You Can Try For A Pick-Up, But There's No Carry-Out

My wife and I visited with some old friends of hers on a recent Friday night.  Kathy is close to her friends, as she is to her family, regardless of the relationship’s vintage.  It might be one of the things I love most about her as I still have many friends that date back to high school days.  Whether you consider yourself hot shit or a piece of shit, old friends have the ability to buck you up or knock you down…they knew you when.  If you don’t receive an attitude adjustment meeting with people you’ve known for decades, you must be the most level-headed person there is.

I was a little tired after a particularly grueling workday, but I didn’t have designs on cancelling my participation in the outing.  I didn’t know any of the attendees particularly well, but we’ve crossed paths repeatedly over the course of my nearly twenty-five year marriage to Miss Kitty.  They are, by and large, a great bunch of folks, easy to talk to, down-to-earth Michiganders that just like to get together and howl.  I’ve never been an opponent of the howl.

Of course, when it’s a couples party and the event is in honor of a vacationing sister, all bets are off for the fellows.  Some play pool, others try to join in the conversations and others just don’t attend.  Fortunately, my personality and interests dovetail with those of the fairer sex so, in the party situation, I am usually one of the girls.  Kath and I are able to hang together for a third to a half of the evening.

So, imagine my surprise when a male friend from her old neighborhood, a complete stranger to me, begins hitting on my wife.  About my age, no worse for the years; married longer than Kathy and I, I learned later.  But he was definitely hitting on my wife.

Now let me begin by saying that Kath and I are not jealous people.  Secure in our relationship, comfortable with our roles, we don’t spend time searching cell phones for unknown numbers or trolling social media to find out who’s been talking to our significant other.  We know who we are and trust each other deeply.  That said, you could make a case that we are ‘territorial.’ If we are in an uncharted territory, we will quickly lay boundaries for anyone that thought they were headed for open road.  Metaphorical traffic cones will be placed, directing the errant traveler to the ‘No Chance’ exit, never to be heard from again.  Usually.

So, sitting among the girls, naturally, I see the boys come in and out.  Sometimes to join the conversation, sometimes asking for a lighter, but they are typically exchanges that last a couple of minutes or less.  We’re beyond the age of babysitters, so the questions tend to be of a banal nature.  Did you turn the alarm on?  Did we feed Spanky before we kenneled him?

Imagine my surprise when one of the fellows begins trying the eighties lines and the eighties stories on my wife.  As I am sitting at her right elbow, he’s on the same side as my good ear, so I can hear everything he says…and he is totally trying to pick up my girl.  Keeping the eighties theme, he is trying to make her remember things that happened over thirty years ago, a story file that is easily massaged for maximum effectiveness.  Kath was receptive…because she is friendly.  She has been to dozens of theater cast parties and understood little of what we call ‘the creative process.’  Yet, she is still an engaged partner in numerous conversations with feverish actors (myself included).

Let me also add that Kath has lost twenty-five pounds this year, yes, a pound for every year we’ve been married, and she looks great.  She feels great.  She walks with a renewed confidence in new clothes that cover her smaller, stronger, toned body.  This is on top of the fact that she was always a “Hi-How-Ya-Doin’” sort at a party, quick with a quip and up for breaking any existing rules.  I had certainly noticed the difference in her, but apparently I wasn’t alone.

Old Neighborhood Guy, having started a conversation, placed his beer on the table between me and my wife, keeping his hand on the label.  Tired as I was, I immediately recognized the move.  When he turned his back to me completely, my suspicion was confirmed.  This dude was boxing me out.  Desperate to empty my bladder, I stayed.  He made landfall with his elbow on the table, putting his whole body between Kathy’s and mine.  I stared at the back of his head and recited a litany of dirty words in my mind, but I also found my inner caveman in that moment.  Inner-Caveman was most unhappy.

When O.N.G. lifted his hand for an elaborate re-creation of long ago glories, he returned to find my arm and my beer where he had once laid his.  When he decamped for a visit to the rest room, he returned to find the spot where he previously held court gone, ‘Occupato’ as they say in Guadalajara.   I told Kath during a quiet moment that the guy was hitting on her.  She brushed me off with a flip of her hand and a dismissive look.  He’s married!  she said.  He’s like a brother to me!  she protested.  I shrugged and moved on, talking to some of the other husbands at the built-in bar. 

