Hitting Sticks...

That’s Don on the left, he was one of the house-mates in the four story bachelor pad that we all shared. Each guy had his own floor. Don was into Gong Fu, while I was training in Tae Kwon Do in those days. We used to spar in the living room, which was too small to really let loose. Sometimes we would run around the lake, carrying weapons, in the middle of the night. We always paused down in Lake Anne Plaza, to spar.

That was in the mid 1970’s, so occasionally there would be a bunch of stoned hippy kids, about ten years younger than us, still hanging out, draped boneless over the long stairs that descended down to the water’s edge. Don and I both dressed out in full Gis, his brown, mine white, with bare feet to better help us pause and fight. The first time we came running silently into the plaza and started hitting sticks, the sound reverberated like rapid-fire shots off of the two story half circle of store-fronts that faced the lake. Those semi-comatose kids on the stairs immediately sprang to full alert, and almost shit themselves. Three AM and a white guy in a white gi was battling a black guy in brown, both in full uniform, swinging fighting sticks and seemingly trying their best to knock each other TFO. Of course we were just two friends out sparing, but those guys had no clue.

Over time, they became excited for our fairly regular appearances on warm summer nights, often giving us a round of applause that also reverberated around the plaza. Shots and applause. It sounded more like the ovation of a sick crowd at Ford’s Theater than 10 or 12 guys who were just happy to have something going on other than staring at the water for another month or two, wondering what they were going to do with themselves when the weather turned cold.

This picture was taken for an article in the local paper that highlighted the growing interest in martial arts at the time. Right after this shot, Don stood up and I busted him in the nose. It was completely my fault, failing to properly check my punch. He bled down his uniform as I repeatedly apologized for my klutziness. Don just laughed it off.

He knew that, as in life itself, when you mix it up, shit happens .

The Flemington Fair

When I was a kid growing up in Westfield, NJ, the annual Flemington Fair was a big deal. Packed with colorful rides, spinning and quaking, flashing lights and blaring calliope music…mostly run by ex-felons on some work release program. The equipment always looked abused and ready to fail. That was part of the excitement, wondering if yours was going to be the seat that would come loose in mid-air and fly off into the haunted house, three booths down the midway.

The Funnel cakes there were deep fried in oil that hadn’t been changed since the previous owner had done it more than a year prior. I ate them last, knowing that those bad boys would give me terrible stomach aches and explosive diarrhea, a carnival prize for the long ride home. With me cramping up in the back seat of my parents Ford Fairlane 500, Mom would tell dad: “We need to stop right away, pull over at that Howard Johnsons up there and let Hugh out.” She was more interested in getting me out of the car than into a rest room. I’m a dad, so I understand that. As a kid who could normally eat anything, much like a young dog, I could wolf it down, still can, but I think the Funnel Cake guy was pissed off about being the Funnel Cake guy and added a “secret” ingredient or two. I thought about a science class I’d had in 6^th grade when the teacher spoke of how things could replicate themselves by budding, like a yeast starter in beer. Since I had the same reaction two years in a row, I couldn’t help but think that the funnel cake guy may have added a little starter of his own. Something had been budding. Mainly, I knew that I was full of shit. My friends and family assure me that little has changed over the years, but only those Funnel Cakes from long ago had the ability to make me understand what nasty menstrual cramps must be like. They were ahead of their time, like young wives who make their husbands wear sympathy bellies so they would better know the joys of pregnancy. I can bond with women better now. Thanks, Funnel Cakes!

That fair crowd was something else, but I don’t know what. I didn’t quite know where they came from but they didn’t look anything like the people I grew up around in our little white-bread suburb of manicured lawns and show-parade church Sundays that I was used to. One guy drunkenly bumping shoulders in the crowd looked as if he had been cut in half lengthwise, like Bluto was always trying to do to Popeye when they worked together in a cartoon saw mill. Unfortunately, when the doctors sewed that man’s two sides back together, the zipper wasn’t properly aligned. Like a too hastily buttoned shirt, this man was askew from head to foot, one eye even higher than the other. Actually, his whole left side was higher, and he wore a corrective shoe to compensate. I thought about that man for many years afterward, wondering if he had ever worked in a sawmill.

