This is my last entry in the Claymont series. I have received some wonderful comments, both written and unwritten, so to those people I say thanks. To those who have not shared their thoughts but read the stories anyway, I thank you as well, regardless of your opinions. When I first sat down to write something about Claymont, I honestly did not have a plan. I predicted I would write six installments but honestly had no idea what would comprise those efforts. I suppose I was challenging myself to come up with something off the cuff and creative, and hopefully, I have been able to do that, in some small way.
I hope I have not alienated any denizens of our little town, past and present, by excluding people, places or events that anyone might have hoped or expected to see. But, maybe, just maybe, by not including these items, purposely or not, it has inspired reflection, conversation or debate. Our memories are our own personal scrapbook, and they fill in the gaps between the yellowing photos, diaries and home movies. Life isn't about the big moments, but rather the small ones. I suppose it's the reason why I wrote my first "thing" in the last five minutes of the last class of the last day of my Senior year. I was sitting in Mr. Simpkins's class, waiting for the big hand to hit the finish line when I wrote my first poem, or limerick, if you will, on the desktop with my trusty #2 pencil. It went like this:
Here I sit, slightly jaded;
The days of my youth are almost faded.
Reflecting, I find
In the depths of my mind
Those memories before they have faded.
No, it's not Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar' or even Bob Dylan, and I'm ok with that. It was, however, the first foray into an accidental passion, which has enveloped me these past 25 years.
The Claymont I knew was Greentree, Ashbourne Hills, Radnor Green, Knollwood and the acreage around the high school. It was the train tracks running behind Plum Tree Lane, the baseball fields behind Darley Road Elementary School and the fields behind the high school. Yeah, it seems like everything I enjoyed was behind something else I enjoyed. It was Howard Booker, Ron Messer, Scott Carey and I driving down to Ocean City, Maryland, to watch the high school's Flaming Arrow Marching Band compete in a regional competition. It was Tommy Carroll, Geoff Bishop, Scott Frizzell and I having pizza on my birthday. It was "buying" Jimmy Coffey and Gordie Knowles at the "Freshman/Sophomore Sale" and making them race down the hallways of the school pushing a peanut butter cracker with their noses. It was my first kiss with Carol Tenshaw, street hockey with Ray Butler and playing Dungeons & Dragons with Freddie and Donie Lang. It was watching Penn State beat Miami for the National Championship with Wayne Jamison and Rod Reeves, smoking clove cigarettes with "U-Dog" Seth Andrews and sitting in class with Nicole Williams, making each other laugh so much it hurt. It was putting a spider on Susan Coulston's desk just to watch her scream, having my heart skip a beat every time I say Kelly Deardorff and having my first beer with Mike DeBevec and Wayne. It was all the fantastic school plays put on by Alan Ruth, the bubbly effervescence of Ellie Kwick, and the bone crushing handshakes of Darley Road principal Mr. Lipka and Mr. Miller, the Vice-Principal at P.S. duPont. It was a head-ringing collision at first base that started a friendship with Scott Strazzella, the Little League legend of John Lucas and playing bombardment in gym class. It was trading baseball cards with my second grade teacher, Mrs. Jordan, learning how to write a check in Mr. Evans's class and hitting the highway with Mr. DiStefano and Ron Inglis during my first Driver's Ed road test. It was the wild ebullience of Albert Bucci, the comedy stylings of Eddie Finnegan and the sharp, aggressive humor of John McInnes. It was the warmth and intelligence of Lisa Chieffo, the sincere humanity and compassion of Martha Schilling and the sweet darkness of Billie Carroll, who has only improved with age.
It was my family, my friends, my acquaintances and those who only passed through peripherally. Not everything was daisies and sunshine, to be sure. That's a funny thing about memory - we seem to filter our past through nostalgic eyes, weeding out the bad so we can caress the good. For some reason, I remember the arcane, like how "Seasons In the Sun" was Michelle Lenhoff's favorite song, drinking a Big Gulp filled with Rum & Coke while taking my Biology midterm and the words "Wisdom had no market value" spray painted on the Darley Road overpass. I'll never forget driving around with Ron Fagnelli, Scott Waldman and my brother in Ron's bright yellow muscle car, delivering the Evening Bulletin with Ray and not being invited to Barbara Davis's famous parties in elementary school. And finally, about six or seven of us cramming ourselves into Bruce Lane's little car, Bandit, on the way to school, riding the bus on the first day of Desegregation and the cosmic marveling at the high school planetarium.
Well, that's not finally. I could probably dredge up a thousand more memories, but I'm sure you have your own. That's why this last installment is for you. To anyone else out there who remembers the old Claymont, don't hesitate to add your own stories. I am not the only person to chronicle his or her experiences of our little town. We all have a voice, and it doesn't matter if you can write or think you can't. The important thing is to share, in your own way, your memories, good or bad. We are all amalgamations of our past, the events and people who have moved through our lives.
Thanks for letting me move through yours.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Claymont, Part 5
This was to be the big day. I couldn't believe that I was chosen to pitch the Little League Championship game. After all, I was the team’s first baseman and had only pitched a couple of late innings in a few games that were hopelessly out of reach. But, still, I was uprooted from my treasured position of first base and thrust into the limelight of being the pitcher for our championship match with the hated, vile Braves. This should have been the realization of a fantasy come true, yet I did not embrace it as eagerly as I would have thought. All through the summers of years past, my friend Ray Butler, and I, would play our “dream” games with all-too-predictable, yet still satisfying conclusions: the bases-loaded strikeout in the bottom of the ninth, or the full-count grand slam in game seventh game of the World Series. From morning till night we would play using baseballs whose covers were badly abused from constant use, their pine-battered husks hanging like tongues in the sticky summer air. Even in the evening, the bright lights from nearby Dyer Field, where the older Babe Ruth League kids played, illuminated our quiet, friendly little diamond, giving us at least two more hours of quality baseball.
A little bit of history about Ray. We met one rainy afternoon. My mom was walking me back from Darley Road Elementary School after registering me for Kindergarten and it really started coming down hard. We were halfway up South Walnut Tree Lane in Greentree when a dark station wagon, driven by an eternally smiling woman, drove up next to us. In the back seat was a kid my age with a crew cut and a look of eager determination. It was Ray, and from that day forward, we were the best of friends. Through the years, we embarked on many a mission, most of which would make my mother's hair turn white if she found out. Like the times Ray would steal money from his mom's purse so we could grab a pizza at Vinnie's. Whatever we didn't finish, we would throw at cars, along with crabapples and snowballs, depending on the season. Other times, we would place nails in the street and sit on the curb watching cars run over them. In Winter, we would cruise the neighborhood at night, wielding baseball bats, looking for snowmen to obliterate. But, Ray's favorite thing to do was go into the utility rooms of the local apartment buildings and turn off all the power. I'd be standing outside when there would be a low hum, followed by complete darkness, then the sight of Ray, laughing that maniacal laugh of accomplishment, as he burst through the front door of the building.
But one thing about Ray most people never understood was the fact he wasn't an aggressively evil kid. He wasn't the kind of person to try and intimidate strangers. He only lashed out at those people who gave him a hard time, but to go blow-for-blow with Ray was a mistake. He was endlessly resourceful and constantly scheming. When Ray and I performed mischief, it wasn't because we thought it would harm another human being; rather, it was the fact most of the mischief occurred without a direct victim in our presence that made it exhilarating. For instance, Ray acquired a habit of stealing hood ornaments and license plates. Once, after he was caught, one car was all the way in Massachusetts before he discovered his plate was missing. He would take freshly arrived Playboy magazines from the local Wawa store and hide them in newspapers when he brought them to the counter. Sometimes, we would take discarded Christmas trees from the curb, drag them to the apartments, lean them against a person's door, ring the doorbell and run. He was a menace to all decent people, so maybe that's why we got along so well. One time, while his mother was sitting on the stoop talking to a neighbor, Ray emptied a bucket of water on her head from the upstairs hallway window. I'm just giving you the diluted stories here. In another medium, and after all the proper legal releases have been signed, I have many more stories about Ray. Many, many more.
Anyway, because of an egg-throwing incident, Ray’s parents did not allow him to play in Little League that year. We were both eleven years old and at the supposed prime of our lives and I knew how badly he wanted to play. All I could do during the games while smoothing the dirt around first base would be to watch Ray watching me between pitches as I impatiently awaited a ground ball or pop-up. Mom and Dad would attend a few games and every now and again my older brother, Dave, would drop by for a few innings. Dave was a good player. The year before, his team not only won the championship, but he actually pitched it. He received his gold-sprayed trophy at the year-end banquet and strategically placed it at various locales in the house as a conversation piece. Most of the time, Dave was the initiator of the conversation.
Now, it was my turn to pull on the stiff, dingy, gray Claymont Little League uniform. The material itched like burlap dipped in wet sand, and on top of that, I was issued number 13. This was Little League. However, it seemed everyone was doomed to wearing a gray uniform a size too big. My team was the Royals, who lost to my brother’s team, the Cubs, for the championship the year before.
When camp broke for our first practices, I immediately marked off the first base area and claimed it in my name, guarding it like a pit-bull against all comers. I looked over the team as our names were being called out by Mr. Shaffer, our coach: “Richard Cross” – I hated him, he thought he was a tough guy – what a jerk; “Liz Woods” – oh great, a girl, for Christ’s sake; “Bobby Cook” –wonderful, the neighborhood thug; “Bunky Hogan” – what kind of name is “Bunky?” They probably thought I was a creep, too; and I probably was. The other teams in the league got the popular kids. I got skid row. Our “stadium” was a chain link fence leaning on cement-encrusted poles with an infield that looked like Normandy Beach on D-Day.
The season opened with the distribution of a fifteen-game schedule which mapped out game times and opponents and probably adorned every Little Leaguer’s refrigerator along with report cards and their mother’s homemade kitchen magnets. The Braves were the team to beat, but no one could beat them. Halfway through the season, the league decided to split the schedule into two halves. The winners of each abbreviated schedule would then battle it out for the championship. With our club adrift at 4-4, we couldn't be happier. The Braves, at 8-0, didn't care for it too much, but no one liked them anyway. My play was gradually improving, yet I would still blame my blatant errors on others and vehemently argue a low-ball strike even if I DID swing at it. Striking out was never cool. It was even worse when that cute girl, Marie London, was watching.
Coming to the conclusion of the second half of the season, we were tied for the lead with, who else, the Braves. I hit a home run against them that I still force people to hear me describe. There was going to be a one-game playoff. If they win, it’s all over. If we win, it’s playoff time. Legend has it that the game was a bloody street brawl replete with Olympian virtue, superhuman fortitude, and otherworldly stamina. Actually, we won 6-5 in a rather dull, yet close-scoring game.
After the game, I played Home Run Derby with Ray. Even though I played Little League, Ray and I could always squeeze a few hours of playing Home Run Derby into the day. The rules were simple: whoever hit the most over the fence after 100 swings was the victor. The simple accomplishment of being able to choose one’s own pitches to swing at, without the hindrance of an umpire, and the complete absence of pressure of a game situation, made these contests relaxing, and gave us an outlet to play baseball at our own pace.
Going into the best-of-three championship, the talk through the hallways in school (school ended in late June that year) was how badly we'd get stomped. They “let us off easy” so they could bludgeon us in the playoffs. And they did in the first game. They beat us so bad that coach put me in to pitch the final two innings. They didn't score on me, but I thought nothing of it. Someone else obviously did. The second game entered the bottom of the seventh (and final, in Little League) inning with us tied 12-12. I was on third base, and if I were allowed to steal, I would have blazed down the line. The pitcher threw a wild pitch and I scored the winning run. Or so I thought. The Braves’ coach said I left too soon and I was duly ejected from the game while introducing the umpire to some of my recently acquired X-rated vocabulary. Bobby Cook moved up on the pitch and scored on another wild pitch. We won, but I was not the hero this time. To make matters worse, Ray was grounded that day for batting golf balls into the neighborhood from his front step.
As I kicked my glove along the path leading away from the diamond, Mr. Shaffer called to me in a voice that rattled my bones “Kevin, come over here!” On no. I'm kicked off the team for sure. “Kevin, I want you to pitch Friday’s game. Can you do it?” I was flabbergasted I called everyone who possessed a seven-digit phone number to inform them about my pending opportunity, but the first person I called was Ray. He promised me he would be there – that’s all I needed to hear.
The next afternoon, Ray convinced his mom to let him see me play. Dad, the shutterbug, took a picture of Ray and me out front of my house. Before the game, as I was wont to do, I would have a catch with Ray rather than my teammates. I was more comfortable throwing to him. Also I could always count on him to chase the ball whenever it went down the hill beyond the right field fence. After four innings, we were up 8-1, due to some clutch hitting on our part and bad fielding on theirs. I wasn't throwing smoke, more like a shot-put motion, but at least it was working. By this time, my brother Dave ventured over to the other field to talk to some girls. Mom and Dad returned home and the crowd was thinning out. Still glued to his seat was Ray. Even when the game ended in a stunning 12-1 rout, the first person I celebrated with was Ray, as the euphoria spread throughout the dugout. I received my little brass trophy labeled “Champions” and proudly displayed it in the various locales Dave so unknowingly mapped out for me.
A few years later, Ray moved to Florida. My trophy ended up in a box in the basement with some junk from my old desk. Last I heard, Ray was jail and I don't remember why. We haven't talked for years, and, for all I know, he might be dead. In fact, I think he is. I came across the old box of junk recently. Inside, I found my old trophy, the old game ball from that memorable afternoon, more junk, and the tattered, dog-eared photo taken of Ray and me on the day of the championship game. I put the trophy, the ball, the junk, back in the box. But I'll always keep that photo near me for the rest of my life
A little bit of history about Ray. We met one rainy afternoon. My mom was walking me back from Darley Road Elementary School after registering me for Kindergarten and it really started coming down hard. We were halfway up South Walnut Tree Lane in Greentree when a dark station wagon, driven by an eternally smiling woman, drove up next to us. In the back seat was a kid my age with a crew cut and a look of eager determination. It was Ray, and from that day forward, we were the best of friends. Through the years, we embarked on many a mission, most of which would make my mother's hair turn white if she found out. Like the times Ray would steal money from his mom's purse so we could grab a pizza at Vinnie's. Whatever we didn't finish, we would throw at cars, along with crabapples and snowballs, depending on the season. Other times, we would place nails in the street and sit on the curb watching cars run over them. In Winter, we would cruise the neighborhood at night, wielding baseball bats, looking for snowmen to obliterate. But, Ray's favorite thing to do was go into the utility rooms of the local apartment buildings and turn off all the power. I'd be standing outside when there would be a low hum, followed by complete darkness, then the sight of Ray, laughing that maniacal laugh of accomplishment, as he burst through the front door of the building.
But one thing about Ray most people never understood was the fact he wasn't an aggressively evil kid. He wasn't the kind of person to try and intimidate strangers. He only lashed out at those people who gave him a hard time, but to go blow-for-blow with Ray was a mistake. He was endlessly resourceful and constantly scheming. When Ray and I performed mischief, it wasn't because we thought it would harm another human being; rather, it was the fact most of the mischief occurred without a direct victim in our presence that made it exhilarating. For instance, Ray acquired a habit of stealing hood ornaments and license plates. Once, after he was caught, one car was all the way in Massachusetts before he discovered his plate was missing. He would take freshly arrived Playboy magazines from the local Wawa store and hide them in newspapers when he brought them to the counter. Sometimes, we would take discarded Christmas trees from the curb, drag them to the apartments, lean them against a person's door, ring the doorbell and run. He was a menace to all decent people, so maybe that's why we got along so well. One time, while his mother was sitting on the stoop talking to a neighbor, Ray emptied a bucket of water on her head from the upstairs hallway window. I'm just giving you the diluted stories here. In another medium, and after all the proper legal releases have been signed, I have many more stories about Ray. Many, many more.
Anyway, because of an egg-throwing incident, Ray’s parents did not allow him to play in Little League that year. We were both eleven years old and at the supposed prime of our lives and I knew how badly he wanted to play. All I could do during the games while smoothing the dirt around first base would be to watch Ray watching me between pitches as I impatiently awaited a ground ball or pop-up. Mom and Dad would attend a few games and every now and again my older brother, Dave, would drop by for a few innings. Dave was a good player. The year before, his team not only won the championship, but he actually pitched it. He received his gold-sprayed trophy at the year-end banquet and strategically placed it at various locales in the house as a conversation piece. Most of the time, Dave was the initiator of the conversation.
Now, it was my turn to pull on the stiff, dingy, gray Claymont Little League uniform. The material itched like burlap dipped in wet sand, and on top of that, I was issued number 13. This was Little League. However, it seemed everyone was doomed to wearing a gray uniform a size too big. My team was the Royals, who lost to my brother’s team, the Cubs, for the championship the year before.
When camp broke for our first practices, I immediately marked off the first base area and claimed it in my name, guarding it like a pit-bull against all comers. I looked over the team as our names were being called out by Mr. Shaffer, our coach: “Richard Cross” – I hated him, he thought he was a tough guy – what a jerk; “Liz Woods” – oh great, a girl, for Christ’s sake; “Bobby Cook” –wonderful, the neighborhood thug; “Bunky Hogan” – what kind of name is “Bunky?” They probably thought I was a creep, too; and I probably was. The other teams in the league got the popular kids. I got skid row. Our “stadium” was a chain link fence leaning on cement-encrusted poles with an infield that looked like Normandy Beach on D-Day.
The season opened with the distribution of a fifteen-game schedule which mapped out game times and opponents and probably adorned every Little Leaguer’s refrigerator along with report cards and their mother’s homemade kitchen magnets. The Braves were the team to beat, but no one could beat them. Halfway through the season, the league decided to split the schedule into two halves. The winners of each abbreviated schedule would then battle it out for the championship. With our club adrift at 4-4, we couldn't be happier. The Braves, at 8-0, didn't care for it too much, but no one liked them anyway. My play was gradually improving, yet I would still blame my blatant errors on others and vehemently argue a low-ball strike even if I DID swing at it. Striking out was never cool. It was even worse when that cute girl, Marie London, was watching.
Coming to the conclusion of the second half of the season, we were tied for the lead with, who else, the Braves. I hit a home run against them that I still force people to hear me describe. There was going to be a one-game playoff. If they win, it’s all over. If we win, it’s playoff time. Legend has it that the game was a bloody street brawl replete with Olympian virtue, superhuman fortitude, and otherworldly stamina. Actually, we won 6-5 in a rather dull, yet close-scoring game.
After the game, I played Home Run Derby with Ray. Even though I played Little League, Ray and I could always squeeze a few hours of playing Home Run Derby into the day. The rules were simple: whoever hit the most over the fence after 100 swings was the victor. The simple accomplishment of being able to choose one’s own pitches to swing at, without the hindrance of an umpire, and the complete absence of pressure of a game situation, made these contests relaxing, and gave us an outlet to play baseball at our own pace.
