end of our school year, which means that many students have already completed their coursework and as a natural result we have fewer attending, and those attending are at points where we can't do much for them. They're taking final exams and such, or doing their final lessons in preparation for the upcoming GED test as the case may be. There simply aren't the demands on an instructor's time as is the case the rest of our academic year. Consequently, it was pretty easy for my attention to drift. Especially as there was a group of T-ball players practicing outside my classroom window.

As I am far too sentimental for my own good, it was all too easy to mosey over to the window and check out the action. Action? Six-year-olds coming nowhere near to catching a pop-up or fielding a grounder, or, later, powerfully swinging a bat at a ball sitting stationary on a tee, missing mightily none the less yet looking majestic all the while. Too many adults, parents mostly, I'm sure, mixed in with the coaches, all properly encouraging the youngsters as they should. I could not help but smile.

It has been twenty one years - twenty one years! - since I was first in that position. We put our oldest in the T-ball league at Wish Egan Field (named after the old Detroit sportswriter) in northeast Detroit in 1988. I still see Chuck's first at-bat: a dribbler off the tee. He raced down the first base line, made it safely, then turned about frantically until he saw me and gave me a thumbs up as a huge grin ran across his little blond face.

Frank in his California Angels cap in his first T-ball league at Patton Park in the southwest side... Abby as a Philadelphia Phillie in the St. Thomas Aquinas league a few years later...Chuck with the game winning two run single he lined to left with the bases loaded when he was a Chicago Cub (that team was the undefeated league champion I'll proudly say)...Frank pumping his first as he rounded second base during a kids run the bases event at Tiger Stadium after a 1992 game at the old ballyard...Abby fouling off I believe 7 straight pitches against the fence in front of her own teams' bench at Porath Field, scattering her teammates as each foul ball struck the protective fence...so many memories streaming to the front of my mind that I would bore you to tears if I recited them all, if I haven't already. Good times, though.

Hey: the kid in the green t-shirt just made a neat little catch. There's hope for the next generation of baseball after all.

I hope they're practicing Thursday night too.

I understand old guys now

I met an old friend for dinner yesterday, someone I've know, well, over 35 years now. We met in college, at the University of Detroit, (the University of Detroit Mercy be damned). We're Titans, the Titans of Dick Vitale and John Long and Terry Tyler. Y'all others are pretenders.

Over a few beers, which aren't healthy for us, supposedly, and with several plates of food not healthy for us either (say those supposedly concerned about our health), we discussed old times. We discussed new times too, and the conversation went something like this:

Oh, my back is tight. I took a fall a few years back and it goes out all the time.

I gotta watch what I eat. Diabetes runs in the family, so I worry about my sugar.

My last time to the doctor, my blood pressure's too high. So he says I can't eat anything I like.

You see my pinky? It swells up with rheumatoid arthritis so bad I can't hardly bend it. So does my thumb.

My left shoulder develops tendonitis from time to time. It hurts so bad I can't raise my arm.

I turn, just a bit, my back goes out. Poof, like that (snaps fingers).

Pause.

You wanna golf? Let's golf. The senior rate is $25 with a cart after 1 PM, and seniors are over 55. 18 holes.

18 holes? Let's do that.

And I thought, man, he's old. Then I immediately thought, so are you. You just spent a two hour dinner talking about all your aches and pains.

Ah well. Not something a little nip won't cure. And I have just the remedy at hand.

If time's worth more than the money, spend the money

I worked for Grandpa Joe for about 17 years. Among other odd things he had this habit, which at the time I thought poorly of, where he would quickly give up the search for a tool or part he needed for a job at hand and simply go buy another whatever. He would end a search within 15 minutes, sometimes less, and even as a teenager who didn't care much about money I wondered why we wouldn't keep searching for something we knew we had until we found it? Joe, being Joe, did things his way. A scant few minutes would pass before he would say, "Aw Hell, let's go get another." Well, his money, right? His time too.

In recent years that last point has struck me as perhaps the important one. That thought came crashing down to me yesterday as I finished a repair on the back of my house.

I had spent about two hours on it and was a quarter hour from finished. I was down to doing a bit a caulking and that would be that. So I climbed down from the ladder and went into the basement, to grab the caulk and caulking gun I knew I had.

Of course I couldn't find the things. After about 15 minutes I actually said out loud though no one was there, "Aw Hell, I'll just go get another caulking gun". The hardware was only a mile away, a two mile round trip.

In fifteen minutes I was home, and fifteen later I was done. It cost me three bucks for a cheap caulking gun, two-ninety-nine for caulk, and all of $6.35 once the tax was added.

For that price, why keep thrashing about my basement? To be sure, I intend to keep closer track of the new tool; why spend three dollars each time you need a caulking gun? But I had no idea yesterday whether I'd find my old one in another ten minutes or for two hours. As it were, I was done in about 45 minutes; a third of that would have been burned if I had walked straight to my old tool and gotten right back up the ladder.

You see, your time is worth something. I'd rather spend just over six bucks perhaps unnecessarily and know I'd have the job done soon instead of taking who knew how long to search and still have to complete the chore. Or maybe have to go get a new caulking gun anyway.

Of course, if I'd have been needing a hundred dollar tool I'd have looked a lot longer. Joe would have too. But for relatively small change, save yourself the time.

I think that crotchety old man was onto something after all.

Do the games play us?

Temple Run. It's a neat little game I play on my iPhone. In fact, I've completed the daily challenge (every day there's a 'challenge': run so far, collect x amount of gems, and so on) for 224 straight days, including today. I'm rather proud of that fact. Really too proud, all things considered.

The first I do in the morning when I wake up is reach over to the night stand, unplug the phone from its charger, and complete the challenge. Often it's just a matter of minutes, but at times I have to play for a good half hour to make the goal. On those days where it takes longer I feel relieved rather than excited that I was successful. One day last week it took over an hour to do the daily challenge. I swear I was sweating when I finished, despite sitting at the kitchen table and not putting out any real effort.

I don't make money at this. I don't earn credits towards purchases. I don't have the almost infinitesimal glory of beating my friends, as none of them play. But it's darn near reached the point of a mania: I've got to make the daily challenge in Temple Run no matter what.

Which leads me to ask: am I playing the game, or is the game playing me?

I think most athletes, professional but especially college, should ask themselves that too.

Lighten up folks

While surfing around Wikipedia this morning I decided to look up a few unimportant things which are nonetheless of interest to me. I searched for Napoleon XIV, as I had always liked his novelty song They're Coming to Take Me Away and was curious about the songwriter/performer who came up with it. As it was, the song made the billboard top five in 1966. It likely would have stayed longer except that radio stations stopped playing the catchy little ditty after advocacy groups for the mentally ill alleged that it made fun of people with psychological issues.

I do not know what to think of this. No, wait, I do: such things are simply far too politically correct for their own good. For starters, the song is just an attempt at humor. Why can't it be accepted on that level? Then, too, it isn't making fun of anyone. It's a parody about the overreaction of a guy who's girlfriend dumped him. It does not, that I can see, make fun or light of mentally ill people. I simply can't see anything wrong with it.

Part of the trouble in this world today is that too many people won't lighten up, and that's especially galling where there's no true ill will expressed by a song or a joke. I will grant you that anything done with venom, something done with malice aforethought intended to actually offend a person or group, may well be indefensible on its own merit. But when someone can't use a common reference for the sake of a laugh, I have to conclude that we have too many folks out there who worry too much about stuff which doesn't rate the amount of concern they think it should.

Busybodies, that's what they are. Fortunately those of us with lives know how and when to laugh. Let's start by laughing at them.