Almost True Stories

Foreword

Several years ago I wrote a play called Bugzzz. In that play two kingdoms of bugs, Stovia and Frigistan, are at war with each other, each separated by the Great Linoleum Plains. I claimed that the play was based on a true story. And that was not a lie. It is true that I had once lived in an apartment with bugs in the kitchen. The lesson to be learned here is that saying something is based on a true story, or even that it is true, means absolutely nothing.

One should also keep in mind that the use of the first person is completely arbitrary. Just because a writer refers to a character in the first person does not mean he is writing about himself, no more than writing in the third person means that he is writing about somebody else.

Finally, the primary job of a writer is to make stuff up – to present things in a new, more interesting way. Therefore, writers, by definition and trade, are liars. This is especially true if the writer actually claims to be writing about himself.

You have been warned.

mjs

Seconds School lunch was invariably the same until I got to high school. My mother would buy a cheap canned ham and have the butchers slice it. Thin. She’d put a piece of that ham – fat and all – between two pieces of cheap white bread slathered in cheap yellow mustard. And that was it. Yeah, there was fruit, whatever was in season – bruised apples, tangerines, and oranges, mostly. Sometimes a brown banana. And sometimes there were chips. But almost always there was the ham. Wrapped in plastic and put in a paper bag with my name written on it. By the time lunch came around that warm piece of ham had become a part of the bread. I wasn’t one of the lucky kids who brought a quarter every day and ate a school lunch. The most I got was three cents, enough to buy a milk. White milk. But there was that one day. I don’t know why. Maybe we were out of ham. Maybe my mother was as tired of making school lunches as I was of eating them. Whatever the reason, I had been sent to school with 30 cents. An entire nickel more than I needed for lunch. Five cents was a lot. It would buy a chocolate dipped ice cream cone at Dairy Queen. Five pieces of candy at 7-11. A whole pack of Batman trading cards, maybe even with Catwoman in it. It’s not that my mother was giving me anything extra. I ate school lunches so seldom that she truly didn’t know how much they cost. But I had an extra nickel. And that was the day we had strawberry cake for lunch. It was just a small piece of white sponge cake with a little bit of canned strawberries poured on top, but I truly loved it. I still do. And, with my nickel, my extra nickel, I could get seconds on strawberry cake. It wasn’t something I had planned. It had just happened. But there was a catch. In order to get seconds, along with your nickel, you had to eat everything on your tray. And that day we had beets. I really do not like beets. It wasn’t just a kid thing. I don’t know how anybody can like beets. It doesn’t matter how you fix them. They’re still bad. But I ate them. I gagged them down. And then I took my tray back to get seconds, to get another piece of that strawberry cake. The lunch lady inspected my plate, and she informed me that there was one beet I had missed. It wasn’t even a whole beet. But it didn’t matter. If I wanted seconds on that strawberry cake, I would have to eat that last miniscule piece of beet. And I couldn’t do it standing there in the line. I would have to take my tray and return to my seat. And no, I couldn’t cut through. I’d have to go back around the way I came. Then, and only then, after I had eaten that last straggling beet, could I return and get that cake. That wonderful strawberry cake. And I did. I returned to my seat. I ate that beet. Then I returned to the lunch line... only to find out that they were now out of strawberry cake. Somebody had gotten the last piece while I was eating the last beet. It was a long time before high school, when my friends and I would go out for lunch, and I could get whatever I wanted. It was even longer before I would try another beet.

The Creek As far as we were concerned, The Creek began where the water found its way out of The Tunnel in the far corner of Kevin’s backyard. The Tunnel was a long, dark, wet culvert, that was impossible to walk through without scraping your back or hitting your head on the ceiling. And it was definitely not a place you wanted to be in a sudden rainstorm, not that the rain was ever that sudden. We’d explore the length of The Tunnel maybe once a year, usually in the summer, when it wasn’t quite as nasty, and we wouldn’t get quite as wet, mostly so we could say that we did. There was nothing we really wanted to find in The Tunnel. We really wanted nothing to do with bats and ‘possums and raccoons and maybe even a skunk. Even if we took Mark’s dog, we were never really convinced that Freckles would flush anything out, or even be concerned if she did. The Tunnel came to an end one block over, on a convoluted cul-de-sac down an unnecessary hill where no kids lived. The only way out on that end was to squeeze through the rainwater slits in the curbs, or to turn around and go back. That’s why we mostly ignored The Tunnel and spent our time playing in The Creek. The Creek was really no more than an open ditch that flowed through a few backyards before finding the street just past the Thorp’s. We could jump over it about anywhere while it was in the backyards, but there were also a few railroad tie bridges laid across for those people who had riding lawnmowers and actually cared about cutting the grass in the back lot. There, in The Creek, we would spend our days hunting crawdads. A piece of bacon on a string worked really well. Just lower it in the water where the crawdads are hiding under a rock and wait for them to grab onto it with their pinchers. They were too dumb to let go when you pulled them out of the water and threw them in a bucket. If we didn’t have any bacon, which was most of the time, we’d straddle The Creek and flip over the rocks. The crawdads would scoot out backwards, trying to find somewhere else to hide. If they stopped out in the open, or you were really fast, then you could grab them, right behind their pinchers. If you missed, or if you didn’t have a good enough grip, they would pinch you. Without hesitation. The little crawdads didn’t hurt too bad, but the bigger ones, with the bigger pinchers and the bigger reach... they did. And they wouldn’t let go. Sometimes they wouldn’t even let go if their pincher broke off. Yeah. Nobody wanted to get pinched. Sometimes we’d let the crawdads go at the end of the day, but a lot of times we took them home, especially if they had eggs tucked away under their tails. We wanted to see if the eggs would hatch into little crawdads. And sometimes they did. But mostly they just died. Some days we tried to build dams across The Creek. Mud and rocks and sticks. The best place was in the Rowan’s backyard, just down from one of the bridges. The Creek was more narrow there, so it was easier to dam. But it never worked. Sure, we’d get it to back up for a while, usually until we went home at lunch. The next time we came back the water had broken through and washed away all the mud and sticks, just leaving some of the bigger rocks behind. There wasn’t any good crawdad hunting on the part of The Creek that ran along the street, and there was no point of ever trying to dam it. Years before the city had come in an poured rough concrete over the entire stretch, from the Thorp’s to the corner. They’d even built a retaining wall that kept the street from washing out when it rained. In the summer we’d ride our bikes along that stretch of The Creek, and in the winter, if there were enough water and it got cold enough, we could ride our sleds on it. At the corner, The Creek ran under the street. We called this section The Tunnel, too. Best I can remember, nobody got overly confused about having two tunnels. The Tunnel under the street was a little taller, but not as wide, as the other tunnel, and it only went under the street. It was too small to ride a bike through, but on a good run you could get your sled all the way through to the other side. On the other side is where The Creek changed. It even had a different name: The Big Creek. It became a small pond, with trees fallen over the far end, and mud slick banks all around, except where it came out of The Tunnel. There it was bordered by a tall, concrete retaining wall that went about ten feet up to the street, where we would sit and stare at the water after leaving our bicycles on the side of the road. At its fullest, The Big Creek was maybe 12 feet across, maybe 12 feet long, and maybe 4 feet deep. Maybe. We couldn’t see the bottom. It was forever shrouded in silt and leaves and broken tricycles. It was not a place anybody wanted to swim. There were never any fish to speak of, not worth trying to catch if there were. The most we usually did was throw big rocks in it to see who could get the biggest splash. But, really, we usually just sat on top of the retaining wall and stared at the water. Beyond The Big Creek, the stream became a bit more mysterious. Sure, we’d walked along it all the way to Shelley Road, and even though it was still part of various people’s backyards, it was a lot more wooded, a lot more overgrown. Unmown. It was a challenge at times to keep close to the stream. And beyond Shelley, it took on yet another name, a real name. Rock Creek. Eventually water that started in our backyards found its way to the Missouri River, and from there, everywhere. Beyond Shelley was where Rock Creek could truly get mean. Once, during a really heavy rain, Rock Creek flooded and actually washed a house away. It picked it up off of its foundation and moved it downstream. An entire house. That was a part of the creek no one had explored. Well, no one from our neighborhood. We stopped at Shelley. Truly, we stopped at the Big Creek. It was at the Big Creek one summer afternoon that Mark saw a frog, its head popping up out of the water as it looked around. This wasn’t just any frog. It was a bullfrog, and it was big. Within 15 minutes every kid in the neighborhood was down at The Big Creek with his BB gun. Every kid had a BB gun. Every guy. No parent even questioned the sanity in arming every child over the age of 8 with a BB gun. Some had guns that looked like Winchesters – the kind where you cocked the handle. I had one that looked like an M-16. I cocked it by pushing the barrel down and then pulling it back out again. Mine had a bit more power than the Winchesters, but not a one of them had any accuracy whatsoever. You’d think you had the frog dead in your sites... well, if your gun had sights... and the BB would splash several feet away. Even if the frog got hit, the BB would just bounce off. It got to where that frog didn’t even care that we were trying to kill it. When we were about to give up, maybe go home and get some of Davey’s M-80s, the frog went under. Usually when it went under, it just sort of slid beneath the surface. But this was different. It was sudden. And it went straight down. And then it popped right back up. This was different, too. Instead of hanging solid in the water, it just bobbed around. Something was wrong. So we got a stick and was able to poke the frog. Instead of swimming away, it just rolled over. The entire bottom half of that large bullfrog was missing. Gone. Before any of us could say, “Holy Shit!” a snapping turtle surfaced in the middle of The Big Creek. A very large snapping turtle. It was an Alligator Snapping Turtle. Macrochelys temmincki. The largest species of snapping turtle in North America. That one probably wasn’t the largest one, but it was bigger than any turtle any of us had ever seen, short of National Geographic specials. If you’ve never seen a picture of an alligator snapper, they look prehistoric. There are ridges on its shell that extend right down its tail. Its mouth ends in a vicious beak. It has long claws on each webbed toe, and they’re not for digging. This is not a turtle that’s going to hide in its shell if you try to pick it up. And there it was, floating in the middle of the creek with frog on its breath. So we decided to catch it. I’m not sure if it were an endangered species then. It is now. I’m not sure it would’ve mattered. We weren’t wanting to kill it. We just wanted to catch it. And we did... well, sort of. It took us the rest of the afternoon, but, using sticks, we finally herded that very large turtle into the shallow end of the creek. It was only there, in the soft mud, that we realized just how big that turtle was. Its shell was easily two foot across, and at least two feet long. It had to have weighed 100 pounds, and that was probably on the light side. If you’re ever wanting to pick up a snapping turtle, you do it by the tail. If you try to pick it up by the shell, it can flip its head around and snap you, or it can rip your hand with those sharp claws... or both. But if you pick it up by the tail – assuming the turtle lets you even get that close – and you hold it out far enough from your body, you can actually move that turtle from one place to another without getting maimed. Mind you, we were just kids. Davey was probably the strongest one in the lot, but even he couldn’t pick up a 100 pound-plus turtle, much less hold it at a safe distance. It was about then that the turtle swung around and bit the branch that Mark was holding clean in two. And fast. Turtles were supposed to be slow, but this one wasn’t. And it wasn’t a half rotten branch. This was a stick about three inches across, about twice the width of a broom handle. Solid. And that turtle snapped it in two like it was nothing. It was then that we re-evaluated just what it was we were trying to do with an animal that was capable of removing body parts – easily. And quickly. This was not something that was ever going to make a good pet. Or a bad one, as far as that goes. It was not something we could really keep – anywhere. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t going anywhere that it already didn’t want to go. And it did not want to go with us. So we got the hell out of there. We hurriedly retreated to the top of the retaining wall, where that turtle certainly couldn’t get us, or at least we’d have time to get away if it tried. And there we watched as that turtle slowly slid back into the water. It hung on the surface for a few minutes, with its nose and all those spikes on its shell sticking out, before it slowly sank all the way under. When it became obvious that it wasn’t coming back up anytime soon, we each picked up our bicycles and slowly pedaled home. After that we went down to The Big Creek like usual. We’d sit up on the retaining wall and stare at the water like we always did. But we never saw that turtle again. I wonder if it made it all the way to the Missouri.

Throwing Stuff at Cars When we were kids, we'd go through phases, doing stuff. In the summer, we lived at the pool during the day and ran amok at night. In the winter, we'd play with our road race cars, designing new tracks, tuning up our cars, and then racing them around the table every night for the next several weeks before we got bored. Then we’d move on to playing Monopoly or Risk or chess. Always moving on to something else. In the fall, it was throwing stuff at cars. We'd crouch down in the cover of the darkness, behind the fence that separated the Huggens and the Browns. The Browns lived on the corner, and from their backyard we could see the unsuspecting cars coming from every direction. We never had to wait very long. Apples were the perfect fruit, but only if they weren't too mushy. And there were a lot of apple trees. Pears worked, too, but ever since lightning hit the pear tree they were permanently out of season. We had peach trees, but they were on the far end of the lot, and since we never sprayed or pruned them, what little peaches we did get were only good for attracting bees. Tomatoes were unreliable. First of all, there was rarely any left on the vines that late in the season, much less any that were a good throwing size. And if there were, they generally weren't solid enough to throw. They'd just go mush in your hand. Then you'd smell like rotten tomatoes for the rest of the night. Kinda makes it hard to deny you were up to anything wrong. We didn't always throw fruit. We experimented with car siding and bottle rockets. We always bought bottle rockets by the gross for the Fourth, every year thinking we'd shoot them all off in one glorious night. But that's a lot of bottle rockets. So no matter what time of the year it was, every kid in the neighborhood had bottle rockets, well beyond their expiration date, squirreled away somewhere. It was hit and miss if they'd do anything at all. Sometimes they'd fizzle out after an abbreviated flight. Other times they'd just blow up without going anywhere. You never knew. Still, it didn't stop us from trying. We'd lay the bottle rocket in the groove of the wood and play with the angle until we got it just right, where it would fly right over the street, perfectly in front of an approaching car, exploding inches from the windshield. Only it was never perfect. It was rarely even close. On top of that, the streak of fire announced exactly where you were. Rotten apples left no streak. It was hard enough to hit a car with a rotten apple. We didn't need to involve rocket science. Some kids threw rocks, but we never did. There just weren't that many rocks lying around, and beside, it was kind of a dick thing to do. We just wanted to have fun, not mess up somebody's car. You hit a car with a rock and you're going to really piss somebody off. That's the kind of thing that makes people want to run you down and beat the shit out of you. Of course, it doesn't take much for some people to want to do that. Some kids threw eggs. But we didn't do that, either. Eggs were expensive, unless you stole them from your mother, and that only worked if your mother didn't count the eggs. My mother knew how many eggs she had better than my dad knew how much beer was left. And he knew. I spent the night once with this guy named Eddie. We snuck out, which was the whole point of spending the night. Eddie shot an egg with a wrist rocket slingshot. If you've never seen one, it uses surgical tubing to fire things like ball bearings. People hunt with them. They're definitely not your Dennis the Menace slingshot. I'm not sure who in their right mind would give a kid a weapon like that. Probably the same mentality that had us all armed with BB guns. So Eddie shoots an egg out of this slingshot at his neighbor's house from like a half block away, and it goes through the window – the storm window – both pains of glass and who knows what else. We quickly snuck back in while his neighbors were out in the backyard with flashlights. The point is… well, I don't guess there is a point. And that brings us to the early October night when me and Andy and Joel, dressed in our darkest clothes, were out in the backyard, apples in our hands, waiting. It's not that we were bad shots, but like most things in life, we were average, at best. We could reliably throw a baseball to first base. But apples weren't as consistent as baseballs. And the guy on first base wasn't going 30 miles an hour. And it was dark. And… well… we were usually lucky if one of us even came close. If we did hit a car, it would usually slow down, maybe look around, and then slowly drive away. Every once in a while it might circle back, but if they didn't chase us the first time, we'd throw at them again. Mind you, we didn't throw at every car. Some teenager's hotrod… nope. They'd slam on their brakes for sure and quite possibly get out and chase you. Some old lady in a station wagon, she's gonna keep on going. Pick up trucks… you never knew. Cars with lights on top… the temptation was there, but we weren't that stupid. And that brings us back to the night in question. It was a station wagon, so we let rip. And against all odds, all three of us hit it. All of us had never hit the same car ever. Not once. I'm not sure if two of us ever got the same car. Be we all got this one. Solid. Not a glancing blow one. Resounding. Bam! Bam! Bam! The car slammed on its brakes, all four doors immediately flew open, and four older guys were running, and I mean running, coming up the hill, coming for us. And they were pissed. They just left their car in the middle of the road with its doors open. They didn't care. We were already moving when the brakes locked up. Still, there was a limited amount of directions we could go. Andy cut back up through the backyard toward the street, hoping to make it to the side of my house, where there were a few good hiding places by the shrubs and between the cars in the driveways. Me and Joel headed toward the far fence in my backyard. If we could make it there, we could slide through the hidden hole in the fence and disappear into the corn stalks. And that's when Joel ran into a horseshoe stake. A metal pole sticking out of the ground that clipped him square in the shin and dropped him. So I grabbed him and we rolled under the bush in the Stevenson's backyard. It was one of those bushes that grows from a central tangle of stems and all the branches form a big umbrella around it. And there we were hiding. Joel was in some serious pain. He was a tough kid. But, damn. You run into a horseshoe stake and see if you don't cry. So there we were. I was holding my hand over Joel's mouth so we wouldn't be heard, and at least two of those guys went running by, saying stuff like, "Where are those motherfuckers?!" You could tell they were really mad. I mean, that's back when you didn't say "motherfucker" unless you really meant it. We just stayed there. We had no idea where Andy was. Not that it would've mattered. Joel calmed down pretty quickly. Like I said, he was a tough guy, but he was still in a lot of pain, which is understandable. And even if we wanted to – and we didn't – he couldn't run. So we stayed hidden. After a few minutes, we heard footsteps approaching the bush. Joel barely whispered that it could be Andy. I barely whispered that I didn't care. If it was Andy we could catch up with him later. Come to find out, it wasn't Andy. It was those guys coming back. Andy was hiding under the three or four stairs that went from my house's back door down to the patio. They were open on each end, and there were no risers, so you could see between each step. He was lying flat on the concrete, trying to blend in, when two of those guys, probably the other two, sat on the stairs above him. They sat there smoking cigarettes, talking about how badly they wanted to hurt us. When the other two guys came back, the four of them hung there for a few minutes more, smoking and cursing, before heading back to their car. I didn't see any of that. Me and Joel stayed hidden until we heard Andy calling for us. Even then, when we came out, we saw their station wagon cruising around, still hoping to catch a glimpse. Still hoping to be able to hurt somebody. It was awhile after that before we felt safe sneaking back to our homes, Joel with a limp. We never threw anything at cars after that night. It's not like we all swore an oath or even talked about it. Just the same, when we were all trying to come up with something to do on any given night, throwing rotten apples at cars was not ever again suggested.

