Slim's stories

Burrita and the Manger Scene

2010-11-21T16:44:00.001-07:00

For the past three years, I have lived in a small guest house on a little ranch in Tempe. There are currently 12 horses on the property, which is divided into nine pastures. With the exception of two stallions – Splash and Rough-n-Ready – each horse shares pasture space with at least one other horse.
A group of five horses – all females – share a large pasture next to the main residence. I refer to them as “The Girls Club.’’ Part of my duties is to feed the horses and while it’s no secret that horses share some of the emotions humans experience, my exposure to these horses has revealed some human qualities I never previously associated with the equine world.
It’s no secret that horses can be contented or afraid or angry, of course. But what I have learned is that horses can also be covetous, petty and, unless I miss my mark, even introspective.
And nowhere is this more evident than when observing The Girls Club. I suppose I could share my perspective on this to make a point, but I believe there is a better point to be made from examining this little society from the point of view of one of its members.
And the point I want to make is about Christmas.
Now that I have piqued your curiosity, let me introduce The Girls Club, starting with the member from whose perspective I will attempt to consider the topic.
I mentioned that there are 12 horses on the ranch, but it is not so: There are 11 horses and Burrita. She is not a horse at all, but a burro.
Now, if you were able to conjure your inner Dr. Doolittle and ask Burrita to introduce her group, she would probably start with Chanta.
At 17 years old, Chanta, is the matriarch of the group and the dominant presence in the pasture. She is smart and wise and seems to understand the humans on the ranch to the point that she is able to anticipate their moves and wishes.
Chanta is the unquestioned boss of The Girls Club. She eats first and woe unto the horse who tries to infringe on her exalted station. The other horses have learned to treat her with great deference.
Next in the hierarchy is Dolly, a black-and-white paint who had a foal last year and is poised to take over the reigns of power someday.
Lena, a newcomer to the group, is a big athletic bay. She was an excellent cow pony in her previous life. She is now pregnant and will produce a fall next October.
Then there is Princess, who although she has reached her maturity is a tiny little horse. Her sweet nature and calm disposition make her an ideal horse for the small children. She is big enough to ride but no so big as to be intimidating to a little child. If she had a pink mane, Princess would be the pony of every little girl’s fantasy.
There is Brynnie, a yearling and Dolly’s foal. Sweet-tempered and beautifully painted, Brynnie is the apple of all eyes on the ranch.
And that leads us finally to Burrita, who occupies the bottom space on the equine totem pole.
She is short – she comes up to about waist high on the average person – and impossibly round. In fact, she is so overweight that the owners have put her on a diet. While the other horses get a flake of alfalfa twice a day, Burrita gets half that – if she is lucky. Sometimes, she is nudged away from her modest portion by another horse that has grown bored with her own rations and has decided to take over Burrita’s.
Funny thing, though, Burrita doesn’t seem ever lose any weight. Sound familiar?
While the other horses boast smooth, shiny coats, poor Burrita’s coat is thick and rough coat and a dull, listless gray. What’s more, her coat seems to have some sort of magnetic quality when it comes to dust. Pat her on her rump and a the Los Angeles skyline seems to emerge. Imagine Charles Schulz’s “Pig Pen’’ character as a burro and you’ve got it about right.
While the other horses vocalize by nickering and whinnying - sounds that are strangely soothing to the ear - the noise that emanates from Burrita’s earnest lips are loud, harsh. If there were an animal version of American Idol, Burrita would be one of those contestants whose audition is aired purely for the sake of public ridicule.
Poor Burrita, huh?
Now, I have no way of knowing if Burrita ever views herself in relation to her pasture mates. But if horses can suffer from fits of anger or fear, it is at least conceivable that they may also suffer from esteem issues.
And if that’s true, it must be painfully obvious to Burrita that she is never going to be the leader of The Girls Club like Chanta. She’s never going to be a mom like Dolly. She’s never going to be athletic like Lena. She won’t be the horse children want to ride like Princess. She won’t be beautiful like Brynnie.
But here is the interesting part: Aside from when she is muscled away from her hay, Burrita seems happy enough. She’s playful in a comic sort of way. She is gentle. She’ll even let you play with her ridiculously long ears, which I would imagine would be something she would be inclined to be self-conscious about.
Yes, she seems pretty happy and if you will permit some license here, I will offer one explanation:
Christmas.
Each year, a nearby Lutheran Church puts on a Nativity Play and Burrita is loaned out as a cast member for a couple of weeks. She is not the star of the show, obviously, but she is a bona fide scene-stealer as far as the younger audience members are concerned. Before and after the show, dozens of little hands compete to spoil old Burrita. They will pat her on her head, rub her dusty coat and treat her with carrots and apple slices.
Imagine that! This is the sort of honor to which regal Chanta, maternal Dolly, athletic Lena, gentle Princess or pretty Brynnie can never aspire. When it comes to the Nativity Play, only short, fat, dusty, bleating Burrita will do.
Does this seem odd to you?
Then stop for a moment and think of what that manger scene really represents.
I want you to peel away the traditions and trappings that have been heaped upon this day, mainly to appease secular sensibilities.
You know what I am talking about. Recently, I’ve seen depictions of Santa Claus kneeling at the manger. I suppose in future depictions we will see Frosty the Snowman and The Grinch jostling with the shepherds for a closer look at the Christ child.
Put all that foolishness aside and look at the scene. Those who can see it for what it really is and for what it really means are blessed.
It is speculation of the wildest, most irresponsible sort to even suggest that Burrita can grasp the spiritual implications of the manger scene.
Still, I like to think that when the Nativity Play is over and Burrita returns to the ranch, she tells her pasture mates all about her role in the manger scene. I doubt they believe it for a moment. Horses, like people, may be skeptics for all I know.
I don’t think it bothers Burrita, though. She knows the truth. It is enough.
For a couple of weeks out of the year, at least, Burrita understands that she is loved apart from all the qualities that demean her among her peers. And that knowledge is enough to sustain her for the other 50 weeks.
And if Burrita can get all that from the manger scene, imagine what it can mean to the human heart.
“Behold,’’ proclaimed the Angel of the Lord, “I bring you glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.’’
Did you get that? ALL people.
Even the short, fats ones who can’t sing and need a bath…

Our State Fair

2010-05-02T19:08:00.001-07:00

From a 1996 Tribune column...

October 16, 2005 - 6:43AM
Tasteless? Tacky? That seems fair
Comments 0 Recommend 0
Slim Smith, Tribune Columnist
The Arizona State Fair started Friday, and I asked a young colleague if she was going.
She wrinkled her nose and said no; it is too noisy, too crowded, too messy, too crude for her tastes, she said.
And I thought, gee, those are the reasons I like the fair.
In our postmodern, homogenized society, our entertainment seems to have been given over completely to technology. It is impersonal, sterile, passive.
Sure, the fair is quirky, flawed, unsophisticated, hopelessly tacky.
In other words, it’s like me.
Go to a mega-theme park and you are nothing more than a consumer. Go to the fair and you are a real person talking to another real person about how he grew a 385-pound pumpkin. You just won’t see that at Legoland.
For all the clutter, confusion and cheesy attractions, state fairs remain popular.
Probably the most famous of the state fairs is the Iowa State Fair, an event so popular that it inspired a Broadway musical: "Les Miserables," I think it was.
So I encourage all skeptics to take another look.
Any dairy-farm housewife can make butter from a cow, but where else will you see somebody sculpting a life-size cow out of butter?
Where else will you find a booth that sells 14-foot fishing boats that can be folded flat and stored under your bed?
Where else can you see hundreds of livestock, thousands of crafts and food items, all the products of folks who might be your neighbors?
I’m talking about folks such as Helen Spangler and Debbie Young. I don’t know either, but I bet they both have big, fat husbands. Spangler won eight blue ribbons for cakes. Young took home five blue ribbons for bread-making.
Nancy Asper only won a third place, which I would protest if I were her. Her "Most Outlandish’’ entry was a cake that looked exactly like a cat’s litter box — one badly in need of cleaning, at that.
The fair is all about stealing a kiss from your sweetie when the Ferris wheel stops at the top.
It’s about eating foods dripping with fat and not feeling guilty.
It’s about winning an enormous overstuffed animal and then realizing you have to tote it around for the next three hours.
It’s about petting a rabbit, mooing at a cow (admit it, you’ve done that).
It’s about giggly girls flirting with the boys and grandpas spoiling the kids on trinkets.
It’s about recognizing all the ordinary people around you and realizing that you fit right in.
It makes me feel sad for my young colleague, who seems to have forgotten what being young — or young at heart — is all about.
Messy, loud, crowded, tacky? What’s not to like?

Porch swing buddy in cap-and-gown

2010-04-28T07:25:00.002-07:00

May is the month of graduations. All over the country, thousands of young men and women will stride across a stage, shake hands with various school officials, take their diplomas and proceed to go out and conquer the world.
The fact that, year after year, droves of young people have been setting out to conquer the world stands as a stark reminder that the world is a pretty tough old bird. Here it is, 10 years into a new millennium and the world has not been sufficiently subdued, apparently.
So I would like to use the space allotted to me here to address that new wave of would-be world-conquerors.
More specifically, I would like to address one particular world-conqueror.
On the evening of May 22, Abigail Nicole Smith will stride across the stage during the graduation ceremonies at Harrison Central High School in Gulfport, Miss., to accept her diploma.
For most of those in attendance, she will be one among many.
Ah, but I know different.
She was not always the tall, graceful, self-assured young woman who will glide across the stage to the applause of a small army of family and friends.
In fact, I have it on good authority that not so long ago, she was short, impossibly plump, virtually non-communicative and blissfully unaware that the world needed to be conquered.
How far she has come. And, so quickly, too.
I guess that’s the way it always is with dads.
I do not understand it, but as the day of her graduation approaches, I’ve found myself reliving memories of her childhood.
It is not a conscious effort on my part. I’ll be making breakfast on morning, and I’ll remember the day when she was 13 and had a friend over to spend the night. The girls disappeared into the bathroom for about three hours to apply make-up and emerged looking like two clowns on acid.
Or I’ll be standing in line at the bank, and I’ll remember the day when she announced she was going to be a vegetarian. As a life-long Southerner, the very idea of someone being a vegetarian seems foreign. But here was this 10-year-old swearing off meat. I didn’t even protest, so certain was I that the lure of a pepperoni pizza would quickly cause her to repent. Two weeks, I figured.
Well, it’s been seven years and she’s still a vegetarian.
I’ll be feeding the horses and I’ll remember how, as just a toddler, she would command my attention by holding my face in her little hands, looking me dead in the eye with wide serious eyes and saying “This is important!’’
For some reason, most of my recollections are dominated by her early years and of the front-porch swing. Getting Abby to bed was my duty – and my privilege - and the front porch swing was where we always greeted the sandman.
When he was just a little bundle, I would swing her on the porch and sing to her and she looked up at me with those big blue eyes. She seemed to favor “Take Me Out To The Ballgame,’’ or so I fancied.
As she got older, the front porch swing was where we could be totally silly.
It was there that she told me her first joke:
Question: Why did the cactus cross the road?
Answer: It was stuck to the chicken.
OK. As jokes go, it probably doesn’t floor you. But to hear her tell it, laughing so hard that she could barely get it out, was to me an eternal pleasure. She would tell the joke over and over and almost collapse in convulsions of laughter, the kind of laughter only innocent children can produce.
It was Abby’s first joke, so it will always be my favorite.
Just before we left the porch swing to go to bed, we played the “I Love You Better Game.’’
“I love you better than chocolate cake!’’ I would say.
“I love you better than a million beanie babies!’’ she would respond.
We would exchange “I love you betters’’ until it was difficult to find comparisons.
Since we did this every night, the game soon became scripted, more or less.
And it always ended with the silliest one:
“I love you better than a dead goat!’’ I would say and she would wrinkle her nose in mock horror and cackle with laughter.
The porch swing exists for us now only in memory.
Circumstances have intervened and I have missed a lot of her teen-aged years, so I’m loath to take any sort of credit for the strong, spirited young woman she is now.
I will not be able to attend the ceremonies, such are my present circumstances.
At the graduation party, someone else will have to make the traditional Smith family toast noting the attainment of a high school diploma with the words, “This don’t mean you’re better’n us!’’
But as she walks across that stage, shakes hands and receives her diploma, a little of bit of me will be there, too.
And at that moment should you see me and notice a tear or two, do not mistake it for sadness or regret.
It’s just that my heart got too full, so a little bit began to leak out.
My porch-swing buddy is all grown up.
But if she’ll permit it – in fact, even if she won’t – I have to say one thing lest the night be left incomplete.
Abby, I love you better than a dead goat!

“It will all come out OK, I hope so’’

2010-03-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

In his Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography “Growing Up,’’ former New York Times columnist Russell Baker writes poignantly of what it was like to be a child during the Great Depression.
Baker’s story, published in 1982, chronicles the struggle of his widowed mother and her efforts to raise two children at the height of the Depression.
Taken in by relatives, the young widow’s best prospects for securing “a home of our own’’ appeared to be a marriage and Baker writes tenderly of a doomed romance between his mother, Elizabeth, and Oluf, a Danish immigrant who was a baker by trade.
The story is told first through Baker’s own memories of Oluf’s very proper parlor visits with his mom and later, when Oluf left to scour the country looking for work, through the letters exchanged between the two adults.
Oluf’s story resonates powerfully today. Before the Depression, Oluf had owned his own bakery. But the Depression forced him out of business. Initially, he found work at other bakeries in town, but as the economic disaster deepened, he was forced to hit the road in a wild and desperate effort to find work in his trade.
His letters to Elizabeth detail the story of his decline. At first, they are filled with hope and good humor, even though the job prospects remained unpromising. “Well it will all come out OK, I hope so,’’ he wrote.
But as time passed, Oluf began to lose hope and his letters began to betray his sense of despair. Finally, he wrote Elizabeth a last letter telling her not to write to him any more.
“I am lost and going and not interested in anything anymore,’’ he wrote. And with that, he simply disappeared into the Depression.
In March, the sale of the East Valley Tribune was approved and 19 of the remaining 33 newsroom employees were terminated. As a former Tribune editor and columnist, I found the news heart-breaking, if not unexpected.
I learned the fate of many of those former colleagues through their Facebook posts. As you might suspect, many of their friends and former co-workers left comments saying how sorry they were to hear the news and trying to offer some encouragement.
“I am so sorry to hear the news, but you are talented so you’ll find something,’’ was one of the general themes.
“This just means something better is coming your way!’’ was the tenor of the more hopeful responses.
But there were other comments that seemed to betray a sense of uncertainty.
“Good luck in your search.’’
“Hope you find something soon.’’
“Hang in there.’’
They say history is written by the winners and the survivors.
It is true there was a V.E. Day. It is also true a lot of fine soldiers never lived to see it. It is true that the country survived the Great Depression. But lost in the history are those who did not.
There is no way of knowing how many Olufs were crushed, maimed and destroyed by the Depression of the 1930s.
Similarly, we have no way of knowing how many of millions of Americans who have lost their jobs will become the Olufs of this generation.
It’s been almost three years since I was fired from the Tribune. As an ex-convict, I realize I go to the back on the line when new journalists enter the job market. In that sense, I am farther way from my goal than ever, which is why it is increasingly difficult for me to say, with any real conviction, “Well, it will all come out OK, I hope so.’’
To be honest, the notion that “tomorrow is another day’’ has become more of a necessary lie than a rallying point. More and more, I begin to fear that, like Oluf, I am “lost and going and not interested in anything anymore.’’
So when I encountered those former co-workers on Facebook, I did not encourage them to look to the future, because I have lost all confidence in it.
I simply wrote, “I am so sorry.’’
It is the only honest thing I can say.

Slim Smith is a free-lance writer living in Tempe. You can reach him via email at slim215980@hotmail.com.

Savin' the Wave

2010-03-02T19:42:00.002-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, an old friend from high school, Kathy Wallace, sent me an invitation to join a website dedicated to our high school.
Apparently, this is the latest thing in social networking. All you have to do is plug in the name of your school (be sure to included “high school’’ followed by a dot followed by the letters ning.com).
Well, I’ve been strolling down memory lane ever since, getting in touch with old classmates, some of whom I haven’t seen in 30 years.Perhaps because of this, I find that long subdued memories from high school are emerging once again.
And, maybe because it is September and football season, my mind drifted back to a particular memory of my days as a member of the Tupelo High Golden Wave football team.
Now, I know what you are thinking: I am going to blather on about how I rescued the Wave from certain defeat with an inspiring heroic effort in the final desperate seconds and was ridden off the field on the shoulders of my teammates and into the embraces of a bevy of lithe, awe-struck young cheerleaders.
Well, if I were Lea Paslay or Tom Alef or Felix Rutledge, that might well be the story I would tell.But even highly selective, much embellished memory does not permit me to tell such a tale, mainly because a bunch of my old football teammates have found this blog and would quickly expose me as a fraud.
So, the story I will tell, while much less heroic, is compelling in it own sort of humbling way.
If memory serves, it was 1976. The game in question was against Pine Bluff, Ark.,
Now, this was a momentous game for the Wave, not because it was a game against a team from a neighboring state, but because it marked the first - and only - time in my football career that we actually got to spend the night at an out of town game.Because Pine Bluff was about a seven-hour bus ride, it was determined that we would bus over early in the afternoon on Thursday so that we would be rested and ready for the game on Friday night.
There was a rumor that several of the players sneaked out of our Holiday Inn rooms and walked a few hundred yards to a Pizza Inn, where they bought pitchers of beer and played the juke box for a couple of hours. I suspect there was some truth to this rumor, mainly because I was there.
Now, in 1976, I was not prominent in the plans for head coach Dennis Waite and the coaching staff. I think I was third or fourth team at about five positions.
So, for me, the trip to Pine Bluff was not accompanied by any pressure. I figured I would do what I almost always did at games - convince a friend in the grandstands to sneak me a bag of popcorn, which I concealed in my helmet.
I figured I would munch on popcorn and watch the game and the cheerleaders; my attention being equally divided between the two.
Let me pause here to discuss the cheerleaders of my generation. They were generally not chosen because of their athleticism, although , of course, there were sometimes athletic girls on the squad. Back in those days, cheerleaders were chosen primarily because they were good looking, energetic and could be convinced to shout, with great zeal, such inane things as "Two bits. Four bits. Six bits. A dollar. All for Tupelo, stand up and holler!''
I liked the cheerleaders a great deal - and from a great distance. The idea of approaching any of these beautiful, flawless creatures would have been, in my mind, an act of unimaginable arrogance.
Girls like that go for the players who don't stand around like a doofus eathing popcorn out of their helmets. So, my strategy when it came to high school girls was to focus on the flawed ones, much like a lion picking out the wounded wildebeest from a great herd of "really hot'' wildebeests.
Well, there were no wounded wildebeests on our cheerleading squad. They were all wonderful, exalted creatures.But I could still admire them from afar, like fine art.
So, while Coach Waite and his staff poured over their game plan with the starting lineup just prior to the game, I already had my game plan down and I was very confident about it, too.
But about an hour before we were to bus to the stadium, word began to leak out: Clay Stewart, one of the starting outside linebackers had come down with some sort of stomach flu and wouldn’t be able to play. Then, I got word that another player had suffered a similar malady. And another. And another.
By the time we got on the bus, about a dozen players were out of commission.And as we moved slowly down the side streets toward the stadium, it began to dawn on me that I might actually play, and not just in the last few minutes when the outcome had already been determined.
Rob Mosely got the start in Clay Stewart’s spot. The back-up to Rob was…well, I wasn’t sure who it was. Heck, it could even be me, for all I knew.
But as the game progressed, I sort of forgot all about what might happen if Rob got hurt.
About three minutes into the second half, with the Wave holding a narrow lead, I was munching on popcorn and ogling the cheerleaders when I happened to turn my attention to what was happening on the field.
Just then, Rob went down in a pile of players and didn't get up.Now by this time, I was well down toward the end of the bench, which is a good spot to be in if you happen to be eating popcorn out of your helmet. Coaches generally frown on players eating snacks on the sideline. You would be surprised how touchy coaches can be about things like that, in fact.
Then, I heard this booming voice: It was Fred Davis, one of the coaches, a wiry black man of indeterminable age who spoke with a gruff, guttural voice that you could hardly understand.
“Miff’’ (Smith),’’ he bellowed.“Miff!’’ he yelled again, as I was trying to ditch the popcorn.
And it hit me: I WAS GOING INTO THE GAME!!!
Sprinting toward the middle of the sidelines, where the coaching staff prowled, I quickly snapped by chin strap.
“Miff!’’ Davis yelled. “I’m here coach!’’ I responded, ready to sprint out onto field.
“Good!’’ Davis barked. “We need your helmet.’’
So, I gave coach Davis my helmet and sort of slinked back down to the end of the sideline. It was embarrassing. Not only that, I didn't have anything to eat popcorn out of.
We bused home after the game and my buddy, Steve Stanfield, gave me a ride home. I walked in the door about 4 a.m. and mama was sitting in her chair in the living room. Mama just couldn't sleep until all her boys were home.
“Who won?’’ she asked sleepily, emerging from her chair to give me a hug.
“We did,’’ I said. “24-16, I think.’
’“Oh, good,’’ she said. “Did you get to play?’’
“Nah,’’ I said. “...but my helmet did.’’
So that's my football story.
I know. It ain't exactly “Rudy.’’

Breakfast in prison

2010-02-04T23:19:00.001-07:00

At 5 a.m., a crackling sound emanates from the wall-mounted speakers in A Pod of Building 4 at Florence West prison and a voice that resembles that of any adult on a Charlie Brown special makes the first of the day’s many announcements. Much like everything else at Florence West (aside from the locks, of course) the speaker is broken, so only a careful listener can make out the message:
“The chow hall is now open.’’
And with that a few dozen traffic cones come to life like a rejected screenplay for a Disney movie: “Fantasia II: Mickey Goes To Prison.’’
In Arizona, all state prisoners are dressed head to toe in orange, most likely for the same reason that hunters wear orange: It is the most conspicuous of colors, which is important to the authorities should an inmate manage to escape the grounds and make a break for freedom across the interminable desert.
So Charlie Brown’s teacher mumbles incoherently into the intercom and a few dozen traffic cones shuffle off across the dirt-and-pea-gravel exercise yard to the chow hall.
Breakfast is optional and most of the inmates choose to sleep through the meal. I was always one of those who roused from their fitful slumber for breakfast, not because I was hungry, but because I had built it into my routine.
As one makes the transition from human being to convict, there are some lessons you learn pretty fast. One of those lessons is that the days are an eternity without some sort of regimen.
In county jail, where the only rules that are enforced diligently are those designed to ensure the inmate’s misery, the routine is as important as it is difficult to create. And if is true at most county jails, it is even more pronounced in the Maricopa County Jail system, the personal gulag of the populist narcissist known Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The sheriff defends the degrading, dehumanizing conditions of his jails by saying they serve as a deterrent, but the man who makes that argument is either ignorant or a liar. The sheriff is not ignorant.
All I know is that virtually every inmate I encountered at the county’s Durango Jail had been in county custody before, some many times.
I spent the first 34 days of my 122-day incarceration for DUI at Durango while awaiting sentencing. There, confined in a pod that was designed to hold 36 inmates but occupied by 70, the long, dark days dragged on in endless tedium. By federal law, inmates were supposed to be allowed an hour of time in the exercise yard six days a week. In my 34 days at Durango, we were given exercise-yard privileges eight times, three of those times before dawn, when the guards knew that few would wake to take advantage of it. So mainly, we spent the days crowded together in that grim little pod.
The small day room was furnished only with four long tables and a battered 19-inch TV, which hung from a high ceiling. Inmates were allowed to watch only two channels – ESPN and Animal Planet, alternating days.
A few inmates had decks of playing cards and some of the men had fashioned crude dominos out of small soaps – the kind you find in cheap hotels.
But you can only play cards or dominos for so long. And when you’ve watched the same pro bowling tournament or the same lion eat the same wildebeest on TV every damn day, the monotony of life starts to weigh on your psyche and your temper. And you find that before too long you begin to despise the other men for no other reason than the fact that they are always there.
Some inmates, I suspect men for whom county jail had become simply another part of life, had perfected the art of sleeping away the long days. In some ways, sleeping was like escaping to freedom, almost like cheating the authorities.
“Wake up and do your time!’’ an inmate would chide a friend who was attempting to sleep off his sentence.
Me? I slept as much as I could, but I was not an expert. So I tried to find other ways to occupy the time. I read whatever printed material managed to get into the pod. I wrote letters, tons and tons of letters, all of them dripping with anger and fear, despair and bitterness and shame. I helped some of the illiterate inmates write letters, too.
But the main diversion, the one thing that I was able to build a daily routine around, was walking. I walked miles, dozens of miles, hundreds of miles.
Estimating that each step was about two feet, I calculated that walking the circumference of the day room 35 times (it took about 76 steps to complete the circuit) would be the rough equivalent of a mile. Using the stub of pencil, I made a mark on the peeling plaster of the wall by my cell each time I made a lap in order to keep track. I tried to walk four to five miles between each “count’’ – when inmates were required to be on their bunks while the Detention Officers accounted for each prison.
At first, the other inmates wondered what I was doing. They would laugh and call me “walking man.’’ But I took it in stride and often I would joke that I was just trying what worked for Joshua.
“You know the story of Joshua, right?’’ I would say, a question mostly met with blank stares. “Well, he ordered the Israelites to walk around Jericho seven times. And when they finished, they blew the trumpets and the walls fell down.’’
“You think it will work?’’ one naïve young inmate asked skeptically.
“Probably not,’’ I said, laughing, “unless you have a trumpet in your bunk.’’
Before long, though, some of the other inmates began to join me, just to pass the time. At 47 years old, I somehow became a father figure to many of the young inmates and on those walks I would listen as they told me their stories. They were just kids, I realized, as they began to open up to me. They missed their mamas. They were afraid. They were confused. They were angry.
I walked anywhere from 16 to 20 miles per day, for more than 30 days, until that wonderful day when I was “rolled up’’ and left Durango for good.
Not long after I left prison, while on a visit to the Phoenix Zoo, I happened past the big cat exhibit and saw noticed that the tigers constantly walked back and forth through their enclosure. I think I have a pretty good idea why they do that now. Prison has ruined the zoo for me. Too many cages. Too many animals pacing in senseless boredom around their enclosures.
During my last court appearance before going into custody, I stood in court, officially pleaded guilty and was told by the judge to move to the other side of the courtroom where I would sign various papers and be taken into custody by a pot-bellied county detention officer (a redundant description). The officer extended a pair of handcuffs.
“Can I sign the papers first?’’ I asked.
“No,’’ he said, slapping the handcuffs on my wrist.
That was the only time during my entire prison experience that jail personnel were in a hurry to do anything.
And that explains why it took my five days to get from Durango Jail in Phoenix to Florence West, a distance of about 60 miles. I could walked there is less than half the time.
Instead, I spent five days at Alhambra Jail in Phoenix for “processing,’’ which entailed changing out of those laughable black-and-white striped clothing that county prisoners wear into to the orange pants that identifies you as the property of the Arizona Department of Corrections, being photographed, fingerprinted and assigned to one of the various institutions located throughout the state. They also give you a Department of Corrections number. It becomes your official identity. My number is 215980. No one else will ever have that number. It will be my number, my identity forever. The Arizona Department of Correction, sort of like elephants, never forgets.
For all of that, it took five days.
Anytime I hear about how the jails and prison are understaffed, I have to laugh. There’s not a damn one of them that doesn’t spend the majority of his time on his fat, lazy butts. I paint with a broad brush on this point, I realize, but I’ll stand by the description and extend apologies to the three or four employees for whom it is not an accurate portrayal.
But I had finally made it to Florence and soon started a new routine, which still included walking. It also included getting up at 5 a.m. and stumbling off toward the chow hall.
Just outside Building 4, a half-dozen of the old-timers, men in their 60s and 70s, sat at one of the metal picnic tables, smoking cigarettes and drinking the instant coffee they had heated up in their pods.
They sat there every morning, smoking and drinking their coffee, scowling silently at the start of a new day.
The first time I saw them, they reminded me of the two cranky old men who sit in the balcony on The Muppet Show and rain insults on the actors below.
“Cheer up, boys,’’ I sang cheerily as I passed them on the way to the chow hall, “it’s only prison.’’
Their groans and mild curses followed me as I moved on toward the chow hall and I had to laugh.
“Here goes another day,’’ I told myself.

Another decade, another challenge

2010-01-05T21:43:00.001-07:00

My January column for the Times Publications....

A new year and a new decade has commenced since my last column and because that doesn’t happen every day, I feel compelled to note this development in this space, even though I’ve long since lost confidence in the possibility that a man’s fortunes can be altered by the simple turn of a calendar.
It wasn’t always that way, though. When I was younger, much younger, I looked forward to the arrival of each new year with great excitement and the approach of a new decade was nothing short of awe-inspiring.
By a quirk, the ‘10s will be the seventh decade I witnessed, having arrived on this mortal coil at the tail-end of the ‘50s.
I recall that in early December of 1979, I sat in the little closet that passed as the “editor’s office’’ for The Chieftain, the student newspaper at Itawamba Junior College in Fulton, Miss., and pondered the momentous arrival of the ‘80s. As editor of the paper, I wrote the editorial for each monthly edition. Of course, I also wrote the news, sports and just about everything else that got into print, having mastered neither the art of delegation nor recruitment. It seemed only fitting that the last editorial of 1979 note the encroachment of the new decade.
That editorial is long lost to posterity, of course, so I do not recall precisely what I concluded about the impending arrival of the 80s. I’m sure it was a very optimistic treatment of the subject matter. My audience consisted of college freshmen and sophomores, which meant we were all young enough to steadfastly believe that we would change the world, leave or mark, go down in history, that sort of thing.
I fancied that that someday I would be invited back to Itawamba to talk about my journey from editor of The Chieftain to editor of The New York Times. - this was back when being the editor of the New York Times meant something, of course.
Well, if any of the 2,000 or so students who attended IJC (or “Harvard On The Tombigbee’’ as we liked to call it) managed to change the world, they did so without my being aware of it. If you were a student at IJC in 1979 and went on the change the world, drop me a line and I’ll be sure to acknowledge it.
As for me, I obviously fell considerably short of the mark. I never did manage to become the editor of The New York Times, of course, although I did figure out a way to earn a paycheck in the newspaper business for more than 25 years. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but try doing that now.
While I do not recall the particulars of that editorial welcoming the arrival of the new decade, I do remember writing that the ‘80s would be the most formative decade in our lives, reasoning that it would be the decade where we would find a profession, find a mate and even start a family.
And that is precisely what happened to me. I found all three. I began my career in 1982 at the Columbus (Miss.) Commercial Dispatch. I was married in 1986 and welcomed my first child, Corey, into the world in 1987.
A career, a mate and a child: That’s a pretty eventful decade, you have to admit, especially when you take into account how the decade began. I entered the ‘80s broke, uncertain of the future and alone.
Which is pretty much the way I enter the ‘10s.
So much for progress.
Maybe because of those unsettling similarities, I find that the sense of anticipation that young people associate with a new decade is beginning to stir within me now.
Leaving behind the grand schemes of youth, I nevertheless embrace the notion that the new decade will again represent a defining time in my life.
If I am going to have a career as a writer, it will come in the decade. If I am to remain alone, this is the decade in which I will have come to accept it as my lot in life. If I am going to secure my future, it will begin now.
Most importantly, perhaps, is that by the end of the ‘10s, I’ll have made peace with the past; surely by then the wounds – mostly self-inflicted – will be nothing more than scars.
I no longer have dreams of changing the world – even though the world is in no less need of improvement. To tell you the truth, the very idea of changing the world is more than a little unnerving. Who needs that sort of pressure? I guess that’s why it’s a young man’s dream.
All I do know is that it doesn’t take a great degree of optimism for me to believe that the ’10s will be better that the ‘00s. A few of my personal highlights from the decade that has just slipped away: Divorced after a 16-year marriage (2002), lost mama (2004), lost dad (2005), fired from my job as a newspaper columnist (2007), sent to prison for DUI (2007).
A more succinct description: the ‘00s kicked my butt. I will remember it as the decade that I became a Human Timex (“Takes a lickin’, but keeps on tickin’!)
So I enter the decade with the always dangerous point of view that things can’t get any worse, even though I’m looking for love, purpose and fulfillment at an age where most people have had those blessings so long they are almost inclined to take them for granted.
I’m 50 years old, a convicted felon and, for better or worse, a newspaper guy.
Neither prospective mates nor employers rate those qualities very high, I realize.
But I retain just enough Southern-bred stubbornness to believe that the arc of my life can, indeed, swing upward, even though the leading indicators suggest a less agreeable trajectory.
My New Year’s resolution is knock the dust off my britches, stick out my chin and keep dreaming.
So Happy New Year and bring on the ‘10s.
I ain’t done yet.

Hide-and-Seek

2009-12-22T12:42:00.001-07:00

When I was in the second grade, I memorized the first 20 verses of the second chapter of Luke and recited it before the class to win a prize. I think the prize was a bunch of Santa Claus pencils and a few pieces of candy. It’s been more than 40 years since that day, so I cannot be expected to remember that detail.
Now, all these years later, I realize that, like so many other things in life, the real prize was what I learned. In fact, to this day, I can recite the 349 words of the passage, although I will confess that I get stuck a few places and have to cheat a little.
One of the things that I’ve always wondered about is how the shepherds found the baby Jesus to begin with. All they were told is, “Ye shall find the child wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.’’
Even though Bethlehem was not a big town, they didn’t really have much to go on. It would be the equivalent of trying to find a single family in a whole subdivision.
Although the account of the Magi is found in Matthew rather than the passage I committed to memory all those long years ago, a similar conundrum arises. According to Matthew, the Magi located the Christ child by following a star, which came to rest above the town of Bethlehem. Again, it seems like pretty vague directions. I cannot imagine you would be able to figure out a specific residence based on the position of a star. It occurs to me that the star of Bethlehem was the first known use of a GPS system, although not a very precise model.
Those curiosities aside, the important fact is that both the shepherds and the Magi found the Christ child.
I think it is interesting to note that, in the accounts of the Nativity, it is just as important to note not only who found the baby Jesus, but who didn’t. That would be Herod, who sought the child with as much zeal as the shepherds or the Magi but with far different motives.
Ever since, people have been looking for him and the success or failure of those efforts, I believe, rests on the intent of the seeker.
This reminds me of when my two kids were little. One of their favorite games to play with Dad was hide-and-seek.
I was always careful to hide in such a way that I could be easily found, of course. Getting “found’’ was the fun part of the game, after all.
So I would hide behind the curtains with my shoes sticking out prominently underneath, maybe rustling the curtains a bit for good measure.
When they found me I would feign shock. “How did you find me?’’ I would ask in mock frustration, and they would laugh and shout and demand that I hide once more so they could find me all over again.
I have a feeling it’s the same way with God. He is easy to find, only because he wants to be found. I am sure His heart bursts with loving affection when his children find him, for the joy it produces.
For those who have sought and found him, Christmas is always a time that we find in our spirits the irrepressible urge to “find him all over again.’’
“Seek and ye shall find,’’ Jesus once said.
So, with the chaos and confusion and the frenzy that generally goes with Christmas, I hope that you will find the opportunity to play the game that fathers love to play with their children.
He’ll be easy to find, of course.
He always has been.
Merry Christmas!

Me & Bobby Bowden

2009-12-02T17:53:00.000-07:00

The plaudits that are now pouring in for Bobby Bowden in the wake of Monday’s announcement that he is resigning as the Florida State head coach come from every quarter – from Hall of Fame players and coaches and luminaries of every ilk, many well outside the arena of college football.
It would be the height of arrogance to expect that he would pay any particular attention to my compliments, of course.
But then a memory stirs of my first meeting with the legendary coach and I pause to think that my words of congratulations might indeed carry a weight beyond all proportion to my status.
It was early August of 1989 and the Seminoles were well into preparations for the season when I made arrangements to visit campus to do a story on a freshman player on the Seminoles’ roster.
At that time, I was a sports writer at the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald and had been sent to Tallahassee to do a story on Terrell Buckley, who had been a star player on the Pascagoula High state title team of 1987.
Although Buckley was a prized prospect and would go on to win the Jim Thorpe Award at FSU in a few years, the Seminoles were such a power that little time or attention was wasted on a raw rookie.
Of course, Buckley was still a luminous star in his hometown, which is why I was dispatched to Tallahassee. Florida State was, at that time, just coming into its glory under Bowden. In fact, the ensuing decade would bring two national championships to the school, cementing Bowden’s status as a college football legend.
Mindful of the status of both the FSU program and its famous coach and equally mindful that I was just a small-town newspaper reporter doing a story on a player who wouldn’t sniff the field that season, I was hopeful that I might get two or three minutes of Bowden’s time, perhaps out by the practice field or between meetings. I was nervous. I figured I had better be ready to get the most I could in a small amount of time.
But when I arrived, I was stunned to find myself being ushered into Bowden’s office. There he was, rising up from his big desk and moving quickly toward me, thrusting out his hand and smiling broadly.
“Hello, Hello!’’ he said, pumping my hand as if I were a dear friend he hadn’t seen in ages. “How was your drive over? You thirsty?’’
Before I could answer, he was shouting out to his secretary, “Can you bring Slim here something to drink? What would you like? A Coke? Water? Boy, it’s good to see you! I appreciate you driving over! Here, please sit down!’’
This was not the reception I had anticipated.
After ushering me into a comfortable chair across from his desk, Bowden sank into his big chair, leaned back and asked what he could do for me. He seemed relaxed, like he had all the time in the world and that my arrival was a pleasing respite from his busy day.
I explained the purpose of my visit and Bowden went into another long soliloquy about what a great kid Terrell Buckley was, what a wonderful town Pascagoula was, what great coaching he had, what a wonderful mama he had, etc., etc.
I had hoped for a few minutes. After a half-hour, I began to feel a bit guilty, even though there was nothing in Bowden’s demeanor to suggest that he wouldn’t have been content to talk all afternoon, maybe even delay practice to continue the discussion.
When I rose to leave, he thanked me again for coming. “You let me know if there’s anything else you need for your story, OK? Anything at all. Boy, it was sure good to meet you, Slim! You come back and see us, all right?’’
Monday, when Bowden stepped down after 44 years as a head coach, including 34 seasons at Florida State where he transformed FSU from a joke to a power, I remember that day 20 years ago when he treated a small-town sports writer as if he were the lead columnist for The New York Times.
One need only examine his won-loss record to recognize that Bowden was a great coach.
My testimony is that he was an even better man.
So congratulations, coach Bowden.
And thanks for the hospitality.

