Religious Belief

I am an atheist. I know that there really is not a good reason, at least as far as evidence is concerned, to believe in the existence of a god. There is really no arguing that. But I have a pretty good idea of why the concept of a god exists and exists in the vast majority of people. First, if a person really deep down believes in a loving god, it can give comfort. Death is pretty scary, what with the notion of endless nothingness, and avoiding all that nothingness can ease the mind. Aside from that, a lot of people feel strength from being in the good graces of their god. A prayer of appreciation can feel pretty good, sort of like putting two dollars in the red, Salvation Army bucket at Christmas time. For the record, I am appreciative of life too, it's just that I do not believe that it does any good to silently express that appreciation in the form of a prayer, consequently, I don't bother.

When I die, should that ever happen, I would like to relive all the great moments I have enjoyed in life. That would include the most thrilling sled rides, the most scrumptious pizzas, the most gripping movies, and the most exciting moments I have experienced while naked. When I've done those things, I would like to relive them again but to avoid the boredom of repetition, I would have no recollection of ever reliving them the first time. I figure that God would be capable of accommodating me on that. Theoretically, my version of heaven could go on forever. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that my heaven exists, just like it is highly unlikely that anyone's version of heaven exists. When it comes right down to it, the two differences between me and those who actually think there is a heaven is, #1; I am more realistic and, #2; I am more nervous about The Great Beyond. Sometimes being rational comes with a price.

The Rico Rizzos of Long Ago

I attended a rather well-to-do, suburban high school. It wasn't decadent but it was better than the average Columbus public high school at that time. I graduated in 1969. I was a terrible student so there was no college.  I had no trade skills either. I knew nothing about bricklaying, plumbing or carpentry. Of course I had no previous experience in any form of employment. Consequently I went straight into the American workforce looking for any employment available. I found a job transporting temporary manual laborers to job sites. Day laborers. Basically I was driving a van full of men who were all but unemployable, transporting them to various work locales where they would do physical labor for minimal wages. Most of these men were unemployable because of alcohol problems. Some were illiterate. Still others were simply bums. One was AWOL from the Army.

I worked this job as a kind of surreal bus driver for about eight or nine months. It gave me an education like none other. A couple of times, when I was done transporting these sad characters to their job sites in the morning, I would trek down to the local watering hole about noon where I would luncheon with a few of the guys who were not selected to work that day. "Lunch" generally consisted of something like a ham sandwich and lukewarm beer. The watering hole was not exactly a four star establishment. I got to know many of these dubious individuals. Some became friends. Mid afternoon I would drive back to the job sites and pick up the men, returning them to the central office where they would receive their day's pay.

In the fall of 1969, I saw the movie Midnight Cowboy at a drive-in theater. I was accompanied by a girl who I briefly dated at the time. One of the central characters of the movie was Rico Rizzo, a down-and-out man from the Bronx who I could have sworn occasionally sat in the back of the van I drove for work. At the end of the movie, Rico slowly dies. He succumbs to pneumonia caused by his own ignorance as well as social apathy for pathetic individuals like him. He died to touching music while in the arms of a pal, a penniless, young, naïve, Texas man he befriended during his travels as a vagrant of New York City.

The entire movie got to me, but the end scene ravaged me. Rico dying devastated me so completely that the girl I was with noticed the effect it had on me. "Wow, that really hit you," she remarked.

"Yeah." I responded, "I know Rico, or at leas I know someone just like him."

I watched the final scene of Midnight Cowboy on Youtube just a few minutes ago. It still gets to me all of these years later. I remember how I felt, sitting in that drive-in theater that long-ago evening, and the feelings that went through me.

I can still recall a few of the names of those down-and-out men from back then too, but oddly, I can't for the life of me remember the name of the girl I took to the drive-in.