The Paper Wad Mr. Oelschlager taught 8th grade English at Nowlin Junior High School. He was a good teacher, not just because he knew stuff like subjects and verbs, and the difference between good and well. It was because he knew how to put up with the little stuff, like students coming in late, but not too late. He knew that kids forgot stuff. And he knew we really had to go to the bathroom, even when we really didn’t. But the biggest reason he was such a good teacher was that he knew how to ignore things. If we weren’t being overly obvious, he could ignore passing notes and talking across the aisle. He could even ignore cheating, mostly because he knew what we hadn’t figured out yet: It’s harder to cheat well than it is to study. The one thing Mr. Oelschlager couldn’t put up with, though, the one thing he couldn’t ignore, the one thing he had no patience for at all was paper wads. It wasn’t just throwing paper wads at each other across the class. That was never going to be ignored. What Mr. Oelschlager especially disliked was throwing paper wads at the trash can. The trash can that set there in the open. Just waiting. I don’t know why. He never explained, and I don’t remember anybody asking. That’s why he had a standing rule: If you threw a paper wad at the can, whether it was from six inches away or from the very back of the room, it was an automatic five eighth hours, which were – each – a full hour after school sitting in Mr. Oelschlager’s room, doing homework or reading or whatever he might have in mind. You had to do it. You couldn’t exchange Mr. Oelschlager’s eighth hours for five swats apiece, like other teachers let you do. You had to serve them. All five. Unless... unless you actually made that shot. If the paper wad went into the can and stayed in the can, there was no penalty. You were golden. After Stephanie Long missed one from, like, two feet away on, like, the second day of school, and she had to serve all five of those detentions, even though it meant she had to miss cheerleading practice, we all knew Mr. Oelschlager wasn’t kidding. And then there was Eddie Wallace. He was a kid I only remember because of that one day in April. April, when the end of the school year finally begins to seem real. Eddie sat on the very back row, in the far corner of the room. As far as humanly possible from the trash can. He’d been there all year long, just putting in his time, like the rest of us. Just blending into the backdrop of all those people you really didn’t know. Until that one day. It was toward the end of the hour, maybe five minutes left, tops, when Eddie raised his hand and patiently waited until Mr. Oelschlager gave him the nod. Then Eddie stood up, and from the furthest corner of the room he launched a paper wad. He had the form of a pro basketball player, the hand left hanging in the air while the wad arched across the room as we all watched. Nobody breathed. Mouths open in awe. It was a perfect shot. The paper wad hit that can dead center. No messing with the rim. No if’s. No maybe’s. Just the resounding “thunk” as it crashed into the bottom of the can. We all went wild as Eddie just stood there smiling, arms held out as those nearest him slapped his hands. Best of all, from the front Mr. Oelschlager gave Eddie a sharp salute just as the bell rang and class was dismissed. Here’s the thing. Eddie had to have thought about that shot all year long. We all did. Every day, that trash can sitting there, mocking us. Thinking about it, after all these years, I bet Eddie practiced that shot. There’s no other way. No kid would just launch a wad from the back of the room with so much to lose. Eddie had to have measured it off. He had to have spent every night practicing in his garage until he felt confident enough to try it. Until he was making 85, 90% of every shot. But even then, even if he had put in all those hours of practice, it’s a lot different when it’s for real. When everybody is watching. When you know the consequences of failure. And there couldn’t be anything much worse than having to stay after school an extra hour for five whole days – an entire week – when it felt so good to be outside in the Spring. Perhaps the only thing worse than missing that shot would have been if Eddie had never tried it at all.

My Alligator Story Back in 1976, back when there still was such a thing, I was an Explorer Scout. Post 943. The Explorers were a part of the Boy Scouts of America, only better. There were no badges to earn or ranks to attain, so you didn’t have to do anything. And they were co-ed. There were girls. Each Explorer post specialized in something, and our specialty was the Kansas City Zoo, which meant I got into the zoo for free and could go just about anywhere I liked, like up inside of the monkey island. The monkeys were all on a concrete island with a moat of water running around it to make sure they stayed put. There were a few dead trees they could climb on, and a tire on a rope they could swing on, but they didn’t. They would just sit there and do nothing, if they bothered to come out at all. But that didn’t matter to me. I got to take the tunnel that went under the moat and came up inside to where those monkeys were hiding. They were still in cages, more or less, but they were close enough where they could reach through and grab me if I wasn’t careful. And they tried, screaming all the while. Those were not happy monkeys. They probably would’ve thrown shit if they hadn’t been so busy trying to rip my flesh off. The hyenas were a lot more fun than the monkeys. Mind you, I didn’t want to be anywhere close to them, or any other animal that could crush my femur with their jaws, as well as the leg attached to that femur. But that’s pretty much all the animals. I never even asked about going backstage with the tigers. Their cages were small, and they spent their days walking back and forth, back and forth. Heads down, mouths barely open, eyes darting furtively from side to side. Yeah... you... that’s right, you. Come over here. There’s something I want to tell you.... But the hyenas were actually trained... more or less. Their names were Bonnie and Clyde, and if I called them, they’d come out. As far as I knew, that was the only trick they would do. Normal people would be standing there wondering where they were at, and I could get them to pop out of the concrete cave, hoping to be fed. But visitors, even Explorers, weren’t supposed to feed the animals. Here’s an interesting animal fact: All elephants in the zoo are trained. That’s true. Look it up. Because if they weren’t, and you wanted them to do something – like show me the bottom of your foot or step over there so I can clean your cage... yeah. Good luck with that. Every day the elephant keeper takes them through their routine – standing on their back feet with their front feet waving in the air, looping their trunks through another elephant’s tail and walking around in circles... you know, circus stuff. Things I don’t imagine elephants do in the wild. Still, taking care of elephants is one of the most dangerous jobs at the zoo. You can look that up, too. It’s not because they’re particularly mean. It’s just if they happen to accidentally bump in to you, or you happen to piss them off, it could really hurt. Sealions can be trained, too. Like a elephants, or I suppose any animal, if they’re trained it just makes them a whole heck of lot easier to work with. And who doesn’t like to see an aquatic mammal bouncing a ball off its nose for the occasional thrown fish? I’ve seen sealions in the wild – many times – but I’ve never seen them bouncing balls off their noses. Maybe I was there at the wrong time. Sealions are also trained by the military to do stuff like look for underwater mines. It would take a lot more than a tossed fish to make me agree to that. But then, I’m not a sealion. The sealions at the zoo swam around in a big pool with an island in the middle, where they would spend most of their time out of the water barking. Really loud. They’re the loudest thing in the zoo. I could’ve gone up inside the sealion island, too, but I didn’t see much point. I could already hear the sealions fine from anywhere in the zoo. My favourite part of the zoo was the reptile house. There were always white mice running everywhere. Seriously. Next time you’re at the zoo look around for the stuff that isn’t in cages. The zoo bred white mice to feed to snakes and such, and some of them... who I am I kidding? A lot of them got out. A regular breeding population. Still, I don’t imagine there’s anywhere safe in a zoo if you’re a white mouse. The reptile house was where our sponsor, Harry, worked. Aside from birds, Harry loved reptiles. He once had a rattlesnake in his basement. It was in a cage. I mean, it’s not like it was crawling around and hiding behind the Christmas decorations. That’s what its babies did. Harry hadn’t realized she was pregnant until she had babies. No eggs, just live, miniature rattlesnakes that are easily more potent than adult rattlesnakes could ever be, and could easily get out of the cage and then easily slither off to hide. Harry’s wife stayed in a hotel for two weeks before he could assure her he’d found them all. Even so, I don’t think she ever went down into the basement again. So all of that’s just a lead in to my alligator story. And, seriously, how many people do you know who have an alligator story? Here it is: One day I was at the zoo, and I bopped into the reptile house, and Harry says, “Oh, good, you’re here. You can help me.” What Harry needed help doing was putting up a sign inside the alligator pen... while the alligator was still in there. A six foot alligator. And, yes, they can get much bigger than that, but six feet is plenty big. I suppose if the alligator had been trained Harry wouldn’t’ve needed my help. And I’m told that alligators can be trained, but I don’t believe it. I don’t think Harry did, either. For the most part, alligators don’t do a whole lot. You’ll never see them bouncing balls off their noses or walking around in circles. Chances are, that six foot alligator wouldn’t move the whole time we were in there. But if it did, if it started to come toward us, I was to hit it with a broom. A broom. Stick on one end, straw on the other. Did you know that an alligator can hiss? It’s something it does while showing its teeth. And it can lift its body off the ground as it walks toward you with its mouth open... hissing. So here comes this alligator, up on its tiptoes with just the tip of its tail dragging behind, showing me all those teeth. And hissing. And there I am with a broom. A broom. So I tap it on the nose. Not hard. I mean, I don’t want to hurt it. I just want it to stop. Just a little tap to let it know that I’ve got a broom, and I’m not afraid to use it. But it doesn’t slow it down. Not a bit. So I tap it again, just a little bit harder. Still nothing. “Harry!” I said, a definite tinge of alarm in my voice. “What?” asked Harry, not looking up, or even in my general direction, as he carefully screwed the sign into place. Mind you, it was a sign that would have worked just as well outside the pen, but that wasn’t something I was concerned with at that particular moment. “The alligator is coming at us!” I was beginning to get more than a little alarmed. “Then hit it with the broom,” Harry said with all the concern of somebody explaining how the backspace button works on the keyboard. “I am hitting it with the broom!” This time Harry did look up to see me jumping up in the air and whacking that alligator as hard as I could with the broom when I came back down, which didn’t faze that alligator in the least, no matter how many times I did it. He was still hissing with his mouth open. Still inching ever closer. Harry, not alarmed in the least, looks at the alligator, looks at me, and calmly says, “Oh. I guess we’d better get out, then.” The alligator lunged just as Harry shut the door, pushing its snout back into the pen. “We’ll have to try again later,” Harry said, safely out of the pen, “when the ‘gator isn’t so upset. Are you going to be around later on this afternoon?” Unfortunately, I had other plans that didn’t include being eaten by an alligator. That’s it. That’s my alligator story. I hope you liked it. It wasn’t long after that that I joined the Navy, and I left the Explorers. Years later, when I finally got out of the Navy, I returned to the Kansas City Zoo. I had to pay to get in. By then, they had done a major renovation, and the cages didn’t look so muck like cages at all, though I doubt if it really fooled any of the animals, especially the smarter ones that could be trained. The only part of the entire zoo that was still the same was the sealion island, where the sealions still barked loud enough that I could hear them all the way to the parking lot.