Going into the best-of-three championship, the talk through the hallways in school (school ended in late June that year) was how badly we'd get stomped. They “let us off easy” so they could bludgeon us in the playoffs. And they did in the first game. They beat us so bad that coach put me in to pitch the final two innings. They didn't score on me, but I thought nothing of it. Someone else obviously did. The second game entered the bottom of the seventh (and final, in Little League) inning with us tied 12-12. I was on third base, and if I were allowed to steal, I would have blazed down the line. The pitcher threw a wild pitch and I scored the winning run. Or so I thought. The Braves’ coach said I left too soon and I was duly ejected from the game while introducing the umpire to some of my recently acquired X-rated vocabulary. Bobby Cook moved up on the pitch and scored on another wild pitch. We won, but I was not the hero this time. To make matters worse, Ray was grounded that day for batting golf balls into the neighborhood from his front step.
As I kicked my glove along the path leading away from the diamond, Mr. Shaffer called to me in a voice that rattled my bones “Kevin, come over here!” On no. I'm kicked off the team for sure. “Kevin, I want you to pitch Friday’s game. Can you do it?” I was flabbergasted I called everyone who possessed a seven-digit phone number to inform them about my pending opportunity, but the first person I called was Ray. He promised me he would be there – that’s all I needed to hear.
The next afternoon, Ray convinced his mom to let him see me play. Dad, the shutterbug, took a picture of Ray and me out front of my house. Before the game, as I was wont to do, I would have a catch with Ray rather than my teammates. I was more comfortable throwing to him. Also I could always count on him to chase the ball whenever it went down the hill beyond the right field fence. After four innings, we were up 8-1, due to some clutch hitting on our part and bad fielding on theirs. I wasn't throwing smoke, more like a shot-put motion, but at least it was working. By this time, my brother Dave ventured over to the other field to talk to some girls. Mom and Dad returned home and the crowd was thinning out. Still glued to his seat was Ray. Even when the game ended in a stunning 12-1 rout, the first person I celebrated with was Ray, as the euphoria spread throughout the dugout. I received my little brass trophy labeled “Champions” and proudly displayed it in the various locales Dave so unknowingly mapped out for me.
A few years later, Ray moved to Florida. My trophy ended up in a box in the basement with some junk from my old desk. Last I heard, Ray was jail and I don't remember why. We haven't talked for years, and, for all I know, he might be dead. In fact, I think he is. I came across the old box of junk recently. Inside, I found my old trophy, the old game ball from that memorable afternoon, more junk, and the tattered, dog-eared photo taken of Ray and me on the day of the championship game. I put the trophy, the ball, the junk, back in the box. But I'll always keep that photo near me for the rest of my life
Monday, January 19, 2009
Claymont, Part 4
Claymont is a place of character and characters. From the Darley House to the Walking Monk to Knollwood to the civic pride that took a hit when the high school closed in 1991, Claymont has always had a reputation as a small, feisty town willing to drop the gloves with anyone who would speak ill of it; well, as long as you lived outside of Claymont. For those of us who have lived and still live there, we can badmouth it all we want. It's like family. I can call my brother a jerk, but if you do, I'll knock your block off.
One of our biggest points of pride has been in our eating establishments, and I think anyone who knows anything about cheesesteaks will agree, the Claymont Steak Shop made the best, not only in town, but also in the entire universe. I haven't been there in a while, so I cannot vouch for it's present quality, but when I lived there...MAN...it was the closest thing to a naked disco for your mouth. The steak was chopped so fine and savory, the cheese was the perfect texture and the roll... Well, one thing we East Coasters ALL know about the cheesesteak is the fact the roll MAKES the sandwich. More than the meat or the cheese, it was the roll that provided the ultimate whammy when your lower mandible collided with your upper row of teeth. Wresting the sandwich from your jaw was the ultimate in penultimate glory. The final bell was the bite remaining in your mouth, like a prisoner at a firing squad awaiting his doom. For a split second, your brain switches on and all the senses heighten to such a degree your face changes color. That first chew, like the first sip from a cold beer or the first drag from a fresh pack of cigarettes, is indescribable to outsiders. I've had cheesesteaks from all the best places in the state and the Philadelphia area, and there have been some fine, fine sandwiches, don't get me wrong; however, none could ever compare with a Claymont Steak Shop offering. None. In fact, even ESPN the Magazine had an article about 10 or so years ago stating the "100 Things You Must Do to Be a Fan." Besides catching a foul ball (done) and running with the bulls (um, no), grabbing a cheesesteak from the Claymont Steak Shop and hauling it to the Vet for an Eagles or Phillies game was on the list. Don't believe me? Last I checked, the article was still on the wall at the restaurant.
Some things, sadly, have passed on into memory. Remember Gino's? It was a fast food restaurant similar to Burger King and McDonald's. It was located in the same shopping center as Hoy's 5 & 10. I always ordered the Gino's Giant. Remember the commercial? "Everybody goes to Gino's, cause Gino's is the place to go-o-o..." Ok, it's not Shakespeare. Hell, it's not even Rain Man, but I remember they would show crayon pictures sent in by kids at the stores. Mine never made it to TV because, well, honestly, I never submitted one. Gino's was replaced by Roy Rogers, which was replaced by...well, I'm not sure. Maybe I'll check it out next weekend. I remembers my friend, Brian Tucker, worked at Roy Rogers. Brian was a good friend until he told us he couldn't play hockey one day, so my best friend, Ray Butler, and I smashed his trashcans with our hockey sticks. Good times. Sorry about that, Brian. I'll tell you about Ray in the next installment. I could write a book about our adventures. Stay tuned. You don't want to miss that.
Besides the Claymont Steak Shop, there was one other place you could get what amounted to a legendary sandwich - DiCostanza's. Those weren't just hoagies they made. They were lunch meat sandwiches the size of telephone poles. It's the kind of sandwich Paul Bunyan would eat all day long before saying, "Ok, I'm out," still leaving half a hoagie to carry home with him. He would never offer any to Babe the Blue Ox, because, let's be honest here, Babe was no cannibal. Babe was also a herbivore, so it's a mute point anyway. This sucker was SO packed with meat and cheese that the roll could only close over half of it. Once, I was carrying one home, accidentally dropped it on the street and it created a hole so large in the road a fire truck fell in. I never heard the crash at the bottom so my guess it's still falling through the Earth's core. Somewhere, Satan is hiring a whole pit of demons to jump on the roll like an over-packed suitcase just so he can take a bite. Oh, and this was a small hoagie. DiCostanza's - or Deke's for short - could feed the entire population of China and Japan for several generations with one sandwich, and that includes the Sumo wrestlers.
I have so many memories about my old hometown without a mayor, and the food joints that etched those memories. Believe me, I received just as much enjoyment out of trying (and succeeding) to eat a Big Mac in three bites in the McDonald's parking lot with my other best friend, Rod Reeves, Harry Dougherty and Dave Stepanek, late night chow fests with Wayne Jamison and Seth Andrews at Howard Johnson's, going to the Totem Pole with my first real high school crush, Alicia Kulp, to buy whatever candy could rot my teeth and eating hot dogs and Swedish Fish on the bleachers with Ed Chichorichi and Scott Strazzella after one of our Little League games. And let's not forget the inimitable enterprising James Priester, Jerry Lee and Nate McQueen, who used to make a mint selling candy they bought with lunch money and selling it to us in school at a 500% mark up. Food is life; food is family. It springs to mind old memories and forges new chapters.
Today, all I really get to see of the old town is my brother Dave's house and my Dad's. The ghosts of people and places from the past still echo soundly through the transom of my mind. My senses are ever keen and I can still hear the rustling of the thin wax paper from the hot dogs at the Little League concession stand, the magma-like heat of hot chocolate on a crisp Autumn afternoon watching Claymont High School battle another Flight B opponent at the football field, the awe-inspiring sight of a banana split being delicately handed over from the driver of the Custard Hut truck and the heft of the pears we used to steal off the trees from a house just off the railroad tracks while being chased by the owner. But, smell is the sense that keeps boomeranging our senses. Studies have shown the sense of smell is the one most strongly associated with memory. Even today, when I smell a funnel cake, I think back to the days of pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the coffers of the Holy Rosary Carnival. All in all, I don't regret a single nickel I have pumped into the local economy over the years because it has paid me back many times over in the memories it has created. I think maybe I'll go visit my brother Dave next weekend for some light reminiscing, as only siblings can do.
And yes, I'll bring my wallet.
One of our biggest points of pride has been in our eating establishments, and I think anyone who knows anything about cheesesteaks will agree, the Claymont Steak Shop made the best, not only in town, but also in the entire universe. I haven't been there in a while, so I cannot vouch for it's present quality, but when I lived there...MAN...it was the closest thing to a naked disco for your mouth. The steak was chopped so fine and savory, the cheese was the perfect texture and the roll... Well, one thing we East Coasters ALL know about the cheesesteak is the fact the roll MAKES the sandwich. More than the meat or the cheese, it was the roll that provided the ultimate whammy when your lower mandible collided with your upper row of teeth. Wresting the sandwich from your jaw was the ultimate in penultimate glory. The final bell was the bite remaining in your mouth, like a prisoner at a firing squad awaiting his doom. For a split second, your brain switches on and all the senses heighten to such a degree your face changes color. That first chew, like the first sip from a cold beer or the first drag from a fresh pack of cigarettes, is indescribable to outsiders. I've had cheesesteaks from all the best places in the state and the Philadelphia area, and there have been some fine, fine sandwiches, don't get me wrong; however, none could ever compare with a Claymont Steak Shop offering. None. In fact, even ESPN the Magazine had an article about 10 or so years ago stating the "100 Things You Must Do to Be a Fan." Besides catching a foul ball (done) and running with the bulls (um, no), grabbing a cheesesteak from the Claymont Steak Shop and hauling it to the Vet for an Eagles or Phillies game was on the list. Don't believe me? Last I checked, the article was still on the wall at the restaurant.
Some things, sadly, have passed on into memory. Remember Gino's? It was a fast food restaurant similar to Burger King and McDonald's. It was located in the same shopping center as Hoy's 5 & 10. I always ordered the Gino's Giant. Remember the commercial? "Everybody goes to Gino's, cause Gino's is the place to go-o-o..." Ok, it's not Shakespeare. Hell, it's not even Rain Man, but I remember they would show crayon pictures sent in by kids at the stores. Mine never made it to TV because, well, honestly, I never submitted one. Gino's was replaced by Roy Rogers, which was replaced by...well, I'm not sure. Maybe I'll check it out next weekend. I remembers my friend, Brian Tucker, worked at Roy Rogers. Brian was a good friend until he told us he couldn't play hockey one day, so my best friend, Ray Butler, and I smashed his trashcans with our hockey sticks. Good times. Sorry about that, Brian. I'll tell you about Ray in the next installment. I could write a book about our adventures. Stay tuned. You don't want to miss that.
Besides the Claymont Steak Shop, there was one other place you could get what amounted to a legendary sandwich - DiCostanza's. Those weren't just hoagies they made. They were lunch meat sandwiches the size of telephone poles. It's the kind of sandwich Paul Bunyan would eat all day long before saying, "Ok, I'm out," still leaving half a hoagie to carry home with him. He would never offer any to Babe the Blue Ox, because, let's be honest here, Babe was no cannibal. Babe was also a herbivore, so it's a mute point anyway. This sucker was SO packed with meat and cheese that the roll could only close over half of it. Once, I was carrying one home, accidentally dropped it on the street and it created a hole so large in the road a fire truck fell in. I never heard the crash at the bottom so my guess it's still falling through the Earth's core. Somewhere, Satan is hiring a whole pit of demons to jump on the roll like an over-packed suitcase just so he can take a bite. Oh, and this was a small hoagie. DiCostanza's - or Deke's for short - could feed the entire population of China and Japan for several generations with one sandwich, and that includes the Sumo wrestlers.
I have so many memories about my old hometown without a mayor, and the food joints that etched those memories. Believe me, I received just as much enjoyment out of trying (and succeeding) to eat a Big Mac in three bites in the McDonald's parking lot with my other best friend, Rod Reeves, Harry Dougherty and Dave Stepanek, late night chow fests with Wayne Jamison and Seth Andrews at Howard Johnson's, going to the Totem Pole with my first real high school crush, Alicia Kulp, to buy whatever candy could rot my teeth and eating hot dogs and Swedish Fish on the bleachers with Ed Chichorichi and Scott Strazzella after one of our Little League games. And let's not forget the inimitable enterprising James Priester, Jerry Lee and Nate McQueen, who used to make a mint selling candy they bought with lunch money and selling it to us in school at a 500% mark up. Food is life; food is family. It springs to mind old memories and forges new chapters.
Today, all I really get to see of the old town is my brother Dave's house and my Dad's. The ghosts of people and places from the past still echo soundly through the transom of my mind. My senses are ever keen and I can still hear the rustling of the thin wax paper from the hot dogs at the Little League concession stand, the magma-like heat of hot chocolate on a crisp Autumn afternoon watching Claymont High School battle another Flight B opponent at the football field, the awe-inspiring sight of a banana split being delicately handed over from the driver of the Custard Hut truck and the heft of the pears we used to steal off the trees from a house just off the railroad tracks while being chased by the owner. But, smell is the sense that keeps boomeranging our senses. Studies have shown the sense of smell is the one most strongly associated with memory. Even today, when I smell a funnel cake, I think back to the days of pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the coffers of the Holy Rosary Carnival. All in all, I don't regret a single nickel I have pumped into the local economy over the years because it has paid me back many times over in the memories it has created. I think maybe I'll go visit my brother Dave next weekend for some light reminiscing, as only siblings can do.
And yes, I'll bring my wallet.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Claymont, Part 3
As I might have mentioned before, I graduated from Claymont High School in 1984, and if I didn't mention it, well, there you go. It's hard to believe it has been a quarter century since I was worried about my senior thesis, taking my SATs and pressing in my fake-me-out mustache for the senior portrait. The passage of time brings with it perspective - a perspective that isn't available when you're 18 years old for the simple fact you think you know everything there is to know about the world at that age. I regarded my high school years with equal parts of enjoyment and out-and-out disdain. Looking back now, I wish I had the perspective of my present mind set. I would have done more, taken more chances and maybe, just maybe, actually studied.
High school is a little community unto itself. The characters, socializing and the teachers. Ah, the teachers. Is there a more thankless job in the civilian world than teaching high school students? For anyone out there presently in high school who may actually be reading this, you'll realize in short order just what an annoying, hormonal drama-monger you are right now, when a few more years pass. Teaching is the equivalent of being a first-time lion tamer except it happens every day at the chalk board. Throughout my life, I have had some fairly nondescript teachers, but I have also had some extraordinary instructors, as well. Ron Eshleman was my 10th grade Science teacher. To get an idea of who he was, try to imagine Emeril Lagasse without the Cajun patois. The man was brilliant and had boundless energy. He demanded accountability and knew his stuff, but the thing I remember most fondly about him is what he told us on the first day of class - "People (teachers always called the students "people"), I don't care if you walk out of here at the end of the year knowing absolutely nothing about science. What I hope you are able to do, however, is learn how to THINK." It's a funny thing, though. I actually do remember a lot about that class and not just because of the handy mnemonics he gave us. But, if you stepped out of line, he really gave it to you. Once, when he was describing how two Nitrogen (periodic symbol "N") split into two, I said, under my breath, "Hmm, split Ns," he wheel around and rocketed a piece of chalk at me that split into a zillion pieces over my head. He said, "You know, for a jackass, you're pretty good." Then he pointed towards the door and I had a chance to socialize with the principal, Mr. Fred Wrigley, for the 100th time.
Fred Wrigley. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but legend had it he was a drill instructor in a previous time in his life. It certainly wouldn't surprise me. Infamous for the way he bellowed the word "soph-o-mores!" to us clueless locker jockeys, the man was a take-no-guff disciplinarian. However, he was one of the kindest, most compassionate people I had ever met at that age. Each year, the senior class would pull what is known as the "Senior Stunt." The class of 1983 filled up Mr. Wrigley's office with 1,983 balloons. It was quite a sight. In fact, it made the front page of the fledgling USAToday, with Mr. Wrigley sitting at his desk surrounded by a mass of inflated latex. As a member of the class of 1984, there was no way we were going to top that, let alone get national exposure, so we decorated his ceiling with 1,984 Wrigley's gum wrappers. Lame, I know, but the gesture had to be made.
Sadly, Mr. Wrigley passed away not long after I graduated. His place was assumed by James Bruton, who had a bit of Smothers Brothers-type routine with the math teacher, Donald Fantine. The two of them were strict taskmasters, but, when the atmosphere was more relaxed, they were like a well-polished comedy team, lobbing hilarious insults at each other and generally adding a lot of color to the hallways. I could really write for hours upon hours about the memorable teachers I had, but for those who attended dear old CHS, you remember them, and for those who did not, you probably had similar people in your educational staff. Without referring to my heavily dust-covered yearbook, I would just like to thank the following teachers off the top of my head for making me the person I am today - for better or worse: the vivacious Susan Stetler, the booming Grant Dunn, the patient-beyond-reason William Chipman, the favorite uncle-type James Ruth, the kindly English teacher James Brasure, the motherly Virginia Burins, the uncompromising excellence of Michael Roccia, the eagerly determined Helene Jouan, the whimsical Robert Guy, the mystical Donald Crawford, the lovable grouchiness of one of the best basketball coaches in the state, Tom DiStefano, who had the unenviable task of teaching me to parallel park, the laid-back brilliance of Rich McKinnon, the bubbly effervescence of the late, indefatigable Gertrude Jenkins and the genuine enjoyer of life, art teacher and senior class advisor, Alan "Bags" Ruth, who, until the day I die, will remain one of my favorite people of all time. Lastly, the teacher all CHS alumni will never forget, the person I could not stand as a student until my last day of class as a senior, when it dawned on me just what an incredible personality he was, Mr. Howard Simpkins. Mr. Simpkins was a taskmaster extraordinaire, with a haircut from a 1950's industrial arts classroom video, rocket scientist eyeglasses and a system of demerits that would bring a Hell's Angel to his knees. He was one of those guys who wore a short-sleeve shirt and tie. It's difficult to elucidate the level of influence he has had on students over the years, and even me, a lover of words, cannot find the exact words to convey just how valuable the life lessons he taught us. To Mr. Simpkins, Mr. Eshleman, all the teachers of CHS, my previous teachers and to all teachers, past, present and future in this world, my sincerest thanks and appreciation. No matter what they are paying you, it is not enough.