From the archives: The Christmas Reindeer

2009-11-12T10:47:00.001-07:00

Folks: An old column of mine from December, 2006 that may help get you in the holiday spirit...

How the Grinch stole the reindeer - or one homeowner's decorating ploy

By Slim Smith
Tribune Columnist
This is a Christmas story and the first thing you should know is that the Geyer family of Gilbert - Steve, Renee and their children, Gabriella and Sophia - have all the qualities you would expect to find on a Hallmark greeting card.
They are all good-looking, smart, successful, responsible and, above all else, so very nice.
Last weekend found Steve doing what most everybody in his neighborhood does this time of year: Stringing up Christmas lights. In addition to the lights, Steve has a couple of those lighted metal reindeer that are all the rage these days.
Steve is a contractor and is the meticulous sort, so rest assured that his decorations are hung with precision - no detail escapes his attention.
But there is the matter of what to do with the reindeer, and this is the dramatic focal point of our story.
This is also the point where you realize that the Geyers' lives are not always as idyllic as you might assume. For as Steve considers what to do with the reindeer, he is really engaged in a battle of wills and of wits that has been a part of the family's Christmas for almost three years now.
It began when Steve bought his first reindeer and placed them on his lawn near the front door a few weeks before Christmas 2003.
Steve went to get the newspaper one morning to discover the reindeer lying on their sides near the curb. Someone had tried to steal them, he realized. The thief must have been startled and abandoned the spoils by the sidewalk. Steve gathered up his reindeer, put them back in their spot and left an outside light on to discourage would-be thieves.
So last year as he was putting up his decorations, Steve remembered that close call. He had an idea: He would anchor the reindeer about three inches deep, which would surely prevent them from being stolen.
It seemed to Steve the perfect solution. He was so confident, in fact, that he decided to enhance the display, buying a string of blue lights which he laid near the reindeer's feet to simulate water. It was a nice effect, two reindeer posed by a serene pool.
A week later, Steve, his family and another couple went for a drive to see the Christmas lights in a Gilbert neighborhood noted for extravagant displays. They were only gone for a couple of hours.
When the Geyers pulled into their driveway, it was 3-year-old Sophia who first noticed something amiss.
"Look!'' she gasped.
There in the front lawn was a solitary string of lights, still shining like a blue pool. An abandoned pool, in fact.
For a long moment, no one spoke. It was almost as if Steve was trying to remember a curse word appropriate for the situation.
Finally, 6-year-old Gabriella broke the silence.
"The reindeer ran away 'cause daddy didn't feed them," she said.
And everybody convulsed in a fit of laughter.
Everybody except Steve, who was striding toward the pathetic scene, muttering under his breath as he unplugged that pitiful string of blue lights. Somehow, his demeanor made it all the more funny and for almost a year now his buddies have teased Steve unmercifully.
"Look on the bright side," one quipped. "At least they didn't steal your water."
Someone suggested that this year he rig his new reindeer with enough voltage to give any robber a suitable electrical shock.
But Steve is simply too kind, too gentle to consider that.
So what did he do?
I will not tell you how this story turns out. For who knows? In this battle of wills and wits, this may not be the final chapter.
But if you happen to find yourself driving around Gilbert and see a home where the lights are strung in perfect symmetry, look a little closer and you will see a couple of lighted metal reindeer. . .
On the roof.

Ug, Og and Twitter

2009-10-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about technology lately.
For me, technology is like laundry; it is far more agreeable to think about it than to do it.
I seem to grow less and less enthusiastic about technology as the years go by. Not that I was ever one of those folks who loved the latest gadgets to begin with. I still think the best thing the Space Program gave us was Tang.
So, no, I’m not a tech guy.
I guess I am far more my father’s child than I ever intended to be. Thanks to Dad, we were the last family on our street to get color TV. My dad never bought a refrigerator with an ice-maker, either. To Dad, those metal ice trays and black-and-white TVs were perfectly fine.
Dad’s philosophy was that technology was not to be trusted. He was convinced that every new gadget or improvement to any existing device was designed to make a product either more expensive to buy or more expensive to maintain. He did have a point, I’ll admit.
Dad’s skepticism combined with the cultural influences of my youth, instilled in me a reluctance to embrace new things. When you grow up in a small Southern town as I did, you tended to hang on to the “old ways.’’ Whenever somebody in our neighborhood came home with something really new and innovative, the gossip that circulated through the back-yard clothes lines – the jury was still out on clothes dryers - was along the lines of the person “putting on airs.’’
“Putting on airs’’ was about as bad as being Catholic in that part of the world. I guess that’s why I never met a Southern Baptist over 40 who couldn’t drive a stick shift.
That seems so silly to me now. All of us eventually embrace technology and it’s hard to imagine life without a microwave oven, a cell phone or the internet.
Everybody arrived in the 21st Century, some kicking and screaming the whole way.
I remember when the internet arrived at the newspaper I worked at back in the early 1980s. The editor of the newspaper encouraged us to take some time to explore this new technology. Ever so often, I would sit down and fool around a bit, but I never could make heads or tails of it, to be honest.
About a week after internet arrived in our newsroom, I confided in a co-worker that I was absolutely convinced that the internet was nothing more than my generation’s Citizens Band Radio. If you are over 40, you remember C.B. Radio, I’m sure. It was all the rage for about two years, then everybody lost interest. I doubt truck drivers even have C.B. Radios anymore.
Well, obviously, I was wrong about the internet. I chuckle at the irony of it: I was sitting in a newspaper office saying the internet would be soon be extinct when I was looking at the very technology that would someday make newspapers extinct.
You would think I would have fallen in love with the internet immediately. After all, I was young and the internet was really the first significant creation of my generation.
I didn’t dislike the internet because it was new; I disliked it because I failed to see its practical value.
Of course, it’s been that way since the dawn of time.
Imagine two cavemen. We’ll call them Og and Ug.
One day, Og drops by Ug’s cave in a clearly excited state.
“What’s up?’’ Ug asks.
“I’ve just invented something,’’ Og says. “Come see.’’
So the two men walk out of the cave and Og rushes over and stands next to his creation with this big smile on his face.
Ug examines Og’s object with mild curiosity.
“What is it?’’ Ug finally asks.
“It’s the wheel! Isn’t it great?’’ Og says proudly.
Ug studies the object again. I’m guessing that at some point he kicks it because men have been doing that forever.
“Hmm. Interesting,’’ Ug says. “What’s it do?’’
Og seems a little taken aback. It seems so obvious to him.
“Why, it rolls!’’ Og says. “Watch!’’
With a big push, Og sends the wheel bounding down the hillside and begins to run after it. He looks back to see Ug turning back to his cave.
“Aren’t you coming?’’ Og asks.
“Nah,’’ Ug says in a disinterested tone. “You go ahead, though. I’m going back to the cave and drag the missus around by her hair for a while.’’
So there you have it. Ug’s enthusiasm for Og’s wheel expired not because Ug didn’t like new things – if Og could have applied his invention in a way that would have made it more efficient for Ug to convey his rapidly-balding wife from Point A to Point B, Ug might have shared Og’s enthusiasm for the wheel. Who knows? Ug might have even become an investor.
But Og never made the wheel practical and Ug was a very practical man.
Of course, I doubt even Og understood the implications of his invention.
“It rolls!’’ was the beginning and end of it for Og. And that was enough.
Now, all these eons later, the invention of the wheel is lauded as one of mankind’s first great inventions.
But I always thought the wheel gets too much credit.
The guy who invented the axle was the true genius, if you ask me.
So as I think about technology, I realize that I’m a lot more Ug than Og.
That is why I am drawing a line in the sand when it comes to the latest bit of technology, which is to say I have decided not to avail myself of the great benefits of Twitter.
Twitter, for you Ugs out there, is the latest advancement in “social networking.’’ Basically, Twitter allows a person to share what he is doing throughout the day with all of his “followers’’ in 40 words or fewer.
Where to begin?
First, the idea of having “followers’’ gives me the creeps in the general “let’s move to the jungle, wear polyester and off ourselves with poisoned Kool-Aid’’ sort of way.
Second, I cannot imagine why anyone would be even mildly interested in what I am doing at any given moment. Most of what I do each day is oppressively boring, even to me.
And finally, there’s the 40-word limit. I am a writer. I can’t tell you what I had for breakfast in 40 words.
Of course, given my track record, I would not be surprised to discover that, in a few years, the whole world is Twittering its fool head off.
But I think I’ll wait a while.
Wake me up when they put an axle on that Twitter thing.
I’ll be in my cave...

Slim's Fables (Or the world's shortest childrens's book)

2009-08-25T14:51:00.005-07:00

On day, Sally sheep was walking through a grassy meadow on the way to her grandmother's house.
Just as she was approaching a little brook that wound through the meadow, two hungry wolves jumped out from behind a bush, startling little Sally.
"Oh, please, dear wolves, don't eat me! I am on the way to my grandmother's house with medicine, for she is very sick!''
Sally's pleas stopped the wolves in their tracks.
The two wolves rubbed their chins and thought to themselves, "Since when did sheep learn to talk?''
And then they ate her.
THE END

Moral of the story: Hungry wolves don't care much for conversation.

Chapter 6: Bellevue and a captive audience

2009-04-28T12:43:00.003-07:00

From Sarah’s Journal:
On train all day Sunday, Aug. 11th. Very dry and flat; immense white fields. Not very interesting except to note what immense ranches and homes; so far apart with no trees except a few near their house to protect them in winter from snows.
We got off train at different stops for 10 or 15 minutes. Moose Jaw was one stop After we left Calgary the scenery was then so marvelous. Such a wonderful change, that we were afraid we would miss something. We then began to climb the Canadian Rockies, getting our first view of the Bow River.

You can only look at wheat fields so long. My mid-day Sunday, the Doc and his family had given up on taking in the scenery. For Sarah, that’s saying something. The woman seems fascinated by everything we encounter.
“Did you grow up blind and only recently get your vision through some miracle?’’ I teased her.
But by now, even Sarah had given up on the scenery. She was snoozing peacefully in our little car. Margaret was reading a book that had caught her attention in the window of a Chicago bookstore.
“You have to read this,’’ she told me excitedly the next day, after she was a few chapters in.
“What is it?’’ I asked.
“It’s called “The Maltese Falcon,’ ’’ she said. “The man at the bookstore said it just came in last week. I bet it’s going to be a best-seller.’’
I laughed at her excitement over the “new’’ book.
“I’m sure it will do well,’’ I said. “I saw the movie. It was pretty good.’’
Margaret gave me an odd look.
“Oh yeah, I forgot.’’ I said. “But you are right. It’s a great book. My friend, Lowell, lists it as one of his favorites and he’s a well-read man.’’
Doc was looking absently out the window, stopping every now and then to make a notation on a big pad he held on his lap. He seemed deep in thought.
I passed a few hours poring over the edition of the Star-Tribune I had bought in St. Paul, gleaning interesting facts from even the most mundane stories. The newspaper was filled with little items that gave me an insight to what life was like in a bygone era, which for everyone but me, wasn’t bygone at all.
“Doc?’ I said.
“Yes?’’
“I was wondering how you found me.’’
Doc placed his notepad on the seat next to him.
“Well, you were sort of famous, at least in my circles,’’ he said.
Doc said that my name had come up during the cocktail hour while he was attending a psychiatry conference in Philadelphia. The wife of a colleague – I gathered she was a prominent lady in New York society – had been talking about a trip she had made to Bellevue with the Greater New York Women’s Benevolent Society. The group apparently took time to visit hospitals and orphanages from time to time.
“And that’s when she told me about you,’’ Doc said.
I did remember the ladies’ visit, mainly because the staff spent two days cleaning our quarters, fussing over the most minor of details in preparation for the visit from these important visitors.
I had been at Bellevue for about three weeks and spent much of the time being amazed at what I was being told. They were telling me it was 1930. That’s the sort of information you naturally question, especially when you weren’t even alive in 1930. It was one thing for my fellow patients to agree on the year – with the exception of Tom, of course, who was convinced it was 400 B.C. – but when doctors, nurses, staff and orderlies confirm it, you begin to wonder.
As much I was amazed at what I was being told, it’s far to say everybody else was even more fascinated by what I was telling them. Some of the patients, of course, did not see anything unusual about me talking about what would happen in the future. As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, a man who believes he is a poached egg sees nothing remarkable about being a poached egg. It’s the people who know better that find it interesting.
So the people who seemed most transfixed by more stories about my stories were the ordinary workers. The doctors, as you might suspect, were more interested about what stories told them about my “condition.’’
But it wasn’t that way with the staff, the orderlies, janitors, nurses, etc. They liked me stories because they were so very interesting.
Before long, I was holding court in the day-room on an almost constant basis.
At first, I told them what I considered the important things – how the recent crash on Wall Street would usher in a decade-long depression the likes of which America had never seen. I told them about the treachery of Pearl Harbor the monstrosity of the Holocaust and Hitler; the depravity of Stalin.
They listened intently, but I sensed they were beginning to grow weary of the grim details of history.
So I began to change the nature of my glimpse into the future. I told them about Corvettes and Ferraris, of television – it’s like having a movie theater in your living room. I told them about microwave ovens and cell phones and the internet, concepts they found difficult to grasp. Of course, I told them about Neal Armstrong and the moon walk, which seemed to delight them.
I guess my best audience, though, were the black night orderlies and janitors, who sat quietly as I told about what was in store for their people.
I told them about Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers and watched with satisfaction at the wonder in their eyes as I related his story.
I told them about Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights movement. I told them how he was shot and killed in Memphis and they could believe that.
I told them about how King would open the door for a black president in 2008. That, they couldn’t believe.
“This negro president, what’s his name?’’ one of the janitors asked.
“Barack Obama,’’ I said.
The men snickered and the janitor said, “Aw, suh, now we know you is funnin’ us.’’
Before long, I had become pretty adept at tailoring my stories to the interests of the audience. Nurse Kennedy was a movie fan, so I told her about the great stars that would soon emerge on the scene – Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis. I told her of the great films that would soon mark Hollywood’s Golden Age – GoneWith the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, etc. Ditto for music. These lectures on “The future of Popular Culture’’ were always the most popular topics, even more popular than my rather grim assessments of the world-shaping events that would soon commence. Some things never change, I suppose.
In the hallways and offices, I quickly developed the reputation as a most inventive man.
The doctors, meanwhile, did not know what to make of me. I gave no indication of mental instability outside of my insistence that I belonged to another time. Nor did I fit the profile of the typical amnesiac. I knew my name, when and where I was born, the basic details of life you might expect from a middle-aged man.
But it was the time element that had them stumped.
I found out later that after telling the doctor that I was born on July 9, 1959 in Tupelo, Miss., as the sixth child of Fred and Mattie Smith, who lived at 1104 Simpson Street, that they dutifully tried to confirm my story.
What they found out was that there was, indeed, a place called Tupelo, Miss. But none of the other information could be confirmed. They couldn’t find a Fred or Mattie Smith in Lee County and there was no record of a Simpson St. in Tupelo. Obviously, I could not have been born in 1959.
But in every other conversation, the doctors reported that I seemed perfectly normal and, in fact, quite intelligent.
When Doc returned from the conference in Philadelphia, he called a friend who was an administrator at Bellevue and arranged an examination.
The Doc was apparently as mesmerized by my stories as the orderlies had been. He returned almost every day for two weeks. By the third week, he had arranged to take over my case – pro bono, he insisted. Two weeks later, he had moved me into his magnificent estate, just two blocks from Teddy Roosevelt’s childhood home.
I did not move into the basement quarters normally reserved for the housekeeping staff, either. I was moved directly into an elegant guest room.
I was part of the family, it seemed.
And that meant, I was part of the family vacation.
Sarah woke, stretched and peered out the window.
“My, just look at the wheat fields,’’ she said. “Beautiful, aren’t they? What could they possibly do with all that wheat?’’
“In a few years, most of it will be rotting in grain silos,’’ I said, ‘’while people in cities stand in line for watered-down soup.’’
Sarah’s face darkened.
“How you talk!’ she said dismissively.

Chapter 5: Running on Faith

2009-04-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

From Sarah’s Journal:
Arrived St. Paul Sat. morning, Aug. 9th. Went to Hotel Lowry, had baths, relaxed, then had lunch. Then we took a ride by auto bus for four hours all over St. Paul and its twin city, Minneapolis; both cities were very beautiful, especially their parks and Minneapolis has the most wonderful number of beautiful lakes. After dinner we went to see Wm. Powell in “For The Defense.’’ Very good. We left St. Paul Sat. night at 10:40.

When we boarded the B&O for the long ride through the high plains to our first “real’’ destination – Banff Springs in the Canadian Rockies - the ladies quickly excused themselves to prepare for bed, which I gathered was a pretty elaborate process. Doc and I went to the observation car, to drink in the cool night air and, also, because Doc wanted a smoke before bed.
We stood there for almost an hour, neither of us having much to say.
Doc had smoked one of his last Havanas down to the nub and was beginning to stretch his arms, a dead give-away that he was ready for bed.
“Doc, how old are you anyhow?’’
“I’ll be 60 on the third of December,’’ he said.
“Hmmm. Let’s see, in 1959, you’ll be….heck, Doc, you’ll probably be dead by the time I’m born.’’
Doc chuckled,. He stood, stretched again, then gave my shoulder a squeeze.
“And Jesus said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’ Doc, said, quoting the scriptures. “I’ll have to ponder that one in my dreams, At any rate, good night, Mr. Smith.’’
I was tired, too, but my head was too full of questions to consider going to bed. So I stood alone on the observation deck, looking into the void as the B&O clicked across the star-less plains.
I was wondering the same thing you are probably wondering: how it came to be that I would find myself here, on a passenger train rumbling across America in August of 1930.
Do you remember the scene in the movie “Gone With the Wind,’’ when the camera pans out over Atlanta after the battle? It is a long shot and as the camera pans out you see hundreds of wounded Confederate soldiers, strewing the landscape for what seems like acres and acres. When I first saw that scene as a boy, it really bothered me. The scale was so massive that it seemed more real than imaginary.
That’s sorta how I felt, like I was an extra is some sprawling 1930s epic movie. At every turn, I expected to bump into Jimmy Cagney or William Powell or maybe even Groucho Marx.
But this place was too far big to be a movie set. And I never saw a camera or heard a director yell, “Cut!’’ So that left only two possibilities: This was real. Or I was nuts.
As I sit here on the observation deck of this west-bound train, it has been about three months since I dropped in to 1930s America. I cannot tell you anything about the precise moment it happened.
All I remember is waking up in a white room.
Morning light streamed through the big windows, all of which were fitted with a lattice-work of iron, to keep folks from jumping out the fourth-story window, I suspect. A long row of twin beds stretched down either side of the big room.
Every where you looked, it was white - white bed linens, white walls, nurses in white uniforms with little white nurses caps, men wandering aimlessly down the long rows of beds in white gowns. Everything white, except for the orderlies, black men in, you guessed it, white jump suits.
It took some time for me to get any useful information this place. The nurses and orderlies simply went about their tasks – which consisted mainly of feeding patients handfuls of big blue pills or forcing us to drink down little cups of vile-tasking yellow liquid - while gently ignoring my questions.
My fellow patients were not of much value, either. Most were either mute or given to senseless babble. One guy, though, a fella named Tom, seemed to be able to string together a few coherent thoughts.
“Where are we?’ I asked.
“We are in the court of the Great King Xerxes, may He live forever,’’ Tom said.
“Oh,’ I said. “Thanks for clearing that up.’’
To tell you the truth, I was less curious than you might imagine for someone in my position.
The last thing that I really remember, before this white room, I mean, was riding my bicycle down Priest Ave. in Tempe, Arizona on a chilly February night, wondering for about the billionth time how my life could come to this – a middle-aged man with no real home, no real prospects. A man alone, 1,500 miles from his two kids. A man who didn’t seem to belong anywhere, or to anyone. A man who had squandered every talent, every opportunity. A felon. Who could have ever imagined it for this middle-class son of a fine, God-fearin’ family?
There is a line from an Eric Clapton song that kept running through my mind: “Lately I’ve been running on faith. What else can a poor boy do?’’
That’s me.
My friends and family all tell me to hang in there, that things would get better. You have to have faith, you know.
\ But as the weeks turn into months and months turn into years, you begin to wonder first, if things will get better and second, why should they?
We kinda like to think of America as a class-less society, but I think we are fooling ourselves. I think most of us live in a self-imposed class system. Rich people expect to be rich, cannot really imagine not being rich. Poor people imagine winning the lottery as they buy a dream for a dollar and a cold 40 for a buck-seventy-five. Middle class folks dream Lexus, buy Buick.
I’ll give you another example of what I mean. A few months after I got out of prison, I went with one of my pastor friends to visit a woman who had called to say she needed help. We drove down to her apartment, located in a dingy complex in a grimy section of central Phoenix. We stood there in her little hovel of an apartment and listened sympathetically as this 60-something woman told her pitiful story.
Her brother, her only family, had died recently. The two had shared the little apartment. He worked as a janitor, their only source of income. Now, what would she do?
We told her we would drop off some groceries and enough money to pay her rent and utilities that month. Of course, we prayed for her, too.
Do you want to know what we prayed for?
First, let me tell you what we did not ask the Good Lord to do for her. We did not pray that God would give her a good job - preferably as a newspaper columnist – with a nice home in the suburbs and a reliable, late-model car. We did not pray that she would meet that certain someone, the kind who cares about you all the time and not just whenever you happen to pop into their minds.
We did not pray, like Jabez, that He would “bless her indeed.’’
We prayed that the McDonald’s down the street would be hiring.
I guess when it comes to some people, you don’t expect Providence to get all carried away.
When I think about that day, I am ashamed. I wonder: What if God gives to you only what you ask Him to give to others - you know, sort of like a corollary to the Golden Rule? It would serve me right, I reckon. It would also explain a lot.
So, yes, I’ll admit it: For the longest time, I expected to be restored to that middle-class life that, for some silly reason, I felt entitled to. I figured I’d pay my “debt to society,’’ then I’d get my stuff back.
But that hasn’t happened. As time passes, it’s easier and easier to doubt that I’ll ever get my stuff back.
So there I was before just before I woke up in that white room. What a scene it must have been: A beat-down middle-aged man pedaling through the darkness for whom running on faith has somehow become running out of faith, which only serves to add another dimension of guilt. Losing hope seems a betrayal of all the kindness and support of those friends and family.
After you have failed yourself, you start in failing others And when that happens, you begin to guard your thoughts.
You do your best to sound optimistic.
What else can a poor boy do?

We interrupt this book...

2009-04-13T16:13:00.002-07:00

If you have been following this blog over the past few weeks, you know that I have taken on a project that might be loosely described as a book. To this point, that has been my approach. I’ve written about 4,000 words, separating them into “chapters’’ and developing a storyline, so it at least has the basic architecture of a book.
But the truth is, I am not sure what sort of book this is or should be – or even if it is a book at all.
The idea for this project came when I stumbled across a woman’s travel journal from a family vacation taken in August and September of 1930. Because it is written by a woman who makes no literary claims, her journal does not give as many insights into the family and their times. Instead, she dutifully details each stop on their 46-day journey from the beginning of the trip on Aug. 7, 1930 until its end in New York harbor on Sept. 22.
As a result, the family remains pretty much strangers at the end of the journey. This should not be surprising; the journal was never written for an audience. Instead, its purpose was to preserve the details of the trip for a time when memories might become hazy. If that is the case, the journal achieves its purpose.
Still, I wanted to know more about this family, mainly because of the parallels that exists between now and then. In August of 1930, the country was about 10 months into the Great Depression. At that time, unemployment was at 8.5 percent – which is the same rate as it is now in the Late Depression, if you will permit me to name it.
At the time of the trip, I wondered if the family had any sense of just how bad things would get, with an unemployment rate of 25 percent and the desperate decade that had just begun.
The family stayed at the finest accommodations during the trip, which suggests that the doctor – I take him to be the author’s husband, but he is never mentioned by name – was either immune to the hard times that had fallen on the country or had greatly underestimated the severity of the times.
Maybe this family had the sort of wealth that protected them from the degradation that befell so many in that era. That's probably true today, too.
I suspect then, as now, the impact of the hard times were not evenly distributed. Back then, even in the worst of times, 75 percent of the people still had their jobs. Their hardships were of a different kind and degree from those who lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their hope, lost their dignity.
Maybe it will be like that this time, too. I know that it's a lot easier to be optimistic when you have a good job, when you can pay your bills, when hard times means vacationing close to home and driving a four-year-old car for another couple of years.
But when you have lost your job, when you haven't been able to make a mortgage payment for several months, when you go to a job fair and find 15,000 applying for a few hundred low-paying jobs, well, you begin to wonder how in the world you are going to make it. And then you turn on the TV and some anchor-person who brings home six figures tries to feel your pain. The admit that things are likely to get worse before they get better. That's an easy assessment to make when it holds no real personal terror. So, they tell us about how to clip coupons, as if that's the magic cure. They assure us that there will be a happy ending, that everything will eventually be OK. And they are right. It will get better. For them.
I would love to have known the doctor’s assessment of the times in which he lived. The grave questions that hovered over the country then are much the same as the ones we are asking now.
And it is this parallel that I find most intriguing about this journal. Granted, to read a first-hand account of such a trip is great amusement in itself. Today, people can replicate their journey, but cannot experience it as they did. Some of the hotels they stayed at do not exist or do not exist as they did. You can still drive from Portland to Los Angeles, but it’s a profoundly different drive than it was back then, when such a drive would have been considered an adventure. Today, it’s a uneventful drive down a freeway.
I point this out to explain why I have not written another chapter in the book.
It seems to me that I need to know much more about the era if I am to recreate the trip with any degree of accuracy. That means research, and lots of it.
Second, and perhaps more important, I need to know what the story really is.
There is an excellent chance that the book that I have started, the four chapters posted on this blog, will not survive, or will survive in a much truncated form.
From the start, the journal seemed to me to be primarily a device by which I could frame the the real storyk, whatever that is.
So what is the story?
I have no idea.
Initially, I thought it would be a novel, written in first person, but only coincidentally autobiographical. Now, I am not so sure. For one thing, the whole time travel genre has been done to death. A fresh perspective has yet to emerge, although it may yet.
More recently, I’ve started to wonder if the story really is more of a personal memoir. From the moment I was arrested for felony DUI, friends have urged me to write that story.
As I mentioned, the parallels between 1930 and 2009 are obvious and therefore relevant. My circumstances hardly mirror those of this family, of course, but perhaps that contrast lends its own value to the story.
There is also the possibility that the two have nothing in common, that in trying to blend them I am not unlike a writer who wants to write a book about, say, 18th Century farming techniques and 1960s women’s fashion.
So, as you can see, I’m in a fog at the moment that I can’t write through.
If you have any thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them. Email me at slim215980@hotmail.com.
And thanks for reading!

Chapter 4: The Diagnosis

2009-04-04T10:27:00.002-07:00

From Sarah's Journal:
Doc and I went out for a walk. We visited Marshall Fields store - the store all Chicago people rave about - but we do not think it compares to Wannamaker’s store in Philadelphia. After our lunch, we went to see a very comical movie picture, “Rain or Shine.’ After dinner, we left at 6:30 p.m. for St. Paul.
xxx
We had spent only about 12 hours in Chicago before re-boarding the train for St. Paul, Minnesota. While Doc and Sarah were sight-seeing, I wandered out to the lake, where I watched the people and studied this odd scene. It felt to me as if I were an extra in some period-piece movie. If Al Capone had shown up and started mowing down people with a Tommy-gun, I’d have viewed it more as a curiosity than some real tragedy unfolding.
As I was waiting to cross Michigan Ave., I noted the cars - Fords, mainly, but some Chevrolets and Hudsons. All black, of course,
I pointed this out to a gentleman who, like me, was standing on the corner at Michigan Ave., waiting to cross. “Describing a car as “black’’ would be pointless, wouldn’t it?’’ I said.
The man just gave me a funny look.
Doc have given me a $5 gold piece - “for lunch, or other amusement,’’ he said.
Five bucks, I thought. I’ll have to be careful.
Hardly.
For lunch, I stopped at a fancy-looking restaurant - white table cloths, fine crystal, etc., etc. - and had prime rib with potatoes, a slice of apple pie with ice cream and tea. The tab: $1.12.
In fact, I discovered that $5 was more than sufficient.
A row of men were standing in line in front of a factory gate and I could not resist. A year into the Depression, unemployment has reached a record 8.5 percent, according to the Chicago Tribune I had been reading during lunch.
“A little something for you,’’ I said, handing out 50-cent pieces.
“Thank you, sir!’’
Back on the train, we pulled out of the Chicago station, heading for St. Paul. After dinner, the ladies retired while Doc and I went for a smoke.
A porter produced a wooden box containing cigars and Doc was inspecting the contents, finally pulling two cigars out of the box and handing the a 50-cent piece.
“Keep the change,’’ he said.
“Thank you, kind sir,’’ the porter said, bowing politely as he stepped away.
“Havanas,’’ Doc said, clipping the end of a cigar and offering it to me. “We’ll be sure to stock up with more when we get to Cuba. Remind me.’’
“We’re going to Cuba?’’ I said, wondering how a west-bound train to Minnesota could eventually wind up in the Caribbean.
“Why, Mr. Smith, have you forgotten the itinerary?’’
I thought for a moment.
“Yes, it’s safe to say that I have no idea where we are going, beyond St. Paul, I mean.’’
“Interesting,’’ Doc said. “Tell me, last week, we all went to a very special occasion, the mark the opening of a great addition to the city of New York. Do you recall what is was?’’
I tried to remember. Somehow, I couldn’t recall anything beyond being on the train.
“No,’’ I said. “What was it?’’
“Last week, we went down to witness the opening of the Chrysler Building, the tallest building in the world. But you don’t remember that, do you? Of course, you wouldn’t. Every day, seems to be the first day with you.’’
“The Chrysler Building?’ I tried to recall the visit, with no success. “I thought the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world or, maybe, Sears Tower in Chicago.’’
Doc stroked his chin and his eyes seemed focused on some distant object, as if he were lost in thought.
“I’ve no knowledge of either of those buildings,’’ he said. “They likely do not exists outside that remarkable head of yours.’’
I didn’t respond right away. The whole conversation was a little unnerving, to be honest.
I took a deep draw from the cigar.
“Havanas,’’ I said contentedly. “You realize, that there will be a day when smoking a Cuban cigar will be a rare treat.’’
“Yes,’’ Doc said in a tone that implied sarcasm. “Tomorrow, for example. We’ll likely be in the company of the ladies for the entire day. We’ll not have time for a smoke, I fear.’’
I turned to look at the window into the blackness of the night.
“Doc?’’
“Yes?’’
“Earlier today, you said I was your patient.’’
“That’s correct.’’
“So I was wondering…Doc, what’s wrong with me?’’
Doc turned at fixed his blue-gray eyes on me, as if he were examining some rare specimen.
“I’ve yet to determine a comprehensive diagnosis,’’ he said. “It has been just two months since we met, after all.’’
“Two months?
“Yes.’’
“Well, in two months you must have some idea, some theory, don’t you?’’
Doc’s voice seemed to change.
“At this point, I would say the patient suffers from acute and recurring amnesia with marked and frequent episodes of psychosis.’’
His cold, matter-of-fact tone threw me a little.
“Psychosis? I hardly believe that,’’ I said, feeling a little indignant. “Doc, I admit I can’t seem to remember a lot of things that have happened recently, but when have I ever head psychotic? That’s totally inaccurate.’’
Doc put a hand on my shoulder.
“See here,’’ he said in a soothing tone. “I’ve meant no offense. I’ve not accused you of anything that you should feel shame. It’s just that the only things that you seem to be able to recall are things that have never happened, are likely to never happen or will happen only many, many years hence.’’
“I’m not sure I am following you, Doc.’’
The Doc rubbed his chin, struggling to find a way to clarify his point.
"It seems that you have lost your ability to recollect,'' he said finally. Whatever in the human mind triggers memory seems, in your case, to elicit only fantasy. It's as if you were wired back-wards, somehow.''
He could tell that his answer did not satisfy me.
“OK,’’ he said, changing tactics. “Let’s try one of our little experiments, OK? Now, you’re a baseball fan. That much I know. This morning you were commenting on the story about Lefty Grove in the newspaper. So let’s talk baseball, OK?’’
“I don’t’ know what baseball has to do with anything, but, sure. Why not? You’re the doctor.’’
“OK,’’ Doc said. “Tell me: What is your most memorable World Series?’’
“Easy,’’ I said. “2001 World Series. Arizona Diamondbacks beat the New York Yankees in seven games, scored two runs in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7 to win it, 3-2. I was there, in fact.’’
Doc laughed, then caught himself.
“I’m sorry,’’ he said, still chuckling. “But don’t you see? You are talking about a World Series that won’t be played for 71 years. And what was the team? The Arizona Diamonds? Is it your assertion that there will be a baseball team in, what, Phoenix, 70 years hence? It is beyond imagination. Really.’’
Now it was my turn to laugh.
“Call me psychotic, if it pleases you,’’ I said. ‘”Mark my words: It will happen. I know it from personal experience. You’ll see. Well, no, you probably won’t, unfortunately. But it will happen just the same.’’
Doc just shook his head.
“What’s more,” I said, “Phoenix will also have a professional hockey team.’’
Doc burst into genuine laughter.
“You are simply delightful,’’ he said, warmly. “I do not know if there is a cure for you. And I confess, at times like this, I wonder if the cure would not deprive us of something truly marvelous. You make H.G. Wells seem like a dullard.’’
I put my arm around Doc’s shoulder. So what if he thinks I’m nuts, I figured. He’s picking up the tab. I’ll just enjoy the ride.
“Maybe I should be a writer,’’ I suggested. “I think my first book will be about World War II.’’
“God forbid,’’ Doc said.

Chapter 3: Rip Van Smith

2009-04-03T23:15:00.003-07:00

I was beginning to worry about Margaret.
It was mid-afternoon on Thursday and the stifling heat was beginning to take its toll on all of the passengers, especially Margaret.
“You don’t look so good,’’ I said to her. It must be better than 90 degrees now and riding in a poorly-ventilated railroad passenger car offered no respite from the heat. The little top windows were open, but the air that entered the car was no comfort, a stale hot breeze, like what you get when you turn a blow-dryer on high.
“Maybe you should go lie down for a while,‘’ I suggested.
“Margaret nodded. “It’s just so very hot,’’ she said. “What I wouldn’t give for a cool bath. I’d be fine if I could just get cool.’’
‘Come,’’ Sarah said, rising abruptly from her seat. “We’ll go the observation car. Perhaps we’ll get a little breeze.’’
Margaret rose unsteadily to her feet, smoothed her dress and leaned on her mother as the women left the car.
Doc and I sat silently for a few minutes, staring vacantly across the farmland that dominates the Ohio landscape.
“How long till we get to Chicago?’’ I asked.
“Probably another 12, 14 hours,’’ Doc said. “The schedule says we’ll be there by 6 in the morning.’’
“Tomorrow morning, huh? We’ll, we’ve got some time on your hands then…I wonder if this train has a bar car.’’
Doc gave me a strange look. In fact, he often looked at me with a puzzled expression.
He laughed,.
“A bar car, huh? ‘’ he said. “Well, that would be a nice treat indeed.’’
“What’s so funny? Trains usually have bar cars don't they?’’
“Not in the last 10 years, they haven’t,’’ he said.
“Oh yeah,’’ I said. “Prohibition. When does Prohibition end? I can’t remember.’’
Doc laughed again.
“I love how you are always seeing the future in past tense,’’ he said. “Very interesting.’’
We sat quietly for an hour.
“I think I’ll go to the wash room,’’ I said, excusing myself.
And it was there that I made a unsettling discovery: I didn’t have a wallet.
As I was contemplating that disturbing fact, I surveyed myself in the wash room’s small mirror and I had to chuckle. There I was in a light gray seer-sucker suit, a stray hat - the kind guys in a barbershop quartet wear, I thought - pushed down firmly on my head.
“Who am I?’’ I asked the mirror. “How did this happen? What the hell am I gonna do?’’
It was as if I had gone to sleep and woke up and the time had backed up a couple of generations, as if I were Rip Van Winkle in reverse.
All I knew is I’m on the train with Doc, Sarah and Margaret. They seemed to know me quite well. Somehow, I was their guest. Am I a relative, maybe? I couldn’t say.
When the train stopped in Washington, the Doc and I left the train to get a cup of coffee and a newspaper, the women deciding to stay on the train during its short stop. The Doc bought a copy of the Washington Post from a newsboy at the station - for a nickel.
In the diner, Doc pushed the paper over to me.
The news I was looking for was found near the masthead - Aug. 7, 1930.
“Is this a joke?’’ I said aloud.
“How’s that?’’’ Doc said.
“Is this the right date?’’
Doc peered over from his side of the small table.
“Yes. It is August 7.’’
"I'll be damned,'' I muttered.
So there I was, standing in the wash room of a train heading to Chicago, taking a quick personal inventory. Let’s see: One suit, one sweat-stained cotton shirt, shoes, a ridiculous carnival barker’s hat. No wallet. No money. No ID. I didn’t even seem to have a train ticket. What if the porter comes around asking for tickets? And if I don't get thrown off the train, what happens when we get to Chicago?
I went back to the passenger car pondering these questions.
Doc was still staring out the window.
“Uh, Doc?’’
“Yes?’’’
“Well, I’m sorta in a tight spot here,’’ I said sheepishly. “I can’t seem to find my wallet. I’m afraid it’s lost, which means I'm broke.’’
Doc did not seem at all distressed with this news.
“Not to worry,’’ he said. “It’s not as though you’ll need any money, but if you should, I have funds available. Just let me know.’’
“I can’t accept that,’’ I protested.
But Doc just waved off my protests.
“It’s all taken care of,’’ he said. “Part of the arrangement.’’
“Arrangement?’’
“Yes,’’ Doc said. “After all, you are my patient. You are going to make me famous, I suspect.’’
I didn't have an answer for that.
xxx
Journal Entry:
Arrived in Chicago early Friday morning, Aug. 8th. Registered at “The Sherman House.’’ Had nice cleansing and refreshing baths. Entirely too hot to take any sight-seeing trips so as Margaret was ill from the heat that she spent the day in bed.

