This is the first of a pair of posts on my first 'real job', after I finished all my schooling. For some strange reason, my brain has been poked to remember various stories from the early years of my career (mostly by reading your blogs, or your comments on mine). Anyway, I hope you enjoy. . .
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When I took my first job, fresh out of college, I went to work for a wheel company here in the town where I have lived ever since (and right next door to the town where the college was located). I will forego retelling yet another time the standard joke about wheels and engineering and 'making 'em round', or the one about re-inventing the wheel. . .
It was a good job, and surprisingly interesting, what for being a small-to-midsize automotive supplier company. We had some very bright, and very interesting folks populating our engineering department in those days (including a guy who would later be my boss, who was a collector of antique bicycles; more than once, I went on rides with him, with him riding an 1890s-vintage high-wheeler; but, I digress), although you might not have suspected it, at first glance.
Our engineering office was carved out of the front third-or-so of a pole-barn which was sort-of 'out-the-back-door-and-across-the-railroad-tracks' from the main company offices. And even those fancy 'front-door' offices had a distinct 50s-era feel to them.
The back two-thirds of the 'engineering building' was mostly a test lab, filled with various and sundry test equipment, which ran more-or-less continuously, to provide validation for our engineering designs. One of the more, um, noteworthy test machines was colloquially referred to as the 'bullwheel' machine. Conceptually, it was quite simple - a wheel, with a tire mounted on it, was fixed to an axle and pressed into a rotating drum at a load and inflation much higher than it would ever see from being installed on a vehicle. The idea was that, if the wheel could endure x-number of revolutions at the increased load, it would never fail in normal road usage. Bullwheels came in two sizes - passenger-car and heavy-truck.
The, uh, exciting feature of the bullwheel machines were the tires that were mounted on the wheels which were the actual objects being tested. The tires were just part of the test fixture, so to speak; just a means of transferring the load between the drum and the wheel. And, in the course of running those wheels through a million or more revolutions (just for reference - for a passenger car, 1000 revolutions per mile is a nice round estimate) at an increased load and over-inflated, those tires, which were generally 'factory rejects' from the tire factories, would, from time to time, explode, rather like a very stout balloon that has been squeezed one too many times. And you can believe that, when a tire explodes, it makes a considerable noise (or, as we would say, in technical engineering language, 'a helluva bang'). Especially the heavy-truck tires.
(An aside - one of the first things they had me do, after I hired in, was to run a calculation on a heavy-truck tire, mounted on a 'split-ring-type' wheel. They showed me where to look up the dimensions of the tire and wheel, and told me what pressure the tire was inflated to. The question was: 'If the tire/wheel is lying flat on the ground, and the split-ring is improperly installed, if the tire blows out, how high in the air will the split ring fly?' I ran through the calculations, made some assumptions about how much of the stored energy from the inflated tire was actually transferred into the flying split-ring, and found the answer, which was somewhere above 200 feet. Which was the right answer, so they let me keep my job. No, the real point was: be very, very careful around split-ring truck wheels; if an improperly-installed split-ring, weighing roughly 50lb., will fly 200 feet into the air when it blows, your head won't slow it down all that much if it gets in the way. Impression duly made.)
Now, when I first started working there, the 'engineering computer system' consisted of a small HP computer in a rack (I'm not sure, but it's possible my graphing calculator has more compute-power than it did), with a few peripherals, like a magnetic-cartridge reader, and a paper-tape reader. The 'computer room' was a glorified storeroom off the end of the engineering office, which was separated from the test lab by a relatively thin wall. One evening, I was working late, on a project that had considerable, um, urgency from corporate higher-ups. I was deeply dialed-in to my computer screen and the task at hand, and my conceptual universe had shrunken to a small tube between my face and the screen. Suddenly, on the other side of the wall, a tire blew on one of the heavy-truck bullwheels. It was a tremendous explosion - to liken it to a cannon going off would not be inapt (see above re 'a helluva bang') - and it happened maybe 12 feet from where I was sitting, on the other side of the thin wall (did I mention that the wall was really thin?). I don't remember exactly what I was working on at the time, but every nerve in my entire body was instantly frayed. I sat there for a few minutes, my body buzzing and quite literally trembling. Finally, I managed to collect myself enough to save the files I'd been working on, turn off the computer, and go home. . .
Another time, we had a computer consultant - most probably from Xavier's former employer - in the office for a week or so, and the big-truck bullwheel blew while he was deeply focused on his computer screen. Slowly, he pushed away from the desk, turned and looked at us, and asked, "Does that happen often?" We assured him that it wasn't all that common, no more often than every two or three days. Since he was going to be spending a week with us, I'm not sure he took that information as comforting.
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But that's not really what I set out to tell you all about (although it does a nice job of 'setting the scene' or providing a bit of background color). Recently, I received an email from one of my old co-workers from there (there was a whole group of us who all hired in together within a couple years of each other, in the late 70s; we still keep in touch, and even have annual reunions). I'm not sure exactly what jogged his memory, but somewhere in his email, he made mention of a man we all called 'Hub' (because his last name was 'Hubbard', although, when you think about it, it was kinda cool that he worked for a wheel company) (another aside - there was another guy, surnamed Tuttle, who was simply called 'Tut'; I'm not sure anyone knew his first name - in inter-office memos, and the employee newsletter, he was referred to as 'Tut Tuttle') (If anyone is inclined to compile a list of surnames whose first syllables could be humorous nicknames, you have my blessing, and obviously, WAAAYYY too much time on your hands.) (and I obviously need to learn a little self-control when it comes to the proper used of parentheses).
Hub was one of the more, um, eccentric people I've ever met. By the time I started working there, he was already in his 70s, and had been mostly-retired for several years. But the company still provided him with a small lab, off the back door of the engineering office, to which he would come at more-or-less random intervals, a few times a week, to tinker. It was understood that no-one went into Hub's lab unless invited by Hub himself, and it was the object of considerable speculation among the younger engineers as to what, exactly, was in Hub's lab, and what, exactly, he did in there. The older guys had known him for years, and regarded him as something like their beloved crazy uncle.
Hub was an inventor. I don't know how many patents he may have held, but it was quite a few - he was a fixture at the company's annual Patent Luncheon. I know that he had several patents relating to electronic controls. He was one of those edisonian 'creative-genius-types' who just thought stuff up, and tinkered in his lab to try to turn his ideas into real machinery, while the company pretty much left him alone, except to gather a group whenever he emerged from his lab, saying he had something he wanted to show us.
In person, Hub was every bit the eccentric genius. His speech was nearly unintelligible, mostly because of his fondness for cigars; he wouldn't remove his cigar from his mouth just because he had something to say.
The cigars also figured into my own most, uh, endearingly oddball memory of him. I was talking to him one time, and I noticed that his two front teeth stood almost straight out from his upper jawbone, like a pair of knife-edges, perpendicular to the 'plane' of his face, in a small 'upside-down-V' shape, almost like a tunnel. I thought it odd, and later mentioned it to one of the older guys (probably Tut). He said, "Oh, those are his false teeth. He made them himself." He made his own false teeth? "Yeah; he couldn't find anybody that would make 'em the way he wanted 'em, so he taught himself how to make his own." Wow, cool! "Yeah, he made the front teeth stand out like that to hold his cigars."
After I'd been with the company for a year or so, the day finally came when Hub approached me at the coffee station one afternoon, saying, "Come with me" (at least, I think that's what he said). I don't know what else I was working on at the time, but whatever it was, it was instantly on hold for the next however-long-it-took. Hub took me through the back door of the engineering office, down a hallway heading toward the test lab, to the mysterious door with the small sign telling the curious that admittance was only by invitation of H. Hubbard. He opened the door and ushered me inside.
Hub's lab was surprisingly small - maybe 12 feet square - and utterly dark, except for a single high-intensity lamp which lit the area he was immediately working at. The walls were surrounded by lab benches, which in turn were all covered with assorted gadgetry and components. I wish to heck I could remember what-all he showed me - it was a mix of some of his favorite inventions from bygone years, and some of his current pet projects, and it was all fascinating. The tour of his lab lasted maybe 20 minutes or half-an-hour, and it left both Hub and me beaming by the time it was finished. I thanked him profusely and returned to the real world of my mundane projects.
