The Devil Doesn't Wear Prada . . .

He wears a hoodie, and this is why wearing a hoodie is wrong. Point of clarification: I'm talking about wearing hoodies and actually putting the hood up on your head. This is the point where it crosses the line. You don't have to agree with me, but this is how I see it. So if you're driving a car with a hoodie on, hood over your noggin', I'll think you're planning to do something illegal and the hood will conceal your identity. Wearing a hood while you walk down the street? Got my eye on you, even though I've noticed people wearing hoodies will not make eye contact with me. Is it 90 degrees outside? You're wearing a hoodie with the hood up in that weather? You are obviously up to no good because a hood holds heat in and in that kind of weather, it's cooking your brain and making your skin oily, which causes pimples. Yuck. But I digress from my main point: wearing a hoodie with the hood up is oh-so-wrong! Know how I know? Like I said: The Devil doesn't wear Prada, he wears a hoodie.

Did you see The Passion of the Christ? Who was there in the crowd? That's right—El Diablo. What was he wearing? Uh huh, a hood draped over his head! Did you see the The Bible miniseries on The History Channel recently? You know, the production by Reality TV pioneer Mark Burnett and his wife, Roma Downey of Touched by An Angel? Did you see old Slewfoot in that series? I did, with a pasty-looking face and a hood on his gourd! I guess Satan himself finally realized, probably from focus groups or his marketing department, that he really needed to cover up those horns to reach more people. Enter the hooded one!

So you want to counter my argument and say, “Well, Mark Zuckerberg wears a hoodie, and he's the founder of Facebook and a billionaire?” Good point, but you are playing right into my argument. Mark Zuckerberg obviously works for The Devil and may actually be The Devil. That's how The Devil works, masquerading as something good, and no one would have ever suspected that a red-headed guy from Dobbs Ferry, New York would be The Devil himself. But he couldn't help wearing the hoodie with the hood up, and that gives away his true identity as an associate of you know who. My recommendation: lose the hoodie and show us there's no horns under there!

And if you're a girl, you might want to read an earlier post about the dangers of big hoop earrings in Confessions of a Girl Wearing Big Hoop Earrings. If you see a girl wearing a hoodie with the hood up and big hoop earrings sticking out, run! Danger is imminent.

Fifty Shades of May

A spring day in May has the power to make a person feel young again, even when that is no longer true. Why? Spring brings hope. Things return to life, pointing toward the radiance of summer. Age feels powerless against imminent waves of heat.  Spring means I can't help rolling down the car windows to let the wind blow through my hair and let the stereo blare Jackson Browne's “Before the Deluge.” I don't think I'll be dying in spring because the prospects of lying in the sand by the ocean shore lifts my soul above the declines of the rest of the year. People move to Florida to escape chill of fall and winter, but if the reality of those seasons does not catch you then their shadowy metaphors soon enough will. So I plan to stay up North and ride out the seasons until they get the best of me.

Today's luminous leaves are suspended on firm branches so green and secure, and will remain so for several months. But you can be sure that fall's chill will begin to fell formerly vibrant foliage when it finally overtakes Indian summer come late October. I love fall too, but in a way that respects the finality as it points to the end of another lap around the sun.

As I now approach fifty, this May beauty cannot erase what my mind knows all too well: spring is again all around me, but fall remains within.

My High School Friend Elton Skelton Talks About Our Hometown

I was back in my hometown last summer visiting with my old high school friend Elton Skelton at the annual 4-H barbecue. We were both eating a thick barbecue sandwich, corn on the cob, and homemade potato salad when I started telling him about New Jersey. He thought it was the strangest place in the world. He kept saying, "Well, Chrissy boy (He always calls me "Chrissy boy"), I don't know how you live out there in a place like that!" I then asked him if he were to try to explain to someone from New Jersey what Mount Vernon is like, what would he say? Well, he had plenty to say and I've tried to summarize his rather lengthy response below.

“What’s it like in Mt. Vernon, Chrissy boy?  Well, first, I'd tell 'em: Let’s get this straight—it is nowhere close to Chicago! Okay! Try 280 miles SOUTH of Chicago! Chicago gets most of our tax money and wastes it on bribes and other such corruption. You think it is an accident that Blagojevich and Obama are from Chicago? Down in Southern Illinois, we hate Chicago. We are in Southern Illinois, not northern. Have you heard of St. Louis, Missouri, Chrissy boy? Gateway to the West? That’s our city. We might also go to Evansville, Indiana, but not very often. Too many stoplights.