A Hero Wannabe

I want to be a hero. I've wanted to be a hero all my life, beginning in childhood. A lot of people want to be heroes, I'm not alone. Just to be clear, giving blood, or social volunteering does not count. Such deeds are noble, but they aren't the acts of heroism I'm referring to. I think it was when Atlanta hosted the Olympic Games, some ordinary guy heroically moved people away from a bomb that had been planted in a public place. The police believed the bomb had been planted by the alleged hero in an attempt to make himself a hero. Not surprising; heroism can be a motive for crime. It turned out that the man did not plant the bomb. He would have been viewed as a hero except for the police errantly raining on his parade. Talk about bad luck.

A few days ago a small but powerful storm swept through my neighborhood. In my boundless wisdom, I went outside to witness it. The storm contained almost no rain but there were winds of up to 70 MPH. A huge tree crackled and fell a few doors away from where I was standing. It crashed on a condo's east side at the approximate site of that condo's patio. From where I was standing I could not see how much damage was done or if there were any injuries.

Fearlessly I quickly hurried over and fought my way through the maze of tree limbs and debris to where the condo patio had once been located. The patio fence was destroyed, as were a table and some chairs, but no one had been on the patio and there were no injuries. It was my chance, I could have been a hero, but no, the fates were against me.

So as luck would have it, I was not a hero, at least not an obvious hero. Still, when some of the residents gathered around the fallen tree a short time later after the storm had passed, I explained in a modest tone but in splendid detail how I had seen the tree fall and had quickly rushed over to check for casualties. I figured that if I could not be a full-blown hero, maybe I could be a limited one.

Naturally, no one was interested. I guess acts of near heroism don't mean much. Still, I yet have hope. In a half hour or so I'll be headed to a convenience store. Maybe it'll be in the process of being robbed and I can single-handedly apprehend the crook. Yeah, on second thought, I don't know if I want to be a hero that badly.

A Boyhood Entrepreneur

I will occasionally discuss my childhood business forays with those interested in the science of free enterprise. I'm talking about my early childhood business ventures, early childhood beginning even before I was old enough to earn six bits by mowing a neighbor's lawn. That was a long time ago and I must confess that sometimes I have wondered if my memory, combined with my imagination, have worked to distort the reality of those days. However I have recently uncovered childhood photographs, and I'm starting to think that I have been recalling those days accurately, though I must admit, those recollections might be a little hard to believe despite being supported by pictures.

My business partners at our lemonade
 stand (post dog turd incident)

In 1958, when I was 7 years old, a friend and I opened a curbside lemonade stand, selling a glass for a nickel. Little did we know until later was that our competition was a Kool-Aid stand up the street that had as its proprietors what were popularly known as "big kids"; i.e. 12 year-olds. They did not like out lemonade stand cutting into their business and so they trekked down the sidewalk and attempted to strongarm us out of business by putting dog turds into our pitcher of lemonade.

What the big kids did not count on was that as they were assaulting our business, a couple of teenage boys were making off with their entire pitcher of unattended Kool-Aid. What a break for us. All we had to do was fish out the turds from our lemonade supply and reopen our business, our nearby competition now gone. We did feel badly about selling tainted lemonade so we reduced the price to 2 cents a glass, which much to our joy, tripled our business.

Me as a casino/treehouse operator

A year later I had become a more sophisticated man of business as I began taking book on the school playground during recess. This prove highly profitable. So profitable that I soon opened my own casino/treehouse where buying into a game of Candyland cost the young gambler 10 cents, winning earned anywhere from 15 cents to a quarter, depending on the number of participants.

Perhaps the highpoint of my childhood business ventures came at the age of 10 when a thirteen year old neighbor boy shocked and horrified my friends and me by explaining to us the facts of life in graphic detail. Among other specifics, we were told that men prefer big boobs to small, and women prefer large penises to the more diminutive variety. We were also informed that for safety sake, a man should always use a condom. That final piece of information was immediately followed by an explanation of what a condom was.

My business associates and I (second from left) 

displaying our merchandise, oversized condoms.

When the shock of what we had just heard began to ebb, our young, business-oriented minds took over. What was to follow was an establishment that used colorful party balloons stretched to look like attractive condoms for the man of girth. Any 16 year-old customer immediately received a reputation not only as sexually active, but well-endowed.

