Baggy Paragraphs

The first record I ever bought was the 45-rpm “Jezebel,” on the Mercury label, by the Rumbles. They were a garage band from Council Bluffs, Iowa, which is across the Missouri River from Omaha. Mighty Twelve-Ninety, KOIL, had been playing the song. The deejays pronounced KOIL as a word rather than spelling out the call letters individually. The station’s jingle included the slogan, “Million-dollar weekend.” I could never figure out who was getting a million dollars: maybe the station. Nor could I figure out why a band would name itself after a street fight. Or maybe it was just thunder. There were lots of things to figure out when I was twelve. I didn’t believe my mother when she said the Rumbles were only covering “Jezebel.” Indeed, the 1951 original, written by Wayne Shanklin, was sung by Frankie Lain, who was backed by the Norman Luboff Choir and Mitch Miller and his orchestra.

I probably bought “Jezebel” at Maple View Pharmacy, on 90th and Ohio Streets. I didn’t get too much farther away from home than that when I was twelve and thirteen. Maple View was within bike-riding distance, easily less than a mile from home by way of Brownley Drive. Maple View had a soda fountain where I tried cherry Coke a few times. It was also possible to buy cigarettes from the rack behind the main cash register, saying they were for my mom. Sometimes I produced a forged note. I don’t recall ever being turned down. The cigarette selection was pretty broad, and in these early days of the Marlboro man it was possible to buy old-time brands Chesterfield King and Herbert Tareyton and Phillip Morris. One source indicates the Tareytons had a cork tip, but the others were unfiltered straights. I had never seen any of my parents’ friends smoking them; instead, they preferred Kent, L&M (my mother’s brand), Bel Air, Salem, and Benson & Hedges. A fellow down the block named Tom Gaukel might have smoked Luckys, which indicated a defiant traditionalism: Luckys were a wartime brand, the kind handed out to soldiers. I had an older friend whose mother let him smoke at home. He liked Bull Durhams and thought it was hilarious when I puffed on these incredibly strong cigarettes and turned gray. When they weren’t making me gag or turn dizzy, cigarettes represented attainable adulthood. On top of this, the brand names and the packaging fascinated me. If I smoked today, it would be disappointing to have so few choices. As with so many consumer products, whether it’s soda pop or breakfast cereal, a relatively few companies dominate the market and the shelf space. Puffing a Basic Light from a packet with such a bland design would hold little innate allure. Smoking has become terribly prosaic.

Some other 45’s I owned:

• “Chain of Fools,” by Aretha Franklin
• “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay”: It always irked me to hear the deejays call him “The late, great Otis Redding” because I didn’t understand what that expression meant—or even that he was really dead: the song was recorded December 7, 1967 and he died December 10 in a plane crash at Madison, Wisconsin
• “Lean on Me,” by Bill Withers
• “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl),” by Looking Glass (“Brandy, you’re a fine girl, what a good wife you would be, but my life, my lover, my lady, is the sea”)
• “The Rapper,” by the Jaggerz (“Rap, rap, rap, they call him the Rapper; rap, rap, rap, you know what he’s after”)
• “Venus,” by Shocking Blue (“She’s got it, yeah, baby, she’s got it. I’m your Venus, I’m your fire at your desire”)
• “Sign,” by Five Man Electrical Band, uncannily summed up my growing anti-authoritarian feelings
• “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses),” by John Fred & His Playboy Band was playing the other day in the supermarket, which prompted the writing of this entire memoir, and to prove how obtuse I am, even as a former owner of the record, I admit that it never occurred to me this song was a parody of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” until just moments ago when I read the Wikipedia entry. Ye gods!

Soul and pop gave way to rock records, and I added Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” to my collection. Even as a fourteen-year-old, I knew what Robert Plant meant when he sang “I’m gonna give you every inch of my love. Especially as a fourteen-year-old, I appreciated seeing “Lotta” officially sanctioned in print. The psychedelic instrumental “orgasm” section, which is followed by Jimmy Page’s rip-roaring solo on a 1958 Les Paul still make me tingle when I hear the song over these forty years.