Chapter 2: Ridin' the B&O

2009-04-02T16:57:00.002-07:00

“We left Wilmington, Delaware Thursday noon. Aug. 7, 1930 over the Baltimore & Ohio R.R. to enjoy our marvelous trip,’’ writes Sarah in her travel journal.
For me, the trip begins in a different place - in the warehouse of the Savers thrift store on Elliott Road in Tempe.
I work in the “Operations Department’’ at Savers as a sales clerk. Savers has two departments - Operations is the sales floor. “Production’’ is where the merchandise is delivered, inspected, sorted, priced and prepared for the sales floor.
It is about 8 p.m. on a Tuesday and I am going through the Production Dept., en route to the break room for my 15-minute break. Because of the hour, Eddie is the only person in the Production Department. His job is to be available to help customers with heavy items, received donations that are dropped off after hours and, when time permits, sort and price items that will soon be sent to the sales floor.
“S’up?‘’ I ask as I walk through Production.
Eddie is leaning against a shelf. In front of him is a big cardboard box full of books.
He holds up a book that has a red checker-board pattern on its cover. There is no title or print of any kind on either cover. It is bound by what appears to be a brown shoestring looped through two holes that look as though they have been made by one of those punches you often see in an office.
The book seems a little swollen, as it has survived some sort of water damage.
“I’m not sure what to make of this,’’ Eddie said. “It looks like some sort of diary or something. It’s about these people who took a trip. There are pictures and stuff pasted in and the writing is hand-written. It’s not really a book, you know?’’
“Hmm,’’ I said. “You never know what you’re going to come across here, I guess.’’
“Yeah,’’ Eddie. “But it’s pretty cool because they went on this trip in, like, 1930.’’
“Really?’’ I asked, my curiosity aroused.
“Yeah.’’
“Let me know when you price it,” I said. “I’ll buy it.’’
I often marvel at how the Production workers at Savers determine how to price the items that come into the store. You see all kinds of products, all kinds of brands. As a salesclerk, I’ve seen Seven and Lucky brand jeans, which normally sell for more than $100 priced at $10 or $12. I think that’s why so many people enjoy shopping at the store. If you are patient, you can find some absolutely smoking’ deals.
Some things are harder to fix a price for than other things, of course.
And this book was a good example: What is a travel journal of a trip made almost 80 years ago really worth? Tucked into that same book were a few pristine postcards from China Town in Los Angeles. You would be surprised what some postcards sell for on eBay these days. There were other photos of landmark hotels and venues which no longer exist pasted onto its yellowed pages. The photos are in remarkably good shape. They are not yellowed or faded like the pages onto which they are posted, for some odd reason.
What is something like that worth?
An hour later, Eddie slid the book across the table in front of my cash register. It has a price sticker on it: 99 cents.
With my 50 percent discount, I paid 53 cents, tax included.
And so the vacation begins.
The Canadian Rockies. The Pacific Coast. A 5,000-mile ocean cruise through the Panama Canal followed by a stop in Havana.
Fifty-three cents.
A vacation even I can afford.
Suddenly, I am in a passenger car on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and it is here that I am meeting my traveling companions - the doctor, Sarah and Margaret, a woman of about 20 who I assume is their daughter. She is a tall, pale, thin girl with big dark eyes. She is wearing a long print dress that falls just below her knees, a short form-fitting jacket, white gloves and a black cloche hat over her short-cropped, flapper-style haircut.
We are south-bound from New York, traveling through Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., before turning west for Chicago.
“Terribly hot and unpleasant for two days,’’ Sarah confides in her journal.
Sarah isn’t exaggerating.
“What’s the deal with the air-conditioning?’’ I ask, mopping the sweat off my head with a silk handkerchief while wondering why it is that I am dressed in a blue sear-sucker suit with a stiff white shirt, even stiffer collar and necktie.
The doctor fixes me with a curious gaze.
“The what?’’ he asks.
“Oh,’’ I say. “Well, never mind. On to Chicago, right?’’

The Vacation: Chapter 1

2009-04-01T19:51:00.003-07:00

I was riding my bicycle home from the grocery store when I crossed the intersection of Priest Drive and Auto Mall Parkway. I was riding in the crosswalk, with the light, when a lady in a SUV speed up to the light and into the crosswalk. I saw her at the last moment; she was trying to the adjust the rear-view mirror, which is probably why she didn’t see me. I locked my brakes and swerved, but I knew that if she didn’t brake, I’d be hit.
Fortunately, she saw me just in time and came to a skidding stop just inches from impact.
She rolled down her window and began to apologize profusely. I smiled, held up my hand and assured her it was OK. “Truth is, even if you had run me over it wouldn’t have mattered much,’’ I said.
As you might imagine, the lady didn’t have an answer for that.
“I’m sorry,’’ she said as I pedaled away.
When a bicycle is your primary mode of transportation, you sort of get used to close calls and you learn not to take it personally. When I first lost my license and began to ride a bike, I would get pretty miffed if someone pulled out in front of me or cut me off. Now, it hardly elicits a response.
But what did disturb me is my reaction to almost getting run over.
“It wouldn’t matter much…”
What kind of outlook on life is that?
I’d be less than honest if I said that life is good for me at this point. It's been a long time since I was genuinely happy, to be honest. The prospects don’t seem any brighter, either. I try to tell myself that things will get better, although there is little to confirmeven that feeble optimism. These days, coping is a triumph of hope over experience, to borrow a phrase from old Samuel Johnson.
Truth is, most days I spend looking into the abyss and deciding to take a step back instead of a step forward. Every day, I take the right step, or at least I have to this point. Tomorrow, who knows?
So that’s what I was thinking about as I rode away from my near collision. Then, I had another thought:
“Man, I need a vacation.’’
So that’s exactly what I did. I took a vacation.
And it wasn’t just a few days of car rides and sleeping at a Best Western, either. No, this was a real vacation - the kind wealthy people or celebrities take; a trip from the East Coast, stops in Chicago and the Twin Cities, though the Canadian Rockies, down the Pacific Coast, hitting all the top destinations - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Carmel, Santa Barbara, two weeks in L.A., followed by a Pacific Ocean cruise through the Panama Canal with a stop in Havana en route to New York. As for the accommodations, well, I stayed at some hotels that you just can’t get in to.
The vacation lasted 46 days and covered close to 10,000 miles.
Now, that’s a vacation.
Oh, I did not travel alone, either. What fun would that be?
My traveling companions were a doctor, his wife, Sarah, and their young, beautiful daughter, Margaret. Funny, though I spent the entire 46 days as their constant companion, I didn’t even get their last name. In fact, you might appalled at how little I actually know about them. Some reporter I am, huh?
At first, I thought I should get to know them, to hear their stories, find out about their background, their hopes, their dreams.
But I made the decision early on to actively avoid discovering even the most basic facts about them. It is better that way, I think, for it allows me to the freedom to invent the facts and circumstances of their lives.
I like it better this way because, when you get right down to it, I’d rather be a writer than a reporter.
Those familiar with my circumstance will be quick to dismiss this vacation as a fantasy. I am, after all, virtually penniless and perilously close to being homeless. Remember, too, that the abyss still yawns before me each day.
Yet this trip is real. It really did happen. I have an account of it, written in Sarah’s own hand, as well as indisputable photographic evidence, to vouch for it.
So join me on the trip of a lifetime.
It begins in Wilmington, Del., on Aug. 7...
...1930.

What do elephants have to remember anyhow?

2009-03-05T17:54:00.001-07:00

I have been thinking lately of something that we are probably all guilty of, namely how often we say things that are quite silly without even realizing it. I suspect there is hardly a day that passes that we don’t say something that would falter upon even the most cursory examination.
What prompted me along this line of thought was a conversation I overheard at Starbucks the other day.
A young woman was sitting at the table next to me when a group of several young people came in. One of the people, also a young woman, noticed her and approached.
“Aren’t you Christina?’’ she said. “I met you at Jamie’s wedding.’’
“Yes, but that was over a year ago,’’ the young woman replied. “You’ve got a great memory!’’
“Yeah, I’ve got a memory like an elephant.’’
The memory of an elephant, eh? Really? People have been lauding elephants for their ability to recollect for decades now, but I am not at all convinced that elephants have earned the reputation.
Admittedly, I don’t know any elephants personally, so I don’t have any anecdotal evidence to support my skepticism. But I strongly suspect that the elephant’s reputation for memory relies largely on the fact that there are really only a few things that an elephant is expected to remember in the first place.
Elephants are generally not held accountable for remembering birth dates, anniversaries, pin numbers, where the car is parked at the mall or to put the lid down on the toilet. It is true that an elephant never forgets where he put the TV remote, but only for the obvious reason that he never had the TV remote in the first place.
Until an elephant demonstrates that he can help an 10th-grader with his algebra homework 25 years after finishing high school, I am not inclined to imbue the pachyderm with any remarkable faculties for memory.
It also makes me wonder what other qualities are ascribed to animals that could not bear serious scrutiny.
For example, dogs are loyal. This is very often true. But not always. When I was a kid, I had a Boston terrier named Buddy who was my loyal friend through thick and thin or until somebody showed up with food. At that point, Buddy was very much inclined – like, say, France - to change his allegiance. He had no pangs of conscience about it, either.
On the other hand, I don’t think anyone will question that the cat has a great sense of hearing. I know this from several cat-sitting jobs with my friend Geri’s cats – Halle and Jade. Jade, quite social for a cat, was always around. Halle only showed up at meal-time. We met at the feed dish and then she would simply disappear for the next 10 hours or so. I had no idea where she went, but I quickly discovered I could find Halle simply by opening the refrigerator door. Before the fridge light came on, she would be sitting there by the fridge.
To be honest, it was sorta unnerving. Halle seemed to just materialize out of nowhere when I touched the refrigerator door handle.
My experience tells me that cats hear well and listen, not at all. Try calling a cat and you’ll see what I mean.
I suspect there are a whole range of qualities assigned to animals that are either not true at all or are greatly overstated.
I could probably come up quite a few of them, but I’d rather open it up for reader participation. (This means you!!)
Besides, I’m busy at the moment.
Where DID I put that TV remote?

The original Homer

2009-02-24T20:44:00.005-07:00

I was sitting on my bike at the corner of Priest Drive and Elliott Road in Tempe on Monday, waiting for the turn signal so that I could pedal the remaining quarter-mile to my work when I noticed a car waiting for the light. What I noticed was not the car, but what was on top of the car: It looked like a brief case of some sort.
Before I proceed, I’m going to give a little back-story for new readers of the blog. That I was on my bike is not uncommon. My bike has been my primary mode of transportation since January of 2007. So if you are of the mind that Americans are too dependant on foreign oil, don’t look at me. Of course, it wasn’t really my idea to swear off driving. The state of Arizona sorta insisted on it after sending me to state prison for four months for DUI.
That’s old news to most of you, I realize.
The most recent development is my job. Since Feb. 12, I’ve been working as a sales clerk at a thrift store which - as you all know - has been my life’s ambition. The $8-per-hour is just gravy.
So that’s what I was doing on my bike at the intersection of Priest and Elliott on Monday.
Aware that the light would soon turn and that the brief case would not likely stay on top of the car until the driver reached her destination, I motioned to the woman in the car.
She looked at me, then looked away very quickly. So I moved closer and tapped on her passenger-side window, trying to get her attention.
It worked. She looked at me with an expression of fear and confusion that I had seen only once before - a long, long time ago. And that’s the crux of this story.
I should note that the woman cracked her window just enough to allow me to tell her about the brief case. She hopped out of her car, grabbed the brief case and said, “Thanks!’’
But as she sped off, I remembered the expression on her face and where I had encountered it so long ago.
It was the same kind of look women in East Tupelo used to give Homer back in the late 1960s.
If you lived in East Tupelo back then, you knew Homer. He was probably that part of town’s most recognizable character.
I don’t recall ever hearing his last name. He didn’t need a last name, really. Like Cher or Madonna, Homer was enough.
Truth is, most of what folks knew about Homer was second-hand. While adults generally viewed Homer as a sad case and somewhat of an embarrassment, he was a figure of great interest to the kids of East Tupelo. Kids are always fascinated with the unusual, whereas adults generally like to pretend it doesn't exist.
By the mid-60s, Homer was in his 40s, by most estimations. He was rumored to live in the housing projects with his elderly mother. The story was that he was “shell-shocked’’ from being in combat, perhaps during World War II or, possibly, Korea.
This condition was used as the explanation for the one thing that truly set Homer apart.
Homer did not drive, perhaps could not drive. Homer’s mother didn’t drive, either.
But those two facts did nothing to deter Homer from the one thing he liked to do best: Homer, not unlike many a family pet, absolutely loved to go for car rides.
Ultimately, it was his passion for car rides that made him famous - or infamous - on the streets of East Tupelo.
Homer did not ask for rides. He simply stood on a street corner, waited for a car to pull up to the light and promptly opened the passenger side door and plopped down in the seat, all without a word.
It did not seem to matter to Homer where the driver was headed. He was just along for the ride.
Now, for most of the men of East Tupelo, Homer was not an unwelcomed guest. I can remember on many, many occasions when my dad and I be running some errand and find ourselves having Homer as an uninvited guest.
Homer would open the door to dad’s pick-up truck and I’d scrunch over to the middle to make room for our companion.
“How you doin’ this morning?’’ Dad would ask as he pulled away from the intersection.
“Um. All right, All right.’’ Homer would mumble.
“We’re going down to the feed store,’’ Dad would inform our guest.
“OK then,’’ Homer would say.
Sometimes, Homer would make the entire round trip and we’d drop him off at the intersection where we picked him up. Other times he would simply get out of the truck when it stopped at the next light. You could never tell with Homer.
But it was sure bet that Homer spent most all of the daylight hours hopping rides indiscriminately before finding his way back to his mother’s little house in the projects.
To the men of East Tupelo, Homer was a harmless figure, a gentle character who never meant any harm.
But the women of East Tupelo did not view Homer in the same light.
I am not sure if their reactions to Homer were born out of fear or the sense of impropriety. Back then, there was sort of a Victorian attitude between the genders.
For example, I remember when I was about 12 years old and I was riding with my dad somewhere. We passed the house of Ms. Swords and I saw her out on her front lawn.
Ms. Swords ran a beauty shop out of her home. She did my mom’s hair. Hers was one of the many lawns I cut to make my spending money. We attended the same church.
“Dad, there’s Ms. Swords. Blow the horn!’’ I said.
But my dad didn’t blow the horn.
“You don’t do that sort of thing,’’ he said.
Ms. Swords was a divorced woman. My dad was a married deacon. Blowing the truck horn and waving would not be proper. Who knows what people might think, after all.
So, even though Homer was as harmless as a child, the sight of a grown man getting into the car with a woman…well, it just didn’t look right.
Of course, to a child that sort of thing is a mystery.
Turns out, it was a mystery to Homer, too.
So, when a woman would pull up and stop at the light where Homer happened to be waiting for his next ride, there was nothing to deter Homer from hopping into the car. He made no distinction when it came to car rides.
The women of East Tupelo soon realized as much, and it was not uncommon to see a woman, having spotted Homer at the corner just ahead, brake a hundred feet short of the light in order to reach over and lock the passenger side doors.
Homer tried ever door handle. If the door happened to be locked, he simply waited for his next opportunity.
Ever now and then, new people moved into the neighborhood, though.
And on those occasions, an unsuspecting woman would pull up to a light and soon have Homer sitting in the seat next to them.
And that was the sort of look I got from that lady on the corner of Priest and Elliott when I tapped on that woman‘s window.
“Lord,’’ I thought. “I’ve become Homer.’’
You may be wondering whatever happened to Homer.
Well, I can only offer the rumored explanation. All I know for certain is that, at some point in the early 1970s, Homer just wasn't around anymore. The word was that he had been hit and killed by a semi-truck on Highway 78. The thinking was that Homer had tried to hop a ride in a fast-moving 18-wheeler. And that was the end of Homer.
Again, though, it’s just a rumor.
The Homer I knew was mostly rumor, I realize now. But he sure loved car rides.
That much I know for a fact.

Second-hand Slim

2009-02-10T21:50:00.002-07:00

I was sitting in a chair near the front entrance of the second-hand store, waiting for one of the managers to return from running an errand. It was 3:05 p.m., and I was there for a job interview.
The night before, I had watched President Obama’s press conference as he made his case for the $800 million stimulus plan, hoping that he would say something that would give me reason to be optimistic.
The best I can tell, I’ll get a $500 tax credit and an extra $20 in my paycheck. Somehow, I don’t think that is going to materially improve my prospects. After listening to the president, I quickly came to the conclusion that if I’m going to get back on my feet, I’ll be doing it pretty much on my own. This is no knock on the president, by the way. It’s just that when you are almost 50 years old and all of your experience is derived from a dying industry, there’s very little the government can do about it.
The new jobs the president touts as the expected result of the stimulus plan are young men’s jobs. And, when the current recession abates, the white collar jobs that once belonged to the suddenly displaced middle aged workers who have lost their jobs will go to the bright young college graduates of tomorrow.
I suspect this was true during the Great Depression, too. I figure half a generation never recovered. I suspect the same will be true of the youngest half of the baby boomers.
And that’s the spot I found myself in Tuesday afternoon, as I waited for the store manager to return from her errand.
A few minutes later, she trudged into the store and was walking past me, when I spoke to her.
“Are you Meg?’’ I asked.
“Yes,’’ she said. “Are you the person who is here for the interview?’’
“Yes,’’ I said.
“OK,’’ she said.
She was a tall, heavy-set woman in her mid-50s who seemed to be constantly out of breath. “Follow me,’’ she said.
As we walked down the aisles of clothes, she turned and looked at me over her shoulder.
She had my job application in her hand.
“Why would you want to come here after making the big bucks you made at the newspaper?’’ she asked.
“Well, it’s not really like a have that as an option anymore,’’ I said. “The newspaper industry is in a free fall and, well, you can see on my job application that I've got some grass stains on my jersey, you know?’’
She seemed satisfied.
I followed her back to a tiny office in the back of the store where she proceeded to ask me a series of questions, mostly about what I would do under certain circumstances, like what I would do if I saw an employee stealing something.
I gathered this was not an altogether hypothetical scenario.
Of course, she also wanted to know about how it was that I came to be a convicted felon.
So, for what seemed like the thousandth time, I found myself trying to explain it. You would think that by now I’d have that story down pat. But it is still a difficult thing to put into words, mainly because anything I can say in my own defense is certain to come off as a pitiful rationalization.
At the end of my story, I paused.
“You know, if somebody had asked me 30 years ago if I thought I could manage to get through life without becoming a felon, I would have liked my chances,’’ I told her.
The interview went pretty well, all things considered.
She told me she had three positions to fill and that she would call me later in the evening.
A few hours later, she called. “Can you come in tomorrow and fill out your paperwork?’’ she asked.
So, tomorrow I’ll start my new career in retail sales, as clerk/floor person at a second-hand store. The pay is $8 per hour, which was what I made during my summer job in Nashville back in 1976. That was good pay in those days. Now, well, it’s better than nothing.
I am a journalist mainly in retrospect now, but I intend to write about my experiences here. Second-hand stores, after all, are booming in times like these. Maybe working at the store will give me some insight into this dark chapter of American life and maybe my observations will be of some value to readers.
I’d like to tell you that I am excited about the job.
I need to be excited about it, I realize.
But I am not there yet.
And I wonder if there’s much left for me to look forward to.
I suspect I’m not the only one who’s wondering about things like that.

Them Old Cotton Fields Back Home

2009-01-30T20:28:00.005-07:00

Ever since Barack Obama defeated John McCain for the presidential election in November, much has been made - and rightly so - of what Obama’s election represents in the African-American Community.
It is perfectly right and proper that all Americans, regardless of race or ethnicity, acknowledge this milestone. But in the innocent telling of the story, there have been some omissions that warrant some attention.
The primary misconception, at least among the current generation, is that only African slaves picked cotton in the Deep South.
This would have been news to a lot of folks of an earlier generation. My folks, Fred and Mattie Jewel, would have been greatly surprised to know this, in fact.
Both grew up in the cotton fields of Tippah County, Mississippi. My mother, in particular, remembered those days - and not with affection.
“People talk about the good old days,’’ she once told me. “Well, they weren’t good old days to me. We worked like dogs We had to.’’
My maternal grandmother died in 1929, leaving my grandfather to raise six daughters and a cotton crop even as The Great Depression descended to knock the bottom out of the cotton market.
Decades later, my mother marveled at how they managed to survive.
Among her earliest memories was the day she went with her father to the cotton gin. My mother was 5 years old at the time, and when their mule-drawn wagon arrived with its crop, my mother proudly informed the cotton gin manager, “I picked 50 whole pounds of cotton, all by myself.’’
The manager brought her into his little office, pretended to study her small, wiry frame and pronounced, ‘’I reckon you don't weigh no more than 50 pounds yourself,’’ he said. “Well, we have a rule here that any child who picks her weight in cotton gets this.’’
He held out his hand and opened his palm to reveal a small gold bracelet.
It was the first piece of jewelry my mother ever owned.
“I couldn’t wear it from taking it off and looking at it,’’ my mother recalled more than 70 years later. “I’d hold it up to the light and just look at it and look at it.’’
Granted, the hardships my mother endured pall in comparison to the plight of the African-American slaves. But the hardships of people like my mother - poor white cotton farmers - should not be forgotten.
During the past 15 years of living first in northern California and now in Arizona, the picture of the Antebellum South I often encounter is the notion that there were just two kinds of people there - wealthy, pampered white plantation owners who devoted themselves to the pursuit of pleasure and poor Black slaves, who did all the work.
But the truth reveals that the vast majority of Southern whites were poor farmers. In fact, the slave economy of the South effectively prevented the emergence of a meaningful white middle class.
The “slave-ocracy’’ of the South oppressed the slave and poor white farmer alike, if not to the same degree.
One of the many tragedies of the Civil War was that it was those poor white farmers who paid most dearly in the wrong and failed cause of the Confederacy. Duped and incited by the small, elite and politically powerful Southern leaders, it was these poor white men who fought and died for a cause that only served to confine them to poverty.
So it is worth noting, I think, to acknowledge that the grim realities of the cotton field was not limited to the slave. Just one full generation removed from the cotton fields, I have a far more direct and personal connection to that part of American history than our 44th president.
With all due respect, the heritage of the cotton field is not reserved exclusively for African-Americans.
It is my heritage, too, and I see no good reason to give it up.

The Party

2009-01-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

By Saturday afternoon, I still wasn’t sure of my plans for later that evening.
I figured I had two options: I could do what I always do - hang around the ranch here, watch some TV, read, rummage through the fridge for dinner. Or I could go to a party at the home of Craig and Tara Morgan.
Scott Bordow, the sports columnist at the EV Tribune, had offered to give me a ride and I was waiting for him to call and confirm when he would pick me up. I was also trying to decide if I was going to beg off going to the party.
Nothing against the Morgans. I love their company and their parties are always a pleasure. They have a natural gift for entertaining and always assemble a group of lively, intelligent, fun guests - present company somewhat excluded.
No doubt, it would be a wonderful party. The Morgans’ parties always are.
Why, then, my ambivalence? Well, it’s a personal thing. I’ve seen the Morgans probably a half-dozen times since I headed off to prison in disgrace on March 2, 2007. When I got out of prison 18 months ago, I was certain that, by now, I would be well on the way toward rebuilding my life. I naturally assumed that I’d find a writing position at a newspaper or magazine, that I’d be well on my way to rebuilding my life.
But it hasn’t turned out that way at all. I am still in pretty much the same situation I found myself in when I walked through the gates at Florence West prison on July 2, 2007. And I feel a sense of shame, a pervasive sense of failure, when I encounter old friends who are eager to know how I am doing.
My attitude was similar to that held by people who chose not to attend a class reunion. It’s not that they don’t want to see their old classmates; it’s more a matter of assuming that those classmates have gone on to achieve some manner of success while they themselves have not done much of anything worthwhile.
Scott called at 2 p.m.
“I’ll pick you up around 6:15,’’ he said.
“I’ll be ready,’’ I said.
The previous Morgan parties I have attended have usually been small, intimate affairs - eight to 10 guests - so I was surprised to see the street out front of their home near Queen Creek lined with cars.
There must have been 50 or more guests, and as many of half of them were my former colleagues at the Tribune. Some I had seen from time to time- Scott, Craig, Bob Romantic, all who worked directly with me when I was the sports editor at the Tribune.
Many others, I had not seen since my abrupt, awkward exit in 2007, people like Michael Grady, the gifted features writer; Jerry Brown, whose clever writing and dour personality I have always found endearing; Carrie White, another feature writer who escaped the Tribune well before the onset of the Tribune’s decline; and Amanda Young, the sweet, idealistic features writer who I viewed as sort of a surrogate daughter.
It was an delight to see them and my previous preoccupation with my sorry state seemed not to matter so very much.
After all, most of my old colleagues are in the same boat, I‘m just a little farther from the shore.
The Tribune is dying, there is little question about it. Earlier this month, the paper became a free publication. It now has limited home delivery and publishes a print edition just four days a week. It’s a disaster and it gives me no pleasure to say it.
Many of the Trib people at the party were let go when the paper converted to its truncated semi-daily product. When I left as sports editor, I had 18 full-time employees in my department. Now, there are five - Bob, who succeeded me as sports editor, Scott and three high school writers. That’s it.
Amanda Young is the features department.
As the evening progressed, I told someone it seemed as though everyone at the party had stepped into a Time Machine and had been transported back to the 1930s. The first words out of every guest’s mouth seemed to be, “Are you working?’’ or “What are you going to do?’’
Even the handful of Tribune people who are still employed find themselves uneasy about the future.
“I’ve discovered two things,’’ Amanda said. “I hate my job and I’m not good at it.’’
But Amanda is only half right. I have no doubt she hates her job. And, to me, that is tragic. I had never seen a young reporter who loved working at a newspaper more than Amanda. And now, she hates it and the experience has robbed her of both her passion and her self-confidence. That’s a shame.
Grady, whose talent I esteem above all others, was part of that group of recently fired employees. He’s trying to finish up his novel about the civil war while he looks around for work.
“The novel is longer than the actual war,’’ he said. “I’m using this time to try get some control over it and get it finished.’’
I suggested that he have the South win the war in his novel; it would be an unexpected twist on an old story. As a Southerner, I’d read it, for sure.
Craig is staying at home with his two young daughters, while Tara goes off to work each day. He is also trying to pursue a career as a free-lance writer. “It’s hard getting a business off the ground,’’ he confessed.
Most of the writers who have been displaced are hopeful that they can survive, maybe even flourish, as free-lance writers. If any succeed, it will be Craig, I suspect. He had the right make-up for it.
Another of my former sports employees (I’ll refrain from using his name so as not to appear insensitive), stood stoically in the center of the room, had little to say and disappeared without goodbyes.
“Where did he go?’’ someone asked.
“I don’t know,’’ another said. “He was here and then he wasn’t.’’
“How is he doing?’’ I asked Jerry.
“Not good,’’ he said. “You know, all of us have talked about how we loved what we did at the Tribune, that it was our passion. But for him, it really was everything. He worked his way up the ranks to the job that was all he ever wanted. And then, he was out the door. Of all the people who lost their jobs, he has taken it the hardest, I think.’’
Of all the people there, those who had lost their jobs and those who were certain they faced a similar plight in the not-too-distant future, no one seemed to have a firm footing.
That didn’t make me feel any better about my situation. But it didn’t make me feel any worse, either. And I found that I didn’t really have to put up a brave, confident front. I am worried. And these old colleagues understood. Many can sympathize; they can empathize. I can tell them how frustrated and fearful I am. They get it.
Among the group, there were no bold assertions of future success, only a stubborn sense of hope, buoyed by a unquenchable sense of humor.
It was after 11 p.m. when I left the party to go home. As we said our goodbyes, the hugs were longer, a little tighter, perhaps to convey feelings of support and sympathy that words seemed hard to capture, even for a bunch of people who made their careers out of words.
Tara locked her arm in mine as I stood in the driveway of her home and I think we both had trouble finding the words to say. I’ll see the Morgans again, of course, but somehow this was different.
The future is clouded. Prospects are uncertain. Desperate thoughts encroach on hope.
We wished each other well and encouraged each other. We laughed. We said goodbye and promised to do a better job of staying in touch.
It was a great party.
I’m glad I went.

Lessons from a Shabby Man

2009-01-22T19:45:00.006-07:00

Wednesday morning, as I was taking the light-rail train back from Phoenix to Tempe, a man stood up and began walking down the aisles, yelling “stop, stop!’’
He was a shabby fellow, dressed in a stained white T-shirt, soiled and wrinkled work pants and worn sneakers. I judged him to be in his 60s, although his sallow cheeks and hollow eyes may have been more a testament to a self-destructive lifestyle that can make a man appear much older than he is.
Light-rail has only been up and running for about a month now, so my first impression upon hearing the man pleading for the train to stop was that he must have thought the light-rail operates on the same principle as a city bus. On a bus, you can summon the bus to stop at any intersection.
Of course, I don’t know if this was what “Shabby Man’’was thinking. All I know is that he was quite sincere in his desire for the train to stop and real quick, at that.
“Look!’’ he told one of the passengers, who had made the mistake of making eye contact with him.
In his right hand, he held one of those lottery “scratcher’’ tickets. “I just won $250! Didn’t I? Look!’’ The man thrust the ticket in the face of the poor passenger, pointing to the winning combination.
The passenger did not respond, but the man seemed satisfied that he had, indeed, won $250. And I gathered it was no small sum for him, given his appearance and the reaction it provoked in him.
“Stop!’’ he said again, as the train began to slow as it approached its next stop.
“I wonder where I can get my money?’’ he said to no one in particular. “I gotta get my money.’’
The train stopped a moment later and the man stepped off. “I just won $250,’’ I heard him say again as left the train.
Now, for most people, this incident would simply pass as a rather odd happenstance. Most folks would attach no greater significance to it.
Well, you know me better than that. I have a hard time with the concept of randomness, which is one of the reasons why I’d be a terrible atheist.
So I have been thinking about this incident ever since, wondering what it could mean. And the more I thought about it, the more I began to connect it with a couple of other things that have been on my mind.
How I came to be on the train in the first place seems to fit in there somehow.
For my monthly column in the Times, I had decided to take up the topic of the woeful state of journalism by taking an impromptu tour of Arizona State’s opulent new journalism school in downtown Phoenix. For someone who doesn’t drive, the light-rail was the ideal mode of transportation.
When I arrived, I ran into an old acquaintance, Steve Elliott. He was the Associated Press bureau chief in Phoenix back when I was at the Tribune. Steve now runs the school’s new service, which gives students hands-on experience by producing stories for the area media. The money-strapped media love it because it’s free content.
I asked Steve if his students were having second thoughts about pursuing a career that, from all appearances, seems to be mortally wounded.
He said most recognized that there probably won’t be conventional jobs in the newspaper, TV or radio fields waiting for them when they graduate. The competition for those jobs is already thick with thousands of talented, experienced journalists who have lost their jobs over the past couple of years.
“There will always be a need for journalists,’’ Steve said. “But what I tell the students is that, more than likely, you’re going to have to invent your own job.’’
That stuck with me. In fact, that is what I was thinking about on the train when Shabby Man began to insist, rather loudly, that the train be stopped.
Now, these two things may seem hopelessly unrelated. At least they appeared that way to me until I sat down for coffee and began reading a book I bought about a month ago. The book - “Outliers, The Story of Success’’ by Malcolm Gladwell - examines the topic of why some people succeed more than others. It points out that the secret of success may not be as simple as we have been led to believe. Since I’ve only read a few chapters, I am not prepared to render a verdict on his ultimate conclusion.
But there was one thing in the book that did capture my attention and led me to make a connection between the two seemingly disparate incidents from Wednesday. The book begins by examining some of the long-held ingredients for success, one of them being intelligence.
On that subject, he pointed out two very different types of questions that are used on I.Q. tests. One is called Raven’s Progressive Matrices. You are probably familiar with it. The question is presented as a series of images, each one different from the previous, which suggest a pattern. You observe several images and then are asked to pick the image that should follow in the sequence.
In other words, you are being tested for your conclusive abilities. Given a number of possible choices, you are asked to select the one right answer, based largely on facts that you have been exposed to.
I think this is a good test for those fields where precision is a great priority - science, medicine, engineering, etc.
The other test rates another kind of intelligence. You are given a fact and asked to arrive at as many possibilities as you can. For example, a question might be to come up with as many uses as you can think of for the following objects: 1. A brick; 2. A blanket.
This kind of test is rates intelligence on a different perspective: creativity. Those who come up with the most diverse group of answers are generally graded the highest. There is a value in that sort of intelligence.
When I read this, I put the book down and began to think again about Wednesday’s experiences. Slowly I began to see the connection, the “big picture’’ that these events brought together.
If you have read this far, I commend you for your patience and realize that I must soon begin to connect all the dots or risk losing you altogether.
This is really a story about our struggling economy - and a possible solution for it.
I do not pretend to be an economist - and one look at my bank account would confirm why I make no such claim. But I do think that I am a reasonably bright person, one whose own economic crisis over the past couple of years has prompted me to give this subject long and careful thought.
Here is how I see it.
The newspaper industry is certainly not the only field that is facing a bleak and uncertain future. Aside from health care, I don’t know any field that isn’t suffering these days.
What might surprise you to know is that newspapers did not suddenly become unprofitable. In fact, most papers - even those who are employing the most draconian measures to cut costs - remain profitable. I think that may well be true of other industries, too, although the auto industry appears to be an exception.
So what is the problem?
It’s the Shabby Man, otherwise known as the stock-holder.
Not long ago, newspapers did not have much contact with Shabby Man. Most were privately held companies and, as such, newspaper owners often plowed money back into their product and, as a consequence, were able to sacrifice short-term profit for greater long-term stability.
When most newspapers were privately held, you could generally expect slow, but reliable growth.
But that began to change over the past 30 years when more and more newspapers were bought by big publicly-held chains. You can scarcely find a privately-held newspaper these days.
The arrival of Shabby Man, and his huge infusion of cash, meant some papers could become far more ambitious in their plans.
But there was a trade-off. In some cases, they grew more than was prudent. And there was also the matter of expectations. Shabby Man expected to see a regular return on his investment, and he expected it sooner rather than later and he expected it no matter what. He further expected that his return would grow each quarter or heads were going to roll.
Every quarter, like clockwork, Shabby Man stands up and insists that the train be stopped. “I gotta get my money,’’ he demands.
As a result, there is no re-investment. Long-term security is sacrificed on the alter of short-term dividends. Vision begins and ends with each quarter.
And there is another grave aspect of the dominant presence of Shabby Man: It created an atmosphere that greatly stifled creativity and diversity.
When Abraham Lincoln left Springfield, Ill., the town’s population was about 10,000. Yet there were seven newspapers in Springfield.
Today, 150 years later, Chicago has a population of 9.7 million and may very soon be down to one newspaper.
That’s true in many other industries as well. Somehow, getting bigger has made us smaller. It has also made us more vulnerable, less creative and less compassionate.
To a family-owned drug store one good employee is a precious asset. The owner will exhaust almost every option to keep him. To a mega-chain drug store, one employee is simply a cost unit or “FTE’’ (full-time equivalent), something that can be disposed of quite easily and without any pangs of conscience.
The ubiquitous Shabby Man is bad for consumers, too.
If you have a dozen small, family-owned deli shops, you’ll get a dozen unique and varied options. At Subway, you get one basic idea.
Shabby Man ultimately forces everyone to reach a single, “right’’ answer. But in these dark days, we all need to think the other way: We need to think about possibilities, the more the better.
Main Street has always been about that sort of thinking. Wall Street is not set up that way. It constricts, confines and consumes to appease the insatiable appetite of Shabby Man.
There is no question that Wall Street is important for our economy. But in my mind, it is Main Street that holds the key.
Wall Street looks a person like me and slams the door. Main Street says give it a shot and see what you come up with. “Invent your own job,’’ is the way Steve Elliott put it to those J-School students.
Each of us, no matter his circumstance, has some say in his future on Main Street. On Wall Street, we are at the mercy of entities who see us merely as consumers. To a small store, you are a person. I like that and I wonder what would happen if we began to invest in each other.
There will always been a place in our economy for Shabby Man, maybe even a large place. But I don’t want him on my train.
If I am going to make it, I’m going to make it on Main Street.

"This was meant to be a happy occasion!''