Recent photo

A Political Opinion

I am very reluctant to write a political opinion for this blog. My thinking is that political opinions are just a little too controversial for it. I do not want to ruffle feathers. Then I stopped and realized that no one reads this blog so why not just write anything I want. So what follows is a political opinion.

I actually believe that I am a good person to write about America's current political landscape. I'm a good person to do this because I am non partisan; a real rarity. I have no allegiance to any candidate or any political party. However I'm not a great person to write a political opinion because I am not immersed in the political scene. I have some degree of knowledge, but I am not all-knowing.

Anyway, we are a little more than fourteen months from electing a new American president. One of the candidates is tycoon businessman Donald Trump. I find his candidacy curious, curious enough to be the subject of this blog entry. Right now, if the election were this afternoon, he would lose to Hillary Clinton by a relatively small margin. He would defeat all the other Republican candidates. His early success seems to come from making statements that make a lot of traditional Americans nod their heads in agreement. He speaks of curbing illegal immigration (with a wall along the Mexican border), reducing the national debt, a better national health care system, and many more improvements. He claims that the national government is "broken".

So far I have not heard much in the way of specific plans or strategies to combat these problems. Trump has proclaimed that Mexico will pay for the construction of the wall along the Mexican border. I heard him say that myself in an interview. He says that if Mexico doesn't fund it voluntarily, they will be tariffed into paying for it. The notion made me chuckle but I am not all-knowing so maybe it could work. Still, it made me chuckle, which is not a good sign.

Donald stated that he would repeal Obamacare and "replace it with something better". I am at best lukewarm on Obamacare. If I wanted to be elected president, I would probably say something like "I will repeal Obamacare and replace it with something better". I would add the last six words as a vague disclaimer because as unpopular as Obamacare may be, I would not have anything better to offer. I have this feeling that Trump has the same problem.

I once saw a candidate who reminded me a lot of Donald Trump. His name was Ross Perot and for a time he was a leading candidate for the U.S. Presidency. That was 1992. Then his popularity began to wane, he got cold feet, and abruptly dropped out of the race. But maybe Trump will be different. Maybe he'll stay in it to the end. Heck, maybe he'll be our next president. I doubt it, but maybe. If we do have a President Trump in 2016, I hope he not only knows what needs fixing, but also knows exactly how to make the repairs. So far I've heard only of what needs fixing. That's not enough to get my vote. If it were, I'd vote for myself.



  

My Favorite Days

I recently asked myself the question; what were my favorite days of my life? Before such a question can be answered, if it can be answered at all, there are some things that need clarification. For the sake of simplicity I am going to proclaim my "favorite days" as being the days I enjoyed the most rather than, say, days I might deem important. So, out of the running would be the day of my birth, for example. Also, one of the ingredients to be excluded is sex. Okay, there is my criteria.

After giving the question several hours of thought and reflection, I'm going to select two days.

July 4th 1963. The morning of that 4th of July the 12 year-old kid I once was laced on his Red Ball Jets and bicycled down to the local city park where there were games of physical skill where success was worth a silver dollar. One of the games consisted of throwing a baseball into a six inch pipe from about twenty feet. Over the course of an hour I lost my amateur athletic status, replacing it with three shiny silver dollars.

That afternoon some neighborhood pals and I blew up several plastic model cars with firecrackers, our voices deftly mimicking the cries of pain and terror from the imagined, ill-fated occupants. That was followed a few hours later by a dinner of hamburgers cooked out on a charcoal grill, with corn on the cob also on the plate. There was a big glass of pink lemonade to wash it all down. The day was capped by the front row viewing of the evening's fireworks display.

An hour or so later I wearily climbed into bed with several mosquito bites speckling my arms and legs, three silver dollars sitting on my dresser, and a grin stretched across my face. What a day.