“Revolution” and “Get Back” were irresistible, even though Beatlemania was nauseating and I hated to jump on the bandwagon. Conversely, the Stones’ bad-guy image put me off, but the riff in “Brown Sugar” hooked me; I’m still learning just how seedy the lyrics are and how deeply Mick Jagger understood the culture that ultimately spawned the blues. “Honky Tonk Women” was another that scandalized but also intrigued while getting the hips shaking. Reading the lyrics online, I finally understand that the singer met a gin-soaked bar-room queen in Memphis and laid a divorcee in New York City: decades of ignorance brought to end.

“Spirit in the Sky,” by Norman Greenbaum, plays all the time on classic-rock stations and while I don’t know how well the lyrics hold up theologically, singing along is fun.

I also had the folky “In the Year 2525,” by Zager and Evans. I liked songs with easily followed stories, but another part of the appeal was that the duo came from Lincoln, Nebraska. It just didn’t seem possible for anyone from Nebraska to be number one at anything besides perhaps football. (By 1969, when the song held number one on the charts for six weeks, the Cornhuskers had yet to win a national title.)

About six months later, “Bridge over Troubled Water” also spent six weeks at the top of the charts. This was the required slow-dance song for make-out parties, one of which I held at my house, so Simon and Garfunkel abundantly repaid the investment of $1.49 or so. Mary Steele later wrote me a note asking if it was still good between us, and she relayed this information: “Everybody said it was a w-h-o-o-o-l-e lot of fun!! Little ones are more fun than the great big ones!! That’s what I think at least!!”

By “little ones,” I trust she was referring to my party and not my part.

What better application for my new Canon EOS 50D camera than trash day in Phony Phrench Estates? Molly and I bravely set out around 7.30 a.m. The brilliant sun highlighted those determined droplets inside the recyclable plastic bottles. It all reeked of a photo essay.

But during my first close-up, a hairy-faced fellow rolled past on his ten-speed. He had been out for an early ride, and finding a photographer bending over a tub of recyclables made him squeeze the brakes. (He lives next door.) “You’re taking pictures of trash?” he said.

I don’t know what I mumbled in response. After parking his bike he came back and asked why, but I just shrugged and walked away. When Henry Ford II got busted with his mistress, he wisely said, “Never complain, never explain.” Besides, the hirsute son of a bitch neighbor has rarely shoveled his sidewalk in winter, so he certainly doesn’t deserve any consideration from me.

Some ways down the street, the next shot, or the next, caused me to rotate slightly, and I saw Bristle Jaws still standing in the same spot and still gaping. Some people just don’t relate to the artistic temperament, I guess.

Plodding ahead, I soon found a ludicrous black superjumbo Lincoln Navigator roaring up to the curb before me. The squarish woman who jumped out looked rather disheveled: buttons not quite buttoned, hair uncombed. Wobbling onto the sidewalk , she introduced herself as Mrs. Fitzpididdle, who is the neighborhood association president. I was confused because there are two identical ludicrous black superjumbo Lincoln Navigator SUVs in our neighborhood, and I thought the fat lady who drives the other one was in fact Mrs. Fitzpididdle. I should have remembered her from the time I attended one of her open-house showings; Mrs. Fitzpididdle is a real estate agent and wants every listing in this subdivision. She now said she recognized me, but what was my name? To this pseudo-sheriff, I duly revealed my identity. (Maybe instead of speaking, I should have simply offered my driver’s license.) She demanded to know what I was doing and griped about having been awakened by three, yes, three calls from neighbors complaining about a man taking pictures of their trash.

In my typical fashion, I was utterly dumfounded. Three strands intertwined in my mind. One, why had she been Fitzpiddling in bed on such a fine summer morn? Two, why would people call her? And three, what difference does it make if your trash is photographed? But none of these points fluttered across my lips.

At least I was not so flustered as to realize that any attempt at explanation would lead to grievous misunderstandings and heated recriminations. My purpose, I offered, hoping to sound as innocuous as possible, not to mention the sheer truthfulness of it, was simply the hobby of photography.

“Well, just as long as you’re not taking pictures of any houses,” she huffed.