2009-01-21T13:08:00.010-07:00

The Great Oath of Office debate rages on.
In response to my latest post, several alert readers seemed to take issue with the way I characterized the flubbed Oath of Office administered by Chief Justice Roberts to President Obama.
The general tenor was that it was Roberts who messed up first, which caused Obama to mess up.
Well, I know how my mama would have responded: "Well, if Judge Roberts jumped off the roof, would you jump off, too, Barack?'' I never had a good answer for that. It was right up there with the "well, I'm not everybody else's mama'' response when I wanted to do something all the other kids were doing.
Beyond that, the whole debate reminds me of a scene from one of my very favorite movies, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.’’
You probably remember the scene in question: Lancelot receives a message from a “damsel in distress’’ being held in a nearby castle who is being forced to marry against her will. Of course it turns out that the message is really from an effeminate young prince who really just wants to sing.
Of course, Lancelot doesn’t know that. So he plunges into the castle, hacks to death any number of the wedding party - including the groom - before the king of the castle (who is also the father of the bride) intervenes. Upon learning that Lancelot is an eligible bachelor, one who has at his disposal several castles that do not “burn down, fall over, then sink into the swamp,’’ the king is more charitably inclined toward the murderous impulses of Lancelot.
And this prompts the king to deliver this classic line: “This was meant to be a happy occasion! Let’s not bicker about who killed who!’’
That’s sort of how I feel about Tuesday’s Oath of Office flub.
As I mentioned in the previous blog, the biggest point of error was where the word “faithfully’’ was supposed to reside in the Oath. It was supposed to go, “I will faithfully execute the office of the president of the United States.’’ Instead, after much confusion, the word found a home at the end of the phrase - “I will execute the office of the president of the United States faithfully.’’
But it's really irrelevant where the word goes. Whether I say “I will promptly prepare my tax return’’ or “I will prepare my tax return promptly,’’ it matters little to the IRS. They’re going to audit me anyway!
But there is one point in this debate that I feel is worthy of scrutiny. Like many old documents, the Oath could use a little editing. Back in the old days, the language was often adorned with superfluous words and odd turns of phrases.
And the same is true of the Oath. In particular, the presence of the word “faithfully’’ serves no purpose, as far as I can tell.
Think about it for a moment. If the person vows that he/she “will execute the office of the president, etc., etc.’’ it can be rightly assumed that he/she will execute it faithfully. After all, if you have “unfaithfully’’ executed the office then you haven’t executed the office at all.
To “unfaithfully’’ execute the office of president suggests that you intend to execute the fun or easy parts while procrastinating over the unpleasant parts - say, meeting with Nancy Pelosi on a regular basis.
There is also the matter of the Oath’s pledge to “protect, preserve and defend’’ the Constitution of the United States. This falls under the category of “when any number of words will work, use the best single word.’’ In my view, the oath could be shortened to “preserve the Constitution of the United States’’ and that would cover it nicely.
I also don’t know if it matters much if you “solemnly’’ swear or “happily’’ swear or “grudgingly’’ swear. The point is, you made the promise and your emotional state is your own business.
My edited version would be: “I (name) swear that I will execute the office of the president of the United States and will preserve the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.’’
I know there are some people who woud object to the "so help me God'' part. In my mind, that's one of the best reasons to retain it, just to watch all the atheists reach a state of apoplexy. Simple pleasures are, indeed, the best.
Let me know what you think of my condensed version of the Oath. In my view, the fewer words, the better.
Somehow, I think President Obama and Chief Justice Roberts would agree.
But, please, let's not bicker about who flubbed what.
It was meant to be a happy occasion!

Been there, flubbed that

2009-01-20T17:45:00.003-07:00

Like most people, except Jose’ who was busy using the leaf blower here on the ranch to rearrange the dust, I watched the presidential inauguration on TV.
At least, I watched until the announcer told the crowd that it was time for a woman named Elizabeth to recite a poem written for this occasion, which apparently was code for “hey, let’s see if we can beat some of this traffic.’
It has been my experience that when you plan to have a poet as part of the program, it is best to have an indoor venue, preferably one with doors that can be locked.
In the spirit of unity and bi-partisanship - this is something that the media has been urging now that the Democrats have control of the House, Senate and White House - I tried to give Elizabeth a chance, even though I’m from the old school of poetry which prefers meter and rhyme. I haven’t hear a good poem since Frost - that’s Robert not David.
Frost is one of just four poets to ever be a part of an inauguration, by the way. Interestingly, all have waxed poetic over the arrival of a Democratic president, not that the Party is pretentious, of course. When Republicans are inaugurated, a singer in a cowboy hat is substituted for the poet.
So I admit that I didn't watch all 847 hours of inaugural coverage, but I'm assuming it all came off like clock-work.
Those minor criticisms aside, I enjoyed watching the inauguration ceremonies, which even though they are carefully scripted are nonetheless interesting.
About the only unexpected moment came, oddly enough, during the swearing in ceremony itself. President Obama absolutely mangled the 35-word oath of office.
Now, this was not a major gaffe, we were assured by the media - it wasn’t Bush doing the mangling, after all. (Can you just imagine if "W'' had mangled the oath? Chris Matthews would have a tingle down his leg, I bet. Keither Olbermann would blather on about it for a couple of decades).
No, it wasn't a big mistake. Still, it was a shock. Obama is nothing if not an elegant, poised confident public speaker. So the fact that he messed up the lines was startling in the same manner as say, when Shaquille O’Neal makes a free throw or Pamela Anderson shows up somewhere without cleavage.
Me? I can certainly empathize with President Obama. In fact, I view his slip as sort of a means of establishing common ground with the 44th President.
Certainly, I am in no position to criticize him for his misstep, mainly because I remember too well what happened on the historic day of April 11, 1986.
It was on that date that I stood out in front of the fountain at the Wyndham Rose Hall Hotel in Montego Bay, Jamaica and faced a short little minister who bore an uncanny resemblance to Desmond Tutu to exchange vows with Miss Susan Eileen Kennedy - or at least I tried to.
For, when the Jamaican minister asked me to repeat after him, “With this ring, I thee wed,’’ I instead uttered, “With this wing, I thee red.’’
And then a lady poet came out and recited a poem entitled “Praise Song for the Idiot.’’
I knew, of course, that there was no reference to wings or the color red in the traditional wedding vows, but unlike the inauguration, NBC was not on hand to make excuses for me by saying it was really the minister’s fault.
Oddly enough, Susan, who hours earlier had threatened to call off the ceremony on the grounds that her “hair wouldn’t do right,’’ sailed through the vows without a hitch. As you might suspect, she teased me unmercifully after the ceremony was all over.
So, yes, it was a mistake, but, no, it wasn’t a big deal.
The marriage was still legally binding - at least it was until 2002 - and I’m pretty sure Obama is officially the president and will - in his words - “execute faithfully the office faithfully of the President of the faithfully United States faithfully.''
If I ever have occasion to talk with the President - I’m guessing my best chance is to be one of those victims who loses his house trailer in a tornado and he shows up to survey the destruction - I am going to mention our common bond.
I feel your pain, Prez.

You asked for it!

2009-01-06T22:23:00.003-07:00

Well, it’s been a couple of months since I’ve written a blog entry, long enough that some folks have noticed and complained - mildly, of course.
Good-natured and well intentioned though those kinds of prompting may be, it has evoked in me a sense of guilt. I really should write something, I would tell myself, only to find myself staring at the keyboard and realizing I have absolutely nothing to say. Whenever an ember of inspiration emerged it quickly faded away. And so, here I am: A writer who doesn’t write.
A close friend has suggested that my lack of creative energy is most likely a sign of depression. I strongly suspect she is right. Without health insurance, anti-depressants run about $500 for a month’s supply. So, since I cannot afford to be depressed, I’ll settle for being despondent, an ailment that doesn’t require a prescription.
As I am writing this, I realize that this must sound pretty pitiful. At this point, if you were among those who encouraged me to write something you are beginning to regret it.
This week I realized that another writing gig fell through. Phoenix Magazine was looking for an associate editor, sort of an entry level position, best I could figure. I had hoped, at the very least, to get an interview for the job. But it didn’t work out. In fact, I didn’t even get a “sorry, but we’re going another direction’’ e-mail.
No knock on Phoenix Magazine, though. Heck, There are thousands of magazines, newspapers and other publishing interests who won’t give me a shot, so why single out Phoenix Magazine?
It’s sorta funny, really. I couldn’t even get an interview with U-Haul, which was looking for a copy writer a while back. That's frustrating because I am confident I could make renting a trailer hitch quite poetic. Their loss, right?
You know, I’ve probably applied for 100 jobs since getting out of prison. I was called in for an interview only once. How I would love to be able to simply be able to make my case in person. But I can’t even get a half-hour of an employer’s time.
So, yeah, I’m despondent.
I guess it’s time to move on, to forget about a career in writing and get a real job, but the truth is I have no appetite for anything else.
Somehow, I’ve got to get an appetite. How do you do that, anyway?
I love to write, have some aptitude for writing and a fair amount of experience at it. Most people seem to like my writing. Unfortunately, none of those people have writing jobs to offer.
But I have to do something. I’m almost 50 with no home, no car, no real security and sometimes it seems to me that I’m a lot closer to ruin than redemption.
I am tired, really, emotionally exhausted, bone-weary. Like the hired man in Robert Frost’s poem, I’m inclined, in my darker moments, to concede that I have nothing to look back on with pride, nothing to look forward to with hope. Some people just get smaller and smaller until one day that simply disappear. Sometimes, I wonder if that's what will happen to me.
That’s probably a lie, I tell myself. It is also an affront to all of you who have been so very kind and supportive and encouraging. I do not mean to be ungrateful.
I guess I’m just despondent.
But it does feel good getting another post out, even if it’s dripping with self-pity.
Maybe the next one will be a little brighter.
Tomorrow is another day, right Scarlett?

Palmer's Big Star: Part II

2008-10-25T08:26:00.003-07:00

In my most recent post, I introduced the topic of Palmer’s Big Star, which has been in operation on Main St. in east Tupelo since the 1950s.
The mention of the store brought back a wave of memories, remarkable only if you view Palmer’s Big Star as simply a grocery store. It was that, of course, the place where everybody bought their bread and vegetables and meat. But it was much more, sort of a community gathering place.
There were several things that emerged from the dusty corridors of my memory at the mention of Palmer’s Big Star.
One of them was Quality Stamps.
Quality Stamps were trading stamps that you could collect and then redeem at a little “redemption center’’ located on South Gloster Street. As best I can tell, Quality Stamps were circulated primarily in what is referred to as the “Mid-South,’’ - Memphis and the surrounding areas of north Mississippi, west Tenneesee and east Arkansas. You may be familiar with S&H Green Stamps, which were more widely circulated. Well, Quality Stamps operated under a similar fashion.
At Palmer’s, you got a certain number of Quality Stamps for each dollar you spent on groceries. My recollection is not perfect on this point, but I seem to recall that the stamps had different values, sort of like currency. Mama was a devoted collector. Woe be it to the person who, having made a quick trip to Palmer's, did not return with her Quality Stamps.
I remember sitting at the kitchen table, licking those stamps and pasting them into the little booklets that, when filled with stamps, you could take to the redemption center. The redemption center looked much like any other retail store, as I recall. You could redeem your stamps for a wide variety of products, from house-wares to toys and games.
Mama being very practical, always used the stamps to buy something useful and sensible - pots, pans, small appliances, that sort of thing.
The one extravagant use of the stamps came when mama relented to my pleas to buy a popcorn popper. I remember pointing it out on the shelf. Mama was skeptical. We had a big pan to pop the popcorn with that had worked perfectly fine for years, after all.
But the popcorn popper was pretty cool, she had to admit. The popper plugged into a wall outlet and a big, clear plastic dome fit over the appliance. The dome was designed to be used as the bowl after the popcorn was popped. The popper had a non-stick surface, with a little metal arm that rotated around the surface to keep the un-popped kernels moving around to avoid sticking and ensure that all the kernels popped.
Mama still failed to see the need for such a device, but I suspect she thought of all the time I spent licking those stamps at the kitchen table and relented.
That night, a bunch of the neighborhood kids came over to watch the popcorn popper work its magic. Then we sat down at watched Jerry Lewis on “Saturday Night at the Movies’’ on TV.
Quality Stamps weren’t the only way to profit from a strip to Palmer’s Big Star, though. The store also featured “Let’s Go To The Races!’’ That turned out to be my first exposure to horse racing. Here’s how it worked:
With your purchase, you were given “betting slips’’ that featured the number of a horse and corresponding race. Again, the number of slips you received were based on your purchase amounts.
Each Saturday afternoon, we would pile our betting slips on the coffee table, sort them by the race and watch and watch the simulcast on the local TV station. Of course, it wasn’t really a simulcast, though. It was a re-run of a simulcast from races as such exotic tracks as Santa Anita, Gulf Stream, Belmont, etc.
In theory, if you had the winning horse, you could redeem your winning slip for cash. Again, I’m vague on the amount of money you could win. It turned out to be a moot point, anyway. We never won, although it seemed like we always had the “Place’’ horse. Of course, you didn’t win any money in the “Let’s Go To The Races!’’ for the Place or Show horses. Still, it was a thrill to have something riding on a race.
I suppose there were other grocery stores that featured Quality Stamps and “Let’s Go To The Races!’’ But Palmer’s was the only store I know of that had a Mynah bird.
At least, they had a Mynah bird for a while.
It was kept in a big cage near the store office and was a magnet for all the kids who accompanied their mama to the store. You had to be careful, though, because he was a temperamental old bird and had been known to take a nip at little fingers that were poked into his cage. We learned that pretty quick, so it never was much of a problem.
Unfortunately, though, the bird developed some unsavory habits that would eventually lead to his demise.
For one thing, he learned to whistle, which delighted the kids. Of course, it was a “wolf whistle,’’ a long, somehow lewd whistle that you normally associated with construction workers when a slender woman walks by in a short skirt.
The sensible, well-mannered women who patronized Palmer’s were decidedly not THAT sort of women, so when they walked by the bird and got the “wolf whistle,’’ it was mildly scandalous and deeply embarrassing.
The bird might have survived this indiscretion had he not picked up another bad habit.
Namely, he expanded his vocabulary to include a variety of curse words.
I do not know who taught the bird those particular words, although I do have my suspicions. I figure it was Buddy Palmer, who had the sort of irreverent personality that made him a likely suspect. But I could be wrong about that.
What I do know is that the Mynah bird soon disappeared. I don’t know what happened to him. If you know, clue me in, OK?
Another thing that distinguished Palmer’s Big Star was its link toboth Rock-n-Roll and Law Enforcement immortality. I’ll have to save that for next time, though.
Today is the best day of the year in racing and the horses are at the post for the Breeders Cup Marathon.

Palmer's Big Star: Part I

2008-10-23T10:05:00.001-07:00

Another trip on the Way Back Machine, aka my high school web site, put me in touch with Tracy Nichols Lyle, who grew up next door to me in East Tupelo. Tracy is 10 years my junior, but she had older brothers that I remember well.
She mentioned that one of her brothers was the meat market manager at Palmer’s Big Star and I was surprised how many memories the thought of the little grocery store stirred.
Unlike other parts of the city, East Tupelo had its own identity, mainly because it had its only little pocket of commerce along a two-block stretch of Main Street.
Old man Post operated a barber shop on the south side of Main St. Although he cut hair for more than 40 years at that location, he only performed one haircut, as best I can tell, a tightly cropped buzz cut that every boy sported. Look at any old photos of the boys who grew up in East Tupelo and you’ll see that “style.’’
When we got into our teen years and were deemed old enough to make our own choices, we would take our business out of East Tupelo to the downtown Central Barber Shop, where the young barbers bet on football games and had back issues of Playboy Magazine you could look at. Being able to go to Central Barber Shop, where the buzz cut was never performed and you could look at pictures of naked women was considered a rite of passage among teenage boys.
Post’s Barber Shop was located right next to Johnny’s Drive-in, which was a main gathering place for breakfast and lunch. The tiny little diner only had seating for about 20. Most patrons chose to eat in their car. As soon as you pulled up, the diner’s car-hops would wait to see if you were going to get out. If you didn’t, they would approach and take your order and bring your food out to you.
Johnny’s is still in operation, I’m happy to report and there is still a Barber Shop at the same location, although Mr. Post has long since passed on. A block further south was Lawhon Elementary School, its property flanked by East Heights Baptist Church, the biggest church in East Tupelo, to the east and the Freewill Baptist Church to the West.
On the opposite side of the street, there was the post office and a People’s Bank branch.
And there was Palmer’s Big Star.
As I reflect, Palmer’s Big Star was the focal point of the community. If you lived in East Tupelo, you may or may not have done your banking at the People’s Bank. You may or may not have worshipped at East Heights Baptist Church. You may have treated yourself to breakfast at lunch at Johnny’s Drive-In from time to time, although eating out was considered quite the luxury for a lot of folks in this working class community. You may have had Mr. Post buzz your head or have had your mom cut your hair instead.
But everybody bought groceries. And while another small grocery store, Lackey’s, operated just “up the hill’’ to the east, almost everyone in East Tupelo shopped at the Big Star.
These days, it would be hard to imagine that a grocery store could be the central meeting place for a community. But that is precisely the role the Big Star performed.
J.K. Palmer and his wife, Lorene, opened the store in the late 1950s. I remember Mr. Palmer well. A very kind, gentle man, he often let hard-pressed customers pay for their groceries at the end of the month. More than once, he would simply tell a customer to “pay me when you can.’’
Try that at your local Wal-Mart SuperCenter.
Mr. Palmer had two sons who grew up in the business, Romie and Buddy. I knew Buddy pretty well, mainly because he was about the same age as one of my older brothers. Also, Buddy was one of the more interesting characters in town . In the ultra-conservative little town, Buddy was an island of eccentricity, flamboyant in his appearance, exuberant in his manner, full of odd ideas and varied interests. You never ran into Buddy Palmer without finding him captivated by some new and unexpected enterprise.
After college at Mississippi State, he returned to run the Big Star with his wife, Cecilia. A few years back, he turned the store over to his two sons, so the Big Star is being operated by the third generation of the Palmer family.
It is funny what sticks in our memories. Important things, we sometimes forget. The trivial live on, for no apparent reason. In my next blog, I’ll share a few of the memories of Palmer’s Big Star that have persisted over the years, including such important matters as Quality Stamps, Let’s Go To The Races, the Mynah bird and Elvis’s kinfolk.

Slim's Greatest hits: 2

2008-10-19T07:38:00.002-07:00

Another reprised column from my newspaper days,this one involving unsolicited e-mail solicitations. The column was written in 2005, but remains timely as ever, don't you think?

xxxx

DEAR KUMBO

I get a lot of e-mails. Most of them are junk. Some, though, warrant a response.
Here is one that qualified, followed by my reply:
Dearest,
I am writing you this letter with due respect and heart full of tears.
We have not met previously but I am asking for your assistance after I have gone through a document that speaks so good of you.
I am Miss Kumbo, 21, from Liberia, but at the moment staying in the refugee camp here in Dakar, Senegal due to the war problems in my home country. I need your assistance towards helping me to retrieve my late father’s financial inheritance presently in a financial firm, and transfer it to your personal account.
My most important concern is for you to assist me (in coming) to your country to continue my education.
The amount is $9.3 million. I had occasionally called the financial company for the release of the funds to me and they told me that due to my refugee status I cannot alone process it.
Rather, I should look for an aged foreign representative to apply for the release.
As soon as I hear from you we shall discuss your percentage . . . Please e-mail me through my personal e-mail: . . .
Best Regards, Kumbo.
XXX
Dear Kumbo:
First off, I’m sorry for your loss. I lost my mother about a year ago, so I can sympathize. Our circumstances differ on one major point: Mom didn’t leave me $9.3 million. My inheritance turned out to be two frying pans, some Tupperware and a ’93 Mercury Sable that needs a water pump.
Your status as a refugee evokes sympathy since I, too, am a refugee. I had to leave my native Mississippi when I said, in a moment of reckless candor, that NASCAR was boring.
I am surprised that you have documents that portray me favorably and can only assume the document you refer to is not The Letters to The Editor section of this newspaper.
As I understand your email, you want my help in getting into this country. Getting into this country, especially Arizona, does not appear to be difficult. I suggest you concentrate instead on getting into Mexico. It's a snap from there.
As for your desire to have $9.3 million deposited into my account, my only reservation is that it may cause several bank tellers to suffer coronaries when they see that my account has a balance above $1.97. But I'll risk it.
Tell the financial firm to send me a check right away.
By the way, I am surprised to discover that refugee camps now offer Internet access. A sign of the times, I suppose. Do you have Starbucks, too?
Anyway, I’m happy to help. After all, what are aged foreign representatives for?
Regards, Slim

TV worth watching - imagine that

2008-10-17T12:16:00.001-07:00

There are few things that are a greater waste of time than watching TV. I watch a lot of TV anyway.
I really don’t know why I watch TV as much as I do. Usually, I find that I watch TV sort of by accident. TV is just sort of there, mainly as background noise. At a certain point, something on the TV will divert my attention for a moment, perhaps as I am pausing to reflect on a passage I’ve just read in a book or while I’m folding laundry or eating my dinner. Well, the next thing I know, I’m sitting in my easy chair and the 10 p.m. news is coming on and I realize I haven’t moved in three hours. I almost always feel mildly disgusted at having been so easily lured into watching a series of silly sit-coms or ludicrous hospital/crime dramas.
Now that I am no longer in the newspaper business, I’ve given some deep thought about exploring other writing genres, including TV writing. Inspired by shows like “E.R.’’ and “Grey’s Anatomy,’’ I have come up with a twist on the genre that I believe could be a very successful show.
My idea is to have a show about a Bordello where the main characters routinely slip off into a store room or closet and practice medicine. What do you think?
Well, I was watching one of those hospital dramas last night when, much to my surprise, I detected something truly literate in the script. In these instances, the pleasure is always enhanced by having found it in a place you least expect it.
But sure enough, as Thursday’s episode of “E.R.’’ came on, I found myself exposed to what many literary critics consider the greatest of the epic poems - The Book of Job.
I’ll try to reconstruct the scene, as best I can recall it.
The opening scene follows one of the doctors, Abby, as he arrives for her shift at County Hospital in Chicago. The scene is constructed in such as way to convey a sense of hopelessness on Abby’s part. Regular viewers know that Abby is one of the original characters on the show, which is in its final season. Abby started out as a nurse on the show, but is now a doctor. (In TV land, you can complete medical school between seasons, of course). A recovering alcoholic, Abby seems to be very disillusioned with life as an emergency room doctor, where she is daily exposed to the carnage normally associated with a hospital emergency room in a big, crime-ridden city.
Abby looks worn and world-weary as she arrives in the chaotic emergency room. The narrator quotes Job as Abby wanders, zombie-like, into the ER. At first, I do not recognize the passage because, I suspect, it is read from a contemporary translation that I do not use - most likely, “The Message’’ by Eugene H. Peterson. But when the narrator says “what I've dreaded most has happened. My repose is shattered, my peace destroyed. No rest for me, ever—death has invaded life,’’ I know that he is quoting the Book of Job.
Now, if I had been the writer of that show, I believe I would have stayed with the King James Version, which is almost always the most poetic of the translations, although not always the easiest to understand.
But that’s a minor criticism.
The narration ends and we watch Abby as she goes through what we find out is her final shift at the hospital. She is moving to Boston to be with her young son and doctor/husband. Abby seems ambivalent about her impending departure. On one hand, you sense she is disillusioned by the grim realities of her job. On the other hand, you sense her affection and admiration for the other doctors and nurses. Over the course of the hour, Abby comes to the defense of a stressed-out young nurse, saves a guilt-ridden teen from suicide and provides encouragement to another weary doctor. And somehow, a flicker of hope seems to ignite in Abby.
At the end, Abby - box of personal effects in tow - says her quick goodbyes and heads out to the street, where her husband and child are waiting to greet her.
The narrator picks up, again quoting the Book of Job, with the series of rhetorical questions that God offers Job as a response to his complaints and accusations.
It was, I felt, a beautiful, thoughtful, literate handling of the story.
And it was on a TV show.
Imagine that.

Slim's Greatest Hits: Vol. 1

2008-10-14T18:33:00.004-07:00

From time to time, I intend to reprise some of my old columns for your reading enjoyment.
Here in the Phoenix area, October means it is time for the Arizona State Fair. The following column about the fair was published on Oct. 16, 2005.

OUR STATE FAIR

The Arizona State Fair started Friday, and I asked a young colleague if she was going. She wrinkled her nose and said no; it is too noisy, too crowded, too messy, too crude for her tastes, she said.
And I thought, gee, those are the reasons I like the fair.
In our postmodern, homogenized society, our entertainment seems to have been given over completely to technology. It is impersonal, sterile, passive.
Sure, the fair is quirky, flawed, unsophisticated, hopelessly tacky. In other words, it’s like me.
Go to a mega-theme park and you are nothing more than a consumer. Go to the fair and you are a real person talking to another real person about how he grew a 385-pound pumpkin. You just won’t see that at Legoland.
For all the clutter, confusion and cheesy attractions, state fairs remain popular. Probably the most famous of the state fairs is the Iowa State Fair, an event so popular that it inspired a Broadway musical: "Les Miserables," I think it was.
So I encourage all skeptics to take another look. There are still people who can make butter out of a cow, but where else will you see somebody making a cow out of butter? Where else will you find a booth that sells 14-foot fishing boats that can be folded flat and stored under your bed? Where else can you see hundreds of livestock, thousands of crafts and food items, all the products of folks who might be your neighbors?
I’m talking about folks such as Helen Spangler and Debbie Young. I don’t know either, but I bet they both have big, fat husbands. Spangler won eight blue ribbons for cakes. Young took home five blue ribbons for bread-making.
Nancy Asper only won a third place, which I would protest if I were her. Her "Most Outlandish’’ entry was a cake that looked exactly like a cat’s litter box — one badly in need of cleaning, at that.
The fair is all about stealing a kiss from your sweetie when the Ferris Wheel stops at the top. It’s about eating foods dripping with fat and not feeling guilty. It’s about winning an enormous overstuffed animal and then realizing you have to tote it around for the next three hours.
It’s about petting a rabbit, mooing at a cow (admit it, you’ve done that). It’s about giggly girls flirting with the boys and grandpas spoiling the kids with trinkets.
It’s about recognizing all the ordinary people around you and realizing that you fit right in.
It makes me feel sad for my young colleague, who seems to have forgotten that sense of wonder in the ordinary.
Messy, loud, crowded, tacky? What’s not to like?

It's a "Ruff'' new world

2008-10-13T11:08:00.003-07:00

If you were to drive past the home of Mark and Ranae Salem these days, you would notice a bright blue banner with the words “It’s a Boy!’’ attached to the fence out front.
It is not what you might suspect. Mark and Ranae, whose appearances are youthful almost to the point of being spiteful, have not added to their family in the traditional sense.
Yet there is a new arrival. Just before going to bed Wednesday night, Mark went to check on one of his mares, Cowgirl, who he had moved into his small back yard in anticipation that she would soon deliver a foal.
Poor Cowgirl. Through the typically hot summer months, we had watched her as her belly swelled and her expression seemed to betray a weariness that only moms can understand.
Now, mares begin to leak milk about 24 hours before they deliver. But this is just a rule of thumb, as Mark and Ranae would discover.
When Mark checked on Cowgirl Wednesday night, there was no tell-tale signs of impending labor.
Thursday morning, Mark walked outside and a movement caught his eyes. His two angus calves were being chased by what he first thought was a big dog.
Mark looked again and was delighted by what he saw: A beautiful painted colt. Sometime between bedtime and daylight, Cowgirl had delivered. And only a few hours later, the little colt was already chasing the calves - a natural cow pony, for sure. Mark has named him Ruff-n-Ready, Ruff for short.
Since Thursday morning, a lot of the Salems’ friends have stopped by to see the little colt. He is a beautiful colt. In fact, he looks a lot like his sire, Splash. In addition to friends, other curious passers-by have noticed the colt and stopped to admire him.
Me? Well, maybe I’m getting to be a little sentimental in my middle age, but Ruff’s arrival seems to be some sort of tonic.
Last week, I was informed that the job lead I had been pursuing, a job that would have represented a major step forward in my struggle to put my life back together after the trauma of going to prison, has been put on hold. As the economic news worsened, the company decided it wise to put some of their plans on hold, and initiated a hiring freeze through the end of the year. Maybe in January, I was told. But, of course, the simple turn of the calendar isn’t guaranteed to change things. I guess there are thousands of Americans who are facing the same uncertain prospects that confront me.
So it was nice to have a distraction. When I went to visit Ruff for the first time, I brought a few snacks for Cowgirl, just to put the protective mom at ease. As I approached, Ruff moved close to his mom. But in a little while, as I kneeled down to present myself a less threatening presence to the gangly little colt, his caution gave way to curiosity. Under his mom’s ever watchful eye, he eased closer to me, finally allowing me to softly stroke his head and withers.
To Ruff, the world is a scary place. Everything is a new experience and, as a result, a potential danger. Of course, it is a dangerous world, but no less interesting because of it.
I know the feeling.
Times are hard, it is true.
But the world remains a hopeful place.
That’s important for me to remember in times like these.

You can call me Tim

2008-10-02T17:11:00.006-07:00

First off, let me apologize to long-time readers of this blog. Ever since I stumbled over that high school website that enabled me to get in touch with my old classmates about six weeks ago, I’ve found myself sort of fixated on those olden days - “before microwave ovens, when a girl could still cook and still would,‘’ is the way Merle Haggard put it. Recent blogs certainly have reflected my mild obsession with all things Tupelo High School circa 1975-77.
I cannot imagine that there is anything more tedious than reading about somebody else’s experiences in high school. But when you consider the unpleasant turn my life has taken in the past few years, I suspect you will be inclined to understand my temptation to occupy my thoughts with the soothing recollections of my days of blissful ignorance rather than contemplate the ambivalent ignorance of my current situation.
I suspect that someday I will emerge from this nostalgic fog and take up more contemporary subject matter.
But today is not that day. Sorry.
During my correspondence with my old classmates, I have found that many of them refer to me as “Tim.’’ The reason they do that is because that is my name: Tim Smith. Of course, if you have known me fewer than 30 years, you know me by my nickname, “Stud.’’
OK. So nobody calls me “Stud.’’ Well, that’s not entirely true. One woman about five years ago, gave me that pet name. I wound up buying a set of encyclopedias from her, so I’m not sure she was entirely sincere.
Most people know me as Slim, though.
When I got into my 40s, it used to sort of offend me when, upon introducing myself to someone, the person would often ask me why people called me “Slim.’’ Well, it used to be a descriptive nickname. Back when I got it, no one ever wondered why. It was obvious. Even though I lost a fair amount of weight a few years back, I still get that question.
So, here’s the answer:
In 1975, I was a sophomore in high school and “Gopher’’ Williams, one of the upperclassmen on the football team - not knowing my name - began to call me “Slim.’’ People with nicknames are entitled to give other people nicknames, I suppose.
To be honest, I rather liked the nickname and will confess that I sort of promoted the use of it. I find now that most of the old classmates who refer to me as “Slim’’ were on the football team.
There were a couple of reasons I favored “Slim’’ over “Tim’’ or - gasp - “Timmy,’’ as my mama called me.
First, I rather liked the alliterative qualities of being “Slim Smith.’’ By that time, I had already determined that I would be a writer, most likely a sports columnist at the New York Times if not the latest manifestation of the great, brooding Southern novelists of that era.
I felt “Slim Smith’’ was the sort of distinctive, memorable name that you associate with great literary figures.
The other, more practical reason, that I preferred “Slim'' to “Tim’’ is that my class at THS already had a “Tim Smith.’’ Somehow, being another “Tim Smith’’ made me feel sort of redundant.
Now, my name is “Timothy Lane Smith.’’ The other guy was “Timothy Lynn Smith.’’ I know this because all through high school I was regularly required to straighten this out.
Beyond the redundancy, I was a little worried about being identified with the other Tim Smith for another reason.
Now at this juncture, the subject of Timothy Lynn Smith is a delicate matter for me to discuss. You see, Timothy Lynn Smith was considered to be, in the vernacular of the day, a “hood.’’
I don’t know what the high school counter-culture of today is called. But in my day, those who rejected the accepted culture of the high school were called hoods. Upon reflection, I do not recall that hoods were really all that rebellious, though. Oh sure, they were somewhat more inclined to smoke cigarettes, cut classes, reject the latest fashions and be enrolled in "Vo-Tech'' classes. But primarily, the hoods were set apart in terms of attitude.
In every high school, you have a small cadre of really popular kids and a great mass of other kids aspiring to affiliate themselves with the popular group. The hoods didn't bother. They were pretty cool, now that I think about it.
I didn't think they were all that cool then, though.
So, being confused with Timothy Lynn Smith, at least in my mind, threatened any misguided ambition I might entertain about being accepted by the popular kids.
Now, I am not flat-out saying that Timothy Lynn Smith was a hood. As has been proven in previous blogs, my recollections are far from perfect.
NOTE TO TIM: If you were a hood, I’m not saying that was a bad thing. So don't come to Arizona and beat me up, OK? If you were not a hood, then you probably aren't inclined to come to Arizona and beat me up. Even so, I apologize if my memory was faulty on this point.
All I remember is that “Tim Smith’’ was routinely being called to the principal’s office. More often than not, they weren’t looking for me. That’s all I'm saying.
I do wonder what Timothy Lynn Smith is up to these days. Sometimes I imagine that he is a minister or teacher or something along those lines. Ironic, then, that it is Timothy Lane Smith who has a prison record, huh?
I’m thinking Timothy Lynn Smith may want to consider acquiring a nickname to spare him from such an unflattering case of mistaken identity.
He should look up Gopher Williams.

Setting the record straight

2008-09-18T22:27:00.012-07:00

Because I have spent most of my adult life as a journalist, I am well familiar with the importance of getting things right. In more than 25 years as a reporter, columnist and editor, I’ve either wrote or ordered thousands of the “corrections’’ you generally find tucked away in daily newspapers.
For the time being, I’m out of the daily newspaper game (Injury Report: Strained Reputation, Out Indefinitely), but I find that corrections continue to hunt me down.
This was the case with my previous blog entry, entitled “How Slim Saved the Wave!’’
An alert reader -Mr. Clay Stewart of Tupelo, Miss. - pointed out that when I wrote that Clay Stewart had fallen ill and missed the game in question I was dead wrong. Although ill, Clay Stewart had played and played valiantly, collecting six tackles and returning an interception for a touchdown (not that he was keep track, of course).
I expect to hear from Mr. Stewart’s attorney any time now. I suspect we will have a long and candid discussion about the grievous harm I have done to Mr. Stewart’s reputation in the community, as well as the severe mental anguish my cruel and reckless misstatements have caused.
So I would like to point out that I have long considered Clay Stewart to be the best football player Tupelo has ever seen, not to mention he is a strikingly handsome man and a man to be trusted above all others. If I should father two more boys (the surgeon who performed the procedure back in 1992 assured me that’s not likely) I would, in fact, name them “Clay’’ and “Stewart.’’
Another alert reader, Mr. Jerry Britton of Pigeon Forge, Tenn., wrote to say that I had the score of the game wrong. I had recorded the score as Tupelo 24, Pine Bluff 16. Mr. Britton contends that the score was actually Tupelo 16, Pine Bluff 0 and I confess that I am much too lazy to look it up. I cannot see any reason why Mr. Britton would lie about such a thing, however.
In my defense, I will remind readers that in the blog post in question, I freely admited that I spent a lot of time watching the cheerleaders instead of the game. So under those conditions, I do not see why some people would bother to nitpick.
I mean, aside from getting many of the basic facts of the story all wrong, I thought it was fine prose, indeed.
Yet another alert reader, Mr. Randall Strange of Hattiesburg, Miss.. wrote on the subject of this post. Of course, Mr. Strange - never one to stay “on message’’ - soon wandered off to some other somewhat related memory of my football career at Tupelo High.
Mr. Strange wrote: “Out of all those years of football - games, practices, meeting, etc.. - the ONE THING that I remember vividly was our senior year - the last game and you were to be named captain for that night’s game. You were escorted into the pep rally by Perkins, Baker, Scrib, and, I think, Johnny Harris all wearing black pants, white shirts and black ties looking like the secret service protecting the President of the United States. That’s one of the memories I have smiled about over the last 30 years.’’
I know that you will find Mr. Strange’s comment alarming: Who would have thought that Mr. Strange could remember even one thing “vividly?’’ Obviously, I have underestimated the man.
But on this point - assuming there is no objection from Mr. Stewart or Mr. Britton - the recollections of Mr. Strange are quite accurate. The Pep Rally scene did play out just as he related.
However, Mr. Strange did neglect to relate another important part of the story, namely the inspiring speech that I made at the Pep Rally - a speech that, without question, rallied our team to victory in that game.
I remember warning the euphoric crowd at the Pep Rally that while it was true that I had undertaken the solemn responsibility of being Team Captain for the game and saying “heads or tails’’ when the coin was tossed before kickoff , that I was only one man and could not be expected to carry the team single-handedly.
I suspect that thought had probably already occurred to Coach Waite and the coaching staff.
But we did win. (If you want to know the score, ask Mr. Britton).
I further suspect that Mr. Stewart played a prominent role in that victory.

How Slim saved the Wave!