Like any high school, cliques develop and evolve. I had a few which I rotated through, like most people seem to say ("I never really belonged to any one group; I got along with everyone." Sound familiar?). The big, broad clique, the kind represented in every high school-based movie of white kids, was always the most eventful. I suppose it's why so many movies are based on that social grouping. We would hang out behind the high school on crisp Autumn nights, passing around half pints of Jack Daniel's, watching the youth football leagues or playing Frisbee and chewing tobacco in the parking lot of Gebhart's Funeral Home or infest the McDonald's on Philadelphia Pike, having a great time laughing, cutting up and soaking up the magnificence of youth, all the while complaining how bored we were. The events of the season, however, occurred when someone's parents went out of town. Everyone descended upon that house in a Bacchanalian eruption of unleashed exhuberance. Whether it was Lynn Newton's house, Mark LaVere's or the epic festivals at Marie London's, everyone who was everyone, in our world, was there. I remember bringing a loaf of Italian bread to Mark's house because, whenever I drank, I would develop a humongous appetite. As if I didn't normally attract my share of derisive gazes, the Italian bread was the clincher. The fact Mark's house was smack dab next to the park was a dangerous formula. Imagine a horde of drunken high school students on the swings, leaping at the apogee up the upswing, people puking whilst hanging upside down on the jungle gym and teenaged girls screeching, "Stop! Stop!" while being violently swung on the little red roundabout, and you have what amounts to a typical Claymont high school teenager party.
High school is a heady time. For some, it's the summit of their lives. Many people never experience the glory of life as they did in their high school years. Others, cocooned in their chrysalis of shyness and late blooming consider their high school years the worst time of their lives. For me, it was a little from Column A and a little from Column B. You see, the students who graduated from Claymont High School more or less grew up together. We went to Darley Road, Maple Lane or Green Street Elementary Schools, attended Claymont Middle School and/or P.S. DuPont Middle School and, eventually, dear old CHS. Many students were integrated into the environment with the advent of busing in the late 1970s while others came from some of the Catholic or private schools. The youth programs, such as Little League, football and basketball leagues further solidified the student community into an inescapable celebration for some and a prison for others. You see, with that environment, something humiliating that happened to you in third grade traveled with you until 12th. You might have changed as a person, but the perception of you did not. It's a cruel truth to face in the most fragile part of a boy's or girl's life. The pressure can create a diamond or a lump of coal. We were all geniuses in high school, and since this is the only life we knew, we figured we knew all about life. How wrong we were, just as wrong as the students of today will find themselves in due time.
Personally, I knew I could not wait to get out. I wanted a fresh start and to put the distasteful elements of my standardized schooling behind me. I didn't want to be around these people any longer. So, it might come as a bit of a surprise, when upon graduation, sitting on stage, I began to bawl like a grandmother. Where was this coming from? Why was I shedding tears for something I detested so much? In the movie , "Conspiracy," (a brilliant and chilling movie about the Holocaust) the one dissenting figure, Dr. Kritzinger, tells a story about how a man he knew, who lost the mother he adored. At her funeral, he could not find the tears; however, when his father, a man he hated, died, he wept uncontrollably. The man in the story, apparently, had been driven by hate his whole life, so when the object of his hate, his father, passed away, his hate died with him. He felt he had nothing else for which to live. I suppose that's how I felt, up on that stage 25 years ago. It's taken the mellowing of age, the appreciation of perspective and the understanding, that, despite knowing everything back then, I realize I know almost nothing today, to not only offer my forgiveness, but my apologies to the people, the institution and the life I had detested so many years ago. When I run into an old classmate these days, I don't think about the bad times; rather, I embrace the good times, the laughs of Margie Eachus and Bev Deloatch, the sinister snarkiness of Scott Frizzell and Rob Doherty, the country boy ramble of Bruce Lane and his car, "Bandit"...
Oh, I could go on. But you know what I'm talking about. It was in your high school too, and in your high school memories. I pushed away my high school years with both arms long enough. I now embrace those memories. Living in the past is not the place to increase you present real estate value; however, even if you don't want to live there, it's not a bad place to visit once in a while.
Even if it's only in your mind.
High school is a little community unto itself. The characters, socializing and the teachers. Ah, the teachers. Is there a more thankless job in the civilian world than teaching high school students? For anyone out there presently in high school who may actually be reading this, you'll realize in short order just what an annoying, hormonal drama-monger you are right now, when a few more years pass. Teaching is the equivalent of being a first-time lion tamer except it happens every day at the chalk board. Throughout my life, I have had some fairly nondescript teachers, but I have also had some extraordinary instructors, as well. Ron Eshleman was my 10th grade Science teacher. To get an idea of who he was, try to imagine Emeril Lagasse without the Cajun patois. The man was brilliant and had boundless energy. He demanded accountability and knew his stuff, but the thing I remember most fondly about him is what he told us on the first day of class - "People (teachers always called the students "people"), I don't care if you walk out of here at the end of the year knowing absolutely nothing about science. What I hope you are able to do, however, is learn how to THINK." It's a funny thing, though. I actually do remember a lot about that class and not just because of the handy mnemonics he gave us. But, if you stepped out of line, he really gave it to you. Once, when he was describing how two Nitrogen (periodic symbol "N") split into two, I said, under my breath, "Hmm, split Ns," he wheel around and rocketed a piece of chalk at me that split into a zillion pieces over my head. He said, "You know, for a jackass, you're pretty good." Then he pointed towards the door and I had a chance to socialize with the principal, Mr. Fred Wrigley, for the 100th time.
Fred Wrigley. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but legend had it he was a drill instructor in a previous time in his life. It certainly wouldn't surprise me. Infamous for the way he bellowed the word "soph-o-mores!" to us clueless locker jockeys, the man was a take-no-guff disciplinarian. However, he was one of the kindest, most compassionate people I had ever met at that age. Each year, the senior class would pull what is known as the "Senior Stunt." The class of 1983 filled up Mr. Wrigley's office with 1,983 balloons. It was quite a sight. In fact, it made the front page of the fledgling USAToday, with Mr. Wrigley sitting at his desk surrounded by a mass of inflated latex. As a member of the class of 1984, there was no way we were going to top that, let alone get national exposure, so we decorated his ceiling with 1,984 Wrigley's gum wrappers. Lame, I know, but the gesture had to be made.
Sadly, Mr. Wrigley passed away not long after I graduated. His place was assumed by James Bruton, who had a bit of Smothers Brothers-type routine with the math teacher, Donald Fantine. The two of them were strict taskmasters, but, when the atmosphere was more relaxed, they were like a well-polished comedy team, lobbing hilarious insults at each other and generally adding a lot of color to the hallways. I could really write for hours upon hours about the memorable teachers I had, but for those who attended dear old CHS, you remember them, and for those who did not, you probably had similar people in your educational staff. Without referring to my heavily dust-covered yearbook, I would just like to thank the following teachers off the top of my head for making me the person I am today - for better or worse: the vivacious Susan Stetler, the booming Grant Dunn, the patient-beyond-reason William Chipman, the favorite uncle-type James Ruth, the kindly English teacher James Brasure, the motherly Virginia Burins, the uncompromising excellence of Michael Roccia, the eagerly determined Helene Jouan, the whimsical Robert Guy, the mystical Donald Crawford, the lovable grouchiness of one of the best basketball coaches in the state, Tom DiStefano, who had the unenviable task of teaching me to parallel park, the laid-back brilliance of Rich McKinnon, the bubbly effervescence of the late, indefatigable Gertrude Jenkins and the genuine enjoyer of life, art teacher and senior class advisor, Alan "Bags" Ruth, who, until the day I die, will remain one of my favorite people of all time. Lastly, the teacher all CHS alumni will never forget, the person I could not stand as a student until my last day of class as a senior, when it dawned on me just what an incredible personality he was, Mr. Howard Simpkins. Mr. Simpkins was a taskmaster extraordinaire, with a haircut from a 1950's industrial arts classroom video, rocket scientist eyeglasses and a system of demerits that would bring a Hell's Angel to his knees. He was one of those guys who wore a short-sleeve shirt and tie. It's difficult to elucidate the level of influence he has had on students over the years, and even me, a lover of words, cannot find the exact words to convey just how valuable the life lessons he taught us. To Mr. Simpkins, Mr. Eshleman, all the teachers of CHS, my previous teachers and to all teachers, past, present and future in this world, my sincerest thanks and appreciation. No matter what they are paying you, it is not enough.
Like any high school, cliques develop and evolve. I had a few which I rotated through, like most people seem to say ("I never really belonged to any one group; I got along with everyone." Sound familiar?). The big, broad clique, the kind represented in every high school-based movie of white kids, was always the most eventful. I suppose it's why so many movies are based on that social grouping. We would hang out behind the high school on crisp Autumn nights, passing around half pints of Jack Daniel's, watching the youth football leagues or playing Frisbee and chewing tobacco in the parking lot of Gebhart's Funeral Home or infest the McDonald's on Philadelphia Pike, having a great time laughing, cutting up and soaking up the magnificence of youth, all the while complaining how bored we were. The events of the season, however, occurred when someone's parents went out of town. Everyone descended upon that house in a Bacchanalian eruption of unleashed exhuberance. Whether it was Lynn Newton's house, Mark LaVere's or the epic festivals at Marie London's, everyone who was everyone, in our world, was there. I remember bringing a loaf of Italian bread to Mark's house because, whenever I drank, I would develop a humongous appetite. As if I didn't normally attract my share of derisive gazes, the Italian bread was the clincher. The fact Mark's house was smack dab next to the park was a dangerous formula. Imagine a horde of drunken high school students on the swings, leaping at the apogee up the upswing, people puking whilst hanging upside down on the jungle gym and teenaged girls screeching, "Stop! Stop!" while being violently swung on the little red roundabout, and you have what amounts to a typical Claymont high school teenager party.
High school is a heady time. For some, it's the summit of their lives. Many people never experience the glory of life as they did in their high school years. Others, cocooned in their chrysalis of shyness and late blooming consider their high school years the worst time of their lives. For me, it was a little from Column A and a little from Column B. You see, the students who graduated from Claymont High School more or less grew up together. We went to Darley Road, Maple Lane or Green Street Elementary Schools, attended Claymont Middle School and/or P.S. DuPont Middle School and, eventually, dear old CHS. Many students were integrated into the environment with the advent of busing in the late 1970s while others came from some of the Catholic or private schools. The youth programs, such as Little League, football and basketball leagues further solidified the student community into an inescapable celebration for some and a prison for others. You see, with that environment, something humiliating that happened to you in third grade traveled with you until 12th. You might have changed as a person, but the perception of you did not. It's a cruel truth to face in the most fragile part of a boy's or girl's life. The pressure can create a diamond or a lump of coal. We were all geniuses in high school, and since this is the only life we knew, we figured we knew all about life. How wrong we were, just as wrong as the students of today will find themselves in due time.
Personally, I knew I could not wait to get out. I wanted a fresh start and to put the distasteful elements of my standardized schooling behind me. I didn't want to be around these people any longer. So, it might come as a bit of a surprise, when upon graduation, sitting on stage, I began to bawl like a grandmother. Where was this coming from? Why was I shedding tears for something I detested so much? In the movie , "Conspiracy," (a brilliant and chilling movie about the Holocaust) the one dissenting figure, Dr. Kritzinger, tells a story about how a man he knew, who lost the mother he adored. At her funeral, he could not find the tears; however, when his father, a man he hated, died, he wept uncontrollably. The man in the story, apparently, had been driven by hate his whole life, so when the object of his hate, his father, passed away, his hate died with him. He felt he had nothing else for which to live. I suppose that's how I felt, up on that stage 25 years ago. It's taken the mellowing of age, the appreciation of perspective and the understanding, that, despite knowing everything back then, I realize I know almost nothing today, to not only offer my forgiveness, but my apologies to the people, the institution and the life I had detested so many years ago. When I run into an old classmate these days, I don't think about the bad times; rather, I embrace the good times, the laughs of Margie Eachus and Bev Deloatch, the sinister snarkiness of Scott Frizzell and Rob Doherty, the country boy ramble of Bruce Lane and his car, "Bandit"...
Oh, I could go on. But you know what I'm talking about. It was in your high school too, and in your high school memories. I pushed away my high school years with both arms long enough. I now embrace those memories. Living in the past is not the place to increase you present real estate value; however, even if you don't want to live there, it's not a bad place to visit once in a while.
Even if it's only in your mind.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Claymont, Part 2
Claymont has always been a place that had a civic pride in things uniquely Claymont. I'm not necessarily talking about any famous landmarks such as the old library, Archmere Academy or the Christmas Weed. No, I'm talking about things we older Claymonters revere with whimsical nostalgia even if we were ambivalent - and maybe downright hostile - towards them in our youth.
How does the Tri-State Mall sound? Back in the day, it's where we hung out, in our Purple CHS jackets with gold lettering, filling up night after night, complaining how bored we were. The Mall was uniquely Claymont. It wasn't really shared as a hangout with any other Delaware school. Notice I said "Delaware" school because the good students of Chichester found a need to hang out there, too. Generally, the two schools kept their distance from each other, but, sooner or later, a cute girl from "Chi" would be talking to a "Claymonster" and before you knew it, a jealous boyfriend emerges from nowhere. Fists are thrown, bodega attendants are yelling and steady-handed bystanders are sneaking hash pipes from under the counter of Village Records in the confusion. Within a week, a simple scuffle gets the grapevine treatment and next thing you know, "oh-my-god!" teenagers are telling a tale of an all-out gang fight, with knives, chains and nuclear warheads; thousands killed, millions of dollars in damage and echoes of "When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way..." filling the air.
As much as we hated the Tri-State Mall, we sure as hell spent a lot of time there. Could there ever be a more delicious and disgusting pizza as you would get from the Orange Bowl? I don't know if that place had seats. Everything seemed to be like a lean-on-the-counter arrangement and lots of orange. LOTS of orange. The pizza itself had a thin crust so firm it could snap a bike chain. It was also heavily floured so when you burnt your mouth of the volcanic cheese, your tongue would magnetize to the bottom (thanks to the flour) so, in effect, you were destroying the roof of your mouth with every bite. Look at the roof of the mouth of any older Claymont folks and it resembles the ceiling of an abandoned farm house. But, ma-a-a-a-a-n, was that the best freakin' pizza in the world. I think they sold insanely-oversalted soft pretzels there, too. They must have had a secret deal with Coke or Pepsi. All that heavy salt and flour conspired in a way that if you didn't have enough money for a drink, you went somewhere else for food. I've seen some first-timers dehydrate in front of my eyes. They run to the doors and collapse in a heap of bones and dust like a time-challenged vampire.
Oh, there were other choices, to be sure. Just next door at Grant's (which then became Grant's City and then K-Mart...I think), they had a little restaurant. Grant's was a department store where you could find a perfectly good scarf in the toy section, a Ted Nugent Album in the bathroom accessories section and some woman smacking her kids so hard and with such skill she never lost the two-inch ash on her Benson & Hedges cigarette in EVERY section. They had a little lunch counter/restaurant thing. I can't remember what it was called, but I remember they had a mascot named Buddy Bradford. Think about that for a second. A department store lunch counter with a mascot they put on everything, including a plastic hand puppet of Mr. Bradford. Hell, Starbucks doesn't even have a mascot. Grant's was also the place of my Cub Scout undoing. Don't feel bad for me - I only signed up to get the knife. My brother, Dave, and I, were at Grant's doing our weekly shoplifting. With us, happened to be two of the baddest dudes around - I won't give their names, and if they are reading this, you know who you are! - who decided to turn on us, run back to our house and rat us out. Dave arrived at the house first. Me? Oh, I took my sweet old time getting home. I figured mom would be completely exhausted taking her anger out on Dave. The most I would get would be the residual. That was the end of my Cub Scout days and besides carving an Ivory Soap canoe, making the worst Soapbox Derby car in the history of the world and being able to legally carry a weapon, my scouting days were largely forgettable.
The Tri-State Mall had a few other unique facets to it, such as the Hong Kong Shop. It was one of those places that had a lot of glass, ceramic and tapestries. It always smelled sweet and intoxicating, almost to the point of being disorienting. The owners were always friendly, but suspicious - as they should have been - and you had to walk VERY carefully through the aisles because one trip over the shoe laces would have resulted in a cataclysmic cascade of every breakable thing in the universe. Me and my friends always flattened ourselves against the left-most wall and made a beeline towards the back corner where the black light posters were. Oh, there were non-black light posters there, like 500 posters of The Doors, a painting of a man holding a lantern with the lyrics to "Stairway to Heaven" and the six-panel "Stoned Again" cartoon. The black light posters were what kept you in the store five hours at a time. There were the multi-colored zodiac velvet posters, some giant, rainbow-themed Spiro-Graph-like drawing and some naked woman with a cheetah and a spectacularly-large afro. The room was small and had a curtain to accentuate the black light wonderfulness. Sometimes, we would just end up being fascinated with how freaky our teeth looked.
Further down the way was Village Records, which had everything - posters, clothing, mirrors, pinball machines and yes, even records. I still remember seeing a price tag on one of my dad's Emerson, Lake & Palmer albums for $4.00. That wasn't a sale price. It was the actual retail price. Bought my first album there, too - "Kiss Alive II" because, well, I rock. Between the Hong King Shop and Village Records, I probably spent a total of 8-9 years, if you add the hours together. And I'm going to get this out of the way now so I never have to revisit this again. In 11th grade, we had a school-wide fund-raiser Dance-a-thon for, I think, Muscular Dystrophy. I was determined to raise more money than anyone, and thanks to an out-of-the-blue donation of $10.00 from Paul Eckler, I barely edged out sophomore Amy Guderian. I was so focused on winning I didn't even think of the fact that, "oh ****, now I have to dance! I can't dance! And now I have to do this for 12 hours?" So there I was, doing the Cabbage Patch Dance, The Smurf and The Curly Shuffle - all with the patented white-man-overbite. Then came the dance contest where everyone formed an alley on both sides for contestants to dance down. I was forced into doing it against my will, especially with the delicious Donna Tenshaw being the judge (man, all the Tenshaw girls were lookers) but proceeded to groove my way down the path. I must have looked like The Joker wrestling a rogue fire hose. By the time I made it to the end, Donna was laughing so hard I thought she was going to snort. As it turned out, I actually won the dance contest, probably based on pure humor alone, and received a gift certificate to Village Records. I took that certificate, won on the musical stylings of "Bette Davis Eyes," "Centerfold," and "Pac-Man Fever" and bought an Ozzy Osbourne shirt. See? It all came around.