I disavowed any house exposures, although now that she mentioned it, there’s nothing illegal about taking pictures of a house. Hers, for example.

Before hefting herself back into her megajumbo SUV, she complained anew about being awakened, as though it were all my fault. The martyr’s role added an additional incongruous note.

Through the open passenger’s window I tried to say something intelligible on the order of, “You needn’t have come out in the first place.”

And away I toddled, trying to steady the 50D during the next few shots.

Indeed, I’m taking pictures of garbage!

Cleaning out a file folder labeled “News Clips Pre-1995” yields the following throwaways:

August 5, 1987: “Whiteheads Tell of a Separation: Call Marriage an ‘Inevitable Casualty’ of Baby M Case”

Runaway surrogate moms were a better story 20 years ago. Today we have Britney Spears! And Madonna versus Tanganyika! Why did I save this clipping so long? My only thoughts on babies are that, without them, there wouldn’t be dead baby jokes. In the best line from this New York Times story, the Whitehead’s attorney blamed “the extra stress placed upon [the] marriage by the public discussion of private matters.” He went on to insist, “Mr. and Mrs. Whitehead love each other very much.”

August 6, 1987: “Man Storming Pentagon Offices Is Shot to Death by Security Guard”

A clipping like this happens when you subscribe to the Times and feel solely responsible for documenting American history. My motto should have been, “Remember the Times Index and put away your scissors!” Dwain Wallace, crazy guy—”had been under psychiatric care in Ohio earlier this year”—tried to get past guards with a pistol, maybe to shoot up the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the guards plugged him right through the heart.

July 26, 1989: Brief item announces Ed McMahon had filed for divorce from his wife, Victoria

I used to save anything related to Johnny Carson and “The Tonight Show.” Victoria was 22 years younger than McMahon. About four years after the divorce, he married Pam Hurn, who was about 30 years younger. Considering recent developments, it’s likely she didn’t get either the wealth or status she’d bargained on when she married the Second Banana.

February 20, 1990: “‘Fantasies’ fueled success, Monaghan says”

Because I covered the vintage car auction scene for Automobile and Monaghan was a player on that scene, I must have thought this Ann Arbor News story would come in handy if I ever was called upon to write a cover story or a full-length profile feature. I could mine the News’s piece for such nuggets as this: “I had a very unsophisticated beginning, [but] sometimes the less you know, the better off you are. Just find a plan quick-and-dirty and do it. Those people that plan and plan and plan but never do anything just make me sick.” I was never called upon to write about Monaghan. Thank God! After a while, this humble guy, who kept appearing in the press, started to make me sick, and my clipping stopped.

April 30, 1992: “9 Dead in L.A. Riot: Street violence flares following verdict in videotaped beating case.”

After 17 years, I’d forgotten about the Rodney King verdict and the following riots. On parole for a robbery conviction, King was driving drunk when the police chased him. A King update, courtesy of Wikipedia:

• After riots, receives $3.8 million in civil case, starts hip-hop label
• 1993: crashes car into a wall in downtown L.A., goes into alcohol rehab
• 1995: Sentenced to 90 days for hit and run after knocking down his wife with the car, bringing to mind his famous, “Can’t we all get along?”
• 2003: Breaks his pelvis after slamming SUV into a house, drunk, fleeing cops for running red light
• 2007: Takes birdshot blast to face, arms, back, torso from thieves who try to steal his bicycle (resolves to go back to driving)

December 1993: “Irons in the Fire,” by John McPhee

Twenty New Yorker pages about cattle brands! Once invested in something like this, how can I dare to let it go?

December 30, 1993: “Heeding the Call of the Autobahn: Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic by Car Window”

Those alluring photos of gray skies, sleet, and people wrapped in heavy coats—how could I have not heeded the call myself? Maybe it’s the reporter’s telling observation: “I got lost trying to find my sleeping quarters in Prague, but I wasn’t surprised. The same thing happened in Berlin and Warsaw, and virtually every other city I had visited.”

March 1, 1993: “Arthur Ashe Remembered,” by John McPhee.

Susan had read Ashe’s memoir. I wasn’t a particular fan—just my curatorial obsesessiveness getting out of hand.

