Baggy Paragraphs

Terri Sibo-Koenig was assisting Helen Martin in organizing the art show portion of the Saline Summerfest when I chatted with them for AnnArbor.com. My assignment was to write a color story. It was pouring rain and the only color was gray. At least that was the case until Terri (left) chipped in. Drenched to the skin, she said that having to cancel the show “added to the humiliation of wet underpants.”  Thinking about this a moment, she said, “Maybe commando-style would’ve been better.”

It just seemed too perfect: the letters aligned themselves, and I had to take this picture of the Little Gem Theater with the headquarters of Big GM in the background. Although today’s Wall Street Journal says the latest round of employee buyouts has reduced staffing in GM’s factories to 48,000 people, which is down from 110,000 in 2006.

Maybe the Little Gem will one day achieve parity.

Number 34 falls to the rear.

The track announcer at a stock car race introduces the field before the green flag waves. He calls out the driver’s name and informs us about the sponsors of the car. For example: “Starting on the pole and driving Number 24, the DuPont Chevrolet, Jeff Gordon.” This is very neat and simple, and half the people in the grandstand boo very loudly while the rest cheer at the top of their lungs. But sometimes the sponsorship gets out of hand. On July 3, the announcer at Daytona International Speedway had to salute the driver of the D.H. Griffin Companies/Quality Turf/Buffalo Wings & Rings/Indiantown Marina Dodge Charger—ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Patrick Sheltra! My brain had shifted into neutral long before the wings arrived.

Some hazard in all this nomenclature is foreseeable. Nowadays, with our diminishing cultural standards, product names are getting dicey. The other day I was startled by an Interstate 94 billboard for poopycredit.com. However, I admit the ad’s efficacy. Not only did I get the message but also remembered it and am now passing it along.

I received another start earlier this summer when the track announcer at Michigan International Speedway hailed Darrell Basham, of Henryville, Indiana. Whether I would want to start a race alongside anyone named Basham is one question. As a shoemaker assumes the name of his trade, did Mr. Basham earn the name by his behavior on the track?

Beyond this, my credulity was strained even farther when the announcer said Mr. Basham was driving Number 34, the Anti Monkey Butt Powder Chevrolet. Someone nearby in the press box did a quick search on her laptop and assured all it was not a joke but a real product, as a website attests. I have since learned that monkey butt is a condition that affects motorcyclists, the operators of heavy equipment, passengers on interminable flights to Australia, and the riders of horses. Why, John Wayne could have persevered through many decades with an undiagnosed case of monkey butt. It undoubtedly must have affected his performances. No wonder he was so taciturn!

As a motorcyclist, I might have endured monkey butt myself without the benefit of this antidote. Before it happens again, I must stop at Tractor Supply and buy a six-ounce bottle of the powder. And I’ll be sure to pick up some Lady Anti Monkey Butt for the missus. Better yet, at the next race, maybe I can just have a little talk with Mr. Basham about getting fixed up with a couple of cases of each product. My Christmas shopping would be all taken care of. I just hope he’s not offended enough to live up to his name.

As early as April 1958, I mastered the art of getting the better of my sister. I had everything a boy could want: bangs, rompers and a striped shirt, and a jocund fleshiness that would soon go away and not reappear until 40 years had passed. Katie, as she was then known (now Kate), was justifiably chagrined at being shouldered out of prominence in the portrait by her privileged older brother. Or maybe her distress was owing to the foretaste of the plaid parochial school jumper she would have to wear until graduation from the eighth grade.

My father practiced no religion, but my mother brought me up rigidly Catholic. During my teen years she lost her faith and we stopped going to Mass. Alas! But she soon swooned to a fundamentalist preacher, and from then on it was nothing but Bible verses. For a time when I was 18, I attended one of those churches. I heard people speak in tongues. I heard that if I was in a drive-in theater, a bar, or a dance hall when Jesus came for His children, He would leave me behind. My first part-time job had been at a drive-in theater and I’d love working there. That cheap preacher’s offense didn’t lead directly to my quitting the church after six months. I think I must lack the faith gene.