Hub died a few years later, and I'm told that his house was also full of odd little gadgets of his own design and manufacture. I don't know what ever became of the contents of his lab; it wasn't long after he died that we moved to a new, fancy-modern office building on the edge of town (with freeway visibility), and I only went back to the old pole-barn a few times after that. As I write this, I'm not even sure the building still stands.
But I've never forgotten Hub, and I'd like to think that he has inspired me ever since, to expand my conceptual universe just a bit, to be creative and think 'outside the box' from time to time. . .
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Monday, July 15, 2013
Through the Years. . .
Went Up North a couple weekends ago, to my hometown of Alpena, for my 40th-anniversary class reunion (just for the record, I am nowhere near old enough for it to have been 40 years since I graduated from high school; actually, I graduated while I was still in utero). What a wonderful time! We all (at least, everyone I talked to) (even the two women who showed up rocking a serious 80s-era spiked-hair-and-eyebrow-piercings punk look) just had a great time catching up on where we've been and what we've been up for the past few decades.
Alpena is a somewhat different place than it was when I lived there. They actually have a Taco Bell there now, whereas in my day, I had to go to the big university downstate to have my first actual taco. And there's a mall on the edge of town now, which houses all the stores that used to be downtown. Downtown, on the other hand, has taken on a decidedly touristy/artisan feel. We dropped in on a T-shirt shop (one of my favorites pronounced, "Lake Huron: Unsalted and Shark-Free"), and a local wine shop, selling locally-grown-and-produced wines. In my day, we barely knew what Boone's Farm was, much less a late-harvest Riesling, and now there's a vineyard down by Ossineke, fer heaven's sake. But the miniature-golf place is still there, down by the beach, and Jen and I played a nostalgic round (well, it was nostalgic for me); I shot four-over-par, which ain't too bad for playing the course no more often than once a decade. . .
The proceedings started with an informal picnic Friday night. The 'informal' part meant that there were no name-tags, so, at least early on, there was a lot of staring at faces, trying to place this or that familiar feature, until the person finally had mercy and told you who they were (of course, many of us were accompanied by our spouses, and one smart-aleck said that they should have had tags saying, "Stop staring; I'm a spouse").
As I said, we had a really great time catching up on the last few decades; we hadn't had a reunion since the 25th, so many of us were seeing each other for the first time in at least 15 years (and I wanna tell ya, the difference between 43-year-olds and 58-year-olds is a significant one). One of my best buds from high school came for the first time since the 10-year reunion, and it was just great to see him; he won the prize for who came the farthest to the 10-year reunion, because he was deported from South Africa the week before the reunion.
Of course, I have several friends with whom I've been at least somewhat in touch ever since graduation, but there are a few of my classmates with whom I've become better friends over the past four decades than we ever were in school, which is kinda cool.
So yeah, we had a great time. Maybe I just have a really great class; lots of my friends have no interest in going to their class reunions, or if they've gone to one, they were put off from ever going back. But I've gone to all of mine, and had a wonderful time at every one of them. . .
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Jen's brother got married for the second time last weekend, at a park over in Port Huron. The county judge who performed the ceremony was a tall, somewhat severe-looking woman, who looked very stately in her robe. At one point, she moved her leg just so, and I espied what looked like an ankle-bracelet. I mentioned the ankle-bracelet to Jen's brother later, and he just laughed, saying, "Uh, no. . . that would be her electronic tether; she's been convicted of DUI three times, but she still manages to keep getting re-elected. . ."
A judge with an electronic tether. . . Only in America. . .
Alpena is a somewhat different place than it was when I lived there. They actually have a Taco Bell there now, whereas in my day, I had to go to the big university downstate to have my first actual taco. And there's a mall on the edge of town now, which houses all the stores that used to be downtown. Downtown, on the other hand, has taken on a decidedly touristy/artisan feel. We dropped in on a T-shirt shop (one of my favorites pronounced, "Lake Huron: Unsalted and Shark-Free"), and a local wine shop, selling locally-grown-and-produced wines. In my day, we barely knew what Boone's Farm was, much less a late-harvest Riesling, and now there's a vineyard down by Ossineke, fer heaven's sake. But the miniature-golf place is still there, down by the beach, and Jen and I played a nostalgic round (well, it was nostalgic for me); I shot four-over-par, which ain't too bad for playing the course no more often than once a decade. . .
The proceedings started with an informal picnic Friday night. The 'informal' part meant that there were no name-tags, so, at least early on, there was a lot of staring at faces, trying to place this or that familiar feature, until the person finally had mercy and told you who they were (of course, many of us were accompanied by our spouses, and one smart-aleck said that they should have had tags saying, "Stop staring; I'm a spouse").
As I said, we had a really great time catching up on the last few decades; we hadn't had a reunion since the 25th, so many of us were seeing each other for the first time in at least 15 years (and I wanna tell ya, the difference between 43-year-olds and 58-year-olds is a significant one). One of my best buds from high school came for the first time since the 10-year reunion, and it was just great to see him; he won the prize for who came the farthest to the 10-year reunion, because he was deported from South Africa the week before the reunion.
Of course, I have several friends with whom I've been at least somewhat in touch ever since graduation, but there are a few of my classmates with whom I've become better friends over the past four decades than we ever were in school, which is kinda cool.
So yeah, we had a great time. Maybe I just have a really great class; lots of my friends have no interest in going to their class reunions, or if they've gone to one, they were put off from ever going back. But I've gone to all of mine, and had a wonderful time at every one of them. . .
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Jen's brother got married for the second time last weekend, at a park over in Port Huron. The county judge who performed the ceremony was a tall, somewhat severe-looking woman, who looked very stately in her robe. At one point, she moved her leg just so, and I espied what looked like an ankle-bracelet. I mentioned the ankle-bracelet to Jen's brother later, and he just laughed, saying, "Uh, no. . . that would be her electronic tether; she's been convicted of DUI three times, but she still manages to keep getting re-elected. . ."
A judge with an electronic tether. . . Only in America. . .
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Connections Through Time. . .
"The years of our life are threescore and ten, or even, by reason of strength, fourscore. . ."
So says the 90th Psalm, and fair enough, I suppose. Although, I admit, being 57 just at the moment, and recalling having been 44 just the day before yesterday, the 13 years left between me and my threescore-and-ten seem pretty much like the-day-after-tomorrow. And those 13 years are by no means guaranteed; my high school class will be holding its 40th anniversary class reunion this summer, and the number of my classmates who haven't lived to see it is distressingly large. 70 just doesn't seem nearly as old as it once did. . .
I was thinking about my dad recently, as I do from time to time, especially on Father's Day (and tomorrow would have been his 91st birthday), and it not yet being two years since he died. I got to thinking about my ancestry more generally, and I had a thought that utterly fascinated me (but then, I get fascinated by weird stuff sometimes). Virtually all of us have known our parents, and these days, most of us have known and had relationships with our grandparents. So far, so good, right? Now, turning it around to the other direction, many of us have children, and the vast majority of those of us with children have known and had relationships with them, although that is not quite as guaranteed as we might wish it to be. And then again, if we are fortunate, we will also know and have relationships with our grandchildren, as well. Some few of us will even be fortunate enough to have known a great-grandparent or two, and some few of us might be fortunate enough to know a few of our great-grandchildren. But, on average, two generations in either direction seems pretty 'nominal'.
So, my dad having died just recently, I got to thinking about his grandfather. Dad had certainly known his grandfather, who died in 1944, when Dad was in his early 20s (and, alas, twelve years before my own auspicious arrival). My great-grandfather, Egbert (for whom I was very nearly named; narrow escape, right there) was born in 1866. His grandfather, Jacob, died in 1875. I don't know if they ever knew, or even met each other, since Egbert was born in Indiana and came to Michigan as a boy, whereas Jacob lived his entire life in upstate New York (not far from Cooperstown, in Otsego County). But their lives overlapped by nine years, and they certainly could have met each other. Jacob was born in 1812.
So Egbert spent 78 years living on the face of this earth. Squarely inside the biblical brackets. But between his grandfather, whom he at least might have known, and my dad, his grandson, whom he did know, the span of his life's connections is stretched to within a year of two full centuries. And I'm sure, if I look at all of my dad's grandparents and their grandparents, somewhere in there, the two-century mark will have been surpassed. Which is a heck of a lot more than threescore-and-ten, and, in a lot of ways, seems a truer representation of the significance of our lives on this earth. . .
