When I Close My Eyes

5224 So. Albany, Chicago

When I close my eyes I see the neighborhood in Chicago where I grew up.   There are a few wood frame homes mixed in with the brick bungalows.  Each house is neatly separated by an 8′ gangway, or sidewalk, which leads to a rear entrance and the backyard.  Backyards measure 30 x 40 feet and most have a cook’s garden bursting with red tomatoes and some radishes or cucumbers.  Each city block is cut in half by an alley that is lined by neat, little one and two car garages.    I spent a lot of time in the alley.  That’s where we kids played.  The streets were busy; the alleys were safe, and you’d get a licking if you didn’t come home when the street lights came on.

As soon as the teachers finished getting us ready for our futures and the days grew longer,  we would spring out of the house and meet up in the alley.  We would stand at a back gate and call each other out.    Sometimes we needed a little pocket change and went door-to-door, selling used pencils or made a lemonade stand, selling  two cent cups of cold, pure sunshine.   We collected bottle caps all summer because the theater gave out a free movie ticket for every eight caps you turned in.   “Three Outs” was a game where we took turns throwing a baseball at the foot of a garage door so it would bounce up, onto it, and fly back to our mitts.  Three misses, or the garage owner coming out and yelling, and you were out.   Hours were spent hopscotching, playing H-O-R-S-E (as if any of us had ever seen a real one) and riding “no hands” on our Stingray bikes with the long banana seats and ape hanger handlebars.

When I close my eyes, I can hear the AM radio playing Harper Valley, P.T.A., 96 Tears, and California Dreaming.  My dad calls me over; I put down my transistor radio and “get” to turn the television channels for him, all eight of them.   Parents figured out real quick that children were much better at changing the channels –only I had the added pleasure of getting to take off his shoes and smelly socks so he could put his feet up on the ottoman after a long day at work.  My mom asks me to run up to “Lotties” (down the alley and up to the corner) to get a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread, handing me a dollar and telling me to count the change.  The phone rings and each of us looks around at the other and says, “I got it last time, it is your turn,” only to find out it is a long distance call and then we all huddle close by to listen.

When I close my eyes, it is just after supper on a typical spring evening and my dad and I are playing catch with the mitts.  It was my favorite game with him.  With each toss, there was a lot going on that was unsaid.  If I jumped up and wrangled a high ball down, he would nod.  Then I’d throw him a burner on purpose just to be a smartass.  I know he felt what I dealt because he would start to twinkle.  That’s when I would brace myself for a real stinger.  I learned real quick that it is better to give than to receive.

When I close my eyes, it is 90 degrees outside, you can see waves of heat rising from the pavement and people are melting because no one has air conditioning.  Mom puts a ponytail in my hair every morning to keep the heat off of my neck.   Looking up and down the entire block, there is a fan blowing in every upstairs window.  Then the miracle of all miracles happens–the Good Humor Truck’s  music gets closer and closer and CLOSER!   My brother runs up to tell me there is a fire hydrant open at 52nd and Troy because Joey’s uncle had a big pipe wrench that fit and that all the kids are there and the water is nice and cool and dogs are running wild in it and so we grab our bikes to see if we can make it through the waves.  Someone has an 8-track player playing Petula Clark’s, “Downtown.”  We race out to the shouts and the glee of the big water spree and the city cool of our very own pool.

Me and Woody, Woody and Me
1966

When I close my eyes, rotary phones are gone along with phone numbers that start with letters, like PO-7-6192, my grandma’s.   I think this is about the time avocado green and seat belts were invented.  My parents bought their first new car, a 1968  Ford Fairlane 500 with with a 289 under her hood that we affectionately named “The Green Hornet”.  It had power steering, lap belts, and an automatic transmission!   The four of us would be coming home from someplace else and someone would remember to call, “I get first dibbs,” (on the only bathroom).   Both my brother and I pretended not to hear my dad’s bathroom song if he ran out of toilet paper.  He would crack the door, put the empty paper tube up to his lips, and sing, “Tootie-Toot, Toot…Tootie-Toot, Toot” until one of us gave in and got him what he needed.  He could sure toot.

When I close my eyes, I’m in the principal’s office and mother has been called; she is on her way there.  My crime?  Wetting blobs of toilet paper and slinging it up on the girl’s bathroom ceiling.  Or maybe it was when the teacher finally noticed my artwork…for days I brought a plastic straw to school and would wad up little bits of paper, wet them with saliva, and blow them on a picture that was hanging next to my desk.  Yep, spitballs. Guilty.  Or maybe it was the time I was spitting down three flights of stairs, trying to hit people from above when a teacher stepped into the wrong place at the right time?  I had a thing for paper, spit, and velocity.

One day, when I close my eyes, I will play ball again, make pinkie rings out of a lightning bugs,  roller skate until the streetlights come on, and I’ll get TWO ice cream sandwiches from the ice cream man and we will never run out of toilet paper and my mom will sew me another Halloween costume  and we will never run out of milk and me and Woody will ride “two on a bike” and never get caught and Santa will bring me lots of presents and we will go to Playland Amusement Park where every ride is a dime and my guinea pigs will squeak when I come home from school and Ricky Carmichael will pull my pig tails again!  Best of all, I will sling a real zinger his way just to see my dad twinkle.

Farmer Style

Pictoral Wishes For Your 2013

Time to Cancel His Show

Obama is a character; a shell game in the flesh, a puppet.  He acts for the audience and will say anything to get what he wants.  Remember transparency promises? 