The movie theater was one of the best around, for first-run movies. There was even a balcony section where you could smoke, and smoke they did. Smoked things legal and illegal, drank and had their way with their partners. Not a movie went by when you wouldn't hear several empty bottle of something rolling down the aisle - and that was for the Benji movies. I saw Star Wars the first morning it opened - and proceeded to see it 20 more times in the theater. I've only gone to see a movie more than once with one other film (that's a lie, but, whatever) and that was when I went on a date with a girl I really didn't want to go out with, and took her to "Silence of the Lambs." Game. Set. Match. Anyway, it was great to get a large gathering of friends together to bellow, in unison, "Your lack of faith is disturbing," in between Jujubee fights. When I was older, we had another large contingent go see "Halloween II." It was a fun movie to watch with friends and the blood wasn't confined to the screen. The marvelously cute Bev Wilson literally lifted little Tim Troutman out of his seat when she dug her nails into his arm during the scary parts. Tim lost a pint of blood that night. I just have to add this other Tri-State Mall movie theater nugget. For anyone who remembers when "Porky's" came out, tell me you didn't laugh more during that film than any other. It's not the funniest movie around, although it was damned funny, but it was the funniest movie to watch in the theater. The Cherry Forever scene, Michael Hunt scene, the hysterical assistant gym teacher - and the legendary shower scene made you laugh yourself sober. Good times.
On the opposite side of the Mall from Grant's was Wilmington Dry Goods, which is worth mentioning primarily for the fun we used to have sliding down the escalator handrails. But something dark was at the bottom of those stairs...something sinister. There was a lower level, which was split-level and perpendicular to the main floor of the mall, like a strip mall super glued to the proper one. My mom used to work at the lamp store down there with some of the most amazing-looking women (including my mom). One night, when, thankfully, my mom wasn't working, two of them were robbed at gunpoint. There was a stairwell next to the lamp store which also led up to the main level. Mom arrived one morning to open the store and saw firemen hosing down the stairs. Apparently, one of the girls who worked at the massage parlor was blown away by some nut job (who was finally captured LAST YEAR) and they were cleaning up the aftermath. Mid-way up the stairwell was a recessed metal door, behind which was a highly exclusive massage parlor. I'm sure nothing illegal was ever happening back there, and even if I wasn't sure, I value my life too much even 25 years later to tell you what I really think. There was also a comic book shop on that lower level. Ever watch The Simpsons? Know who "Comic Book Guy" (Jeff Albertson) is? Well, THIS guy looked exactly like him - ponytail, goatee...stunning, really. Aside from having some of the more obscure comics and being a birthing ground for aspiring Dungeons & Dragons players, he had the most extensive collection of Playboy magazines - going back to the early 1960's. Even though we were nowhere near legal age, he still let us buy them. You know how it is when you're young - you go to buy a Playboy, look around first, check out the Sports Illustrated, flip through an Archie's comic, your eyes shifting this way and that - then, you gather all the possible nerve you possess and reach for the magazine. Then, you quickly slither your way to the register and get the hell out of there as soon as possible. You'd always buy a newspaper and maybe a MAD Magazine to provide some subterfuge in case you were ever approached. And yeah, I had the first Bo Derek issue.
Of course, you cannot celebrate the greatness of the Tri-State Mall without paying homage to the annual carnival, which occupied the southern third of the parking lot. The rides weren't half bad, actually, and the girls were amazing, in their feathered hair, dark eye shadow and roach clip earrings. The Midway games were your standard fare of duck ponds, darts and goldfish bowls. Spider rings were everywhere and if you were really good, you walked off with an Aerosmith clock or REO Speedwagon mirror. It was no Holy Rosary Carnival, that's for sure, but it was always a nice thing to see such a dark place lit up, and for a brief moment, magical.
Sometimes, I long for those semi-innocent days of the Tri-State Mall. The chance to flip those old Playboys on eBay for big bucks, actually buying a velvet Elvis at the Hong Kong Shop and perhaps getting to see what was on the other side of the big metal door in the stairwell. I also would like a chance to have another slice of pizza from the Orange Bowl with whatever is left of the roof of my mouth.
Even if I have to go to Chichester to get it.
How does the Tri-State Mall sound? Back in the day, it's where we hung out, in our Purple CHS jackets with gold lettering, filling up night after night, complaining how bored we were. The Mall was uniquely Claymont. It wasn't really shared as a hangout with any other Delaware school. Notice I said "Delaware" school because the good students of Chichester found a need to hang out there, too. Generally, the two schools kept their distance from each other, but, sooner or later, a cute girl from "Chi" would be talking to a "Claymonster" and before you knew it, a jealous boyfriend emerges from nowhere. Fists are thrown, bodega attendants are yelling and steady-handed bystanders are sneaking hash pipes from under the counter of Village Records in the confusion. Within a week, a simple scuffle gets the grapevine treatment and next thing you know, "oh-my-god!" teenagers are telling a tale of an all-out gang fight, with knives, chains and nuclear warheads; thousands killed, millions of dollars in damage and echoes of "When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way..." filling the air.
As much as we hated the Tri-State Mall, we sure as hell spent a lot of time there. Could there ever be a more delicious and disgusting pizza as you would get from the Orange Bowl? I don't know if that place had seats. Everything seemed to be like a lean-on-the-counter arrangement and lots of orange. LOTS of orange. The pizza itself had a thin crust so firm it could snap a bike chain. It was also heavily floured so when you burnt your mouth of the volcanic cheese, your tongue would magnetize to the bottom (thanks to the flour) so, in effect, you were destroying the roof of your mouth with every bite. Look at the roof of the mouth of any older Claymont folks and it resembles the ceiling of an abandoned farm house. But, ma-a-a-a-a-n, was that the best freakin' pizza in the world. I think they sold insanely-oversalted soft pretzels there, too. They must have had a secret deal with Coke or Pepsi. All that heavy salt and flour conspired in a way that if you didn't have enough money for a drink, you went somewhere else for food. I've seen some first-timers dehydrate in front of my eyes. They run to the doors and collapse in a heap of bones and dust like a time-challenged vampire.
Oh, there were other choices, to be sure. Just next door at Grant's (which then became Grant's City and then K-Mart...I think), they had a little restaurant. Grant's was a department store where you could find a perfectly good scarf in the toy section, a Ted Nugent Album in the bathroom accessories section and some woman smacking her kids so hard and with such skill she never lost the two-inch ash on her Benson & Hedges cigarette in EVERY section. They had a little lunch counter/restaurant thing. I can't remember what it was called, but I remember they had a mascot named Buddy Bradford. Think about that for a second. A department store lunch counter with a mascot they put on everything, including a plastic hand puppet of Mr. Bradford. Hell, Starbucks doesn't even have a mascot. Grant's was also the place of my Cub Scout undoing. Don't feel bad for me - I only signed up to get the knife. My brother, Dave, and I, were at Grant's doing our weekly shoplifting. With us, happened to be two of the baddest dudes around - I won't give their names, and if they are reading this, you know who you are! - who decided to turn on us, run back to our house and rat us out. Dave arrived at the house first. Me? Oh, I took my sweet old time getting home. I figured mom would be completely exhausted taking her anger out on Dave. The most I would get would be the residual. That was the end of my Cub Scout days and besides carving an Ivory Soap canoe, making the worst Soapbox Derby car in the history of the world and being able to legally carry a weapon, my scouting days were largely forgettable.
The Tri-State Mall had a few other unique facets to it, such as the Hong Kong Shop. It was one of those places that had a lot of glass, ceramic and tapestries. It always smelled sweet and intoxicating, almost to the point of being disorienting. The owners were always friendly, but suspicious - as they should have been - and you had to walk VERY carefully through the aisles because one trip over the shoe laces would have resulted in a cataclysmic cascade of every breakable thing in the universe. Me and my friends always flattened ourselves against the left-most wall and made a beeline towards the back corner where the black light posters were. Oh, there were non-black light posters there, like 500 posters of The Doors, a painting of a man holding a lantern with the lyrics to "Stairway to Heaven" and the six-panel "Stoned Again" cartoon. The black light posters were what kept you in the store five hours at a time. There were the multi-colored zodiac velvet posters, some giant, rainbow-themed Spiro-Graph-like drawing and some naked woman with a cheetah and a spectacularly-large afro. The room was small and had a curtain to accentuate the black light wonderfulness. Sometimes, we would just end up being fascinated with how freaky our teeth looked.
Further down the way was Village Records, which had everything - posters, clothing, mirrors, pinball machines and yes, even records. I still remember seeing a price tag on one of my dad's Emerson, Lake & Palmer albums for $4.00. That wasn't a sale price. It was the actual retail price. Bought my first album there, too - "Kiss Alive II" because, well, I rock. Between the Hong King Shop and Village Records, I probably spent a total of 8-9 years, if you add the hours together. And I'm going to get this out of the way now so I never have to revisit this again. In 11th grade, we had a school-wide fund-raiser Dance-a-thon for, I think, Muscular Dystrophy. I was determined to raise more money than anyone, and thanks to an out-of-the-blue donation of $10.00 from Paul Eckler, I barely edged out sophomore Amy Guderian. I was so focused on winning I didn't even think of the fact that, "oh ****, now I have to dance! I can't dance! And now I have to do this for 12 hours?" So there I was, doing the Cabbage Patch Dance, The Smurf and The Curly Shuffle - all with the patented white-man-overbite. Then came the dance contest where everyone formed an alley on both sides for contestants to dance down. I was forced into doing it against my will, especially with the delicious Donna Tenshaw being the judge (man, all the Tenshaw girls were lookers) but proceeded to groove my way down the path. I must have looked like The Joker wrestling a rogue fire hose. By the time I made it to the end, Donna was laughing so hard I thought she was going to snort. As it turned out, I actually won the dance contest, probably based on pure humor alone, and received a gift certificate to Village Records. I took that certificate, won on the musical stylings of "Bette Davis Eyes," "Centerfold," and "Pac-Man Fever" and bought an Ozzy Osbourne shirt. See? It all came around.
The movie theater was one of the best around, for first-run movies. There was even a balcony section where you could smoke, and smoke they did. Smoked things legal and illegal, drank and had their way with their partners. Not a movie went by when you wouldn't hear several empty bottle of something rolling down the aisle - and that was for the Benji movies. I saw Star Wars the first morning it opened - and proceeded to see it 20 more times in the theater. I've only gone to see a movie more than once with one other film (that's a lie, but, whatever) and that was when I went on a date with a girl I really didn't want to go out with, and took her to "Silence of the Lambs." Game. Set. Match. Anyway, it was great to get a large gathering of friends together to bellow, in unison, "Your lack of faith is disturbing," in between Jujubee fights. When I was older, we had another large contingent go see "Halloween II." It was a fun movie to watch with friends and the blood wasn't confined to the screen. The marvelously cute Bev Wilson literally lifted little Tim Troutman out of his seat when she dug her nails into his arm during the scary parts. Tim lost a pint of blood that night. I just have to add this other Tri-State Mall movie theater nugget. For anyone who remembers when "Porky's" came out, tell me you didn't laugh more during that film than any other. It's not the funniest movie around, although it was damned funny, but it was the funniest movie to watch in the theater. The Cherry Forever scene, Michael Hunt scene, the hysterical assistant gym teacher - and the legendary shower scene made you laugh yourself sober. Good times.
On the opposite side of the Mall from Grant's was Wilmington Dry Goods, which is worth mentioning primarily for the fun we used to have sliding down the escalator handrails. But something dark was at the bottom of those stairs...something sinister. There was a lower level, which was split-level and perpendicular to the main floor of the mall, like a strip mall super glued to the proper one. My mom used to work at the lamp store down there with some of the most amazing-looking women (including my mom). One night, when, thankfully, my mom wasn't working, two of them were robbed at gunpoint. There was a stairwell next to the lamp store which also led up to the main level. Mom arrived one morning to open the store and saw firemen hosing down the stairs. Apparently, one of the girls who worked at the massage parlor was blown away by some nut job (who was finally captured LAST YEAR) and they were cleaning up the aftermath. Mid-way up the stairwell was a recessed metal door, behind which was a highly exclusive massage parlor. I'm sure nothing illegal was ever happening back there, and even if I wasn't sure, I value my life too much even 25 years later to tell you what I really think. There was also a comic book shop on that lower level. Ever watch The Simpsons? Know who "Comic Book Guy" (Jeff Albertson) is? Well, THIS guy looked exactly like him - ponytail, goatee...stunning, really. Aside from having some of the more obscure comics and being a birthing ground for aspiring Dungeons & Dragons players, he had the most extensive collection of Playboy magazines - going back to the early 1960's. Even though we were nowhere near legal age, he still let us buy them. You know how it is when you're young - you go to buy a Playboy, look around first, check out the Sports Illustrated, flip through an Archie's comic, your eyes shifting this way and that - then, you gather all the possible nerve you possess and reach for the magazine. Then, you quickly slither your way to the register and get the hell out of there as soon as possible. You'd always buy a newspaper and maybe a MAD Magazine to provide some subterfuge in case you were ever approached. And yeah, I had the first Bo Derek issue.
Of course, you cannot celebrate the greatness of the Tri-State Mall without paying homage to the annual carnival, which occupied the southern third of the parking lot. The rides weren't half bad, actually, and the girls were amazing, in their feathered hair, dark eye shadow and roach clip earrings. The Midway games were your standard fare of duck ponds, darts and goldfish bowls. Spider rings were everywhere and if you were really good, you walked off with an Aerosmith clock or REO Speedwagon mirror. It was no Holy Rosary Carnival, that's for sure, but it was always a nice thing to see such a dark place lit up, and for a brief moment, magical.
Sometimes, I long for those semi-innocent days of the Tri-State Mall. The chance to flip those old Playboys on eBay for big bucks, actually buying a velvet Elvis at the Hong Kong Shop and perhaps getting to see what was on the other side of the big metal door in the stairwell. I also would like a chance to have another slice of pizza from the Orange Bowl with whatever is left of the roof of my mouth.
Even if I have to go to Chichester to get it.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Claymont, Part 1
I grew up in Claymont, Delaware. I was not born there; that dubious distinction falls on the unfortunate shoulders of Chester, Pennsylvania, but Claymont was home to me for almost all of my first 18 years on this planet. For many years after I left, I regarded it as a place best viewed in the rear-view mirror. I was fond of my own cheeky description when describing it to non-residents: "Claymont: A Nice Place to Leave." Slowly, as I have grown older and maybe a smidgeon more intelligent, I have come to regret those sentiments. I always regarded Claymont as a collection of bland, split-level houses, suspect apartment buildings and a biting resentment for the more affluent neighborhoods. I suppose that still exists to some degree today, but, if we're being honest here, the same could be said for almost every middle class suburban community in this country. Maybe it's taken me longer than most people to understand Claymont isn't defined by what lies in its borders, but who lives in it.
I have recently been in contact with some people from my past. This, naturally led to digging out and dusting off the old high school yearbooks - and in one case, an old middle school yearbook. What I saw shocked me. I realized the people with whom I attended school were actually some pretty likable folks. Some of them were downright terrific people. And the teachers, the ones I loathed and rebelled against so long ago were actually decent and often amazing people. It would be convenient and maybe even logically correct to tuck into my Claymont experiences by starting at the beginning, but memories played out in a chronological manner steal a little bit of the magic for me. Sometimes, it's just more emotionally satisfying to chase the rabbit down the hole and embrace whatever dirt gets kicked back into my face.
I grew up in a development known as Greentree. It was one of those 1960s-era sections perfect for the first post-World War II generation to buy an affordable house for less than $20,000. It's where the promise of newly-planted trees would deliver ample shade once the young parents of the day sent their children to college, the military or the working world a decade or two later. The streets were all named for different trees: Plum Tree, Elm Tree, Birch Tree, Walnut Tree, Peach Tree...well, you get the picture. It was Americana, with children's bike parades on the Fourth of July, Little League and flashlight tag, back when it was safe for young kids to be out, unattended, at night. Maybe it's me, but in the 1970's, it seemed there were more kids swarming throughout the neighborhood than a smacked hornet's nest. If you wanted to make mud pies, play street hockey or throw rocks at the train, you never had any difficulty finding several accomplices.
Oh that. Yeah, well, I cannot say I condone it now, but when were young, throwing rocks at the passing trains was one of our daily pastimes. The tracks were in the woods about 500 feet from my house. To hear the horn was similar to the sound of the Good Humor man in that dozens of kids high-stepped it out the door, all of us at top speed, to await our lumbering, metallic victim. The tracks had an endless supply of pirogue-sized rocks, perfect for winging. The goal was to hit the train as many times as possible and create a spark when one of the rocks hit a piece of metal JUST right. Our "station" was about 10 feet below the tracks on the west side of the slope. It was quite a sight. All these kids of varying ages rifling dangerous projectiles without any fear of danger, repercussion or common sense. The locomotive was always off-limits because, well, because we could get in trouble if the conductor slammed on the brakes. Never mind the fact by the time the train would stop, he would be miles away. We were just afraid of the railroad police which would patrol the tracks from time to time. The caboose, on the other hand, was not only fair game, it was the ultimate target. The caboose was legendary. There was always someone in the group who knew someone who knew someone who said there was a person who sat in the caboose waiting for smart-alecks like us, just aching for a chance to blast us with a salt rifle. For some reason, that never deterred us. If anything, it just made us more determined to knock the windows out of the caboose. How we all didn't end up in the Boy's Home is one of God's miracles.
We had a great cast of characters: Freddie and Donie (yes, he spelled it "Donie") Lang, who were two of the few African-American kids who would come around, the three Kevins - me, Kevin Smith and Kevin Grant, Greg Newton, Eddie Kupsick, Tommy Patton, Bobby Cook, Rich Piroli, Kenny Radke...the list was endless, but the one who made it his life's mission to enact as much anarchy wherever he went was my best friend, Raymond Butler. I'll get to him later, because he is worth an entire book by himself. Even my very first friend, Steve Jennings, who was 6 feet eight at birth and by all accounts one of the kindest, most decent people I have ever known, could get caught up in the excitement, hurling rocks at the train with such force they sucked the air out of your lungs when they whizzed over your head.
However, when trains weren't available, we needed something else to occupy our time. So what do adolescent boys do when they don't have easily-available trouble to get into? That's right, we created our own. There was a Wawa convenience store on the other side of the slope of the train tracks. We would buy or steal our daily supplies of chocolate milk, soda, chips, Tastykakes and candy and sit on the rails of the tracks, waiting for something to happen. Then, a funny thing would happen. No one would leave. No one would leave because the minute you descended the rock-covered slope and disappeared into the canopy of trees of the adjacent woods, someone - usually Freddy, but we were all guilty - would yell "Rock 'em!" and with that, dozens upon dozens of rocks would rain down in the projected direction of the kid who had the temerity to leave the boredom of a hot July day at the tracks to go do something else. When we weren't attempting to cold-cock our friends, our rock-throwing would be focused on the back of the mini-strip mall that housed the Wawa: Carpenter Station. There was a dance studio which would sometimes have the back door open for ventilation. Claymont was a blue collar town, which is another way of saying, "We mock what we don't understand." Culture, especially dancing, was lost on a bunch of scraggly-haired delinquents such as us. So, we responded in the best way we knew how, by trying to throw rocks through the back door of the studio. Can you imagine watching these dangerous missiles skipping across the floor as young girls are practicing their five positions, chassés and chaînés? When the prospect of being strangled by the dancers' fathers proved off-putting, we shifted our attention one door down to the back of the arcade.
