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.