And even besides biological/familial connections, I think of the elders - teachers, coaches, family friends, etc, etc - who enriched my formative years, and I am coming into my own set of young friends my kids' age, or even younger. And I wonder how far into the past those relationships reach, and God only knows how far into the future.
Fascinating. . .
So says the 90th Psalm, and fair enough, I suppose. Although, I admit, being 57 just at the moment, and recalling having been 44 just the day before yesterday, the 13 years left between me and my threescore-and-ten seem pretty much like the-day-after-tomorrow. And those 13 years are by no means guaranteed; my high school class will be holding its 40th anniversary class reunion this summer, and the number of my classmates who haven't lived to see it is distressingly large. 70 just doesn't seem nearly as old as it once did. . .
I was thinking about my dad recently, as I do from time to time, especially on Father's Day (and tomorrow would have been his 91st birthday), and it not yet being two years since he died. I got to thinking about my ancestry more generally, and I had a thought that utterly fascinated me (but then, I get fascinated by weird stuff sometimes). Virtually all of us have known our parents, and these days, most of us have known and had relationships with our grandparents. So far, so good, right? Now, turning it around to the other direction, many of us have children, and the vast majority of those of us with children have known and had relationships with them, although that is not quite as guaranteed as we might wish it to be. And then again, if we are fortunate, we will also know and have relationships with our grandchildren, as well. Some few of us will even be fortunate enough to have known a great-grandparent or two, and some few of us might be fortunate enough to know a few of our great-grandchildren. But, on average, two generations in either direction seems pretty 'nominal'.
So, my dad having died just recently, I got to thinking about his grandfather. Dad had certainly known his grandfather, who died in 1944, when Dad was in his early 20s (and, alas, twelve years before my own auspicious arrival). My great-grandfather, Egbert (for whom I was very nearly named; narrow escape, right there) was born in 1866. His grandfather, Jacob, died in 1875. I don't know if they ever knew, or even met each other, since Egbert was born in Indiana and came to Michigan as a boy, whereas Jacob lived his entire life in upstate New York (not far from Cooperstown, in Otsego County). But their lives overlapped by nine years, and they certainly could have met each other. Jacob was born in 1812.
So Egbert spent 78 years living on the face of this earth. Squarely inside the biblical brackets. But between his grandfather, whom he at least might have known, and my dad, his grandson, whom he did know, the span of his life's connections is stretched to within a year of two full centuries. And I'm sure, if I look at all of my dad's grandparents and their grandparents, somewhere in there, the two-century mark will have been surpassed. Which is a heck of a lot more than threescore-and-ten, and, in a lot of ways, seems a truer representation of the significance of our lives on this earth. . .
And even besides biological/familial connections, I think of the elders - teachers, coaches, family friends, etc, etc - who enriched my formative years, and I am coming into my own set of young friends my kids' age, or even younger. And I wonder how far into the past those relationships reach, and God only knows how far into the future.
Fascinating. . .
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Eight Is Enough (That's What She Said). . .
Now, don't anyone get too terribly excited to see a fresh post here at The Yard. My 'parameters' really haven't changed since my 'farewell' post a couple months ago. But, I had a few posts 'in the hopper' when I said goodbye, and I've more-or-less decided that the World would benefit from my going ahead and actually, you know, posting them. So, I'll dribble them out over the next few months, and we'll see what the World looks like after that. . .
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8M is just about to finish 5th grade, and thereby, his tutelage under the estimable Mrs. Jackson. Mrs. Jackson holds a unique position in the life of our family. All of our kids have attended the same Catholic parish school, from kindergarten through 8th grade (well, 8M has only gotten to 5th grade so far, but he's a bright lad, and I have every confidence in him).
And Mrs. Jackson has taught them all. In the 25 years of our association with the school, every other teacher has come and gone, some of them more than once. But only Mrs. Jackson has taught all eight of our kids, beginning with 1F's 4th grade year in 1992-93. She was actually a first-grade teacher in 1F's first-grade year, but that year, there were two first-grade classes, and 1F was in the other one. By the time 1F got to 4th grade, Mrs. Jackson had moved to 4th grade, and she taught 4th grade to all of our kids. 7M actually had her for two years, since she moved from 4th grade to 5th the same time he did. And now she's taught 8M, completing the set, the first, and most likely only, member of that club (there is another woman, who has taught middle-school literature to our first seven kids; she wasn't on the staff this past year, but I'm told she would love to return, so that book has not been finally and definitively closed, just yet; we shall see). Not, you know, that it's such a great honor as all that. . .
She hasn't tended to be the most beloved of all the teachers at the school. She has a straightforward, no-nonsense demeanor that can be intimidating or off-putting, until you get to know her. And you can believe me, that, her having taught all eight of our children, we've had no lack of opportunity to get to know her. Even so, it was apparent to Jen and me early on that, whatever the qualities of her personality, she was a teacher of rare ability, who often saw things in our kids that we had only vaguely noticed, and she helped us to deal constructively with some problems we had struggled with. She is a rare gem of a teacher, and we have been fortunate, indeed, to have benefitted from her influence.
Jen asked all our kids to write a single sentence describing their experience of Mrs. Jackson, which we will present to her as a token of our gratitude. I reproduce those brief encomia herewith:
1F - "She was my favorite teacher, because she encouraged creativity and critical thinking."
2F - "When she corrected me, she did it in a way that made me feel better about myself, without softening the correction."
3M - "We disliked each other strongly; yet, after A YEAR together, she still found it in her heart to not only continue teaching, but to go through 5 MORE of my siblings! That is the epitome of dedication to one's craft."
4M - "The first (only?) teacher to connect my Religion grade with my actual behavior - 'Do you behave like a Christian?'"
5M - "She helped immensely with my social development by alerting me to personal hygiene issues."
6F - "She cared about my emotional well-being at a time when our family was going through extreme trauma. But she didn't baby me; I still had to behave."
7M - "She was probably the best teacher I ever had. I just didn't know it at the time. She deserves an award for having to deal with all of us. . ."
8M - "She put up with my ADD, and helped me learn a lot even in spite of it."
So, thank you, Mrs. Jackson. You've been a boon to our family. You're one in a million. . .
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8M is just about to finish 5th grade, and thereby, his tutelage under the estimable Mrs. Jackson. Mrs. Jackson holds a unique position in the life of our family. All of our kids have attended the same Catholic parish school, from kindergarten through 8th grade (well, 8M has only gotten to 5th grade so far, but he's a bright lad, and I have every confidence in him).
And Mrs. Jackson has taught them all. In the 25 years of our association with the school, every other teacher has come and gone, some of them more than once. But only Mrs. Jackson has taught all eight of our kids, beginning with 1F's 4th grade year in 1992-93. She was actually a first-grade teacher in 1F's first-grade year, but that year, there were two first-grade classes, and 1F was in the other one. By the time 1F got to 4th grade, Mrs. Jackson had moved to 4th grade, and she taught 4th grade to all of our kids. 7M actually had her for two years, since she moved from 4th grade to 5th the same time he did. And now she's taught 8M, completing the set, the first, and most likely only, member of that club (there is another woman, who has taught middle-school literature to our first seven kids; she wasn't on the staff this past year, but I'm told she would love to return, so that book has not been finally and definitively closed, just yet; we shall see). Not, you know, that it's such a great honor as all that. . .
She hasn't tended to be the most beloved of all the teachers at the school. She has a straightforward, no-nonsense demeanor that can be intimidating or off-putting, until you get to know her. And you can believe me, that, her having taught all eight of our children, we've had no lack of opportunity to get to know her. Even so, it was apparent to Jen and me early on that, whatever the qualities of her personality, she was a teacher of rare ability, who often saw things in our kids that we had only vaguely noticed, and she helped us to deal constructively with some problems we had struggled with. She is a rare gem of a teacher, and we have been fortunate, indeed, to have benefitted from her influence.
Jen asked all our kids to write a single sentence describing their experience of Mrs. Jackson, which we will present to her as a token of our gratitude. I reproduce those brief encomia herewith:
1F - "She was my favorite teacher, because she encouraged creativity and critical thinking."
2F - "When she corrected me, she did it in a way that made me feel better about myself, without softening the correction."
3M - "We disliked each other strongly; yet, after A YEAR together, she still found it in her heart to not only continue teaching, but to go through 5 MORE of my siblings! That is the epitome of dedication to one's craft."
4M - "The first (only?) teacher to connect my Religion grade with my actual behavior - 'Do you behave like a Christian?'"
