Sunday, November 05, 2006

The Lost City of Valimar I wrote the following for another project, and thought I'd inflict it on you guys.  As a point of information, we live, if you're loose with your definitions, in a Seattle neighborhood called Wallingford. I'm not sure what made me think of this 30-some-year-old anecdote - possibly from watching the phenomenon lately in Wallingford of demolishing modest houses, replacing them with lot-devouring mega-residences and hanging 7-figure price tags on them, and knowing that the following bit of Wallingfordiana is not likely to be repeated. We first rented, then purchased our house in 1975. Built in 1906, it had been in use as a rental for at least 5, and perhaps 10, years, and had suffered the amateur ministrations of absentee landlords, their brothers-in-law and, perhaps, tenants with the desire (but not the technical skills) to improve their fleeting sojourn there. It was, in a word, ramshackle, but it sat on what passes in Wallingford for a double lot, a feature we kids from the flat and ample platting of small-town Ohio thought valuable. Until we tried to mow it. We didn't own a lawn mower as tenants, so we rented one from Handy Andy when the sporadic impulse to play groundskeeper overtook us. What we found, on closer inspection, was that the luxurious sheaves of quack grass bursting forth in the fecundity of our first Seattle spring sprang from an unruly expanse of clumpy sod that the mower simply could not negotiate. Back to Handy Andy I went to rent a lawn roller, which I laboriously pushed over the turf with little effect except to rattle my bones. The lawn's condition was the result of a startingly industrious farming effort by a group of former tenants who apparently had made of the property something of a commune. Our landlady had hinted briefly at the endeavor when showing us the house, excoriating them for planting a plague of blackberries, and concluding, "They were nice kids, I think...just lazy and ignorant." We felt the sting on our own pseudo-hippie spirits, but maintained a diplomatic silence. A neighbor, B., later filled us in on more details of the "commune", filtered through his own combination of perspective and, probably, wishful thinking. He was a large, amiable guy from Oklahoma, rumored to have played some football there, and the combination of his large frame, sizeable gut and two small, yappy dogs always tickled us. He would periodically come out onto his front porch, barefoot, in jeans and shirtless, clear his throat and launch a loud, Okie "hawk-TEWWWW" expectoration off the rail - prefatory to ineffectually admonishing his dogs when they yapped energetically, but at a safe distance, at friend and foe alike passing on the sidewalk. B. said that our hippie commune predecessors had dug up the entire back and side yards and planted a variety of crops. To his consternation, they'd fertilized it with a mountain of wet chicken manure that he claimed stood as high as our garage when they'd imported it. He asserted that there'd never been flies in the neighborhood before that seminal act of counterculture agriculture. With each over-the-fence conversation, the census of naked hippies who inhabited this utopia multiplied, and B. hinted with what sounded more like envy than admonition at the unrestrained pursuit of free love. For a long time, these terse anecdotes, and the word "Valimar" in Druidesque script carved into the gate of a fence, were the only remnants of our hippie forbears. Then, a few years ago, a guy showed up at the door, said he used to live there during that time, and asked to look around. My wife was there (I wasn't), and to her he seemed nostalgic, maybe a little rueful, and told her a little about their sojourn there. He recalled helping to carve "Valimar" in the fence, and also cleared up a lingering mystery: Our kitchen retains the ceramic tile floor that was there when we bought the house, and there has always been this big chip - a divot, actually - in the center of the floor. The guy said that, during an argument, his girlfriend had launched some substantial piece of kitchenware at him, and his nimbleness in dodging it was our floor's misfortune. I have long since replaced the rickety old fence and its Middle Earth moniker. I also churned up the yard and laid new sod down about 25 years ago, only to have the vigorous native quack grass quickly displace it, although I'm now able to mow it when I'm so moved. B.'s college girlfriend suddenly re-entered his life, and they moved off to less fly-blown - and probably more affordable - climes.  And for years now, we've had a most excellent vegetable garden in the back, probably owing to that roof-high load of Nixon-era chicken manure. And not all that many flies, really. 7:51:34 PM    Speak to me! []

	Sunday, June 18, 2006

Fathers and Sons In my previous post, I alluded to a depth of generations.  So, for Father's Day, here they all are, 6 generations of fathers and sons: Me, my grandfather, my son, my dad (ca 1984). My dad, my grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great grandfather (ca 1925).  A fine-looking brace of Irishmen! And, oddly reminiscent of the photos in this post, here's one I found of my dad and grandpa: 8:45:29 PM    Speak to me! []

