IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AND WE’RE GONNA MISS IT

By M. Alberto Rivera

Shopping in bulk feels like preparing for the apocalypse. Surely I can’t be alone in this sentiment. And while I feel as though our pantry is sufficiently spacious, I don’t think it was conceived with BJ’s, Sam’s Club, or Costco in mind.

The once-a-month trip to the bulk emporium finds the otherwise spacious vehicle packed to the gills with absurd quantities of sundries and foodstuffs — 42 cans of cream of mushroom soup, 206 individually wrapped bagels bites, and 56 packages of assorted snack crackers made up mostly of the kind no one likes or wants, the kind that only get eaten out of desperation when everything else snack-like has disappeared from the home.

And if no one’s able to organize the space in a timely fashion, we end up with a helter skelter stacking of boxes, which only adds to the cluttered feeling of living in a Cold War/Y2K bunker. I’m now sidestepping flats of Spam and discontinued flavors of marked-down Ramen that stand waist-high, begging for children of comparable size to come knock them down, and claustrophobia-inducing towers of cardboard and tin. It can all start to feel like hoarding for beginners.

Toilet paper rolls normally come in multiples of 16, but there are exceptions to this rule. There is a 12-pack of available for purchase, but it’s the extra–mega-super-jumbo, industrial-wide girth rolls usually reserved for airports and other impersonal, utilitarian buildings. Try fitting that onto the standard spool in your restroom and you may end up losing a finger.

There’s a false sense of security brought on by this kind of purchasing. Possibly the most infuriating moment related to bulk shopping convenience arrives when something you’ve lived in close confines with for the past three months has finally run out. “Whaddaya mean we’re out? We just bought 209 of ‘em, like yesterday…” This is particularly true of the aforementioned toilet paper. I know some of you still have those rectangular tissues from the 2004 hurricane season MREs tucked away somewhere, just in case.

But a sense of impending doom has been loitering for as long as anyone can remember. Every so many years they change the how-and-why of our ultimate demise as a species, planet, and life as we know it. I think they think we’ll eventually point out that the world didn’t end as predicted and so they divert our attention to something else to fret over.

Nostradamus is usually associated with end-of-the-world prophecies, but no one seems to nail a prophecy down solid until after the event done come and gone — sort of a  “hindsight is 20/20” thing, re. accuracy. Lots of Negative Nancys say Nostradamus predicted the 2012 doomsday to begin with several natural disasters. He also mentioned a planet that is supposed to hit the earth. He didn’t name the planet, but some scientists named it “Planet X.” I don’t want to disparage the storied seer, but timelines were never his strong suit.

Much ado has been made about the Mayan calendar and the year 2012. By the time you read this, it’ll already be 2012 and you can set your watch for extinction. According to the sort of people who worry about such things, on December 12, 2012 — 12/12/12 for anyone needing it spelled out — doomsayers claim the Earth will be host to a veritable smorgasbord of cataclysmic astronomical events, including a Planet X flyby (again), killer solar flares, and a geomagnetic reversal, guaranteeing a very, very bad day for most, but great ratings for CNN. Not to mention that this is set to take place just before Christmas and you probably still won’t know what to get your brother-in-law. And how sad would it be to perish at the mall, waiting in line for some rapping Santa gag gift? Not only is it the end of civilization, but you’ll also be out ten bucks.

My theory on why the Mayan calendar ends in 2012 is simple. The calendar maker died. Quit. Retired. Started selling Amway or Mary Kay. He/she figured by the time they get to 2012, it’ll be someone else’s problem. Say goodnight, Gracie.

The end of the world is relative. I’m not trying to trivialize anyone’s suffering or loss, but if I were stranded outside the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina for days on end, it would certainly seem like the end of the world. The same goes for watching my house, car, and neighbors being swept away by the 2011 Japanese earthquake/tsunami combo. But it can also seem like the end of the world when your girlfriend reads a text on your phone from another girl who’s pretty sure she’s your girlfriend also. The best you can do at this point is go into survival mode, hunker down, and ask your friends if they know anyone who’s currently single.

But I get the distinct feeling that when the world ends, whether the house is stocked or barren or whether I’m prepared or not, I’ll be out of town. There will be a wedding to attend, a family gathering, or God knows what, but the more supplies I’ve secured in anticipation of end times, the better the odds I’ll be far and away. Then I’ll have to ask if someone will let me crash on their sofa until the end of the world is over — or until it has been replaced by the next season of “American Idol.”

I’m thinking of asking for the day off, just in case, to use the time at home to catch up on my to-do list. If it all goes to hell while I’m doing yard work, no one’s going to fault me for not finishing. I’ll give Nostradamus a high five and call it good if there’s a mass checking out that day and I’m among them.

Otherwise, we’ll all just have to brace ourselves for the next sure thing that guarantees our inevitable doom.