Without question, my favorite attraction, the one I yearned for and pestered the folks about before they finally broke down and took me, was the freak show. Such things were still legal in those days. Several summers in a row, “Pinhead” was their main attraction. She stood just outside the main tent flap, next to a waving canvas sign that boasted of her ability to count to ten. I never heard her make it past four, but that wasn’t the point. The ads pulled me in with their claim that she had a “head the size of a baseball”. At age 11, that was just about the coolest thing I had ever heard of. These days, I guess we catch most of these kinds of things in a prenatal stage and I understand why freak shows are no longer allowed, but Pinhead really appeared to be enjoying the passing crowd as much as we enjoyed seeing her. How else could she make money now anyway? She was happy, all smiles, and seemed to really try to get her numbers in order. She was a star! Anyway, her issues left her few options. Not like the four-legged girl inside. She could do lots of other jobs. How many of us are able to count the exact number of legs on a toll booth worker or the girl selling tickets at the local movie theater? We only see them from the waist up. Hell, maybe some have seven legs...

Just inside the tent entrance sat a fat lady. Alone on a makeshift stage with only an oversize chair for company, she reigned like the queen of quantity, the opal of obese, a bulging butterball. Chunky and colorful, draped in a flowing Moo Moo, patterned with yards of red roses. She wasn’t really all that fat by today’s standards though, maybe 400 pounds. You can see the same at any midnight madness sale at Walmart these days. Scooters overflowing with flesh motoring down the chips isle. We didn’t speak as I entered but I was the last one out, so before leaving, she and I were alone, just sizing each other up. Clever boy as always, all I could come up with was “You sure are fat!”.  It was offered as a compliment. She said” “Yup!” and that was it. Our moment. My brush with stardom.

That job had to suck, how boring would it be to just sit there for hours, days, years? She’s one who could be much happier now, a computer programmer maybe, or making ads for Nutrisystem, hobnobbing with Marie Osmond.

The fat lady was just OK, as was the tattoo girl. These days just another face in the crowd, everyone has tattoos, but at least that woman had a beard too. Again though, I think Walmart has several. I know I saw a very large scooter jockey with sideburns one evening but was unable and unwilling to determine gender.

 Another super special performer though, aside from pinhead, was a guy who could pass a thin sword through his body without pain or blood. He pulled handfuls of flesh out from his legs and stomach, skewering them for the crowd. Anyone who wanted one, was given an extra-long pin with a colorful bead on one end. We were invited to push the pin right through his outstretched flesh when he pointed to a certain spot and nodded approval. My older sisters were totally grossed out by that and immediately left the tent. They gave me their pins so I stayed and eagerly skewered away, feeling lucky as hell to have three pins.  I felt like he and I bonded over that and thought of him fondly whenever I made Shish Kabob as an adult.

The snake lady was too obvious. She spent hours with her head stuck up through the top of a wooden chest that supported an “aquarium”. Inside was a huge paper-mâché snake, curled and ready to strike. You couldn’t see the woman’s neck, just her head sticking out above the coils, making faces and flicking her tongue at the crowd.

The next room was cramped, feted and damp. It smelled like the mildewed tent walls that rippled slowly with the winds outside. Shelves full of bottles lined the walls, oddities, backlit and floating in formaldehyde. Each jar challenged people to figure them out. What the hell is that? On closer inspection, most were obvious fakes. A fish with a monkey head, a baby goat with another half-goat sticking out from its back. I think the world’s biggest rat was just a fat Opossum.