Now that we have that out of the way, what's it like in Mt. Vernon? It's a small town of about 17,000. The population has held steady for about, ah, I don't know, fifty years? People really don't move here from other places unless they're moving from smaller Southern Illinois towns to the “King City” as some call it around here because this is a big town by our standards. Most people stay in Mount Vernon because that's where their kin live. If you growed up in Mount Vernon, college is optional for you. You know all this, Chrissy boy, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir. But if you put this in that blog thing you do, maybe this'll help them old city slickers out by you. The good thing here is our kids don't grow up burdened by the pressures of them college entrance tests like them kids in those highfalutin’ suburbs out by you. Besides, those who do go to college and find out what the rest of the world is like typically don't come back, right Chrissy boy? You done flew the coop a long time ago. So we don't encourage college much. I wish you'd stayed around here buddy cause it's hard to find someone to go duck huntin' with.

In Mount Vernon, I guess we're mostly farmers, fast food and factory workers and such. There is a rich legacy from our farmin' roots too. Actually, truth is there's only about five people here are real farmers. But everyone has a garden. We still eat like farmers with hearty appetites because farmin' is demandin'. That's why we like all-you-can-eat buffets over orderin' fancy foods with parsley sprigs on a square plate that is green like an avocado. Besides, ordering off a menu takes too much talkin'. We are not that big on talkin' around here. We are descendants of farmers, who go out in the field all day by themselves. Talkin' is best when kept to a minimum, despite this little display I'm givin' you right now. We also have an independent mindset here. We're true rugged individualists who fix our own equipment and do our own chores by ourselves. That is how we want to eat, too. Just give me a clean, round white plate and I will go up, get my own food at the buffet, and bring it back to my table. And please don't put a white tablecloth on my dinner table. Just wipe the table off with a sponge and leave a fresh bottle of ketchup on the table and we're all set. You know what I'm talkin' about, Chrissy boy! We are not a white tablecloth bunch here.

And we ain't green (he held the syllable on green for a full second) here in Southern Illinois either. There is so much land is it necessary to worry about recyclin'? Oh, I smash my beer cans sometimes and take 'em in when I need a little money, but it like we're gonna run out of land anytime soon. Why can’t we just burn our trash and our leaves and throw our old tires out in the woods? We are farmers, for God’s sake, Chrissy boy! We got this. You take care of your garbage and we'll take care of ours.

(Elton took a couple of bites of his barbecue sandwich then started in again.) With this attitude, you can see that there aren't too many famous people from Mount Vernon. We had a guy who played in the NBA in the early '70s named Nate Hawthorne. I didn't think you'd ever heard of him. And there was Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a 1944 graduate of the high school, who was the United Nations ambassador in the '80s in the Reagan administration. Never heard of her either? Well, that' about it for our famous people.

The center of life in Mount Vernon is Wal-Mart. We have a 24/7 Supertemple. I'm sorry, Chrissy boy, did I say Supertemple? I meant Super-center. Everyone goes to Wal-Mart at least once a week. It is almost like a religion for us. I'll bet if Wal-Mart could find a way to sell religion, they would. Anyway, most of us feel like if you cain't find what you're looking for at Wal-Mart, you probably don't need it.

We have a city park, but not too many people use it. It's actually for poor people to use. If you're not poor, you probably have plenty of land and can put your own playground equipment in the yard. This keeps you from having your children mix it up with them, let me say undesirable children in the city. Just tellin' it like it is, right Chrissy boy? You know what I mean.

People in Mount Vernon are bigger than people in New York City, at least from what I've seen on Real Housewives of New York City, because people in Mount Vernon don't walk anywhere. And we eat them all-you-can-eat buffets. I guess we're the people they're talkin' about on Fox News when they say our country has an obesity problem. My grandma used to say we are a “pleasingly plump” people. How's that for bein' poetic, Chrissy boy? Besides, we eat a lot to support the American farmer. Becoming fat is our way of showing we're patriotic. Ain't I tellin' the truth, Chrissy boy? You know I am.

Like most people in our country, folks in Mount Vernon don't have many kids. That is why the population isn't growin'. When it comes right down to it, most of us would rather eat at the all-you-can-eat buffet than have sex. Or we'd rather go to Wal-Mart than have sex. Can you imagine that, Chrissy boy? Only in Mount Vernon. You did good to get out of here.

The big festival of the year in Mount Vernon is the Sweetcorn and Watermelon Festival. It's held in August of each year. I told you we were farmers and an ear of corn represents what farmin' is all about, you know, the harvest. People love the festival because it's only in Mount Vernon and there's nothin' like it. Not too many people actually go to the festival because it's too dang hot. You been there, right Chrissy boy? You know, can you imagine eatin' an ear of corn with butter and salt dripping off it in 95-degree weather while your sweatin' a river off you? (Elton remembered the ear of corn on his plate, grabbed it and took a bite out of it. He continued while chomping on the corn . . .) But the festival's always been in August, so we won't change it. We don't like change round here.