2008-09-11T21:05:00.009-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, an old friend from high school, Kathy Wallace, sent me an invitation to join a website dedicated to our high school. Apparently, this is the latest thing in social networking. All you have to do is plug in the name of your school (be sure to included “high school’’ followed by a dot followed by the letters ning.com).
Well, I’ve been strolling down memory lane ever since, getting in touch with old classmates, some of whom I haven’t seen in 30 years.
Perhaps because of this, I find that long subdued memories from high school are emerging once again.
And, maybe because it is September and football season, my mind drifted back to a particular memory of my days as a member of the Tupelo High Golden Wave football team.
Now, I know what you are thinking: I am going to blather on about how I rescued the Wave from certain defeat with an inspiring heroic effort in the final desperate seconds and was ridden off the field on the shoulders of my teammates and into the embraces of a bevy of lithe, awe-struck young cheerleaders.
Well, if I were Lea Paslay or Tom Alef or Felix Rutledge, that might well be the story I would tell.
But even highly selective, much embellished memory does not permit me to tell such a tale, mainly because a bunch of my old football teammates have found this blog and would quickly expose me as a fraud.
So, the story I will tell, while much less heroic, is compelling in it own sort of humbling way.
If memory serves, it was 1976. The game in question was against Pine Bluff, Ark., Now, this was a momentous game for the Wave, not because it was a game against a team from a neighboring state, but because it marked the first - and only - time in my football career that we actually got to spend the night at an out of town game.
Because Pine Bluff was about a seven-hour bus ride, it was determined that we would bus over early in the afternoon on Thursday so that we would be rested and ready for the game on Friday night. There was a rumor that several of the players sneaked out of our Holiday Inn rooms and walked a few hundred yards to a Pizza Inn, where they bought pitchers of beer and played the juke box for a couple of hours. I suspect there was some truth to this rumor, mainly because I was there.
Now, in 1976, I was not prominent in the plans for head coach Dennis Waite and the coaching staff. I think I was third or fourth team at about five positions.
So, for me, the trip to Pine Bluff was not accompanied by any pressure. I figured I would do what I almost always did at games - convince a friend in the grandstands to sneak me a bag of popcorn, which I concealed in my helmet. I figured I would munch on popcorn and watch the game and the cheerleaders; my attention being equally divided between the two.
Let me pause here to discuss the cheerleaders of my generation. They were generally not chosen because of their athleticism, although , of course, there were sometimes athletic girls on the squad. Back in those days, cheerleaders were chosen primarily because they were good looking, energetic and could be convinced to shout, with great zeal, such inane things as "Two bits. Four bits. Six bits. A dollar. All for Tupelo, stand up and holler!''
I liked the cheerleaders a great deal - and from a great distance. The idea of approaching any of these beautiful, flawless creatures would have been, in my mind, an act of unimaginable arrogance. Girls like that go for the players who don't stand around like a doofus eathing popcorn out of their helmets. So, my strategy when it came to high school girls was to focus on the flawed ones, much like a lion picking out the wounded wildebeest from a great herd of "really hot'' wildebeests.
Well, there were no wounded wildebeests on our cheerleading squad. They were all wonderful, exalted creatures.
But I could still admire them from afar, like fine art.
So, while Coach Waite and his staff poured over their game plan with the starting lineup just prior to the game, I already had my game plan down and I was very confident about it, too.
But then, about an hour before we were to bus to the stadium, word began to leak out: Clay Stewart, one of the starting outside linebackers had come down with some sort of stomach flu and wouldn’t be able to play. Then, I got word that another player had suffered a similar malady. And another. And another. By the time we got on the bus, about a dozen players were out of commission.
And as we moved slowly down the side streets toward the stadium, it began to dawn on me that I might actually play, and not just in the last few minutes when the outcome had already been determined.
Rob Mosely got the start in Clay Stewart’s spot. The back-up to Rob was…well, I wasn’t sure who it was. Heck, it could even be me, for all I knew.
But as the game progressed, I sort of forgot all about what might happen if Rob got hurt.
About three minutes into the second half, with the Wave holding a narrow lead, I was munching on popcorn and ogling the cheerleaders when I happened to turn my attention to what was happening on the field. Just then, Rob went down in a pile of players and didn't get up.
Now by this time, I was well down toward the end of the bench, which is a good spot to be in if you happen to be eating popcorn out of your helmet. Coaches generally frown on players eating snacks on the sideline. You would be surprised how touchy coaches can be about things like that.
Then, I heard this booming voice. It was Fred Davis, one of the coaches, a wiry black man of indeterminable age who spoke with a gruff, guttural voice that you could hardly understand.
“Miff’’ (Smith),’’ he bellowed.
“Miff!’’ he yelled again, as I was trying to ditch the popcorn.
And it hit me: I WAS GOING INTO THE GAME!!!
Sprinting toward the middle of the sidelines, where the coaching staff prowled, I quickly snapped by chin strap.
“Miff!’’
“I’m here coach!’’ I said, ready to sprint out onto field.
“Good!’’ Davis barked. “We need your helmet.’’
So, I gave coach Davis my helmet and sort of slinked back down to the end of the sideline. It was embarrassing. Not only that, I didn't have anything to eat popcorn out of.
We bused home after the game and my buddy, Steve Stanfield, gave me a ride home. I walked in the door about 4 a.m. and mama was sitting in her chair in the living room. Mama just couldn't sleep until all her boys were home.
“Who won?’’ she asked sleepily, emerging from her chair to give me a hug.
“We did,’’ I said. “24-16, I think.’’
“Oh, good,’’ she said. “Did you get to play?’’
“Nah,’’ I said. “...but my helmet did.’’
So that's my football story. I know. It ain't exactly “Rudy.’’

A "real'' moment at the Convention

2008-09-04T09:24:00.004-07:00

Like a lot of folks I watched Sarah Palin give her big speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday.
In the early part of her speech, Palin acknowledge the presence of her family, which consists of her parents, her husband, her five children and her soon-to-be son-in-law.
The controversy surrounding the pregnancy of her daughter, Bristol, had both of the heads of the two parties calling for the media to lay off the families of the candidates.
The media cannot help themselves, apparently.
So, predictably, after Palin acknowledged her family, some media types viewed it as a double-standard. The argument: You can’t tell the media to leave them out of the spotlight and then parade them before the spotlight.
But it seems to me whoever makes that argument in the media is simply mean-spirited.
I think all the candidates have a right to acknowledge their families. There’s a big difference between that and exposing them to brutal, entirely irrelevant questions.
Truth is, the kids have been the best part of either convention, in my opinion.
Barack Obama’s two girls are simply adorable.
And so are Palin's children.
In fact, the presence of those young children may be the only unscripted aspect of any convention. They provide the real moments that we all can relate to.
When Obama’s young daughter shouted out “Hi, daddy!’’ when she saw him on the big screen, that was a genuine, warm moment that any parent can relate to.
But the best, most real moment of all came on Wednesday.
Palin’s 7-year-old daughter was holding her baby brother, Trig. Then she did something that I think we all have experienced, one way or another: She licked her fingers and smoothed down the baby’s hair.
And this simple act proves a point that surely must be beyond debate: Girls are BORN with a maternal instinct. That is the sort of thing only a mother would do.
Anyone who has ever been a mom or a child (which includes just about everybody) has had that experience.
I know it was something I remember from my childhood. My mama would do the same thing to us boys, usually as we were piling out of the car at church on a Sunday morning.
She would stop us in our tracks and give us The Inspection: Shirt-tail tucked in? Check. Pants zipped? Check. Shoes tied? Check.
“Now let me look at that hair,’’ she would say, as he licked her fingers and plastered down our cowlicks and stray “bed-head’’ hair.
We hated it.
In fact, having your hair slicked down by your mama’s saliva ranked second only to being kissed by really old people when it came to things young boys hated most.
So, yes, I absolutely approve of candidates showing off their families at events such as this.
It is a reminder that we all share a common bond as Americans.
As long as mamas slick down their kids’ hair with spit, we’re going to be OK, I think.

Maureen Dowd: My inspiration!

2008-09-02T08:02:00.003-07:00

A lot of people have written to encourage me to continue writing. Although the prospects may not seem particularly bright at the moment, they are convinced that I will be able to resurrect my writing career.
Now, there are two ways to look at this. One way is to dismiss it all as simply an act of generosity. Sometimes, it is easy for me to reach that conclusion.
The second way of looking at it is much more hopeful: If Maureen Dowd can be a columnist at the once-venerable New York Times, then there truly is no limit to my potential.
Tuesday’s edition of the Arizona Republic carried a reminder of this. There was Ms. Dowd’s column with a headline that read “If you like chick flicks, try “Half-Baked Alaska.’’ The column was about Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
Dowd, because she is so very original in her prose, thought it would be clever to address this subject as though it were a movie plot. This device is particularly appealing to Dowd because it permits her to distort, defame and ridicule her subject with impunity because she has crafted the criticism in the context of a fictitious movie plot. Fictitious characters, as we know, can say, believe, do or be anything that the author would like. When you are creating fiction, you don’t have to worry with annoying things like facts. You don’t have to meet any standards of honesty or fairness.
Now, it’s no shock at all that Dowd would come after Palin with sharpened fingernails. For Palin represents all that Dowd deeply despises. She is anti-abortion AND an evangelical, unforgivable sins in the eyes of women like Dowd, whose idea of feminism allows for no difference of opinion on those subjects.
Dowd, who once wrote a column for Time Magazine that suggested that all of Mississippi’s economic and social problems could be attributed to an insufficient number of abortion clinics, is obviously an idiot. She proves this on a routine basis. Another favorite Dowd-ism was when she wrote that Cindy Sheehan had "absolute moral authority'' on the war in Iraq. Apparently, Cindy Sheehan is God. Thanks, Maureen, for clearing that up.
So is it any wonder that when Dowd makes her case against Palin, she chooses a non-sensical premise. Palin is not qualified because she has never been on “Meet The Press.’’
I swear I am not making this up. This is what Dowd actually believes.
Of course, this says far more about Dowd and her media cohorts than it does about Palin. If you have ever wondered if the national media has an inflated view of itself, here is Exhibit A. Apparently, you have to be on “Meet the Press’’ to have any relevance.
I won’t go into the column point by point. I’ll just say simply that it is demeaning - Dowd imagines a scenario where Palin “Putting away her breast pump, (she) points her rifle…’
It is mean-spirited, even by liberal media standards.
The truth is, we don’t know much about Palin. But we will know plenty about her soon enough. While Dowd’s column suggests that a good portion of the national media will seek to portray her in the most unfavorable light, Americans will pay close attention to what she says over the next two months.
Blasting away at Palin before she even has an opportunity to express her views is not only unfair, but a tactical error for the media who obviously have a rooting interest in this election. Oh, I’m sure Dowd and her comrades will be the toast of the town among the liberal elite crowd that they slobber over.
But “out there’’ in the towns and cities of “irrelevant’’ middle America, people will make up their own minds, based not on Dowd’s views, but on what they see and hear from Palin herself. That is what fair-minded people always do.
When you get right down to it, I trust what I don’t know about Palin far more than what I do know about Dowd.
Dowd is a hack.
And she has a job.
That gives me hope.

Zoo memories

2008-09-01T19:05:00.002-07:00

OK. So Monday was Labor Day and I thought I would go to the zoo.
I didn’t actually go to the zoo, of course. I just thought about going to the zoo. I also thought about doing some laundry.
It’s a lot more fun to think about going to the zoo than it is to think about doing laundry.
And I was weighing the pros and cons of going to the zoo, I started thinking about my previous trips to zoos.
The first zoo I remember going to was the zoo in Jackson. I was about 8. The thing that sticks out about that trip was that somehow I wound up with animal poop all over my shirt. I don’t know how that happened. Things like that happen to 8-year-olds. If you have kids, you know what I mean.
The next zoo I remember going to was the Audobon Zoo in New Orleans, which is an excellent zoo.
By this time, I had a boy of my own. Corey was about 3, I think, when we first went to the Audobon Zoo.
The thing I remember most about that trip was when we happened to stop in front of the bison exhibit.
There we were - me, my then-wife and my son, Corey - standing by the fence. Well, since Corey was only three, I had to point out what animal it was that we were supposed to be looking at. Otherwise, he would focus on some interloper, maybe a bug or a frog, and look at that.
So I said enthusiastically, “Corey! Look at the buffalo!’’
Well, as soon as I said that, this guy next to us, butts in and says, in sort of a snooty, condescending voice, “Actually, it’s a bison.’’
Don’t you hate know-it-alls? I mean.
I never really understood why people are like that. First, who cares? Second, do I know you? Third, Have I asked you for your expertise on the weighty issue of buffalo vs. bison? Fourth, do you realize that I’ve done hard time in prison and can snap at any moment? Of course, at this moment in history, it will be about 30 years before I actually go to prison, but I’m still a dangerous man.
So, that’s my main memory of the Audobon Zoo. Bisons.
The next zoo I went to was the San Francisco Zoo. You may recall that the San Francisco Zoo is where the fences at the Tiger Exhibit are about, oh, three feet high. A while back, a couple of drunken teens started taunting the Tigers, who inexplicably decided to quit being mellow Bay-Area Tigers and attacked the teens. Nobody taunts the Tigers there anymore.
By the time of my visit to the San Francisco Zoo, I had another child. Abby was about 4 when we all went to zoo.
It is a very nice zoo when the Tigers stay in their enclosures.
The highlight of that trip was around lunch time. Corey and Abby were STARVING, of course, because they hadn’t eaten anything in about five minutes. So we stopped at the little food court and bought hotdogs, chips and a soda for the four of us, which cost approximately $842.
Well, sweet little Abby was standing there, minding her own business, eating her hotdog. She had taken about one bite, when suddenly this pigeon dive-bombs her and snatches her hotdog right out of her little hand.
The expression on her face is difficult to convey in words. I’d say it was a mixture of shock, fear and confusion, followed by very loud crying.
“It’s OK,’’ I said. “I’ll get you another hotdog. It’s all right.’’
Poor child. Soon as she got that hot dog she went directly under the picnic table with it.
I’ve been to the Phoenix Zoo many times. The orangutans eat their own poop, by the way. I don’t know if that’s just a Phoenix thing or not, but it is highly entertaining, especially if you are a pre-teen boy. Or me.
That’s pretty much my zoo memories.
Animal poop on my shirt. Bison experts. Thieving pigeons. Orangutans eating their own feces.
I recalled all these fine experiences as I was thinking about going to the zoo on Labor Day.
Which maybe explains why I only thought about going to the zoo.

Slim's God-Fearin' Cornbread Recipe

2008-08-26T09:11:00.009-07:00

In the previous post, I shared my efforts to enlighten a couple of transplanted Yankees by explaining how to make cornbread.
I received several responses.
Margaret Howell, an old friend from my high school days in Mississippi, wrote to say that my blog post had inspired her to make cornbread that very day. Of course, as a Southerner, Margaret made it the way Jesus would have made it - white corn meal, no sugar, she said.
“I had it with black-eyed peas and cabbage. Wish you were here for some!’’
Me, too.
Matt Self, who is a big-shot TV producer at the local NBC affiliate here in Phoenix, wrote to expand on the cornbread theme. “In my neck of the woods (Kimberly, Ala.) we crumble that stuff up in a glass and pour buttermilk over it.’’
Matt, is absolutely correct.
In fact, I told my Yankee friends about that, too. They just looked at me with an expression of incredulity, so I gave up trying to convince them. You have to take the Yankee out of people a little at a time, I reckon.
C.J. in Phoenix, being a Southwestern girl, was opposed to using corn meal altogether. “You need a recipe for tortillas,’’ she said. Let’s all pray for C.J., OK?
And finally, there was this from Cristina in Mesa: “So what’s your recipe? I don’t like the fluffy, yellow cake stuff, either.‘
Well, that’s a first. No one has ever asked me for a recipe before.
So I am honored to consent. Here goes:

SLIM’S GOD-FEARIN’ CORNBREAD

Equipment

One 8-inch cast-iron skillet, properly cured.
Note: Over my mild objections, you can also use the tin muffin trays or corn-pone trays, but I can’t guarantee that your conscience won’t keep you up at night if you do it that way.

Ingredients

1 ¼ cup of white corn meal mix.
½ cup of Martha White self-rising flour (It’s got Hot Rize!)
1 teaspoon salt
¾ tablespoon of baking powder
1/3 cup of Crisco shortening.
2 eggs
1 cup of milk

A word about ingredients:
Organic products are very popular these days. But I strongly advise against using organic produce in any recipe. OK, I realize that this recipe doesn’t cause for anything which would require you to choose between regular and organic, but let me finish: It’s a topic I have deep feelings about. And, besides, I never interrupt you when you are talking, do I?
Now, I am opposed to the use of organic produce for many good, common sense reasons.
First, people who insist on using organic produce are generally weird, odd, strange people. I am not sure exactly why that is. It could be a chicken-and-egg deal. I don’t know if they are weird, strange and odd because they consume organic produce or if consuming organic produce causes them to become weird, strange, odd people.
But, invariably, people who insist on organic produce are the sort of people who raise kids that turn out to be synchronized swimmers or rhythmic gymnasts. You know, weird people. So it’s best to stop the cycle of weirdness at the current generation.
Beyond that, I will point out when I grew up we grew almost all of our own vegetables. We had competition from bugs and worms as to who was going to enjoy the fruits of our labor, so we routinely saturated all of our plants with powerful chemicals. It never did me no harm. Today, I am a 5-foot-11, 185-pound picture of virile manhood, the veritable picture of health.*

Preparation

Find a clean mixing bowl. (For me, this is the most time-consuming part of the process)
Dump in the flour, corn meal, salt, baking powder and mix thoroughly with a spoon.
In a separate container (my cookware consists primarily of plastic margarine and Kool-Whip containers. Either will suffice), mix the Crisco, beaten eggs and milk together.
Pour liquid concoction into pan with the corn meal mixture and blend with a wooden spoon. Don't use an electric mixer; the cornbread mixtures should not be too thoroughly blended.
Grease skillet with a stick of butter or margarine.
Set oven to 400-degrees and place skillet in over to preheat.
Remove pre-heated skillet from oven (with an oven-mitt, unless you want to practice your cussin‘) and pour mixture into pan.
Cook for roughly 35-40 minutes. To make sure it‘s done, stick a toothpick into the cornbreard. When you pull it out, if no cornmeal mixture sticks to it, you know it‘s done.

Serving

Cut cornbread into about six big slabs.
Slather butter all over your slab of cornbread (Don’t forget to say the blessin’ before you eat!)

Storage

This tip is from noted Southern cornbread connoisseur Bill Perkins. "The proper way to store cornbread is to leave it in skillet on top of the stove with a dish-towl over the top of it.'' Thanks, Bill, for all you do. And, most of all, for CARING!

* This is an example of a literary device writers refer to as "creative license,'' i.e., an exaggeration used to emphasis a point. How big a exaggeration it is in this case is open to debate.

It's cornbread, not cake!

2008-08-25T14:22:00.003-07:00

Ron and Joan try. They really do.
But some things are just not easy for them, mainly because of their disadvantaged upbringing.
By “disadvantaged upbringing,’’ I mean they are - and there is just not delicate way to put it - Yankees.
They just don’t know no better, as the saying goes back home.
I should point out here that Ron and Joan have done well for themselves despite this obstacle. They are eager to try new things and more or less open to a more enlightened view.
Take the issue of cornbread, for example.
Saturday afternoon, this important topic came up and we all decided that it would be great to have cornbread to go with the tortilla soup that a friend was bringing over for dinner the next day.
Those familiar with this blog know that I have been helping Ron and Joan out for the past few weeks while they recover from a bad car accident.
Well, I made the innocent inquiry of whether we had all the necessary ingredients for cornbread. It was with great pleasure that I learned that Ron and Joan had a big cast-iron skillet. It was really more than I could have expected, to be honest. We started clicking off the necessary ingredients: corn meal, flour, baking powder, salt, eggs, cooking oil.
Then one of them - I think it was Joanie - said something that I found very disturbing: “Don’t forget the sugar,’’ she said.
Sugar? It was a jolt, to be honest.
And then I remembered: Yankees use sugar in their cornbread. And that ain’t all, either.
So I pressed them on their definition of cornbread.
Now, I don’t want to put words in their mouths, but their idea of cornbread was a creating that was yellow, fluffy and sweet.
“What you are describing ain’t cornbread,’’ I said in a calm, restrained voice. “Yellow? Fluffy? Sweet? You are describing cake!’’
Patiently, simply I tried to explain it to them.
“Well, I guess it is possible that cornbread can be made two ways,’’ I said. “You can make fluffy, sweet, yellow cornbread. That’s one way.
“And then there is the way God intended.’’
Now, this comes as no surprise to any genteel southerner, of course. We have known since our earliest days that cornbread is made with white cornmeal and no sugar.
But there have been dark forces at work over the decade, truncating the time-honored cornbread tradition. In fact, even the corn meal manufacturers - people who have been given a sacred trust to uphold all that is good and decent about cornbread - have proven to be a part of the conspiracy.
Don’t believe me: Check out the cornbread ratio on the box. It calls for roughly twice as much flour as corn meal, which is almost exactly the proper ratio inverted. They also call for as much as four teaspoons of baking powder, which - if followed - would produce that obscenely fluffy texture that is contrary to the very nature of cornbread and a violation of a major tenet in the art - that cornbread should be flat and course. And, of course, the box also calls for sugar, which is simply an abomination.
Now, Sunday evening I made cornbread. Sadly, the corn meal was yellow, so I had to carry on as best I could.
The end result wasn’t half bad, though.
And then Ron did something that I could not have anticipated: He poured honey over the cornbread, even as I was slathering the butter on my chunk of corn bread.
Of course, I was too polite to make a scene, but it did remind me of a passage in Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird.’’ In that seen one of the Ewell children had been invited to eat lunch with Jem and Scout. The visitor, being of a disadvantaged background and horrible manners, asked the maid for some molasses and drenched everything on his plate - meat, vegetables, bread - with molasses.
When Scout protested, the maid sternly told her to be quiet.
As I watched Ron drizzle honey over perfectly good cornbread, I suppressed my impulse to speak out.
Now, Ron is a fine, intelligent man.
But there are some gaps in his education.
Put honey on your cornbread?
Southern mamas would be aghast.
But I cut Ron and Joanie some slack.
They grew up Yankee. They just don’t know no better.

What Have THEY Been Drinkin'?

2008-08-21T16:18:00.006-07:00

Does anybody have a phone number for The FOX television network?
I have a TV show concept that I want to pitch: It’s called “Are You Smarter Than A University President?‘’
Last week, a group of 119 university presidents put their pointy little heads together and called for a reduction of the legal drinking age from 21 to 18.
The presidents say it is important to lower the legal drinking age to combat binge drinking on campus.
Oh, I see...
Well, no. I don’t.
These presidents claim that a lot of students under the age of 21 are prone to binge drinking because they have limited access to alcohol. Their theory: Because a person can’t buy a beer in a bar, he’ll buy 38 beers and drink them in the bushes someplace.
OK. First question:
True or false: The way to reduce abuse of a substance is to make it more readily available?
If your answer was, “Duh! False!’’ then congratulations! You Are Smarter Than A University President!
When this story first came out, I waited around for the punch-line, even checked the calendar to see if it was Chinese April Fool’s Day or something along those lines. Then it dawned on me that they were actually serious.
I listened to the arguments for reducing the legal drinking age limit to 18, as it was prior to 1984 when - as we all know - no one EVER binge drank.
Their argument is two-fold:
1. Under-age people binge drink because it is “forbidden fruit.’’ Make it legal to drink at age 18 and suddenly all these students will trade in Coronas for Calculus. (Dude! It's Saturday night! Let's study til we puke!'')
2. The legal drinking age of 21 isn’t working. People under 21 are drinking anyway! Shocking, huh?
Look, I’ve had three DUIs, even went to prison for DUI. I don’t claim to be an expert on many subjects, but I figure I have serious credentials when it comes to alcohol abuse.
And from where I sit (which is NOT on a bar stool , by the way), it is easy to see the deep flaws in both points.
1. For this premise to be true, you might expect that once a person turns 21 he immediately hangs up his beer bong and drinks only a glass of wine with dinner. Reality check time: Do you know any 21-year-olds? See what I mean?
Beyond that, the idea that making something legal diminishes its use is just plain goofy. I mean, under that theory, we should legalize murder, right? If that theory were true, abortions would have pretty much stopped after Roe v. Wade. Quite the opposite is true, as we all know.
2. This is equally nonsensical, even though it is embraced by Arizona Republic editorial writer Kathleen Ingley, who bemoaned the “failed law’ that raised the drinking-age limit to 21 in 1984.
Failed law? Ingley cited the fact that so many teens are drinking as proof of the failure of the law.
Interesting. I’ll go back to the law against murder. Every day, hundreds of people are murdered in the U.S. So, you see, the real problem here is that “failed law’’ against murder. At least that seems to be the way Ingley looks at it. I wonder what other bad things we could get rid of by simply changing the law that prohibits them? Just playing devil's advocate here, Kathleen, but could it possibly be the culture that is flawed and not the law?
But, really, what do all these university presidents hope to gain by calling for a change in the drinking age?
I suspect the real motive is that they are tired of being embarrassed by the torrent of booze that practically flows through their campuses, especially given the fact that 7 out of 10 students are under the legal drinking age. Furthermore, I suspect the presidents would like very much not to be held accountable for the overt law-breaking that transpires regularly on campus.
Me? I happen to favor the position held by Arizona senate candidate Russell Pearce (*K, Mesa) who plans to propose a law that would send anyone caught drinking under the age of 21 back to Mexico.
“But, hey, I’m not even FROM Mexico!’’ the offender might argue.
Well, too bad. You are a criminal and, the way Pearce sees it, all criminals should be sent to Mexico.
Now that I think of it, I think Pearce shouldn't be a senator; he should be a university president.
* Kook Party

A whole 'nother level

2008-08-19T10:13:00.001-07:00

I was watching a little bit of the Olympic table tennis competition the other night and, naturally, it reminded me of prison.
I should probably explain that, huh?
Well, once I got out of Sheriff Joe’s Gulag and was transferred to the state prison at Florence, conditions improved in just about every way imaginable. Oh, it still wasn’t like an extended stay at the Four Seasons, which is what some people who don’t love mercy suggest whenever someone brings up poor living conditions in jail/prison.
Well, one of the little things they had there at Florence West prison was a ping-pong (or table tennis, if you prefer) table. These sorts of things were provided for inmates in order to break the monotony of beating each other up. So I played a lot of ping-pong.
Now, back at Itawamba Community College, I was sort of a ping-pong whiz. I wasn’t the best player on campus, but I was in the top five, for sure. But after I left Itawamba, I didn’t play ping-pong again and it’s funny how much your skills can diminish over a quarter-century of inactivity.
So when I first took up the paddle, I wasn’t much competition.
But the rust began to wear off. I was routinely beating my friends. I generally played people I was on good terms with, mainly as a safety precaution. You never know how a convict is going to react to getting skunked, after all.
After a couple of weeks, I was a dominant player. I even began to talk it around that we should put together some sort of ping-pong tournament.
Then one day I walked into the room where the table was located and saw two of Sheriff Joe’s most favorite people in the world - illegal aliens who had been sent to Florence.
Have you watched those Chinese players in the Olympics? Well, that’s pretty close to what I saw while watching these two inmates play. They were simply crushing shots and, more surprisingly, the ball kept coming back over the net somehow.
It was then I realized that if there was a tournament at Florence West, I’d be competing for the bronze - at best.
But isn’t that how it goes in life? Sometimes you fancy yourself pretty good at something, based on what turns out to be pretty limited information.
Poetry is a good example of this. So is singing.
I know a lot of people who sing well. In fact, I have an old high school friend, Jan Grissom, who became one of the world’s top sopranos. Unfortunately, I’ve not had the opportunity to hear Jan sing.
But I’ve heard some people who I thought were pretty good. I am thinking primarily of some people I’ve heard singing at church.
But there is a different level. I realized this when the contemporary Christian group Avalon came to sing at the church I attended. I was simply amazed.
Yes, there is a whole ‘nother level when it comes to singing.
It’s like that with ping-pong, too.
And writing.
Unfortunately.

Getting the Star treatment

2008-08-16T09:11:00.003-07:00

I sat in Steve Strickbine’s office in Scottsdale on Friday morning as we negotiated a deal for me to write columns for his monthly magazines. I use the word “negotiated’’ is the loosest possible terms. Here is how those negotiations went:
Steve: “We would like you to write a column for us each month.’’
Me: “OK.’’
Strickbine is the president of Times Publications. Most likely you have seen his magazines, which are circulated around the Valley as the Scottsdale Times, Gilbert Times, Chandler Times, East Mesa Times, Ahwatukee Times, Northeast Phoenix Times and Glendale Times. About 125,000 copies are printed and distributed at more than 3,000 locations across the Valley.
I have been aware of the Times for a while now. The format allows writers the space necessary to do some in-depth reporting, something you see less and less of in newspapers. What you also see in the Times that you rarely see in newspapers any more is a sense of fun. It’s a lively, entertaining, well-done product.
Probably the most recognizable name among the Time’s contributors is David Leibowitz, a former columnist at both the East Valley Tribune and Arizona Republic and radio show host at KTAR.
Leibowitz writes columns for the Times now. Steve gave me a whole bunch of back issues and I noted that Leibowitz’s columns appear near the front of the magazine. My column, Steve said, will run a little farther back, in the “Voices’’ section.
Now, I don’t know what this means, of course. Although it appears to me that I’m batting clean-up while Leibowitz is up there at the top of the batting order, trying to draw a walk or roll a trickler through the infield. Of course, that is just one way of looking at it, I realize.
At any rate, I’m really excited to have the chance to have my words put on newsprint again. That hasn’t happened with any regularity since Feb. 14, 2007, my last column at the Tribune.
Leibowitz came up in my conversation with Steve. On March 14, 2007, Leibowitz and I met that day under the most unusual of circumstances. I don’t remember what Dave was wearing, but I was wearing the black-and-white stripes, handcuffs and leg shackles. We met in a small room in the visitation area of the Durango Jail in Phoenix. I had been at Durango for 12 days at the time.
I don’t remember hardly anything else about our conversation except for the fact that Leibowitz had a Starbuck’s coffee. Prisoners in Maricopa County are not allowed to have coffee, so I remember fixating on that Starbuck’s cup. In his column, Leibowitz said he was fixated on my leg shackles.
Anyway, we talked about an hour, I think, and then Leibowitz left to write a column and I left to serve another 110 days in custody.
I never did get a chance to see Leibowitz’s column about me and I sort of forgot the whole thing pretty quick. At the time, I was a little preoccupied with not getting beat up by the other inmates.
But Friday, the subject came up and I asked Steve if he had that back issue. He found one and gave it to me.
I was eager to read Leibowitz’s column because I remember how emotionally exhausted I was at the time of the interview. As I turned to the column, I wondered if I had been able to articulate any coherent thought during the interview Not surprisingly, Leibowitz produced an interesting column, even though most of my observations about life in jail could be paraphrased in one phrase: “GET ME OUT OF HERE, PLEASE!’’
But what really caught my attention was the promo of the column on the cover of the magazine. In the top right hand corner of the cover, there was a picture of Leibowitz and a headline that read “Slim Smith’s Tumble’’ with small type that read “Jailhouse interview with a fallen star!’’
The promo was only half an exaggeration, I realize. Fallen, certainly. Star? Well, that’s a pretty liberal use of the term, don’t you think?
Still, I got a good chuckle out of it.
Yes, I think writing for the Times is going to be a lot of fun.
Look for my debut column in the September edition.
They say they are going to promo the column on the cover, too.
“Star Rises From the Ashes’’ is my guess.
Too funny!

A job inquiry

2008-08-13T12:53:00.002-07:00

August 13, 2008

Ms. Marian Frank
Features Department
The Arizona Republic

Ms. Frank,
One of the angels who flitter around and fuss over me and generally look after my well-being forwarded your memo about the job opening you have for a lifestyle columnist for Arizona Living.
After reading the memo very carefully, I have decided to seek this position. I freely admit that I am an unconventional choice for this position in the sense that I am a man and you are looking for someone to write about “issues, trends and experiences that appeal to women 40-49 years old.’’
The conventional candidate, I realize, would be a female in that age range.
Well, there is nothing this side of Sweden I can do about that.
While I am not a female, I have lots of experience with females. My own mother was a female, in fact.
I was once married to a female and if I ever marry again, I intend to marry another female, most likely in the very 40-49 age group you are seeking to serve (I am 49).
I have a sister who is a female. Also, I am a father to a 16-year-old female, which I realize is almost like a sub-species at that bewildering age.
Many of my best friends are females.
Aside from my extensive experience with females, I believe I possess other qualities that suit me for the job.
During my tenure as Metro Columnist at the East Valley Tribune, I found that my
columns had great appeal among women, even though I did not necessarily tailor my subject matter to this demographic.
Women seem to like my writing style, which I would describe as warm, personal, funny and unpretentious (is it pretentious to consider yourself unpretentious, I wonder?)
Modesty aside, I have a singular talent for relating to people on an intimate, emotional level. Women readers especially value that quality, I’ve come to realize.
Male readers generally are fact-driven. A guy wants to know an athlete’s stats. Women, again speaking in general terms, are more interested in how the athlete treats his mama. Men want spreadsheets. Women want stories. That plays to my strength; I am a story-teller.
I also think I have a pretty good feel for what women in the 40-49 are all about. Most are well-established in their careers and homes. Their children are older and they are beginning to wonder if it is possible to have grandchildren without the unflattering necessity of actually being a grandma.
Women in this age group generally have a well-defined sense of identity. Unlike their younger peers, they seem to possess a healthier balance between their personal interests (health, aging, retirement, etc.) and more universal concerns (community, charity, the environment, “Dancing With The Stars.’’)
They read more, are more discriminate in their choices and more certain of their convictions. They have been around the block; you can’t fool them.
I admire women in this age group. They are smart, interesting people.
I would like to write for them.
I am pretty sure they would like that, too.
Thanks for your consideration.
Respectfully,

Slim Smith

P.S. Your memo mentioned that you are looking for a mix of Anna Quindlan, Ellen Goodman and Dave Barry. The voices in my head were all excited to hear there are jobs out there for schizophrenics!

Beard dives into shallow end of the pool

2008-08-11T09:29:00.009-07:00

Like most Arizonans watching the Olympics, I am rooting especially for the athletes who have Arizona ties.
There are a whole bunch of them, but I’ll not bother to suggest a number. I’ll leave that to the media, which appears to be obsessed with that sort of thing. Perhaps as a means of justifying the expense of sending reporters to China to cover the event “from an Arizona perspective,’’ some of the media have really gone to extremes to pronounce as many athletes as possible as having an Arizona connection.
Rest assured, if an Olympic athlete’s sister-in-law’s third cousin once went to NAU for a semester, that athlete is considered to have “Arizona ties.’’ Well, there is one Arizona athlete I simply can't root for.
Her name is Amanda Beard, a four-time Olympian and multiple medal-winner in swimming. Without question, Beard is a phenomenal talent. But I simply cannot cheer her on because she represents much of what I believe has gone desperately wrong in our culture.
Beard was making news long before she began her Olympic competition by posing nude, with an American flag as a backdrop, for a PETA ad. Beard explained that she posed nude to call attention to the cruelty of the fur industry.
Beard is an expert on this topic by virtue of having watched some PETA-produced videos about the subject.
I can only assume that before watching these videos, she was a wholesome, modest, decent young woman who - when confronted with the cruelty of the fur industry - did what any clear-headed, idealistic person would do - take all her clothes off and adorn herself with the invisible cloak of Bimbo-ism. I thought the American flag was a nice touch, too. It speaks so eloquently of all that is good and decent and virtuous in our country, don’t you think?
Now, this sort of distasteful extremism is only to be expected from PETA, whose president once wrote a letter of complaint to Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat when a suicide bomber committed the unspeakable atrocity of using a donkey in a bombing that - oh, by the way - killed a dozen or so innocent “non-animals.’’ The letter didn’t object to the human carnage, of course, since those victims were considered by PETA as merely collateral damage.
Yes, I think it is safe to say that there is no depth of poor taste PETA will not plumb in an effort to promote its agenda.
That is why I would like to have given Beard the benefit of the doubt by considering the possibility that she - being young, attractive and naive - was merely an unwitting pawn in PETA’s army of kooks.
There is no question she was an easy target for PETA recruiters, having grown up so very blond in Southern California and going to college at the University of Arizona in Tucson, otherwise known as Raza-ville. The girl never had a chance.
But, on the other hand, this was not Beard's first venture into exhibitionism. In a culture where Paris Hilton is the Queen of Empty-Headed Sexpots, Beard is obviously angling for a prominent place in her court.
Beard says she posed nude for PETA to support a cause. Well, I wonder: What cause she was advocating when she posed nude for Playboy and various other magazines that exists for primarily as an aid for men’s acts of, uh, self-gratification?
If you are female reading this, I hope you will take time out to enlighten me on this subject: What is it about the female gender that makes young girls consider being the object of lust for some greasy middle-aged truck-driver grunting in a restroom stall such a great achievement? I am reminded of a quote attributed to the late British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge: "How do I know pornography depraves and corrupts? It depraves and corrupts me.''
Some of you might be inclined to quibble over whether or not Beard's photos are pornographic. To clarify, here's what I have adopted as a reasonable standard for determining what is or isn't pornography: Would you be comfortable showing it to either your child or your mother?
Of course, in our Western culture, no one even bothers to ask that sort of question anymore. As the esteemed Hilton might say, “There’s nothing better than being hot.’’ Poor deluded soul.
So, no, I’ll not be cheering on Arizona’s favorite exhibitionist when she hit’s the pool in China. I don't believe in her "cause.'' In fact, I don't even believe in her sincerity in supporting it.
Beard can pontificate all she wants about the fur industry, but I’ll bet if Nike developed a swimsuit made from the hides of baby seals that would shave .01 seconds off her time, she’d be out there balancing a beach ball on her nose and barking “Gimme!‘’

Why Tupelo "Rocks!''