August 18, 1987. A lifelong Ohioan, it was my fourth day ever in the state of California, the first three days encompassing the previous 72 hours. It was my first few days west of the Mississippi since a family vacation 25 years earlier. My girlfriend, Diana, who was to become my lifelong partner, and I were staying in the tiny town of Lee Vining, California, twenty miles east of Yosemite National Park. On the morning of August 18th, with the forecast calling for clear skies, we decided to drive up the long, winding, uphill highway to the eastern edge of Yosemite where we would hike the Tioga Pass Trail.

A view from the old mining cabin with the lakes
 below and the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the distance

At about noon we reached the parking lot just inside the boundary line of the park. We strapped on the small backpacks containing our water, lunches, and a small camp stove, and then started up the trail. The temperature was a wonderfully crisp 60, and the deep blue sky did not own a cloud. The trail began at 10,000 feet elevation and for the first few hundred feet it cruelly went up, but once we passed over the ridge, the alpine terrain leveled out. Before us sparkled two small, crystal lakes, and stunning greenish-brown meadows edged by the the rocky faces of Sierra cliffs. We had it all to ourselves, there wasn't a soul in sight.

We hiked alongside the lakes for a mile or so until we reached the remnants of an old mining cabin which needed photographing. We then meandered up to a snowy glacier to make an August snowball. About a half hour on down the trail we stopped for lunch at an overlook where we could gaze down onto the lakes. I cooked us some soup and tea and we sat back and relaxed in the utter quiet, the sunshine supplying a marvelously soothing warmth.

That evening, back in Lee Vining, Diana and I shared a pepperoni pizza and a carafe of wine on the veranda of our motel room as we watched the sun slowly slide below the horizon.

In the years to follow, Diana and I have returned to the Tioga Pass Trail on a handful of occasions, attempting to recreate that first hike best we could. It will always be a great place to hike, but there was something kind of magical about that day of August 18, 1987.  

A Heart For Gardening (By guest blogger Shannon Hayes)

Shannon Hayes

When I was a little girl I wanted to be a doctor. I liked gardening and nurturing flowers and vegetables, but more than anything I wanted to be a doctor. I think it was about my junior year in high school that I decided to work towards becoming a cardiologist. I'm not sure why I chose that specific field, but I did.

I always received good grades in school. I have been rightfully accused of being a nerd. When I graduated high school, I had my choice of universities to attend. I chose the University of Michigan, at least partially because the school has prestige, and I was offered a sizable academic scholarship.

I went through undergrad and pre-med without much trouble. I am not saying everything was easy, but there was never any doubt that I would make the grade. When I went into the cardiology program, I was an intern with Dr. Michael Lane; a highly respected cardiologist at the Ann Arbor Heart Clinic. One day we were examining patients, one of whom was a man in his early 50s who had a history of rather mild heart disease, specifically, partial blockage in a main heart artery. He was being examined because of recent chest pain. His name was John Kelton.

When Dr. Lane and I stepped into the examination room #4 where Mr. Kelton was waiting, I was struck by how youthful and physically fit he looked. I was an intern but I had already learned that the majority of cardiac patients were not exactly pictures of health. Anyway, Dr. Lane and I examined John... Mr. Kelton. We listened to his heart sounds and evaluated his recent diagnostic tests. He had undergone a stress test only a few months earlier and everything was normal. Because of the chest pain, there had been a blood test checking John's blood enzymes for anything that might be indicative of a heart attack. Everything looked normal.

John had a great sense of humor. When I placed my stethoscope to his chest to listen to his heart, I inadvertently set it on a shirt pocket holding two movie ticket stubs. John removed the stubs, gave them a quick glance, then jokingly said, "Leatherheads; great cast, terrible movie." He then flipped the ticket stubs up on a countertop.

When Dr. Lane could not hear John's a mild heart murmur through is stethoscope, Dr. Lane shrugged and said, "I guess my ears aren't what they used to be. I can't hear the heart murmur, but then, I can't hear half of what my wife says."

John made Dr. Lane and I laugh when he humorously replied, "Doc, that problem hearing your wife may not be due to your ears."

When we were done with the examination, John thanked Dr. Lane for his time, and then he turned to me and wished me good luck in my career choice. He said that I was sure to make for a fine heart doctor. Like many nerds, I do not befriend people quickly, or easily, but I liked John. He was a soft-spoken, personable man. I warmed up to him immediately.