It was known as "The Arc," but the official name was TJ's, I believe. The owner's father pretty much ran the place but we understood the "true" ownership was in the name of his infant grandson, for tax purposes. The back door was made of this very resonant aluminum, which, when struck by a rock, would make a sound so loud, neighbors several hundred yards away thought we dynamited a garbage truck. Eventually, you just want a place to hang out and even brainless miscreants like us realized we needed to find a more constructive way to be destructive; a better target, in other words. So, we chose each other.
We already had been used to having rocks showering down on us whenever we left the sanctity of the tracks. In time, you do things like try to pick off bottles we set up on the rails. Sometimes, we wouldn't wait for the person setting up to get out of the way, which was usually followed by "I'm going to kill you!" or "You son of a..." This eventually evolved - or devolved - into us breaking into teams maybe 30 yards away and firing rocks at each other. There was no malice intended; it was just a way to burn up the hours of a lazy summer afternoon. Sometimes, when it was just Ray and me, we would station ourselves 50 feet from each other and try to bean the other. We did have rules, though. You had to wait for the other guy to throw his rock first before your next throw, no decoy lobs in order to set up a kill shot, and skipping shots off the rail was worth double. So, there we would be, best friends trying to brain each other while talking about how this new guy, Dallas Green, was going to be a better or worse manager for the Phillies than Danny Ozark, the new Kansas album or when Ray was going to go back home and steal money from his mom's purse so we could grab a pizza pie in Northtowne Plaza next to the Super Saver grocery store.
While Ray and I could generate our own brand of mischief, sometimes it came gift-wrapped to us. Like many neighborhoods, people are always up in each others' business. My community was no different. When Gina Giantonio's house went up in flames on Elm Tree Lane, the crowd was so thick it was like people were waiting for Jesus himself to emerge from the flames. It was the social event of the season. Cute girls you always liked never failed to show up (I'm looking at you, Barb and Carol Tenshaw and Christine Lewandowski). Adult neighbors would be standing, cross-armed, shaking their heads at how disgraceful it was so many people are watching someone else's life being destroyed in full public view. The volunteer fire fighters were looked at like rock stars, including our friend, James Mayfield, a high school student and the first African-American volunteer fire fighter in Claymont. It had all the makings of a block party. All we needed was a hot dog cart, sparklers and someone selling t-shirts with iron-on decals of bug-eyed maniacs power-shifting over-sized GTO engines. Standing there with Ray, watching the Giantonios' house being destroyed wasn't really celebrating the fact, though. Not a single one of us didn't imagine our thoughts if it was our own house. Even Gina and her younger brother Nicky would have attended the burning of someone else's house. There was something intoxicating about sharing a terrible event with others. It brought the residents closer, in some weird way. A camaraderie gets forged, if only for a little while. These weren't necessarily bad people, and truth be told, we weren't evil kids. We simply had a destructive streak that was meant to fill the boredom of the days.
I think perhaps I held a distaste for Claymont because it held up a mirror to myself, of all the distasteful things I was in denial about in my own character, but I now realize circumstance and subjective limitations cloud the mind. These weren't bad people. In fact, we had some very good people. People like James Mayfield, Steve Jennings and the people who offered their help and support to the Giantonios, among many, many others. It's a reason I am returning to my roots to write this series of valentines to the place I called home for so many years and has shaped me, for better or worse, into the person I am today. I don't know where this road may lead, much as I did not know where it was leading all those years ago, but I want to invite you along with me to discover something that will exist within me forever and maybe give you a chance to visit a place of your own you may have left behind. It may not be the same location as mine, but it might be the same place:
Home.
I have recently been in contact with some people from my past. This, naturally led to digging out and dusting off the old high school yearbooks - and in one case, an old middle school yearbook. What I saw shocked me. I realized the people with whom I attended school were actually some pretty likable folks. Some of them were downright terrific people. And the teachers, the ones I loathed and rebelled against so long ago were actually decent and often amazing people. It would be convenient and maybe even logically correct to tuck into my Claymont experiences by starting at the beginning, but memories played out in a chronological manner steal a little bit of the magic for me. Sometimes, it's just more emotionally satisfying to chase the rabbit down the hole and embrace whatever dirt gets kicked back into my face.
I grew up in a development known as Greentree. It was one of those 1960s-era sections perfect for the first post-World War II generation to buy an affordable house for less than $20,000. It's where the promise of newly-planted trees would deliver ample shade once the young parents of the day sent their children to college, the military or the working world a decade or two later. The streets were all named for different trees: Plum Tree, Elm Tree, Birch Tree, Walnut Tree, Peach Tree...well, you get the picture. It was Americana, with children's bike parades on the Fourth of July, Little League and flashlight tag, back when it was safe for young kids to be out, unattended, at night. Maybe it's me, but in the 1970's, it seemed there were more kids swarming throughout the neighborhood than a smacked hornet's nest. If you wanted to make mud pies, play street hockey or throw rocks at the train, you never had any difficulty finding several accomplices.
Oh that. Yeah, well, I cannot say I condone it now, but when were young, throwing rocks at the passing trains was one of our daily pastimes. The tracks were in the woods about 500 feet from my house. To hear the horn was similar to the sound of the Good Humor man in that dozens of kids high-stepped it out the door, all of us at top speed, to await our lumbering, metallic victim. The tracks had an endless supply of pirogue-sized rocks, perfect for winging. The goal was to hit the train as many times as possible and create a spark when one of the rocks hit a piece of metal JUST right. Our "station" was about 10 feet below the tracks on the west side of the slope. It was quite a sight. All these kids of varying ages rifling dangerous projectiles without any fear of danger, repercussion or common sense. The locomotive was always off-limits because, well, because we could get in trouble if the conductor slammed on the brakes. Never mind the fact by the time the train would stop, he would be miles away. We were just afraid of the railroad police which would patrol the tracks from time to time. The caboose, on the other hand, was not only fair game, it was the ultimate target. The caboose was legendary. There was always someone in the group who knew someone who knew someone who said there was a person who sat in the caboose waiting for smart-alecks like us, just aching for a chance to blast us with a salt rifle. For some reason, that never deterred us. If anything, it just made us more determined to knock the windows out of the caboose. How we all didn't end up in the Boy's Home is one of God's miracles.
We had a great cast of characters: Freddie and Donie (yes, he spelled it "Donie") Lang, who were two of the few African-American kids who would come around, the three Kevins - me, Kevin Smith and Kevin Grant, Greg Newton, Eddie Kupsick, Tommy Patton, Bobby Cook, Rich Piroli, Kenny Radke...the list was endless, but the one who made it his life's mission to enact as much anarchy wherever he went was my best friend, Raymond Butler. I'll get to him later, because he is worth an entire book by himself. Even my very first friend, Steve Jennings, who was 6 feet eight at birth and by all accounts one of the kindest, most decent people I have ever known, could get caught up in the excitement, hurling rocks at the train with such force they sucked the air out of your lungs when they whizzed over your head.
However, when trains weren't available, we needed something else to occupy our time. So what do adolescent boys do when they don't have easily-available trouble to get into? That's right, we created our own. There was a Wawa convenience store on the other side of the slope of the train tracks. We would buy or steal our daily supplies of chocolate milk, soda, chips, Tastykakes and candy and sit on the rails of the tracks, waiting for something to happen. Then, a funny thing would happen. No one would leave. No one would leave because the minute you descended the rock-covered slope and disappeared into the canopy of trees of the adjacent woods, someone - usually Freddy, but we were all guilty - would yell "Rock 'em!" and with that, dozens upon dozens of rocks would rain down in the projected direction of the kid who had the temerity to leave the boredom of a hot July day at the tracks to go do something else. When we weren't attempting to cold-cock our friends, our rock-throwing would be focused on the back of the mini-strip mall that housed the Wawa: Carpenter Station. There was a dance studio which would sometimes have the back door open for ventilation. Claymont was a blue collar town, which is another way of saying, "We mock what we don't understand." Culture, especially dancing, was lost on a bunch of scraggly-haired delinquents such as us. So, we responded in the best way we knew how, by trying to throw rocks through the back door of the studio. Can you imagine watching these dangerous missiles skipping across the floor as young girls are practicing their five positions, chassés and chaînés? When the prospect of being strangled by the dancers' fathers proved off-putting, we shifted our attention one door down to the back of the arcade.
It was known as "The Arc," but the official name was TJ's, I believe. The owner's father pretty much ran the place but we understood the "true" ownership was in the name of his infant grandson, for tax purposes. The back door was made of this very resonant aluminum, which, when struck by a rock, would make a sound so loud, neighbors several hundred yards away thought we dynamited a garbage truck. Eventually, you just want a place to hang out and even brainless miscreants like us realized we needed to find a more constructive way to be destructive; a better target, in other words. So, we chose each other.
We already had been used to having rocks showering down on us whenever we left the sanctity of the tracks. In time, you do things like try to pick off bottles we set up on the rails. Sometimes, we wouldn't wait for the person setting up to get out of the way, which was usually followed by "I'm going to kill you!" or "You son of a..." This eventually evolved - or devolved - into us breaking into teams maybe 30 yards away and firing rocks at each other. There was no malice intended; it was just a way to burn up the hours of a lazy summer afternoon. Sometimes, when it was just Ray and me, we would station ourselves 50 feet from each other and try to bean the other. We did have rules, though. You had to wait for the other guy to throw his rock first before your next throw, no decoy lobs in order to set up a kill shot, and skipping shots off the rail was worth double. So, there we would be, best friends trying to brain each other while talking about how this new guy, Dallas Green, was going to be a better or worse manager for the Phillies than Danny Ozark, the new Kansas album or when Ray was going to go back home and steal money from his mom's purse so we could grab a pizza pie in Northtowne Plaza next to the Super Saver grocery store.
While Ray and I could generate our own brand of mischief, sometimes it came gift-wrapped to us. Like many neighborhoods, people are always up in each others' business. My community was no different. When Gina Giantonio's house went up in flames on Elm Tree Lane, the crowd was so thick it was like people were waiting for Jesus himself to emerge from the flames. It was the social event of the season. Cute girls you always liked never failed to show up (I'm looking at you, Barb and Carol Tenshaw and Christine Lewandowski). Adult neighbors would be standing, cross-armed, shaking their heads at how disgraceful it was so many people are watching someone else's life being destroyed in full public view. The volunteer fire fighters were looked at like rock stars, including our friend, James Mayfield, a high school student and the first African-American volunteer fire fighter in Claymont. It had all the makings of a block party. All we needed was a hot dog cart, sparklers and someone selling t-shirts with iron-on decals of bug-eyed maniacs power-shifting over-sized GTO engines. Standing there with Ray, watching the Giantonios' house being destroyed wasn't really celebrating the fact, though. Not a single one of us didn't imagine our thoughts if it was our own house. Even Gina and her younger brother Nicky would have attended the burning of someone else's house. There was something intoxicating about sharing a terrible event with others. It brought the residents closer, in some weird way. A camaraderie gets forged, if only for a little while. These weren't necessarily bad people, and truth be told, we weren't evil kids. We simply had a destructive streak that was meant to fill the boredom of the days.
I think perhaps I held a distaste for Claymont because it held up a mirror to myself, of all the distasteful things I was in denial about in my own character, but I now realize circumstance and subjective limitations cloud the mind. These weren't bad people. In fact, we had some very good people. People like James Mayfield, Steve Jennings and the people who offered their help and support to the Giantonios, among many, many others. It's a reason I am returning to my roots to write this series of valentines to the place I called home for so many years and has shaped me, for better or worse, into the person I am today. I don't know where this road may lead, much as I did not know where it was leading all those years ago, but I want to invite you along with me to discover something that will exist within me forever and maybe give you a chance to visit a place of your own you may have left behind. It may not be the same location as mine, but it might be the same place:
Home.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
The Birth of Cool
We're at that time of the year where I like to mess with peoples' heads - the dead of Winter. Actually, that's a bit of a misnomer since the first day of Winter is tomorrow (Sunday)...
(A little aside here. As I was typing "Sunday," I actually typed "Sinday." Just thought you'd like to know that. Anyway, back to your story...already in progress)
Either way, folks appear to claim the start of December as the beginning of Winter by default. For those who worship the sun and carry an incandescent, nuclear glow year-round, Winter begins the day after Labor Day. For those who live at the Equator, they're too far away to matter for this story and aren't my target audience anyway. You see, I hate wearing pants. I'll pause while you think disgusting thoughts. What I mean is I love wearing shorts - year round, no matter the weather. Yes, I'm one of THOSE guys. We're usually single because we're insane. Friends, strangers and various domesticated animals give me the ol' wonk-eye when they see me easing my way into Best Buy or cruising the produce section of the supermarket in shorts while a Himalayan nightmare was piling up outside so fiercely the Abominable Snowman would be pounding on the store windows yelling, "Someone throw me a freakin' sweater!"
It's not like I'm trying to prove a point. I'm not one of those drunken chuckleheads you see at a Chicago Bears home game, shirtless and painted, with his 1970s-era sunglasses and wooly bear mustache boldly announcing "Bon Voyage" to his sanity for millions of us unfortunate viewers. For me, it's all about comfort. If I felt more comfortable wearing an admiral's hat and Buckingham Palace guard's jacket, I'd flit about town in that, but I can't pull of wearing red and I'm not much of a hat guy, anyway. My friend, Tim, is incredulous about this fact and continually tries to convince me to stop, which, of course, will never happen. As you know, I include my non-work friends in my stories, so if you're not familiar with Tim, consider this a primer.
Tim was a roommate of mine here, in Delaware and previously, in Cleveland. A relentless social dervish, Tim is easy to like, and if you don't like him, he'll eventually make you like him. When we lived in Cleveland, the Lake Effect Snow (capitalized, for your pleasure) was as unpredictable as a schizophrenic in a Hall of Mirrors. I recall driving to work and there being about six inches of snow on one side of the street and the other side of the street looking like a Frosted Mini-Wheat. I half-expected my alarm clock to go off after a purple tornado of vampires touched down in one of my tamer dreams. One fine March Sunday, we went down to the waterfront to listen to some bands and grab a bite to eat. It was in the mid-70s, I wasn't the only person in shorts and one could almost detect the faint smell of cocoa butter. Tim had a Jeep and put the top down, and for one glorious day in March, we were kings of the world.
Then came Monday. It snowed. Tim, rushing to get to work that morning, didn't have time to put the top up on his Jeep, and it was coming down pretty hard. Tim, in his suit, was struggled to keep hold of his Cool Points and by the time he arrived at work, he looked like a Sugar-Coated Businessman (again, capitalized, for your pleasure). This was back in 1994 and they're still thawing him out today. I'm just hoping he doesn't come back as Encino Man. If you haven't seen the movie, I'll save you the trouble of looking it up on Netflix and suggest you watch mold grow on your bread. Better plot, funnier and better acting.
Taking the Mind Shuttle (again, capitalized...never mind) back to Delaware. In Cleveland, and other snow-encumbered places, they're prepared for snow. As the first flake is about to hit the ground, the snow plows are already shifting out of first gear. Here, in Delaware, when one of the local Weather Guessers predicts snow, there is an almost biblical charge to the hardware stores and supermarkets. Everyone takes a large swig of Stupid and has a Dagwood-sized bite from the Irrational Overreaction Sandwich (...), it makes an 1800s cattle drive look like an Elementary School Halloween parade. In fact, I recall the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse hanging out in the parking lot trying to get anyone's attention:
War: "Um, hello! Excuse me. Can I just get your atten..."
Death: "Forget it, we can't handle this."
Famine: "Why are we in front of a grocery store? I'm FAMINE, remember?"
Pestilence: "Who's the idiot in the shorts?"
Weather does that to people. It turns relatively insane people more insane. People fighting over snow shovels, rock salt and canned peaches, everyone losing their minds and mentally filling out their wills as another Winter storm front lurks several hundred miles away. Survivalists laughing themselves silly from their rural fortresses, yelling to the television, "See? I TOLD you! But you wouldn't listen!" Meanwhile, I'll be home, kicked back in my shorts, eating whatever I can jimmy free from the sides of my refrigerator, completely oblivious to the pandemonium outside. When I'm hungry, I'll hitch up my shorts and start the car, secure in the knowledge that, since everyone else is bunkered down, I won't have to wait in line anywhere. You just have to keep your wits about you. See, it's one thing to be cold.
It's another thing entirely to be cool.
(A little aside here. As I was typing "Sunday," I actually typed "Sinday." Just thought you'd like to know that. Anyway, back to your story...already in progress)
Either way, folks appear to claim the start of December as the beginning of Winter by default. For those who worship the sun and carry an incandescent, nuclear glow year-round, Winter begins the day after Labor Day. For those who live at the Equator, they're too far away to matter for this story and aren't my target audience anyway. You see, I hate wearing pants. I'll pause while you think disgusting thoughts. What I mean is I love wearing shorts - year round, no matter the weather. Yes, I'm one of THOSE guys. We're usually single because we're insane. Friends, strangers and various domesticated animals give me the ol' wonk-eye when they see me easing my way into Best Buy or cruising the produce section of the supermarket in shorts while a Himalayan nightmare was piling up outside so fiercely the Abominable Snowman would be pounding on the store windows yelling, "Someone throw me a freakin' sweater!"
It's not like I'm trying to prove a point. I'm not one of those drunken chuckleheads you see at a Chicago Bears home game, shirtless and painted, with his 1970s-era sunglasses and wooly bear mustache boldly announcing "Bon Voyage" to his sanity for millions of us unfortunate viewers. For me, it's all about comfort. If I felt more comfortable wearing an admiral's hat and Buckingham Palace guard's jacket, I'd flit about town in that, but I can't pull of wearing red and I'm not much of a hat guy, anyway. My friend, Tim, is incredulous about this fact and continually tries to convince me to stop, which, of course, will never happen. As you know, I include my non-work friends in my stories, so if you're not familiar with Tim, consider this a primer.
Tim was a roommate of mine here, in Delaware and previously, in Cleveland. A relentless social dervish, Tim is easy to like, and if you don't like him, he'll eventually make you like him. When we lived in Cleveland, the Lake Effect Snow (capitalized, for your pleasure) was as unpredictable as a schizophrenic in a Hall of Mirrors. I recall driving to work and there being about six inches of snow on one side of the street and the other side of the street looking like a Frosted Mini-Wheat. I half-expected my alarm clock to go off after a purple tornado of vampires touched down in one of my tamer dreams. One fine March Sunday, we went down to the waterfront to listen to some bands and grab a bite to eat. It was in the mid-70s, I wasn't the only person in shorts and one could almost detect the faint smell of cocoa butter. Tim had a Jeep and put the top down, and for one glorious day in March, we were kings of the world.