	Sunday, May 22, 2005

This is from a "humor" column I wrote for the school newspaper as a senior in high school.  I stumbled across the stash of these old papers last week, and had some fun reading through them. 5:30:28 AM    Speak to me! []

	Monday, April 04, 2005

A March Madness Reminiscence The NCAA men's basketball championship is tonight and, although I really don't have an emotional stake in the outcome, I always get a little pang around this time of year because it reminds me of the torrid 3-year affair I conducted with my first sports love. My mom and dad both attended Ohio State, and there was never any question about where our sports loyalties resided. I was sort of a chubby, unathletic kid, though, and the sports gene pretty much lay dormant until the winter of 1959 - 60. That year, a once-in-a-lifetime recruiting class became sophomores and eligible to play at Ohio State, including Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, Mel Nowell and Bobby Knight. I must have contracted my dad's enthusiasm, and we started setting aside time on the evenings - Saturday and Tuesday, usually - when they played, and we'd strain our radio's capability to pull in the Columbus radio station carrying the games. As this first wondrous season unfolded with victory after victory, we at some point got caught up in keeping score. My dad must have seen a bonding opportunity in this virtual sport that hadn't germinated in the freezing duck blinds and torpid bobber-watching forays he'd tried in vain to inure me to, and he made the most of it. He had printed (mimeographed - these were the old days) scoresheets made at his office with the hallowed starting five filled in, and blanks for subs, and we assiduously recorded field goals attempted and made, free throws attempted and made, and personal fouls. We'd compare notes at halftime and at the end of games, and compute the shooting percentages for individuals and the teams, and try to do it fast enough to compare ours with the post-game wrap-up. We were aided greatly in this endeavor by undoubtedly the most egregious homer announcer I've ever heard, a guy named Joe Hill. It was amazing how close our radio-informed statistics would track the official numbers. And, an added bonus, Hill would really scourge the refs if he felt we were being jobbed, and, for the first time in my life, I tasted the seething vintages of the sports fan's hatreds. The Buckeyes won the national championship that year that Lucas and Havlicek were sophomores, and went on to post a 73-6 record over the three years those guys played. They were beaten, however, in each of the next two national championship games by Cincinnati. I honestly think I lost my religion the Sunday morning after the second Cinci loss. I remember having to walk away from the TV in the second half, as I'd learned to discern defeat in a team's demeanor. Then in the morning, sitting in church with my eyes closed but seeing nothing but the Blade's "CINCI WINS!" headline emblazoned in Hiroshima-sized type on my retinas, I finally knew the universe for the cold and brutal place that it is. Ohio State had a couple of good years after that with Gary Bradds, another all-American, at center, but, for me, bra sizes began to replace field-goal percentages as my stat-du-jour, my dad began to suffer stress from occupational angst and personal demons, and our period of Buckeye bonding dissipated. Still, we had it, that period of delirious sports lust, and its corollary, the searing heartache of defeat and entitlement forfeited. Of course, my dad and I collaborated on projects and enjoyed each other's company until he died last fall, and I've had satisfying adult relationships with other sports teams, but I always feel a little nostalgia during March Madness for those nights by the radio, brow furrowed and pencil poised, urging Big Luke to sink another of his soft hooks. (Pictures from The Golden Age of Ohio State Basketball by Lee Caryer) Bonus shot - Basketball cognoscenti familiar with the scowling, silver-haired visage of Bobby Knight might get a kick out of the shot below, taken at the Cow Palace after the 1960 national championship game:   6:11:17 PM    Speak to me! []