The Bridge If you turn right at the gas station town of Lampe, Missouri, just south of the Kimberling City Bridge, and then meander in the general direction of east for about five miles, eventually you’ll come to the Mill Creek Resort. That is where my family spent two weeks’ vacation every summer. We had our choice between cozy cabins and double-wide trailers. We stayed in the trailers. I’d like to think it was because there was more room in the trailers. They had two bedrooms and foldout couches in the living area. In reality, I think it was because my mother just liked staying in a trailer. At first, it was all of us, my sister, my brother, and me – and, of course, my parents. But then as my brother and sister got jobs and had to work, and then moved out, it was only me. Next summer I’d be 16. Next summer I, too, would have a job. Next summer I’d have an excuse not to spend two weeks at the Mill Creek Resort on scenic Table Rock Lake. But until then there was no way my parents were going to leave me at home by myself while they vacationed at the lake. Table Rock Lake was well off the beaten path – a good two hours further from Kansas City than the Lake of the Ozarks, which really wasn’t in the Ozarks at all. People went to the Lake of the Ozarks to party. People went to Table Rock Lake, which was deep in the Ozarks, to fish. To sit on the dock in the afternoon doing nothing. To relax by the pool. Maybe read a book. To take casual boat rides. In short, to be bored out of their minds. To say that Table Rock Lake was dull is an understatement. It was Dull with a capital “D.” Even if you had your own boat. And my father did have his own boat, a runabout. A boat suitable for fishing, skiing, and going for those casual boat rides. Waterskiing helped dispel some of the boredom. I would usually go skiing in the morning when the water out in the cove was still smooth. We would start at the boat dock, go up to the main channel where the water was considerably rougher, turn around, and come back. And that was it. I might even go out again in the afternoon. And sometimes... sometimes I’d even ski as far as the camping grounds at the far end of the cove. Rough water be damned! Excitement had no bounds. And there was fishing. My father would actually fish. He had strategies. He knew which lure to use, where to cast his line, and it never got tangled on underwater limbs so badly that there was no choice but to cut the line and tie on another lure. My father actually caught fish. And they were often big enough to eat. And we ate them. And, yeah, I had my own pole. I even had a tacklebox... with tackle in it. But I knew it was pointless for me to even try. Fishing, for me, was sitting in a boat that went nowhere while I did nothing except occasionally stick a hook in my thumb while trying to change a lure that wouldn’t work, either. The fish were safe from me. Sometimes my parents would go boating. Not fishing, not skiing... just boating. Sometimes short boat rides. Sometimes longer. And sometimes I’d go with them. Once we went all the way to the Arkansas State Line. Mind you, the resort was only about a mile from the Arkansas line, but not by water. You couldn’t go that way in a boat. The State Line was easily 30 miles by water... in a boat that would only do 25, tops. My mother thought 15 was fast in a boat. So we’d generally cruise at about 12 MPH. You do the math. There was actually a cable across the increasingly smaller body of water that still called itself Table Rock Lake to let you know when you crossed out of Missouri and into Arkansas. There were notices telling you that whatever fishing license you might have probably was no longer any good. When we got there, at the border, I got out of the boat, skied from Missouri into Arkansas, and then back into Missouri again, and then I got back into the boat. Just to say I had done it. Not like it’s a feat that would ever impress anybody. Just the same, I had done it. Once we got the ski rope pulled back in we headed back to the resort. I wouldn’t spend six hours in a boat again until I joined the Navy. There was one other kid at the resort who was my age, a semi-cousin named Rex. At the time, the resort belonged to a middle-aged couple named Frank and Kitty, who were second or third cousins to my father, whatever that means. Rex was a relative of theirs. He probably wasn’t related to me at all. But I didn’t care. He was somebody to hang out with. Rex was there for the entire summer. He worked there, more or less. He’d help clean out cabins and do other chores as necessary. When he wasn’t working, and when I wasn’t out on a forced boat ride, we’d put on diving masks and swim fins and explore the bottom of the lake just beyond the end of the dock. There, in about 15 feet of water, we found all sorts of stuff, like broken fishing rods, a silt-filled tape measure, and rusting beer cans. The most interesting thing we found all summer was a metal chair – you know, the kind people sat out on their porches, or docks, with the metal pipe frame that would slightly rock when sat in. We became obsessed with getting that chair off the bottom. We couldn’t bring it straight up, even with a rope. So we spent about a day and a half diving down together and moving it a foot or so at a time toward the shore before we had to surface for a breath. When we finally got it close enough where we no longer needed to dive, we put a rope on it, and Rex pulled from the shore while I pushed from the water, and, by golly, we got that chair out on dry land. That muddy, rusty, nasty chair that Frank told Rex to drag behind the sewage lagoon and throw on the junk pile. One nice thing the resort had was a pool. The pool had a diving board, but it wasn’t any good – just a solid piece of fiberglass-coated steel that had no bounce whatsoever. Yeah, I could do a flip off of it, but that wasn’t a challenge. Being a member of the Junior Varsity Diving Team at my high school, I was quite the connoisseur of diving boards by then. But the pool was still good to cool off in during the heat of the afternoon, and it was fun to float in at night and watch movies. A couple of nights a week they’d set up an old school projector on the poolside. Kitty would pick up free movies at the local public library, and then we’d watch them while the bats swooped down trying to catch the bugs that were attracted to the underwater lights in the pool. We watched a lot of documentaries. And, for whatever reason, a lot of those documentaries were about diesel engines. To this day I know a lot about diesel engines. How they run. How they start. How they don’t need sparkplugs. They’re German, you know. It all became a routine. We’d go for a boat ride in the morning. Maybe pretend to fish. We’d have lunch. Maybe do some waterskiing. Lay around the dock. Jump in the pool. Watch a movie. Or not. Supper. Bed. And then do it all over again, but not necessarily in that order. Wanting to dive off of the Kimberling City Bridge became part of that routine. The thing was, the bridge wasn’t that far away from where we were staying. Almost every time we went out in the boat it was there, spanning the lake, much higher on the north end, but still not particularly close on the south end, the end I wanted to dive from. From the first time I went under that bridge, sitting in my father’s boat, gazing up at the steel beams 50 feet over my head, I knew that it was something I had to do. I was going to dive off that bridge. So every time my parents would ask, if only out of politeness, if there was anywhere I wanted to go, my answer was always, “Yeah. I want to dive off of the Kimberling City Bridge.” To which my folks would say, either one at a time, or sometimes in unison, “No.” My mother’s objection was that I might dive down and hit something. But I knew there was nothing down there to hit, not for about 150 feet. The superstructure of the old bridge, the bridge that had gone across the White River before they built the dam and flooded the valley, was still down there rusting. Supposedly there were still buildings down there, too. I wasn’t in much danger of hitting them, either. My father’s objection was that it was somewhat illegal to dive off the bridge. My reply was, “So?” And I knew I could do it. I could actually pull it off. It was totally possible. And if... if I could make that dive – toes pointed, back slightly arched, arms out to my sides, fingers tight together, hands slightly cupped, head steady, eyes filled with the steely glaze of absolute determination, at the last second bringing my hands together and drilling the entry, so slick there’s no splash at all except for the one drop of water that shoots into the air to fall back to the exact spot it left with a silent “daloop” – then I would’ve pulled off the single most amazing dive I would ever hope to make, maybe in my entire life. And nobody, nobody at all, would have even the slightest doubt that I really was a good diver, that I was worthy of a varsity letter. So I would ask, every time, to dive off that bridge, and my parents would unerringly say “no,” every time. Until finally my father said, “Yes.” Well, it was more like, “OK, fine. Dive off the damn bridge.” But it meant the same thing: Yes. And I knew that my father would never say yes again. So I had no choice. I was going to dive of that damn bridge, and it was going to be today. Now. My father let me out at the shore and I walked up the hill to the roadway. I wore my tennis shoes to protect my feet from the rocks and the hot pavement, and I took a ski belt with me to tie my shoes to, so they wouldn’t sink when I threw them off the bridge. I mean, I wasn’t going to dive with my shoes on. Thing was, once I’d gotten far enough out on the bridge to be well away from the shore, once I’d climbed over the railing and out on the steel beam holding the bridge up, and once I threw my shoes off in the general direction of the boat below, I truly had no choice. It was too late to reconsider how good of an idea this was to begin with. I couldn’t walk back without my shoes, and I definitely didn’t want to be that kid who is too afraid to go off the high dive and has to climb back down the ladder while everybody yells at him. But it was a long way down. I’m guessing 50 feet, if it were an inch. Maybe you’re thinking that’s not very high. Maybe you weren’t up there. Next time you’re on the fifth floor of a building, look out the window. A high dive in a swimming pool is three meters. That’s not even ten feet. Stack five high dives on top of each other, maybe six, and you’re pretty close. And that’s what I intended to do – dive. From that height, though, you can’t just dive off like you might with the diving board back at the resort. The momentum will carry your feet completely over your head and you’re probably going to land on your back... hard... and that’s really going to hurt. A lot. The way you do it, in case you ever need to, is you jump straight up, then let gravity do the rest, back slightly arched with your arms out to your side for balance – much like you would if you were freefalling from a plane. In theory, you should be pointing in the right direction when you hit the water, being careful to intertwine your fingers when you bring your arms over your head for the entry. Otherwise the force could pull your hands apart, and that’s probably not going to be very good, either. I mean, seriously, there’s just a lot of things that could go wrong. So there I was, trying not to overthink it. Count to three and go. And I did it. I sailed off into the air. Legs together. Toes pointed. Arms gracefully out to my side. My head pivoted toward the water, and at the last moment I clasped my hands together and disappeared smoothly beneath the waves. Hardly a splash. It was a good dive. 8’s and 9’s, maybe even a 10. And I did it. I actually did it. I had dove off of the Kimberling City Bridge. When I popped to the surface I looked over at the boat, expecting to see my mother still holding the camera, the photographic proof. I expected to see my father smiling that I had not just gone off the bridge, but I had done it well. But they weren’t. Not at all. It was then that I realized my parents hadn’t been looking. They had missed it. A large fish had jumped out of the water behind them, and when they turned back around I was already in the water. Nobody had seen it. Nobody at all. I retrieved my shoes and climbed back into the boat, and then we headed back to the resort, with a little less than a week before we would head back home.

Becoming a Birder It all started with dippers. I was in Colorado the first time I ever went birdwatching – proper birdwatching, where you go out with the sole purpose of seeing birds, and not just birds in general, but specific birds, birds with more than one name. Estes Park, to be exact. I was 16. I was there with Explorer Post 943 from the Kansas City Zoo. Our sponsor was an older guy (like in his mid-30s) named Harry who worked at the zoo. Harry was a bonafide birder. He took birdwatching seriously. He had more than one field guide that he actually used. He wore his binoculars all the time... even while driving. He had a really nice camera with this really long lens that was all mounted on an old rifle stock so he could hold it still while taking pictures of birds. The shutter button was the “trigger” of the “rifle.” And he could tell one bird from another with just a glance, if that. The guy was good. Harry had even gone to Africa just to see birds. That’s how serious he was. But he’d never seen a dipper. An American Dipper. Cinclus mexicanus. Dippers, or water ouzels for you old timers, are technically songbirds, and they do sing, but it’s not a catchy tune. They are not overly attractive birds. They’re a uniform dark gray, maybe a bit smaller than a robin with short, stubby tails. If they were sitting on a branch up in a tree, they’d be really easy to overlook. But sitting in trees is not what they do. What they do is walk underwater in swiftly moving mountain streams, using that stubby tail as a brace. There they eat all the stuff that they can find. Usually little stuff – little bugs, little fish, little crustaceans. Underneath that swiftly moving, very cold water. No other bird on the entire planet does that. If you want to see a dipper, you need a mountain stream. A serious mountain. Sure, they may call overly large hills “mountains” in places like Missouri, but the dippers know they’re not. The Rocky Mountains, now those are serious. You find a stream there, and there’s a very good chance you might just see a dipper. After all, they’re really not that rare, or secretive. So very early in the morning, like 5 a.m. early, Harry and I went out in search of dippers, because, apparently, that’s the best time to see birds – ridiculously early in the morning. It was me, the guy who had never birded, and Harry, a full-fledged birder. I mean, seriously, the guy looked for birds with binoculars while he was driving. And he found them. And he could generally stay on the road while doing so. So there were were, walking along a mountain stream while the sun still wasn’t certain it really wanted to rise. And I thought the other side of the stream might be a better place to find this elusive bird, to actually see a dipper, only because we had yet to see any on this side of the stream. Harry had his doubts, but I jumped over just the same. Problem was, even though it was easy to jump over, I couldn’t jump back. The bank I had jumped to was considerably lower than the one I jumped from. Gravity works that way. And Harry didn’t want to jump at all. It’s that whole gravity thing. So we were stuck walking on different sides of the stream. And then the stream got wider and there were trees and such and we got separated, which was really no big deal, because eventually we’d come back to the road where we started, and there was a bridge. There, walking by myself, that’s when I saw a dipper. And, really, there’s no mistaking a dipper. It popped out of the stream, caught its breath, or whatever it is that dippers do when they’re not underwater. And then it jumped back in, walked around underwater for a bit, then it came back out and flew away. Just like that. I had seen a dipper. When I got to the road and caught back up with Harry I told him about the dipper. “Are you sure?” he asked. And, of course, I was. “Let’s go!” he said, taking off before I even had a chance to point in the general direction, quicker than I’d ever seen him move. So we trekked back to where I had seen it, both of us on the same side this time, but no matter how quiet we were or how long we waited, there was no dipper to be seen. Harry tried to act like it was no big deal. Like it was just a part of birding. After all, you’re never going to see them all. But he wasn’t fooling anybody. It was there, and he had missed it. It was the next day that Harry heard that dippers had been spotted under a highway bridge. Luckily I already had my shoes on. When we got there, cars were parked all along the highway. The place was flocking with birders, a regular murmuration, all armed with scopes and binoculars and cameras, and all just as impressive as anything Harry had. And sure enough, there were dippers, more than one, flitting in and out of the water underneath that bridge. Not even trying to hide. Not caring who might see them. Posing. So Harry got to see a dipper before we headed back to Missouri. I don’t know what it was, though. Harry just didn’t seem nearly that excited about finally seeing all those dippers under that bridge as he had been the day before when he hadn’t seen any of them at all.

Birthday Beer On my 18th birthday I went to Kansas with my buddy Dave, just so I could buy some beer. No pretending. No hoping they wouldn’t check my ID or, if they did, look at it too closely. It was all legal and above the board. I was 18, and I could buy beer in Kansas. Well, it was 3.2 beer, but who cared? If it had been .0001 it would’ve still been beer, and that’s what mattered. We went to a grocery store. Not a 7-11 or the Beer Barn or some place where buying beer before 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning would seem normal, but a regular grocery store where regular people were buying regular groceries. We went back to the liquor department and I perused the beer like I actually had an opinion, and I carefully selected a six pack. Probably Coors. Back then we thought Coors was special. We had a lot to learn. With one hand under my six pack, and the other on top, I proudly held my six pack up against my chest as we stood in line behind mothers doing their weekly shopping, waiting for our turn, slowly moving forward. I think the lady in front of us considered letting us go before her. After all, we only had one item, and she had a whole cartful. But when she saw that our one item was beer – me, grinning like an idiot while proudly holding it there in front of me – she ever so slightly huffed, turned around, and started unloading her cart. She wasn’t in a hurry. Neither were we. When she was finally out of the way, I sat my six pack on the conveyor and watched it come to a stop in front of the cashier lady. She could have easily been my mother, or my high school English teacher. Neither had a sense of humour. She was somebody who was tired before she ever clocked in, and still had the better part of the day to work. Somebody who had no room for nonsense in her life. Ever. She looked at the beer. Then she looked at me. I smiled even more than I had been before. She frowned even more than she had been before. “You’re not old enough to buy beer!” she said with a sneer. I begged to differ, and I held out my ID for her inspection. She snapped the ID from my hand, and after taking her reading glasses off the top of her head, carefully inspected the ID... both sides. Then she looked at me once again over her glasses before checking my ID once more. Then, in disgust, she threw the ID back at me. She seriously threw it, as she said, “Oh, good grief! Today is your birthday!” And she didn’t say anything more. Not a word. This was back when cash registers had keys, and those keys could be pounded. And she did. Bam! Bam! Bam! Caching! She then snatched the money out of my hand and stuffed it in the register. She dug out my change and slapped it down on the counter. There was no counting. There was no offer of a sack. And she sure as hell didn’t wish me a happy birthday. She didn’t need to. To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a beer more than the one we drank in the parking lot of that grocery store. And it was just ten in the morning. I still had the rest of my birthday in front of me.