You remember Mount Vernon's got an Art Museum don't ya Chrissy boy—Mitchell Museum. When you live in Mount Vernon, you never think of goin' to the Art Museum. I mean, who has time for that when you need to do chores, cut the grass, change the oil, and fix the leaky roof? You get your work done, and then you have time to relax. But before you relax, you probably need somethin' from Wal-Mart. Art is for city people, Chrissy boy. We just ain't city people 'round here. We'd never think of havin' an art museum in Mount Vernon because we think art is stupid and a waste of time. I think somebody who used to live in New York started the art museum.

You probably remember this too, Chrissy boy, but I'd tell 'em in Mount Vernon we are white and black. If you're black, we'd prefer that you stay in the south part of the town. If you're white, it's okay to spread out. If you're from another country, please don't come to Mount Vernon. Please stay in your country. We are Americans here. If you live in another country, you're obviously not American. Duh? So why would you come here? It's hard enough keeping our own employed. We just can't take responsibility for you too.

Well, Chrissy boy, I hope I gave you some good information that you can use to help them people in New Jersey understand what it's like around here. It hasn't changed much since you left. Sounds like you'd forgot quite a bit. If you'd come back more often I'm sure it'd all come back to you. Good seein' you buddy. Guess where I gotta go now? You know it, gotta pick up my wife at Wal-Mart.”

How to Check the Iron When You're Approaching 50

I can tell I am getting older by the way I check to see if the iron is on. Now that I am nearing fifty, I have noticed it is too much trouble to bend down and see if the iron is plugged in. I mean, it is a long way down there and lots of things can go wrong bending down that far. Dizziness can set in. You can pull a muscle. Wrench your back. (I am finally learning not to reach into the back seat while I'm driving the car for that very reason.) It is also way too much trouble to bend down and unplug the iron to be sure the iron is turned off. Besides, bending down that far for one thing is really not a good use of my time. If I'm bending down that far, I better have more to do than just check the iron. At my age, you just can't go around wasting your energy on frivolous activities like checking to see if the iron is plugged in. Wait until there's a few things to do down there before you commit—picking up paper clips, dryer lint, stray used softener sheets, etc. Getting down there to check a plug is a high-effort activity, so don't waste it. Do a few other things while you're there. Since it is rare for me to have any other activities planned that I can do while I'm in the dirty lowdown position, what do I do? Instead of bending, I feel the surface of the iron with my hand to see if it is hot or not. You might expect that even though I am getting old, I feel young when I scream like a girl if the iron is on and it is hot. That's right, I scream like a girl! So feeling the surface of the iron to see if it is on works for me, even if I occasionally scream like a girl when the surface is really hot. Then I whip my hair back and forth, blow on my fingers and palms, and unplug the iron from the socket with my toes. I feel young when I do that too.

Inversion Boots

The media has never really influenced me much. I could always watch what I wanted on television and suffer no ill effects, like a man who can eat a large piece of apple pie a la mode every night after dinner says it doesn't bother him because he sleeps like a baby. But let a guy do that over a period of years and it will eventually catch up with him. But mine was not the cumulative effects of media consumption over time; I had a one-time episode resulting from a movie that I know got the best of me: American Gigolo.

Richard Gere played a . . . well, okay, a gigolo in the movie who hung upside down shirtless in inversion boots and drank Fresca out of the can. (This is all I really remember about the movie except that Lauren Hutton was also in it, and I figure if she came of age now they would have put braces on her to fix the gap between her front teeth.) I believe it was around 1982 when I saw the movie, so you can guess what happened next: I bought a pair of inversion boots and would hang upside down and shirtless from a chin-upbar in my bedroom doorway. I lived with my grandparents and mother, none of whom seemed impressed by this feat, a teenager hanging red-faced, eyeballs bulging out of his head, feet in the air.

I suppose the images--one of me doing chin-ups right side up followed by me hanging from inversion boots upside down--aptly describes life as a teenager for many of us. On the one hand, doing something normal, and the other doing the opposite, the Jekyll and Hyde nature of youth on display.

After a good hang, I would grab a can of Fresca, which I recall had a message about causing cancer in laboratory animals, and pour into my body the greenish liquid that was about the same color as the water in an outdoor pool at a cheap motel that didn't have a good filtration system. But Fresca has a bit of a citrus taste and was so much better than Tab, one of the main competitors in the early 1980s diet soda genre that was what I imagine taking chemotherapy must be like: a pure chemical cocktail. But it had only one calorie, so it seemed worth it at the time.