Dad never went inside, he thought it was dumb. He didn’t like anything about the fair but wouldn’t let mom make the drive by herself. Mom was creeped out by the whole freak show thing and hustled quickly past Pinhead and the barker next to her to wait for me on safer ground. There really wasn’t anything at the fair for either of them. They both just wanted to get back home, their parental duty behind them, and go out for an adult dinner, alone. That's exactly how I feel after I take the dogs out for a long romp in the country.

These days of course, freak shows are a thing of the past, we’ve become more homogenized and safe. Everything is padded, and PG, no visually sharp edges to cut or entertain. Make no mistake though, there are still plenty of freaks out there, but now they look somewhat like everyone else. It's only when they open their mouths to speak that you feel the need for fight or flight. The true professional freaks even have high paying jobs on capital Hill. They dress in suits. Some of them make millions preaching on TV.

Like the packed crowds at the Flemington Fair, we keep coming back, reelecting career politicians who promise real change in each new election. We fill the collection plates of the grown descendants of snake oil salesmen. We're so desperate to be anything other than what we are. Politicians and preachers sell false hope. The freak shows sold gratitude. We were glad that our heads are larger than a baseball or that we didn't have to shave around our eyeballs to see.

Sadly, perhaps, the true, old fashioned freak shows have gone the way of Cherry bombs, lawn darts, Green stamps and phone booths. Clark Kent could get arrested for stripping in public.

That spaceship of a Ford Fairlane 500 with three flatulent kids fighting in the back seat, one with explosive diarrhea, and no seat belts anywhere in sight, is just a memory.

What of Pinhead you ask? I'm not sure, but I think I may have actually spoken with her yesterday. It appears that these days she is answering customer service phones for Comcast.  

Choirboy...

My grandfather bought this statue on one of the many junkets he and Grandma took to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He said it reminded him of me. I had grown up singing in a prominent Episcopal choir of men and boys that emulated that English tradition. Ten years, from age 7 to 17, three nights a week and Sunday services. I paid my dues. Grandpa liked that.

The problem, for me, was that when I was 18, I looked 15. Skinny, blond, and pink cheeked. I hated the whole choirboy image. In sixth grade, while casting for a play, I wanted to be John Raitt, Bonnie’s dad, as he had been in the Broadway production of Carousel. He was barker Billy Bigelow, a tough guy who always wore a tight black turtleneck that showed off his muscles. My own turtleneck only held a scrawny little blond kid who couldn’t scare a Chihuahua.

So when Grandpa gave me this statue, it represented everything I was trying my best to outgrow, even though as a present from him, it was huge.

I immediately stashed it in my parents’ house for about ten years. 

Then, softening to the image, I replaced the cross with a sword and made space for it in my bachelor pad. This guy stood on a wooden table beneath the undulating orange parachute that draped down and across the ceiling of my bedroom. Holding his sword at the ready, the choirboy became my own wooden Indian and hat rack, subjected to the humiliations of inappropriate head wear, eye-wear and even the underwear of a cute guest or two if I got lucky.

Sometimes he would lay down his sword and hold a perfectly rolled joint. A good boy gone bad.

Perfect, we were starting to make some headway.

Yesterday I was looking at him, just the two of us alone in the room. We talked, reminiscing about how we met over 50 years ago, his childhood in San Miguel and what a long strange trip it’s been.

No one thinks I look younger than my age anymore. He is unchanged, that bastard. These days I have no problem with being reminded of my choirboy years, nor with being compared to this guy. We’re buddies now.

Sometimes we really do change the way we feel about things.

Everything changes, Well, almost everything.

Memories of the way my mother made eggplant casserole back in the day is set in stone though. It would still be every bit as disgusting today as it was way back then.

Home...

Escaping the labyrinth, looming monoliths of steel and glass, thousands jockey for position in a crowded pack, all horses blowing with monoxide flatulence. Windows closed tight, the sound of fans recycling canned air, unheard over megawatt sound systems inside the bubble. Commuters flee the city, girded tight in battle garb. A colorful noose hanging loose, my exit finally loomed ahead like freedom calling, inviting me down the  last paved road home.