As many parties do, the assembled end up huddled around the bar.  In the absence of a kitchen, the bar will do.  Kath and one or two of the other women were behind the bar, creating new libations and searching for the Tiger game on the satellite TV.  We came across a tribute to Gordie Howe, at which point O.N.G. re-appears, demanding the floor to tell his story of meeting Gordie, not just once, but twice.  It was a…good story.  I don’t want to nitpick but, as a writer, it could have used some editing.  It only mattered what Kathy thought, as he told the whole thing to her, swirling the single-malt in his rocks glass.  I don’t think she was terribly impressed.  I’ve seen the same look when I attempted to act out the opening nine pages of a first-draft.

With the mood effectively killed by the sense-numbing story, the girls disappeared from behind the bar to dance in a circle to music that isn’t often heard outside of Oldies radio.  The men dissipated as well, seriously regarding cigars they’d lit and extinguished throughout the evening.  As I remained at the bar, nursing my third Dr. Pepper, O.N.G. reappeared, elbowing me in the ribs as yet another Gordie Howe tribute was offered on the big screen.  “Hey, you know, I met him twice,” he stated.

“Yeah, you mentioned that,” I responded.  My face registered no emotion in the mirror behind the bar, but my Inner-Caveman just roared.

The Splinter and The Lip

After the passing of Muhammad Ali, I began thinking about another departed sports hero, Ted Williams.  ‘The Louisville Lip’ and ‘The Splendid Splinter’ had more in common than a stranglehold on Sports Illustrated covers.

Both were among the greatest in their respective sports at a time when competition was keen.  The heavyweight division was never stronger than it was in Ali’s era.  As formidable as Sonny Liston was, Ali’s TKO and KO wins over ‘The Bear’ remain tainted by allegations of a mafia fix.  With Liston’s personal troubles before and after the Ali fights, it is not hard to make a good argument in that direction.  Yet Ali held the championship twice in the seventies in a time that Joe Frazier and Ken Norton and George Foreman demanded a shot at the title.  Williams prowled the outfield for the Red Sox at a time when the Yankees dominated the headlines and the World Series.  Win or lose, Williams clocked in everyday, took his licks and did his damnedest to win.  I don’t think anyone who has ever read or seen an interview given by Williams would doubt his commitment to the game. 

  Neither Ali nor Williams ever pleaded injury when their efforts didn’t produce the hoped-for outcome, such was their fierce pride.  You would have to be an idiot to think they didn’t occasionally, or often, ply their trade while in pain.

They shared a great pride in their abilities.  When Williams began to decline as a hitter (almost imperceptibly to the layman), he would mutter to himself in batting practice, “I am Ted Fucking Williams and I am the greatest fucking hitter in the game.”  Prior to his bout with Ernie Terrell, Ali's opponent was quoted as saying, “His Mama called him (Cassius) Clay, I’m going to call him Clay.”  Yet in the ring, as Ali turned Terrell’s face into hamburger, Ali taunted, “What’s my name?  What’s my name?”

Each gave up a piece of their athletic prime for the U.S. military.  Williams, because he chose to serve, Ali because he refused.  Williams could have made appearances for the U.S.O. or coached a baseball team comprised of soldiers.  But he wanted to be a pilot and flew missions during the Korean conflict.  Ali refused induction, knowing he also could have been an ‘attraction’ for the Army and entertainment for the troops, though he refused the easiest path as well.  He chose to endure the scorn of the press and much of conservative America, insisting, “Ain’t no Vietnamese ever called me nigger.” 

Both had an up-and-down relationship with the press, Ali having a slightly better experience because his career was longer and his words, incendiary or not, made better copy.  Even if Williams had had his own Howard Cosell, a journalist he could speak expansively to at times and pick on at other occasions, I don’t think Williams would’ve become the icon Ali did.  Williams lacked that gift of gab.

In terms of an exit, Williams got the best of that deal.  On a late September day in 1960, Ted hit a game-winning home run and walked off the field for the last time as a player.  Ali stuck around for years after becoming the champion for a third time, finally leaving the boxing game as a loser in a lopsided decision to a middling heavyweight named Trevor Berbick in the Bahamas in 1982.  Yet Ali had been to the mountaintop three times while Williams never won the World Series for the BoSox.  Would Williams have mortgaged his batting titles and his position in the Baseball Hall of Fame for one World Series ring?  I think he might have.