5M - "She helped immensely with my social development by alerting me to personal hygiene issues."
6F - "She cared about my emotional well-being at a time when our family was going through extreme trauma. But she didn't baby me; I still had to behave."
7M - "She was probably the best teacher I ever had. I just didn't know it at the time. She deserves an award for having to deal with all of us. . ."
8M - "She put up with my ADD, and helped me learn a lot even in spite of it."
So, thank you, Mrs. Jackson. You've been a boon to our family. You're one in a million. . .
Sunday, February 3, 2013
The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said. . .
. . . for me to step away from blogging. Again (and those of you who have known me from the beginning, or close to it, back in May 2006, will be forgiven for saying, "Yeah, we've heard that before"). It's been a pretty long, sustained run this time, over 4-1/2 years, from June 2008 until today, with a quick break to change blogs and blog-o-nyms at the end of 2009.
Alas, the Real World is pressing its claims on my life, and I just need to clear my head and readjust my priorities real-ward.
I don't know if or when I'll be back; as of this minute, I don't have any plans, one way or the other. Perhaps I'll still visit your blogs and leave an occasional comment, but I can't promise that I will. If it turns out that I never do return, please allow me to say that I have enjoyed every one of you that I've met (or, I should probably rather say, 'met', in finger-quotes) here in blog-space. You are some wonderful folks, and I have enjoyed such friendship as we've shared, for never having laid actual, physical eyes on each other. If I should ever happen to be in any of your neighborhoods, perhaps we can get together for a suitably convivial beverage.
Until we meet again. It's been a blast.
Blessings to you all. . .
Alas, the Real World is pressing its claims on my life, and I just need to clear my head and readjust my priorities real-ward.
I don't know if or when I'll be back; as of this minute, I don't have any plans, one way or the other. Perhaps I'll still visit your blogs and leave an occasional comment, but I can't promise that I will. If it turns out that I never do return, please allow me to say that I have enjoyed every one of you that I've met (or, I should probably rather say, 'met', in finger-quotes) here in blog-space. You are some wonderful folks, and I have enjoyed such friendship as we've shared, for never having laid actual, physical eyes on each other. If I should ever happen to be in any of your neighborhoods, perhaps we can get together for a suitably convivial beverage.
Until we meet again. It's been a blast.
Blessings to you all. . .
Heartbreak Is Part of the Deal. . .
OK, I promised that if/when I ever stop blogging, I'd leave this post at the top of the page, just in case anyone comes back here from time to time, this is what they'd see. . .
If I may say so myself, this is about the most important thing that I'll ever say in this humble blog. So there.
This post runs parallel to something I posted four-and-a-half years ago. It's not really a re-post, but the thoughts are pretty similar (that older post is pretty good in its own right, maybe even better than this one; go ahead and read it, too, if you're so inclined). . .
-------------------------
Over the course of my 30-or-so years of parenthood, I have come to the conclusion that parenthood is, by its very nature, inherently heart-breaking.
That is not, by any means, to adopt a cynical or 'woe-is-me' attitude to the biggest, best, and noblest thing I've done with my life thus far (however poorly I've actually done it; and the empirical evidence is pretty damning). It is to say that, one way or another, our kids will, inevitably, disappoint us; sometimes crushingly so. And that the heartbreak of parenting is one of the main ways that we fulfil what Mother Theresa liked to refer to as 'our main task in this life' - 'to learn what it really means to love'.
When my kids were born, I held such high hopes and dreams for them. Not, to be sure, that I had 'The Plan' for their lives, or anything like that. I actually looked forward to the adventure of finding out who they were, and what amazing and wonderful traits they would blend from Jen and me into their own, unique selves, and what traits of theirs might go off in some entirely unforeseen directions.
And it has been wonderful to see all their lives unfold. Several of our kids are very musical - 1F, 3M and 7M perhaps most especially. 3M, 7M and 8M are near-genius bright. 4M and 6F are both hard-working and good-looking, and 4M is a star athlete (sometimes I wonder how this kid ever came from me; Jen assures me that he did). 1F, 2F and 5M are all very kind and compassionate. And so it goes.
But our kids, being, alas, human (wait, that doesn't sound right; I'm really, really glad that they aren't newts, or tapeworms, or whatever), are subject to the effects of The Fall, just like Jen and I are (well, I know that I am; I'm pretty sure that she is, too). And therein lie the seeds of heartbreak. In our early years of parenthood, we hoped to raise a family of kids who were better than we were - with all our strengths (which we were just arrogant enough to think were considerable), but none (or at least, not so many) of our weaknesses. We hoped that they would be smart, strong, wise, virtuous, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, without all that nagging selfishness and venality. Because, of course, we were better than our own parents had been, right? (Well, of course not; but we thought we were. It's a Boomer thing.) And we would just impart our own superior wisdom, virtue, etc. to our kids, and all would be well. Right?
(*sigh*)
When 1F was in her teens, people used to congratulate us for having raised such a wonderful young woman. And I (perhaps inspired by a salutary humility; or perhaps merely prophesying a glimpse of the future) used to reply that it wasn't really wonderful teenagers I was after, but rather capable, wise and virtuous adults. And it wasn't too many years before my own words were borne out, to my own chagrin.
Back in the days when our older kids were passing through middle school, the Religion teacher (if that strikes your ear as a trifle odd, it's a Catholic school thing. . .) was a very wise woman, who became a good friend. In the course of a, uh, conversation we were having about one of our kids, who was proving to be a tad more intractable than we had planned on (but which didn't seem to faze her all that much), she told us, with a wistful maternal smile, that the day would inevitably come when we would find ourselves talking to the police about one of our children (and not necessarily the one we were discussing at the time); that it had happened to her, and that it happened to most parents sooner or later, no matter how earnest or capable they were, and that we shouldn't freak out when it did. And Jen and I both shook our heads inwardly, certain in our own minds that her words were ridiculous, that such a thing would never happen to parents as conscientious as we were.
Such touching naivete, right?
It wasn't that many years later (distressingly few, in fact) that one of our kids (I'll decline to say which one) threw back at us, as I was retrieving him from a night in jail, that all of our kids down to him had now had run-ins with the police, and that, as far as he was concerned, that constituted slam-dunk definitive empirical proof that we were simply, utterly, execrable parents (OK, he didn't use the word 'execrable', but he used one of its synonyms). In the years since then, that flawless record has been extended by a few kids younger than him.
I have written elsewhere of some of the youthful (or even not-so-youthful) misadventures of our older kids. I won't rehash them for you here (and I think I've mostly taken those posts down from my old blog), but trust me when I say that we were utterly, absolutely flabbergasted. We'd said and done all the right things, as best we could see, and as best we were able (well, you know, aside from a certain proclivity to outbursts of temper, and a few (*ahem*) minor character flaws on that order; but God understands our weakness, right?), and it hadn't been enough. And I can tell you that it hasn't ended with them; our younger kids have made their own significant contributions to the broken-ness of our hearts
It slowly dawned on us (perhaps a good bit more slowly than it should have, but both Jen and I had been 'good kids', so our own experience had left us a tad ill-equipped to deal with kids who were less 'with the program' than we'd been) that God, in his wisdom, had blessed our children, just as he'd blessed us, with Free Will (what He was thinking when He did that, I've had occasion to wonder). And that, our own earnestness and sincerity notwithstanding, our kids, even though made, as we were, in the Image and Likeness of God, were also, as we were, subject to the effects of The Fall, and capable of the same sorts of jaw-dropping venality we were; sometimes, even moreso. Even astoundingly moreso.
Taken all together, in the fullness of time it became an occasion of deeper insight into what it means to be human, to carry simultaneously within ourselves, and virtually side-by-side, both significant markers of divinity, and appalling selfishness and venality. And to learn, on a deep, down-and-dirty level, what Jesus was talking about when he said (in so many words) that the measure of love isn't how you treat agreeable, congenial people, but rather, in how you deal with (as Thomas a Kempis called them in The Imitation of Christ) "hard, obstinate and undisciplined people". Which is to say, people like our kids. At least, some of the time (distressingly much of it, to be brutally candid). Put another way - it's not the absence of heartbreak, or disappointment, that makes our lives successful, it's what we DO with the heartbreak that will, inevitably, come into our lives – can we let “love cover a multitude of sins”, or not?