Sharp right turn off worn asphalt onto a narrow dirt lane, mostly hidden by a late summer explosion of uncut green and brown. Eager wheels kicking loose stones, a tree-high cloud of dust rolling and tumbling in my rear view, Mark Knopfler and I, both cranked up, singing/shouting about MTV and color TVs.

Finally, just ahead, a rural mailbox, peeking out above tall weeds, marking the serpentine driveway that ends in my front yard. A private oasis. Turning in slowly, a sports car not designed for that rutted path, sweat soaked horses heading back to the barn. Cutting the engine, ears begin to quickly acclimate to remote woods, only the popping sounds of the cooling engine to remind me of our race to the finish.

Ruth knew when I was only moments away, Ohio the Wonder dog told her. In our country setting, that good dog barked out a profile of any vehicle coming down the road, her pitch dictating friend or foe. God help the UPS man and the meter reader. Ruthie expected me to pull in when I did, and had started running from the door of the old frame house. For some reason, I thought of the label in her cheap blue jacket that promised “As Warm as a Collie’s Fur”. An odd boast, it seemed. Lowering the front windows, a dust cloud kicked up by my sudden stop holding its shape, shifted ghost-like into the trees, hiding from sight behind the ruins of the old barn.

Like a pearl diver breaking the surface, I sucked in large gulps of air, a cedar scented breath of freedom flowing in through open windows. Ruth’s blue coat, an approaching blur, long blond hair flapping horizontal in the wind behind her. Cool Fall breezes flushed out the stale, recirculated air, as she ran up to the passenger side, jabbering with excitement.

Leaning in, her attention turned briefly to a caterpillar, scraped unscathed from the lowering window, now feeling its way along the rubber track, unaware of the staring eyes of a little girl, a giant just inches away.

It’s OK, I thought, Ruth wouldn’t hurt a fly, or you. You can live here, Mr. Caterpillar.

Planting one brown laced wingtip on the ground, Ruth scurried around the car and jumped up into my arms, jabbering again. Ohio sniffed and danced at my feet. Emmylou was singing inside the century old wood house as crickets found their voice again, singing along with their courtship songs that had been so rudely interrupted by my arrival.

Carrying precious cargo, her blond hair fanning the side of my face, everything that mattered to me was inside that old frame house we were about to enter.

Home.

Christmas Stories!

Carla and I don’t do Christmas anymore, haven’t in many years. Not since the kids went off to go off on their own paths. We never did all that much in the way of commercial gift giving anyway, mostly treating the holiday as we do Thanksgiving, lots of good food. One family tradition demanded that I find a big lobster for us to share. After carefully removing the meat from the largest claw, I mounted bright red claws on the wall, just below the ceiling in our cabin house. A gift that kept on giving.

Some years we didn’t have a lot of money, but it never mattered. We knew that the stores full of stuff held little of value. Sure, we got the girls dolls and such, but mostly it was about the seasonal music, lots of special treats to eat, and a decorated tree that filled the house with the fresh evergreen scent that is the essence of Christmas.

The thing I miss the most though, was a handwritten story from Ruth. From the time she was first able to do so, I asked her to write me a story, about anything at all, just write. That's what I wanted. She thought she was getting away with something because she didn't have to buy me anything, all she had to do was write me a story. I still have most of them, stained and wrinkled pieces of lined and unlined paper, filled with color and imagination, starting out with a child’s scrawl...and ending here. I think this was the last one.

All of them were the best presents a Dad could get.st

Geezer MMA

Fight fan? Most of my closer friends know that I’m a huge MMA fan. I’ve never missed a big UFC event since that promotion first started in the early 1990’s. In general, the fighters, men and now women too, range in age from 20 to 40. Twenty is pretty young to be any good and forty is old for your body to be able to take it. But I want to bring a new element to the sport, something as big or bigger than when women became regular fighters, not just a novelty. I want to start MMA for seniors over 60. Hell, I’m 68, still work out pretty regularly, know and love MMA, and I should be able to fight some other old codger if I want to. People love to see old guys fight, right? There’s huge potential here for an entirely new division…geriatric grapplers, belligerent, cantankerous, and easily exhausted.