GAF “There are openings at GAF,” said the lady at the state unemployment agency. This was in the Spring of 1978. In Kansas City. “There are always openings at GAF. But you won’t like it,” she added, sounding very much like Eeyore on a particularly gloomy day. “What do they pay?” I asked. “It won’t matter,” she replied, and, probably because it was required of her job, she added, “They start at $5.25 an hour.” “That’s...” “That’s almost twice minimum wage,” she finished for me. “I know. But it won’t be worth it. It includes a fifty cent an hour differential because you’ll be working evenings, 3 to 11.” Then she added, “But it won’t be enough.” “What is GAF?” I asked. “They’re a roofing mill. They make shingles and tarpaper.” They also made the paper that shingles and tarpaper are made from. That part she didn’t tell me, probably because she didn’t have to. Sometimes it was just the regular pulp paper, sometimes asbestos. You take all those asbestos fibers, soak them down, and turn them into pulp, pulp into paper. Not only would the asbestos kill us in about 20 different ways, but the fumes off the tar would, too. And there had to be other things in there as well, including the janky machinery we worked on. Tar oozed out of the floor and dripped off the rafters. Dust and smoke filled the air. And the noise was constant. At that point, it really didn’t matter if you smoked as well, and worrying about second hand smoke was just silly. Here’s how you make tarpaper, in case you ever think you might. You start with a big roll of paper – asbestos or otherwise – at the back of the line, run it up and down over all these rollers, through a vat of 450 degrees tar in the middle, cool it off on even more rollers, wind it into rolls, slap a label on it and shove it onto a pallet. When you have a pallet full of rolls, a forklift takes them out to the warehouse. Fairly simple, except when you have to splice a new roll of paper onto an old roll of paper. There’s not a chance that splice is going to make it all the way through to the other end. As well, if the guy winding the paper into rolls falls behind or something goes wrong with the winder or one of the rollers gets too sticky or the paper breaks for no reason whatsoever – in short, if anything at all happens that shuts the line down – then it meant taking long metal poles with hooks on the end and then digging all the torn pieces of tarpaper out of that incredibly hot vat of tar, as well as peeling if off the rollers, and then squirting down those rollers with kerosene so the paper wouldn’t stick for at least a little while, before the entire machine could be rewound and slowly started up again. Even with gloves and long sleeves and WWI flying helmets on we still got splattered with very hot tar. Everybody got burned nightly. Many times. You only hoped it wouldn’t be too bad. Mind you, the paper would break no matter what speed we ran the machine at. But around 350 feet per minute it ran reasonably well. Thing is, to make some crazy quota we never could make anyway we were supposed to run the machine at 450 feet per minute. Never mind that every time we kicked it up to that speed the paper broke, and then we spent even more time getting it going again. Had we run it at 350, we would’ve produced way more paper than ever trying for 450. But Vincent, the supervisor, always insisted that we run it at 450. Vincent never got in there to clean the paper out. But then, we wouldn’t’ve let him. That was a Union job, and he was management. I’m not sure what qualified Vincent, or anybody, for management at GAF. It wasn’t because he knew how anything at the mill actually worked. Vincent was fairly easy to ignore. Management turned over faster than labor. And when it got down to it, Vincent couldn’t even fire us, short of our doing something incredibly stupid, like plugging 440 volts into the PA system. We were all Union. Teamsters. One time, for example, the line was down when Vincent realized nobody was even trying to get it running again. We were all just sitting around doing nothing. “Why the hell isn’t that line running!” Vincent yelled. Vincent was really good at yelling. It’s not just that he was loud. The trick is to be loud and convincing. To come off like you really have the authority to take appropriate action when necessary. I suppose that’s the key to being an effective supervisor. It would probably also help if anybody who worked for you really cared if they got fired. “Get off your asses and get back to work!” Vincent yelled at a group of guys who really didn’t care if they got fired. “Nope,” said Arnold, and he meant it. Arnold was our Union Rep. He knew how things worked. He knew, because he was the Union Rep, that he could only be fired by upper management – the guys in suits who probably didn’t even know where the roofing mill was. Even so, firing the Union Rep was ridiculously complicated, no matter what the charges were, and would probably involve a strike and litigation and in the end he’d probably get his job back with back pay. So if a problem ever found its way to upper management that involved firing anybody, it was always easier to fire the supervisor, who had obviously screwed up simply because he wasn’t able to resolve the problem and now they had to. The problem on that particular night was that in order to rethread the line, we needed to get up on the catwalk, and the lightbulb had burned out. And it was a Union lightbulb. It could only be replaced by a Union electrician, who was on a Union break. Vincent tried to get us to go up there anyway, but Arnold, the Union Rep, refused, claiming it was unsafe. Mind you, the light bulb probably had been burnt out for months before anybody noticed it, but now that it was noticed, it had to be fixed. Vincent was willing to fix it himself, to which Arnold said that if he did, the entire mill would walk out. And we would’ve, too. Vincent wasn’t in the Union. The Union wasn’t for management. And management was strictly forbidden from doing Union work. The Union electrician finally returned from his Union break – not one Union minute early, screwed in a new Union lightbulb, and we had to go back to work. Union work. Somewhere in there the logic was lost. Never mind that it might be unsafe to work up on the catwalk without proper lighting. The entire machine was inherently unsafe, no matter how well lit it might be. The entire roofing mill was a class action lawsuit just waiting to be filed. But that didn’t mean the Union wasn’t on our side. Instead of the Union getting better working conditions every time the contract came up, they got us paid holidays. Aside from the usuals, like Christmas, New Years, and Thanksgiving – both the Thursday and the Friday – we got Arbor Day off. Arbor Day! We also got Flag Day, our birthdays, and Mother’s Day, even if we didn’t have a mother. We got something like 14 paid holidays a year. Of course, we still had to work them. We just got paid more, which meant we got taxed more. It was often hard to tell the difference from one check to the next, no matter how many hours we worked or how much we were getting paid. Absenteeism was constant, so much so that on any given night there might be only enough guys to run one line. One of the guys who was always there was Chuck. He’d even show up early, and was in no hurry to clock out at the end of the day. For Chuck, going to work was better than staying home with his wife, and he couldn’t afford another divorce. Chuck worked in the asbestos mill. He was the guy who shoveled all those asbestos fibers into the vat where they were turned into pulp that eventually became asbestos paper. He was the only person in the entire mill who was offered any protective clothing at all, but even then it wasn’t enough – the coveralls, the hood, and the mask, complete with breather. He’d get all dressed up before going into the room that wasn’t nearly sealed enough. He would glance around with a look of complete resignment before closing the door behind him. And, yeah, even in the late ‘70s we knew that asbestos was horrible, that it would kill us. Chuck knew it, too. But if you were wanting to work days, and really needed that extra dollar an hour, there was always an opening in the asbestos mill. It was much harder to bid for a job anywhere on the shingles line, mostly because it rarely broke down. It was even harder to get a position on the far end of the shingles line, the part that dealt with the shingles once they were already shingles, the part that automatically wrapped them before sending them out to where Wolfman no longer worked on the palletizer, mostly because even if the line went down the guys on that end of the machine didn’t have to do anything to fix it. Randy Collins had one of those jobs. I didn’t know Randy Collins too well. Probably the only reason I even knew his name, both first and last, was because everybody would come up to me for about a week and say, “Hey, did you hear what happened to Randy Collins?” What happened to Randy Collins was that he got his glove caught in one of the chains on the conveyor belt, and it pulled his hand into the gears, which took off three of his fingers. They were more mashed off than chopped off. They sent what was left of his fingers to the hospital with Randy, but there really wasn’t much of a point. Come to find out, there was a set rate for missing body parts. Each finger was worth $1500. A thumb would’ve been worth $3000, but Randy still had his thumb. With his $4500 Randy bought a new Ford. A Fairmont Futura. Me? I would’ve wanted something more than a Fairmont. I imagine Randy did, too, especially when he eventually traded it in and found it had no resale value at all. Me? I wouldn’t’ve settled for anything short of a Corvette. But to be able to afford a Corvette you wouldn’t be able to drive it. And then there was Leon. Leon didn’t have either a Futura or a Corvette. What he did have was a job for life. Leon, best I could tell, didn’t do anything. When he bothered to come in at all, he just sat in the supervisor’s shack drinking coffee. Years ago he got his arm caught in one of the machines. He still had it, but it hung useless at his side. Leon’s settlement, back before they came up with set values for every body part, was perpetual employment. I’m not sure that was much of a deal. And I can’t imagine Leon did, either, especially when they closed down the roofing mill well before Leon was ready to die. Maybe, by then, he was close enough that it really didn’t matter. Rufus did have to work, but that didn’t mean he had to work very hard. Rufus ran the saturator on the shingles line, the part where the paper gets saturated with tar. So the name. And that meant he pretty much had control of the entire machine. It meant that he set the speed, and that speed was slow. Vincent probably wanted the shingles line to run faster, but Rufus didn’t, and that settled it. Unlike all of us on the tarpaper line, Vincent never yelled at Rufus. And that’s probably because Rufus was big. Really big. Not big like Skoal. Skoal was big like always having an extra serving of mashed potatoes and gravy at every meal since he was two. Rufus was big like a brick wall. Solid. Well built. Not going anywhere. It was Rufus who walked up and shoved me from in front of his fan. It wasn’t technically Rufus’s fan. He didn’t buy it. But he claimed it, and that was pretty much good enough. And there I was, just having gotten out of fishing scraps of dripping tarpaper out of the tar pit. I was hot. Profoundly hot. And there was a fan. I didn’t particularly care whose fan it was... until Rufus put both of his very large hands on my chest and shoved me out of the way. Without thinking, I spun around and shoved Rufus back. I shoved him hard enough that he almost had to take a step back. He stood there, unmoving, looking me over, and then he just laughed, before he turned and walked away, still laughing. But he never shoved me again. It was a bit like Rodney. Every day at the end of our shift, when we were gathered around the clock waiting to time out, Rodney would challenge me to arm wrestle. And every day I told him no. I just wanted to go home. Rodney wasn’t a big guy. He was somebody who would move when you shoved him. He was just a guy who, for whatever reason, wanted to beat me at arm wrestling. And he kept at it. Some days he wouldn’t even wait until quitting time. He’d sit up on his forklift waiting for the pallet to fill up with tarpaper rolls and he’d yell over at me, “Hey! When we gonna arm wrestle?” Until finally, one day while everybody except Chuck was bunched around the time clock waiting to go home, I told Rodney, “OK, I’ll arm wrestle you.” Rodney looked at me with a worried look on his face. “Right now?” he asked. “Right here. Right now,” I told him. Rodney looked at me for a minute or two before he finally said, “No.” To which I said, “Are you serious?” Rodney replied, “Man, I ain’t gonna arm wrestle you.” “Why the hell not?” “Because,” said Rodney, “I might lose.” And that was that. Rodney never asked me to arm wrestle again. Nobody did. That was probably right after Wolfman had been fired. Maybe that’s why I agreed to arm wrestle Rodney. I never knew what Wolfman’s real name was. I’m not sure he did. As far as I know, it really could’ve been Wolfman. Wolfman ran the palletizer, a nifty machine he had designed. When the bundles of shingles came off the end of the conveyor they would neatly slide onto the waiting pallet, which regularly turned so all the bundles of shingles would tie into each other, each row going a different direction than the row beneath it, and when the pallet was full, it would roll away to be hauled off by a forklift while another pallet automatically slid in place, and then it would do it all over again. As part of the incentive deal for inventing the palletizer, Wolfman got a check for $300, and two guys lost their jobs. That was before I ever worked there. Wolfman became my friend. We’d have lunch together while we watched the palletizer doing its pirouettes, and on occasion we’d go out for a beer after work at the Eastsider, a bar underneath a viaduct just down the street from the roofing mill that made no attempt to patch the bullet holes in the walls. I was there once when a really rough looking guy got right up in my face, grabbed me by the collar with one hand while he loaded the other, and said, “What the hell are you doing in my bar?” That’s the kind of bar we’re talking about here. I stammered that I was just having a beer with Wolfman. The minute – the second – he heard Wolfman’s name he let me go, profusely apologized, straightened out my collar, and bought both me and Wolfman a beer just so there would be no misunderstanding. That’s the kind of guy that Wolfman was. His name pretty much says it all. Wolfman once invited me to an orgy. Me and my girlfriend. I had never been invited to an orgy before. As far as that goes, since. It’s not like a regular party. There are certain expectations, I would imagine. It’s kind of like a costume party with no costumes. A party with interactive entertainment, a lot more robust than charades. I politely declined. But it did make me wonder. How does one arrange such a thing? Never mind who you would invite. What sort of infrastructure would you need? And then, how does an orgy even begin? Does everybody just kind of stand around, maybe sipping on a drink, polite conversation, that sort of thing, until somebody rings a bell? Says go? Blows a boat horn? Never mind how they end. There. Now you have something to wonder about. Wolfman, when he wasn’t hosting orgies, kept a bottle of cheap whiskey in a breaker box at work. That was his downfall. One night when he’d been hitting it rather hard he got to wondering what would happen if he plugged 440 volts into the PA system. It just went “pop.” It wasn’t even a loud pop. It was also the end of the PA system, not that it was really missed. And they fired Wolfman. Even Arnold couldn’t save his job. Wolfman wasn’t without resources, though. He went back to working fulltime for a call girl service. He wasn’t the pimp, mind you. He would’ve needed a nicer car for that. He was security. He’d drive the ladies to their appointments, then wait in the parking lot. If a window got broken, that was Wolfman’s signal to go in and introduce himself. I often wonder what happened to Wolfman. I hope he’s had a good life. It was Gonzo, though, who impressed me the most at GAF. I’m pretty sure that Gonzo wasn’t his real name, either. Gonzo was a chemist at the roofing mill. What that meant was he had an air conditioned office and a seemingly endless supply of porn. He also had a seemingly endless supply of beakers and test tubes and Bunsen burners and other assorted scientific equipment that he never used. The only thing remotely scientific that he ever did was to routinely tear a piece of tarpaper in two to see it if were soaked all the way through with tar. In his spare time there was the porn. Gonzo, though, had a dream. He was absolutely convinced that working your entire life until you were too broken to work anymore, much less even remotely starting to enjoy all the spare time you now had since you were no longer working, was the dumbest idea anybody had ever come up with. And that led to his Checklist. It was a Checklist so profound that it had to be capitalized. Number one on his Checklist was finding a beautiful, well endowed woman who rarely wore appropriate undergarments and believed as he did, a woman who he truly loved and she truly loved him. Number two was she had to be rich. Incredibly rich. Monopoly money rich. Number three was she had to be willing to spend all of her money now. They would simply take off on a perpetual vacation that would only end when all of the money finally ran out, and only then, if necessary, would they reluctantly start working. The rest of the Checklist was filled with sexual things that this woman would be eagerly willing to do. You laugh, but he found her. I have no idea how, but he found her. I suppose you have to know where to look. Her father was some sort of diplomat. Her mother was some sort of heiress. Henry Kessinger was at their wedding. If you don’t know who Henry Kissinger is, look him up. And then they disappeared. Not Henry. Just Gonzo and his new wife. I’d like to think they never ran out of money, that even today they’re still lying on some beach somewhere without a care in the world. But, yeah. Talk about career planning. Talk about those things they never even suggest at the unemployment office. Me? I was still employed. I was still at GAF. I’d been there close to a year when one night I showed up to work only to find that once again not enough people had shown up to run both lines, so they were only running the shingles line, slowly, and that made me an extra, along with Skoal. Skoal was a big ol’ boy from Arkansas who got his nickname from shoving half a can of Skoal chewing tobacco in his mouth at a time. I liked the guy, but he did lack a certain modicum of hygiene. By the time I caught up with Skoal – by the time Vincent found me in the breakroom and realized I wasn’t doing anything – Skoal had been shoveling shingle gravel for half an hour. The conveyor that took the fine gravel from a bin somewhere in the basement up to where it came down on the shingles as they passed underneath was broken. It wasn’t broken bad enough not to work, but bad enough to make a huge mess under the part where it was broken. It probably wouldn’t’ve been too hard to fix the silly thing, but that would’ve meant shutting down the shingles line, and then they’d have no excuse but to run the tarpaper line, and nobody wanted to do that. So, like the shift before us, they had two guys shoveling the gravel into a large bucket on a forklift. When the bucket was full, the forklift would take it to the basement and dump it back into the bin. Then they’d bring the bucket back, set it down by the leak, and the shoveling would continue. All night long. And there I am, before I ever shoveled anything, and I just had to ask, “Why don’t you just put the bucket under the leak?” It had seriously never occurred to anybody, for at least 10 hours, to simply put the bucket under the leak. The guy sitting on the forklift looks at the leak, looks at the bucket, and says, “Oh. That might work.” Of course, they still needed somebody to shovel the little bit up that ended up on the floor every time they emptied the bucket, and since Skoal already had a shovel, I let him continue, and I went off to hide back in the breakroom. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the vending machine anymore. Everybody had been shaking it to loosen chips and candy for months. Finally, when there was nothing that would shake free anymore, somebody had simply smashed out the front glass with a two pound hammer. There are simple solutions for every problem, so it would seem. It couldn’t have been a month after. Spring was quickly running out, and soon it would be summer again. It would be my second summer at GAF. It was hot in the roofing mill in the dead of the winter. In the summer it was unbearable. Standing in front of Rufus’s fan didn’t help. Even the salt tablets didn’t help. There I was, tar in my hair, on my clothing, on my skin, sitting in a tar-splattered chair made from an old cardboard barrel that wouldn’t set straight no matter how much I wished it did. There I was, running the saturator on the tarpaper line, watching the tarpaper roll by. The paper going in and out of the tar, over and under the rollers. We had just gotten it running, for like the fifth time in the last two hours. And we were just waiting for it to break again. Before Vincent had a chance to tell me to increase the speed, I got up, walked to the supervisor’s shack, and told Vincent that I quit. Just like that. Vincent looked at me with no emotion whatsoever, especially surprise, and he simply said, “OK.” As I was leaving, from his forklift, Rodney called out to me, “Hey, where you going?” “Home,” I said. “I just quit.” “No shit?” said Rodney. And as I was headed out toward the warehouse that eventually led outside to where my truck waited for me in the dimly lit gravel parking lot, Rodney called out to me, “Hey... can I have your lunch?” I had a meatloaf sandwich that night. I really like meatloaf sandwiches. But I gave it to Rodney just the same. It was maybe two years after I left GAF that I heard it had gotten closed down by OSHA. It wasn’t that OSHA had actually shut them down. They just told GAF everything they would have to fix before they’d allow them to run the place, and all those guys in upper management did the math. Since then there have been multiple class action lawsuits against the GAF corporation. For years after I worked there I’d regularly get the notices in the mail. Unfortunately, I wasn’t lucky enough to have developed any nasty diseases or to have simply dropped dead because I had once worked there. All that money went to the other guys. Some guys have all the luck. I suppose all those guys who worked there, the ones who were still able, like me, went on to other jobs. Maybe they got on down at the steel mill. They paid really well, too.