So yeah - heartbreak is part of the deal. Our kids will never be as perfect as we wish they were, and their flaws will be all-too-evident (and the ones they've picked up from us will be duly galling). But somewhere along the way, we'll have made progress toward what Mother Theresa was talking about, learning 'what it really means to love'. . .
*************************
And. . . heartbreak. . . I pre-posted this a couple weeks ago, before the events of this past Friday in Connecticut, which make my concerns seem. . . small. My heart breaks in two for all the families who will have gaping, bleeding holes in their hearts, and around their tables, where their children - their little children - or their parents, or their siblings, or their spouses, should have been this Christmas. I just can't grasp the brutal cruelty of it. Please join me in praying for them, and the entire community there. . .
GK Chesterton once said that, of all the doctrines of Christianity, none would seem to be more empirically obvious than that of the fallen-ness of human nature. How I wish that were even a little bit less true. . .
And then this - Jimmy Greene, whose six-year-old daughter, Ana Marquez-Greene, was among the slain, said, out of his grief, that "Ana beat us to Paradise." That father, whose heart is certainly broken in two, is my hero today. You get it, sir. . . you really do. . .
O Lord, have mercy. . .
If I may say so myself, this is about the most important thing that I'll ever say in this humble blog. So there.
This post runs parallel to something I posted four-and-a-half years ago. It's not really a re-post, but the thoughts are pretty similar (that older post is pretty good in its own right, maybe even better than this one; go ahead and read it, too, if you're so inclined). . .
-------------------------
Over the course of my 30-or-so years of parenthood, I have come to the conclusion that parenthood is, by its very nature, inherently heart-breaking.
That is not, by any means, to adopt a cynical or 'woe-is-me' attitude to the biggest, best, and noblest thing I've done with my life thus far (however poorly I've actually done it; and the empirical evidence is pretty damning). It is to say that, one way or another, our kids will, inevitably, disappoint us; sometimes crushingly so. And that the heartbreak of parenting is one of the main ways that we fulfil what Mother Theresa liked to refer to as 'our main task in this life' - 'to learn what it really means to love'.
When my kids were born, I held such high hopes and dreams for them. Not, to be sure, that I had 'The Plan' for their lives, or anything like that. I actually looked forward to the adventure of finding out who they were, and what amazing and wonderful traits they would blend from Jen and me into their own, unique selves, and what traits of theirs might go off in some entirely unforeseen directions.
And it has been wonderful to see all their lives unfold. Several of our kids are very musical - 1F, 3M and 7M perhaps most especially. 3M, 7M and 8M are near-genius bright. 4M and 6F are both hard-working and good-looking, and 4M is a star athlete (sometimes I wonder how this kid ever came from me; Jen assures me that he did). 1F, 2F and 5M are all very kind and compassionate. And so it goes.
But our kids, being, alas, human (wait, that doesn't sound right; I'm really, really glad that they aren't newts, or tapeworms, or whatever), are subject to the effects of The Fall, just like Jen and I are (well, I know that I am; I'm pretty sure that she is, too). And therein lie the seeds of heartbreak. In our early years of parenthood, we hoped to raise a family of kids who were better than we were - with all our strengths (which we were just arrogant enough to think were considerable), but none (or at least, not so many) of our weaknesses. We hoped that they would be smart, strong, wise, virtuous, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, without all that nagging selfishness and venality. Because, of course, we were better than our own parents had been, right? (Well, of course not; but we thought we were. It's a Boomer thing.) And we would just impart our own superior wisdom, virtue, etc. to our kids, and all would be well. Right?
(*sigh*)
When 1F was in her teens, people used to congratulate us for having raised such a wonderful young woman. And I (perhaps inspired by a salutary humility; or perhaps merely prophesying a glimpse of the future) used to reply that it wasn't really wonderful teenagers I was after, but rather capable, wise and virtuous adults. And it wasn't too many years before my own words were borne out, to my own chagrin.
Back in the days when our older kids were passing through middle school, the Religion teacher (if that strikes your ear as a trifle odd, it's a Catholic school thing. . .) was a very wise woman, who became a good friend. In the course of a, uh, conversation we were having about one of our kids, who was proving to be a tad more intractable than we had planned on (but which didn't seem to faze her all that much), she told us, with a wistful maternal smile, that the day would inevitably come when we would find ourselves talking to the police about one of our children (and not necessarily the one we were discussing at the time); that it had happened to her, and that it happened to most parents sooner or later, no matter how earnest or capable they were, and that we shouldn't freak out when it did. And Jen and I both shook our heads inwardly, certain in our own minds that her words were ridiculous, that such a thing would never happen to parents as conscientious as we were.
Such touching naivete, right?
It wasn't that many years later (distressingly few, in fact) that one of our kids (I'll decline to say which one) threw back at us, as I was retrieving him from a night in jail, that all of our kids down to him had now had run-ins with the police, and that, as far as he was concerned, that constituted slam-dunk definitive empirical proof that we were simply, utterly, execrable parents (OK, he didn't use the word 'execrable', but he used one of its synonyms). In the years since then, that flawless record has been extended by a few kids younger than him.
I have written elsewhere of some of the youthful (or even not-so-youthful) misadventures of our older kids. I won't rehash them for you here (and I think I've mostly taken those posts down from my old blog), but trust me when I say that we were utterly, absolutely flabbergasted. We'd said and done all the right things, as best we could see, and as best we were able (well, you know, aside from a certain proclivity to outbursts of temper, and a few (*ahem*) minor character flaws on that order; but God understands our weakness, right?), and it hadn't been enough. And I can tell you that it hasn't ended with them; our younger kids have made their own significant contributions to the broken-ness of our hearts
It slowly dawned on us (perhaps a good bit more slowly than it should have, but both Jen and I had been 'good kids', so our own experience had left us a tad ill-equipped to deal with kids who were less 'with the program' than we'd been) that God, in his wisdom, had blessed our children, just as he'd blessed us, with Free Will (what He was thinking when He did that, I've had occasion to wonder). And that, our own earnestness and sincerity notwithstanding, our kids, even though made, as we were, in the Image and Likeness of God, were also, as we were, subject to the effects of The Fall, and capable of the same sorts of jaw-dropping venality we were; sometimes, even moreso. Even astoundingly moreso.
Taken all together, in the fullness of time it became an occasion of deeper insight into what it means to be human, to carry simultaneously within ourselves, and virtually side-by-side, both significant markers of divinity, and appalling selfishness and venality. And to learn, on a deep, down-and-dirty level, what Jesus was talking about when he said (in so many words) that the measure of love isn't how you treat agreeable, congenial people, but rather, in how you deal with (as Thomas a Kempis called them in The Imitation of Christ) "hard, obstinate and undisciplined people". Which is to say, people like our kids. At least, some of the time (distressingly much of it, to be brutally candid). Put another way - it's not the absence of heartbreak, or disappointment, that makes our lives successful, it's what we DO with the heartbreak that will, inevitably, come into our lives – can we let “love cover a multitude of sins”, or not?
So yeah - heartbreak is part of the deal. Our kids will never be as perfect as we wish they were, and their flaws will be all-too-evident (and the ones they've picked up from us will be duly galling). But somewhere along the way, we'll have made progress toward what Mother Theresa was talking about, learning 'what it really means to love'. . .
*************************
And. . . heartbreak. . . I pre-posted this a couple weeks ago, before the events of this past Friday in Connecticut, which make my concerns seem. . . small. My heart breaks in two for all the families who will have gaping, bleeding holes in their hearts, and around their tables, where their children - their little children - or their parents, or their siblings, or their spouses, should have been this Christmas. I just can't grasp the brutal cruelty of it. Please join me in praying for them, and the entire community there. . .
GK Chesterton once said that, of all the doctrines of Christianity, none would seem to be more empirically obvious than that of the fallen-ness of human nature. How I wish that were even a little bit less true. . .
And then this - Jimmy Greene, whose six-year-old daughter, Ana Marquez-Greene, was among the slain, said, out of his grief, that "Ana beat us to Paradise." That father, whose heart is certainly broken in two, is my hero today. You get it, sir. . . you really do. . .
O Lord, have mercy. . .
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Place Names in Michigan
I was born in Michigan, and I have lived virtually my entire life here. At one time or another, I've traveled to just about every corner of my native state. I'm sure that your states have some pretty fun place names, too (I'm thinking of one small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in particular) (also Pee Pee Creek, and its eponymous township, in Pike County, Ohio), but here's a sampler from where I live. . .