We’ll need a few new rules though. Like no punching to the head. That gives me headaches. No punches to the stomach either, I’ve got a hernia. No grappling on the ground, just getting down there and then back up is a bitch, not so easy without a chair or something to lean on. I mean, I swear a blue streak and need pain meds just to put on socks and shoes, so the idea of wrestling and going for submission holds that any decent ground game requires, just sounds too painful to deal with. Naturally we’ll need to change the time for each round just a bit. Instead of three, 5 minute rounds, I’m thinking we need to go to three rounds at 1.5 minutes each with ten minutes in between rounds and a built in pee break. Oxygen and funeral services should be available as needed.

Also, no jumping, or kicking. That shit causes serious spine problems. I would have to take a permanent room in my Chiropractor’s office.

But that pretty much covers it. You must be over 60 and ready to fight like a crazy man. But no kicking, jumping, strikes to the head or body, and no wrestling or ground work. OK?

This is going to be huge. I’m eager for my first fight, more like a caged tiger than just a man. My friends (trainers) and I strategize every morning at our gym, on the couch, next to the coffee machine. Collectively, we’re a frightening killing machine, and I’m their champion.

I just hope to get this fight over before my scheduled hip replacement in February.

Reading and Life Lessons in a Tabloid Gauntlet...

I was thinking about the clutter of cheap magazines and Hollywood tabloids that scream for attention when we stand in the checkout line of almost any grocery store, Walgreen's or Walmart. A wild gauntlet of absurdities.

I happened to be standing in such a line. Did you know that Al Gore is actually a woman?

Apparently Hillary Clinton is an alien, and every Hollywood star over the age of 50 is dying a horrible death. Each rag has the exclusive pictures. Although the publications themselves come and go, they take me back some 30 years when I was standing in that same line with a little blonde girl who was just learning how to read.

Carla home schooled Ruth, with my blessing, as long as an emphasis was put on reading and writing. To me, that's the key to anything else someone may want to do in this world. While Ruth was just starting to learn, she read the billboards, traffic signs, the names of businesses, anything and everything. She would sound them out bit by bit until the whole word popped out, accompanied by a joyful recognition and awe at her own growing ability.

But the checkout line was special for us. That's where we could pick up a National Enquirer, The Weekly World News, or whatever the trash magazines were that I no longer remember. “Dad, can we get the one about Bigfoot?” One of the tabloids always made it to the belt, a special treat. On the drive home, we both looked forward to the time that we would spend together after the groceries were put away...nesting in a big chair, or maybe soaking up the sunshine out on the lawn with Ohio the Wonder Dog rolling on her back nearby. Ruth would read to me from the National Enquirer, pausing as I helped to clarify words and meanings. Asking lots of questions in that funny, unfiltered dialect of a very young child. All those alien adventures, the Kangaroo that gave birth to a human baby, the people that were discovered living 1000 miles below the surface of the earth. We laughed and talked about the stories, her eyes wide with joy at her own discovery of what was and wasn’t real. She loved to bust the stories, like finding treasure, explaining to me why they were fiction and why they made no sense. 

Ruth learned a healthy skepticism early in life, to question everything and to decide for herself. The very same lesson my father had taught me 30 years prior when I was shocked to discover that an article in our local paper wasn’t the truth. Ruth learned that lesson well and she also learned to read.

For me? I knew then and remember clearly now, that there was no better way for me to spend my time on this earth, than cuddled up in a big overstuffed chair, reading, pointing, and laughing... with a little blonde girl who had a purple tongue and breath that smelled of Gummy Worms and Skittles...