Road Trip

I remember taking a driving vacation with my parents to the west coast back when Blake and I were kids. We had an old VW bus that Dad was prone to sticking his head out the sunroof of in order to take better pictures of the passing scenery. I specifically remember him doing this as we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. It embarrassed Mom, the native Californian, to no end to have her husband so gleefully playing the part of tourist, replete with Missouri license plates on the van, camera strap around his neck, black socks pulled up to his knees, and shorts pulled up to his nipples. Now that's sexy. Dad, Susan, Blake, and I drove out to the east coast several years later and really honed our "look like a tourist" skills. We camped throughout that trip, in exotic east coast locations such as a parking lot in Jersey. That is what I call "roughing it." Many years later, when Mom decided to move back to California, I followed her out there in her Nissan pickup while she drove a car for Blake to use while he attended Stanford. A two thousand mile trip spent alone in a small, over-packed compact pickup isn't as much fun as it sounds, especially when driving through the Donner Pass during a blizzard at one in the morning with big-rigs flying past you like you were days-old road kill, harmlessly occupying an insignificant portion of the side of the road forgotten by the world of the living. Good times.

In college, several fraternity brothers and I road tripped from Columbia to New Madrid, MO on the date that all the experts predicted the end-of-the-world earthquake would happen back in 1992. We figured there was no better place to be than the epicenter to feel the earth-ending quake. We were a little disappointed that the cataclysmic event never occurred, but we did get on "Good Morning America", and were interviewed by several radio stations and newspapers. The same group of guys also took trips to Carbondale IL, Ames IA, and Rolla MO. Those memories are pleasant if not extremely blurry.

My Hannibal friends and I have taken more road trips than I could ever count. Many entailed simply driving aimlessly on back roads with no destination in mind. Several have been taken with the goal of visiting a friend who circumstances have caused to move away. A few have ended with a piece of furniture being defiled and/or burned. One trip saw Bill Herrin and I drive to Vegas and back in a 1984 Plymouth Horizon that was literally held together with duct tape and baling wire. How any of us survived these wild days on the road is a mystery to me.

Now my family gets subjected to my love of the road whenever we go on vacation. We have driven to Orlando, Colorado, Michigan, Baltimore, Chicago four times, and Kansas City and St. Louis many, many times. Thank God for portable DVD players. Actually, the kids are good travellers, as is my beautiful spouse (whenever she has managed NOT to lose her glasses in the ocean.) I am still trying to convince her to: 1. Let me buy an RV and 2. Drive out to see Blake and Meredith in Philly this Christmas rather than fly. (We could buy an RV for what we would spend on airfare for four people.) I'll let you know how it turns out.

After recently reading "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac (for the first time in my 38 years, sadly), I have been re-energized and I have re-dedicated myself to a life of discovery that can only be found on the road. I hope to get that RV (a small, used one will do) and set out on new road-tripping adventures soon. Don't be surprised if you hear a honk in your driveway or a knock on your door sometime in the near future. And when the road calls, you'd better answer. Or else you may find a flaming bag of poo on your front porch. "Shitter's full, Clark."

The President's Speech to our Children, (straight from the source.)

For reasons I cannot fathom, there is a raging debate about whether or not our prsident should be allowed to speak to our kids in school. In my humble opinion, Barack Obama is the President of the United States, not just President of the Grown-Ups. What is wrong with allowing a few minutes out of a 180 day school year to give the president an opportunity to challenge young people to do better in school?

Some people claim that Obama is a socialist who is using this speech as a chance to indoctrinate the youth. They call it Marxist propaganda and make comparisons to Hitler. I for one find this disgusting and decidedly un-American. It seems that some conspiracy theorists are afraid that Obama will brainwash their suseptible children in this short, live broadcast. His powers of hypnosis and persuasion would have to be pretty amazing to overcome all the brainwashing being done by these kids' parents at home.

Here is a link to the exact text of the speech, which I copied from the White House web site. Decide for yourself. If you can still find something wrong with ANYTHING written in this speech, then by all means don't allow your kids to watch it at school. But for goodness sake, stop with the Hitler comparisons, stop the fear-mongering, and admit that this speech is simply an effort by our president to motivate our youth do do better in order to make our country better.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

Football Player

We signed Alex up for tackle football this year expecting it to be similar to his experiences in baseball and basketball. We figured he'd practice once a week and play a few games. No big time commitment, but he'd still have a good time. Well last night was the first practice and we learned a little more about what we got ourselves into.