The Best Man Barbara was wearing a stunning, mostly white ankle length dress that her maid of honour had worn at both of her previous weddings. Somewhere along the line the veil had been lost. The maid of honour had also been lost. She had to be in court. Aside from no maid of honour, there were no bridesmaids, either. Sherrie had been there briefly to help Barbara get dressed, not that she really needed the help, and then she had to go, in case the maid of honour needed to be bailed out... again. And Sandy had called that morning to say that she couldn’t make it because somebody had failed to show up for their shift, and unless she worked she’d be fired, too. The groomsmen, Larry and Carl, were there, though. They had come straight from their jobs at the garage. I knew they were Larry and Carl because their names were embroidered on their shirts, although the grease stains made it hard to read. Washing their hands was something that never occurred to them. With nothing better to do, the groomsmen kept bowing at each other while saying, “Ahh Soo” with a really bad Chinese accent, and then raucously laughing. They had both recently seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon where apparently Bugs, not afraid of being racially insensitive, had been doing the same thing. “Yeah, that Bugs,” I said, “he sure can act,” “Yes, he can!” said Larry and Carl. The bride’s father was also there. He was sitting alone on the right side of the church. He wasn’t just sitting by himself. He was the only guest in the entire church. He was not there to give the bride away. He had no official capacity whatsoever. The only reason he had come at all was to show his vehement, but silent, disapproval, which would have been extremely hard to do had he stayed at home. He was wearing a conservative black suit, with a rather severe clerical collar that he wore everywhere, even to bed. He had been an Assemblies of God pastor for 26 years and counting. The only reason he ever asked anybody about their religious beliefs was so he could tell them why they were wrong. But today he wasn’t telling anybody anything. You really can’t talk and seethe at the same time. I have no idea why Barbara’s father was so opposed to the union. Not that he needed a reason. It could’ve been any of the usual objections any father might have. More than likely, though, it was along the same lines as Barbara’s mother. She hadn’t shown up at all. She wanted nothing to do with any of it. Never mind that her daughter wasn’t marrying a true believer, that he didn’t attended her husband’s church, and he didn’t come forward on a regular basis... or ever. It wasn’t because Barbara had been cohabitating with the groom. It wasn’t because she refused to wear dresses all the time, had cut and dyed her hair, listened to rock and roll music, went to movies, played cards, drank hard liquor, and even smoked cigarettes. It was all of it. She was marrying against their wishes. Good Christian women do not shout out obscenities in church, even if it’s somebody else’s church. And that’s why Barbara’s mother had stayed home. And that brings us to the groom, David. He wasn’t there, either. But I was. I was the best man. I had met David a few years prior when we were both working at the Kentwood Arms Hotel. In its day, the Kentwood Arms had been the place to stay in Springfield. It had hosted celebrities and politicians alike. I’m told Harry Truman had once stayed there, along with Dom DeLuise. Not at the same time. And like those two celebrities, the Kentwood Arms’ day had come and long been gone. When David and I worked at the Kentwood about the only people who stayed there on purpose were trainmen. The hotel had a contract with Southern Pacific or Santa Fe or whatever to put traincrews up for the night while waiting for the next train out. We also had some overflow customers from the Galaxy, which was the gay bar next door. They were better tippers than the train guys. David and I worked in the hotel’s restaurant. He was the all-night cook. I was the all-night waiter. It was the best job David had ever had. I’m not saying it was the worst job I’d ever had. There’s some pretty stiff competition for that spot. It was definitely better than making tarpaper, but not by much. And anything was better than the Navy. So there we were. Two people who really had nothing in common. But since we had to work together, and since I’m not an asshole, I was nice to the guy. I mean, he wasn’t a bad guy. I liked him. David, on the other hand, thought we were best friends. And even though I moved on as soon as I could, David still kept in touch the best he could. And when he needed a best man, I was his choice. How do you tell someone that you’re not going to be their best man? How do you explain that you have nothing in common, especially when they think you do? That you’re truly not even friends? Well... unless you’re an asshole, you don’t. So I was the best man, trying to keep Barbara calm by assuring her that David would certainly be there any minute. I mean, he really wasn’t that late. Maybe five minutes. Ten, tops. But you’re really supposed to be at the church early, well before the ceremony is scheduled to start, especially if you’re the groom. So it was understandable that Barbara was getting increasingly nervous with every click of the clock. I did my very best to sound convincing when I assured her that David would never leave her at the altar. And, thankfully, I was right. “I’m here!” David cheerfully announced as he came through the door, acting as if there was nothing unusual about stopping on the way to one’s wedding to pick up some pizzas. He had figured with a five o’clock wedding everybody would be hungry. Carl and Larry certainly were. I convinced them to leave the pizzas at the back of the church and eat them after the ceremony. That’s the sort of thing a best man needs to be prepared to do. After all, we were on a fairly tight schedule. The AA group had the church reserved for six, and the organist had to pick her kids up by 5:30. The organist only knew one song, so that’s the song she played: “In the Garden.” And, yes, it’s traditionally a funeral song. She played it while Barbara escorted herself down the aisle, slowly, one step at a time with her hands out in front not holding a bouquet. And since Barbara hadn’t made it to the altar when she finished, the organist played it again. All of it. And that brings us to Brother Simon, the minister. He was probably the youngest guy in the room. Not that that’s a bad thing. Thing was, Brother Simon had been an ordained minister for exactly one day. That’s one day in the general sense, and not 24 actual hours. This was his first wedding. As far at that goes, it was his first anything... well, as far as the ministry goes. He probably would’ve been nervous no matter what, but he knew Barbara’s father was also a minister, that he’d been preaching longer than Brother Simon had been alive. That he had married more people than Brother Simon knew, collectively, for his entire life. That he would be sitting there critiquing everything. And, as far as Brother Simon knew, Barbara’s father was in a foul mood because of him. The entire wedding ceremony came in well under two minutes, and that’s liberally rounding up. The good news is that Brother Simon didn’t pass out, even though it was touch and go there for a moment. There were no comments on the sanctity of marriage. There was no ring ceremony. No unity candle was lit. There were no vows to speak of. He asked each if they took the other to be their lawfully wedded whatever the case might be. And that was it. He didn’t even wait for them to answer. He didn’t invite David to kiss the bride, and he definitely didn’t introduce “Mr and Mrs Ross” to those gathered. He just bolted. Out the back and gone. The good news was that the organist was still there, so she played “In the Garden” one more time as the newly married couple exited down the aisle. There was no applause, just Larry and Carl saying, “Ahh Soo! Ahh Soo!” I thought about applauding, but one guy alone would’ve just been pathetic. Barbara’s father had already left, not that he would’ve applauded anyway, and he definitely wasn’t going to the reception at the Galaxy. It was a couple of weeks later, I found out, that Barbara’s father married them again, hanging around long enough to sign the wedding certificate. I’m not certain if Barbara’s mother attended that one, either. I wasn’t there, but I suppose I would’ve been had David been able to find me. I saw David a couple more times that summer, and then in the fall I moved away. And I never saw David again. It was maybe seven or eight years later that Barbara found me. She looked me up to let me know that David had died. He had had cancer. David had asked Barbara to find me. He wasn’t sure if he had ever thanked me for being his best man, and he wanted me to know.