-------------------------
In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise. In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell". (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .) On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .
We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart. Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .
And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan. Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .
Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .
And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .
And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . . It's top-in-a-BEE. . .
Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below. As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time. Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name. (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)
Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly. I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one. And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!" And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .
Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .
-------------------------
Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -
Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke. Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .
And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .
Also the Manitou Islands, in northern Lake Michigan.
Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .
On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .
And of course, the aforementioned Tahquamenon Falls and Topinabee. And even Saginaw, though I've never hitch-hiked there. . .
Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .
-------------------------
The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -
Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.
There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name. The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .
Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods'). Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.
And Cadillac, which is in the opposite corner of the Lower Peninsula from where luxury cars are made. . .
-------------------------
We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established. A few examples -
Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.
Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT'). Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .
Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right? Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .
Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING
Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said
And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.
Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s? Try ar-MAY-da. . .
Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh
Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)
And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rawn, if you affect a slightly snooty accent), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident. I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .
-------------------------
And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .
"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .
*************************
And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone). I really wasn't feeling good. At all. I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic. But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because. Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town. But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors). And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .
-------------------------
In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise. In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell". (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .) On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .
We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart. Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .
And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan. Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .
Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .
And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .
And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . . It's top-in-a-BEE. . .
Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below. As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time. Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name. (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)
Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly. I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one. And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!" And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .
Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .
-------------------------
Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -
Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke. Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .
And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .
Also the Manitou Islands, in northern Lake Michigan.
Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .
On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .
And of course, the aforementioned Tahquamenon Falls and Topinabee. And even Saginaw, though I've never hitch-hiked there. . .
Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .
-------------------------
The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -
Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.
There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name. The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .
Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods'). Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.
And Cadillac, which is in the opposite corner of the Lower Peninsula from where luxury cars are made. . .
-------------------------
We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established. A few examples -
Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.
Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT'). Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .
Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right? Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .
Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING
Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said
And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.
Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s? Try ar-MAY-da. . .
Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh
Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)
And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rawn, if you affect a slightly snooty accent), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident. I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .
-------------------------
And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .
"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .
*************************
And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone). I really wasn't feeling good. At all. I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic. But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because. Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town. But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors). And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Epiphany
Today is Epiphany, marking the end of the Season of Christmas (I'm never sure as to whether Christmas is the First Day of Christmas, or Epiphany is the Twelfth; not that it matters all that much. . .) In some Christian traditions, mainly in the East, Epiphany, not Christmas, is the day for exchanging of gifts (after the example of the Magi, I suppose), and, at least in terms of public celebration, Epiphany is a bigger deal than Christmas is.
'Epiphany' means, literally, 'revelation' or 'manifestation'. Jesus might have been born on Christmas, but Epiphany is when He 'went public', so to speak. The readings for Epiphany rotate among the visit of the Magi (Matthew 2:1-12), the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-40), and Jesus' Baptism by John the Baptist (John 1:29-34). All of which represent, in varying ways, Jesus being 'made manifest' to the world He came to save.
I have especially come to appreciate the story of the Magi, and what it represents. There is a delightful irony in the fact that God, who forbade the Jews to practice astrology, gave the Magi a 'sign in the heavens', to announce the coming of His Son in the flesh to Gentiles. Of course, God knew that the learned Gentiles would notice, and be impressed by such a sign, and He wasn't above letting them know, in a way they could comprehend, that something big was going down in Bethlehem, and they wouldn't want to miss it. . . Put another way, the stars don't move us, God moves the stars. . . And even today, I suppose, God leaves signs of Himself to be noticed, and understood by those 'who have eyes to see, and ears to hear', even among secular modern folks.
And, oh, to be Simeon, or John the Baptist, waiting to see the Promised One, the Desired of the Nations, and then finally to see and recognize Him. I can understand Simeon saying, "Now, Lord, you can dismiss Your servant in peace". . . That was it; he was waiting to see the Messiah, and there He was. Now, so to speak, old Simeon could die happy. I have often wondered, if Jesus came today, would I recognize Him? Would I have the eyes and ears to see and hear when He came among us? Or would I be like those in Jesus' day who were so focused in on their own notions of 'what the Messiah will be like', or 'what God must be like', that they didn't recognize Him when He stood in their midst?
Oh, Lord, have mercy; let me have 'eyes to see, and ears to hear'. . .
'Epiphany' means, literally, 'revelation' or 'manifestation'. Jesus might have been born on Christmas, but Epiphany is when He 'went public', so to speak. The readings for Epiphany rotate among the visit of the Magi (Matthew 2:1-12), the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-40), and Jesus' Baptism by John the Baptist (John 1:29-34). All of which represent, in varying ways, Jesus being 'made manifest' to the world He came to save.
I have especially come to appreciate the story of the Magi, and what it represents. There is a delightful irony in the fact that God, who forbade the Jews to practice astrology, gave the Magi a 'sign in the heavens', to announce the coming of His Son in the flesh to Gentiles. Of course, God knew that the learned Gentiles would notice, and be impressed by such a sign, and He wasn't above letting them know, in a way they could comprehend, that something big was going down in Bethlehem, and they wouldn't want to miss it. . . Put another way, the stars don't move us, God moves the stars. . . And even today, I suppose, God leaves signs of Himself to be noticed, and understood by those 'who have eyes to see, and ears to hear', even among secular modern folks.
And, oh, to be Simeon, or John the Baptist, waiting to see the Promised One, the Desired of the Nations, and then finally to see and recognize Him. I can understand Simeon saying, "Now, Lord, you can dismiss Your servant in peace". . . That was it; he was waiting to see the Messiah, and there He was. Now, so to speak, old Simeon could die happy. I have often wondered, if Jesus came today, would I recognize Him? Would I have the eyes and ears to see and hear when He came among us? Or would I be like those in Jesus' day who were so focused in on their own notions of 'what the Messiah will be like', or 'what God must be like', that they didn't recognize Him when He stood in their midst?
Oh, Lord, have mercy; let me have 'eyes to see, and ears to hear'. . .
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Slip Slidin' Away
I grew up way Up North in Michigan, and snow was a major feature of my entire childhood. In a typical year, the first snow came around the beginning of November, and it was usually right around Thanksgiving that the snow stayed on the ground, and didn't melt away in the next day's sunlight. By Christmas, we typically had a foot or more on the ground, and all through January and February, the snow cover averaged around one-and-a-half to two feet. The sidewalks were little miniature canyons, and the piles of snow left after the streets were plowed often rendered the street invisible from the sidewalk, and vice-versa. One year (I think it was January of '71), we had a pair of freak lake-effect blizzards in the same week that dumped 42 inches on us, which, because of drifting, etc, necessitated digging tunnels to the entrances of the high school.
So, yeah. . . snow. Which meant that snow-fun, such as sledding, was a main staple of wintertime recreation (we also enjoyed skating; our town was a hotbed of speedskating in my childhood, in the aftermath of Terry McDermott's Olympic medals; nowadays, they're more into hockey).
When our family first moved Up North, in the fall of '63, I went to a 'rural' school, since we lived on the lakeshore, 7-8 miles out of town. The school grounds were expansive. There was a small, blacktopped 'playground' close to the school building, with the requisite four-square and hop-scotch courts painted onto the blacktop, the standard swingsets and monkey-bars. And there was a large, open field, surrounded by woods. The woods were actually on school property; somewhere 50 yards or so into the woods, there was a wire fence marking the limit of the school grounds. At the boundary between the large open field and the woods, there was a five-or-six-foot rise. So we would cross the field, climb a little ridge, and be in the woods. It's hard to convey how incredibly cool recess was at that school. . .
When the snow fell, the six-foot ridge was laboriously converted into a long row of ice-slides. At the first recess after a big snow, dozens of kids would run out across the field to the ridge, form little teams of 5-10 kids, and begin stomping up and down the ridge, packing the snow down, and ultimately polishing it into an icy glare. By the end of the day, there would be 10 or 15 icy chutes distributed along the ridge, and for the rest of the winter, we'd spend recess sliding down the ice-slides in every configuration we could think of - face-up, face-down, standing (surfing, if you will), two of us one-on-top-of-the-other, etc, etc, etc. It was pure wonderfulness.