 Anyway, during that time, my mother set me up on a date with Kim M______. (The surname is shared with an Agatha Christie detective.) I’m not sure of the connection—something church-related, for sure. Kim was a girl with pretty eyes, short hair, a flat chest, and rather a large ass. She had a larger frame than I and was destined to be a big lady. I can just picture her today, waddling through the parking lot of a factory outlet mall. She will no doubt be wearing a red sweatshirt with a quilted bear on the front. Anyway, whatever our one date, she thought I was the neatest guy—according to my mom, via Kim’s mom—and Kim herself told me that if only I could attend Indian Hills Church, where I seem to recall her dad was the pastor, we could have something wonderful. I guess I wasn’t interested enough to go through such an ordeal.

Anyway, we soon went off to our separate schools. And then I received this letter, written in a most fluid and beautiful cursive on the green leaves of a small notebook. Kim’s spelling is generally very good and I faithfully reproduce the few flaws here:

Oct. 4, 1976 (Mon.)

Ron,

Hi! Well, here we are both in school once again. How’s it going down there in Lincoln? Must be nice to be close to home. Do you go home alot? I was home about two weeks ago and surprised my family. I didn’t tell them I was coming home and just popped in. Boy, were they shocked! I got in on Friday and saw my sister at the church youth house and she told me mom and dad weren’t home so I got home and was waiting for them when they walked in the door. It was alot of fun but I wish I could have seen you. So much has happened.

I checked into my room on Sept. 6th and have 2 other roommates. Both of them are from wisconsin. There are 2 girls, 2 guys and I up here from Omaha, so it’s not to lonely. The next time I get to come home is Thanksgiving time.

I’m glad you let your mom give me your address. Now we both can get mail so that our mail boxes won’t starve. Ron, I just pray that the Lord will let you know how much He loves you. Like I’ve said before, God means so very much to me and I wish you would go back a few years and try to remember what it was like. I just pray for you every day. The Lord has such great plans for each one of us. If only we would stop, look and listen to him. Each day the Lord seems to be so close. But only when I let him be close and love me, can I feel it. This is exactly what you need to do. Can I suggest a super great church? Well, I’m going to: First Assembly of God. The pastor’s name is Rev. Jack Glass. Do me a favor and talk to him, because I know you have alot of questions, deep in your mind and heart, that need to be answered. Please? Write me and let me know how it goes, OK? At Thanksgiving will you to Glad Tidings [a church near my parents' house] with me? I can come and pick you up without any trouble at all.

I’ve got to go now. I hope you understand what I’ve written and can accept it for what is meant and not as a lecture or sermon. Please write back soon. God Loves you and please always remember that.

Love in Christ,

Kim

My address is:

Kim M______

North Central Bible College

910 Elliott Avenue South, Box 137

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404

Poor Kim. I don’t remember ever writing back. Until now.

You missed, babe. Never forgot you, though.

I’ve been pinioned by a minion,

parsed up the arse,

and pilloried by Hillary.

But I purloined a sirloin,

which I think I fed later

to the InSinkErator.

(Fed uncooked, if this be true to a Piet Hein “grook.”)

(My memory is fogged

from too much grog.)

When writing recently about the bane of gift books, I started off by lustily inveighing against the very most recent one of these to be sent my way, which is the collection of Charlie LeDuff’s newspaper pieces. But I’d completely overlooked the first gift books among them. I trace it back to the time I was turning 11 or 12 and decided I’d like to have a birthday party. A kid named Steve, who lived at the bottom of the hill, was one of the puny number of attendees. His family took its faith seriously, and he had been brought up to be kind to everyone.

Steve was physically a much bigger kid, with dark hair and eyes and a pleasant smile. On the playground he showed very little footspeed but was a ready participant in ballgames and could dependably clog up the middle, as they say of defensive tackles. In saying he was a big kid, I don’t mean he had large powerful shoulders. Once as were changing back to street clothes after ninth-grade gym class, I had a glimpse of his bare dimpled rear end and impulsively called him “Jell-O butt,” which was a most ungracious thing to say, and I’ve often regretted my callousness and would happily apologize if I ever meet him again, which will probably be in a big-box store as he’s driving down the aisle in an electric cart because he’s grown too fat to walk.