2008-08-04T13:01:00.012-07:00

I do not know what it was that turned my attention to my hometown. Maybe it is the uncertain nature of my current prospects. The clouds of my childhood are white and fluffy; those on the horizon, bleak and foreboding.
Maybe it was just a random thought that popped in my mind and snuggled in for a while, you know, sort of like a tune that keeps playing in your head.
Maybe it was something I ate.
Whatever the reason, I’ve been a little preoccupied with pleasant thoughts of home, which in my case is Tupelo, Mississippi.
As is often the case with hometowns, I realize that Tupelo is a great place to live if you don't actually live there anymore.
If you have heard of Tupelo, most likely it is because Tupelo is the birthplace of Elvis Presley. Also, Tupelo pops up from time to time in song lyrics, which suggests it must have some lyrical quality that my limited training renders me unable to identify.
When I lived there 30 years ago, the population was around 20,000, which qualified Tupelo as a major city by Mississippi standards. That meant that Tupelo residents were adorned with an air of big-city sophistication that people in Pontotoc or Booneville or Baldwin could never claim.
Tupelo was designated as an “All-America City’’ in the early 60s. Also, Tupelo was the first city to get its electric power from the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s. There was a Civil War battle there, but I don’t remember who won.
But most of all, Tupelo takes inordinate pride in being the “birthplace of Elvis.’’ He is not the only famous singer from Tupelo, though. Guy Hovis, Jr. is from Tupelo. He was a singer on the Lawrence Welk Show. But perhaps the best singer, judged solely on the quality of voice, is Jan Grissom. I went to high school with Jan, but I didn’t find out until recently that she went on to become a world-renowned soprano, a member of the Metropolitan Opera who sang with Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo and a lot of other famous opera stars I never heard of.
Of more prominence, at least in my view, is that she was not once, but twice a guest on the “Prairie Home Companion’’ radio show with Garrison Kellior. Let me state now that I would do anything - including contract killing - to be on the "Prairie Home Companion'' show.
Yes, like most folks from Tupelo, I am proud of my hometown.
It has little to do with the honors it has received or the talented people who call it home.
Instead, it is the city’s healthy self-image. Tupelo is a great place because the people there believe it is. It is a town that takes some things very seriously - education and community service - but doesn’t take itself too seriously. People there are as inclined to embrace their quirks as quickly as their virtues.
As evidence of this quality, I submit this story about Tupelo:
Long before I came along, there was a pedestal outside the entrance of the Leake & Goodlett building supply store on East Main St. On it, there was a large oval stone. This, too, was a point of pride for the community.
There was an inscription on the pedestal that identified the stone as “The Tupelo Meteorite.’’
The inscription tells how the 1,100-pound meteorite fell to the earth near Nettleton, Miss., in 1870 where it was discovered by a farmer whose initial thought was likely to have been, “Great, another big, stupid rock I have to plow around!’’
Now, people in that agrarian part of the world are familiar with rocks of all shapes, sizes and hues. But there was something about this rock that suggested it was unique, even other-worldly. For one thing, there was its symmetry; rocks are rarely as oval as this one. The other thing was that, at least according to the farmer, the rock wasn’t in the field one day, but was the next. Your average, every-day, run-of-the-mill rock generally just doesn't show up in people's fields unannounced.
So based on such empirical evidence, the rock was proclaimed to be a meteorite and was brought to town and given a place of prominence. After all, there aren't many towns that have their own meteorites. Memphis doesn't have one. Neither does Atlanta or New Orleans.
The rock that suddenly appeared out of nowhere didn’t always stay put, though. Over the years, it could be found on the top of Dudie’s Dinner, in the foyer of the high school and at numerous other inappropriate venues around town. I confess that I had a hand in pilfering the meteorite and placing it in the foyer of the high school in 1977. I can say that now because the statute of limitation on such an offense has almost certainly expired by now.
But in 1980, a Dr. John Harris (a Yankee, I strongly suspect) happened to come across the meteorite as he was driving through Tupelo on the way to Ole Miss to give a lecture to whatever sober students he could round up.
Harris was a NASA chemist and nuclear physicist, so the Tupelo Meteorite was of great professional interest. He asked someone, probably Mayor Ballard, if he could borrow the meteorite to take it back to Houston for closer examination. Well, given the fact that people had been "borrowing'' the meteorite for years - and for far less edifying purposes - Mayor Ballard could hardly object.
Well, he should have, because a few months later Harris returned and pronounced that the meteorite was, uh, meteor-wrong. “It’s just a chunk of concreted sandstone,’’ he said.
It is at this point, where the true character of Tupelo was best exhibited. In fact, I consider it the town's finest hour.
I suspect that most towns, upon hearing that for more than 100 years they had been being paying homage to a chunk of concreted sandstone, would have taken great pains to quickly distance itself from the matter and hope that everybody else, especially those rubes in Pontotoc or Booneville or Baldwin, would eventually quit laughing.
But that is not the course that Tupelo pursued.
Instead, they quietly took possession of this giant rock and simply placed it back on its pedestal.
Furthermore, the inscription on the pedestal was not amended in any way.
It strikes me as an act of quiet, dignified defiance.
That is why, in the highly unlikely event that you happen to find yourself on East Main St. in Tupelo Mississippi, you will see The Tupelo Meteorite sitting proudly on its pedestal out front of the Leake & Goodlettt building.
Unless of course, it’s on the top of Dudie’s Dinner.

Comfort Food

2008-07-27T13:07:00.005-07:00

I’m in Mesa and I’m not really supposed to be here.
No, it’s not as though that I have been banned from Mesa or anything sinister like that. (On second thought, who knows, maybe I am banned from Mesa; I haven’t looked at my court papers in a while).
It’s just that I was supposed to be back at home in Tempe after back-to-back house/animal-sitting engagements in Mesa, then Ahwatukee.
But the day I left Mesa, the folks I was house-sitting for - Ron and Joanie Newth - were involved in a pretty bad crash on the interstate. Ron suffered broken ribs, broken bones in one hand, a couple of broken fingers on the other and a concussion. He was released from the hospital Monday (July 21). Joanie is still in the hospital where she is recovering from broken ribs, punctured lungs and a stubborn infection in her leg.
'Since I’m in a position to help out, I returned to the Newths home here in Mesa on Friday and will be here until Ron runs me off. Presumably, the idea was that I would be handy to help Ron with things while he continues to recover.
But Saturday morning, Ron was busy making French toast for our breakfast while I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper. Can you spot what’s wrong with this picture?
Anyway, any of you who know the Newths will be relieved to know that Ron is taking excellent care of me.
In my defense, I will say that I mowed the lawn. So there.
Of course, I stand ready to help, should Ron need it.
It would be difficult for me to deny Ron and Joan anything, to be honest. Of course, I don't actually HAVE anything, so there's no real internal conflict on my part, if you know what I mean.
The larger point I am trying to make here is that the Newths were there for me in my most difficult days.
On April 21, 2007 (coincidentally that was also the anniversary date of my mother’s death), I received a letter from The Tribune saying that the paper had changed its mind and decided to fire me. In an instant, I was just another incarcerated convict, with nothing much waiting for me outside the prison gate - no home, no job, no plans. The next day, I wrote a terrified letter to Ron and Joanie, asking them to put the word out that I would need a place to stay and a job. Did they know anyone who could help?
They were the one couple that I somehow knew would be there to help. This, despite the fact that I had only known them for a few years and we were more acquaintances than close friends.
A lot of people that I knew much better than the Newths didn‘t waste any time in putting some distance between themselves and me. Not the Newths.
Looking back, there were a handful of truly supportive people who held me up when I was sinking - when, in fact, I sorta wanted to sink. I am referring to folks like Mark and Ranae Salem, Matt and Billye Paulson, Rex Griswold (he offered to let me stay in his home: Imagine THAT conversation: “Honey, get the guest bedroom ready! A convicted felon is coming to live with us!), Geri Koeppel and, of course, my brothers and sister.
So, I will be forever indebted to the folks like the Newths. Ron can make me French toast as long as he wants, as far as I’m concerned.
Funny, our whole relationship started with food.
Back in December of 2005, I wrote a column satirizing a meeting of the Mesa City Council. (if you want to read that column you can find it at: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/55597).
A couple of days later, I arrived at the office to find a fresh loaf of homemade banana nut bread on my desk with a note from Joanie, a woman I had never met, saying how much she enjoyed my column. That still stands out as one of my favorite memories of my days as the Metro Columnist at the Tribune. It is not for me to say how good that column was, but I bet Hemingway never got homemade banana nut bread for anything he wrote. I’m just saying, you know?
Anyway, like so many people in this part of the world, I’ve grown to love and admire the Newths. They are kind and thoughtful and generous. They’re bright, articulate and hospitable.
During the time I’ve spent with Ron here, I have witnessed how deeply moved he has been by the many expressions of sympathy he has received as he and Joanie recuperate. But that kind of outpouring of affection doesn’t surprise me at all. The Newths have been sowing kindness for years. The crop is coming in, now that they need that sort of nourishment.
I don’t necessarily eye-to-eye with Ron and Joanie on everthing, of course. When it comes to politics they are a little more liberal than I am. For example, they have two miniature schnauzers. Their names are Barack and Hillary.
Of course, while I was house-sitting I called them Ron and Nancy.
But, please, don’t tell the Newths.
I’ve grown quite fond of Ron’s French toast.

Gray's Anatomy

2008-07-21T21:41:00.003-07:00

Two pretty little girls stand in the living room and it is obvious from their posture and demeanor that they have rehearsed the speech they are about to deliver.
Their dad is sitting there in the living room in his favorite chair. I’m guessing he is watching a ballgame on TV, although it is strictly conjecture on my part. That’s what I do when I sit in my easy chair.
The elder of the two girls, says in a solemn tone, “Dad, it’s time.’’
The younger pipes in on cue, ‘You would be a nice catch for someone.’’
The elder daughter reveals the box she has been hiding behind her back.
It is a box of “Just for Men’’ hair coloring.
You see, dad suffers from a condition that insures perpetual solitude. Dad has gray hair, which means he is condemned to a life of - I don’t know - watching whatever he wants to watch on TV, eating dinner in his boxers when his daughters aren’t staying over, playing golf on both Saturday AND Sunday if he chooses, not having to lower the lid on the toilet and not having to go see “Sex & The City‘’ or - even worse - "Mamma Mia!'' when he really wanted to see “Iron Man.’’
Now, you can bet if this dad’s progeny had been boys instead of girls, the scene would have played out differently, maybe like this:
Elder son: “Dad, it’s time.’’
Younger son holds out a box.
It is Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.
Now, of course this is simply a television ad. The folks at “Just For Men,’’ are making a point: Gray hair isn’t appealing to women, at least it isn't appealing to lean, long-legged, pretty women in their early 30s.
Based on my own observations, I am conflicted over the accuracy of this claim. As you can tell from my photo, I have gray hair. I am alone. I have not noticed any lean, long-legged pretty women in their early 30s knocking on my door. Of course, I did go to the mailbox down the street a while back. Maybe they came by then. I don’t know. I sorta doubt it.
On the other hand, many women have told me that they find gray hair attractive on a guy.
So maybe it isn’t my gray hair. A quick personal inventory seems appropriate:
Things I have:
A felony conviction.
A winning personality.
A lots of silly stories.
Things I don’t have:
A drivers license.
A home of my own.
A car.
A decent job.
A savings account.
Hmmm.
Yes, it is obviously to the gray hair that’s holding me back.
But, then again, there is one huge problem with this conclusion: I already tried coloring my hair.
Really, it was my brother Mick’s fault. About a year-and-a-half ago, he came to visit from Houston and attended church with me. All the folks at church told me how nice it was to meet my younger brother.
Younger brother? He’s four years older than me, for cryin’ out loud!
My brother is living a lie, you see. He’s been coloring his hair for years, the big fraud.
Well, I was so offended that the next day I went down to Smart Clips and had them color my hair. The cosmetologist lady asked me what my natural color was.
“Brown….I think, Yes, brown. I’m pretty sure.’’
An hour later, I emerged from the Smart Clips with a head full of dark, brown hair.
Over the course of the next few days, I noticed that women did not seem to be paying any attention at all. Sometimes I'd walk right past the same woman two or three times, running my hand through my thick brown hair. No response at all, although one lady did threaten to call 9-1-1, if you can count that as a reaction.
None of my male friends noticed, of course That's how guys are. You could walk past your friend with one of your arms torn off and he might not notice. Men tend not to look at each other. Ever.
Of course, there were some women who noticed. My ex-wife, for example. Co-workers, too. And folks at the church. Nobody liked it. Now, they just didn’t come out and say it, of course. But I could tell by their forced smile and the rather vague compliments. “Wow, you look really different!’’ That sort of thing.
The one exception was my teenage daughter, Abby.
“Cool!’’ she said.
Of course, Abby changes her hair color about once per month, so that pretty much eliminated her as an impartial witness.
To be honest, I didn’t like it, either. I felt like a total phony and couldn’t wait for the color to fade to gray.
So, here I am.
Gray again.
And all alone.
Watching a ballgame on TV.
Eating dinner in my boxers.
Works for me.

Streaking down Memory Lane

2008-07-18T09:27:00.007-07:00

A brief in Friday’s edition of the Arizona Republic caught my attention and made me wax nostalgic.
OK, “wax’’ is not a word I generally use every day. But if Bill Goodykoontz, the Republic's movie critic, can refer to a movie as being a “lark’’ then I should have some license, too. By the way, I thought a lark was some sort of bird. Also, I vaguely recall that Lark was also a brand of cigarettes way back when.
At any rate, the brief was about how the Gilbert police were looking for a man accused of indecent exposure after a woman saw him running naked through a park Thursday morning.
According to the report, he was last seen riding a bike into a neighborhood. I am assuming he was still naked at that point, but the story doesn’t say.
Anyway, the police were provided a pretty good description. The perp is reported to be between 20 and 30 years old, is about 5-foot-10 and 130 pounds and has a tattoo of a sun on his right thigh.
I’d say the woman got a REALLY good look at the offender. At this point, I half expected her to say that the offender likes long walks on the beach, cuddling, old movies and is possibly Jewish, if you get my drift.
I mean, heck, she got everything but a phone number, you know?
Of course, these days the idea of a man running naked through the park is, in some quarter, considered a serious offense. You can get prison time for it, in fact. And after you get out, you have to register as a sex offender and folks will hound you out of any decent neighborhood.
Ah, but this was not always the case.
Well do I know that, in fact.
Let’s travel back to the summer of 1975. A group of 16-year-old boys are hanging out at one of the kid’s homes. They are bored because it is summer, they are 16 and the XBox won’t be invented for another 25 years.
So, one of the boys stands up, strips off his Peter Frampton T-shirt and announces, “I’m going to streak around the subdivision.’’
This pronouncement prompts a lively discussion among the boys. Wagers are made. Then off comes the Levis and Fruit Of The Looms and he is standing there, wearing only his Converse All-Stars.
As the boys begin to scream and holler, heads peak out through the windows of the houses along the previously quiet street. As the boy begins to run down the sidewalk, 14-year-old Avery Bank is, at that very moment, walking out her front door, oblivious to the figure that is soon to pass with a few feet of her.
She hears the hollers, looks up and sees the boy right in front of her. The boy sees her stunned expression as he passes and laughs so hard he almost stumbles.
Soon, he has made the complete circuit and is greeted with cheers from his buddies.
They laugh, slap five (high-fives would not be invented for another five years or so).
Then one of the boys, Bill Perkins, makes a suggestion:
“You know, if you really want to do it right, you should streak by Rockwell,’’ he says.
Now this suggestion represents a serious raising of the stakes.
Rockwell Park is where all the high school kids hang out in Tupelo on a Saturday night. To streak past Rockwell Park - the plan involves running behind Perkin’s ratty old Ford pick-up truck with its headlights flashing and horn blowing - would be an enormous risk. But it would also insure the streaker a permanent place in Tupelo folklore.
“I’ll do it,’’ I said.
So, a hundred feet or so before the entrance to the Park, I emerged from the pick-up truck and made my dash into immortality, with Perkins blasting the horn and shutting the headlights on and off. The kids at the park began to hoop and holler, girls peaked and blushed and laughed.
And at the end of the circuit, the truck stopped and I climbed back into the cab of the truck.
An hour later, Randall, who had also been in the truck told me that he had to talk Perkins out of abandoning me, naked, and speeding away.
“I would have killed him,’’ I said, laughing. That would have been pretty funny, I had to admit.
Now, I don’t know what would have happened if the cops had caught me that summer night 33 years ago. But I doubt I would have had to register for anything or being facing any jail time. Of course, my folks would have gone ballistic, so I'm grateful I wasn't caught.
Of course, times have changed.
There was a time when simply being naked wasn’t considered a sex crime. Heck, I can remember many times when Southern mama’s wouldn’t even let their muddy children set foot in the house. If you had been playing in mud holes - another pre-video-game pastime - your mama would make you strip naked out on the front lawn while she washed you down with the garden hose. Mamas were more concerned with the state of their carpet than any embarrassment suffered as a result on being naked out on the front lawn. Mamas back then were practical that way.
I would strongly suggest mamas avoid this these days. Otherwise, you can expect a visit from CPS.
Late humor columnist Lewis Grizzard put it pretty well, I thought, when he said that there was two states of being unclothed: Naked and Nekked. Naked is when you don’t have any clothes on. Nekked is when you don’t have any clothes on and you’re up to something.
Now, I don’t know the intentions of this guy in Gilbert. I like to think t was just a bit of innocent exuberance. I hope that’s the case.
Somehow, I suspect the woman who reported the incident feels the same way.
It was just a lark, after all.

"Ripped From The Headlines''

2008-07-10T22:24:00.006-07:00

Well, we had the quarterly meeting of the Board of Directors for this blog this afternoon and big changes are in the works, let me tell ya.
The biggest change will be an additional feature, a commentary on stories “ripped from the headlines of today’s news.‘’ That used to be a promo used on the TV show “Law And Order.‘’ Very dramatic, huh?
The board, in case you are wondering, consists of me and the other residents who live on the property, all of whom happen to be horses.
Anyway, the vote for six in favor, none opposed, with Bernie the draft horse abstaining in favor of hogging all the alfalfa while the rest of us discussed the idea.
I’m not sure how often I’ll do this: Fortunately, the board has given me great latitude on the content of this site, mainly because none of them ever read it anyway.
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
“Man caught with Cocaine in Shoe”
A Chandler man was arrested Thursday after police said he was supporting a lifestyle based on drug sales in the presence of small children.
Rene Saul Arrieta, 27, was arrested at Dobson and Elliot roads Thursday after police said they found approximately 2 ounces of cocaine inside his shoes while he was in the presence of four children between the ages of 1 and 9.
COMMENTARY: Gellin’ like a felon. Literally.
“Gilbert Woman To Be On Big Brother 10’’
A woman from the Higley area of Gilbert made the cast for the 10th season of CBS's Big Brother that premieres Sunday.
April Dowling, 30, is a financial manager for a car dealership, and according to the show's Web site, is obsessive-compulsive and can't sleep unless the bottles in the refrigerator are lined up correctly.
COMMENTARY: I did some further research on this story and discovered that this woman is very blonde and, uh, busty, to put it delicately. Shocking, huh?
I think it’s wonderful that we have someone from our own backyard joining this cesspool of a show. I am wondering now how long she will maintain her virtue. My guess: She’ll be deflowered by the second commercial break, if past shows are any barometer.
If you know this woman's parents, good taste dictates that you avoid the subject altogether when in their presence.
“Sheriff Won’t Be Deterred By Graffiti Incident’’
Sheriff Joe Arpaio says the Mesa graffiti incident won't hold him back from doing his job.
Graffiti of Arpaio's head and the words "Nazi Joe" were recently spotted on several buildings in downtown Mesa.
"There hasn't been one elected official to step up and say 'they shouldn't be saying these things about our Sheriff' regardless of what they believe," Arpaio said. "Where is everybody? For me, no one cares."
COMMENTARY: It’s a comfort to know that Joe’s single-handed mission to Make The World Safe For Inhumanity will not be impeded by the presence of his name on some cinder block walls in Mesa. Quite frankly, I would expect nothing less from “The Toughest Human Being Who Ever Lived” or whatever title he claims for himself these days.
I suspect Joe is already brushing back the tears (For me, no one cares!) and making plans for another massive assault in an effort to get those dangerous hotel maids off the streets.
The real news here is that Joe’s name wasn’t already on all those cinder block walls to begin with. Look around: Everything in the county seems to have Joe’s name on it. If he ever leaves office , it’s going to cost the county about a zillion dollars to take his name off everything.

xxx

GOOD NIGHT! And remember, if you can read this blog, thank a teacher. If you can read this blog in English, thank a soldier. If you can read this blog in English and Arabic, thank Barack Obama.

AARP jumps the gun

2008-07-09T21:10:00.006-07:00

The very first e-mail I opened Wednsesday morning was an invitation from AARP.
“Happy Birthday to me,,‘’ I thought.
Then I thought, “Hey, hold your horses on that invite, hoss. I’m only 49 today!’’
Wednesday was my birthday. I was born on July 9, 1959. Do the math. I am 49. Honest.
That’s the problem with being 29 or 39 or 49, I suppose. Any birthday with a “9’’ at the end invites skepticism.
Fortunately, my birthday fortunes improved as the day progressed.
Part of my morning ritual is to read through the Valley’s two newspaper websites and I quickly discovered that Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts had chosen Wednesday to publish a column about me. I doubt that she wrote the column to coincide with my birthday, though. I suspect it was mere happenstance, one of those rare days when Sheriff Joe isn’t up to some self-promoting nonsense.
Laurie was very generous to me in her column. She even included this blog address and, boy, did readers flock to it. Normally, I’ll get a couple dozen visits per day. By early Wednesday afternoon, more than 300 people had chosen to visit the blog. Of course, that means I’m going to have to be a little more diligent in writing blog entries, now that I’ve captured a wider audience.
Many of the visitors to the blog followed up with an e-mail to me. I even reconnected with a few of my old readers from my days at the Tribune, which was very nice.
One guy from Prescott e-mailed me to ask my advice. He’s headed to prison for a four-month DUI sentence later this month. I called him Wednesday evening and we talked for more than an hour about what he could expect in prison. It made me feel good to be able to answer his questions, to assure him that he can get through the experience. I thought back to how frightened I was about the prospects of going to prison.
Laurie also forwarded me responses she received. Several of them mentioned job prospects. So we shall see. I am hopeful, as you might imagine.
I’m certainly grateful to Laurie. I can‘t see much news value in a column about me, to be honest. I will say that is very odd to be the subject of a columnist. I had always been on the other end of that particular stick, after all. She was kinder to me than I deserve, I realize, although she didn't mention in the column anything about my rugged good looks. Maybe the editor took that part out because of space limitations. I’m going with that theory, anyway.
All of my brothers and my sister called with birthday greetings. Birthday cards arrived in the mail from my kids and ex-wife (we have a surprisingly good relationship now that she’s shed of me, oddly enough) and my dear, sweet friend Ann in Queen Creek.
So, on the balance, it was a very good birthday.
I look forward to hearing from AARP this time next year.

An old dog, a new trick

2008-07-08T13:39:00.004-07:00

Maggie is going home tomorrow and I’ll miss her.
Calling your attention to the photo on the right side of the page, you’ll note that Maggie is a dog, an Airedale Terrier/German Shepherd mix.
She has been staying with me for the past week while her owners were on vacation in Boston. We’ve had no disputes, really. Oh, the first time I left the house, she proceeded to shred the bamboo blinds on the front door, but I do not believe she did this with any malice. I think she was just suffering from a little separation anxiety, which is understandable since she was in unfamiliar surroundings.
But that has been just a hiccup. We’ve gotten along famously, to be honest.
Each morning, before the heat becomes too oppressive, we talk a little walk. In the evenings, we take a longer walk, usually about 45 minutes.
Now, I am sure that Maggie will be happy to be back home. After all, she has a lot more room there and more people, too, including a couple of kids. Dogs love kids, it’s been my experience.
So, while I’m sure she’ll enjoy being reunited with her family, I also believe that she’s enjoyed her stay here. I know I’ve enjoyed having her.
I gave her snacks and belly rubs and a place of prominence on my bed. (not my side, of course; we worked that out on Day 1).
Really, it’s a pretty good place for a dog. Because I live on an “urban ranch,’’ there are a lot of things that are of natural interest to dogs
Now, as the time approaches for Maggie‘s departure, I realize that she has been teaching me a pretty good life lesson.
They say you can‘t teach an old dog a new trick. But I reckon an old dog can teach us a lesson or two, if we pay attention.
The first couple of days, as we made our evening walks, Maggie seemed to be aware of everything we approached. There were many, many thinks to sniff, to study, to bark at. During those first couple of days, she must have stuck her nose in every gopher hole on the property, which is saying something. She put all the horses on the property to a through sniff test, and they returned the favor. She stared, fascinated, at the goats and the Alpaca who live on a nearby property. Alpacas are world-class competitors when it comes to a stare contest, by the way.
Yes, Maggie spent our entire walks sniffing and discovering and investigatin g. She seemed to be aware of everything.
And, then, on our third evening walk, she spotted a rabbit. The fact that it took her three days to see a rabbit is a bit surprising, to be honest, for the rabbits are plentiful and unafraid here on the ranch. You can approach to within a few feet of them.
But a rabbit’s instincts tell it that a dog is a predator. And in Maggie’s case, those instincts were correct. Maggie spotted her first rabbit as we were leaving the house. The rabbit was lounging under a horse trailer when it caught Maggie’s eye. Suddenly, Maggie was sprinting after the rabbit, almost jerking my arm out of its socket, so hard did she pull on the leash.
Well, that single incident changed the nature of our walks.
What had been a leisurely stroll, became - at least from Maggie’s point of view - a hunt for blood.
From that point on, she rarely investigated any gopher holes or stopped to sniff out the scents that had always fascinated her in the pre-rabbit excursions. Horses, alpacas, other dogs - they also disappeared from Maggie’s consciousness.
Her’s was a single-minded obsession. The multitude of pleasures that greeted her along the way in previous walks seemed to offer no solace.
I think it was a poor choice on Maggie’s part. After all, she must have realized the futility of it. There was no way I was going to let her off that leash. She was never going to catch a rabbit.
And yet, she persisted in her obsession.
I wonder if we humans aren’t like that, too.
I know I am.
God save us from our most desperate desire. Its pursuit can blind us to all other blessings.
I guess Maggie taught me a lesson she can’t learn for herself.
Thanks, girl.

A year out of prison

2008-07-02T17:33:00.003-07:00

Today is Wednesday, July 2. That means that one year ago today, I walked out of Florence West prison. I doubt that Emily Post has a section on how such anniversaries are to be commemorated.
Here’s how I chose to do it.
I’m having a friend over. Her name is Maggie. She’ll be staying with me for a week. She came in last night and the only instructions I had for her was to show her which side of the bed was mine. I should point out that Maggie is a dog. I mean, a real dog. I am taking care of her for a friend, who is vacationing in Boston for a week.
Maggie is part Airedale Terrier, part German Shepherd. Basically, she is a large fuzzy-faced dog.
And, like most all dogs, she is a very good listener.
It’s kind of nice to have someone to share my thoughts with on this occasion. For some reason, the anniversary date of my release for prison has been on my mind for the past couple of weeks. During that time, I’ve been trying to reflect on what has happened since then and what this whole experience has meant.
Well, I wish I could share with you some profound conclusion. But the truth is, in many respects, I don’t think I’ve made a whole lot of progress since the day I got out of prison.
Back then, I was brimming with optimism. I figured I’d be able to land a job with a newspaper or, failing that, find a job in a related field and would quickly get back on my feet financially. Well, it’s been a year and I’m still just scraping by, still looking for work, still applying for jobs online, still waiting for responses to those applications that never come.
Back then, I had entertained the idea that I could somehow re-connect with my fiancé,, who broke up with me a few months before I went to prison. To my surprise, I found that she had met someone else and got married while I was in prison. So that door has been slammed big-time. To be honest, it still stings a bit.
So, by all outward appearances, I’m still in pretty much the same spot as I was when I got out of Florence West 365 days ago.
But in another sense, I think maybe I have made some progress. More and more, I am beginning to view this whole experience, which began with my DUI arrest on Feb. 19, 2006, as primarily a spiritual journey.
And as I reflect on this past two-and-a-half years, I’ve come to realize that God has used these often painful circumstances to point me toward those things that are really important in life.
And slowly, I am beginning to realize that while a fulfilling career, a companion, and a secure financial future are all things to be desired, they aren‘t the essence of life.
All the things we can see or touch or possess in this world are temporary. The enduring things - faith, hope and love - are the real treasures of life.
And that is why, through no credit of my own, I find that with each job rejection, I am more hopeful, not less. That is why, on those days when it occurs to me that, gee, it would be great to have a mate to share my day with, I find that I am not so lonely anymore. And that is why I find myself to be more empathetic toward people I would have previously judged ever so harshly.
I’ve come to understand that there are really only two kinds of people in this world: The Unrighteous and The Self-Righteous. It’s pretty obvious that I fall into the latter camp. What I realize now, is that it’s the best camp to be in.
So, while my external circumstances may not have improved in any discernable way, I know that I am a better man than I was back then. That’s progress of the best sort.
Of course, I cannot accept any credit for that. People don’t change. People are changed. If I’m better, God made me better.
So here it is a year later and these days I find that my life is sort of like trying to put together one of those giant jig-saw puzzle. Only I don’t have to cover of the box to look at.
The big picture has yet to emerge and, as you might imagine, I am extremely curious to see what it will be. But for now, the best I can do each day is to find pieces that seem to fit together and trust that the picture, a good picture, will someday emerge.
What do you think, Maggie?

The Intolerant Christ

2008-06-24T21:50:00.009-07:00

Well, this was a head-scratcher.
You may have seen the latest survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Versions of the story ran in most major newspapers on Tuesday.
The survey finds that a majority of those who are affiliated with a religion do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation.
Now, there’s nothing extraordinary about that in and of itself. After all, this idea of polytheism has been circulating since antiquity.
What is surprising is that the survey indicates that 57 percent of those who described themselves as evangelical Christians hold that view.
At this point, I add my own data: 57 percent of those who describe themselves as evangelical Christians aren’t.
Now I know this is going to seem like a harsh assessment. It may even sound mean-spirited, disrespectful, I realize.
That sort of thinking simply does not conform with the Cult of Tolerance, which is apparently the god of this age.
But sometimes intolerance is the only real choice.
The fact is, we demand intolerance in many important areas of our lives.
For example, it is intolerant that 2 +2 = 4. There are pre-schoolers out there for whom a tolerant view of the equation would allow for the answer to be 5 or 7 and 34. A child who adds 2 and 2 and gets 5 is no less sincere and honorable than the child that arrives at 4.
And while it may bruise a child’s ego to be told that his addition is faulty, it is better for him to suffer that shame than continue in error. Common sense tells us that much.
No doubt, it is harsh when the doctor arrives with a grim prognosis, but no one is his right mind would expect the doctor to tell his patient he has the flu when the doctor knows the patient has cancer. It is better, in this case, not to spare the truth to in order to spare one’s feelings.
So what do you think? Is it intolerant to claim that the only way to God is through the Christian faith? Before we get to that, I think it's important to recognize the true nature of tolerance.
Genuine tolerance, the sort that should be advocated, is simply this: Impose your beliefs on no one; share them on anyone who inquires. That is what I have tried to do. It is consistent with my faith while being generous to those outside my faith.
During the darkest days of my recent journey, I've been most comforted by people of other faiths. People like Ann Rosenberg and Lowell Cohn, both Jewish, have been so kind and sharing that I know that I will never be able to repay the debt of gratitude I owe them.
So, even though my faith differs from theirs, I do not believe that either would suggest that I am intolerant.
But when it comes to Christians, I can speak with certainty on this point, although I am only a layman.. To wit: A Christian simply cannot hold the view that there are other paths that lead to God outside the Christian faith.
Rather than take my word for it, better to go to the authority on this subject. So what did Jesus have to say on the matter?
Here’s what:
“I am the way, the Truth and the Life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.’’ (John 14:6, emphasis is mine)
There is nothing ambiguous in that statment, no grounds on which to arrive at a diffferent interpretation that would open the door for the validity of other faith systems.
Notice, Jesus did not say, “I am one way, one truth and one life. Some men cometh unto the Father by me.’’
The implications are obvious: The person who believes that salvation can come from a source other than Christ contradicts Christ himself and, by extension, cannot seriously consider himself a Christian. I don’t know what that person is, quite frankly.
Like I said, it’s a head-scratcher.
And it should be a wake-up call to the clergy.
These days, you will hear a lot of ministers lamenting the demise of Christian ideals in the public arena. But I wonder if that angst isn't misdirected in light of the Pew survey. Seems to me those ideals are as scarce in the church house and the home as they are in the schools and court house.
Which, do you think, represents a greater threat to the faith?

You can cancel my Library card

2008-06-19T11:13:00.003-07:00

I had just boarded the 62 Hardy North bus on the way to visit a friend who is gravely ill and being treated at Banner Baywood Medical Center in Mesa. It’s about a 2-hour trip.
No sooner had I settled into my seat than I got a call from the man’s wife, who said the doctor’s were performing a procedure and that he would not be allowed any visitors for 24 hours.
Since I was already on the bus, I decided just to ride along to the end of the route, which happens to end at the ASU campus. From there, I made my way over to the Mill Ave. District.
It was about 3 p.m., and one of those blistering hot June days. The first few weeks of summer are the worst, I think, because it takes about a month or so of 100-plus temps to get acclimated. You could tell that nobody on Mill Ave. was acclimated. People moved very slowly. It was so hot, in fact, that I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walking.
Normally, when I visit Mill Ave., I head to the Borders to drink coffee and look through books. But it was so hot that coffee didn’t seem all that appealing. So I stopped in at a bar/ restaurant on the corner of 5th St. and Mill Ave. to suck down some ice tea. There were only a handful of folks there. Several men were sitting at the bar, flirting clumsily with the 20-something blonde bartender. A family sat at one of the tables enjoying a late lunch.
The name of the establishment is called The Library. If you are at all familiar with Mill Ave., you have probably heard of it. It struck me as an interesting motif for a restaurant/bar. After all, most people don’t associate a library with food and drink. In fact, most libraries discourage the presence of food and drink.
Of course, I have no formal training in marketing, so what do I know.
Anyway, the motif was established by the presence of lots and lots of books. Book cases lined all the walls.
So here we have a theme for the bar/restaurant. OK. Now, consider the efforts made to carry out the motif with all those books. Naturally, you would expect the wait staff, bartenders, etc. to be dressed as, well - I don't know - librarians, maybe?
How silly of me.
The wait staff, I can assure you, were not dressed that way. It was at this precise point that the theme was abandoned.
I looked around. I did not see a single severe-looking lady with her hair pulled back in a tight bun, clothed in an ankle-length gray dress with cat’s-eye glasses and sensible shoes. No one hissed, “SSSHHHH!!’’ as the conversation swelled at the bar.
Instead, the wait staff, made up of what I can only assume were co-eds. They were dressed as if they were cast members in a particularly tasteless porn movie about wayward Catholic school girls. By that, I mean they wore plaid skirts so short that modestly - if they had had any - would have prevented them from bending in even the slightest manner. Some of them work knee-high stockings. The ensemble was completed by a sleeveless white shirt, tied at the bottom to expose a bare midriff and unbuttoned in order to expose as much cleavage as the law permits. The law permits a lot, by the way.
It was overt sexuality and I suppose there some valid marketing research encourages the ownership to insist on that sort of uniform. I suspect the girls don’t spend too much time bothering about how they are being objectified. Hey, the tips are good. The general strategy seems to be: Let's exploit our young staff so they can, in turn, exploit the customers. Everybody wins!
Shoot me if I ever get into that business, OK?
Now, I know I am going to be dismissed by some as a hopeless prude at this point, but the whole scene struck me as tacky, demeaning, juvenile. So, as the middle-aged guys at the bar tried out their best and crudest lines on the little blonde bartender, I started looking at the bookshelves.
But rather than being a suitable diversion, it only made things worse.
Maybe it is my writer’s sensibilities at work here, but I started thinking about what those books represented to the people who wrote them. Without a doubt, each of those books was the fulfillment of something extremely important to the author. Each volume was a testament to the endless hours of toil, of doubt, of lonely struggle. A book is the window to a writer’s soul. It is something very personal, very intimate. It is the author’s passion and purpose. It is the realization of a dream, a validation of an original idea. A triumph.
But here, as the patrons ogled the wait staff and the wait staff wriggled and giggled and the air filled with clumsy innuendo and booze, the books on the shelves served only as props to fulfill a silly theme.
Any book lover would be offended, I think.
I know I was.
Fortunately, there are other, better places to have an iced tea.

The book I would have written

2008-06-18T12:24:00.003-07:00

Just about everybody I know suggests that I write a book. Up until now, I’ve dismissed that as flattery.
But recently, I’ve been giving it some serious thought.
In fact, last week I made up my mind to write a book, although I doubt it is the book any of my acquaintances would have expected.
The book is about a whole bunch of desperate people, told through the experiences of one family. This family - we’ll call them the Garcias - were farmers. In fact, generations of their family had lived and worked the same land.
Unless you have an instinctive hatred for poor folks, you will like the Garcias, I think. They are a good, decent hard-working family. They have been swept up in circumstances beyond their control. If they are to survive, they will have to leave.
So the Garcias, like so many of their friends and neighbors, packed up their few meager belongings and headed for a land of promise hundreds of miles away. California.
That far-away land represented a fresh start, a better life. Some of their relatives had made the same journey years before and had encouraged them to join them. California was a land of milk and honey, they all said.
Well, really, what options did they have anyway? It was California or ruin.
The book begins with the beginning of the Garcias’ journey.
It was a tough trek over difficult terrain. The little money they had was soon exhausted and they were forced to make do the best they could. Sometimes, they were helped by other travelers, who were pursuing the same dream.
Sadly, Abuela Garcia dies, broken-hearted, along the way. With no money for a proper burial, the family simply buries her in the desert and moves on.
When the Garcias finally arrive in California, they are completely destitute. What’s more, times have changed. The boom days are over and even relatively prosperous Californians are beginning to feel the effects of a faltering economy.
Years before, these refugees had been welcomed and accepted. In fact, a lot of their culture was adopted into the community. There was a spirit of mutual respect and appreciation. The residents appreciated their willingness to do all the jobs nobody else wanted to do, for pay that no one else would stand for. The immigrants simply appreciated the opportunity to build a better life.
Now? The visitors are treated with suspicion, even hatred. “We have our own people to take care of,’’ the thinking went. “These people are just a drain on our resources.’’
So, they were told to go back where they belonged, even though a return trip would sentence them to a hopeless future. Going home was not an option, so they hid as best they could, sneaking out only to look for work.
Before long, politicians and law enforcement, sensitive to the fear and prejudices of the residents, began to make political hay of the situation. Laws that had been simply ignored for years were suddenly dusted off and implemented with great vigor. Lock 'em up or send 'em home, came the cry.
And the plight of the Garcias grew worse. Residents sneered at them, called them names. Cops rounded them up, beat them down, generally abused them.
And if they dared complain, they were told, “Go back where you came from. You have no right to be here!’’
Soon, employers - fearful of government reprisal and the hostility of the residents - refused to give them any work at all.
Without work, some resorted to stealing, so desperate had their blight become. Others, as is the case with any mass migration, were simply criminals at heart. It didn’t take long for that distinction to be lost to the residents, though. “They’re just a bunch of criminals, little better than animals,’’ was the general opinion.
The book chronicles the demise of the Garcias, and many others like them.
I was pretty excited about writing that book.
And then, I realized something:
This book had already been written. In fact, it was written almost 70 years ago, by John Steinbeck.
It’s called, “The Grapes of Wrath.’’
Oh, there are a few differences between the book I imagined and Steinbeck’s. The family in Steinbeck’s book are the Joads, not the Garcias. And they were from Oklahoma rather than Mexico.
Beyond that, it’s the same story.
With the same implications.