The next morning I was scheduled to be with Dr. Lane again. I was looking at what was on the day's schedule when I heard from one of the nurses that John and died the night before. The nurse said that she had heard that Mr. Kelton had died in his sleep overnight and though there was not yet a confirmed cause of death, it appeared to be cardiac arrest.

For a moment I was in shock. This man, seemingly healthy one day, was dead the next day. It just seemed surreal. Had Dr. Lane and I missed something during the exam? If we had, I did not know what it could have been. Then I started thinking about not John Kelton the patient, but John Kelton the nice man I had come to briefly know, a nice man forever gone. The thought filled me with anguish.

Still, I thought I was going to get through the morning and my emotional trauma. Then Dr. Lane and I stepped into examination room #4 to visit a patient. There on that countertop were the ticket stubs that had been in John's pocket the day before. It was just too much and I lost it. Right in front of both Dr. Lane and the patient, my breathing went haywire and my hands started to tremble. I quickly excused myself and dashed into the women's restroom where I broke down and cried.

That was six years ago. I'm now about to go to Wahler Florist. I work there in their greenhouse as the horticulturalist. It is where I belong. The most beautiful roses in Michigan can be purchased at Wahler's, at least I think they are the most beautiful. I also grow cucumbers, bell peppers, and different varieties of tomatoes which I sell at a farm market. I have developed this very delectable tomato that I am quite proud of. I call it the Kelton Tomato. It has a pleasant, sweet flavor that's hard not to like.            



    

 

A Visit To Lake Hope

Today I drove the hour and a half to Lake Hope State Park. It is a small lake within a state forest nestled in the hills of southern Ohio not far from the tiny town of MacArthur. Over the last ten years or so I have visited Lake Hope about every other summer. When I was between the ages of 10 to about 15, our family drove from Columbus the 80 miles to Lake Hope perhaps three or four times. The lake now holds sentimental value for me. In fact, I have paid a call on Lake Hope more times out of pure nostalgia than I did as a kid sitting in the family station wagon. That doesn't seem quite rational but I guess there is nothing wrong with it.

Back in the early to mid 60s when our family would go to Lake Hope, my three sisters and I would play around in the water and do silly jumps off of the two diving boards located at the end of a wooden pier that extended about hundred feet out into the lake. Usually sometime during the afternoon we would meander to the snack bar and get hamburgers, potato chips, and a Coke. Once my dad and I rented a row boat and some fishing gear. We ventured out onto the lake for some fishing. I remember catching a little blue gill.

The snack bar

I'm not sure why I am so sentimental for Lake Hope, but I have my theories. During that period of my childhood I was not a kid who enjoyed sitting still. Consequently, I would occasionally get into trouble, almost always for minor kids' stuff like ripping a pair of pants or perhaps just getting dirty. This was true especially in the summer. The other three-fourths of the year I was in school, where I was pretty much an abject failure. A trip to Lake Hope meant that I would not have to worry about wear-and-tear on my pants, or altercations with dirt, or bad grades in school. Giving it a little thought, it is no wonder I reflect fondly on Lake Hope.

Unfortunately Lake Hope, specifically the beach/swimming area, is not exactly as it once was those fifty years ago. There are no longer diving boards at the end of a wooden pier. There is no longer a pier. And I don't think there is any spot in the confined swimming area that is deep enough to do any actual swimming. But the boat house is still there, and the little snack bar remains there too, although the best a patron can do is the purchase a lukewarm hotdog. But through all the years and all the changes, the laughter of kids can still be heard, and that's a wonderful thing. I know it's wonderful; I once helped provide it.



 

Sporting Entertainment; Jim Style

To one degree or another I have been interested in sports my whole life. When I was playing Little League baseball or playing backyard wiffleball, I would pretend I was Mickey Mantle. All through childhood, and even into early adulthood I would dream of playing one of the "big three" professional sports, the big three being baseball, basketball, and football. Up until I was about 14, I actually had some hope I could make the grade. Reality, that is; the limits of my athletic talent, did not hit me all at once. I gradually figured it out simply by the observation of bigger, faster, stronger kids.