AND YET MORE RANDOM NOTES 

By Rick LaClaire

“Capitalism is the exploitation of man by men. Communism is just the opposite.” — Nikita Khrushchev

Yes, another year has passed. They sure go fast, don’t they? It seems like only yesterday I was shaking out my leisure suit, looking for party leftovers. Nowadays I’m more likely to find a suppository wrapper. This phenomenon was best summed up by Bob Dylan. When asked how he felt when he turned the ripe old age of forty, he said, “Ya just can’t help it.” Yeah Bob, you hit the nail on the head. Time passes, and ya just can’t help it. And when time passes, people pass too. Ya just can’t help it.

Now I could begin this new year loudly lamenting the passage of Steve Jobs or Elizabeth Taylor — people with bigger-than-life fame. Or I could do what I usually do, which is doting on the unsung and less significant. The rich and famous get their lion’s share of attention, so I think it’s only fair to elevate the quickly-forgotten. In some ways they’ve affected me more than their much-lauded contemporaries. For instance, Steve Jobs never entertained me for one minute when I was a teenager, but in half-hour increments, Sherwood Schwartz sure did.

Remember “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch”? Yeah, the shows are corny today, but back in ’65 I never missed an episode of “Gilligan.” Part of it had to do with the fact that we only got two channels on the ol’ black and white Zenith (and one channel was Canadian), but you just never knew; maybe this would be the episode when they get rescued. Of course, we didn’t want them to get rescued. There would be no show — and worse, we’d be relegated to watching the curling playoffs in Saskatoon. “Gilligan” was pulled after the ’67 season and it wouldn’t be until ’69 that my attention was captured by the Bradys. It was from that family I learned which paisley shirt pattern best matched my striped pants. Six kids, two parents, a housekeeper and only one toilet? Except for the live-in maid and the gay dad, that sounded like home to me. You know, after watching over my kids’ shoulders as they indulge in their so-called “reality” TV, I find watching “Brady Bunch” re-runs refreshing. They’re still in daily rotation on one of the religious cable stations.

Schwartz laid some eggs, too. Do you recall “It’s About Time” and “Harper Valley PTA”? I didn’t think so, but everyone remembers “My Favorite Martian.” Schwartz had his hand in there, too. The talents of Sherwood Schwartz, to me, fueled what I call the Aluminum Age in TV. Television’s Golden Age was the Fifties. I call the Sixties the Aluminum Age because that was what the ol’ black and white Zenith’s body was made of: anodized aluminum. Mr. Schwartz died last July. He was 94.

Thirty some-odd years ago I was graced with the gift of a “licorice pizza,” which some will recognize as a vinyl LP, by one of my favorite D.C. blues bands, The Nighthawks.  The band has had a variety of lineups over the years (including Brevard’s own Danny Morris) and this album, Jacks and Kings, featured one Pinetop Perkins. “Pinetop,” for those who don’t know, was a brand of cheap rotgut whiskey which circulated among the troops on both sides during our War Between the States, so named for the pungent pine dowel used as a cork. I don’t know if that has any bearing on Mr. Perkins’s moniker, but man, could that guy roll on the piano.

My favorite cut has always been “Pinetop’s Boogie-Woogie,” a “funny little song” in which he extols the listener to “hold it,” then “get it” and boogie. This song rocks. It’s fun to dance to as well as play, and I’ve tried forever and ever to get that Pinetop piano roll down and can’t quite “get it.” His real name was Joe Willie Perkins and he died last March at age 97.

Another loss in March was Geraldine Ferraro. Remember her? If not, remember Walter Mondale? Well, in case you don’t, Walter Mondale ran for president in 1984 and I (and two other people) voted for him. In retrospect I don’t know why I did that, but I do remember he was the first nominee to run with a woman as his vice-president. No, he didn’t make it, and I always thought he had a sex change shortly afterward and became Madeline Albright, but that’s just a rumor. Anyway, in 1984, it took a lot of guts to bust into Reagan-era politics with a woman in tow. And it took a lot more guts to be that woman. Of course the Republicans took her apart piece-by-piece and in the end, well, you know what happened. Four more years of The Gipper — or “The Gypper,” depending on which social stratum you occupied. Geraldine Ferraro was 75.

Has there ever been a more distinctive singing voice than Phoebe Snow’s? You could recognize her in a heartbeat. The first time I heard her was in college, when my then-housemate Sam bought the Still Crazy album by Paul Simon. Simon was always infusing new sounds and Phoebe certainly filled the bill. Despite legal hassles with her labels, she was much in demand and recorded with the likes of Lou Rawls, Garland Jeffreys, Billy Joel and Queen, among many others. She suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 2010 and never fully recovered. Born Phoebe Ann Laub, she died in April at age 60.