The Gospel According To Fred

2008-06-16T10:56:00.009-07:00

OK. This morning I’m reading my devotional and, because lack of focus has been a lifelong infirmity, my mind drifted back to a moment more than a year ago when I was at Florence West prison.
There was this inmate by the name of Wells Vaughn who one day made the statement that Luke was the most prolific writer in the Bible.
Now, I was pretty sure this was wrong, but I raised my objection very delicately - and for a very good reason. Wells was prone to outbursts of anger. He was a bare-knuckled believer, a distinct sect you find only in prison. If you’ve ever been to prison, you know what I’m talking about. It’s all, “Come to Jesus or I’ll pound ya!’’
So when Wells makes his statement about Luke‘s writing, I chose my words carefully.
“Gee, I didn’t know that,’’ I said softly, careful not to make direct eye contact. “All along, I thought Paul wrote the most in the Bible.’’
Now, Paul is generally credited as the author of at least 13 of the books in the New Testament. A 14th, the Epistle to the Hebrews, was initially attributed to him. Nobody is saying flat-out that Paul didn’t write Hebrews, but those who are inclined to dismiss Paul as the author point out that the style of writing found in Hebrews differs greatly from his universally accepted works.
So Paul wrote 13 or 14 of the books of the New Testament.
That made Wells’ pronouncement that Luke was the most prolific writer in the Bible suspect in my view. The only books that are attributed to Luke are The Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles. By my scorecard, that’s Paul 13, Luke 2. And that’s not even giving credit to Paul for Hebrews. Heck, let’s give Hebrews to Luke. He’s still way behind, right?
When I meekly raised this objection, Wells said that while he conceded that Paul wrote more books, when you counted the words in the books written by the two men, you would realize that Luke wrote more of the words in the Bible than Paul.
And since Wells seemed to me precisely the sort of guy who would bother to count the exact number of words, I let it pass. Nothing to get a broken nose over, I figured.
Of course, some time later, as I considered Wells’ reasoning it struck me that, if you went by word count, Moses - credited as the author of the first five books of the Bible - wrote more words that Paul and Luke put together. Moses was like the Tolstoy of the ancient writers. Moses wrote some seriously long books.
But just this morning , it occurred to me that if you ask, “Who wrote the most in the Bible?’’ you first must clarify which Bible you are talking about.
Because as I skimmed through the pages of the Bible I was holding this morning, a new candidate emerged:
Fred Smith.
Now, before you dismiss this as some sort of heresy, perhaps an effort to invent some new pseudo-Christian belief system (Fred Smith is not Joseph Smith’s lesser-known brother, for example), I ask for your patience.
Fred Smith is my dad.
The Bible I read from is one of his things that came into my possession after he died three years ago. It is a faded brown leather King James version, roughly 5x7 inches and about a inch thick with pages so thin you can almost see through them when you hold them up to the light.
Near the front, there is a page that carries a message. Written there in my mother’s elegant hand in faded blue ink, is this: “Presented to Fred Smith by Mattie Jewel (my mom’s name) on Feb. 13th, 1971.''
That means the Bible was a present from mom to commemorate Dad’s 53rd birthday.
You can tell it was a pretty expensive Bible. I’m not sure how much it set mom back, but I can’t see how that really matters. The worth of a thing is seldom measured by its cost.
But it is obvious that the gift was of great value to Dad, for it bears the evidence of more than 30 years of diligent use.
That is why, if you ask me who wrote the most in the Bible - at least MY Bible - I have to include Fred Smith as a contender.
It’s a pretty beat-up old book, which rather than being a sign of neglect is a testament to its use. There are notations writing in my dad’s often indecipherable hand from cover to cover. OK, there are long stretches in the Old Testament that don’t carry any extra ink. But when you get to the New Testament, I find my dad’s scribbling on just about every page.
There are passages underlined and circled. There are passages where he has written in the tiny margin with words that I cannot make out in whole or part. Then there are some notations that seem sure to remain a mystery. For example, the number “6628’’ is written on one of the blank pages at the front. Who know what that means? It could be a house number or the last four digits of a phone number, which would be all you needed in our small town since everybody had the same “842‘’ prefix.
But, really, who knows? Jack Van Impe might argue that it was divine revelation of the second coming - June 6, 2028 - if you‘re into that sort of thing . I am not
Of the margin notes that I can make out, one is particularly interesting to me. Dad had bracketed Acts 20, verses 17-38. This is the account where Paul is saying his final goodbye to his congregation in Ephesus. In the margin, Dad wrote, “Bro. Steve‘s last sermon.’’
I don’t know “Bro. Steve.’’ He must have arrived as pastor at my parents' church some time after I began by prodigal journey. I don’t know when Brother Steve arrived, when he left or why.
But thanks to Dad’s note in th margin, I do know what Brother Steve talked about on his last Sunday morning at East Heights Baptist Church in Tupelo, Miss. It was important enough for Dad to note, which means that Brother Steve must have been someone very dear to Dad, who never was the sort to show emotion.
So, if you know Brother Steve, you might pass that along, which is a long shot, I realize
Now, I have quite a few Bibles. In some respects, the others are superior to Dad’s beat-up old KJV. The new translations are easier to understand, have more study aids and commentary and are not dog-eared, torn and generally worn out.
But I find that Dad’s Bible is the one I use the most and not merely for sentimental reasons.
I’ve always loved to borrow books from people who make notes on the margins and underline captivating passages. Often, the original owner will highlight something or make a comment in the margin that helps me see the narrative in a new or more insightful way or call my attention to something I might otherwise have neglected.
And so it is with Dad’s Bible. When I come across an underlined passage, I pause to reflect on what it must have meant to him. Often, I find that he has helped inspire me to consider a passage more carefully.
You know, my dad worked two or three jobs all through my childhood. We were never wealthy, but we had what we needed, mainly because dad was determined to be a good provider.
When he passed, he left each of his six kids about $18,000 which is truly remarkable when you consider that he never made more than $8 per hour and had six kids to raise.
That money is long gone. But I have some other little things that serve as a reminder. I have a pair of his blue coveralls. Much to Mom’s dismay, Dad basically lived in coveralls. Except on Sunday mornings, of course, when - like most folks of his time and place - he “dressed’’ for church. I have reminders of that, too, in the form of a handful of his “clip-on’’ ties, fabulously loud ties at that. I smile every time I see them.
Besides that stuff, I am beginning to realize that Dad left me something of much greater value. He left me his Godly example. I can't imagine a better, more enduring gift from a father to a son, really.
His example is never farther away than his memory, and I find further evidence of it all through the pages of that worn-out King James Bible.
Yes, Moses, Paul, Luke. They wrote plenty in the Bible. I leave it to Wells to hash out who wrote the most.
But on the pages of the Bible I read each day, I say with all reverence that I have been left with another account of the Gospel, written by a simple, hard-working man who happened to be my dad:
The Gospel According To Fred.
Amen, Dad.

It's Father's Day, confound it!

2008-06-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

Sunday is Father’s Day, but I’m sort of on the periphery of that holiday this year. My kids, Corey and Abby, are back in Mississippi, 1,500 miles away, so this is the first Father’s Day we’ve been apart. Since I’ve already been through a Thanksgiving and a Christmas without seeing them, I do not expect Father’s Day to be too difficult, though. We’ll talk on the phone and I’ll find that to be a blessing. There will be other Father’s Days when we can be together, God willing.
My own dad died in September 2005, which means BOTH of my fathers are in heaven now.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t think of Fred Austin Smith, especially this time of year.
I cannot say that I knew my dad all that well. He was always working, more out of necessity than anything else. He worked two or three jobs throughout my childhood, which is what comes with trying to raise six kids with the benefit of only a high-school education.
He loved to hunt and fish, although he rarely had time for those interests. After he finally retired, he would play golf occasionally. The only time he played golf was when one of us kids came home for a visit.
The fact that he never had a golf lesson and played about two rounds of golf per year did not diminish his expectations, though. Dad was a natural athlete and a competitor, a fierce one at that.
One of my fondest mental images of Dad is of him deep in a green-side bunker, flailing away in a comically futile bid to extract a golf ball from the sandy depths.
Now, my dad was a fine Christian man, a deacon and a revered Sunday School teacher for 40 years.
That meant he did not swear. In fact, I cannot recall a single cuss word escaping my dad’s lips, even though there were many occasions when that might have been expected, given the mischief six kids will inevitably get in to.
So, in obedience to his faith, my dad swore off swearing, you might say. But the competitor in him had to have some outlet in times of great duress. So it was that my dad perfected the art of swearing without swearing.
His favorite non-cuss, cuss-words were “Confound it!’’ He would yell it with great conviction in times of deep frustration.
So I see him down in that bunker, hacking at that golf ball in the much the same manner as a man trying to kill a python with a leaf rake - violently jabbing at that ball with great, thunderous utterances of “CONFOUND IT!!!’ with each failed attempt.
He was a good man, loved and respected by all who knew him.
Dad, I want you to know that I love you and miss you something awful.
What I wouldn’t give to play another round of golf with you
That can’t happen, of course, so the memories will have to suffice.
. CONFOUND IT!!!

Preferring Pam to Jenna

2008-05-23T09:08:00.011-07:00

My favorite TV show is “The Office.’’ It never fails to make me laugh out loud. Each episode brings new dimension to words such as “dysfunctional’’ and “inappropriate.’’
It also manages to do something extremely difficult in seamlessly combining the authentic with the absurd. Anyone who has ever worked in an office will note the air of authenticity in the show's characters. And yet, it is mainly populated with caricatures. The writing is brilliant.
For all its amusing distortions, the show is not without an element of sweetness, due mainly to the two characters who are unqiue in the sense that they are not portrayed as gross exaggerations. The characters I refer to are Pam, the receptionist, and Jim, a salesman.
They have a budding romance that is tender and smart and entirely charming.
I find Pam especially endearing. She is sweet and genuine, modest yet appealing. Often, the camera will show her gazing across the office at Jim and smiling. In those shots, it seems to me that she is the most attractive woman on TV.
She is, without question, one of the more wholesome characters you will find on TV, which I realize is faint praise in today’s prime-time lineup.
I found her so refreshingly decent that I was compelled to find out more about the actress that plays the role. So I Googled “Jenna Fischer.’’
I wish I hadn’t.
The first image that came up during the search was a photo of the young actress that can best be described as soft porn.
My heart sank. Then, I had to chuckle at my gullibility.
After all, I’m almost 50 and, because my profession has often put me in the company of celebrities, I should certainly have known better than to assume that the people we know from the spotlight are the same people behind the scenes. My experience tells me that the surest way to be disappointed in your heroes is to actually meet them.
Yes, it was naïve of me to think that the qualities that define Pam on “The Office’’ would be exhibited in Jenna the actress.
Of course, it is always easy make judgments about people we don’t know. Maybe that photo of Jenna was a lapse in good judgment; perhaps it is something she deeply regrets and how I wish that were true,
But on the other hand, I cannot dismiss the possibility that the photo is an accurate portrayal of a ambitious young actress who is as promiscuous and morally bankrupt as any other young Hollywood starlet.
If that’s the case, there’s no reason I should be surprised.
Over the years, I’ve come to recogninze that fame is a most alluring addiction and all addictions destroy.
Consider: Ten years ago, a young girl tells her mom she wants to be the next Britney Spears and her mom takes her to a voice teacher. Today, a young girl tells her mom she wants to be the next Britney Spears and her mom takes her to a therapist.
A couple of months ago, Miley Cyrus was the ideal image of what a young girl should be. And then, this 15-year-old girl shows up semi-nude on a magazine cover and we shudder.
The photographer, Annie Leibovitz, is recognized as a great photographer, so she can defend turning a 15-year-old into a sex object as "art.'' In the process, she seems to have created a new genre, a means of making child pornograply a little more acceptable. Imagine that. Now, we have Child Soft Porn. Thanks, Annie, for your contribution to humanity.
At Molly’s age, Britney Spears was still as wholesome as an episode of “Little House on the Prairie,’’ which suggests that Molly is way past Britney on the journey into depravity.
So what happened to Britney? What is happening to Miley? They’ve been lost in the addiction of fame. And if you want to remain relevant in pop culture, you better be provocative. That is truly tragic, I think. Self-obssession, this desperate need the be in the spotlight no matter the cost, ultimately leads to ruin.
Of course, being self-absorbed is not limited to actors and entertainers.
Truth be told, we’re all vulnerable.
We’re all selfish, to some degree, and I’ve come to believe that it is greatest obstacle to true happiness, contentment and fulfillment.
At least, that’s been my own experience. It is a battle I’m always fighting on one level or another. And the pursuit of self is the great rabbit hole of humanity. Chesterton wrote that it is easier to grasp and understand the cosmos than to explore the vast expanse of self It is a dark and cold and empty space. You can get lost there.
The genuinely successful person is not one who thinks less of himself, but one who thinks of himself less often.
I am at my best, and most closely resemble the person God made me to be, when my thoughts turn to others.
That is what gives me hope.
World-weary through I may be, I still believe that somewhere among the Jenna Fischers and Miley Cyruses of the world, there really are some Pams and Hannah Montanas.

Stuck in the 70s? Who knew?

2008-05-22T20:44:00.002-07:00

I read a very disturbing story in the May 21 edition of The Arizona Republic. It caught me off guard for a couple of reasons. First, the story was located in the Arizona Living section of the paper, where the fare is generally benign. I confess it is a section I rarely ever read.
Beyond that, it was the content of the story that furrowed my brow in anguish.
It was a story about a fund-raising effort. Apparently, men are growing moustaches for charity. Now, I had heard of women having their hair cut and donating it to a charity that makes wigs for women who have lost their hair during chemotherapy.
But what do you do with a moustache? I mean, are there men out there undergoing chemo who would be greatly cheered by wearing another man’s moustache? This seems highly improbable.
The story was a lamentably vague on those sorts of details. As best as I could piece it together, the idea was that men would grow a moustache, which would inspire people to give money to the moustache grower’s favorite charity.
The ambiguity surrounding this effort was not what I found disturbing. No, it was the way moustaches are characterized that jolted me.
According to Lisa Nicita, the story’s author, “A moustache these days can be a conversation starter. It’s not seen as much anymore…’’
Well, all I can say is that Lisa hasn’t been watching me for about the past 30 years. I’ve had a moustache since I was about 20 years old.
Jim Valenzuela, who is an owner of one of those fancy-smancy upscale barbershops was quoted in the story. According to Valenzuela, the moustache look fell out of favor in the 70s, when it became unruly and wild and started being associated with adult films.
You know, I’ve really got to start paying more attention to style section of the newspaper. Apparently, I started growing a moustache about the same time moustaches suddenly became code for “sicko.’’
I mentioned all of this to a friend of mine.
“Just think, I’ve been walking around looking like a creepy porno star for almost 30 years!’’ I told him. “I bet that’s why I can’t get a date!’’
My friend considered me with a cold, unblinking stare. Then put a hand on my shoulder and let out a sigh.
“Somehow I doubt that,’’ he said softly.
Thanks, pal.
But you know what. I’ve grown accustomed to this old gray moustache. I think I’m going to keep it.
Sorry if that creeps ya out.

Crime and Punishment, Maricopa County style

2008-05-20T19:48:00.005-07:00

Imagine that you have just brought home a new puppy. We’ll call him Rex (I always wanted a dog named Rex and it’s my blog, after all).
Well, not surprisingly, Rex has some behavioral issues. He just refuses to do his business outside, even though you have a doggie door and you have been over this time and time again. Furthermore, he has chewed up every shoe in the house. Rex yaps well into the early-morning hours. He begs for food every time you sit down for a meal.
What shall we do?
Here are some helpful ideas:
The next time Rex soils the carpet, you should grind his wet little nose into the deposit he has just left on the floor. It might also help to kick him sharply in the side, just so he’ll get the message.
And that shoe-chewing issue? A fist to the little face should help Rex see the error of his ways.
Barking? That’s easy, soak his little tongue with Tabasco.
If Rex begs for food, cut his food ration in half. Then he’ll have something to beg about, right?
Now, some of you bleeding-heart types might suggest that following these steps is simply cruel. Heck, it is even illegal, you might argue.
But you just don’t get it, do you?
See, I really do have Rex’s best interests in mind. I want him to be an obedient, well-adjusted part of the family. I bet you understand now, right?
Just think about how you raised your children. Remember when little Billy broke that vase with his ball when you had told him over and over not to play ball in the house? Say what you want, but after beating him almost unconscious, Billy sure learned his lesson about playing ball in the house, didn’t he?
So the same principle applies here. The idea is to make the punishment so unpleasant that Rex and Billy will never, ever make THAT mistake again.
OK. Let’s end this ruse here. Who in his or her right mind would approve of such cruelty?
A lot of people, that's who. I run into them all the time. I’m talking about the kind of people you would normally consider to be kind, generous, thoughtful people.
It comes up almost everytime the subject turns to my recent stay in prison. They want to know what it was like, so I tell them it was a miserable experience, especially the 34 days I spent in county jail.
I tell them that the conditions at Durango Jail, where I was placed while awaiting sentencing on my DUI conviction, are brutal. I tell them that there are pointless acts of cruelty inflicted on the inmates on a routine basis, that the sheriff has for years, flaunted the rules governing treatment of prisoners. I tell them that it seems the general policy at these jails is to make the experience as dehumanizing and degrading as possible.
And you know what these fine, decent people say?
“Well, I’m sure it’s like that so that the people there will never want to come back.’’
I used to be surprised by that answer. Not anymore.
I can only assume that these people have never really thought it through. Maybe it is because the sheriff - I wish I could remember his name, but like most Arizona sheriffs, he is content to do his job without any fanfare - has been trotting out that “it’s for their own good’’ nonsense for the past 16 years.
It’s his pat answer for acts so senselessly mean-spirited that no rational argument can be made in their defense. It’s always the default argument: We are being cruel for the good of the inmate.’’
And somehow, many decent people have simply adopted that twisted logic without holding it up to the light of reason.
It's pretty simple. Treat a human being like an animal and that it what he is likely to become. Oh, that less-than-human ex-con will be back in the neighborhood, sooner or later. Sleep light, OK?
This week, I saw on the local news that the sheriff will address a cut in his budget by turning the screws on the inmate population. So, it’s likely that the gulag conditions at his jails will be even harsher. That will take some creativity.
And chances are, there won’t be a peep of protest from the community, which seems anesthetized by the sheriff's mantra that being tough on crime is synonymous with terrorizing people who are already in custody and, hence, are no long an eminent threat to the community.
OK. Let me jump in here to say that I am not suggesting that the jails be “country clubs.’’ You often hear that drivel whenever someone of conscience complains about cruel treatment of prisoners. If you want to have a serious, grown-up discussion about jail conditions, please resist the urge to blurt out that foolishness. No one has ever suggested that inmates be treated as though they are on a vacation trip to Disneyland, OK?
But I will suggest that a human being, made in the image of God, should not be subjected to treatment that would be considered inhumane and illegal were it inflicted on a dog.
Now, if you are of the mind that prisoners should suffer needless cruelties, that a pound of flesh is half as good as two, stand on that argument. If you conscience doesn't cry out in protest, ignore the subject altogether.
But, please, let's put aside this insulting idea that making a man less than human is somehow for his own benefit.
Can't we at least be that honest?

Splash's tale (For mature audiences only)

2008-05-08T10:06:00.011-07:00

OK. It’s been a while since I’ve written, so some of you may have wondered how I am getting on.
Well, I’m doing fine, thanks. At least, I’m doing fine compared to my friend, Splash.
Splash is a horse and he’s had a tough go of it for the past week or so.
Before I tell you about Splash’s troubles, some background might be of value.
I live in Tempe, on an “urban ranch’’ owned by Mark Salem. Mark sort of took me in after I got out of prison, renting me a little mother-in-law house on his six-acre property in southwest Tempe.
Mark has eight horses and a burro. He moves the animals around on the seven small pastures on his property. My little house in smack dab in the middle of his pastures, so I’ve made friends with my neighbors, who happen to be horses.
Mark’s menagerie includes two yearling fillies - Jasmine and Gracie - four mares - Chanta, Cowgirl, Dolly and Misty - and a burro named Burrita. He has a gelding draft horse named Bernie, who comes from Amish stock in western Pennsylvania. Bernie is the only horse on the property with any religious affiliation, far as I know.
And finally, there is Splash. Splash is a painted stallion, whose job is to breed with the mares. Now, Splash is always "on the clock'' so to speak, which means he must be kept apart from the other horses except for the time when Mark wants his mares to get pregnant.
About a week ago, Mark decided it was time for Dolly to get pregnant, so Splash and Dolly were put in the pasture next to my house. This small pasture is considered the “Honeymoon Suite’’ of the ranch.
I became aware of this when I heard a commotion outside. I went outside and watched for a while.
An old friend of mine said that when his young boys began to inquire about “where babies come from,’’ rather than have an awkward conversation about “the birds and the bees’’ he instead took them out to his dad’s farm and let them see for themselves.
Well, I cannot recommend this strategy, based on what I observed this week.
(NOTE TO CHILDREN AND THE SQUEAMISH: This would be an excellent point in the story to QUIT READING! )
While Splash tackled the job with great zeal, Dolly did not seem agreeable. Maybe she was worried about losing her girlish figure. Maybe she just wanted to cuddle. Maybe she wanted to be "just friends.'' I don’t know.
But it was obvious that she wanted no part of what Splash was up to. She would try to run away, but Splash would follow on her heels, throwing his front hooves up on her back and running along behind her on his two rear legs, all the while trying to, uh, “engage.’’ Dolly would snort and holler and kick, but Splash was not deterred in the least.
Truth is, it struck me as a most violent act. I wondered if I should call 9-1-1 or something.
Instead, I just went back in my house and turned up the stereo - loud.
A couple of days later, Jose' (Mark’s ranch-hand) told me something very interesting. Apparently, when Splash had succeeded in his quest, his, uh, “thing’’ had become entangled in the hair of Dolly’s tail. The result was that the hair tore open Splash’s “thing.’’
“He pees out of about three holes now,’’ Jose' said.
The vet came out and rubbed anti-biotic on the wound (I’ll bet THAT is something they never tell you about in Vet School, huh?) and waited to see if the wound would heal on its own.
The other day I ran into Mark and I inquired about how Splash was doing.
He said it’s likely that Splash will have to have surgery.
The vet made a follow-up visit on Tuesday. Now, as it turns out, that was the day Mark got a call from a rancher friend who was coming through town with his horse trailer when he noticed that his brakes were beginning to fail. Mark, who owns an auto shop, told him friend to bring his truck by the shop. While Mark was working on his brakes, Mark asked his friend to stop by the ranch to help the vet examine Splash.
His friend was happy to oblige. When he got to the ranch, the vet asked for a a hand - literally.
“I need to take some pictures,’’ the vet told him.
So, Mark’s friend had to hold Splash’s “thing’’ so that the vet could photograph the wound from various angles.
So somewhere out there, there are photos of this man holding a horse’s "thing.''
I STRONGLY suggest that this man never run for public office. Some things you can just never explain, after all.
Anyway, Splash seems to be doing all right. He still nickers and hollers when he sees the mares in the other pasture. Splash can play hurt, I figure.
Mark says he plans to put Splash in with Dolly as soon as he heals up. He said he will probably put Dolly's tail up in a bun to prevent another similar accident.
I suspect that Dolly will look sort of like an FLDS horse with that bun, although I doubt Splash will mind. Like I said, he loves his work.
But he's going to be a sore boy "down there'' for a while, I bet.
On top of all that, I am sure that Splash is pretty embarrassed about all this. I suspect the mares smugly tell him that "it serves you right, you beast!'' They probably give Dolly a "high-hoof'' and say, "You go, girl!''
I am also sure that Bernie, being a gelding and bitter about it, is greatly amused.
But I feel sorry for ole Splash.
So, yes, I am doing fine.
Relatively speaking.

Prison Life-ee

2008-03-08T22:15:00.004-07:00

When I arrived at Florence West Prison on the morning of April 5, 2007, my agenda was a modest one: Remain as inconspicuous as humanly possible until I could determine the relative safety of my environment.
Loyal readers (by "loyal,'' I mean those folks who are bright, curious and refined enough to follow these posts regularly) will remember that while in county jail I was coerced into becoming part of the inmate power structure, a process that ultimately ended in my being the "head'' of the white inmates of Durango Jail Building 4, A Pod for a span of three weeks. My administration will pass into history little noted. That is not a complaint, by the way.
So when I got to Florence I was perfectly content to let the other inmates run the asylum, so to speak. Oh, after I grew comfortable with surroundings and knew which inmates could be reasoned with, I did offer my opinions on things from time to time. But for the most part, I avoided any "causes.'' My goal was to do my 88 days in relative obscurity.
Except when it came to one matter.
"Keefe.''
Say that word aloud. Now, operating on assumption that your are not an idiot, I am confident that you pronounced it as a one-syllable word. "Keef.'' As in "Leaf.'' As in "Brief.'' Am I correct?
Of course. How else could you reasonably pronounce it, right?
Well, when I arrived at Florence West, there were approximately 487 inmates on the yard. About 480 of them pronounced the word as "Key-fee.''
There are certain things that inmates simply cannot be forced to do. You cannot make them stand single file. You cannot make them eat green jello. And you cannot make them embrace the fact that certain letters are "silent'' in certain words.
By now, you are probably wondering why something so trivial would set my teeth to grinding. Well, I am hard-pressed to articulate why it would be so. It just did.
And it did not help matters that the word "Key-fee'' was regularly on the lips of every inmate on the yard, including the non-English speaking segment of the population.
Keefe (or key-fee, if you are an ex-con reading this) was the name of the company that provided the commissary for the inmates. To further insure that the company name was forever mangled by "Joe Convict,'' the company had its own line of products. For example, you could order say, Folger's Instant Coffee or Keefe Instant Coffee. Keefe had an extensive line of generic products.
So every time you turned around, some inmate was invoking the company name. It was "Key-fee messed up my order!'' or "I'll give you two Key-fee brownies for a the rest of your Key-fee tortillas,'' or "Key-fee just raised the price on sodas.''
I was a good sport about this for quite some time. In fact, I thought it sort of funny at first. I would gently correct the inmate: "It's pronounced, "Keef.'' The last "e'' is silent, see?''
But as the weeks passed, it began to gnaw at me. Ultimately, I was convinced that the other inmates were bringing the word into conversations needlessly, just for spite.
I felt most certain of this one June evening during our "Prayer Circle'' when the inmate who was leading the prayer - a bright well-educated man who I will not identify beyond stating that his name is Brian Cox and he's from Phoenix and attends church at Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities - opened the prayer thusly: "Father, thank you for your many blessings. Thank you that our Key-Fee orders came in on time. Thank you for all the many fine Key-Fee products we have at our disposal. We pray that your spirit will be with those in charge at Key-Fee so that they will not raise their prices again.''
Incidentally, I am 0-for-1 in the "calling down lightning from heaven'' department.
I kept fighting the good fight, though. Well, until the last two weeks of my sentence.
I remember sitting next to man named "Sarge'' as he was filling out weekly commissary order. "Dang,'' he - being a salty old convict - said in so many words, "those Key-fee donuts are as expensive as the dog-gone regular ones!''
"It's pronounced Keefe,'' I said.
He looked at me. He looked at his order form. "No,'' he said. "It's Key-fee. See? There's an "e'' on the end.''
I gave up.
"Fine-ee,'' I said.
As I walked away shaking my head, I heard him call after me: 'Hey, Slim. Chill, OK? You shouldn't be embarrassed about it.''
Groan.
Now, I am not saying that being surrounded by people who - defiantly and deliberately -pronounce silent letters in words is the worst thing about beitng in prison. But it's on the short list, as far as I'm concerned.
No, there is nothing pleasant about prison life-ee.

Prison and Mill Ave.: Part II

2008-03-07T11:07:00.005-07:00

I was browsing through a shop about a week ago, looking at greeting cards when one particular card caught my attention.
The card read: "I am not here to fix things. I am here to observe and pass judgement.''
I had to laugh out loud. Ever notice that the best humor is often found in a truth exposed rather than a fiction concocted?
And this card hit me square between the eyes.
You might call it an occupational hazard. For 25 years, it was my job to "observe and pass judgment'' as a journalist. That's what I was paid to do. But I cannot attribute that
inclination simply to my career path. I've always been prone to having a strong opinion, which perhaps creates a chicken-and-the-egg premise: Did I become a journalist because I had a natural tendency to be opinionated? Or did I become opinionated because I spent 25 years as a journalist?
Let's pause here to discard one long-held myth that you often hear from readers, i.e., readers want their journalists to be strictly objective.
This is not only an impossible demand (we are all shaped by what we are taught,, what we experience and what we assume based on those influences) but an undesired request. No, what readers really want from a journalist is someone who shares their biases. That is why the same news story can be viewed as biased by one reader and strictly objective by another. A journalist's work is corrupted, at least to some degree, at its conception and continues to be corrupted all along the way, including at the breakfast table.
Now, the reason I mention all this is because of some points raised by readers of my previous post "Prison and Mill Ave.''
In that post, I wondered aloud why many churches are enthusiastic in their efforts to minster to convicts - through various prison ministries - but less inspired to provide help to ex-convicts. I wondered why members of a church in Glendale would spend their weekend nights handing out tracts on the street corners on Mill Ave. in Tempe rather than the street corners of their own town.
Well, maybe I assumed too much. Maybe there are churches who actively minister to those prisoners when they are released. Maybe, they keep up with those convicts and are there waiting for them when they return to their communities. And I had to think to myself, "If that were true, how would I know of it?'' And I have to concede that the possibility exists. Maybe those good folks from Glendale are prominent on the street corners of their town, too. I don't go to Glendale, so how would I know.
So, that's a question I would put to those who are involved in the prison ministry. Do you know when these men will be released from prison? Do you know where they will be going once the gates closed behind them? Have you helped connect them with a church in that area? If they are going to live near your church, have you examined any job or housing possibilities?
You know, by nature and, most likely, by divine design, churches have enormous networking possibilities. Chances are, there is an ex-con who is a plumber and a church member who owns a plumbing company who could use a good man. Chances are, there is someone who owns rental property who could use a tenant.
Make no mistake. Prisoners need Christ. And prison, it might surprise you, is fertile ground, mainly because you check your pride at the gate when you walk in. There is no delusion of self-confidence when you hit that exercise yard. When you get to prison, you get a uniform, a number and as much humility as you'll ever get. And grace looks first to the humble.
Yes, prisoners need Christ. They also need a place to live. They need a job. And they need to feel that they are accepted, that they belong. They need to be included and encouraged and inspired. They need to feel like they are being helped because they are being valued.
You know what they don't need? They do not need to feel as though they are someone's "moral obligation.''
In the eyes of God, we are all criminals. Sometimes, as we "observe and pass judgment'' we forget that, I think.

Prison and Mill Ave.

2008-03-02T16:37:00.004-07:00

Today is March 2, 2008. One year ago today, I stood before a judge at the Superior Court in Phoenix and pleaded guilty to a felony DUI charge. I was taken into custody and spent the next 122 days in jail/prison. Along the way, I lost my career as the Trib's Metro Columnist, a relationship that I had hoped would help me endure that awful crisis, my self-esteem and just about everything else that I valued.
A few weeks before that fateful day, when it became more and more clear to me that I would be headed to prison, I bought a CD by the Christian group Avalon. The CD was "Faith: A Hymns Collection.'' I must have played that CD a thousand times or more as I awaited that awful day when I would give up my freedom and face a future full of uncertainty. I cannot tell you what a comfort those old hymns were at that point in my life.
Well, it's been a year since that day. Today, I went to a new church, one I had ridden past on my bike many times. I had noticed the church before, but never attended. But last week I saw a banner outside the ChristLife Church on Warner Road in Tempe. It read: "Avalon, performing in the 8:30 and 10 a.m. services.''
On March 2.
So, if you happened to be there this morning and saw a gray-haired, middle-aged man weeping quietly as Avalon performed it was probably me. I guess I'm getting sentimental in my old age.
In the weeks before I went to prison, I recalled the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego in the Book of Daniel. Threatened with being thrown into a furnace, they told the King that they served a God who could deliver them and, even if God didn't deliver them, they still wouldn't worship the idol the king demanded them to worship.
You probably know the story. When the three were thrown into the furnace, the King noted in amazement that there were four men walking around in the furnace, unscathed by the fire and one of them, according to the king "had the form like unto the Son of God.''
Sometimes God delivers us. But sometimes he just goes into the fire with us. God didn't deliver me from prison, but I'm convinced he was there with me at Durango Jail and Florence West Prison the whole time.
And it brought to mind something I have found very interesting.
You know, most every church has a heart for convicts. Just about all of them are involved in a prison ministory of one kind or another.
Ah, but ex-cons. Well that's often a different story.
I think it's that way with a lot of churches.
Friday night, I went down to Mill Ave. in Tempe. I had coffee at the Borders, ate at Fat Burger and later had ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery. I walked along Mill Ave., just people-watching mainly.
A group of people were handing out tracts and telling people - actually they were shouting above all of the noise of the busy street - about how they could avoid going to hell.
I approached one of the people handing out tracts and asked him where they were from. He said he was from a church in Glendale.
I don't know much about Glendale, I'll admit. But it made me wonder if there aren't any lost people in Glendale. Or on the street where those people live. Or where they work. I wondered if maybe these good church people considered the patrons of Mill Ave., especially condemned. Maybe they feel those folks out there partying in the clubs on Mill Ave., are somehow more lost than their neighbors whose sins are perhaps a little more palatable. I don't know, of course. But it did make me wonder.
I think a lot of Christians like to proclaim the gospel at arm's length. It's one thing to visit a prisoner when he's locked up. It's altogether different to minister to a released convict who might show up at your doorstep or need something beyond a word of encouragement. It's easy enough to tell a drunken college kid about the error of his ways. It's another thing to have that conversation with the couple next door, people you see every day and don't offend you in any obvious way.
I know a little bit about that.
It's one of the things I have learned in the past year.

The Man and the Moon

2008-02-24T17:38:00.002-07:00

We had a lunar eclipse last week.
I didn't get to see it, though, because it happened on one of those rare Arizona nights when the skies are cloudy. That's too bad, I thought, because there won't be another lunar eclipse until 2010.
That's also the year that I'll be able to get a driver's license again, although I do not believe the two are related. I just find that any reference to 2010 reminds me that I'll be able to drive again, which is a big deal only if you've lost your driving privileges.
I exchange letters with a couple of friends who are still in Florence West prison. One of them, Mark, is always asking me if I'm dating. He does this to taunt me, I suspect, because this is a seriously silly question to ask someone in my position. I lost my driver's license for three years, so I sold my car before I went to prison. I ride a bike now.
Am I dating? Consider that question for a moment. Do you begin to see the difficulty inherent in my position?
I mean, in the unlikely event that I could find a woman to consent to date a man with no home, no reliable income and a future as clear as mud, there is the the practical issue of how I would manage a date. I envision the conversation going something like this...
Me: Hey, would you like to go out to dinner and a movie Saturday night?
Her: Sure!
Me: Good. I'll be at your house at 7. Be sure to wear reflective clothing and comfortable shoes!
So, you see, dating is just not part of the equation.
Ah, but in 2010 things will be different. Maybe.
Of course, I'll be 50 years old by then. Half-a-century old. Half as old as the state of Arizona.
So I imagine another scenario...
Me: Would you like to go out Saturday afternoon?
Her: Sure!
Me: OK. I'll pick you up at 1 p.m.
Her: What are we going to do?
Me: I don't know. Maybe we could go to the orthopedics store and look at artificial hips!
So, dating is sort of a sore subject with me. I mean, I really would like to find someone. But, let's face it: It ain't happening. Get over it. Get a hobby. Get a pet.
So, please, let's get back to the original point, which is the lunar eclipse.
One of the things that I like about the lunar eclipse is that you don't have to have any scientific background to understand it. It's pretty simple. As the earth orbits the sun and the moon orbits the earth, once in a great while it winds up that the earth (or world, as I like to refer to it) gets between the moon and the sun. The moon, as I am sure you know, has no light source of its own: It simply reflects the light from the sun. So, when the world comes between the light source (the sun) and what it reflects off of (the moon), you can't see the moon. It goes dark for a while.
Well, if you live in Arizona, you couldn't see that happen to the moon last week. Like I said, it was too cloudy.
And I'm sorry I couldn't see it, because I sort of imagine that I know what the moon must feel like when that happens.
You see, a lot of people go to prison and find God there. Me, ever the contrarian, did it the other way around. That's why I say I sort know what the moon feels like during an eclipse.
By that, I mean I know what can happen when the world gets in the way.
It's a big part of why I wound up in prison, why I've been disappointed in so many relationships, why I find myself alone.
I let the world get between me and the light.
And in the darkness, I suffered.
So now, my prayer is to live in the light.
That's why, just last night, when I looked up in the sky and saw that big old full moon, it made me smile.
xxx
In him was life; and the life was the light of men - John 1:4

A letter TO prison...