	Friday, December 31, 2004

Milepost 2004 has been our "30th" for several things.  In June, we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary;  In October, 1974, we loaded up a 5' by 8' U-Haul, hitched it to my 1967 Pontiac Tempest, and left northwestern Ohio for a vision of Ecotopia in Seattle;  and, 30 years ago tonight, we did a "midnight move" from our apartment on Belmont Avenue, Capitol Hill to our current home near Greenlake. We had signed a 6-month lease for the Belmont apartment in October, and faithfully paid our rent.  However, around Thanksgiving, the radiator system, which had been showing increasing signs of distress, finally just quit working, and we had no heat at all, day or night, for the month of December. I had found work in what I then considered my "field", as a bicycle mechanic, while Mrs. Perils was spending her evenings weaving rugs and her days trying to sell them at the Pike Place Market.  We were unused to the relentless damp and gloom of this northern latitude, and a depression of sorts settled in.  I don't remember if we called the landlord about the lack of heat or not...perhaps we didn't feel, as carpetbaggers and fugitives from responsible midwestern values, entitled to heat on demand.  My seldom-used Tempest, meanwhile, was parked in an inclined lot with its right side facing upwards, and once when I went to drive it, I found 2 inches of water on the floor and mold festooning then interior. At that time in our strapping youth, we mostly bicycled for transportation.  We still felt, however, that we needed to do something for exercise, and often stopped at Greenlake to run its 2 1/2 mile circumference before bicycling back to our Belmont Avenue digs.  At some point, a friend of ours approached us about renting a house near Greenlake with him, and we jumped at the chance.  We went to tour the house, but were disappointed when it was rented to someone else.  Spurred by the cold and damp in our apartment, though, we started checking ads, and happened on one for our current house.  The landlady said we could have it, but we'd have to take it immediately, and not wait for our apartment lease to expire. This presented a dilemma, as we felt bound by the lease, but really wanted the house and its proximity to our hallowed running venue.  We finally decided that enough was enough,  packed up our stuff on New Year's evening and moved into the house.  It seemed cavernous compared to our apartment, as we had no furniture beyond my JBL 77 speakers and Mrs. Perils' weaving loom.  We sat on the floor, ate a dinner hastily purchased at Dick's Drive-In, and felt quite satisfied in our civil disobedience and the unimagined opulence of occupying an entire house (a letter of explanation to our Belmont landlord brought an apology and full refund of our deposit). 9 months later our landlady asked us if we were prepared to move out so she could put the house on the market and (subject of a future story) we ended up, after sweating bullets over signing a land contract and paying what seemed like a fortune, buying the place from her instead. 8:26:46 PM    Speak to me! []