December 1994: “The Longest Yard: Howie Long is the Foxy face of the TV gridiron”

Recently retired from the playing field, Long admits, “I can’t go to bed without a room being clean. I don’t know why that is.” He also says he wouldn’t care if a fellow is gay. “If you can play defensive tackle, please line up.”

May 30, 1994: “Hillary the Pol: Hilary Rodham Clinton has navigated difficult territory as Bill Clinton’s full partner, and throughout her career she has shown a remarkable resiliency and a willingness to reposition herself as many times as necessary to get the job done—her way”

This one spanned more than 40 New Yorker pages. Something I’ve learned when filing away any long piece is to underline the key passages as a way of quickly reacquainting myself with the high points. As for Hillary, how my perceptions of her have changed in the past 15 years! The low point was during the primary campaign when she looked miserable knocking back a shot and a beer in a Pennsylvania bar. It was as bad as John Kerry’s goose-hunting expedition in Ohio a couple of days before the 2004 general election. Nevertheless, this is an exhaustive treatment of the subject Hillary, and I remember it being very well written by Connie Bruck. Maybe I’ll surprise one of my young nieces by sending it in the mail.

Take a last look!

One of my file drawers is jam-packed with maps, the consequence of indiscriminate collecting. Wherever I’ve gone, the map came home with me. Time to make some hard choices. Who really needs that grid of Grenoble? How about Helsinki? Damned if I know what to do about Denver!

Some files are quite thick. This represents desire. I have visions of two or three years in Costa Rica, of summering in a travel trailer in northwestern Wyoming, of returning to Iceland and riding my bicycle around the remote eastern half of the island, thereby completing the circle tour that I began in 1992.

Even those files have begun to bloat. Why, for example, do I need a Bureau of Land Management map showing fishing opportunities in southwestern Wyoming? This clever document informs the reader that channel catfish can be caught at Woodruff Narrows Reservoir, north of Evanston. Splake may be taken in the Viva Naughton Reservoir. This is my first acquaintance with splake. (Web search: the crossing of a male brookie with a female lake trout.) Just reading about it now makes me:

1) Desire to keep the map in my files

2) Strongly desire to rush forthwith to Kemmerer, the nearest town, and wade into Viva Naughton, in which body of water I might rassle and tussle with the plumpest splake the Rock Springs District has heretofore seen. Having fought it till I’m plum splakered out, I’ll want to repair to a roadhouse or brewpub for a draught of ale, if not a hearty splash of barleywine.

Then there’s the BLM’s Farson map. It’s usually possible to look at any map and come up with a whole list of fascinating names, but only Teakettle Butte stands out here. Otherwise, it’s just clichés like Packsaddle Canyon (North and South), Buckhorn Canyon, and Elkhorn Junction. Even Squaw Teat is a variation of a variation. As for Rollins Bottom, I would dread the prospect of having any part of my anatomy assigned on the scale of 1:100,000.

Finding Tabernacle Butte, I sense the presence—even in such a sparsely populated country—of one Mormon too many.

Without regrets, this map is trashward bound.

The Michigan town of Chelsea is home of Chelsea Milling Company, producer of the Jiffy brand of boxed muffin mixes, and of Jeff Daniels, the superb actor whose movies range from “Dumb and Dumber” to “The Squid and the Whale.” For a couple of months in the summer of 1986, I worked as a reporter for the Chelsea Standard, the weekly newspaper there. The Standard was owned by Walter P. and Helen M. Leonard. Walter was a native of southwestern Iowa, and Helen came from Ann Arbor. They bought the Standard in 1947, but to the consternation of some Chelsea people, they kept their home in Ann Arbor. For the nearby town of Dexter, the Leonards also published the Leader, which they seemed to regard as a nuisance and paid little attention. The Leader’s columns were filled with Chelsea news except for original material produced by a lonely reporter, Donna, who for 30 years had covered the Dexter council’s meetings and also came up with enough school news to fill the allotted space.