My enthusiasm as a sports fan peaked fairly early. I was a big Washington Redskin fan when I was about 18 or so. That was about as fervent as I ever got for one sports team. That did not last long. By the time I was in my mid 20s I did not know who was on the Redskin's roster. I was a Cleveland Indians fan when I was in my early 20s but my interest in that team never matched what I had felt for the Redskins. It is pure coincidence that the mascots and logos of both teams denigrate the American Indian. Hopefully that denigration will someday be rectified.

For some unknown reason I then went decades relatively indifferent to professional sports. I would watch sports, but passively. As a Columbus, Ohio resident, a bit of spirit was reborn with the debut of the Blue Jackets NHL hockey team. I never played hockey and can barely skate, but I have been a mid-level hockey fan since my teenage years when an NHL game was broadcast on TV every Saturday throughout the winter.

I don't mean to blow my own horn, at least I don't mean to blow it too loudly, but I consider myself a very good sports analyst. I will often forgo the audio portion of a game's broadcast, particularly if I consider one of the announcers annoying. I find I don't need the commentary. I can do just fine on my own. Sometimes I will be watching a Blue Jackets game on television and I'll see an illegal play, and the subsequent penalty being called, ten seconds before the commentators see it, or mention it. "Hey you guys, the referee just called a penalty," I'll mutter at the television. The announcers never seem to hear me. That's okay, I often have them on "mute" too. When you have more experience watching sports than the commentators do, you can do that.

For the last ten years or so I have been oddly bothered by the imperfection of many sports. I'm referring to the sport itself and not the players. The biggest problem is that human eyes, specifically the human eyes in umpires and referees, are not good enough to accurately officiate the action in many sports. I will see a ref make a questionable call in a basketball game, a call that likely alters the game by at least two points, and I'll think; let's see if the game ends with a two point differential, making that call game-altering.

I guess the umpiring and refereeing can't be that flawed. If it were, I would have been a professional athlete, and not just dreamed of it.

 

Mustache

I had a mustache for the vast majority of my adult life. I first grew it on a trip to Florida in the summer of 1970 with three friends. I was 19 years old. I was not yet physically mature enough to grow a good one. It was better than the average high school mustache, but it was clearly not yet fully developed. I did not intend to grow one, or keep it once I did grow it, but as the weeks went by, I just never shaved it. Finally, after a few months, it had become something of a fixture.

By the mid 70s mustaches were all the rage. A lot of celebrities had mustaches back then. There were Burt Reynolds, Mark Spitz and Tom Selleck, to name three who were known for their mustaches. My mustache probably peaked about then both in color, how it fit my face, and also taking into account the general overall popularity of the mustache.

Wilford Brimley

My 'stache started overpowering my face in the early to mid 80s and so I started trimming the edges every few days, just to keep it under control. Mustaches were still moderately stylish, and I thought mine looked okay.

Somewhere in the early 90s both my scalp and my facial hair started to show flecks of gray. The graying mustache did not look overly attractive. I told myself that if I were really concerned about my appearance, I would have to get a whole new wardrobe. Truth was; I felt that the mustache had become part of my persona. I thought about touching it up with dye but I had seen others do it with less than great results.

By the late 2000s, the old mustache was pretty much entirely gray. Worse, perhaps the most famous mustache still being sported was owned by Wilford Brimley. One Saturday afternoon in 2011 I took a long, hard look in the mirror and decided the time had come. For the first time in 40 years the razor blade did not stop when it crossed the area above my upper lip.

Early that evening Diana, my life companion, got her first look at me without the old mustache. She never said a word. Finally, a few weeks later she was talking about someone who had a mustache "just like yours". She then glanced at my face and noticed I was clean-shaven. "You shaved your mustache!" she proclaimed in shock.

"Yeah," I calmly responded, "three weeks ago."

It's great to be noticed.