Then came Monday. It snowed. Tim, rushing to get to work that morning, didn't have time to put the top up on his Jeep, and it was coming down pretty hard. Tim, in his suit, was struggled to keep hold of his Cool Points and by the time he arrived at work, he looked like a Sugar-Coated Businessman (again, capitalized, for your pleasure). This was back in 1994 and they're still thawing him out today. I'm just hoping he doesn't come back as Encino Man. If you haven't seen the movie, I'll save you the trouble of looking it up on Netflix and suggest you watch mold grow on your bread. Better plot, funnier and better acting.
Taking the Mind Shuttle (again, capitalized...never mind) back to Delaware. In Cleveland, and other snow-encumbered places, they're prepared for snow. As the first flake is about to hit the ground, the snow plows are already shifting out of first gear. Here, in Delaware, when one of the local Weather Guessers predicts snow, there is an almost biblical charge to the hardware stores and supermarkets. Everyone takes a large swig of Stupid and has a Dagwood-sized bite from the Irrational Overreaction Sandwich (...), it makes an 1800s cattle drive look like an Elementary School Halloween parade. In fact, I recall the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse hanging out in the parking lot trying to get anyone's attention:
War: "Um, hello! Excuse me. Can I just get your atten..."
Death: "Forget it, we can't handle this."
Famine: "Why are we in front of a grocery store? I'm FAMINE, remember?"
Pestilence: "Who's the idiot in the shorts?"
Weather does that to people. It turns relatively insane people more insane. People fighting over snow shovels, rock salt and canned peaches, everyone losing their minds and mentally filling out their wills as another Winter storm front lurks several hundred miles away. Survivalists laughing themselves silly from their rural fortresses, yelling to the television, "See? I TOLD you! But you wouldn't listen!" Meanwhile, I'll be home, kicked back in my shorts, eating whatever I can jimmy free from the sides of my refrigerator, completely oblivious to the pandemonium outside. When I'm hungry, I'll hitch up my shorts and start the car, secure in the knowledge that, since everyone else is bunkered down, I won't have to wait in line anywhere. You just have to keep your wits about you. See, it's one thing to be cold.
It's another thing entirely to be cool.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Give Up the Funk!
As a crotchety 40-something, I owe certain debts to society. One such debt happens to be my never-ending rebel yell railing against the state of music of the past 10 - 15 years. There is no shortage of bulls eyes on which to focus my high-powered assault rifle. It really isn't fair, to be honest with you. It's like challenging a convent of armless nuns to a tug-of-war with a dead water buffalo as my anchor man.
But, this isn't about snatching such low-hanging fruit. No, this is about the almost sudden and inexplicable disappearance of a treasured musical form. Now, before you make your usual incorrect guesses, let me first say it's not about the vanishing of heavy metal barbershop music, punk flugelhorn or country/western opera. It's the milk carton-worthy extinction of Funk.
There was a time you couldn't flip on an AM radio or tune into one of the UHF stations and not get your groove on to some of the most funkelectric sounds this side of George Clinton's mothership. Leading the parade would be the monstrously smooth Don Cornelius, he of the tinted-window shades, dazzling rings and Harvey's Bristol Cream voice, hosting another fuzzy-pictured session of Soul Train. You didn't even need to be a fan of Funk to get righteous with the mega-afroed cats bubbling out beats like an overheated cauldron, but it helped. When they got down with the showcase dance, or whatever it was called - you know the one where the dancers lined up across from each other while couples snapped and popped their way down the middle - there wasn't a single two-legged, multi-celled organism who could resist playing air bass watching all those wide lapels, towering platforms and thick belts groove their way into your living room.
And the acts! Parliament-Funkadelic, Earth, Wind & Fire, Heatwave, Curtis Mayfield, Sly & the Family Stone, Kool & the Gang, The O'Jays, The Brothers Johnson and even Stevie Wonder - he of the highly dangerous and should-be-outlawed "Ebony and Ivory" - could crank out the funk like it was nobody's business. It wasn't just music, it was a block party clocking in at four minutes and thirty seconds per song. Even a miserably uncoordinated jester like yours truly would have the money-maker cranked up to "Full Boogie," knocking unread Social Studies books, Little League trophies and Aqua Velva bottles across the room.
Some would blame rap music for Funk's demise, but I can't get behind that. The Gang from good ol' Sugar Hill, Newcleus, Cameo, Melle Mel, The Gap Band, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five and the irrepressible Kurtis Blow were early to the rap scene without sacrificing any of the funk. And if you still think Funk wasn't a major player in the 80s, look up the Purple Lord of Funk, Prince, or whatever hieroglyphic he goes by these days, and his stable of proteges, including Sheila E and the Clown Prince of Sex-ay, Morris Day and The Time. Oh, there have been recording artists out there who have tried to resuscitate and kick-start funk by paying homage to the masters (I'm looking at you, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jamiroquai), but it just was never able to get off the disabled list once grunge, gangsta rap, prefabricated pop and the Coor's Light-drinking/khaki-wearing/SUV-driving/play-dates-for-the-kids, doughy, middle class-embraced Hootie, Dave Matthews, Matchbox 20 and soundalikes (of which there are several million) started clogging up the airwaves like an airport toilet.
I always believed then, and I still believe now, music shouldn't be a passive experience. It has to be pulled out of the listener. Sometimes it is caressed out of your heart; sometimes it is hypnotically teased from your soul; and sometimes...sometimes, it explodes from every pore on your body. That's what Funk does. It turns you inside out, like a hand grenade in a microwave. Know that expression, "Dance like no one is watching?" well THAT is what Funk does to you. It's arms, legs, booty, head, the whole magilla, not unlike when you were young and, as a joke, told your loudest aunt she had a hornet hovering around her head. You never thought you could see a woman her size move like that. She was a double-knit blur.
While it's true the best Funk was primarily generated from the legends of the African-American community, Funk's appeal crossed racial lines, genders and socio-economic classes. Don't believe me? Then tell me, wasn't that YOUR mom, uncle or grandmother spilling their scotch and soda onto the dance floor at your cousin's wedding while singing, "Play that funky music, white boy!..." wildly off-key? Yeah, thought so.
I dream of a day when Funk is resurrected, when I can flip through the high-definition channels of the satellite television and stumble upon between five and fifteen dudes in matching multi-color outfits, wild sunglasses and big whacked-out afros with lasers and smoke, all of them grooving the same dance steps in time. I'll crowbar my ragged carcass off the couch, reach for a broom handle and pop and groove right along with them, knocking Sudoku puzzles, lottery tickets and bottles of Gold Bond across the room. No matter what else is going on in my life and whatever worries I might have - the economy, rising unemployment, nations who wish us harm - will disappear for that four minutes and thirty seconds of Boogie Bliss.
I can't move without groovin' and I'll be groovin' 'til I'm done. I'll be groovin' to the funk.
Can't have "Funk" without "Fun".
But, this isn't about snatching such low-hanging fruit. No, this is about the almost sudden and inexplicable disappearance of a treasured musical form. Now, before you make your usual incorrect guesses, let me first say it's not about the vanishing of heavy metal barbershop music, punk flugelhorn or country/western opera. It's the milk carton-worthy extinction of Funk.
There was a time you couldn't flip on an AM radio or tune into one of the UHF stations and not get your groove on to some of the most funkelectric sounds this side of George Clinton's mothership. Leading the parade would be the monstrously smooth Don Cornelius, he of the tinted-window shades, dazzling rings and Harvey's Bristol Cream voice, hosting another fuzzy-pictured session of Soul Train. You didn't even need to be a fan of Funk to get righteous with the mega-afroed cats bubbling out beats like an overheated cauldron, but it helped. When they got down with the showcase dance, or whatever it was called - you know the one where the dancers lined up across from each other while couples snapped and popped their way down the middle - there wasn't a single two-legged, multi-celled organism who could resist playing air bass watching all those wide lapels, towering platforms and thick belts groove their way into your living room.
And the acts! Parliament-Funkadelic, Earth, Wind & Fire, Heatwave, Curtis Mayfield, Sly & the Family Stone, Kool & the Gang, The O'Jays, The Brothers Johnson and even Stevie Wonder - he of the highly dangerous and should-be-outlawed "Ebony and Ivory" - could crank out the funk like it was nobody's business. It wasn't just music, it was a block party clocking in at four minutes and thirty seconds per song. Even a miserably uncoordinated jester like yours truly would have the money-maker cranked up to "Full Boogie," knocking unread Social Studies books, Little League trophies and Aqua Velva bottles across the room.
Some would blame rap music for Funk's demise, but I can't get behind that. The Gang from good ol' Sugar Hill, Newcleus, Cameo, Melle Mel, The Gap Band, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five and the irrepressible Kurtis Blow were early to the rap scene without sacrificing any of the funk. And if you still think Funk wasn't a major player in the 80s, look up the Purple Lord of Funk, Prince, or whatever hieroglyphic he goes by these days, and his stable of proteges, including Sheila E and the Clown Prince of Sex-ay, Morris Day and The Time. Oh, there have been recording artists out there who have tried to resuscitate and kick-start funk by paying homage to the masters (I'm looking at you, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jamiroquai), but it just was never able to get off the disabled list once grunge, gangsta rap, prefabricated pop and the Coor's Light-drinking/khaki-wearing/SUV-driving/play-dates-for-the-kids, doughy, middle class-embraced Hootie, Dave Matthews, Matchbox 20 and soundalikes (of which there are several million) started clogging up the airwaves like an airport toilet.
I always believed then, and I still believe now, music shouldn't be a passive experience. It has to be pulled out of the listener. Sometimes it is caressed out of your heart; sometimes it is hypnotically teased from your soul; and sometimes...sometimes, it explodes from every pore on your body. That's what Funk does. It turns you inside out, like a hand grenade in a microwave. Know that expression, "Dance like no one is watching?" well THAT is what Funk does to you. It's arms, legs, booty, head, the whole magilla, not unlike when you were young and, as a joke, told your loudest aunt she had a hornet hovering around her head. You never thought you could see a woman her size move like that. She was a double-knit blur.
While it's true the best Funk was primarily generated from the legends of the African-American community, Funk's appeal crossed racial lines, genders and socio-economic classes. Don't believe me? Then tell me, wasn't that YOUR mom, uncle or grandmother spilling their scotch and soda onto the dance floor at your cousin's wedding while singing, "Play that funky music, white boy!..." wildly off-key? Yeah, thought so.
I dream of a day when Funk is resurrected, when I can flip through the high-definition channels of the satellite television and stumble upon between five and fifteen dudes in matching multi-color outfits, wild sunglasses and big whacked-out afros with lasers and smoke, all of them grooving the same dance steps in time. I'll crowbar my ragged carcass off the couch, reach for a broom handle and pop and groove right along with them, knocking Sudoku puzzles, lottery tickets and bottles of Gold Bond across the room. No matter what else is going on in my life and whatever worries I might have - the economy, rising unemployment, nations who wish us harm - will disappear for that four minutes and thirty seconds of Boogie Bliss.
I can't move without groovin' and I'll be groovin' 'til I'm done. I'll be groovin' to the funk.
Can't have "Funk" without "Fun".
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
I Hope There's a Heaven (For Liz)
I hope there's a Heaven.
I found out last night my best friend, Liz Roberts, passed away this weekend. I have felt lost and untethered ever since. She was the best person I have ever known in this world. She made me a better person, a better man. More importantly, she made me want to be a better man. She was nonjudgmental and endlessly encouraging. She was everything that was good and right in this world. She was smart, compassionate, very witty and dear. I talked with her every day for over four years. She lived in Connecticut while I was in Delaware. Every night, at seven, we would talk about everything and nothing. The fact we never ran out of things to talk and laugh about speaks volumes about the friendship we had
I hope there's a Heaven, because she had to weather some of the worst circumstance I have ever known a person to handle. In the space of a short period of time, she lost her mother, father, brother, younger sister, best girlfriends and the husband of another best friend. She suffered two heart attacks, contracted a staph infection and came down with pneumonia - all suffered while she was in the hospital. Could you blame her for being stubborn about going back when her health took a severe downturn? I hope she is with her husband, Bryce, and renewing her life with him. She adored him beyond measure and I would have gladly traded my life for his. THAT is how much I cared for her. That is how much she cared for me. We did not have a romantic relationship, but we loved each other very much. I miss her laugh. I miss her care. I miss her simple elegance. I miss her.
I hope there's a Heaven so she can smile down on her young children, Kate and Matt, and her lovable puppy, Tiggy. I feel like I have watched them grow. We talked about them constantly and we joked how I would chaperone Kate whenever she went on a date. We laughed about how wonderful it was when Matt hit his first home run in Little League this year. She let me come up with suggestions for the kids's birthdays, science projects and dinner menus. She adored her children and puppy. I feel so very bad for them. I love them, too, like they were my own children. And I always will.
I hope there's a Heaven so her sister, Julie, brother-in-law, Charlie, and nephew, Jared, can rest assured Liz is gone, but waiting for them on the other side. Julie was phenomenal, making sure her younger sister had everything she needed, not waiting to be asked - just knowing, as only a loving sister could, what Liz's needs were. If situations were reversed, I am sure Julie would agree Liz would do the very same for her. That says a lot for their parents, Gladys and Milton, and for themselves as siblings. They had such a tremendous bond and love for each other that it is difficult to imagine we live in a world of cold distance and selfish interest. Charlie was always involved in trying to make things easier for everyone, including Liz. He has the heart of a lion and the love of a great woman. Jared was always doing things for Liz, from cutting her grass to running errands to just stopping by for a visit to talk, nephew to aunt. She was so incredibly proud of him, and just like our many, many talks about her kids, we had just as many about Jared. I feel like he is my nephew, too.
I hope there's a Heaven so God has taken Liz into his embrace and took all her pain away. I hope her suffering is over and that her spirit exists somewhere. I would gladly volunteer my soul to Hell if it would guarantee she has a place in Heaven. The world is in such sort supply of great people, of people who do not push their agendas on others, of people who actually listen instead of just waiting for their turn to talk, of people who volunteer themselves to others before needing to be asked. There is a pain in my heart I have no idea will ever pass, but if it does, it's because of the love of my best friend, Liz. She was a much better person than me and I will strive to be the best person I can be every day, for her and for me. If I can find a way to harness my love for her to others in my life, to family, friends, acquaintances and strangers, I feel I would be carrying on her legacy. I wish everyone knew her. I pity those who never had that chance.
I hope there's a Heaven so I can carry that hope to embrace her and let her know just how much she meant to me. I love you, Liz, and I always will. When this world is through with me, I hope the way your influence has impacted my life will mean I can ask Bryce if I can have one dance with you in Heaven.
I hope.
I found out last night my best friend, Liz Roberts, passed away this weekend. I have felt lost and untethered ever since. She was the best person I have ever known in this world. She made me a better person, a better man. More importantly, she made me want to be a better man. She was nonjudgmental and endlessly encouraging. She was everything that was good and right in this world. She was smart, compassionate, very witty and dear. I talked with her every day for over four years. She lived in Connecticut while I was in Delaware. Every night, at seven, we would talk about everything and nothing. The fact we never ran out of things to talk and laugh about speaks volumes about the friendship we had
I hope there's a Heaven, because she had to weather some of the worst circumstance I have ever known a person to handle. In the space of a short period of time, she lost her mother, father, brother, younger sister, best girlfriends and the husband of another best friend. She suffered two heart attacks, contracted a staph infection and came down with pneumonia - all suffered while she was in the hospital. Could you blame her for being stubborn about going back when her health took a severe downturn? I hope she is with her husband, Bryce, and renewing her life with him. She adored him beyond measure and I would have gladly traded my life for his. THAT is how much I cared for her. That is how much she cared for me. We did not have a romantic relationship, but we loved each other very much. I miss her laugh. I miss her care. I miss her simple elegance. I miss her.
I hope there's a Heaven so she can smile down on her young children, Kate and Matt, and her lovable puppy, Tiggy. I feel like I have watched them grow. We talked about them constantly and we joked how I would chaperone Kate whenever she went on a date. We laughed about how wonderful it was when Matt hit his first home run in Little League this year. She let me come up with suggestions for the kids's birthdays, science projects and dinner menus. She adored her children and puppy. I feel so very bad for them. I love them, too, like they were my own children. And I always will.
I hope there's a Heaven so her sister, Julie, brother-in-law, Charlie, and nephew, Jared, can rest assured Liz is gone, but waiting for them on the other side. Julie was phenomenal, making sure her younger sister had everything she needed, not waiting to be asked - just knowing, as only a loving sister could, what Liz's needs were. If situations were reversed, I am sure Julie would agree Liz would do the very same for her. That says a lot for their parents, Gladys and Milton, and for themselves as siblings. They had such a tremendous bond and love for each other that it is difficult to imagine we live in a world of cold distance and selfish interest. Charlie was always involved in trying to make things easier for everyone, including Liz. He has the heart of a lion and the love of a great woman. Jared was always doing things for Liz, from cutting her grass to running errands to just stopping by for a visit to talk, nephew to aunt. She was so incredibly proud of him, and just like our many, many talks about her kids, we had just as many about Jared. I feel like he is my nephew, too.
I hope there's a Heaven so God has taken Liz into his embrace and took all her pain away. I hope her suffering is over and that her spirit exists somewhere. I would gladly volunteer my soul to Hell if it would guarantee she has a place in Heaven. The world is in such sort supply of great people, of people who do not push their agendas on others, of people who actually listen instead of just waiting for their turn to talk, of people who volunteer themselves to others before needing to be asked. There is a pain in my heart I have no idea will ever pass, but if it does, it's because of the love of my best friend, Liz. She was a much better person than me and I will strive to be the best person I can be every day, for her and for me. If I can find a way to harness my love for her to others in my life, to family, friends, acquaintances and strangers, I feel I would be carrying on her legacy. I wish everyone knew her. I pity those who never had that chance.
I hope there's a Heaven so I can carry that hope to embrace her and let her know just how much she meant to me. I love you, Liz, and I always will. When this world is through with me, I hope the way your influence has impacted my life will mean I can ask Bryce if I can have one dance with you in Heaven.
I hope.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
License to Shill
Like many children from the Northeast, my parents took us to Walt Disney World for vacation. At the beginning of the trip, everyone was full of fun and laughter - even if we left at three in the morning. The promise of sunny skies, sweet smells and giant, white-gloved rodents was enough to turn an adolescent's stomach into cotton candy. Being awake at that time of night (or day, depending on your collective unconscious) is surreal. Gas station lights look like oases, the navy firmament of the sky fissures and feathers and the road is fairly traffic-free. It leaves you wondering, as you pass the man in the brown Cordoba, with its rich Corinthian leather, "what in the hell is this guy doing on the road at this hour?" Is he going to work super early to sink his teeth into the ass of the American Dream or is he returning home from an all-night bender and practicing his excuses to the wife who fell asleep on the couch waiting for his untrustworthy backside to try to sneak past her - shoes in hand? I knew one thing for certain, though. He wasn't headed to Walt Disney World, like us.