As time wore on, I kept doing chin ups right side up and eventually stopped hanging upside down, probably because I had installed the chin-up bar myself and wondered if it would give way some day and I would fall on my head. Eventually, Diet Coke replaced Fresca as my drink of choice, and An Officer and a Gentleman became the movie I associated with Richard Gere rather than Gigolo. Every now and then, I'll reach for a chin-up bar and think about throwing my legs over it and hanging upside down because I know I would feel eighteen again, at least for a moment. But then I think better of it, grab the bar, and pull myself up, grateful I can still chin myself after all these years.

My First Car Advice Column

In honor of 2012 being the final year Car Talk would record new shows, I have decided to launch a car advice column in 2013 to take advantage of the strategic opportunity due to diminished competition in the auto repair advice space. Who knows? Maybe I will finally get my big break. So here goes with some of my best advice.

1. Get your child an old car when he or she gets a driver's license. Too many parents nowadays buy or lease the golden child a new car. Why? Learning what to do when your car breaks down is a valuable life skill. Plus, with cell phones it's just not that hard. The engine dies. You pull out the cell phone and make a call. The tow truck comes within 45 minutes or so. It's not that big of a deal. Back in the old days, breaking down was tough. You stood by the road and hoped someone would pull over to help you. Usually they did, but it was usually some rough-looking guy with a beard because those are the people who know about cars. He would get out a tool box, lift the hood, and ask you to try to start it. He would poke around for a few minutes, but finally you would jump into a car with a complete stranger with a beard while he took you somewhere to call, usually a pay phone. You thought about scenes from every scary movie you ever watched. Then you would realize you had no change, and this was even before phone calling cards. You would have to borrow a quarter or make a collect call to be able to get help. The stranger would have to stay with you to make sure help came. It was a complicated convergence of events that had to take place to work through having a car break down. Today, it's a piece of cake with cell phones: you call for a tow, sit and wait, surf the web or update your Facebook status with “car won't start LOL,” and then they come and tow you away. The tow truck even takes AMEX. Big whoop: you broke down. So don't waste money buying or leasing a new car.
2. Never wash a car. It will just get dirty again. Besides, what do you think rain is for? That's right: God's car wash! So please don't waste time or money washing the car. Besides, cars are mostly plastic these days, and plastic doesn't rust. (My cars are so old they still get rust, but a little rust never hurt anything.)
3. Always back into a parking spot because you never know when you will need a jump start. In 2012, I actually had a two-week period where I had to be jump started three times between two of our cars. During the same two week period, I then had to take lunch periods and go get a replacement batteries for the car. I learned that somehow the economic recession had resulted in batteries doubling in price. (This has me thinking about getting an MBA so these kinds of things won't be such a surprise to me when they occur.) So my life was consumed with car batteries for that two-week period. Oddly, even though women are now able to serve in combat, the women's liberation movement has never seemed to push for women taking care of battery problems with cars, at least at my house.
4. If you're a coach, don't turn in the soccer or softball equipment to the league. Keep it in the trunk over the winter. Seriously. The extra weight in the trunk will keep the car from fishtailing on icy or snow-packed roads.

That's enough for a first column. Next week, we will discuss whether you should buy a car with manual or automatic windows.

My Annual Rite of Passage: Storing Away the Air Conditioners

In recent years, I've noticed that I do not readily jump up in October, run upstairs and pull the air conditioners out of the windows, and take them down the stairs into the basement to store them away for the winter. I had realized this last November when I took those burdensome boxes out of the bedroom windows and carried them down. This made me think that I was in pretty good shape, especially since our bedroom air conditioner was about 30 years old and was huge, heavy, and unruly. My body managed to get the AC down to the basement by myself (a drawback in life of having only daughters), but my mind kept telling me with each precarious step down the stairs “you're getting older, you've got nothing left to prove, you don't need this, so just stop using this ancient old heavy air conditioner and replace it with a new, lighter one.”

This annual rite of passage with the air conditioner is a way I've watched myself age over the past ten years. There were years where the thought of carrying air conditioners down two flights of stairs to the basement was almost too much to bear. Sometimes, my mind would tell me I would probably fall down on one of those flights of stairs going down to the basement. Other times, I would remember a woman named Pearl who used to attend our church. She had told me about a man who became paralyzed from a fall when he was trying to move an air conditioner. Not a pleasant thought.