Our Lady of the Americas Christen taught science and math and a few other things. No one was really certain what went on in her room, except maybe Christen. I’m certain, though, that she taught religion. Before the school year had started all the teachers met for a combination prayer breakfast and teachers’ meeting. The prayer part of the breakfast was Christen reading from the Bible while the rest of us silently counted the breakfast part of the meeting; there were thirteen of us and only twelve donuts. Aside from losing her place twice and mispronouncing “Ephesians,” she did alright. “I tried teaching in public schools,” Christen explained, “but once you’ve taught religion you can never go back.” We all helped ourselves to the donuts while Christen talked. Christen was pregnant, marginally less so than the amount of time she was married. She could quote the Pope’s stand against contraception and she even knew which Pope had said it; it made her very proud to be able to do so. Christen was truly remarkable. The heat didn’t help her morning sickness one bit, but Christen never let it slow her down. She kept a bucket by her desk that she would empty promptly after each class period. “We must all suffer like Christ. The heat is only a minor discomfort we need to endure. Heaven is our reward.” Christen was an idiot. “But she is a devout idiot, and that,” Marge had confided in me, “makes all the difference in the world.” I liked Marge. She had been teaching forever, maybe even a little bit longer. She was going bald and really needed to shave; she had given up trying to lose that extra fifty pounds sometime in the late ‘forties. I had misjudged Marge. I really though she would be no fun at all. Marge had been raised a Methodist, which, she explained, was alright, except you had to say “Excuse me” every time you wanted a beer, and “Pardon me” every time you drank one. Marge was hot, too. She was on the floor above me, which meant that she was really hot. The sweat would roll out from underneath her wig, straightening out little wisps of hair that would have preferred to have remained hidden, and every once in a while a glistening drop would slip from the end of her nose and land with a “plop” on some worksheet she happened to be grading. I personally don’t think the fan helped a bit. I only had one, and it just chopped the heat, moving one gust of steamy air somewhere that another gust would have rather remained. The whole problem with the fan was that it didn’t move, unless, of course, I got up and moved it. If I aimed it at one half of the room, the other half complained, and visa versa. Even if we took turns it wouldn’t work. Seventh and eighth graders never seem to be happy about anything, except about not having to button their shirts all the way up – the boys, that is. The girls could do nothing, which, I know, wasn’t fair. So I got rid of the fan. I sent it upstairs to Marilyn. Marilyn was so damned cute that she could have asked me for my desk and I would have given it to her. I offered it to her, but she didn’t want it. I can’t remember Marilyn ever sweating. All her kids were cute, too. They weren’t really her kids; they all went back to their mothers at night. A few of them went home to both their mothers and their fathers. Marilyn taught the first grade. She had gotten married the day after she graduated from college. With her teaching certificate in hand, she spent most of the summer honeymooning in various parts of the Caribbean Sea. I’m almost positive she didn’t keep the certificate in her hand the whole time, and if she did, she managed to shift it regularly so as not to diminish her tan any. Marilyn didn’t get to take anything off, either, much to Scott’s and my disappointment. We were the first male teachers ever to grace the halls of Our Lady of the Americas Catholic School. We all just called it OLA for short. You didn’t need to take two breaths in order to say OLA. It was quite an event – our being hired. Half the kids came down to look at us two weeks before school even opened. A steady line of them passed by us as we stood on ladders while wet paint dripped off the walls and onto our tennis shoes. The rumour was confirmed. I believe quite a bit of money changed hands in the process. “What’s the matter with these damned kids?” I asked. “Beats hell outa me,” Scott answered. Mrs. Ragusa smiled at me reassuringly. I had just explained to her that I had a degree in Literature and a minor in Communications – getting up in front of the class would be no problem. What the heck, as long as I had the teachers’ editions of the textbooks there would be no problem with teaching. “I’m going to offer you a contract to teach seventh and eighth grade Literature,” Miss Ragusa beamed. “Usually I start new teachers out at $9,500 a year, but I’m going to offer you $10,000 for your first year here at OLA.” Miss Ragusa was being generous because I was a man and because I had a family. Heck, with that kind of money my wife and I could even have more kids. “But I don’t want to plan your family for you,” Miss Ragusa half-apologized. I had no concept of money in those days. “I really believe the Holy Spirit has guided you to OLA,” she explained. That should have been my first warning. I had just spent two-and-a-half hours driving lost through neighborhoods where they don’t even wait for your car to stop before stealing your hubcaps. I quit asking for directions when I realized that nobody spoke English in that part of town. “Usted está en Estados Unidos, señor, pero es posible que usted no está aquí, pero entonces, ¿dónde?” Scott had just painted over a window completely. “There’s something in my room I’d like you to paint.” “What?” asked Scott. “I’ll show you later,” I said, then I continued, “Hey, did I tell you what she has me teaching now?” “No,” said Scott. He was trying to decide whether he should take the paint off the window or put another coat on and let it go. “I’ve still got my lit classes, but now I’ve got Religion.” “Religion?” questioned Scott. “I thought you said you weren’t Catholic.” Scott had begun putting another coat of paint on the window. “I am Catholic,” I explained. “I’m just out of practice.” “Oh, really? How long out of practice?” “About fourteen years.” I carefully dabbed a spot on the window that Scott had missed. “Does Ragusa know that?” Scott artistically smoothed over the spot I had just dabbed. “No,” I said, “she never asked. I figured the Holy Spirit had told her.” “Oh,” said Scott, hopping off of his ladder so he could get a better perspective of his window. The paint on the window had dried quickly in the heat. “Do you suppose anyone will notice?” asked Scott. “Naw, I’ll just make them pray every morning. That should do it.” I was confident. Unfortunately, the heat outlasted my confidence. Jesus had sworn that he had seen our patron saint sweat. The life-size mural of the Blessed Virgin Mary (which we all conveniently shortened to BVM), who was depicted as standing on the earth while groveling peasants cluttered the corners, completely covered the back wall of my room. “That is what I’ll miss most about this room,” Miss Ragusa had confided in me. “I got so much comfort out of just looking on the hands of Mary.” Mary’s hands were spread out, as if she were trying to touch the groveling peasants. Scott had quit painting long before we ever got to my room. He had just finished painting over his second window when he quit. “You really do need to come down to my room and do some painting,” I pleaded, “only the back wall – that’s all.” But it was too late. “Are we getting paid for this?” Scott asked. “I think so.” “How much?” Scott asked again. “I’m not sure,” I answered. “It’s not enough.” Scott didn’t even wash out his brush. If only Scott could have been called out of retirement it would have solved the entire problem with Jesus. Scott had made the mistake of actually calling the poor kid Gee-Zuss, which Scott thought was down-right funny. Hey-Zeus had no sense of humour whatsoever. In fact, none of the kids did. I didn’t even get a smile out of my favourite Catholic joke: Do you know why Jesus was crucified instead of being stoned? (Wait time...) So Catholics could go like this (Cross yourself) instead of this (Act like your fists are stones that are repeatedly hitting you in the face). I loved that joke. So, at any rate, here’s Jesus swearing that the Virgin is sweating. I prudently passed up a very good one-liner. “It’s only a minor discomfort that she needs to endure. We all must learn to suffer like Christ.” Oh my god! I was beginning to sound like Christen. “Now shut up and get back to your damned seat.” That was much better, more like me. Tony lit up like a Christmas tree. “Mr. Soetaert, you said Damn! We’re not supposed to say Damn. Damn’s a curse word. You said Damn. Did you know you said Damn? Damn, he said Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn.” “Tony, shut up.” “But you said Damn.” “So?” “Does that mean we can say Damn, too? You said Damn so we can say Damn, too. Damn, we can say Damn.” Miss Ragusa wanted to know just two things. One: Why was my necktie around Saint Joseph’s neck; and Two: Why were all my students saying Damn? She also wanted to know who painted over the windows in Marge’s room, but she had long ago given up trying to find out. I could have had either Saint Joseph or Jesus (with a “G”). Since I had to have a statue in my room, and since Joseph is my middle name, I figured that I’d keep it in the family. Besides, Joseph was holding baby Jesus. This way I could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. That’s why I had a Joseph in my room. And since it was so unmercifully hot I got to take my tie off. Saint Joseph just seemed to compel me. “I need a tie,” he had whispered to me. “Mr. Soetaert, why is it so Damned hot?” Little Christina always looked so innocent. There was a running bet that she would be pregnant by the time she was fifteen. “I really don’t know, Christina. Please don’t say Damn anymore.” “Miss Christen says it’s so Damned hot because we all must suffer.” “That may very well be true,” I said. “Please don’t say Damn anymore.” Christen snarled at Scott and me as she passed us in the hall, swinging her bucket menacingly. Christen had begun to snarl a lot more it seemed. I always thought it was because all my students wanted to say Damn in her room, too. Scott said it was because she hated him. It think Scott was right. “You missed a Hail Mary,” Scott reminded Christen. Christen had been silently wearing out her Rosary Beads in the teachers’ lounge while the coffee pot sizzled the last forgotten drops of coffee into a black crust that no one would ever bother to wash out. “What?” Christen always looked somewhat wild-eyed. It was a hard look to place – somewhere between a desperate vampire and a double-crossed pimp. “What do you mean I missed a Hail Mary?” “You said ten Our Fathers and only nine Hail Marys...” “Do you know what ‘hallowed’ means...” I tried to interject, but Christen ignored me. “What do you mean I missed one?!” Christen was beginning to look a lot less like a desperate vampire and a whole lot more like a double-crossed pimp. “You said only nine Hail Marys,” Scott calmly explained. “You missed one.” “How dare you tell me how to pray!” Christen was almost yelling, “At least I’m praying! I never see you praying!” “So?” asked Scott, becoming increasingly calmer. “It means sanctified or sacrosanct – super holy, so to speak.” I wasn’t about to give up. “What the hell are you talking about?” screamed Christen. “Hallowed,” I explained, “that’s what hallowed means. You know, ‘Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name...’?” “Please don’t say Hell,” Scott added. Christen had a way of turning very red when she got extremely angry. She also had a way of slamming the lounge door so hard that the crucifix on the wall above it would swing back and forth. Scott and I watched it swinging, swinging, swinging, moving our heads like we were at a tennis match until it all but stopped. “Double or nothing tomorrow,” I said, certain it was going to fall. The door violently flew back open. Christen grabbed her bucket off the floor and slammed the door behind her once again. “I believe that makes a whole case,” Scott said as the crucifix finally stopped swinging. Christen still carried her bucket, although she no longer needed it. The sight of it alone scared any seventh grader into submission. “What’s the matter with Christen?” asked Marge, coming into the lounge. “She forgot her bucket,” I explained. “Hey, I have an idea,” I said to anybody who cared to listen. “What if I filled a bucket with shit. That would probably end my discipline problems.” “Naw, someone’d just steal it.” Scott was trying to make a card house on the table, but the cards kept falling over. “Please don’t say Shit,” said Marge as she unloaded her lunch from her crumpled paper bag and then carefully folded it back up again – her bag, not her lunch. “Christen hates me,” said Scott, carefully lowering a card destined to be the roof. And the cards tumbled in. “And she hates me, too,” I said, coveting Marge’s apple. “She hates me because Scott and I are friends.” “But she hates you devoutly,” explained Marge, “and that makes all the difference.” Just then the coffee pot sizzled and popped as the last drop of moisture gave up its earthly existence. “Would anyone like any coffee?” asked Marge cheerfully. “Only if you’re making a pot anyway,” I obediently replied, thankful that it would never finish brewing before I had to be back in class. I had never noticed before that the teachers’ lounge didn’t have a statue of anyone in it. “Juan Valdez, patron saint of Coffee Pots, Coffee Drinkers, and those little packets of sugar previously not covered under Saint C and H, patron saint of sugar.” I chuckled out loud. “What?” Scott looked up from his pile of cards. “Never mind,” I said, still chuckling. “By the way,” said Marge after her jagged teeth marks ruined any hopes I had that included her apple, “do either of you know how to get paint off of windows?” If we had a statue of Saint Juan I would have taken it over Joseph, but that’s the way it goes. Miss Ragusa got the state of Saint Mary. She had called dibs sometime last year. Genuflect... Genuflect... Genuflect... “It is necessary to genuflect before the Chalice that sits to the right of the Altar....” But the Baltimore Catechism said nothing about Mary. I felt that I should genuflect before the Mary in Miss Ragusa’s office. Miss Ragusa had a small office to begin with, and half of it was Mary. She stood atop and ancient doilied table that had been hand-carved by someone’s great-grandfather who was still in Mexico – buried, and the doily had been hand-crocheted by elderly nuns and was actually blessed by the Pope; or maybe it was just a Cardinal. I had never given it much thought, but I suppose that a Cardinal could bless just as well as the Pope – at least things like doilies. Blessing people might be different, but, then, I’m really not sure. Miss Ragusa’s Mary had the same out-stretched hands as the one that I had painted around in my room. She also had the same complacent smile. There was a place somewhere in Kansas City that sold the statues. They had them all, even Saint Juan, I’m sure. Supposedly, the statues came over from Italy where the Pope blessed them by the truck-load before they were loaded on a boat. Only Popes can bless statues of saints. He blessed the boat, too, for good measure, although a Cardinal probably could have done the boat. But one can never be too careful. Behind the statue of Mary, hung from the ceiling by twisted bailing wires, was a portrait of Mary. The portrait looked almost identical to the statue, which looked almost identical to the Mary I had painted around in my room. The glaring difference was Mary’s halo – the Mary in the picture, that is. It was huge, almost twice the size of Mary’s head. It seemed to illume the room. “Is that black light?” I asked. “What?” asked Miss Ragusa. “Never mind.” I continued to stare at the portrait. At least it kept my eyes off of Miss Ragusa. I’m certain that if she tried Miss Ragusa could stretch her bottom lip completely over her nose with absolutely no assistance. And she constantly smoked those little brown cigarettes. I suppose she was trying to hold her lip back from the slow creeping – so slow she would never notice it until it started to blur her vision. But the truly amazing thing about Miss Ragusa was her fingernails. The lady had six-inch fingernails. It was beyond the point of arguing whether they were real or not; indeed, that was beside the point. She had to dial a phone with a pencil. I have no idea whatsoever how she ever managed to go to bathroom, not that going would be the hard part. “I’ll take a piece of that action,” Marge said, overhearing Scott and me making bets in the teachers’ lounge. I said she just didn’t. Scott said that she did. “But if she does,” I reminded Scott. “You got to prove how.” “Verification’s going to be the bitch,” Scott said. Christen violently threw open the door. Her face was brilliant red. Her eyes screamed hate as they tore us apart from the doorway. And then just as quickly as she had come, she slammed the door to the lounge as hard as she could. The crucifix above the door rocked twice and then crashed to the floor, causing Jesus to pop off the cross. “Shit!” Scott cursed. “There goes a whole Damned keg!” “Please don’t say Shit,” Marge said. “Please don’t say Damn,” I said. So I sat in Miss Ragusa’s office trying not to stare at her fingernails, becoming more and more convinced that she just didn’t. “I find it comforts me, too,” said Miss Ragusa, noticing my distraction. “Yes,” I agreed, “she does take one away from their present distractions.” “From his present distractions, or her,” Miss Ragusa interjected. “Excuse me?” I was forced to face her fingernails. “’One’ is singular, and ‘their’ is plural,” she corrected me. “Oh,” I said. Miss Ragusa’s lip started to move. Quickly she took out a brown cigarette and even more quickly I returned my attention to Mary. A crucifix was draped carefully over Mary’s hand. Had my necktie been so blessed by the Pope I might have had an argument. “I know I shouldn’t genuflect, but shouldn’t I at least cross myself?” I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer; I just had to know. “Excuse me?” Miss Ragusa looked puzzled. “Never mind.” Perhaps there was somebody else I could ask. Perhaps my life would be complete if I never knew. “You told me you were Catholic, right?” My worst fears came true. This was going to be a serious conference. Yes, I had been a Catholic. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. That’s what the nuns always told me in CCD classes. To this day I have yet to learn what CCD stands for. “When was the last time you went to Mass?” I’m not certain, but I don’t believe anyone blesses ashtrays. At any rate, I had been intently watching the ash at the end of Miss Ragusa’s little brown cigarette become increasingly longer. The longer it became, the more I wished that Marge were there. By the time Miss Ragusa finally moved her little brown cigarette toward the ashtray I would have given Marge 17 to one odds that she wouldn’t make it. “How did you do that?” I sat in amazement. Miss Ragusa had not flipped her ash; she had simply looked at it and then nodded her had, and it fell off on its own, landing perfectly in the middle of the ashtray. “Do what?” Miss Ragusa asked. “Never mind.” Still, Miss Ragusa wanted to know when was the last time I went to Mass. I knew I couldn’t count last Saturday. All the teachers got to... no, had to, parade in front of the entire congregation. We were given nifty stainless steel crosses to wear daily. I suppose they were purchased at the same place where the statues came from. I had stopped wearing mine when I had to take my tie off of Saint Joseph. Since I was wearing my tie no one could tell that I wasn’t wearing my cross. Besides that, it had cooled off. It’s not that my tie felt good around my neck when it was cool; it’s just that it no longer felt like I was slowly strangling. Of course, the kids were complaining because it was too cold. “Complain to God,” I told my class. “It’s not my fault, and I know it’s not fair. Now take out your literature books... the blue one with the dog on the cover.” Scott let it be known that he was willing to go half-ers with anyone in on a gun. “If Christen says that we need to suffer one more time, I’m going to shoot her.” That was the first thing Scott said after we finished the first six pack. I wouldn’t let him say anything until we had three apiece. Scott had a conference with Miss Ragusa, too. “And after Christen, I’m going to shoot Miss Ragusa, too.” “That’s not fair,” I complained. “I get to shoot at least one of them.” “So, what was your conference about?” Scott asked. “I’m not teaching religion anymore.” “Oh,” he replied. I had done such an outstanding job, too. I personally think I taught religion better than literature. I’ll never forget the day I gave the now famous “Our Father” lecture. I found it incomprehensible that the kids all said their numerous Our Fathers daily and didn’t have the slightest idea what “hallowed” meant. I hit on it all – everything from eschatological theory to historic Judaic theology. I was confident; they would never say their Our Fathers the same again. We even did a nifty play about the Ten Commandments. I believe that is what caused me to lose my religion class. Either that, or it was the follow-up lecture when Miss Ragusa, who happened to be observing my class that day, decided to take over the lecture after I got the seventh and eighth commandments confused. Had I not left out number nine altogether I might have been able to fake it. But still, it could have been the play. It was an entire class project, with several small groups acting out the important segments of Moses getting those infamous slabs. It looked so good in my lesson plans that Miss Ragusa invited herself to the final production. And she, in turn, took the liberty of inviting Father Garcia. Father Garcia always wore a poncho that looked more like an old rug than a poncho and sandals that had been made from bus tires. In the evenings, after the last of the kids had finally finished their detentions, you could hear Father Garcia from the rectory banging on his guitar and singing hymns in Spanish. Father Garcia was not Hispanic, although I suppose that it didn’t matter. I could imagine whole rows of monks walking hours on end into the night, outside in the freezing drizzle, while they went through their Gregorian chants, and there, in the middle, would be Father Garcia, oblivious to it all, chanting away like a trouper while his thoughts were somewhere slightly above Purgatory. He never got upset over anything. You could have told the good Father that Satan, himself, had risen from Hell and had stolen the sacrificial wine, and he would not have gotten upset; the Father, that is. He simply would have reached beneath his poncho and come up with a few loose dollars before sending you down to the corner to do the best you could before Mass. When you got back Satan would be gone, the hole boarded up, and never a mention of it would be made again. In fact, there was only one time that anybody could recall Father Garcia ever changing his expression. He and Miss Ragusa sat in the back of the room and quietly watched our production of the Ten Commandments. Neither of them got upset when Moses dropped Commandments eleven through fifteen; they didn’t seem bothered that God wore dark glasses or that Aaron started break dancing. It was when Moses stood up to the Pharaoh and said, “Let my Damned people go....” No one at that school had a sense of humour. Perhaps Miss Ragusa did, after all, have a point about my not teaching religion. I couldn’t really understand why Scott was so upset, though. It had something to do with curriculum. “It’s either my way or the highway with Ragusa,” Scott snorted. “Hell, I’ve been teaching three years and none of my principals ever watched me as much as that Damned Ragusa.” “Please don’t say Damn.” I had to take Scott’s word for it since this was my first school. I had thought it odd, though, that Miss Ragusa had observed my class on the very first day. The first day was supposed to be a half day – since it was so hot – and I suppose it really was (a half day, that is), although to this day I still get confused. Someone had worked out an amazingly elaborate schedule so no one class lost more time than the others, but every class lost different amounts of time every day until in the end it all worked out right. If that just didn’t make sense to you then you’ll probably understand why it never made sense to me. It so happened that my literature class was scheduled to lose more time the next day than the day I thought it was, which was the day Miss Ragusa dropped in, which was still the first day of school. “Weren’t you supposed to have been here yesterday?” I asked. “Excuse me?” questioned Miss Ragusa. “Never mind.” If anyone ever tells you that students are willing to learn, he is lying. He is lying through his teeth. And students are even less willing to learn on the first day of class. Miss Ragusa sat in the back of the room, tapping her pen ever so softly on her brown note pad. There are times in your life when you wish you’d learned how to do a soft-shoe shuffle. “OK, class, pick up your books and read something.” “What do you want us to read?” Joe asked. “The first story in the book, Joe.” “What book?” “Your literature book, Joe.” “Which one is that?” “It’s the blue book with the picture of the dog on the cover.” “Oh, this book?” “Yes, Joe. It’s the very same book that everyone else has out on their desks.” I waited for Miss Ragusa to correct my English from the back of the room, and she did. I didn’t like Joe. Perhaps it was a quick decision, but those are the kind we all tend to make. “OK, Joe, why don’t you read first?” “Out loud?” Joe looked shocked. “Why would I have you all take turns reading to yourselves?” “Oh, I just thought maybe...” “Just read, Joe, we’ll work on thinking later.” “Hubo un hombre que se comió mierda....” That was before the class learned that they could say Damn. Miss Ragusa quietly sat in the back and wrote a lot. She probably would have written a lot more if the students had learned how to say Damn. I was trying to drive and hit a road construction sign with an empty beer can. “It’s an exercise in coordination,” I explained. I carefully gauged the distance of the sign, the weight of the can, and the speed of the car. Then I flipped the can over the roof of the car with the precision of a professional basketball player and missed by a mile. I watched the can bounce stupidly alongside the road until the gush of a truck’s tires chased it into the curbside weeds. Still Scott was mad. So I had another beer. “What’s to get so upset about? You just go in and teach and then they pay you for it, right?” I thought about what I had just said for a moment and then added, “Well, you get a check. Whether or not you call it pay is up to you.” It didn’t matter that we were both getting shellacked. We were perpetually stuck in traffic all the way back to the shopping mall where we met each day to trade rides. We couldn’t possibly get up enough speed to kill anyone, except maybe ourselves, and that no longer seemed a great concern. “So she wants to change the curriculum? Who cares?” I didn’t. “Besides, what the Hell is a curriculum, anyway?” “Please don’t say Hell,” Scott reminded me. I really can’t explain exactly why I quit. To do that I would have to explain exactly why I took the job to begin with, and I don’t know the answer to that, either. I remember telling Marge first, but by that time Marge was getting used to teachers’ quitting. I suppose that Miss Ragusa was getting used to it, too. The PE teacher was the first to go. Janis only lasted two weeks, which was not nearly long enough to get to know her well enough to ask her why she had a tattoo, but I had asked her anyway. She had gotten “Daisy,” she explained, to cover up another tattoo that didn’t look nearly so cute. Daisy’s cute little eyes always seemed to be trying to peak out of Janis’ blouse. Daisy was a little skunk that looked like one of those air fresheners you can get for your rearview mirror. Janis had one hanging over her rearview mirror. I suppose there was a connection between the two skunks, but I never found out before Janis quit. “There’s nothing wrong with a tattoo,” Marge explained, “as long as you get one devoutly.” I wonder if just a priest could bless a tattoo. I suppose he could, unless it were on a person, but then would he have to bless the whole person? And how could he bless a tattoo if it weren’t on a person? It was Janis’ first year of teaching, too. I’m really not certain why she quit, but it had something to do with her moving to Jefferson City to be near her fiancé until he could get out of prison. It took both Scott and me to hold Janis back as Christen walked out of the teachers’ lounge saying something about suffering and Jesus (with a G). Scott quit next, or rather, as Scott put it, “It was a mutual separation. My way’s the highway.” Actually it worked out quite well, as it were, since Scott quit right after it was decided that I would no longer teach religion classes. It was decided that I would now teach Scott’s Social Studies classes, which meant I was no longer teaching literature at all. “Shouldn’t somebody tell Miss Ragusa that I never studied Social Studies in college?” I asked Scott. “I mean, somebody besides the Holy Spirit?” The Holy Spirit didn’t seem to be holding up too well lately. Scott was busy taking his few worldly possessions out of his desk drawer and packing them into an old paint can box. There was a whole closet full of all the old painting stuff that nobody ever bothered to clean out. “Would it matter if she knew?” Scott was trying to find any playing cards that might have gotten loose from the rest of the deck. “I don’t know,” I said, finding the Queen of Clubs. “What’s left for me to teach?” “Relative to where?” Scott snapped the rubber band around the deck. “If you find any cards, you can keep them,” Scott added. “Here.” I handed Scott his only plant. “Don’t forget this.” The only crusted brown leaf hung limply to the blackened stem that was anchored firmly into the moldy-white, cement hard dirt. “I think it needs water.” “I think it needs a beer.” Scott pulled a cold beer out of one of his desk drawers. We both watched the pool of yellow suds sit on top of the soil with no intention of going anywhere. “I believe it’s too far gone,” I said, wishing I had a hat to take off. “Shouldn’t we do something?” Scott gently took the only remaining leaf into his hand, lightly touched one of his free fingers in the pool of beer, and then crossed the leaf. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The leaf came off in Scott’s hand. “Oh well, at least it’s with the angels now.” I did feel better. “The hell with this, then,” Scott said, throwing the leaf, pot, and plant into the trashcan. It bonked solidly on the bottom. “Did I ever ask you why you have a Snoopy trashcan in your room? I asked Scott. “I think so,” Scott answered. “Did you ever tell me?” “No, I don’t believe I did.” I never asked Scott if he thought he’d ever return to teaching. Marge was standing on a chair in the faculty toilet when I told her I was going to quit. She was trying to tie a string to the flash button of a Polaroid camera. “When she flushes the toilet the camera will take her picture.” Marge smiled with the gleefulness of a child. “Wouldn’t it be after the fact, though? I mean, when she flushes the toilet we’ll just get a picture of her flushing the toilet.” Marge stepped off the chair and sat down on the toilet, not even noticing that the lid was still up. She was obviously disappointed. “Keep working at it, Marge.” I tried to cheer her up. “You’ll come up with it yet.” I sat down in a chair across from Marge so I could help her think, too. “How about drilling a little hole in the door?” “Naw,” said Marge after a few moment’s thought, “I’d probably just have to pay for the door if Miss Ragusa found out.” “I kicked a hole in my desk.” Marge looked up at me and smiled. “Will you have to pay for it?” Marge asked. “No.” That had been Ragusa’s first idea. But there was no money missing from my final paycheck. I did have to sit in her office, though, while she lectured me about my not being able to teach before she finally gave me my money. “I wish you would have thought about more than just money when you took this job.” Miss Ragusa was doing a very fine job of acting angry. “Can I go now?” I quietly asked. I had brought my year-and-a-half old daughter with me on my final trip to that hot brick building that sat underneath the freeway viaduct with its steeple almost touching the deck of the bridge. All the time Miss Ragusa had been lecturing me I stared in amazement. Her bottom lip really was moving up over her nose. I was so amazed I hadn’t notice that my daughter had pulled the Sacred Mary Amulet off the Mary Shrine. Blessed by the box load by anyone above a Bishop, they’re handed out on some special Holy Day to be worn around the neck, protecting the wearer from certain hell fire in case his or her brakes were to fail, or something like that. Rachel chewed on it twice and decided to put it back, safely beneath the out-stretched hand of Mary. As I pulled away from the curb for the last time, I could have sworn I saw Marge waving from the small hole she had managed to chip through the paint on her window. Either she was waving good-bye, or she was trying to motion to me that somebody had stolen the beauty rings off my car.