2008-02-21T17:12:00.001-07:00

February 21, 2008

MARK!
How are you doing? How is the Cigarette Butt Retrieval Business these days? It's a comfort to know that they teach skills in prison that are transferable to "outside'' life!
I am sorry that I've been so long in writing. The past couple of weeks have been tough ones financiallly, which - I am sorry to say - infected my attitude a bit.
But I got paid today and all is right with the world! Enclosed you will find your dividend check in the amount of $20. Use it wisely.
In all seriousness, though, my recent struggle had more to do with faith than finances. As you know, I've been unable to land a job in the newspaper industry, despite 25 years of experience and some pretty good credentials. To be honest, there has probably never been a more difficult time in the newspaper industry. I read where 25 percent of all newspaper jobs have been eliminated in the past eight years. Just this month, there have been major layoffs at the Chicago Tribune, New York Times and Indianapolis Star-Tribune. So if the more profitible papers are reducing staff, you can imagine how most other newspapers are faring. So my inglorious exit from the Tribune could not have come at a more difficult time.
As I was brooding over this, and wondering how to make $20 last until pay-day, my spirits began to sag. Then I heard, via internet, a series of sermons by Chuck Swindoll on Matthew 11: 28-30 -- "Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.''
As Swindoll dissected this passage, I began to realize that if I truly trust God, then I need not worry about circumstances, that He will provide all my needs. In taking up the yoke of Christ (a farm term; basically oxen are yoked together so that they pull together rather than against each other), I am following the lead of Christ himself. And to be honest, it is Christ who carries most of the load.
So, basically, what Chuck Swindoll was saying is this:
JESUS IS A BIG OX!
I'll bet Brian has never used THAT analogy!
In all seriousness, I had to ask myself a really important question in the face of this struggle: Do I love Jesus for the things he can provide? Or do I love HIm for who He is? I have decided that I want Jesus. I am convinced that He alone is all that I need and, really, all that I wanted. I just did not realize it until now.
So I feel better. I know I can live above my circumstances, not under them. Naturally, I have desires. But those desires are not the focal point of my life. If it pleases Him, he will provide me with a better job, a brighter future in this world, friends, a companion. If it DOES NOT please Him, I don't want them anyway. It would be pretty dumb to want things that God does not want me to have. So "Father'' does know best.
I guess our pal Brian is already beginning to pack his bags, huh? I know how excited I was as the time drew close for me to get out of prison. And I only did four months, so his excitement is probably exponentially greater than mine.
You should be encouraged, too, the months are peeling away. Since you have eclipsed the half-way mark, every day is a downhill journey for you, after all.
I want you to know that I'm doing what I can, limited though it may be, to prepare for your exit. I'm looking for living options for you and exploring church possibilities. We'll find a church that is "on fire'' for the Lord, a church that will welcome a couple of ex-cons with charm, talent, personality and, of course, humility. Heck, we may even try Brian's church, although I am highly suspicious of any church that would accept him as a member. Laughing.
Funny that I never asked, but what is your situation when you get out? Will you be on parole or probation? If it's probation, will it be intensive? Will you have a driver's license? (As you may know, I won't have a DL until April, 2010, which is almost like having another prison sentence, since it severely restricts my mobility).
My daughter, Abby, is coming here for spring break, but given my driving situation, she'll spend most of that time hanging with her old friends, which is understandable, given her age (15). Still, she'll spend a couple of days with me. I'm going to borrow another bike, so we can ride to the bus stop and then go where-ever we want. I hope to have a little money to do a few special thing with her. My budget does not normally allow for many extravagances, but I am doing a free-lance gig for the Seattle Times this week, so I'll have $150 from that, money I have ear-marked for Abby's visit. It will be wonderful to see her again!
Well, I'm going to close for now. Be sure to share this letter with Brian and tell him I'll be sending him his VERY OWN letter real soon.
Mark, be encouraged. If God be with us, who can be against us?
Your friend,
Slim

P.S. You asked me if I ever see women? Yes, there are many beautiful women who come into the coffee shop. Of course, I have ZERO chance in the romance department until I get on my feet again. It's pretty hard to date by bicycle, after all. So until then, women are like expensive art: appreciated, but not possessed.

American Idol: The Campaign

2008-02-18T18:50:00.004-07:00

I generally avoid writing about politics. It gives me indigestion.
But there is something happening in this year's presidential race that I find too interesting to pass up.
Primarily, it is the candidacy of Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois. He's on fire, as they say. And I'm at a complete loss to understand why his run for the White House has gone from a campaign to a cult.
Now, I'm not suggesting that all of the people who support Obama's candidacy are ill-informed political groupies. Just the ones I know fit that category.
For example, there is Monica, one of my co-workers. She's a sweet sincere young woman of 24. She is completely enamored with Obama, often wearing her Obama For President T-Shirt to work and gushing over his appearance in the Valley a few weeks ago. Monica attended the rally and got close enough to take a lot of photos; she took a photography class at Gilbert-Chandler Community College last semester, so the rally was a good opportunity for her to put her new-found photography skills to work. She routinely threatens to bring the photos to the coffee shop so that I can see them.
I envision it going this way:
Monica: "Here's a picture of Obama talking!''
Me: "Yes, I see.''
Monica: "And here's a picture of Obama shaking someone's hand!''
Me: "Fascinating.''
Monica: "And here's one of him waving!''
Me: "The man can flat-out wave, no question about it.''
Monica: "And here's a double-exposure I did where it looks like Obama is morphing into Janet Napalitano!''
Me: "My, just look at the time!''
Now, I'm not one of those cranky old people who want to crush the enthusiasm of today's youth. I think it's a good thing that young people participate in the politic process, if only for the reason that it gets them away from MySpace for a few hours. But if America's youth is going to participate, it would be nice if they had at least some interest in what's at stake, how the process works, the relevant issues. You would hope they would be savvy enough to look beyond the promises and ask "OK, how are you going to deliver?'' Here's a hint for you 18-to-35 folks: Candidates can't always do what they promise to do! Shocking, huh?
More and more, I get the feeling that this year's presidential race is more "American Idol'' than it is the serious business of selecting the next leader of the free world. (To vote for Hillary, text 1001!)
Last week, Monica asked me what a conservative was, bless her little Obama-obsessed heart.
Right now, it's anybody's guess as to who will emerge as the nominee of the Democratic Party.
If Obama really wants to wrap up the nomination, maybe he should choose Jordin Sparks as his running mate.
Saturday, as Monica was in her middle of another impromptu Ode to Obama, she stopped to ask me what I thought of Obama.
"I think he's a political neophyte, a light-weight populist who will be eaten alive in the hard-ball world of national government,'' I said.
Of course, I overstated the case. Truth is, there's no reason to suggest that Obama will be any less mediocre than any of the current candidates. But Monica doesn't assault me all day with her incessant talk of Obama, so I figure my response worked its intended magic.
By the way, this should not be viewed as an endorsement of Hillary Clinton, whose charm and personal charism remind me of Nurse Ratchet from "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.''
But I will say about the only candidate on either side who has shown any interest whatsover is working "across the aisle'' is John McCain. Everyone else, Obama included, seems to guarantee four more years of gridlock, which is the last thing we can afford.
But really, I guess the question we should all be asking ourselves at this point is "How Would Simon Vote?''

Uncle Lloyd's Roman Holiday

2008-02-14T16:58:00.009-07:00

Readers: Not much new in my world these days, so I thought I would share with you a "letter from home'' that I received from one of my favorites cousins, Nancy Thornton. Nancy and her husband, Bruce , have owned the Tippah County Farm & Garden Supply store in Dumas, Mississippi, for the past 25 years. Much of my extended family still lives in the area, farming soy beans and cotton all across Tippah County in the northeast corner of the state.
xxxx

Feb. 7, 2008

Dear Slim
How are you doing?
It's been so long since I've written that I thought I would take some time now and write to you, although there is not much new to report.
As you know, Frankie is studying engineering at Auburn, and went back to school two weeks ago. It was great to have him home for the holidays and I think he enjoyed being at home. He certainly ate as if he enjoyed it!
Denise and the grandbabies are doing just fine, although Sophia, the three-year old, got the measles around Christmas. But you know how kids are; she's as fiesty as ever now.
Bruce and I hope to get away for a week or so next month to visit his parents in Houston, so we're looking forward to that.
The big news around here is that my uncle Lloyd and aunt Bernice went on vacation to Rome, if you can believe that. You probably know that they sold the farm last spring, all but about 20 acres around the homeplace, so finally they had both the money and the time to take their first vacation since their honeymoon a thousand years ago. They went to Memphis, as I am SURE you know.
When they told me they were going, I was pleased and grateful that maybe Uncle Lloyd would finally have something to talk about other than the ducks at the Peabody Hotel. He's been telling THAT story for more than 40 years.
So, just after the new year, they took their vacation. Can you just imagine my Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Bernice in Italy? Well, hold onto your socks, It's funnier than you could even imagine!
The day after they arrived at their hotel in Rome, Bernice arranged to go on a shopping trip arranged by the hotel. Of course, Lloyd didn’t want any part of that. Unless the shopping involves looking at farm machinery, well, he’s just not interested.
So Bernice left to go on your shopping trip early that morning and Lloyd was left to his own devices. After breakfast, he decided he would take a walk around and see some of the sights. Before long, he found himself wandering through Vatican City and Lloyd figured, since he was there, he might as well check out the Sistine Chapel, which he had always heard about.
Later that afternoon, when Bernice arrived back at the hotel, they were having coffee at a small bistro next to the hotel, telling each other about their day.
You know how quiet Lloyd is, so Bernice did most of the talking. Finally, after she had showed him the purse and shoes she had bought, she asked him what he had done.
Well, Lloyd tells her he took a walk down to Vatican City looked around, but didn’t see the Pope, at least he didn’t think so.
"I don't know,'' he said. "Maybe the Pope don’t dress up on Thursdays. Maybe he just wears his work clothes, you know? That's the only way I'd be able to spot him. There was an awful lot of old bald white fellas running around that place, after all.''
Of course, Bernice asks him if he saw the Sistine Chapel.
“Yeah,’’ Lloyd said, ‘’but there wasn’t much to it. You know how things get built up bigger than they really are? That place is just like that. It ain’t worth the trouble, you ask me.’’
So Bernice took him at his word and they scratched off a tour of Vatican City for the next day.Other than that, they saw most of the sights of Rome and I think they really enjoyed themselves, even though they were happy to get back home, as you might imagine.
Bernice stopped by the store last Tuesday and said that they had gone over to Wal-Mart in Ripley and got all their pictures back and that Ernie had turned them into a slide show. She invited us over to supper Saturday and we watched the slides after we ate.
It was so cute! Pictures of them in front of fountains, in front of museums, one in front of the Collesseum (Lloyd said he reckoned that “them Italians (he pronounced it "EYE-tailians'') are pretty handy at bulding, but they sure don’t take care of stuff. That Collessuem was right near fallin’ over.’’
What makes that funny is that you just KNOW that Lloyd wasn’t making a joke.
Anyway, after a while Bruce asked Lloyd if they had any pictures of the Sistine Chapel and Lloyd said he hadn’t bothered because it just worth the trouble.
Now, you know Bruce had spent time in Italy when he was in the service, so he was very surprised at Lloyd’s assessment.
“Really? You weren’t impressed?’’ Bruce asked.
“Not even a little bit,’’ Lloyd said. “I’d heard all my life about it, too, but best I could tell it wasn’t much different than any of those buildings there at the Vatican. Of course, it was cloudy and I couldn’t get close enough to give it a good look, but I didn’t see much of anything. Maybe the paint faded. Wouldn't surprise me none, either. It’s been five hundred years since Michaelangelo painted that roof, after all.’’
“You mean ceiling,’’ Bruce corrected him.
“Ceiling?’’ said Lloyd. I looked up and all the color had gone out of his face.
God forgive me, I started laughing so hard I almost peed myself.
Slim, Lloyd never went INSIDE the Sistine Chapel. He thought Michelangelo had painted the ROOF!!!.
Is that too funny?
Bruce and I were rolling on the floor. I looked over at Bernice and she was just shaking her head. Bless his heart, I think we sort of hurt Lloyd’s feelings. He started trying to explain why he hadn’t gone into the chapel.
“I ain’t a Catholic, so I didn’t figure it was right to go in there, seemed disrespectful,’’ he said.
Poor man. Bernice didn’t talk to him the rest of the night.
And, of course, everybody in town has been teasing him something fierce since the word got out.
But you know what a sweetheart Uncle Lloyd is. He even chuckles about it now.
I just love that man!
But just this morning as I was reading the Bible and saying my prayers, it hit me that so very many of us make the same mistake that Uncle Lloyd made, when you think about it.
I mean, it sure is easy to look at the externals and make judgments without ever going “inside,'' isn't it? And how foolish we often are, how much pain and hurt feelings it can cause. Uncle Lloyd isn’t the only one who looks at the roof, but never takes the time and effort to see the ceiling.
Well, I’ve got to run. I made a casserole and I’m going to take it over to Pastor Sean’s house. He has a broken jaw. And, yes, there’s a story there, too. All I’ll say for now is that Faron McCluskey is now going to the Methodist Church and everybody thinks that’s for the best, considering.
I’ll write soon. You are in our thoughts and prayers.
With love,

Nancy and Bruce

Burdens and Blessings

2008-02-12T18:50:00.007-07:00

I have been working at the coffee shop for a little more than three months now, so I'm beginning to get to know some of the regular customers.
Some I know by name, others by sight. There is one woman I know by the drink she always orders: a tall iced white chocolate mocha, with hazlenut, soy milk and light whip cream.
Today, I'd like to talk about one particular customer.
She is a woman I would judge to be in her early 50s, although she could be younger, perhaps much younger. A sunny disposition is worth more than a hundred botox treatments. And, by contrast, a sour countenance adds decades. Slim's Beauty Tip for That Youthful Look: Smile.
When I first began to recognize this unsmiling woman as a regular, she was often accompanied by two little girls, who I am guessing are anywhere from 4 to 6 years old. They are pretty little girls with long blonde hair, precocious and energetic.
I overhead the woman refer to them as "my kids,'' and was a little surprised. I initially thought they were her grandchildren.
The other thing I noticed about this woman, which I have already alluded to, was a consistent melancholy. Most customers are pleasant. You smile at them, they smile in return. One thing I can almost always do is make just about anybody smile. But I have yet to see this woman smile. My "good mornings" were greeted with a sort of a grunt. She seemed very weary to me, dejected, disappointed, defeated.
And her demeanor does not appear to be brightened by the presence of those two pretty little lively girls. They seem more of a burden than a joy, more of a responsibility than a blessing.
I find it a challenge to serve her with any enthusiasm, to be honest, not only because she is grumpy but also because she is the sort of customer that demands her drink to be made a certain impossible way.
Basically she wants a latte with a lot of foam and a lot of milk. Now, I am no student of physics, but when you order a grande' latte, the cup only holds 16 ounces. I have yet to master the art of getting 12 ounces of foam and 12 ounces of milk into a 16-ounce cup. It confounds my Mississippi math. So, if one of my co-workers is with me, I always let her make this woman's drink. In fact, my female co-workers know to do this without even waiting for me to give them the nod.
Now, my female co-workers do not have the ability to defy the laws of physics, either, but oddly enough, she seems satisfied with their efforts. She was never satisfied with mine. Maybe she just doesn't like men. Maybe there's a good reason for that. Like I said, I don't know much about this woman.
I mentioned the woman one day to one of my co-workers. To be honest, what I mentioned was what a pain on the be-hind I found this woman to be.
"Oh,'' my co-worker said dismissively. "She's just like that.''
She told me a few things about the woman that I didn't know. The little girls are, in fact, her granddaughters. She is raising them as her own. Apparently, the children's mother - this woman's daughter - is estranged from the family, for some unpleasant reason. I further gather that the woman is not married, that she is raising these little girls by herself.
I began to wonder about this woman's life, what it must be like. I wondered if she is deeply discouraged with the way things have worked out in her relationships, especially her relationship with her daughter and maybe even with her daughter's father, who isn't around as best I can tell. I wondered if she feels guilt over what has happened to her daughter. I wondered if she resents being left alone to raise two spirited young girls. I wondered if there are more bills than money at the month. I wondered if the challenges of raising two girls in today's world seem overwhelming. I wondered if she often thinks she have the strength to endure it sometimes.
And then, a week or so ago, she came into the coffee shop, ordered her latte and sat down at one of the tables.
And I was surprised by what she did next.
She pulled out a Bible and a book I judged to be some sort of study guide and began to read and take notes.
"She's a Christian,'' I thought and I was surprised.
But, really, I don't know what I was all that surprised about Truth is, there are a lot of beat-up, worn-down, joyless Christians out there. I know this based on one piece of indisputable evidence: I was one of them. And it is my continuing struggle, if I am honest with myself.
Because whatever qualities I find in that woman, when multiplied, I recognize are the characteristics of my own journey over the past couple of years. So as I write about this woman, I realize I am writing about myself, too.
Maybe the mirror God provides us is not the image we see in the glass, but in the faces we see on the other side of the counter.
I wrote a story in the Tribune a few years ago about a man named Mark Mugleston, who was dying of cancer. As the time grew shorter, Mark's enthusaism for life grew deeper. Faced with having lost his health and facing the prospects of leaving behind a wife and five children, I asked him how he could be so full of joy."The last freedom you have is your attitude,'' he explained.
And it is true.
God is showing me that life really is all about the attitude of our hearts. When I focus on myself and my circumstances, disappointment is sure to follow. After all, as Job said, "man is born to trouble as sparks fly upward.''
But when my focus turns to Christ, I see a beauty and a hope that is immune to the vagaries of human existence. And as I think about pleasing Christ, I am less concerned with pleasing myself. The misfortunes that have robbed me of my joy and my hope suddenly seem insignificant, boring even.
It probably would not surprise you to know that I have often prayed that God would change my circumstances. Instead, I find that he is changing me. That's what I love about God: He always seems to have a better idea.
I haven't seen this woman in a while.
But when I do, as my co-worker is making her drink, I intend to tell her this:
"What you are doing with those little girls? It is pleasing to God.''
I think maybe that's just the thing she needs to hear.
When we turn our eyes to God, maybe we begin to see that our burdens are really our blessings and our crosses are our crowns.

Now what?

2008-02-09T19:31:00.001-07:00

If you have had the habit of dropping in every so often to see what I've written, you've probably noticed that this is my first post in quite a while.
The reason is pretty simple: I have discovered that I don't have anything to say.
Now, for those of you who know me a bit, the idea of me not having anything to say is comparable to Britney Spears not feeling the urge to go for a car ride.
Truth is, I do have some things to say, provided you have any interest in reading about it.
When I first created this blog, my intention was to resurrect my column from the Tribune and proceed as though nothing had changed (aside from the paycheck I used to get every couple of weeks).
But I have discovered that I may have underestimated the difficulty associated with this. Truth is, I live in a small world, confined to a few miles and a few people with whom I have regular contact. Some of these people have marginally interesting stories, but exposing their lives in a public forum such as this seems inappropriate. For example, every single manager where I work is a woman and I have some interesting observations about this dynamic, observations that I had probably best keep to myself, however. (I need the work.)
Much of the basis of my Tribune column came from being in the newsroom environment, hearing reporters talking about their beats and engaging with readers as a natural part of my affiliation with the newspaper.
I have none of that now.
So what, then, do I have to say?
Well, I could write about my experiences in jail/prison, but I don't know if there is any real interest in that and, if there is, how quickly the average reader will tire of the subject.
I do not want to become one of those "personalities'' who seem to think that anything that happens to him or her is interesting to the public simply because it happened to him or her. You see this all the time, especially on TV. A local TV news personality will experience something that happens to lots of ordinary people every single day and suddenly it's a four-part series.
Beverly Kidd was the best example I can think of on the spur of the moment. When she had a baby a few years back it was as if she had become the first woman to give birth. Her TV co-horts oohed and awed over it. It seemed to wonderful to comprehend. Before you know it, Beverly Kidd was being promoted as some sort of expert on parenting, all by virtue of having a child. I think she's sort of calmed down now and is content to simply have great hair and makeup and not be known so much as the world's leading authority on motherhood.
Poor Beverly. The bad part of being self-absorbed is that you often want everybody else to be as fascinated with you as you are. This is rarely the case.
So, really, it's up to you.
Because, given the present circumstances, about the only thing I know to write about is what's happened to me over the past couple of years. Of course, going to prison is a little more unusual than having a baby, but I do not want to be the Beverly Kidd of Ex-Cons, as it were. (Unless, I can get my own TV show, that is.)
So if you want me to continue writing, with the understanding that about the only thing I have to share is what has happened/is happening to me, then please post a comment at the end of this post.
And if you would prefer me to simply shut up, you can leave that comment, too.
I promise to be a good sport. Honestly, I don't know whether I should keep writing or not. Ultimately, it is for you readers to decide.
I'll abide by your verdict.
This seems entirely fair, don't you think?

A letter to Claudia

2008-01-31T08:34:00.000-07:00

I got an e-mail from former Mesa council member Claudia Walters on Wednesday, a very kind, very supportive e-mail. Claudia, as you know, is running for mayor in Mesa. So is Rex Griswold, who offered to take me into his home when I released from prison. That's a testament both to his faith and his character. Imagine, taking an ex-con into your own home!
I do not know the other candidate, Scott Smith. But I have very warm and supportive feelings for both Claudia and Rex.
I will not offer my endorsement for either candidate, operating on the theory that getting an endorsement from a convicted felon isn't exactly a boost to anybody's campaign. Maybe I should endorse Scott Smith, but then, he's never done me any harm.
Anyway, after getting the e-mail from Claudia, I sat down and wrote a reply. I hope that Claudia is not offended, but I've decided to publish my response to her e-mail as a post here, because it is related to what I am doing on this blog, or what I had hoped to do.
So here goes:

Claudia:
It was a delight to hear from you because it brought memories of a happier time. I so enjoyed being the Trib's columnist and this effort via the blog, I suspect, is an attempt to re-connect with that.
You know, all of us have a need to feel as though we belong. And for me, the connection with the Tribune readers created that sense of belonging. And, because of the solitary nature of my life, I think I needed that more than most.
I won't go into the pain, darkness, desperation and disappointment that led to the wrong turn that my life took. I've found most people are too bottom-line oriented to care much about that. This is particularly true of criminals and even more true of DUI offenders. The public demands its pound of flesh, justifiably, I suppose.
You know, when Jim Ripley wrote to me in prison to inform me he had changed his mind about bringing me back, the one line I remember best from his letter was: "I'll be happy to praise your abilities as a wordsmith to any prospective employer.''
I thought to myself, "I was an excellent employee at the Tribune for nine years and all Jim could say on my behalf was that I had a way with words.''
I thought, "How little he knows me.''
And then, a more disturbing thought: "How little I know myself.''
And I realized that if Jim is correct in his assessment, then what a waste my life has been, how morally bankrupt I am, how little character and intregity I possess.
So let me just say that I am thankful that there are those, like you, who are inclined to view me a little more charitably, if not more accurately.
The blog, I am beginning to realize, is a failure. By that, I mean that has not succeeded in creating a dialogue with my former readers.
When I think of my best work as a columnist, I realize that much depended on my interaction with people; hearing their stories, being exposed to ideas that sort of floated around the newspaper. The stories that reporters talked about, but nobody wanted to write. I often found good stories where reporters saw nothing special. I loved mining for those little gems there in the East Valley.
And I think they mattered to readers, somehow and for some reason.
Editors, you should know, were not as appreciative of my work as readers. And that makes me realize that getting an opportunity to do that again at a newspaper will be a formidable challenge. If readers were doing the hiring, I'd like my chances. But readers don't do the hiring.
Beyond that, I am beginning to realize that other circumstances make it difficult - if not impossible - to return to writing my old column. Claudia, my world is a very small one; without a driver's license I am confined to living my life inside of "bicycle range.'' Basically the edges of my world are Rural Road to the east, Priest Drive to the west; Elliott Road to the north and Ray Road to the south. Most of my life these past six months have been lived within those few miles in South Tempe.
My world is simply too small. I have no connection with the lives of the people I used to write about or the people I wrote for.
I am sorry that this is the case. I miss "belonging,'' probably more than anyone could begin to realize. I loved it so.
But then I think of a scripture: Hebrews 11:15. It reads, "And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.'' When I think about that verse, I wonder if the reason that Jim changed his mind, the reason that my efforts to return to my "old column'' have failed is that it was never intended that I to go back there.
Maybe God allowed these things to happen to move me to some other place (I'm not speaking in terms of geography here). If so, it will be an exercise in faith, for I have no idea, at the present, where I am supposed to be going.
But if God is, in fact, taking me in a new direction, it would be sad indeed to someday reflect on it and realize that I went kicking and screaming all the way.
So my confidence must be in God. His grace must be sufficient for me.
Still, it is pleasant for me to remember the good things of the past, and I am particularly pleased to hear from you because I held/hold you in high esteem.
So very best wishes on the election. You have served Mesa well, and I'm confident you would serve equally well as mayor if it turns out that way.
Again, thanks for taking the time to write. Knowing a little about you, I suspect there were other more important demands on your time.
May God bless you in all you do.
Slim

The Color Orange

2008-01-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

I am the last person you would expect to pose as an expert on relationships. My track record in this department is, well, not good.
Even so, I do believe I have some valid observations on this topic. Even a bad singer knows the lyrics, after all.
So, I'll make this observation on one of the "stages of relationships'' that is often neglected.
Somewhere between casual dating and a committed relationship is a stage I call "Clothing Commitment.''
Couples usually reach this stage after a few months of dating and it is a milestone that should not be ignored. Clothing Commitment is the stage in which the female descends upon the male's bedroom closet and decides which clothing the male is permitted to wear.
Women do this because they love us and it pains them to see us walking around looking like a "winter'' when every female in the universe knows that we are actually a "fall.'' Men do not know this. At least heterosexual men do not know this.
I have reached this point several times. And one time is particularly memorable because of the significance it would hold a couple of years later. The relationship did not last, but the memory of that "closet do-over'' did.
I had been dating this lady for a couple of months when she decided to make "the next step'' in our relationships by going through my closet. So I sat on my bed as she rifled through my stuff. She quickly assembled my wardrobe into three piles: Clothes I could keep and, presumably, wear with confidence; clothes that should be given to the Salvation Army; and clothes that were too unspeakably tacky to be given even to the indigent.
She would hold up each garment, render her judgment and then ask me if I agreed with the verdict, I suppose to give me the illusion of having a real say in the matter.
I grudgingly agreed with most of her pronouncements. On occasion, I'd put up a fight because the garment in question had some sort of sentimental value - say, a shirt my kids gave me one Christmas, for example.
Sometimes she would acquiesce to my protest, moving the garment to the "OK'' pile with sort of a pained expression on her face. Most times, though, my feeble argument would be dismissed and it would be "Goodbye, pants!''
Then, she emerged from the closet with an orange polo shirt. Her expression announced the verdict before she even spoke.
"But I just bought that!'' I whined. "I've only worn it a couple of times!''

She just shook her head, then spoke in a tone that dripping with solemn candor:

"You must promise me to never, ever wear orange,'' she said, as if my entire future relied upon it.
"Uh...OK,' I said, a little startled at the gravity of her plea.
At the time, it did not seem like a difficult vow to keep.
Now, we move forward a couple of years, to a precise date, in fact: April 5, 2007.
For the month prior, my wardrobe has consisted of the black-and-white striped pants and shirt of a prisoner in the Maricopa County Jail System.
But on that April morning, I stood in a room at Alhambra Jail in Phoenix with about 25 other men who were being transferred to state prisons. We stood there naked as a Trusty entered the room with big boxes. Inside the boxes were our new state prison uniforms: white boxer shorts with the acronoym "ADC'' (Arizona Department of Corrections) stenciled on them. Orange pants. Orange T-shirts. Orange canvass slippers.
I began to laugh, for I suddenly remembered the words of my old girl friend: "Promise me that you will never, ever wear orange.''
The other inmates stared at me, wondering why I was laughing. When you are standing around in room full of naked men, being noticed is not a good thing.
So off I went to Florence West prison, home to roughly 500 men wearing orange pants, orange T-shirts and orange canvass shoes.
Early in the morning, when a voice announced on the P.A. system: "The yard is open,'' you would see the men spill out into the exercise yard. It reminded me of some sort of Disney animation - 500 traffic cones come to life.
"Gee,'' I remember saying to one of my fellow inmates on one of my first days at Florence West, "I guess every day is Halloween here, huh?''
As I mentioned earlier, at Maricopa County Jail inmates are attired in those ridiculous black-and-white striped uniforms, almost as though we were extras in some old James Cagney prison movie. I am pretty sure inmates are dressed this way as a form of humiliation. It did not produce those feelings in me, though. I sort of got caught up in the idea of playing a Humphrey Bogart role in some old movie. I often had to resist the urge to turn to a fellow inmate and whisper, "Psst! Me and Whitey are going over the wall at midnight!'' So thanks, Sheriff Joe, for permitting me to "escape'' into fantasy.
But there is nothing romantic about wearing orange, although you understand the reasoning behind it. Orange is highly visible. Hunters wear orange so that other hunters will be able to distinguish them from the prey they are seeking to shoot holes into. This is important in, say, the event of an escape attempt. You can spot a guy in orange from a great distance, believe me.
So, for 84 days, I broke my vow to my old girl friend and wore orange every day. I trust she will understand.
But now that I am a free man, I am back to a life without the color orange. And content.
Who knows? Someday I may even be able to walk into Home Depot.

Remembering Lenny

2008-01-15T16:51:00.000-07:00

The headline grabbed my attention right away: "Suit settled for $2 mil in county jail death,'' read the headline in the Jan. 15 edition of the Arizona Republic.
The story reported that the county agreed to pay $2 million to the parents of Brian Crenshaw, a mentally disabled man who died while in the custody of the Maricopa County Jail System, to settle a wrongful-death suit facing the cash-strapped county.
In the story, a lawyer for Sheriff Joe Arpaio said, in so many words, that the sheriff would rather have fought the charge in a trial, but they decided instead to hand over $2 million in taxpayer's money, out of kindness, I suppose.
Crenshaw is one of 11 inmates who have died in Sheriff Joe's care during his tenure as sheriff. Some, like Crenshaw, suffered from mental illnesses, which strikes me as particuarly tragic. If you want the details of Crenshaw's story, go to: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0115settlement0115.html
Sheriff Joe characterizes those deaths as accidents, more or less. Nothing to get all worked up about. They're just inmates, after all, not dogs.
Two thoughts struck me as I read the sad account of Crenshaw's death: First, Sheriff Joe's jail must be the most accident-prone place on earth, ya know?.
Second, I wonder what's become of Lenny.
Let me back up a second. As my regular readers know, beginning on March 2 of 2007, I served 122 days for a felony DUI. I was locked up for 34 of those days at Maricopa County's Durango Jail in Phoenix. For about three weeks, I was, for lack of a better term, the leader of a prison gang, which still amazes even me.
Briefly, here's how that came about. In prison, the inmates self-segregate according to race, with each race having its own power structure. As distasteful as that must sound, I found there was one benefit to such a system in that it provided a means of settling disputes between races. If, for example, a white inmate got into a dispute with a black inmate, the matter was settled by the "heads'' of the two races. Assuming the two heads could agree on a resolution, those issues were dealt with such a way as to prevent fights.
I did not aspire to hold office when I arrived at Durango. But when Sammy, the No. 1 head of the white inmates, was moved to another part of the jail, Kurt, the second in command, took over. Only Kurt turned out to have the diplomatic skills of Atilla the Hun. He had the ability to turn a small dispute into an impending race war. And, in prison, when your race goes to war, you go, too. Nobody is allowed to stand on the sidelines.
Fearful that Kurt's reign would ultimately lead to a bloodbath, the other white inmates urged me to take over as head. I think they saw me as something of a father figure, truth be known, someone who could negotiate and keep the peace. Kurt was more than happy to abdicate the post. All these squabbles were giving him headaches, he said.
So I took over for purely selfish reasons. I figured it was in my best interest to see if I could make violence the last resort rather than the first option.
I succeeded, too, although there were some tense moments. I don't mind saying that I looked forward to the day of my sentencing as much to get out of the inmate gang hierarchy as to escape the dehumanizing conditions of county jail.
The day before my sentencing, I met Lenny, which is not his real name. He was one of eight new inmates to arrived in our pod (cellblock). He was an enormous kid, 6-foot-7, probably 260 pounds. My first thought was it was nice to have a big guy on our team. After all, good weapons make good diplomacy sometimes. So I introduced myself, told him I'd meet with him later to fill him in on some things he'd need to know about life at Durango.
He didn't say much. I attributed that to the shock on being thrown into a cellblock with a bunch of strangers. Man, didn't I know that feeling.
But it wasn't 10 minutes until one of the other race's head burst into my cell, where I was writing a letter.
"You gotta do something about your new boy,'' he said.
"What do you mean?''
He went on to explain that Lenny had tried to go to the bathroom when it was closed for cleaning.
Inmates are responsible for what passes for cleaning at Durango. Each night, a half-hour after dinner, a group of inmates clean the bathroom. While they are doing this, no one is permitted to enter. A trash barrel is placed at the entrance so the other inmates know it's cleaning time.
But Lenny didn't figure it out. He simply slid the barrel to the side and walked in. One of the men doing the cleaning stopped him.
"Bathroom's closed,'' he told Lenny.
"But where am I supposed to go to take a piss?'' Lenny asked.
The other inmate shrugged, pointing to the trash can, sort of as a joke.
Only Lenny didn't take it as a joke. In a moment, he had lowered his striped pants and was about to relieve himself when the other inmate yelled at him to stop.
"Are you f------ crazy?'' he screamed.
And, of course, the matter was brought to me.
"I'll talk to him,'' I told the other heads, who had assembled to discuss what should be done about the incident.
I found Lenny sitting in his bunk, rocking back and forth.
"Hey,'' I said. "We need to talk about what just happened.''
"I didn't do nothing,'' he said. "I wanted to take a piss. I did what they told me. And now everybody wants to fight me.''
And I knew, both by his tone and his words, that the huge figure who sat rocking in his bunk was really a little child, an innocent.
"Slim, why does everybody want to fight me?'' Lenny asked.
"I told him that it was all a misunderstanding.
"Maybe it's better for you to stay here on your bunk for a while,'' I told him. "I'll take care of everything. It will be OK.''
"OK,'' he said quietly.
"I'll come back and check on you in a little while, OK? I've got some books. Would you like to look at some books? I can find some magazines, if you would rather have that.''
"I like magazines,'' he said.
"Great. I'll get some.''
"Slim?'' he said as I was turning to leave his cell.
"Yeah?''
"Slim, I don't like this place,'' he said, his voice quivering.
"Aw, you'll be fine,'' I said. "You'll get to know the other guys and you'll get used to things. Everybody feels the same way you feel when they first come here. It gets better. You'll see.''
I went back to my cell, whether the other heads were waiting to hear from me.
I told them about Lenny, that he was like a little child in his thinking. He wouldn't be any trouble, I told them, as long as they explained things to him in a way he could understand.
A few minutes later, I pulled Raymond aside. Raymond would take over as head of the whites when I left Durango the next day. "Take care of him,'' I said. "Don't let him out of your sight, OK?''
Raymond assured me he would watch over Lenny.
Just before night head count, when all the inmates are required to be in their own cells, I stopped in to see Lenny.
He was still on his bunk, but he was weeping now, giants sobs, heaving breaths, still rocking back and forth.
"Hey,'' I said, trying to sound comforting. "There's no reason for that. You're safe. Nothing bad is going to happen to you.''
"Slim,'' he said between great sobs. "Slim, why won't my mama come and get me? I don't like this place. I want to go home. Mama don't love me. She's mad at me for being bad. She won't come get me out of this place.''
I put my hand on his ernormous trembling shoulder.
"Your mama loves you,'' I said. "But she can't come get you, not right now. You have to stay here, but you're going to be OK. I tell you what: I'll get Raymond to help you write a letter to your mama tomorrow. That way, she can write back to you. What do you think of that? That's a good idea, huh?''
Lenny stopped sobbing. "Yeah, I guess,'' he said softly.
"Good,'' I said. "Now, go to sleep and I'll see you in the morning.''
That was a lie. I knew I'd be pulled out of the cellbock at 4 a.m. to be transported to Superior Court for sentencing. But I just couldn't think of a way to tell him I was leaving. Raymond would find him after the morning count and take care of him.
Lenny stretched out on his bunk and rolled over on his side.
"There you go,'' I said.
"Slim,'' he said. "I don't like this place.''
"I know,'' I said.
And that was the last I saw of Lenny.
I don't know what has become of him.
But when I read to story about Brian Crenshaw, I wonderd about Lenny.
And I wondered if Brian was like Lenny. I wondered if Brian's last months of this earth were filled with confusion and fear. I wondered if a misunderstanding led to a beat-down that ended in his death.
I wondered if Brian's last thoughts were the ones Lenny voiced that night at Durango:
"Slim, why does everybody want to fight me?''
I wondered about all 11 of those inmates who have died in Sheriff Joe's care over the past 12 years.
And the more I think about it, the more surprised I am.
I have lived in Sheriff Joe's hell-hole.
So I am not surprised that so many have died.
I am surprised that so few seem to care.