	Thursday, September 02, 2004

A Musical Interlude As I mentioned a couple of entries ago, I'm going to Columbus to meet up with my brothers and parents, and to play with my OSU band alumni at the football game against Cincinnati Saturday.  As I've said before, it's hard to torch one of the last summer weekends in Seattle to do this, but since all of my family (2 younger brothers and parents) attended OSU, and my youngest brother was in the band, too, it's become a traditional family reunion. This year, it's threatened a bit by Hurricane Frances.  My youngest brother, the other bandsman, works in Atlanta for a major homeowners' insurer, and is almost certain to miss the trip as they deploy claims personnel around the area.  My middle brother lives in Charleston, SC and is waiting to see which way the storm turns before flying to Columbus.  They have animals that would need to be evacuated by car if they got major attention from the storm. So, the other night I crept down to the basement, oiled my trumpet's valves and began to methodically abuse my dental work, to the presumed consternation of neighbors and the certain reproductive disruption of our basement's spider population.  It pained me, as well, to reconcile the sounds bouncing off the walls, the clangor of distressed metallurgy, with the remembered dulcet tones of my youth. The trumpet I'm using is the same one that I had in high school, and the case is a museum of competition medals (I wasn't that good, but our band was), OSU basketball programs from the Bill Hosket/Dave Sorensen/Jim Cleamons era.  I know this is absolute nonsense to anyone not having an unhealthy level of knowledge of Ohio State athletics, but you get the idea. My accompanist on this night is Miss Jean Ann Soda, an effervescent, if uncautious, complement.  I warm up with long tones, lip slurs, chromatics.  Yes, it IS like riding a bike, but the fingers fly ahead of the flaccid lip muscle.  From my trumpet's sarcophagus I pull my book of exercises, Rubank's Advanced Method Vol. 1 for Trumpet or Cornet, and page through it looking for something I can play.  I play some arpeggios, some short ditties, and flit back and forth between different keys to awake whatever ability I retain to sightread music.  As I move from page to page, I note handwritten dates, phrases and imprecations: "Dec 20.  Long tones, go for 25 seconds";  "Nov 1-62";  "Nov 29-62 - both lines, ALWAYS!";  "Dec 6-62  Do again"; on page 26, "Feb 2-63" and, on the same page, "Feb 6 - 63  Do it Please!";  on page 31, "May 26 - 63 Re-Do Correctly...sf..pp..staccato";  and on page 50, undated "Very Good".  A log in the front of the book has entries in the same handwriting spanning from October 12, 1962 to May 31, 1963, a period during which I took private lessons from our high school band director, Frank Menichetti, which would have been my freshman year. We probably all have that one teacher that we look back to and say he/she made a difference, was a fulcrum in our development.  At the time I started high school, Mr. Menichetti had built a powerhouse high school band juggernaut at our school, with consistent 1 ratings at state concert band competitions.  You could go anywhere in Ohio, say you played in the Perrysburg band, and have instant respect.  He did it with a combination of teaching solid fundamentals, criticism when warranted and, above all, constant exhortations towards excellence.  Our motto, on a sign above his podium, was "Quis In Tartaro Communis Es Vult", "Who in hell wants to be ordinary?".  Although he wasn't Bobby-Knight abusive, you definitely knew when you weren't measuring up.  I believe this explains why the private-lesson entries in my exercise book end on 5/31/63.  Progress was glacial, I was lazy and complacent and we broke for the summer and never resumed. At the end of my sophomore year, I began to appreciate more fully our legacy of success, and to want to step up to a more significant role, perhaps even contend for first chair.  Then, sometime during the summer, word came that Mr. Menichetti had resigned and, apparently dismayed either with teaching or the administration, was returning home to Illinois to work in the family meat business.  There was no comparable successor on staff, and it soon became clear that the administration was not going to make much effort to find one.  When school began, our director was an earnest but overmatched young guy just a year or so out of college. I recall the sting of this revelation, that internecine jealosy and academic politics could bring down something that we and the community seemed to value so highly.  I also recall a little of the kids-of-divorce syndrome, that maybe if I/we had tried harder to be better, he might have stayed.  The next two years were what it might be like playing for the post-Lou Piniella Mariners, stuck in a purgatory of high expectation and, well, merely ordinary performance. Still, not everyone gets to experience the catalyst of success, of knowing how it feels and having at least an inkling of how hard it is to achieve and maintain, and there was more value in having played in Mr. Menichetti's band than in anything else I did in high school.  I'm not saying, by any means, that it was a launchpad to unalloyed lifelong success.  But without it, I wouldn't have had the personal and musical wherewithal to try out for and get into the Ohio State band, where I was able again to experience that elixir of excellence.  Those experiences have given me a standard against which to measure any activity that I engage in. I know Mr. Menichetti eventually returned to teaching, at a town not too far from mine.  Last year, out of curiosity, I Googled him just to see if I could fill in any more of the story.  I was startled to come across a reference in a small-town Illinois cemetery, with a link to this: Whether he's in Tartaro or Caelum, the bastards had better be filling out their practice cards. 9:09:50 PM    Speak to me! []

	Monday, June 07, 2004

On This Day In... 30 years ago today Mrs. Perils of Caffeine and I were married in Findlay, Ohio.  We had moved in together after college, to the consternation of both families, in Bowling Green while I took some courses and waited for life to whisper something definite in my ear.  The situation with the families didn't improve, and we finally decided to get officially licensed. We were over-the-top bicycle enthusiasts then, and thought it would be the height of whimsy to ride our bikes to the ceremony.  We'd heard that the mayor of Findlay, the self-proclaimed "only Democrat in Hancock County", would perform the honors free of charge, so we grabbed a good friend as witness and rode the 25 miles to Findlay.  We encountered a strong headwind, the relentless kind of wind in Ohio unencumbered by trees or hills, and tucked in behind a farmer's combine for several miles.  As a result, the bride arrived at her wedding with chaff in her hair. Afterward, we rode back to Bowling Green in time for the bride to work her shift at the restaurant at the Holiday Inn.  She either liberated, or they gave her, a nice hunk of steak, our friend brought a cake and we had our wedding banquet after she got off work. We could have, probably should have, given the families the opportunity to throw a traditional wedding.  It would have healed a lot of things and made life a little easier for all of us in the years to follow.  But I was stubborn, self-absorbed and - look at me - not really ready to deal with rooms full of people asking me what I was doing with my life. All in all, though, things have worked out well.  Though my parents live 2,000 miles away, I visit with them 5 or 6 times a year; my mother-in-law now lives with us as an invited guest;  and the marriage has outlived the Kingdome and scores of sovereign nation-states. Thank you, dear!  Hope we last another 30! 6:13:55 AM    Speak to me! []

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