The Joke Many years ago, at the first school I ever taught at, I carpooled with two other teachers, a man and a woman – call them Gary and and Miss Corbell, both my age – young, novice teachers. And we – mostly Gary and I – would tell jokes on occasion. So one day I told what I still consider to be one of the funniest jokes ever – the "Sonofabitch Fish" joke. Two elderly priests were fishing, enjoying a peaceful day by an isolated lake. After a bit, one of the priests – call him Father John – pulled in a fish and exclaimed, "What a magnificent sonofabitch!" The other priest – call him Father Tom – was taken aback by Father John's language, but he said nothing. Pretty soon, Father John pulled in another fish, this one even bigger than the first, and he exclaimed, "Aye! Another big sonofabitch!" And so Father Tom said to Father John (imagine a strong Irish accent), "Aye, Father John, though we may be far removed from the ears of man, we are never removed from the ears of God, and God finds such language offensive." To which Father John replied, "Aye, Father Tom, think not that I would ever use such language unfounded, for I would never choose to offend the Lord. But that is what the fish is called. That is its given name. It is a Sonofabitch Fish." Father Tom was somewhat doubtful, but he kept his tongue. When they got back to the church, Father Tom looked it up, and sure enough, the fish was really called a Sonofabitch Fish. To say the least, he was relieved that Father John had not been cursing, and disappointed in himself for ever having doubted the good Father. That night they had those fish for supper. At that meal, fresh out of seminary, was a brand new priest. It was the first time he had ever broken bread with either Father Tom or Father John. Understandably, he was a bit nervous. After the Blessing, Father Tom took a bite of his fish and exclaimed, "That is one delicious Sonofabitch!" And then Father John, after taking a bite, replied, "Aye! That is the best Sonofabitch I've ever eaten." To which the new priest said, "You know, I think I'm going to like working with you motherfuckers." Gary, who was driving, laughed so hard I feared we might not stay on the road. Miss Corbell was offended. Not just a little offended, but whole-heartedly offended. And she told me so in no short order, and, further, that I was never to tell such inappropriate jokes in her presence ever again. Because it was just not funny! I apologized, but mostly, I wrote her off as being a humourless prude. I only worked at that school for a year, and after the Sonofabitch Fish joke, I rarely carpooled with Miss Corbell again. And I sure as heck didn't tell her anymore jokes. But that joke followed me for the rest of my career. At almost every school I ever worked at, there was invariably somebody who would realize that I was the one who had told "that joke." Educators I met at seminars, people I didn't even work with and had never met before, knew about "the joke." In more than one interview I had to talk my way out of telling that joke – I had to sooth the interviewing principal or superintendent's fears that I would behave inappropriately as a teacher. That joke could very well be why I didn't get hired at any number of districts. Had I not told that joke, my career could've – and probably would've – taken a very different path. One joke. Looking back on it all, if I had the chance to go back and not tell that joke, I'm fairly certain that I wouldn’t change a goddamned thing. A Priest and a Rabbi had been fishing together for years. One day, they invited the town's Baptist minister along. They were sitting in a boat in the middle of a lake, all patiently waiting with their lines in the water, bobbers gently rocking, when the Rabbi says, "I think I'm going to go back to the car and get some more coffee." So he gets out of the boat, walks across the water, gets the coffee, and returns, once again walking on water. The Priest doesn't say a thing. He doesn't even look up. It was as if nothing unusual had happened. The minister, understandably, was freaked. But he kept his composure. Pretty soon, the Priest says, "I don't know about you boys, but I'm ready for a sandwich." And then he got out of the boat, walked across the water, and returned with the sandwiches, once again walking on water. The minister is really freaking out now. A Catholic and Jew has just walked on water. The fate of the entire Protestant faith may very well be in his hands. There was nothing to it. He had to walk on the water, too. So he says, "I just realized I forgot my favourite lure." After which he stepped out of the boat, and "Whoosh!" – he goes under. As the minister was splashing about in the lake, the Rabbi turned to the Priest and said, "Do you think we ought to tell the fool where the stumps are?"

Hurricane Danny My family usually stayed in Grenada, Mississippi, when we drove from Missouri to Destin, Florida, on our summer vacation. Grenada is right at about halfway. Grenada was a nice town. It still might be, though I haven’t been there in quite a while now. There was a business strip, right off the highway, with nice places to stay, complete with swimming pools to keep the kids happy. And a choice of all the chain restaurants you could possibly want. Grenada, though, was a town of two halves, as we found out when we decided to explore. There was a black half and a white half. Unless you had specific business in whichever half you weren’t, there were no welcoming smiles. You did not belong there. It’s a good thing, to know where you don’t belong. This trip to Florida, however, we didn’t stop in Grenada. I was determined to make it in one day. Twelve hours of highway hell and we’d be there, ready to start day two of our vacation on the beach. And, yes, I knew hurricanes routinely hit anywhere along the northeastern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For that matter, anywhere in the Gulf of Mexico. And even though we were going in July, which was technically in the hurricane season, they were rather rare until August, late August at that. How rare? No hurricane had ever come ashore in the the Lower Mississippi Valley – southern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama – that early in the season... ever. Until July 17, 1997. In fact, Hurricane Danny was the first (and only) hurricane to make landfall in all of 1997. Sure, back in 1997 they didn’t track the storms quite like they do now, but they still had radar and satellites. The weathermen still got just as excited over the possibility of threatening weather as they do now. They could still see a storm coming all the way across the Gulf of Mexico, just like they do now. Only Danny didn’t do that. Danny started out as a tropical depression that formed over land and then moved out to sea. There, fueled by the warm Gulf waters, it quickly became a hurricane. It took one look at the open sea and decided it wanted nothing to do with that, and headed right back toward land. Just for the record, I’m not totally irresponsible. I don’t purposely drive into hurricanes. And, yeah, I knew there was a hurricane somewhere out there. But I knew it was headed out to sea. Away from us. I got it on good authority from the weather forecast we had heard earlier in the day on the radio. I mean, if you can’t trust the weatherman, who can you trust? Still, I knew we’d be driving through a bit of rain. That’s why I pulled off the road in southern Alabama when it was still just sprinkling and made sure my wipers were in good order. What I didn’t know was that the hurricane had changed its mind and was headed back. And that it was going to be more than just a “bit” of rain. As far as rain goes, we’re talking Biblical. The first clue I had that things were maybe not quite right was when we drove into the outskirts of Mobile in a steady rain. It wasn’t that bad of a rain, mind you. I’d driven through worse. Many times. The lower wiper setting was doing just fine. So here we are, driving into Mobile, and I happen to comment that the traffic was rather light for a Friday afternoon. In fact, we were the only car on the road. And then Susan notices that McDonald’s is boarded up. And so is Burger King. And so is everything. So I prudently tuned the radio into a local station, and the first thing I hear is, “...if you leave Mobile, you will not be allowed to return until after the storm....” They didn’t say anything about those of us who were already there. Yeah... what do you do? I’ll give you a moment to consider your options. As far as our options went, just staying put didn’t seem like a particularly good idea. The guy on the radio was advising people who where already safe indoors to seriously consider leaving, especially if they were in a low-lying area. Never mind that all of Mobile is a low-lying area. And I’m in a minivan. No matter where your house might be, it’s still has to be safer than a minivan. We thought about going back... but going back to where? How far north would we have to go before we’d be safer than where we were right now? Which, apparently, wasn’t very safe. How far north would we have to go before we could even start to find our way east... quite possibly back into the path of the hurricane? And what kind of roads would we be driving on? Mind you, Alabama is flat. There’s not a whole lot keeping the water off the road when it’s not raining. But... but if we stayed on I-10 there was a pretty good chance based on absolutely no solid evidence that we could outrun the hurricane. If we could make it to the Florida State Line we’d probably be OK. More than likely. A definite maybe. And that’s only 45 miles. It couldn’t be that hard. Why, we’d be there before the storm even started to get bad. So we pressed on. And that’s when it really started to rain. There isn’t a setting high enough on your wipers kind of rain. If you’ve ever driven east on I-10 from Mobile, then you’ll remember the big bridge that goes over Mobile Bay. It’s an impressive structure that really shouldn’t sway. From the top you can see way out into the Gulf. You can see the entire Bay. We couldn’t see a thing. I’m told that at about the same time we were up on that bridge the weirdness of the storm’s winds and the coincidence of the tides had pulled all of the water out of Mobile Bay. One part of me says that would’ve been a cool thing to see, even if I could’ve. Another part says I’m glad I didn’t. Right after the bridge, if you remember, there’s a tunnel that goes for about two-thirds of a mile under the Bay. Seriously. A tunnel. A tunnel under a bay in a hurricane is a really, really bad idea. Those are the bodies they find after the flood waters recede. While we were in that tunnel, the only other car we would see on the road until Florida, blew past us, probably pushing a hundred. It was there and gone, probably not wanting to spend anymore time below sea level than I did. When we came out of that tunnel, we were back in the blinding rain. Rain constantly pounding on the windows and the doors and the roof. Rain coming from every direction at once. Rain that drowned out the roar of the thunder, and everything else. And it was dark. There was no power on anywhere. There especially were no streetlights, and my headlights barely made a difference through the blowing rain. Then the lightning would flash, barely showing me the lines on the highway, if only for a second, but it was enough to keep moving. All the while the wind was steadily pushing the side of my minivan, trying its best to shove it into the median. A median that was full of water lapping against the edge of the pavement. Even when the wind let up, it was still blowing at a steady clip of 60 miles an hour. But it only let up so it could then blow that much harder. I tried to stay on the higher part of the outside lane so that when the wind made a sudden gust I’d have somewhere to go that was still above water, and still paved. Really, I could’ve driven wherever I wanted. We were the only fools out there. And all the while I’m assuring my three children in the back, ages 6, 11, and 14, that, yes, everything was going to be fine. The six year old might’ve believed me, but the older two weren’t fooled in the least. It could’ve been that my voice was a few octaves too high, or that I was steadily chewing on my gum, something I normally did not do. Or maybe it was that I had a death grip on the steering wheel and I did not take my eyes off the road. All told, the trip to the Florida border couldn’t’ve taken us more than an hour and half, if that. But it seemed so much longer before the rain began to let up, until in the distance I could see an electric sign that told me a restaurant was open, and their lights were on. We pulled in. We had made it. My hands were so sore from gripping the steering wheel that I had a hard time holding my fork. But we had made it. After supper we continued on to our lodging, getting in way later than we had planned, well past midnight. And the place was a dump. It wasn’t anywhere near the beach, like advertised. It wasn’t anywhere as large as they had let on. The furniture was worn and the carpeting was ratty. There was only one bedroom, not two, as also had been advertised. The sofa did foldout, but that pretty much took up the entire living room. They did have a pool, but it was small and nasty, full of deflated pool toys and trash. This was not someplace I wanted to stay with my family for the next week. And I was not alone. And what if the hurricane was headed our way? Susan and I seriously debated just shucking it all and heading north the next day to the Carolinas. Susan had vacationed there when she was young, and remembered the beaches as being really nice. But it was late and we all were tired, so no matter what, any decision would have to wait until the morning. In the morning the weather people said the hurricane was headed north, and was not coming anywhere close to Destin. So we went to the rental agency, and they found us a new place to stay, down in Santa Rosa. It was great. We had escaped the traffic and commercialism of Destin. We were less than a block from the beach. We had all the room we wanted – an entire house that was even cheaper than the place we left behind. A pool that was clean, inviting. And every day the weather got better. Come to find out, Hurricane Danny had headed north – northeast, in fact – northeast to the Carolinas where it actually got stronger by sucking the energy from another stormfront that just happened to be passing through. That’s something storms don’t usually do. And there it stayed for the next week, dumping rain and chaos on the Carolinas while we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in Florida. By the time we were ready to head back home, the flooding had cleared. I-10 was once more open. Come to find out, the rain and the wind were concentrated at the eye of the hurricane... where we were, right over Mobile. Where they got right at 36 inches of rain, most of it on my minivan. All told, it was considered a very small hurricane, a category one. But then, things like “big” and “small” are relative. So now, if I ever drive through another hurricane, I’ll have a point of reference.