He is coddled by the media and embraced by all that is fake in Hollywood.  He performs well in a controlled environment.   He is a man without without substance and this was painfully demonstrated during the first presidential debate on October 3, 2012:  The Rocky Mountain Smack Down.

Finally, the world got to see the insecure, smug Barry Obama as Romney chipped away at his facade.   For the first time in years, BO was on his own up against a business professional with no one telling him what to say via teleprompter, and having to attempt to defend an abysmal record over the past four years.  Obama is a narcissistic neophyte who does not have the experience or competence to hang with the big boys.  The emperor wore no clothes.

Both wives were seated

before the debate began and Mrs. Obama looked concerned, worried, and fearful. 

Did anyone else pick up on that?  After the debate, the mainstream media looked like someone had just died.  Then Al Gore gets on and comes up with the high altitude excuse for BO’s poor performance.  Really?  Rubio had it right when he said that Obama’s ideas aren’t any better at sea level.

During the debate, Barry couldn’t look the American people in the eye because deep down, he knows he is a fraud and it was humiliating for him to have to answer questions–coming from someone other than David Letterman –because he was exposed.  The president got it all wrong, likely because the fog in which he and his senior advisers are allowed to live had declared the election over weeks ago.  This led Obama to underestimate his opponent and overestimate his own position.   Earlier in the week President Obama told interviewers that his debate preparations were “a drag” because his advisers were making him do his “homework.”  If he didn’t have time to meet with global leaders, he certainly didn’t have time to do any homework either.

Obama made a grave error in believing his own hype during the last month of the campaign. Obama can never get back the moment in which he, by underestimating his opponent and overestimating himself, allowed Romney to become a plausible alternative.

Lucille

I can remember 1977 when this song came out.  It is still one of the saddest ones I know (and I wasn’t a farmer back then!)  Lucille may be eclipsed by Elvis Presley singing, “In the Ghetto.”    Oh wait, then there’s Bobby Goldsboro’s song, “Honey” where the wife died and he sings about how he misses her.  A sad song list must include Kris Kristoferson’s , “Sunday Morning Coming Down”  followed up by Johnny Cash singing, “We’ll Meet Again.”   –Whitney Houston’s, “I Will Always Love You” still tears me up.

Where are have all the great song writer, story tellers, and poets gone? 

On the flip side, I can be hip, too.  I think “Lose Yourself” by Eminem is brilliant.  Whatever the genre…I’m putting the word up and out on this web, this invisible cloud, to artists here and now:  we need real songs, real content again.  P R E T T Y  P L E A S E

The Show Pony

Imagine two American icons converging at the tip of Michigan’s mitten–

at the Straits of Mackinac, where Great Lakes Huron and Michigan are defined by the Mackinac Bridge, a massive suspension bridge.

This is precisely the spot where a group of Airstream owners rendezvoused with Captain Adam, master of all that is pirate, this past summer.  Salty sea dogs, rogue pirates, and even Captain Adam have mothers.  I affectionately call him my “Show Pony” and cashed in all my chips to get him to load his 30’ Boston Whaler on its triple axle trailer to haul it 300 miles up north for my Airstream rally.

Ok, so I promised to bake him his favorite chocolate cupcakes too.

Throw in a visit to the historic Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island

and you have a combination of epic proportion.

Big boys (and girls) with toys! 

We called our rally, “Exploring Under the Bridge” and advertised that there would be an opportunity to salmon fish and joy ride on a private boat.  What catapulted this rally over the top was the Whaler and the added adventure it could provide.   Airstreaming families rolled in from GA, OH, IL, MO, OK, MI, IN and Canada!   For many, this was their first experience on big water.

Our attendees were able to go back “Somewhere in Time” to Mackinac Island and sip lemonade on the porch of the Grand Hotel.  We took full advantage of the twin 225 Mercury Verado engines as we explored under the Mackinac Bridge.  We docked in time to catch happy hour at the island’s Pink Pony Saloon.

Here’s the not-so-secret secret:  Airstreaming and Boston Whaler boats are a state of mind and have become as common and well-loved in the culture of America as blue jeans and tees. 

Airstream’s silver-bullet travel trailers have been streaming down the nation’s ribbons of highways for more than 75 years Founder Wally Byam began the enterprise in the 1920s by selling plans for building trailers, which led to the design and launch of “The Clipper” in the early 1930s. The company makes travel trailers primarily, but also produces its Interstate touring coach with full amenities. Airstream has produced about 140,000 travel trailers and motor homes since it began, and roughly two-thirds of them are still making trails. Airstream is a subsidiary of Thor Industries. 

Salty sea captains and die hard Whaler owners like my son, Adam, are secretly pleased with themselves for thinking outside of the box.  Owners of both of these iconic American brands have an elevated understanding of style, durability, and value without being snobby about it.  Was that snobby?  We feel responsible for the life of our boat or trailer–knowing where she’s been before, if buying used (as many of us do) or if she’s been restored.  Those leaving a dealership keep meticulous records to pass down one day–if that day ever comes.

Airstreamers are an industrious lot; many had researched the Boston Whaler website and learned how unsinkable they are.  Those who could not swim or were afraid of water donned life vests and threw caution to the wind.  By the rally’s end, we heard so many nice things about the Whaler’s creature comforts and how she handled the 2-4’s in the Straits and how unafraid folks were.  That speaks volumes about qualities that are built into the Boston Whaler and how tasty my chocolate cupcakes really are!