Even on the blacktopped playground, kids would stomp back and forth, creating a 30-foot-long frozen slip-n-slide. So when recess came, we'd line up, get a running start, and slide on our bellies across the ice. Or, some of the baseball players would practice sliding into second base. We weren't supposed to slide standing up, but we always did, when we thought the playground-teacher wasn't looking. And every once in a while, somebody would slip and whack their head on the ice-covered blacktop, and win a trip to the school nurse, and a few punitive lost recesses. But, to my knowledge, no-one ever died, or suffered permanent brain damage (but hey, this was the early 60s; we still rode in the backs of pickup trucks, and seatbelts were just appearing for the first time).
-------------------------
The best, most excellent sledding action to be found in our area was at a place called Manning Hill, which was maybe 15-20 miles west of town. I'm sure that Manning Hill has grown in my memory over the years, to where it is, by now, on a par with Pike's Peak. But I've been by Manning Hill in the last 10 years, and it's still a pretty impressive bump; maybe a couple hundred vertical feet from base to top. We'd pull off the main highway into a parking lot, grab our sleds and commence the long uphill trek to the top of the hill. On a good sledding day (a sunny day in the 20s, so the snow wouldn't get soft and slushy), there would be a hundred or more kids on Manning Hill. Roughly half of their parents would just bring a newspaper and sit in the car; the hardier half would accompany their kids up the hill, and occasionally grab a seat on a down-bound toboggan. My folks were generally of the climb-the-hill-with-the-kids persuasion, although they didn't slide downhill much.
In linear terms, the sledding run down the front of the hill was somewhere between a quarter-mile and a half-mile. If the snow was soft and fluffy, you might go most of the way down the run before you came to a stop. If it was hard and slick, you might make it all the way down to the parking lot; there was a steep upturn at the bottom of the hill, so no-one would ever end up sliding into the parking lot ('cuz, you know, that just wouldn't be good. . .) When your downhill run finally slid to a halt, you'd get up off your sled and begin the long trudge back to the top of the hill. You might spend 3-4 hours at Manning Hill, and make 10 or 12 downhill runs. Each run would last a minute or so; if you really managed to milk it, you might get two minutes of adrenaline rush. Then it would take 10 or 15 minutes to climb back to the top of the hill (it only seemed like two days).
There were toboggans, which were cool, because you could get four or five people on the same ride, and you were (generally) sitting upright. There were a few saucers (aluminum ones, not the plastic ones you see today). Some kids just brought an old cardboard box with 'em, and I was always impressed at how much fun there was to be had from a simple cardboard box sliding downhill.
But by far, the preferred sleds were the vaunted old Radio Flyers - the steel runners with a wooden-slat surface on which to ride, and the wooden cross-bar to steer with. The preferred configuration was to lie on your belly and steer with your hands, but some kids would sit upright and steer with their feet. And of course, tandem pairs of kids would lie one-on-top-of-the-other. The added weight meant you could go faster, but every bump and divot in the sliding surface meant that the kid on the bottom got the wind knocked out of him as the kid on top slammed down on him.
-------------------------
One year, I think when I was in junior-high or high school, we had an absolutely perfect sledding day - it was bright and sunny, with temperatures in the upper 20s. So, as long as we stayed active, we weren't going to get frozen, and the snow would be hard, but the bright sun would make for a slick crust on the top of the snow surface. Oh, the sledding was fast that day. The first time I went down the hill, I flew. I felt like I was an airplane coming in for a landing as I zipped down the hill at half the speed of sound; I could feel the pressure waves building up in front of me, I was going so fast. I had to look far down the hill ahead of myself to plan my steering moves, and hope that no kids at the bottom of the hill decided to wander across the main sledding lane. I didn't come to rest until I rocked up onto the incline at the edge of the parking lot. It was incredible!
Our whole family was there, and my brother and I were quickly engaged in various contests and races. It was the greatest day of sledding in my whole life. I don't know how many hours were actually spent there, but I'd have been willing to keep going by starlight, if they'd let me.
At one point, in the later afternoon, my brother and I were standing on the top of the hill, catching our breath after our most-recent uphill trek, and preparing for our next high-speed descent. As we huffed and puffed, we looked around, taking in the scenery from the top of the hill, from whence we could see a surprising distance over the surrounding countryside. At one point, we were facing away from the front of the hill, where everybody was sledding, when we noticed, for the first time, the back side of the hill. It was steep at the top, just like the front, but about halfway down, the slope became more gradual, and it continued on for a long way - MUCH farther than we could go on the normal run on the front side. There were even a few sled-tracks running down the back side, so it wasn't like you couldn't sled back there.
My brother and I looked at each other, an unspoken 'You wanna?' passing between us. We didn't say a word, just set our sleds on the brow of the hill, pointing down the back run. This was gonna be cool. . .
We pushed off, and instantly, we were flying! My brother would pull ahead of me by a foot or so, then I'd catch back up and nudge ahead, and we just kept going. It was the most incredible run either of us had ever had. At some point, I was aware that, if we'd been on the front side of the hill, our run would be over, but we were still flying, the wind peeling our cheeks back, adrenaline still pumping through our veins.
Our speed dropped off, just a bit, as we continued onto the more gradual slope halfway down, but at that point, it became a contest just to see who could keep going the longest, and run the farthest down the hill, more than simply who could go the fastest. Even so, my brother and I were eyeing each other, one of us, and then the other, nudging ahead by a few inches as we continued downward.
After a certain point, I looked ahead, and saw a fence. When we were at the top of the hill, the fence had seemed ridiculously far away, that we could never go that far. But now, it seemed quite possible that the fence would come into play before our run was over. I looked along the fence, and saw a gap, maybe ten feet wide, with two large maple trees marking the edges of the gap. The fence went up to the maple tree on either side, and whoever had built the fence had decided not to fill in the gap with an extra ten feet of fencing. So I began to steer myself toward the gap in the fence, just in case I still had some speed left when I got there.
My brother saw what I was doing, and quickly ascertained that he should steer toward the gap, as well. And we continued sliding down the hill. We were still going fast enough, though, that our 'steering margin of error' was still pretty comparable to the width of the gap, and I began to get nervous as to whether I would be able to actually hit the gap or not. My brother's sled moved closer to mine, and we began to bump each other sideways with the realization that it was gonna be a pretty close thing for both of us to shoot the gap together.
Finally, we were in the last few yards, still moving at a rapid clip, and I smiled to myself as I realized that, yes, by golly, I was indeed going to hit the center of the gap. I sailed on through, between the two huge trees, and found myself cruising across virgin snow at the back of some farmer's field, and I only made it 20 or 30 yards into the field before I slid to a halt.
But where was my brother? I looked around, and then I saw him, lying face-up in the gap between the trees, but I couldn't see his sled. I grabbed the lanyard on my own sled, and trudged back to where he was laying. As I approached, he looked up at me.
"Are you OK?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"What happened?"
"I had to bail."
"Where's your sled?"
He rolled over, looking toward the tree that had been on the left side of the gap as we approached. There was his sled, a small dimple in the metal framework at the front of his sled.
"I was gonna hit the tree," he said, "so I had to bail. The sled hit the tree. I hope it still works."
We picked it up and gave it a quick inspection. It looked like it might be slightly bent, so we torqued on it, to try and un-bend it. Then we set it back upright. It seemed to sit flat on the surface, so we pronounced it OK.
Then, we turned and looked back toward the hill, which was much farther away than we'd ever seen it, having never been down the back side before. It was gonna be at least a half-hour trudge back to the top.
So, we adjusted our mittens and our stocking-hats, grabbed the lanyards to our sleds and began our wintry trek back up the hill.
"Coolest. . . run. . . ever. . ." my brother smiled.
"Yeah," I said, "and I won. . ."
So, yeah. . . snow. Which meant that snow-fun, such as sledding, was a main staple of wintertime recreation (we also enjoyed skating; our town was a hotbed of speedskating in my childhood, in the aftermath of Terry McDermott's Olympic medals; nowadays, they're more into hockey).
When our family first moved Up North, in the fall of '63, I went to a 'rural' school, since we lived on the lakeshore, 7-8 miles out of town. The school grounds were expansive. There was a small, blacktopped 'playground' close to the school building, with the requisite four-square and hop-scotch courts painted onto the blacktop, the standard swingsets and monkey-bars. And there was a large, open field, surrounded by woods. The woods were actually on school property; somewhere 50 yards or so into the woods, there was a wire fence marking the limit of the school grounds. At the boundary between the large open field and the woods, there was a five-or-six-foot rise. So we would cross the field, climb a little ridge, and be in the woods. It's hard to convey how incredibly cool recess was at that school. . .