When morning finally blessed us with its sun-drenched glory and we were full of coffee, donuts and pixie stix, we would inevitably start into the traveling games, like I Spy, the Alphabet Game and License Plate Poker. Don't even pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. You probably played License Plate Poker on your way home from work today. Eventually, boredom and ennui settle in like a rude uncle and the ride turns into a waiting game of "Are we there yet?" as Dad puts the steering wheel into a death grip and grits his teeth until they crack. That's when it hits...
"Did you see that? That car is from North Dakota!"
All heads slam to the same side window, temporarily listing the car onto two wheels. Even Dad gives a quick glance. The car starts buzzing with new life and someone (usually me) suggests we start keeping track of all the different license plates we see. We'd see all the plates from Delaware to Florida, but there were the other more common ones we would see regularly, like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, D.C., New York and even Quebec, which seems to collectively vacation at the Jersey Shore. Once, we saw an Alaska license plate and the resulting roar about made Dad drive into a ditch. To this day, I still have a bit of a license plate fetish.
In Delaware, if you have a low-number license plate number, you wear it like a badge of honor. Some people convert these plates to black and white ceramic replicas as a status symbol. They are all the rage, and I'm not making up this next part: people pay tens of thousands of dollars for the right to have a low-number license plate. Did you hear me? TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS! Conspicuous consumption is alive and well in The First State.
Ah, there's the other shoe falling. Delaware is The First State, and proudly announces that proclamation on the back of every car registered here. New Jersey touts itself as The Garden State, though many might proclaim it the "Which Exit?" state. Pennsylvania is the Keystone State and used to offer "You've Got a Friend in Pennsylvania." I hope I get a choice of whom to choose. If you have enough people sign up, you can have your group or alma mater on your plate. I suppose it's only a matter of time when we see people's personal MySpace page links, cell phone numbers and whether they sleep in the nude listed. I know one thing, there will be a lot of tailgating and rear-end collisions in the future if that last scenario comes to fruition. I'll end up in the Tailgating Hall of Fame and my car paint will be on the back of every Jetta in the state.
"But what about vanity plates?" you may ask. I'm getting to that. Calm down already. Usually, when you see a vanity plate, you would roll your eyes and yell out the window as you drove past, "Have a nice day, Miss Self-Absorbed!" before being passed on the right by a guy who looks like that wind-swept dude in the Maxell advertisement who is sunk deep into his chair listening to his stereo and steadying his wine glass. As he zips by, you can see he has something cheeky like "STOLEN" on his plate. Grudgingly, you mutter to yourself, "ok, that one was good." Then you would rattle off in your mind different letter/number combinations if you were to get one for yourself. A word of warning first. Many people put their occupations on their plates. These people should be locked away, but, if you insist on following suit, make sure you're not a therapist because "THRAPST" can very easily be misinterpreted as "The Rapist" and then you're in a world of hurt if your car breaks down in the wrong neighborhood.
We live in a world of efficiency. Some of those efficiencies come at a cost. Vowels are now an endangered species as some knuckleheads (teens are excluded because, frankly, they don't know any better) go for the cnsnnt nly spelling in ALL phases of their desperately-trying-to-be-hip lives. I once saw a plate that said IH8TRSTS. It was a California plate, so they had eight characters. It took me a while to figure out it meant "I hate tourists." I think we're all guilty of this. How many times have you seen one of these license plate mash-ups and spent the better part of your commute trying to figure out what the hell it meant?
I guess these days a license plate isn't just some rectangular wafer of cheap metal letting Mr. PO-liceman know you spent the better part of a miserable morning in line at the DMV to prove your car is legally registered. Nowadays, it's a way to tell the world you support the local wildlife, you're the proud member of a fraternity that's now on double-secret probation and you know how to spell like a teenager. Enjoy them now because we're probably not far away from them being flat screen images with advertisements from Stub Hub, ESPN scoreboards and toothy infomercials from Tony Robbins. It'll be the birth of a whole new game.
And the death of License Plate Poker.
Thanks to my friends Kim Martucci and Andi Buckman for this topic!
When morning finally blessed us with its sun-drenched glory and we were full of coffee, donuts and pixie stix, we would inevitably start into the traveling games, like I Spy, the Alphabet Game and License Plate Poker. Don't even pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. You probably played License Plate Poker on your way home from work today. Eventually, boredom and ennui settle in like a rude uncle and the ride turns into a waiting game of "Are we there yet?" as Dad puts the steering wheel into a death grip and grits his teeth until they crack. That's when it hits...
"Did you see that? That car is from North Dakota!"
All heads slam to the same side window, temporarily listing the car onto two wheels. Even Dad gives a quick glance. The car starts buzzing with new life and someone (usually me) suggests we start keeping track of all the different license plates we see. We'd see all the plates from Delaware to Florida, but there were the other more common ones we would see regularly, like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, D.C., New York and even Quebec, which seems to collectively vacation at the Jersey Shore. Once, we saw an Alaska license plate and the resulting roar about made Dad drive into a ditch. To this day, I still have a bit of a license plate fetish.
In Delaware, if you have a low-number license plate number, you wear it like a badge of honor. Some people convert these plates to black and white ceramic replicas as a status symbol. They are all the rage, and I'm not making up this next part: people pay tens of thousands of dollars for the right to have a low-number license plate. Did you hear me? TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS! Conspicuous consumption is alive and well in The First State.
Ah, there's the other shoe falling. Delaware is The First State, and proudly announces that proclamation on the back of every car registered here. New Jersey touts itself as The Garden State, though many might proclaim it the "Which Exit?" state. Pennsylvania is the Keystone State and used to offer "You've Got a Friend in Pennsylvania." I hope I get a choice of whom to choose. If you have enough people sign up, you can have your group or alma mater on your plate. I suppose it's only a matter of time when we see people's personal MySpace page links, cell phone numbers and whether they sleep in the nude listed. I know one thing, there will be a lot of tailgating and rear-end collisions in the future if that last scenario comes to fruition. I'll end up in the Tailgating Hall of Fame and my car paint will be on the back of every Jetta in the state.
"But what about vanity plates?" you may ask. I'm getting to that. Calm down already. Usually, when you see a vanity plate, you would roll your eyes and yell out the window as you drove past, "Have a nice day, Miss Self-Absorbed!" before being passed on the right by a guy who looks like that wind-swept dude in the Maxell advertisement who is sunk deep into his chair listening to his stereo and steadying his wine glass. As he zips by, you can see he has something cheeky like "STOLEN" on his plate. Grudgingly, you mutter to yourself, "ok, that one was good." Then you would rattle off in your mind different letter/number combinations if you were to get one for yourself. A word of warning first. Many people put their occupations on their plates. These people should be locked away, but, if you insist on following suit, make sure you're not a therapist because "THRAPST" can very easily be misinterpreted as "The Rapist" and then you're in a world of hurt if your car breaks down in the wrong neighborhood.
We live in a world of efficiency. Some of those efficiencies come at a cost. Vowels are now an endangered species as some knuckleheads (teens are excluded because, frankly, they don't know any better) go for the cnsnnt nly spelling in ALL phases of their desperately-trying-to-be-hip lives. I once saw a plate that said IH8TRSTS. It was a California plate, so they had eight characters. It took me a while to figure out it meant "I hate tourists." I think we're all guilty of this. How many times have you seen one of these license plate mash-ups and spent the better part of your commute trying to figure out what the hell it meant?
I guess these days a license plate isn't just some rectangular wafer of cheap metal letting Mr. PO-liceman know you spent the better part of a miserable morning in line at the DMV to prove your car is legally registered. Nowadays, it's a way to tell the world you support the local wildlife, you're the proud member of a fraternity that's now on double-secret probation and you know how to spell like a teenager. Enjoy them now because we're probably not far away from them being flat screen images with advertisements from Stub Hub, ESPN scoreboards and toothy infomercials from Tony Robbins. It'll be the birth of a whole new game.
And the death of License Plate Poker.
Thanks to my friends Kim Martucci and Andi Buckman for this topic!
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
The Fling
This is the ultimate in Jazz Writing. Normally, when I sit down to write, I at least have a topic in my head. I don't necessarily flesh it out because I prefer everything to flow organically. I'll have a thought, sit down, type like a mad man and before you know it, you're sitting there reading it, wondering, "Where does he come up with this crap?"
To tell you the truth, I have no idea where it comes from. I have no idea what the next sentence will be, where it is going or how it will end. It just does. When the story picks up steam, I do the sensible thing and get the hell out of the way. From there, the story basically writes itself and I just sit back, like the rest of you, and shake my head incredulously at what spews out.
I was watching an episode of the best show to ever hit network television, Northern Exposure, about 17-18 years ago. In this particular episode, Chris Stevens, the felon-cum-philosophical disc jockey, was looking to fling a cow using a medieval trebuchet. If you don't know what a trebuchet is, it's basically a catapult, with a counter-weight that provides locomotion and increases velocity (all you trebuchet fans please calm down, you know that's the basic gist of it and it's something my readers understand). Chris abandons the cow for a piano after Ed tells him it was done before in a Monty Python movie. When asked why he was going to fling a cow, he said it was "to create a pure moment."
I really didn't understand what he meant. Philosophically, I understood, but from an artistic point of view, I wasn't fully developed to appreciate it. For me, art had always been eternal, something to walk away from and say, "Yeah, I painted that," or "Do you like that vase? Made it myself." I never really put any stock into transient art, the art of the moment. Here right now and gone in an instant. There is no proof remaining. Well, let me amend that, there may be physical proof, like the dead cow or the ruptured piano, but, that's not the piece of art. Let me take it a step further: a body in the casket no longer remains that person. It's an empty vessel that carried a living person. The true person transcended that body. He/She was a soul, a spirit, a being cased in hair-covered meat. Change the exterior of a person and the same person remains inside. It's like that with transient art. As Chris Stevens said, "It's not the thing you fling, it's the fling itself." Damn straight.
It took me a while to really grasp what he was saying. Oh, I understood it, from a spectator's standpoint, but from an artist's standpoint, I was a drooling idiot. I eventually came to understand the value of creating, the old cliche of "It's not the destination; it's the journey." It's what led me to where I am today, from a creative platform.
Say what you will. I may not be a great writer - hell, I might not even be good enough to be a poor writer - but, the finished products of mine you read are the shattered pianos of my efforts. Truth be told, I really don't care how these stories turn out. Oh, I appreciate the comments others make when they are being sincere, but if reading these stories are those pianos, the process of writing is the fling for me. I'm along for the ride, just like you. I never go back and edit anything. Once it hits the page, it's done. If someone else wants to edit them, be my guest, but I've already moved on to something else. Revisiting a moment in your mind is great when living vicariously through yourself. How many times have you reminisced about a family vacation, laughing with friends or the first time you fell in love? Chances are, you might be doing that at this very moment. That's good; there's nothing wrong with that. It cleanses the soul. However, I cannot revisit the same pure moments I create for myself. All I can do is surge forth and create more, and it's incredibly worthwhile because pure moments are in an endless supply. There is no blueprint, nothing needs to be arranged, there is no right or wrong. All you have to do is feel and express through those feelings.
I've often said I'm an artist without an art. I can't draw worth crap, can't sculpt, can't paint, can't play a musical instrument...hell, I can barely feed and clothe myself. Yet, when I sit down to write, I feel a rush of expression and a giddiness one feels like when you still believed in Santa Claus and Christmas was just a few weeks away. I never really felt at home with people who don't appreciate the daily esoterics (probably not a word, but you know what I mean) of life, how ironies flutter by like butterflies and moments appear before you, however fleeting, that you can't share with anyone else because no one was in your shoes and experienced them like you did. Too many people walk this planet like stimulus/response zombies and the nuances of the incredible nature of life bounce off them like ping pong balls. They miss the ecstasy of being a sponge, absorbing the subtleties that nine out of ten people completely miss. We are mechanical people, in a mechanical age, product-hoarding automatons desperate to remain trendy. It's sad, and sadly, it's not going away.
I owed it to myself to offer something back to this world, no matter how inconsequential. Sure, my writing is basically for my own satisfaction, but others have told me how they enjoyed what I tossed out there, and that's ok, too. It's made me a better person for being able to squeeze that sponge and release those butterflies when I write, and in that, I feel like I am giving something back to this world, if even in my own little way, regardless if anyone reads it or not. Too many people ask "Why?" and not enough people just accept. Everyone seems to be afraid and they care too much what total strangers think and box themselves in. They don't really express themselves; they don't think they have a piano to fling. Paint a picture, write a story, sculpt something, just DO something to express yourself, no matter how poorly you may perceive the end result. THERE is your piano. Fling the hell out of it. It's this creative drive that makes us feel alive - it makes us human.
Don't be a passenger, be a driver, because, in the end, you don't want to be old and regretful of the things you should have done. When the atoms and molecules of this world came together, they created you as a human, not a rock, not a tree, not the crusty residue around the top of the ketchup bottle at a family picnic. As a human, you have an obligation to act on your humanity. Be alive! It's so easy to be self-defeating and make excuses that you are too tired, have no time or are afraid of what others may think or say. Is that really living? Is that really being human? In the words of Peggy Lee, is that all there is? There is not a single one of you out there who doesn't have something to give of themselves. Don't worry if no one sees or reads it, as long as you FEEL it. Dare to be human! Because, in the end, you are not the face in the mirror and you will not be that body in the casket; you are the light you brought to yourself and to others.
My name is Kevin, and I wrote this.
Fling away.
To tell you the truth, I have no idea where it comes from. I have no idea what the next sentence will be, where it is going or how it will end. It just does. When the story picks up steam, I do the sensible thing and get the hell out of the way. From there, the story basically writes itself and I just sit back, like the rest of you, and shake my head incredulously at what spews out.
I was watching an episode of the best show to ever hit network television, Northern Exposure, about 17-18 years ago. In this particular episode, Chris Stevens, the felon-cum-philosophical disc jockey, was looking to fling a cow using a medieval trebuchet. If you don't know what a trebuchet is, it's basically a catapult, with a counter-weight that provides locomotion and increases velocity (all you trebuchet fans please calm down, you know that's the basic gist of it and it's something my readers understand). Chris abandons the cow for a piano after Ed tells him it was done before in a Monty Python movie. When asked why he was going to fling a cow, he said it was "to create a pure moment."
I really didn't understand what he meant. Philosophically, I understood, but from an artistic point of view, I wasn't fully developed to appreciate it. For me, art had always been eternal, something to walk away from and say, "Yeah, I painted that," or "Do you like that vase? Made it myself." I never really put any stock into transient art, the art of the moment. Here right now and gone in an instant. There is no proof remaining. Well, let me amend that, there may be physical proof, like the dead cow or the ruptured piano, but, that's not the piece of art. Let me take it a step further: a body in the casket no longer remains that person. It's an empty vessel that carried a living person. The true person transcended that body. He/She was a soul, a spirit, a being cased in hair-covered meat. Change the exterior of a person and the same person remains inside. It's like that with transient art. As Chris Stevens said, "It's not the thing you fling, it's the fling itself." Damn straight.
It took me a while to really grasp what he was saying. Oh, I understood it, from a spectator's standpoint, but from an artist's standpoint, I was a drooling idiot. I eventually came to understand the value of creating, the old cliche of "It's not the destination; it's the journey." It's what led me to where I am today, from a creative platform.
Say what you will. I may not be a great writer - hell, I might not even be good enough to be a poor writer - but, the finished products of mine you read are the shattered pianos of my efforts. Truth be told, I really don't care how these stories turn out. Oh, I appreciate the comments others make when they are being sincere, but if reading these stories are those pianos, the process of writing is the fling for me. I'm along for the ride, just like you. I never go back and edit anything. Once it hits the page, it's done. If someone else wants to edit them, be my guest, but I've already moved on to something else. Revisiting a moment in your mind is great when living vicariously through yourself. How many times have you reminisced about a family vacation, laughing with friends or the first time you fell in love? Chances are, you might be doing that at this very moment. That's good; there's nothing wrong with that. It cleanses the soul. However, I cannot revisit the same pure moments I create for myself. All I can do is surge forth and create more, and it's incredibly worthwhile because pure moments are in an endless supply. There is no blueprint, nothing needs to be arranged, there is no right or wrong. All you have to do is feel and express through those feelings.
I've often said I'm an artist without an art. I can't draw worth crap, can't sculpt, can't paint, can't play a musical instrument...hell, I can barely feed and clothe myself. Yet, when I sit down to write, I feel a rush of expression and a giddiness one feels like when you still believed in Santa Claus and Christmas was just a few weeks away. I never really felt at home with people who don't appreciate the daily esoterics (probably not a word, but you know what I mean) of life, how ironies flutter by like butterflies and moments appear before you, however fleeting, that you can't share with anyone else because no one was in your shoes and experienced them like you did. Too many people walk this planet like stimulus/response zombies and the nuances of the incredible nature of life bounce off them like ping pong balls. They miss the ecstasy of being a sponge, absorbing the subtleties that nine out of ten people completely miss. We are mechanical people, in a mechanical age, product-hoarding automatons desperate to remain trendy. It's sad, and sadly, it's not going away.
I owed it to myself to offer something back to this world, no matter how inconsequential. Sure, my writing is basically for my own satisfaction, but others have told me how they enjoyed what I tossed out there, and that's ok, too. It's made me a better person for being able to squeeze that sponge and release those butterflies when I write, and in that, I feel like I am giving something back to this world, if even in my own little way, regardless if anyone reads it or not. Too many people ask "Why?" and not enough people just accept. Everyone seems to be afraid and they care too much what total strangers think and box themselves in. They don't really express themselves; they don't think they have a piano to fling. Paint a picture, write a story, sculpt something, just DO something to express yourself, no matter how poorly you may perceive the end result. THERE is your piano. Fling the hell out of it. It's this creative drive that makes us feel alive - it makes us human.
Don't be a passenger, be a driver, because, in the end, you don't want to be old and regretful of the things you should have done. When the atoms and molecules of this world came together, they created you as a human, not a rock, not a tree, not the crusty residue around the top of the ketchup bottle at a family picnic. As a human, you have an obligation to act on your humanity. Be alive! It's so easy to be self-defeating and make excuses that you are too tired, have no time or are afraid of what others may think or say. Is that really living? Is that really being human? In the words of Peggy Lee, is that all there is? There is not a single one of you out there who doesn't have something to give of themselves. Don't worry if no one sees or reads it, as long as you FEEL it. Dare to be human! Because, in the end, you are not the face in the mirror and you will not be that body in the casket; you are the light you brought to yourself and to others.
My name is Kevin, and I wrote this.
Fling away.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Car Tune
"Here in my car, I feel safest of all. I can lock all my doors, it's the only way to live. In cars."
- Gary Numan.