Steve’s gift to me at my birthday party, a hardcover edition of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” was probably a recycled item. Maybe Steve had received it at his own earlier birthday party, to which I most conspicuously had not been invited. (How else would he have seen the way clear to foist his book upon me?) Or maybe one of his older sisters owned but was discarding it after having purchased a leather-bound edition of the work. Maybe the advance notice for my party had been too slim, leaving only enough time to skim off “Little Women” from the scant selection of possible gifts in the family’s inventory. Maybe times were hard down there at the bottom of the hill—my mother said the salary of Steve’s father, a YMCA manager, couldn’t be too great. Maybe the whole family was just a little odd and Steve went off to the next birthday party with a copy of “Anne of Green Gables” or “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

My younger brother, Dan, once reported that Steve’s younger brother, Larry, took down his own pants and challenged Dan to do the same in a comparison of manly parts. Maybe Larry’s aberrant behavior was due to early and repeated contaminating exposure to “Little Women.”

Even aside from the question of the poor taste Steve had shown in giving me chick lit, the fact was that sentimental nineteenth-century fiction was definitely not the intellectual fashion in our house. Among other subjects my father would probably not have cared to see me pursuing were Greek and Roman mythology, Renaissance poetry, or Victorian literature. His disdain for the gods and goddesses of the Classical Period was in keeping with his rejection of all religious expression as naught but ego-based superstition. (“We’re too important to die, so there must be a soul and eternal life.”) As for the Renaissance, its artistic glories were too much within the purview of high-culture elitists who must be refuted. And the Victorians were of a royalist society, royalism being worthy of contempt and ridicule.

My father, being nevertheless a great believer in the advantages of reading, used to spend more time than money at newsstands. Why purchase the magazine for 35 cents when it could be read on the spot for nothing? “Wait here,” he would tell me and my sister Kate, leaving us sitting in the car outside the drugstore for 45 minutes while he perused Popular Mechanics. He usually wasn’t alone: freeloading at magazine racks was quite popular in those days. I remember accompanying him as an eight-year old at the huge Skagway superstore, located at 72nd and L Streets in our fair city of Omaha. While he was absorbed in his technical reading, I roamed the enormous humanities section of the periodicals, and here I came upon the first pornographic image of my life (aside from the centerfolds in an auto parts store he frequented). This image, offered by some rag that was included among the True and Argosy imitators, depicted the dungeon where Nazis were about to torture a woman, who was clad only in tattered underthings and was bound, spread-eagled—XXX marks the spot—to a wagon wheel. It must have been the Russian front because of the spoked wooden wheel: probably some oxcart had been flattened by a Panzer. I have never forgotten the thrill—an eight-year-old boy’s inexplicable tastes—and the instantaneous knowledge that this page was surely forbidden, verboten, taboo. I had most likely already committed a sin merely by chancing upon this page. Sometimes I’ve since regretted having put back the magazine so fast, as though it had scorched me. What became of the poor maiden? Maybe Allied bombers smashed the dungeon, and with fate leaving her as the only survivor, she precariously rolled herself on her wheel to amnesty in Switzerland. In any event, the result of my porn immersion at the 100,000-square-foot Skagway superstore was undoubtedly to leave me annealed—even if there hadn’t been too many words on the page—against the insipidities of such limp fiction as “Little Women.” I was into the hard stuff.

My father hadn’t seemed to notice any of this, but perhaps I was wrong. Sometime afterward, for no reason at all, he proffered “Ivanhoe,” the comic book. This historical romance by Sir Walter Scott was published in 1819 and put out by Classic Comics in 1946, with subsequent editions. Even if it hadn’t been way over my head—the dialog balloons teemed with loquacity—I had no taste for this sort of thing, being but my father’s son. I can’t imagine that he would have read Scott’s novel of Saxons and Normans and Lady Rowena, so why did he think I’d go for the comic book? I was already a newspaper reader but skipped the “Prince Valiant” strip on the funny pages. It was comedy, not Arthurian adventure, for me. I was a “Peanuts” kid. I dug “Andy Capp.” I have never forgotten that Dagwood Bumstead’s boss was J.C. Dithers, and I react approximately like Dagwood, which is to say apoplectically, when a door-to-door salesman rings my bell.

As a teenager, my thoughtful selection one year for my father’s Christmas present was Wilt Chamberlain’s autobiography, “Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door.” I adored Wilt the Stilt but should have known better than to make my father read about a black man, especially an egotistical one like Wilt, and even more especially one who suggested he might live next door. It wouldn’t have much less palatable if I had chosen Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice.” To my father’s credit, thought, he soon applied himself to the hoopster’s autobiography but pronounced it nearly insufferable because of Wilt’s braggadocio.