The team is made up of 3rd & 4th graders from Southern Boone County. They will practice four nights per week. They will play 7 to 10 games including away games in towns as far as Moberly, Fulton, Hallsville, and Jeff City. Each kid will play at least six plays per game, but this is not simply a "just for fun" league. The coaches aim to win every game, while making the experience enjoyeable for all the kids. In short, my baby, my son Alex is playing on a real football team in a real football league.

How did this happen? How is it that I have a child old enough to be playing tackle football? How is it that the child of two band geeks is a football player? It just doesn't seem possible, but when I saw Alex in his full uniform with pads and helmet running drills last night, it seemed all too real. That being said, I am actually quite excited about watching him play. I think he's really going to enjoy it. He wants to play linebacker because, as he said last year during flag football, "Dad, I just wanna HIT somebody! I'm all twitchy." That sounds like a linebacker's mentality to me.

Wish Alex, and whoever the poor kids are who will be unlucky enough to get in his way, good luck. I'll keep you posted on his progress/medical bills.

Fight Scene from Chapter Five of "Burning Couches"

I couldn’t believe it. Chris was serious. There would be no way to worm my way out of the mess I was in. “Okay, friend,” I said as sarcastically as possible. “Let’s do this.” But before we were turned loose on one another, our “corner men” had to pat us down for weapons. Apparently Dave and Rosie had discussed the ground rules on their way home from the Dunes the night before. It became obvious that they had actually been looking forward to our little “battle-royale” since I threw down the challenge at the party. They took their jobs seriously as they each diligently searched Chris and I for hidden weapons. It was all so surreal that I just stood there and tried to force myself to believe that it was all really happening. Suddenly reality, and Chris’s left fist, hit me square in the jaw. Game on. I shook off the initial blow and circled around Chris while he searched for another opening. As he came back in close, I ducked a left hook that would have surely killed me had it connected, and threw my right arm around Chris’s neck. I squeezed with all my might and found myself controlling my flailing opponent in a deep headlock. With my left, I fired uppercut after uppercut into Chris’s face. I landed at least six or seven shots before he finally managed to wrestle himself free. “Wrestle” being the key word, because Chris was a member of the school’s wrestling squad, and he knew exactly how to end the fight at any time. We danced around for a few more minutes and then he made his move. He lunged at my legs for a textbook takedown and had me laid flat on my back before I had any chance to react. His fists started raining down on me while I lay pinned under his weight. We would have never met in an official wrestling match because he outweighed me by a good forty pounds. But there were no such safeguards in place on the golf course that day, and Chris proceeded to pummel me relentlessly. I finally managed to roll onto my belly, which did nothing to stop the pounding Chris was giving me. It only slowed his attack down when his fists started to ache from hammering them repeatedly into the back of my skull. After a few minutes, he at last rolled off of me, utterly exhausted. I lay there for a while, half expecting him to resume, but thankfully, he did not. Our corner men helped us to our feet, dusted us off, and inspected our wounds. I was bleeding from my nose and from a split and swollen lip. Blood trickled down Chris’s face from a nasty gash above his left eye. While catching our breath, we both took a second to look at each other and admire our handiwork.

Dave broke the silence. “Are we all done?” We both nodded. “Good. We still have a case and a half of beer left over from last night.”

“Love Shack?” I asked.

“Love Shack,” Chris agreed.

I vowed to never fight again. As the wise Dave Richards once said, “Fightin’ just gets in the way of drinkin’ beer.” Who could argue with that?

Book Excerpt

The following is just a little teaser pulled from one of the first four chapters of the novel I'm writing. Enjoy.

One of our favorite road trips led us along a winding, dusty road terminating near the Mississippi River at a place just south of town that we called “The Dunes.” Flooding on the river had created several sizeable mounds of sand along this area and it made for a perfect place to convene gatherings of drunken teenagers to play beach volleyball, pitch horseshoes, and do keg-stands. It was far enough from town that we could be as loud and obnoxious as we wanted with no worries about being hassled by cranky neighbors or law enforcement, yet close enough that we could be home in our beds within twenty minutes after the party broke-up. As the sun cast the Big Muddy into shadow, a bonfire would be built and couples would climb around the backside of the dunes to make out. Invariably, someone would blare some Skynrd or Zepplin from their car stereo and as the night wore on and the piles of empties got bigger and bigger, our discussions ranged from “who’s screwing who” and “what does it all mean” to “it doesn’t get any better than this.” To a group of teenaged guys, life couldn’t get any sweeter. Rather than face the reality of our lives at home, we could make our own reality whenever we wanted.