You've heard the song, you know you have. Even if you don't like it, you still find yourself humming or singing it if you hear it. It's one of those songs that's fun to sing and all those worries you might have just disappear for three minutes and thirty-seven seconds. For those, like me, who have a quirky love affair with music from the 1980s, it's an essential component of any 80s mixed CD you make for a cute girl. Well, that and "Take On Me" by A-ha, but that's another story.
For me, a car was always nothing more than a four-wheeled, motorized conveyance vessel for the purpose of getting you from Point A to Point B. Of course, this was in the days when I didn't have a car and just wanted to give my feet a much needed rest (I walked EVERYWHERE. I walked more than Jesus. In fact, I WAS like Jesus, save for the fact I don't look like a hippie, can't perform miracles and will most likely go to Hell).
I learned how to drive using the family van. This wasn't the emasculating minivan other men my age dejectedly have to pilot when they cart their precious little hellions to some organized activity they seem to feel their kids need. No, this was a Ford Econoline with a 351 Cleveland engine, mag wheels, captains chairs and a bed in the back my Pop constructed. It was a rolling love machine. I suppose it was a bit of a unique way to learn how to drive, surpassed only by a rocket sled, space shuttle or stolen police car. Whenever I was allowed to drive to the store, I always made sure I detoured to the school parking lot, where my friends hung out, and blasted "Kashmir" in a desperate attempt to look cool.
Eventually, I needed my own car. My Aunt Peg won a Benson & Hedges contest where she won every item shown in a magazine photo. One of those things was a Thunderbird, which made their Bronze Age-era Honda Accord expendable. It was my first car and this beggar wasn't being too choosy. My new car wasn't the most stylish thing on the road. It looked like it was designed by manic-depressive Dadaist artists. Each door, quarter panel and the hood were different colors and it was rusting so badly that pieces of it would fly off whenever I went at least 35 mph. But, it was mine, all mine, and for that, I loved it.
When I was in college, I found myself short on funds for rent one month, so I sold it to my friend, Norm. I told him I would sell it to him for $200 and split any repair costs for the next six months. Norm said if I sold it to him for $175, he would take care of any potential repair costs that ensued. Regrettably, I agreed and parted with my first car, but I needed a roof over my head more than four wheels under my ass. Two weeks later, I ran into Norm on campus. I asked him how the car was doing and he said "Doc (one of my many nicknames in college), it's running like a dream." I muttered a few insults in his direction through a clenched-teeth smile and went on my way to blow off another class. The following week, I ran into Norm again, but this time at one of the campus bus stops. As I recall, the conversation went down like this:
Me: "Say, Norm, why are you taking the bus? Where's the car?"
Norm: (exasperated gust of a sigh) "Doc, it died on me."
Me: "What happened?"
Norm: "Engine block cracked."
Me: "Bummer. But a deal's a deal."
Norm: "Yeah, but I only had it a few..."
Me: "Deal's a deal, Nommy."
I pivoted on my heel and walked towards another class that I eventually blew off. It taught me a lesson. Don't look for that lesson here because I've forgotten what it was. I was now ready for car #2.
My next vehicle was a 1972 Ford Maverick. Eggshell white. It was owned by my grandparents and probably never saw the north side of 45 mph. Ever. I took care of that within two seconds of turning the ignition. In fact, me getting behind the wheel probably shocked the poor automobile into a heart attack. Before you can say "You need to change the oil every now and again," it was left a smoking, hollow shell by the side of the highway.
Next was an early-80s Cutlass Supreme I inherited from my other grandmother. I never put oil into this car, either. It also died by the side of the road. This time, I I finally learned my lesson - never accept a car from a relative. It was time to buy a car from a respected used car dealer.
It was a stunningly beautiful Mustang. Ultra cool and as classic as they come, I had finally arrived. Unfortunately, it was possessed by the ghost of a disgruntled employee of Henry Ford. The first week I had it, the windshield cracked. After the first month, the paint started to flake off the hood. I was driving a leper car. Since it was rear-wheel drive and a very light car, driving in snow was sheer terror. Hell, it would careen all over the road even when it was cloudy. I'm a pretty brave man. I've killed a Bengal tiger with my bare hands, punched out a bull elephant and drank Coor's Light (don't let anyone fool you - Coor's Light isn't beer; it's grassy water with a hint of beer "flavoring"), but I was terrified driving this thing in bad weather. I once had a cackling truck driver put me into a snow bank on an uphill climb because I couldn't get any traction. Good time. At least I put oil into it. It was time to move on. It was also then I entered into a tortured love affair with the Ford Probe.
My mom owned an early model Ford Probe and that car was incredibly fun to drive. The one I bought (actually leased) was the same color as my ill-fated Mustang but it was a new model and looked like a sports car. Handled like one, too. Best of all, it was front wheel drive. Bring on the snow, Mother Nature, you bitter wench!
I. Loved. This. Car. It was so much fun to drive and handled like a Corvette. It also looked kinda cool. Then, on April 1, 1997, it all changed. I was driving back from Red Lobster with my girlfriend when an 18-wheeler merged into my driver's side door on I-95. I said to Michelle, "Man, that tire is getting awfully close to..." BANG! The tire hit my door. I couldn't have changed lanes because there was a car barely ahead of me to the right and I was waiting for him to get completely clear so I could change lanes. The impact sent us violently to the right. I tried to control the car and the steering locked up - and sent us right back towards the truck. We were headed right under the tires when I somehow had the wherewithall (one word?) to somehow guide the car away from certain pancaking and bounced back off the same tire that initiated this fun little adventure. We shot from left to right again and slammed into the guard rail. The impact was so great we rebounded back into the middle of the highway. God must have done well at the track that day because he was feeling generous and ensured there were no other cars close enough to us to either hit or hit us. After checking to see if Michelle was ok, I assessed my own personal damage. I was alive. We both were; and we both walked away relatively unscratched. It was a miracle. Hmmm, maybe I AM Jesus. Sadly, my little car didn't make it. It was completely totaled. It looked like it was destroyed by a truck or something. I was back at work by April 3rd.
I decided to get another Ford Probe since the first one sacrificed its life to save ours. This one was black, even sportier, and this time, no lease. Not much to say about this car other than it was an absolute dream to drive. I drove it until the wheels fell off and the engine seized in front of my Pop's house. In fact, it died just as I was coming off the highway ramp. The steering partially locked and I coasted off the ramp, merged on to the road, coasted slowly down to my Pop's street, pulled the muscles in both arms to turn down his street and eventually came to rest in front of his house. Time for Ford Probe #3.
This one was white and took a while to like, but once I did, it was a love affair all over again. It was a GT, with a tremendously expensive sound system, black tinted windows and erotically magnificent Pirelli tires. I had it for four years until it mysteriously stopped starting. I would have it towed to the shop where the mechanic would tell me that "It started right up for me." I would pick it up, drive it for a month or two, and the same thing would happen. This occurred about seven or eight times over the last two years and it was as frustrating as my experiences on Match.com (a future story. I won't reveal any names, sorry). It was almost as bad as having an insane girlfriend. I eventually had to cut the cord. Fortunately, my mechanic had a car he was willing to sell me for cheap. Wouldn't you know it - it was a hunter green...wait for it...Ford Probe. I'm not going to waste a new paragraph on that car because the transmission dropped out of it within two months. It was time to walk away and try a new direction.
I hunted all over for a Saab. My buddy, Doug, whose opinion I hold in high regard (one of the only people whose opinion I actually respect), has two of them and raves about them. He also knows it takes a certain dedicated person to own and properly maintain one. I figured I finally learned to change the oil in my car so I must be ready. I went to the lot to pick it up after seeing it online, but when I arrived, the convertible top wouldn't open. I had about three people try to make that damned thing open. Once it was finally opened, it wouldn't shut. I wouldn't have minded if it never was cold, rainy, snowing or I lived in a world without crime, but Utopia is a story not a reality. I took that time to case the lot to occupy my mind.
Then I saw it.
When I was young, there was a car a few neighborhoods over that bugged my eyes out of my head. It was a cherry red 1968 Jaguar XJ-12. Black convertible roof and brilliant, shimmering spoke rims. It was that classic "slipper" shape and even my primitive brain knew this was like dating the cutest girl in the office. No, I take that back. It was like being Hugh Hefner. Owning a car like that means you would never be able to notice what color the car was because it would be such a chick magnet women would just throw themselves on it. Ok, I'm drooling now. Moving on. Back to the car lot.
It was a Jaguar. I didn't dare...or did I? The owner of the lot came over to me and could see my Adam's Apple bouncing up and down like a Super Ball in an OCD asylum. "She's a beaut, isn't she?" I gurgled something like, "Me want" and he slapped the keys into my sweaty palm. I got behind the wheel and almost had an accident even before I turned the key. It was love. It was obsession. It was WAY out of my league.
I had to have it.
After taking what seemed like a fortnight, the paperwork was signed, the Saab was a vacant memory and I was pulling out of the lot. Ever date a girl who you KNEW was WAY too good for you? I have. Pretty much every girl I've ever dated. I didn't feel good enough to even look at it, let alone drive it. I could almost hear the car say to itself, "You've gotta be kidding me. I have YOU as an owner?" It was like holding a loaded gun and my hands were shaking on the steering wheel. I knew I had to get a grip and calm down. I was so worried about crashing that I almost crashed. Fortunately, I had my mp3 player with me. I had the cassette adapter and searched for a song to ease my mind. Then I found it and turned it up loud:
"Here in my car, I feel safest of all. I can lock all my doors, it's the only way to live. In cars."
Now if I can only remember to change the oil.
- Gary Numan.
You've heard the song, you know you have. Even if you don't like it, you still find yourself humming or singing it if you hear it. It's one of those songs that's fun to sing and all those worries you might have just disappear for three minutes and thirty-seven seconds. For those, like me, who have a quirky love affair with music from the 1980s, it's an essential component of any 80s mixed CD you make for a cute girl. Well, that and "Take On Me" by A-ha, but that's another story.
For me, a car was always nothing more than a four-wheeled, motorized conveyance vessel for the purpose of getting you from Point A to Point B. Of course, this was in the days when I didn't have a car and just wanted to give my feet a much needed rest (I walked EVERYWHERE. I walked more than Jesus. In fact, I WAS like Jesus, save for the fact I don't look like a hippie, can't perform miracles and will most likely go to Hell).
I learned how to drive using the family van. This wasn't the emasculating minivan other men my age dejectedly have to pilot when they cart their precious little hellions to some organized activity they seem to feel their kids need. No, this was a Ford Econoline with a 351 Cleveland engine, mag wheels, captains chairs and a bed in the back my Pop constructed. It was a rolling love machine. I suppose it was a bit of a unique way to learn how to drive, surpassed only by a rocket sled, space shuttle or stolen police car. Whenever I was allowed to drive to the store, I always made sure I detoured to the school parking lot, where my friends hung out, and blasted "Kashmir" in a desperate attempt to look cool.
Eventually, I needed my own car. My Aunt Peg won a Benson & Hedges contest where she won every item shown in a magazine photo. One of those things was a Thunderbird, which made their Bronze Age-era Honda Accord expendable. It was my first car and this beggar wasn't being too choosy. My new car wasn't the most stylish thing on the road. It looked like it was designed by manic-depressive Dadaist artists. Each door, quarter panel and the hood were different colors and it was rusting so badly that pieces of it would fly off whenever I went at least 35 mph. But, it was mine, all mine, and for that, I loved it.
When I was in college, I found myself short on funds for rent one month, so I sold it to my friend, Norm. I told him I would sell it to him for $200 and split any repair costs for the next six months. Norm said if I sold it to him for $175, he would take care of any potential repair costs that ensued. Regrettably, I agreed and parted with my first car, but I needed a roof over my head more than four wheels under my ass. Two weeks later, I ran into Norm on campus. I asked him how the car was doing and he said "Doc (one of my many nicknames in college), it's running like a dream." I muttered a few insults in his direction through a clenched-teeth smile and went on my way to blow off another class. The following week, I ran into Norm again, but this time at one of the campus bus stops. As I recall, the conversation went down like this:
Me: "Say, Norm, why are you taking the bus? Where's the car?"
Norm: (exasperated gust of a sigh) "Doc, it died on me."
Me: "What happened?"
Norm: "Engine block cracked."
Me: "Bummer. But a deal's a deal."
Norm: "Yeah, but I only had it a few..."
Me: "Deal's a deal, Nommy."
I pivoted on my heel and walked towards another class that I eventually blew off. It taught me a lesson. Don't look for that lesson here because I've forgotten what it was. I was now ready for car #2.
My next vehicle was a 1972 Ford Maverick. Eggshell white. It was owned by my grandparents and probably never saw the north side of 45 mph. Ever. I took care of that within two seconds of turning the ignition. In fact, me getting behind the wheel probably shocked the poor automobile into a heart attack. Before you can say "You need to change the oil every now and again," it was left a smoking, hollow shell by the side of the highway.
Next was an early-80s Cutlass Supreme I inherited from my other grandmother. I never put oil into this car, either. It also died by the side of the road. This time, I I finally learned my lesson - never accept a car from a relative. It was time to buy a car from a respected used car dealer.
It was a stunningly beautiful Mustang. Ultra cool and as classic as they come, I had finally arrived. Unfortunately, it was possessed by the ghost of a disgruntled employee of Henry Ford. The first week I had it, the windshield cracked. After the first month, the paint started to flake off the hood. I was driving a leper car. Since it was rear-wheel drive and a very light car, driving in snow was sheer terror. Hell, it would careen all over the road even when it was cloudy. I'm a pretty brave man. I've killed a Bengal tiger with my bare hands, punched out a bull elephant and drank Coor's Light (don't let anyone fool you - Coor's Light isn't beer; it's grassy water with a hint of beer "flavoring"), but I was terrified driving this thing in bad weather. I once had a cackling truck driver put me into a snow bank on an uphill climb because I couldn't get any traction. Good time. At least I put oil into it. It was time to move on. It was also then I entered into a tortured love affair with the Ford Probe.
My mom owned an early model Ford Probe and that car was incredibly fun to drive. The one I bought (actually leased) was the same color as my ill-fated Mustang but it was a new model and looked like a sports car. Handled like one, too. Best of all, it was front wheel drive. Bring on the snow, Mother Nature, you bitter wench!
I. Loved. This. Car. It was so much fun to drive and handled like a Corvette. It also looked kinda cool. Then, on April 1, 1997, it all changed. I was driving back from Red Lobster with my girlfriend when an 18-wheeler merged into my driver's side door on I-95. I said to Michelle, "Man, that tire is getting awfully close to..." BANG! The tire hit my door. I couldn't have changed lanes because there was a car barely ahead of me to the right and I was waiting for him to get completely clear so I could change lanes. The impact sent us violently to the right. I tried to control the car and the steering locked up - and sent us right back towards the truck. We were headed right under the tires when I somehow had the wherewithall (one word?) to somehow guide the car away from certain pancaking and bounced back off the same tire that initiated this fun little adventure. We shot from left to right again and slammed into the guard rail. The impact was so great we rebounded back into the middle of the highway. God must have done well at the track that day because he was feeling generous and ensured there were no other cars close enough to us to either hit or hit us. After checking to see if Michelle was ok, I assessed my own personal damage. I was alive. We both were; and we both walked away relatively unscratched. It was a miracle. Hmmm, maybe I AM Jesus. Sadly, my little car didn't make it. It was completely totaled. It looked like it was destroyed by a truck or something. I was back at work by April 3rd.
I decided to get another Ford Probe since the first one sacrificed its life to save ours. This one was black, even sportier, and this time, no lease. Not much to say about this car other than it was an absolute dream to drive. I drove it until the wheels fell off and the engine seized in front of my Pop's house. In fact, it died just as I was coming off the highway ramp. The steering partially locked and I coasted off the ramp, merged on to the road, coasted slowly down to my Pop's street, pulled the muscles in both arms to turn down his street and eventually came to rest in front of his house. Time for Ford Probe #3.
This one was white and took a while to like, but once I did, it was a love affair all over again. It was a GT, with a tremendously expensive sound system, black tinted windows and erotically magnificent Pirelli tires. I had it for four years until it mysteriously stopped starting. I would have it towed to the shop where the mechanic would tell me that "It started right up for me." I would pick it up, drive it for a month or two, and the same thing would happen. This occurred about seven or eight times over the last two years and it was as frustrating as my experiences on Match.com (a future story. I won't reveal any names, sorry). It was almost as bad as having an insane girlfriend. I eventually had to cut the cord. Fortunately, my mechanic had a car he was willing to sell me for cheap. Wouldn't you know it - it was a hunter green...wait for it...Ford Probe. I'm not going to waste a new paragraph on that car because the transmission dropped out of it within two months. It was time to walk away and try a new direction.
I hunted all over for a Saab. My buddy, Doug, whose opinion I hold in high regard (one of the only people whose opinion I actually respect), has two of them and raves about them. He also knows it takes a certain dedicated person to own and properly maintain one. I figured I finally learned to change the oil in my car so I must be ready. I went to the lot to pick it up after seeing it online, but when I arrived, the convertible top wouldn't open. I had about three people try to make that damned thing open. Once it was finally opened, it wouldn't shut. I wouldn't have minded if it never was cold, rainy, snowing or I lived in a world without crime, but Utopia is a story not a reality. I took that time to case the lot to occupy my mind.
Then I saw it.
When I was young, there was a car a few neighborhoods over that bugged my eyes out of my head. It was a cherry red 1968 Jaguar XJ-12. Black convertible roof and brilliant, shimmering spoke rims. It was that classic "slipper" shape and even my primitive brain knew this was like dating the cutest girl in the office. No, I take that back. It was like being Hugh Hefner. Owning a car like that means you would never be able to notice what color the car was because it would be such a chick magnet women would just throw themselves on it. Ok, I'm drooling now. Moving on. Back to the car lot.
It was a Jaguar. I didn't dare...or did I? The owner of the lot came over to me and could see my Adam's Apple bouncing up and down like a Super Ball in an OCD asylum. "She's a beaut, isn't she?" I gurgled something like, "Me want" and he slapped the keys into my sweaty palm. I got behind the wheel and almost had an accident even before I turned the key. It was love. It was obsession. It was WAY out of my league.
I had to have it.
After taking what seemed like a fortnight, the paperwork was signed, the Saab was a vacant memory and I was pulling out of the lot. Ever date a girl who you KNEW was WAY too good for you? I have. Pretty much every girl I've ever dated. I didn't feel good enough to even look at it, let alone drive it. I could almost hear the car say to itself, "You've gotta be kidding me. I have YOU as an owner?" It was like holding a loaded gun and my hands were shaking on the steering wheel. I knew I had to get a grip and calm down. I was so worried about crashing that I almost crashed. Fortunately, I had my mp3 player with me. I had the cassette adapter and searched for a song to ease my mind. Then I found it and turned it up loud:
"Here in my car, I feel safest of all. I can lock all my doors, it's the only way to live. In cars."
Now if I can only remember to change the oil.
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