My teen years passed. I read the hilarious “MASH,” by Richard Hooker, and the less hilarious sequel, “MASH Goes to Maine.” Besides the daily newspaper, I didn’t do much additional reading. I had always wanted to read George Plimpton’s “Paper Lion” but never sprang for the $1.95 and still haven’t read it. However, one day in a book nook at the Westroads shopping mall, I came across the racy novel “Three in a Bed.” How I wish I’d held on to this pocket paperback! What a rarity I’d possess today! At the moment of purchase it seemed to be part of a series of multifariously themed soft-porn novels that shared the same cover design, a sort of World Book Encyclopedia of perversity. Buying this—I couldn’t in those days buy cigarettes as easily as the literary transaction was completed—I brought home my prize, thinking finally I had found a subject that suited me: the ménage à trois! I read just the first couple of pages, and then stashed the book with my underwear. I went off to school, forgetting that my mother took care of laundry duties, including the loving placement of all clean and dried and folded underwear back into the bureau. My father—who had probably suffered feelings of rejection those nine years earlier over the “Ivanhoe”—entered my room that afternoon. (Why the hell wasn’t he at work?) “I see you’re finally reading,” he said, grimly tossing “Three in a Bed” at me. “Too bad your choice of material isn’t too good.”

My high school graduation occurred just weeks later. At the small party that was held for me, I knew Grandmother Tillotson could be counted on for some Holy Cards, as usual. Meanwhile, Aunt Margie had given me Peace Dollars over a succession of birthdays, my Holy Communion, and Confirmation. (I still have every one of them.) Another silver dollar would be fine, but I now unwrapped a package that obviously contained a book and found “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” which had been a fixture on the bestseller list. This volume was a beautiful slip-cased hardcover with endpapers of vellum: my first deluxe edition.

It helped that “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” was brief—a shrewd choice on my aunt’s part—so I actually read the novel, or novella, which is very nearly a unique circumstance in my entire history of receiving gift books. Of course I don’t remember a thing about the story other than its seeming a bit vapid. Once I got to college and started reading the heavyweights like Melville, with all his deep philosophical musings, Richard Bach’s pop fiction fable hardly seemed to belong in my collection: J.L. Gull met Melville’s Confidence Man and endured quite the plucking. Somewhere along the line, I parted with him. Today I regret this action, but not as much as having sold back my physical geography text to the college bookstore.

It seems as though “Little Women” was still in the bookcase at my parents’ house in 1986, on the eve of their move from Omaha to Florida. Being present to help them pack up, I salvaged a couple of my childhood books and brought them back to Ann Arbor. My foxed copy of “The Flight of the Silver Ship,” a 1930 work of juvenile fiction by Hugh McAlister—a dirigible adventure story—survived the transition. “Little Women” got shuffled off among the discards. Society’s attempt to create out of me a eunuch for Jane Austen had inexorably failed.

Transcript of testimony by the Duckling Savior, of Spokane, Washington, in his appearance before the Truth Commission, as established by the United States House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on Divers and Dabblers:

Commissioner Merganser: Mr. Duckling Savior, according to the report submitted to this commission by the Justice Department, you have now saved two broods of ducklings that jumped off the second-story ledge of your office building, first in 2008 and again in May of this year.

Duckling Savior: That is correct. In 2008, the mallard hen built her nest on the ledge. Everyone in the office watched the process and was aware of it. The night after the eggs hatched, I lay awake worrying about the ducklings. First of all, how would they get down? Directly below, it’s just a concrete sidewalk. This is downtown Spokane we’re talking about. The concrete is very, very hard in Spokane. And I lacked any previous experience in mitigating animal instincts. I’m a real estate loan officer. There was also the second question of how they would get across Riverside Avenue.

Commissioner Merganser: So in 2008, the mother duck flew down to the sidewalk and—what would we say?—beckoned her ducklings to jump off the ledge.

Duckling Savior: Also correct. And the first one jumped. I mean, it just clobbered the sidewalk. That’s when I ran downstairs. The second duckling was almost ready to heave itself off the ledge. I caught it with my bare hands and set it down. Then the process was repeated with ducklings three through nine.

Commissioner Merganser: And for this you abandoned your duties as a loan officer?

Duckling Savior: Well, I had to call a widow about refinancing her home, which was paid off, in order to get her some cash for a Vegas trip. But it could wait.

Vice-Commissioner Scoter: Mr. Duckling Savior, I’ll just point out the photos show ten ducklings in all. Had you checked with the EPA or your state department of fish and wildlife there in Washington about the necessary permits before getting involved in this?