When the snow fell, the six-foot ridge was laboriously converted into a long row of ice-slides. At the first recess after a big snow, dozens of kids would run out across the field to the ridge, form little teams of 5-10 kids, and begin stomping up and down the ridge, packing the snow down, and ultimately polishing it into an icy glare. By the end of the day, there would be 10 or 15 icy chutes distributed along the ridge, and for the rest of the winter, we'd spend recess sliding down the ice-slides in every configuration we could think of - face-up, face-down, standing (surfing, if you will), two of us one-on-top-of-the-other, etc, etc, etc. It was pure wonderfulness.
Even on the blacktopped playground, kids would stomp back and forth, creating a 30-foot-long frozen slip-n-slide. So when recess came, we'd line up, get a running start, and slide on our bellies across the ice. Or, some of the baseball players would practice sliding into second base. We weren't supposed to slide standing up, but we always did, when we thought the playground-teacher wasn't looking. And every once in a while, somebody would slip and whack their head on the ice-covered blacktop, and win a trip to the school nurse, and a few punitive lost recesses. But, to my knowledge, no-one ever died, or suffered permanent brain damage (but hey, this was the early 60s; we still rode in the backs of pickup trucks, and seatbelts were just appearing for the first time).
-------------------------
The best, most excellent sledding action to be found in our area was at a place called Manning Hill, which was maybe 15-20 miles west of town. I'm sure that Manning Hill has grown in my memory over the years, to where it is, by now, on a par with Pike's Peak. But I've been by Manning Hill in the last 10 years, and it's still a pretty impressive bump; maybe a couple hundred vertical feet from base to top. We'd pull off the main highway into a parking lot, grab our sleds and commence the long uphill trek to the top of the hill. On a good sledding day (a sunny day in the 20s, so the snow wouldn't get soft and slushy), there would be a hundred or more kids on Manning Hill. Roughly half of their parents would just bring a newspaper and sit in the car; the hardier half would accompany their kids up the hill, and occasionally grab a seat on a down-bound toboggan. My folks were generally of the climb-the-hill-with-the-kids persuasion, although they didn't slide downhill much.
In linear terms, the sledding run down the front of the hill was somewhere between a quarter-mile and a half-mile. If the snow was soft and fluffy, you might go most of the way down the run before you came to a stop. If it was hard and slick, you might make it all the way down to the parking lot; there was a steep upturn at the bottom of the hill, so no-one would ever end up sliding into the parking lot ('cuz, you know, that just wouldn't be good. . .) When your downhill run finally slid to a halt, you'd get up off your sled and begin the long trudge back to the top of the hill. You might spend 3-4 hours at Manning Hill, and make 10 or 12 downhill runs. Each run would last a minute or so; if you really managed to milk it, you might get two minutes of adrenaline rush. Then it would take 10 or 15 minutes to climb back to the top of the hill (it only seemed like two days).
There were toboggans, which were cool, because you could get four or five people on the same ride, and you were (generally) sitting upright. There were a few saucers (aluminum ones, not the plastic ones you see today). Some kids just brought an old cardboard box with 'em, and I was always impressed at how much fun there was to be had from a simple cardboard box sliding downhill.
But by far, the preferred sleds were the vaunted old Radio Flyers - the steel runners with a wooden-slat surface on which to ride, and the wooden cross-bar to steer with. The preferred configuration was to lie on your belly and steer with your hands, but some kids would sit upright and steer with their feet. And of course, tandem pairs of kids would lie one-on-top-of-the-other. The added weight meant you could go faster, but every bump and divot in the sliding surface meant that the kid on the bottom got the wind knocked out of him as the kid on top slammed down on him.
-------------------------
One year, I think when I was in junior-high or high school, we had an absolutely perfect sledding day - it was bright and sunny, with temperatures in the upper 20s. So, as long as we stayed active, we weren't going to get frozen, and the snow would be hard, but the bright sun would make for a slick crust on the top of the snow surface. Oh, the sledding was fast that day. The first time I went down the hill, I flew. I felt like I was an airplane coming in for a landing as I zipped down the hill at half the speed of sound; I could feel the pressure waves building up in front of me, I was going so fast. I had to look far down the hill ahead of myself to plan my steering moves, and hope that no kids at the bottom of the hill decided to wander across the main sledding lane. I didn't come to rest until I rocked up onto the incline at the edge of the parking lot. It was incredible!
Our whole family was there, and my brother and I were quickly engaged in various contests and races. It was the greatest day of sledding in my whole life. I don't know how many hours were actually spent there, but I'd have been willing to keep going by starlight, if they'd let me.
At one point, in the later afternoon, my brother and I were standing on the top of the hill, catching our breath after our most-recent uphill trek, and preparing for our next high-speed descent. As we huffed and puffed, we looked around, taking in the scenery from the top of the hill, from whence we could see a surprising distance over the surrounding countryside. At one point, we were facing away from the front of the hill, where everybody was sledding, when we noticed, for the first time, the back side of the hill. It was steep at the top, just like the front, but about halfway down, the slope became more gradual, and it continued on for a long way - MUCH farther than we could go on the normal run on the front side. There were even a few sled-tracks running down the back side, so it wasn't like you couldn't sled back there.
My brother and I looked at each other, an unspoken 'You wanna?' passing between us. We didn't say a word, just set our sleds on the brow of the hill, pointing down the back run. This was gonna be cool. . .
We pushed off, and instantly, we were flying! My brother would pull ahead of me by a foot or so, then I'd catch back up and nudge ahead, and we just kept going. It was the most incredible run either of us had ever had. At some point, I was aware that, if we'd been on the front side of the hill, our run would be over, but we were still flying, the wind peeling our cheeks back, adrenaline still pumping through our veins.
Our speed dropped off, just a bit, as we continued onto the more gradual slope halfway down, but at that point, it became a contest just to see who could keep going the longest, and run the farthest down the hill, more than simply who could go the fastest. Even so, my brother and I were eyeing each other, one of us, and then the other, nudging ahead by a few inches as we continued downward.
After a certain point, I looked ahead, and saw a fence. When we were at the top of the hill, the fence had seemed ridiculously far away, that we could never go that far. But now, it seemed quite possible that the fence would come into play before our run was over. I looked along the fence, and saw a gap, maybe ten feet wide, with two large maple trees marking the edges of the gap. The fence went up to the maple tree on either side, and whoever had built the fence had decided not to fill in the gap with an extra ten feet of fencing. So I began to steer myself toward the gap in the fence, just in case I still had some speed left when I got there.
My brother saw what I was doing, and quickly ascertained that he should steer toward the gap, as well. And we continued sliding down the hill. We were still going fast enough, though, that our 'steering margin of error' was still pretty comparable to the width of the gap, and I began to get nervous as to whether I would be able to actually hit the gap or not. My brother's sled moved closer to mine, and we began to bump each other sideways with the realization that it was gonna be a pretty close thing for both of us to shoot the gap together.
Finally, we were in the last few yards, still moving at a rapid clip, and I smiled to myself as I realized that, yes, by golly, I was indeed going to hit the center of the gap. I sailed on through, between the two huge trees, and found myself cruising across virgin snow at the back of some farmer's field, and I only made it 20 or 30 yards into the field before I slid to a halt.
But where was my brother? I looked around, and then I saw him, lying face-up in the gap between the trees, but I couldn't see his sled. I grabbed the lanyard on my own sled, and trudged back to where he was laying. As I approached, he looked up at me.
"Are you OK?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"What happened?"
"I had to bail."
"Where's your sled?"
He rolled over, looking toward the tree that had been on the left side of the gap as we approached. There was his sled, a small dimple in the metal framework at the front of his sled.
"I was gonna hit the tree," he said, "so I had to bail. The sled hit the tree. I hope it still works."
We picked it up and gave it a quick inspection. It looked like it might be slightly bent, so we torqued on it, to try and un-bend it. Then we set it back upright. It seemed to sit flat on the surface, so we pronounced it OK.
Then, we turned and looked back toward the hill, which was much farther away than we'd ever seen it, having never been down the back side before. It was gonna be at least a half-hour trudge back to the top.
So, we adjusted our mittens and our stocking-hats, grabbed the lanyards to our sleds and began our wintry trek back up the hill.
"Coolest. . . run. . . ever. . ." my brother smiled.
"Yeah," I said, "and I won. . ."
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