Age Appropriate

For the last few years I have been on the the threshold of actual old age, of senior citizenship, at least the early stages of it. This is not a particularly pleasant place to be, but it is an interesting one, in its own way. I have occasionally weighed whether or not to chuck all elements of not just youth, but midlife, and pass through the gates into full advanced maturity. I have contemporaries who have done just that. They are often heard saying, "I'm too old for that" when confronted with activities that require even minimal physical strain. Advanced technologies are for "younger people". They will not even consider participation in a casual volleyball game at the company picnic.

It is not all bad. A senior citizen can aspire for a kind of dignified maturity. Their opinions would receive more regard, or at least seem to. They would be allowed to remain seated in a crowded area when others remain standing. Snow shoveling, and other common drudgeries, would be performed by the neighborhood kid. I get it.      

As of the summer of 2015, I will climb a ladder to clear branches off a roof, and I will slid under a car to change the oil. I have been known to stroll over to the local playground to shoot the basketball, and chase the ball at a jog, when need be. I will take on the newest technologies with the only possible barrier being cost and need.

If I may get philosophical... once a man becomes a social patriarch, there's no going back. It's a one-way journey. Everything is temporary, youth, midlife, life itself, so I might as well fight to keep everything intact for as long as possible. It's an interesting part of life, complete with its own struggles, struggles I never would have dreamed existed when I was in those early stages of life.    

  

Joe

It's the end of another football season and the Super Bowl is at hand.

In 1965 when I was a young teenager of 14, I admired New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath perhaps more than anyone living at that time. This admiration was a combination of a newly pubescent boy, and a insanely popular playboy athlete. It was not purely coincidental that upon the floor of Namath's bachelor pad there rested an expensive, decadent llama-skin rug while at the same time my sock drawer was lined with fake fur from a couple of torn-apart winter gloves. I wanted to be like Joe, even if I couldn't.

In the mid 1960s there were better choices than Joe for personal admiration. There was John Glenn and Martin Luther King Jr., to quickly name two. But I had not seen either Glenn or King throw a fifty yard pass in front of 60,000 cheering fans, let alone fend-off countless beautiful women. Fact is; Joe Namath was probably not even the best quarterback of his day. His football career overlapped the careers of such Hall of Famers as Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas, Sonny Jurgensen. Terry Bradshaw and Roger Staubach. But none of them had the off-field charisma of Joe Willie.

The idolization did not last long; perhaps a football season or two, but right there at that critical stage of my young life, it was going full blast.

Namath retired from football in the mid 70's at a fairly young age. He had bad knees almost his entire career and eventually they brought his playing days to an end. By then his wild popularity had waned and within a few years he was mostly forgotten by both pop America, and by me.

In recent years Namath has occasionally reemerged in the public eye, sometimes in embarrassment. A few years ago during a football game, an aging, drunken Joe Namath flirted with an attractive female media member during an ill-conceived interview. Other appearances have been more positive, thankfully.

It has been fifty years since Joe Namath's rookie season. He seems in good health. He is trim, lucid, and his damaged knee joints have been replaced with artificial ones. But gone are the cheering crowds. His picture has long since disappeared from magazine covers. The groupies have gathered elsewhere. No more crowds of girls. Aside from the occasional reunion, the comradery with teammates is a thing of the past. I hope the older Joe is happy.

I am no longer 14, but I still remember the young Joe Namath and the dubious effect he had on me. I suppose the truth is; I am still something of a fan. I'm a big enough fan that I thought of him this morning... as I was pulling on my fur-lined gloves.  

My Friend the Internet

I was born in 1951. I'd have to think about it but it is very possible that, in my opinion, the internet is finest invention to come along in my lifetime. The computer and antibiotics proceeded my birth, as did the television.

Not every First World citizen would agree with my assessment, of course, particularly older folks. I have some older friends who know nothing of the Net, and don't want to know. And there are others who are internet literate but simply have other interests.