For some reason, the thought of falling tragically is not so strong in summer when it's burning hot and the women look to me to do something. A man wants to save the day in summer, but no one appreciates putting the air conditioners away for winter, a thankless act of manhood that will lower the utility bill but otherwise no one else will care.

Taking the air conditioner to the basement to me is a serious matter of statistical probability, trying to determine whether or not I can determine how many more years I can continue this annual rite of passage before my inevitable decline would become too great of a risk to take. This air conditioner thing is certainly a cliff you want to walk up to the edge of but not fall over.

We've only lived in one place with central air during the past nearly 30 years, and this was in our first home in Leonia from 1997-2002. Those would have been prime years for me to transport the air conditioners to the basement because I was only in my thirties. But there was no need then, so five years of my prime was wasted, and in an unfortunate twist of fate we found ourselves leaving central air for window air in a one-hundred year old home just as I was approaching 40, the age when men should cease performing feats of strength with window air conditioners.

I haven't mentioned that we have three air conditioners, one for each bedroom. We bought two from an Estonian couple who attended our church. In 2002, they were returning to their country and needed to get rid of two fairly new window ACs. It happened that we had just moved to our new home without central air. These new ACs were not like the 30-year old cast iron AC that was left in our bedroom window. I could carry these new lightweights down to the basement without screaming at people to move, abruptly call on someone to drop everything and open the door, or move the toy in the floor out of the way, or whatever. Moving that big AC was War and Peace and Apocalypse Now all rolled into one for me.

This year, I finally broke down and got a new 5000 BTU AC from Target that seemed really light compared to the old AC. I put it in the window in May and left the heavyweight in the basement. June, July,and August went by before I finally got up enough nerve to carry the heavyweight to the curb for a trash day in September. I thought about this impending challenge all summer and finally, a wave of courage came over me as summer was slipping away and fall was imminent. I hoisted the “ancient of days” and attacked the staircase, going up the stairs to exit the basement. Marcia opened the front door as Old Ironsides and I had an epic struggle all the way to the curb, where I dropped her to the ground and thrust my arms into the air victoriously. Now approaching 50, I needed to know I still had it. And at least for one more year, I can say that I do.

Original Draft of My Poem, "Barbeque Grill" From Touching Other Worlds

Original Draft of "Barbecue Grill," from Touching Other Worlds, pg. 1

 

Original Draft of "Barbecue Grill," from Touching Other Worlds, pg. 2

What the Reviewers Are Saying About Touching Other Worlds

Now that my book has been out for over a year now, I've gotten lots of good feedback by email and in person at book and poetry readings. Here's what people are saying about Touching Other Worlds:

“Not horrible . . .”

“Brave . . .”

“Better than I thought it might be.”

“He'll be a good writer some day!”

“Finally some manly poetry for a change.”

“Not half bad, especially for a descendant of Midwestern farmers.”

“Very rare collection, indeed . . .”

“Liked it better than I thought I would.”

“Moved me to tears . . .”

“This poetry is definitely other-worldly . . .”

“Rainey's poetry is unbelievable . . . unimaginable”

“Reminded me of buses and diesel fumes . . .”

“Woven in transluscence throughout . . .”

“Lifted me out of the doldrums”

“Waiting for the German translation.”

My First Storm Update

The winds started in on Monday and apparently gusted to almost 90 mph. Our big tree survived in front in the high winds, but power went out Monday evening and still hasn't been restored. Just in case, I tied my leg to the bedpost during the height of the storm because it was really windy.
We are partying like its 1899, playing board games and sleeping good in the deep darkness without light pollution. It gets a little chilly, but not bad. Water heater works--notice I didn't say "hot" water heater!--so we do get warm showers. My work has been up and running since Tuesday, so I made it in on Wednesday and can get on the Internet from here. I drove 24 miles to work this morning and saw only three gas stations with gas. Each had lines of 1/4 to 3/4 mile long. I've heard the people were acting really nice. I've been fortunate since Marcia sat in the car in line on Wednesday for an hour and filled up my car. It looks a little like Russia here, or at least what I imagined it looked like, many years ago waiting in line for bread or something. Many people cannot come to work because they don't have gas and can't get it.

We walked to CVS in our town last night and an employee went back and found us one package of D batteries. We were able to get three more flashlights going and it was so exciting. We were shining our lights around on everything in the house just because we could. It was like one of the Stars Wars movies for a few moments in our house with beams of light flying around.

Also, many people bought generators when we were without power last year for five days at this time, but I figured what are the chances of that happening again? Well, it happened again. But the generators are so annoying, sounding like someone is out mowing the yard all night long.

Will write more later.