In their 60s when I came along, the Leonards were badly muddled by their four decades of toil. Helen was so distracted that she could barely complete a sentence. Walter just mumbled. He had much hairy foliage sprouting from his nose, holes in his greasy pants, and a desk buried under press releases, manuscripts, phone messages, notes, newspapers, and galleys of type. The Leonards’ slobbishness extended to their cars, which were filthy inside. The building that housed the Standard had once been the recreation facility of the Glazier stove works. It was far too large for the meager staff required to produce this small newspaper, and the Leonards were none too particular about cleaning it. The floor was like the inside of a smudge pot, and with four cats to track the grime all over, every surface got a coating. Cat fur stuck to all of it. Junk was heaped up everywhere, the windows were dirty, and cat turds lay on the floor of the men’s room.

The Leonards operated by terribly inefficient means, and on the night before the publishing deadline, Walter would worked very late, unnecessarily late, and then slept on a sofa in a side room. When I arrived at nine o’clock, he came out puffing his pipe and looking awfully bleary. The odd priorities that governed the Leonards were exemplified by Helen, who once picking a paper clip out of a pile of soot. One Saturday morning I was first to work and spent a good half hour sweeping, but when she showed up and caught me in flagrante, she said, “Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

It only took about six weeks for me to reach my wit’s end. One morning I came in and found Helen screaming at Donna, and five minutes of this clamor was enough to make me crazy. A couple of days later I found cat shit on the two-drawer file cabinet next to my desk. I knew no one else would clean it up, so I scraped away the feline paperweights and called Helen’s attention to the residue.

“Oh, did Becky throw up?” she asked.

“That’s not throw-up,” I informed her.

“Are you sure?”

I asserted that the difference was obvious. Furthermore, she could go and look in the toilet if she wanted.

“Oh, dear.” She went away for a paper towel, muttering about what Becky ate and how it had the propensity for making her sick.

I, too, had become pretty sick of what Becky ate. The only good day in that stretch was the Tuesday that I pasted up the Leader—a task for the lowest person on the totem pole—and everybody left me alone. Upon finishing, I swept the floor at that end of the building and gathered an unbelievable pile of fur.

A few days later I decided to end my career at the Standard. Being owed a few dollars, I called up on payday to see if the check was ready. While she had me on the phone, Helen told me a customer at the front desk had offered the opinion that Becky coughed up a fur ball.

“So it was vomit and not B.M.,” she said.

Disputing this made no sense, so I just said I’d see her at four-thirty.

Escaping that filthy dungeon was a huge relief and unquestionably the right thing to do. The odd thing was that the other reporter, an amiable guy and very good writer named Brian—who had worked there at least a couple of years before I came along—stayed on with the Leonards, evidently unfazed by the conditions, until they sold their operation in 1995, after which time he became editor-in-chief. To the victor go the spoils.

http://www.jiffymix.com

http://www.21stcenturynewspapers.com/paper.asp?par=16

Pinhead Mike and Judy await phase two.

School was canceled Monday because of three inches of snow that fell overnight. April’s custom is to leave snow once during its first week. (That’s why I leave winter tires on the car till about now.) Finding anything positive about snow in April is tough, but yesterday I took the dog for an early afternoon walk and found a couple of kids making snowmen. One, Bella, is an exuberant strawberry-blonde charmer. Seeing me, she called out, “Can you believe it’s April?” Implicit in her question was this subtext: “Why, in all my seven years, I just haven’t seen the likes of this!” (Also implicit: the sentiments of her parents, who met as students at Michigan State University.) Then Bella explained that the completed snowman was a snowwoman—Judy, I think—and Mike, her mate, was under construction. A pair of snow children and a dog were scheduled in phase two of the project. Bella spritzed Judy with diluted red dye, while the other girl applied the blue.

Another neighbor, Vince, pushed a plastic shovel across the windshield of his minivan to clear away the sloppy snow while his young daughter explained that school was canceled and she was glad. I asked for a prediction on the championship game between Michigan State and North Carolina. From where we stood, it was just 50 miles to Ford Field, which hosted the Final Four. Vince picked MSU because of the home-court advantage. We exchanged certitudes about the Spartans’ momentum, how they had made the Connecticut Huskies look ordinary in Saturday night’s game, and the meaninglessness of the first match, last December, between MSU and UNC (Tar Heels 98-Spartans 63). Yet the Heels would confidently approach the contest—no doubt about that.