The internet now takes up more of my leisure time than does its rival; the television. In fact, I think the internet might be winning at a 2 to 1 ratio. Part of it is that I often watch TV shows on the Net, particularly shows from the distant past such as It Takes a Thief, Combat!, and Maverick. I watch a lot of Youtube educational videos too. Yesterday I clicked onto a video taken from inside of a WWII B-17 in flight. That was kind of cool.

I keep in contact with a lot of old friends over the internet, either through email, or Facebook. I know what many of my high school classmates are up to these days, thanks to the internet. These were classmates 45 years ago. Such a thing was unheard of, pre Net. Unfortunately, through the internet I have been made aware of the those who have died too.

I pay my bills on the Net. I rarely write a check anymore. I've made all kinds of reservations over the internet too. I've made doctor appointments. In fact, I've gotten doctors' opinions over the internet.

But the thing I like most about the Net is just playing and/or making a nuisance out of myself. In my case, playing, and being a nuisance, are kind of one and the same. I actually have some social "causes", none of which I would have engaged in if not for the ease of the Net and the anonymity it provides. So now and then I will click into some interactive internet forum or website, just to straighten out some misguided folks. Of course I'm not so serious about any of my causes that I would insult or cuss out someone online. I am "playing" after all. Still, there is nothing quite so invigorating as telling people how to think, specifically how to think about religion, race, and the environment. Sometimes I will even get philosophical over the internet. The philosophical things I confer may be ignored, as they are in my real life offline, but when they are posted on the Net, I don't know that my musings are ignored. It is a kind of odd, blissful ignorance, all thanks to my friend; the internet.  

 

A Door, Past and Present

When I was sixteen the Doors, a legendary late 60s to early 70s rock band, came out with their first album which contained the epic single Light My Fire. The year was 1967. I would sing along with Jim Morrison when the song came on the car radio. I found that I could drop my regular speaking voice down a half octave and do a reasonable job on the song; just so long as the car engine and the sound of traffic drowned out the glaring imperfections. A few years later my voice had matured a little and I could do a presentable job singing the Doors' Touch Me. If memory serves me correctly, I actually performed the song in a duet with Morrison in front of a girlfriend, Morrison on the radio, of course.

My imagination has always been able to take me into other dimensions. Back in the late 60s I would listen to Light My Fire and imagine myself fronting the Doors in a giant auditorium of crazed high school students, most of whom being attractive girls. I would not only sing, I would also have a guitar strapped over my shoulders and would play that too. I was both Jim Morrison and Robby Krieger.

It is now 2015. All of the Doors' songs have been remaster and sound terrific. They are readily available for listening on Youtube. No need to do anything other than occasionally remain patient through an annoying, intrusive, 15 second commercial. I do not get Youtube on my car radio so I will listen to the Doors on my home computer. It is equipped with a decent sound system so the remastered songs sound pretty good.

A lot has changed over the years but not the power of my imagination. In 2015 I am still performing Doors music and as always, I sound exactly like the Doors. How could I not sound like them since it is remastered Doors recordings that fuel these flights of fancy. But I am no longer performing with them. I am now in an unnamed band that has an older lady on keyboards, a younger guy on bass, and a younger woman on drums. I think the more youthful woman on drums is a nice touch. It's sort of progressive, in its own way.

In my typical daydreamed concert we are performing at a small venue with a stage in front of several dozen circular tables. The audience is my piers, that is; older people. There is a lot of gray hair and many pairs of bifocals. In fact, before the band dives into song, I, as band spokesman, warn the people, "you'd better be prepared to get hit with some good, old-fashion, energetic rock n' roll because that's what you're are about to hear." I click on the Youtube "play" button and the daydreamed concert begins.

By the end of the second or third song I often envision younger folks stopping to listen. They stand beyond the tables, behind the seated older people. They are obviously impressed, perhaps even overwhelmed, and maybe even shocked that "old stuff" can be so rousing and dynamic.

Once, in a reflective moment, I looked out to the young listeners and saw a familiar face. I could not quite tell for sure but it looked as if he were staring right at me with this terrified look on his face. That kid was me, of course, forty-three years ago. Sorry to disappoint you kid.