When someone called “Doctor Death” meets his demise, do you celebrate, mourn, or what? Also known as “Jack the Dripper,” his goal was “death with dignity,” and as I grow older and nearer my own time I find myself agreeing more and more with his philosophy. He was not a wanton killer. Yes, his methods were said to defy the then-current moral standards, but did they really? Abortion had been legal for decades. You could kill your defenseless fetal offspring, but not willingly take your own declining life? Kevorkian said it was okay to do that and put his own butt on the line. His goal, he said, was not to kill people, but to end their suffering. He went to jail. After release from prison in 2007, he devoted his life to lecturing and running for Congress. He was also an artist who sometimes painted with his own blood. I find that just a bit weird. He died in June.

Chester, Festus, Miz Kitty, Doc… What do those names conjure? “Gunsmoke”! It is said that the Wild West only lasted seventeen years, but Gunsmoke lasted twenty. There’s something to be said for a TV show that can re-write history. Of course the glue that held the Gunsmoke gang together was Marshall Matt Dillon, also known as James Arness. Born James Aurness and father of 1970 world-champion surfer Rolf Aurness, he was 88 when he died in June.

Clarence “Big Man” Clemons, Jerry Lieber… The arts took a beating in 2011. I was never a fan of Bruce Springsteen, but who could resist that signature sax style of Clarence Clemons? And remember hearing “Jailhouse Rock” for the first time? I was only five then, and ten years later I covered the very same song with my high school rock combo. Someone told me Big Mama Thornton wrote that song, but no, it was a couple of white guys from Baltimore called Jerry Leiber and Jeff Stoller. Clarence Clemons died in June, Jerry Leiber in August.

Finally, does the name Lana Peters ring a bell? Perhaps you would know her better by her birth name, Svetlana Stalina. Yes folks, she was the daughter of that fun-loving, devil-may-care, madcap despot known as Josef Stalin. Now why would the only daughter of the leader of the not-so-free world want to defect to the land of hot dogs and Playboy magazine? Well, why not? Nikita Khrushchev, one of Stalin’s homies, once said he witnessed the “man of steel” grab Svetlana’s mother by the hair and drag her to the dance floor (it’s rumored alcohol was a factor). I hope it was a good song. Obviously, Svetlana had daddy issues, and a few years after his death she defected to America where she took the name Lana Peters. Hounded by reporters and paparazzi all her days here, she desperately sought privacy, winding up back in Russia for a short time in the ’80s. She died in Wisconsin at age 85.

The Memory Season

By Rick LaClaire

“It’s Xmas time again/Has it really been a year?” — Joe Jackson, “Tango Atlantico”

My wife’s family has an enduring tradition for Thanksgiving dinner. After all are seated and grace is said, each person at the table must say what they are thankful for. Of course everybody says “family” first and then something like “the Buffalo Bills” (if they’re winning) or “the Sabres” (if they’re not), but sometimes a valuable nugget of wisdom will be divulged. I could share some of these, but I think it would be too personal. My point is that the holiday season is a time for gathering and reflection, and what better time than at year’s end, Christmas.

For some reason we give each other gifts at Christmas. This can get way out of hand. Why? It is written that the three Magi gave gifts to the baby Jesus, so we do the same to commemorate that act. Well, that’s what I was told… Apparently a lot may have been lost in translation.

Memories are gifts you give yourself. People may share the illusion of your memories, but you will perceive them uniquely, making them truly your own. In other words, the things you remember may not be what someone else does.

We all have different triggers for memories: a song, a sunset, the timbre of a voice. For me, smells are the strongest catalyst. The whiff of freshly cut celery reminds me of my mother. I recently bought a truck that was owned by a smoker. It smells like my father’s Dodge, and it brings him to mind. Wind Song perfume carries me back to college; Patchouli incense to high school. And the smell of a tightly-packed school of mullet gives me Florida memories. The fall run is on as I write this, and the air is ripe with Florida memories.

I have a lot of fishing memories, and as always, it’s not all about the fishing. Like the first time I went for tarpon up Sebastian River. Another summer day in ’87, we put in before dawn so we could net bait before the bite. The sky broke an eerie pink, a foreboding sky, and soon the sun illuminated mammoth sky castles of rain clouds. Lightning flashed. We pulled under an abandoned boathouse to escape a shower. Rain drummed on the tin roof. It leaked, and soon we realized we were going to get wet anyway, so why not fish? Huge tarpon rolled all around us. It was hot and extremely humid, so hot the lens on my Pocket Instamatic fogged up. My old friend Tyler and I jumped more than a dozen tarpon that day and I landed only one. It was the smallest to strike, and after an hour’s fight on gear that wasn’t geared for tarpon, we gently lip-gaffed her. I hefted it for the camera. It is my favorite fishing picture. It’s fuzzy, foggy, and you can barely discern the fish. But it shouts “Florida” in every aspect: heat, sweat, menacing clouds, and a grin on my face that shows how much I love this place.