The family directly across the street flew a large Michigan State flag. (They also had been displaying at the curb a table and three chairs—patio furniture—with a “free” sign.) The oldest of the three daughters is an MSU freshman, and by the comings and goings over there I could feel the excitement increasing. But this is Ann Arbor. I can think of only one or two other MSU flags in our subdivision. There isn’t so much crossover between supporters of Michigan and Michigan State. One friend who’s a Michigan alumnus said he just can’t root for Sparty, except to increase the stakes in bragging rights when the Wolverines beat them next year.

Calder Bros. Farm Dairy truck number 1032 (Dairy … Lincoln Park • Farm … Carleton, MI) has just stopped, and the driver loaded all the furniture but one chair into the cargo compartment and took it away. The MSU flag still flies proud on this day of cold and flurries.

At some point in his life my friend Budd must have decided that learning anything technical or mastering the fine points of everyday gadgets was incompatible with his asceticism. He is exclusively devoted to the pure and the good. Helping him to pick out a new TV was going to be a challenge, but I was prepared to be patient. He said he needed one because he was unable to get any channels. The set just wouldn’t go on. Last weekend he missed all the opening-round NCAA tourney games.

"My stars! Whyever so?" sayeth Budd.

When I arrived I found that his 13-inch portable was receiving input from the DVD player and he had been able to watch the Nebraska Cornhuskers football games that he loves. (He subscribes to a service that sends an edited version of each game, and he plays these throughout the year.) I quickly ascertained the reason he was unable to receive any channels was that the power to his DIRECTV receiver was switched off. Maybe he had inadvertently bumped into it. But I wanted him to upgrade to a better TV. Where did he want to go shopping?

“Circuit City,” he said.

I had already told him they went out of business just after Christmas. We went to Best Buy. Entering the TV department we saw a fabulous home theater system. Having one look at it, Budd declared that nobody needs such a thing and anyone who could afford it should be taxed. This is what comes of listening to NPR all day long.

We ended up in the aisle with the 19- and 22-inch TVs. One screen showed a lot of semi-naked men seated on the ground and swaying their shoulders as they faced a kind of altar. Budd ventured the rite was in Indonesia. We looked at another TV with a built-in DVD player. The difference is price was only $50. Budd was acting confused, so I suggested we take a walk and discuss the options.

“I don’t understand any of it,” he said. Pulling himself together, he finally decided to go for a 19-inch set with the DVD feature. We brought it home and I hooked it up. Then I tried to help him make sense of the new remote control and the DIRECTV remote, too. Despite having subscribed to this service for several years, it appeared Budd had no idea that channels could be selected by punching the number keys. He must have relied exclusively on the channel up/down toggle. He also seemed surprised to learn a channel guide could be called up with one touch of a button and he could navigate through this on-screen menu and select a channel. I wrote out a few simple guidelines for the basic functions he will be using most. We practiced with the built-in DVD player, looking at a Nebraska-Iowa State game from the Bill Callahan era. Budd noted that a large number of men in the student section wore strange costumes and gestured with their upper bodies and directed their painted faces at a kind of altar.

Then I asked to have a look at his computer. It recently came to my attention that he has no clue about hyperlinks or that a specific URL can be entered in the browser bar, which leaves him relying exclusively on Google searches to get to websites. And I’d bet $50 that he has no idea how to create folders and organize his inbox. In fact, I’d bet $500.

So I sat down in front of the monitor and found 15 e-mail files open in Microsoft Outlook. He has mentioned more than once that his “techie,” to whom he paid consulting fees, grew angry with him and refused to come out any longer. I managed to keep my patience but came home puzzled by how anyone—Budd isn’t the only example—could will himself to ignorance. “I can’t possibly do this” is a byword with him. Being quick to surrender is a continual foible. On the other hand, if I need to know the scientific name of a plant or isolate a strange religious practice, even one that’s enacted on the gridiron, he’s the guy to call.