The Christmas Parade The cold wind snapped across the littered parking lot, pushing sleet that lightly covered the windshield on the high school principal's truck. After a few moments the wipers slid across the glass and revealed three men walking slowly across the gravel toward the truck. One of the men was Santa Claus; he would've looked better with a beard. Within seconds the windshield was misted over again. When the wipers once more sequenced, the men were waiting at the truck for Mr. Anderson to remove the key and step out into the December morning. "When do you want to start?" Santa Claus asked. "I'm not in charge of the parade," Mr. Anderson answered. "We know," said one of the other men who had his ball cap firmly screwed on his head to keep it from blowing away, "but do you want the four-wheelers to go before or after the horses?" "All I'm here to do is to make sure the queen candidate is here," said Mr. Anderson. "You're going to announce her at the end of the parade, aren't you?" another man said from the comfort of his hooded hunting jacket. "Only if necessary," replied Mr. Anderson. "That's good," said the man in the ball cap. "But what about the four-wheelers?" Three four-wheelers were sitting in the near corner of the parking lot. Two of the riders were taking turns popping their clutches and spinning gravel on the third rider, who was trying to get hers started, between cursing at the other two. In deference to the occasion, they had wreaths attached with duct tape to their handlebars. "I think the four-wheelers ought to go behind the horses," Santa Clause volunteered. "Horse," the man in the hunting jacket corrected. "We only got one horse, unless Larry shows up." "Victor's got a horse," said the man in the hunting cap. "He gots to go up front," Santa Claus reminded him. "He's carrying the American flag. The American flag always goes up front." Out in the street near the intersection, Victor, who was dressed in his full VFW regalia, was trying to keep the American flag pointing upward with one had while hold the reigns to his jittery horse with the other. Every time he seemed to have the horse calmed down, whoever was sitting in the firetruck would rev the engine and send him prancing around in circles. "There's another horse," said the hunting cap. "We can't count that horse," said Santa. "It's pulling the Baptists." Coming up the street was one slowly plodding horse, laboriously pulling a flatbed wagon. Above the wagon a banner had been erected simply stating, "Jesus Saves." Whoever had planned the banner hadn't planned well enough, for the letters became increasingly smaller and scrunched up the closer they got to the right side. Several hay bales had been thrown on the wagon, upon which were seated members of the congregation. It was hard to tell just how many might be there since they were all huddled tightly under a collection of quilts. Muffled attempts at singing escaped from underneath the covers. "So no one is really in charge of this parade?" asked Mr. Anderson. Hunting Jacket replied, "Well, Larry usually runs these things, but I ain't seen him yet. I figure if he ain't here by now he probably ain't gonna come." "Larry's got the other horse," Ball Cap added. From the back of a pickup truck parked in the middle of the street, several students whose banner announced that they were Cub Scouts had started throwing their candy to the half-a-dozen students who had gathered to watch. Only they weren't gently throwing, and the students weren't collecting the candy to keep; they were throwing it back. "OK," said Mr. Anderson, "we'll put Chester out front..." "Who's Chester?" Santa wanted to know. "The guy with the flag." "No, that's Victor. Victor's got the flag," said Ball Cap. "Whoever. The guy with the flag leads. We'll put Santa in the rear, right behind the queen candidate, and everybody else can just fall in." "Sounds good," said Santa. "Then let's get going before we all freeze." "We cain't go yet," said Hunting Jacket. "The marching band ain't here yet." "What marching band?" Mr. Anderson wondered. "Why, the school marching band," said Ball Cap. "I didn't know we had a school marching band," Mr. Anderson said more to himself than anyone else. Santa replied just the same. "Oh, we do, and it's a dandy!" As if on cue, the marching band emerged from the walkway that ran between the high school and the New Gym. The music teacher was holding a banner that was really designed to be held by two people, which the wind kept trying to wrest from her hands. On the banner, amidst various cleft signs and musical notes, were the words "NHS Marching Band." It was actually a nice banner, or at least had been for the first thirty years of its life. With luck, duct tape would see it through another thirty years. The three members of the marching band followed behind. There was a drum, a clarinet, and cymbals. All the students had on the pants and jackets that made up the uniforms, complete with the fancy embroidery work that ran down the vest. One of them was even wearing a hat. "I'm sorry we were late," panted Mrs. Murgel, the music teacher. "We were waiting for Ricky, but he never showed up." "That's alright," Mr. Anderson replied. "Just as long as you're here we're OK. We'll put you behind Chester..." "Victor," corrected Santa. "Victor. We'll put you behind Victor." "You cain't put 'em behind Victor," said Hunting Jacket. "The cymbals'll spook his horse." "Hell, wind'd spook that old horse," Santa said to the appreciation of the other men. "Alright, then, the firetruck follows Victor..." Santa nodded his approval of Mr. Anderson finally getting the name right. "And we'll put the marching band behind the firetruck." "We can't march behind the firetruck," Mrs. Murgel protested. "No one would hear us over the noise from the diesel." Mr. Anderson was tempted to say that that was the general idea, but decided it wouldn't've been professional. "OK, then, we'll put you after the Baptists." "That's not a good idea," said Hunting Jacket. "Why not?" "Well, for one thing, they'll both be playing music, which is probably not a good idea." "I'd agree," Mr. Anderson quickly added, although he wasn't considering the possibility that their songs would clash. "And another thing," Ball Cap continued, "Les has been having trouble with his stomach lately. I don't think you'll want to walk behind him." "Who's Les?" Mr. Anderson wondered. "He's the Baptists' horse," Ball Cap explained. "Then we'll put the Baptists behind the flag, the firetruck will follow the Baptists, the four wheelers can follow the firetruck, and the Cub Scouts can follow them. We'll put the marching band behind the Cub Scouts, the queen can follow the marching band, and Santa Claus can bring up the rear." "What about the other horse?" asked Santa. "We can put him behind the Baptists." The three men thought about it for a few moments. "By golly, I think that'll work," Santa finally concluded. As the parade slowly started down Walnut, the townsfolk came out of the warmth of their homes to huddle near the street as it went by. The parade made it to the second house down from the school when the firetruck died. After a few attempts at turning it over, the fireman inside stuck his head out and announced, "It's froze up!" The excuse was readily accepted. Hunting Jacket walked up to Mr. Anderson, who was still standing in the parking lot. "I reckon we'll just call it quits here. The firetruck ain't goin' nowhere, and the band's already played all the songs it knows. We can use the Baptists' wagon to announce the Christmas queen on." The wagon was a good idea. Les, the horse, had laid down in the middle of the street, and since he was going nowhere, neither was the wagon. "Oh, I don't think we'll need the wagon," Mr. Anderson volunteered. "The girl who was elected queen didn't show up. We'll just give the tiara to her on Monday, if she shows up then." "I reckon that'll work," said Hunting Jacket. Down the street, the homeowners had already gone back inside. The Baptists had all abandoned their wagon, leaving Les on his own. Victor and his flag were no where in sight. Once the parade had begun, Victor had never looked back to see if the rest were following. The four-wheelers were all chasing each other around in the field that the students used for parking, and the Cub Scouts were now throwing gravel at each other, having run out of candy. The Marching Band had headed back to the building, only to be stopped by Ricky, who had finally shown up and now wanted to play his trumpet. Since Mr. Anderson could see no reason to hang around any longer on a Saturday morning, he headed to his truck, only to be stopped halfway there by the trio of Santa Claus, Hunting Jacket, and Ball Cap. "That was a right fine parade," Hunting Cap volunteered. "Yes, it was," Ball Cap agreed. "A dandy! Best one we ever had." "We sure appreciate all your effort," said Santa Claus, patting Mr. Anderson on the back. "We couldn't've done it without you."

Robbing a Bank How messed up would your life have to be that robbing a bank would actually be a good idea? That anything bad that could possibly happen from trying to rob that bank is still better than what you’ve got going on right now? It’s not like stealing a tape deck or shoplifting or even knocking over a convenience store. It’s a federal crime. You’re going to get caught. And then you’re going to prison. For a while. Federal prison. If you think you’re life is bad now, it’s only going to get worse. And that’s probably on the more optimistic side. “Hey, guys, I have an idea... no, no... hear me out....” Seriously, what kind of argument could you possibly have to risk everything, maybe even get killed, really, for nothing? So there we were, my son and I, wanting to get some lunch at Taco Bell. But these were the days before bankcards, a weird time when people used cash to buy things, or they could write a check. Only Taco Bell, like most fast food places, didn’t take checks. So we had to go to the bank to get some cash, only not from an ATM, because those hadn’t been invented yet, either. Like I say, it was a weird time, when if you wanted cash then you wrote a check to yourself and went to a bank, where they’d trade the check for cash. I didn’t even have to get out of my truck. I went to the drive thru. When I pulled into the drive thru I wasn’t paying attention to anything except not running into the building. My son, definitely alarmed, says, “Quick, dad, get out of here!” And I’m thinking it was just my son not wanting to be seen by one of his teachers, or maybe a girl, or maybe... I don’t know. I mean, he was 14. So with definite annoyance I say, “What?” To which he replies, “The bank is being robbed!” So I finally look inside, and sure enough, three guys in ski masks were robbing the bank. One guy had jumped over the counter and was pointing a gun at one of the tellers, while the other two had stopped whatever they were doing and were staring at me and my son, sitting there in the drive thru like we would just wait while they finished up so we could still get some cash. Then the third guy stops what he was doing and he stares at us, too. I mean, it’s not like they could shoot us with all that bulletproof glass in-between, but just the same, my son says, “Let’s get out of here!” Which I thought was an excellent idea. So we did. We pulled out of the drive thru and looped back around and parked in the parking lot, just sitting there with the motor running, not certain what to do, because like everybody else on the planet at the time I didn’t have a cellphone, so I couldn’t very well call the cops. And it’s about that time those three guys come running out of the bank, still wearing their ski masks, the one guy still with a gun, and one of the others with the money in a brown paper bag. Mind you, it’s not a very big brown paper bag full of money. It looked like it could’ve been his lunch. And they all jumped in an old, beat-up Chevy, all three crammed in up front, and they take off. That’s when my 14 year old son says, “Let’s chase them!” And, being the responsible parent that I was, I say, “OK.” Well... because they were bank robbers. And they were getting away. And it sounded like a good idea at the time. So I go tearing out after them in my little pickup. They had about a two block lead on us, but I saw them whip around a corner. So when I got there, I whipped around it, too. And up ahead, I see them whip around another corner, and when I get there, I whip around it, too. And there they are. Stopped. Apparently this is where they were ditching their getaway car. One beat-up Chevy for another. The two sidekicks are panicked and have started running off through the backyards, all full of fences. But the guy with the gun is standing in the middle of the road, gun at his side. He is no longer wearing a ski mask. He’s just standing there looking at me with that gun in his hand. Going nowhere. So I floored it. I whipped around them all and just kept going. If they wanted to get away, that was alright with me. And I headed back to the bank. I mean, where else are we going to go? And it was a good thing, too. The initial report to the police was that there were two getaway vehicles. Mine and theirs. Apparently we were the lookouts. Once I got back to the bank we got out to see if everybody inside was OK. Of course, they’re probably all thinking, “Good Lord! The robbers are coming back!” Like maybe we’d forgotten something. It was then that about two-thirds of the police force showed up, engines roaring, sirens blaring, sliding to a stop sideways out in the street blocking traffic, jumping out with their guns, and generally having a wonderful time. Not trusting the cops to tell a good guy from a bad guy, I tell my son to hold both of his hands in full sight and not to move. But the cops definitely did want us to move. They wanted us to lay face down on the pavement with our hands out to the side. They took care of the rest. It was quite awhile before the local cops started to believe us, but they left the handcuffs on until the FBI guys said it was OK to take them off. Even so, we were there for a solid two hours. And no matter who questioned us – and they all did – they kept coming back to the same question, “And just why did you chase after armed bank robbers?” They were glad, though, that I could tell them exactly where the getaway car was, though I don’t think it would’ve taken much effort to find it. All told, those three guys weren’t very good at robbing banks. Maybe with practice they would’ve gotten better. But as it were, all three were caught before the evening news. It was reported that they had only gotten away with $386.49. Now that’s accurate reporting. Eventually the sidekicks would be sentenced to over ten years in prison each. The guy with the gun, probably because he had the gun, and definitely because he had shoved one of the tellers to the floor, was sentenced to more than 20 years. For nothing. My son and I were finally allowed to leave. We went home and had peanut butter for lunch. I was told the bank might’ve given us a reward for helping catch those robbers, but I never asked.

Gentleman’s Night Out Back when I was still trying to figure out what to do with an undergraduate degree in 16th Century British Literature, I sold jewelry. I was an assistant manager, complete with an assistant manager’s mustache, for a place called Mission Jewelers, which was a division of the Zale Corp. We specialized in first time buyers... meaning low end. We sold a lot of $199 trio sets. Her engagement ring and both bands. Sizing was extra. This was before I had realized that jewelry was something that nobody needed. Not really. Even if you could make an argument for a watch, how much watch do you need? A Timex and a Seiko are the same. All you’re really paying more for is the name. Still, it took me a bit more than a year to figure that out. But that was long enough to know who the big diamond guys were in town. And there was none bigger than Woody Justice. You want to give your wife a nice ring, maybe spend a grand, tops, go to Zales. If you want to tack a few more zeros onto that and get an extremely nice ring, you go see Woody. You go to Justice Jewelers. Woody was the guy. Long after I left the jewelry world far behind and was now spending my days teaching teenagers to conjugate verbs, I got invited to Gentleman’s Night Out. Gentleman’s Night Out was a marketing ploy dreamed up by Woody Justice, or somebody that he paid, and probably paid well, for getting all of the high rollers in the area together for one night, just before Christmas. And I got invited. Not because I was a high roller. Definitely not. And not because Woody knew me. He didn’t. Even though we had once met, back when I was selling jewelry, there wasn’t a chance he remembered me. Who I knew was Ron Davis. Ron was a reporter in town. He worked at a local TV station. Ron was very good at what he did. He was good enough to win the Edward R. Murrow Award. Look it up. And Ron was given two passes, two tickets to get inside, for this prestigious event. Maybe because Woody thought Ron was a high roller... he wasn’t. Or, more than likely, because he was a name in that town, a name that could throw him some publicity. Except Ron couldn’t make it. So he gave those tickets to my buddy Dan, and Dan invited me to go with him to Gentleman’s Night Out. And it was all free. By the time we got there, fashionably late, there were Rolls-Royces in the parking lot. And my Chevette. We were each given a Cuban cigar when we walked through the door, and nobody expected us to go outside to smoke them. Yeah. Sure. Cubans were illegal then. Probably still are. But I don’t think anybody there gave a damn. And if there should be any questions of legality, there were plenty of lawyers, and – according to Dan – a few judges – who were already smoking theirs. There were a lot of big names there that I didn’t know. Dan would point out the guy that owned the trucking company over here, or the guy who built the office complex over there. There were doctors and politicians and guys who nobody was sure where they got their money. And I didn’t know any of them. I didn’t even recognize Woody. But he was there. Shmoozing. Subtly steering people toward the diamond cases. Offering to show them whatever they wanted to see. You can tell when people have money. You can tell a very nice suit from a pair of worn khakis. You can tell an expensive haircut from a discount barber. Italian shoes from Hush Puppies A Rolex from a Timex. These were men who could buy any of the very nice pieces of jewelry that Woody was featuring for the evening without checking their bank accounts first. I don’t think anything there was truly “on sale.” I don’t think it mattered. Hell, even the Santa Claus that was walking around was wearing some very nice gold chains. Along with Santa there were several Christmas trees featuring diamond earring ornaments. There were garland and tinsel, and “Deck the Halls” was playing from the sound system. It was just like an old fashioned Christmas, the kind with Beluga Caviar. Not “beluga grade” caviar. This was the real stuff. Imported. The stuff runs about $500 an ounce. About $500 a serving. And it was worth it, especially because it was free. If you’ve ever had caviar and didn’t like it, then you’ve probably never had Beluga. It was so good. Incredibly good. So good that it made me sad because I knew, deep down, that I would never have it again. I thought about going back for seconds, but it would just make it worse. Besides, I was trying to act like none of this was a big deal. I smoke Cuban cigars, eat Beluga Caviar, and take shots from a thousand dollar bottle of whiskey all the time. And that was one of the cheaper bottles of whiskey. As it happened, I actually knew the liquor steward. Anywhere else he would’ve been a bartender. But not here. Here, he was a steward. I got to know Dave at the local liquor store where he worked. I knew his name, and he knew mine. I would ask him to recommend wines and whiskeys, and.. well... anything. And he never let me down. So I introduced Dan to Dave. They immediately hit it off. “Do you have a good whiskey?” asked Dan. Ever hopeful. “Most definitely,” said Dave, and he poured us two drinks from a bottle that I couldn’t afford the deposit on. And it was good. It was incredibly good. And, after we had thoroughly enjoyed every drop of that wonderful whiskey, Dan said, “That was really nice, but do you have anything that’s better?” And Dave did. This was seriously a $1000 dollar bottle of whiskey. Maybe more. We weren’t buying any, so the price really didn’t matter. Trust me on this: It’s like Beluga. If you’ve never liked whiskey, it’s probably because you were still drinking the stuff you could afford in high school. We were tempted to stay right there with the liquor for the rest of the night, but we didn’t want to seem too pedestrian. Besides, I needed to be able to drive home, which really good whiskey can come in the way of. So we decided to make our way back over to the hors d'oeuvre table and see if they had anymore of the stuffed mushrooms or the escargot in the unbelievable butter-garlic sauce. And maybe, just maybe, there was some more of that caviar. And that’s when the lingerie models made their entrance. There were about a dozen or so very attractive, very shapely women in very elegant nightgowns. Designer nightgowns. Designed to leave no doubt just how shapely that woman really was. If you wanted to see how lovely that emerald necklace would look around somebody’s lovely neck, they were glad to do it. If you wanted to buy that lovely nightgown, they were glad to sell it. They were more than happy to let those old men feel how soft that silk really was. And all those old men were more than happy to feel it. And that’s when one of these lovely young women came running up to me and excitedly said, “Mr. Soetaert! Do you remember me?” I did. It was Crystal, one of my former students. Wearing a very shear low cut night gown that rose up high on the sides and cascaded ever so gently in the back. Sure, she was now probably 20, 21, but she was still one of my former students. She was a child. And then she asked, “Have you seen Katrina? You remember Katrina?” I did. She was there, too. Another one of my students. Katrina had gotten Crystal the gig for the evening. I have no idea what company she worked for that arranged such things. Crystal wanted to visit. After all, she said, I’d been her favourite teacher. But she had to get back to work. Maybe we could talk later on. She was sure Katrina would want to see me, too. And she went off to twirl in front of well dressed gentlemen. And I had to go. After all, it was a Tuesday night, and I had to work in the morning. And if my Chevette got too cold, it might never start again.

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