Duckling Savior: No, I hadn’t.

Vice-Commissioner Scoter: Had you played outfield in the minor leagues, at least.

Duckling Savior: Ma’am, I was on the baseball team in high school but honestly didn’t get into very many games. Mostly, I was just a pinch runner.

Vice-Commissioner Scoter: So you had never played at any professional level?

Duckling Savior: True.

Commissioner Merganser: Let me proceed with the questioning about events of that day in 2008. Is it true that after all the ducklings had jumped and you had caught them, you put them into a box that you then carried two entire city blocks to the Spokane River?

Duckling Savior:  There was a significant amount of traffic.

Commissioner Merganser: Could you tell us what the box had contained when it was full?

Duckling Savior: Copier paper.

Vice-Commissioner Eider: Mr. Duckling Savior, had you given any thought whatsoever to using a box that had contained, say, a shipment of luxury gardening tools from Smith & Hawken?

Duckling Savior: Do we have a Smith & Hawken in Spokane? I don’t even know.

Vice-Commissioner Eider: You might have ordered from the catalog.

Duckling Savior: Aaaaaahhhhh…

Commissioner Merganser: Mr. Duckling Savior, you are directed to answer the question.

Duckling Savior: No, I hadn’t given that any thought.

Vice-Commissioner Eider: Did former Vice President Dick Cheney supply you with that box?

Duckling Savior: Absolutely not. The only time I’ve been anywhere near Dick Cheney is when we took the family skiing at Jackson Hole, and I believe he was at his place there for the holidays. It’s hard to say we were near him even then. I think you’d call that proximity, at best.

Vice-Commissioner Eider: If not Cheney, was it Scooter Libby who supplied the box?

Duckling Savior: No way.

Vice-Commissioner Eider: Were the ducklings hooded while you traversed the distance between the sidewalk and the river?

Duckling Savior: Again, absolutely not.

Vice-Commissioner Eider: But photos were taken of the captives.

Duckling Savior: Yes, you see them, but the ducklings weren’t hooded.

Vice-Commissioner Eider: Was there ever the attitude, either of your own or among the office staff, that this was some sort of holiday or even a joke?

Duckling Savior: The entire staff was deeply concerned—except for one person in the commercial department who came out with everyone but went on down the street to Starbucks.

Commissioner Merganser: All right, let’s move forward to this year’s episode. Please tell us what happened.

Duckling Savior: It was pretty much the same thing. The mother duck returned to the ledge in late March, I guess.

Vice-Commissioner Scoter: Was any attempt made to dissuade her?

Duckling Savior: One of the security staff said something about setting out poisoned oats. But the office manager pointed out that ducks don’t really eat oats in the first place. Or even millet.

Vice-Commissioner Scoter: Do you know if this statement about oats was made after the security person had met with the CIA?

Duckling Savior: I do know there were some meetings with the FBI, but I thought those were about money laundering.

Vice-Commissioner Eider: Mr. Duckling Savior, sometimes this commission has found you less than forthcoming.

Duckling Savior: I’ve told you nothing but the truth.

Vice-Commissioner Eider: Can you explain why, if you never had any professional baseball experience, you risked catching the ducklings barehanded instead of using a net?

Duckling Savior: If it means being out of compliance, then next time I will.

Vice-Commissioner Eider: You mean to tell us that you contemplate allowing this to go on again in 2010?

Duckling Savior: Birds tend to return to the same nesting site year after year.

(Here, the commissioners confer about recommending a Treasury Department infusion of TARP funds into the bank and a replacement of the board of directors and CEO. The gallery becomes quite agitated and Commissioner Merganser finally bangs his gavel.)

Commissioner Merganser: Once again, the ducklings weren’t hooded?

Duckling Savior: Once again, Commissioner, you have pictures that show you they weren’t.

Commissioner Merganser: But the mother duck was allowed to lead the ducklings through the busy streets to the river.

Duckling Savior: It’s because the streets were closed for a parade.

Commissioner Merganser: No thought was given to the possibility that bagpipers might tread upon the ducklings? Mr. Duckling Savior, I’m afraid we find you quite negligent in this. And add to all of it the fact that you allowed your actions to be videotaped for national broadcast… I fear that this commission has no other recourse after this hearing than to turn its findings over to the Justice Department for additional investigation. That will be all today. We will honk—call you—if anything else is needed.