If there is a specific afterlife for sports heroes, a heavenly arena or stadium where the cigar smoke hangs in the air and the floors are still sticky with beer, that would be where I would like to imagine Ali and Williams meeting.  Would they shake hands and congratulate the other for all that had been accomplished?  I think they would.  They were true to their sport and true to themselves.  Float like a long fly ball, sting like a bee.

At Your Bacon Call

It wasn’t a night that would stand out in most people’s minds when they looked back on their lives.  It might not have been enough to be a highlight of the week.  There wasn’t a big storm, there wasn’t a major news story, no member of the family had been empowered or imperiled. 

It was a normal weeknight evening when Kathy and I greeted our daughter, Lucy, who’d arrived after dinnertime to take a few things from her high school bedroom to her post-college house.  It was only going to be a few minutes of course, but when talk about the new job and updates on the old gossip stoked the conversational flames, it was quickly nine o’clock.  It’s the time of the evening when I typically begin snacking and the monkey on my back was craving bananas.

I asked my daughter, “Are you feeling peckish?”

Lucy replied in kind, in old movie fashion, “I could eat.”

My son was due to quit his work shift thirty minutes later as Lucy shouted, “Somebody better text Dan.”  Kathy quickly grabbed her cell phone and pounded a staccato beat on her keyboard before pulling another dusty box out of Lucy’s closet. 

It was fifty cents worth of eggs, maybe a buck-and-a-half in bacon.  Biscuits in a tube brought the total to three bucks tops.  If you want to factor in the cheese slices and the margarine, hell let’s make it five bucks.  I probably dropped something that the dog ate and I chose to forget it.

Anyway, what I’m saying is, it was just intended as a late night snack.  Seconds of preparation had gone into the menu plan, so it was surprising to me when the back door flew open with splintering force and my son walked in.  Dan, who never met a curfew he did NOT like, a fellow who often bridged directly from the time clock to the buddy’s apartment, was home for a mid-evening visit.  “Mom texted me there was hot breakfast cooking,” he volunteered, an explanation that was sorely needed at the time. 

I had it on the dining room table five minutes later and five minutes after that, you would’ve needed a C.S.I. team to find evidence of it.  We ate too much and we stayed up too late, but I don’t think any of us regretted it.  I felt a peculiar pride in having produced the humble supper that stuck with me into the next day.  I was at my place of employment, changing out of my loafers into my work shoes…

Shoes… 

Shoes equal love…

My mother always had a special bond with her father because of shoes.  As a small child with a rheumatic heart, five year-old Carolyn Johnston wasn’t allowed out of bed.  Most people would have just shook their head sadly when they heard the sickly child wish for an accessory she couldn’t use, but my grandfather didn’t.  He bought his baby girl a pair of shoes.  He bought them with money he didn’t have for a child that couldn’t use them…yet.  My mother, to this day, has a fantastic set of shoes.  It’s not at the Imelda Marcos level, but it should be respected.  There isn’t a member of my family that hasn’t been shoe shopping with her.  You knew she might buy herself a pair, but you knew for sure she was buying you a pair.  Maybe two.

And where shoes equal love for some, it seemed breakfast was my Valentine’s card.  When I was courting Kathy, I would come by on Saturday mornings after an all-night shift, with two Hardee’s fast-food platters.  That obviously worked.  A few years later, I was married to that girl, though still working midnights.  We were, at the latter point, eating cinnamon rolls in our own house with our first-born, watching “The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh”.  When Dan came along, Kathy had attempted chocolate chip pancakes.  By the time he was three, she had mastered them.  There was more than one sleepover that wound up at our house because of a promised flapjack feast.

They didn’t know at the time that we often substituted breakfast food for the usual dinner fare because many of the morning staples were cheaper than the steaks, chops and chicken we might have preferred.  I could make an omelet that looked like it jumped off of a Denny’s menu.  What I couldn’t do was stretch the grocery budget any further.  They didn’t know it then and they don’t care now.

Now breakfast equals love.

Dan graduated from community college this weekend, opting to have the family gathering at The Bomber, a historic diner in downtown Ypsilanti, for the post-ceremony meal.  There were eight of us, unanimously choosing breakfast for our mid-day sustenance.  My rapidly growing boy showed me his scuffed dress shoes and asked if I thought they had any life left in them.

“Better talk to Grandma,” I advised.

Yeah, I know, a pair of shoes lasts a lot longer than a plateful of hash browns.  But you can’t make an omelet out of a penny loafer, either.