Florida, to me, means outdoor activity year-round: fishing in the warm months, hunting and fishing in the cool ones. I’d never really explored the interior of the state till a few years ago when I took my teenage son squirrel hunting in Osceola County. We don’t do it much now, his interests have shifted as he has grown, but these are the freshest of my favorite memories. The best was our first foray. We’d seen these woods from a car window but had no idea how beautiful they were till we got into them. It was like going back to the beginning of time.

But I quickly learned that I needed lessons in Southern hunting, and our first experience resulted in not a shot being fired. It was toward sunset, on a gorgeous December day, and I felt I had let my boy down. “Here,”” I said, and handed him the truck keys. “You drive.”
“Who? Me?” His eyes went wide. He was just fourteen. We were in the middle of nowhere, on a well-kept dirt road, no one in sight, and I wanted him to remember this day whether we killed anything or not. He did pretty well, for a first-timer. I figured it would give him something to brag to his buddies about. But he’s not like that, I guess. So it’s just a memory for him and me. He sure was nervous behind the wheel. Still is.

There are older memories. Like voting for Carter in 1980, our first full year here. My wife and I were young and childless — basically freewheeling — and we’d bopped up and down the Eastern States as the mood prescribed. We were renting a house with friends over by the University and, at that age, had just one goal: fun. That we had. The only whiff of seriousness came with election time. As faulty a Chief Executive as he was (aren’t they all?), my wife and I were Carter fans. We registered to vote at the old courthouse on Neiman and dragged our house-sharers with us: we were going to exercise our civic duty. We also discovered that “Vegetarian” was not a political party — but that’s another story.

Anyway, as soon as we registered, the debates began. Not the ones on TV, but the ones at home. Carter was a loser. Reagan was too old. Carter was a wimp. Reagan was a war-monger. Look at the mess Carter made of the economy. Reagan would cause World War III. Look at the mess Carter made in Iran. Reagan is a phony who dyes his hair. On and on… It seemed as if my wife and I were the only registered Democrats in Brevard County. That was proven on Election Day.

Our polling place was an auditorium on the FIT campus. My wife and I worked for the same company and didn’t have to be at work until nine, so we figured on making a quick stop on the way in to cast our ballots. Apparently, everyone else had the same idea. The line was out the door. We had a long wait, and in that line we heard plenty of strong talk, all pro-Reagan. We decided to just wait our turns and shut up. This was not a place for debate. They would have made mincemeat out of us.

Consequently, we were an hour late for work. We explained to the boss we were delayed at the polls, and isn’t it great that you have employees who exercise their civic duty? “Sure,” she replied, “just as long as you didn’t vote for that wimp Carter.”

That night we drank heavily and watched the returns. Other friends joined us. We had a full living room and only two Democrats. The fire flew. Then, before the votes were even tallied completely, Carter conceded. My wife and I looked at each other sadly. I guess Carter really was a wimp.

Why is this a cherished memory? Because it was the first time I ever voted on a voting machine. My first presidential vote, in1972, was cast in absentia, on paper and mailed. That guy lost, too. Then, in 1976, I didn’t vote at all. I forgot to register! This time, 1980, I’d done all the homework and was solid in my choice. So continued a tradition that holds to this day: I have never voted a winner in a presidential election.

Babysitting a parrot, discovering I don’t care much for scuba diving, catching a world-record palometa (and releasing it!), riding out hurricanes… The Christmas tree of my mind is deeply surrounded by gifts of my own making. Now, at year’s end, it’s time to open them.

A Very Small Gift List

By David Sherman

It was my intention to write something of a more non-political nature for the December issue, granting a sort of Holiday ceasefire, if you will. But, as I would be the only one ceasing fire, that idea, however originally well-intentioned, seems a bit pointless, and more than a little naive.

While I still respect the sanctity of all the upcoming Holy Days, I would ask that you still take some time out to remember, and try to understand, that there are people out there in the world fighting for you right now. I do not speak of those men and women currently serving in U.S. Armed Forces abroad, though I acknowledge, applaud, and honor their service. I speak of those civilians currently gathered in protest on Wall Street, and the thousands like them in cities and towns across this nation.

Most people would agree that the men and women of our military are standing up for the rest of us, but too few seem to get that standing up for the rest of us is exactly what the Occupy Wall Street protestors are doing. They are exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Personally, I think a little more emphasis on a specific list of grievances would go a long way toward garnering popular support, but I bet half the guys dressed as natives at the Boston Tea Party didn’t know much about the details of any political grievances either. They were just lucky enough to be drunk enough in the wrong tavern at the right time. One minute it’s hot buttered rum at the Broken Barrel, next thing you know, you’re running through the streets of Boston half naked and chucking tea in the harbor. C’mon, who among us hasn’t done that at least twice?

I’ve heard these protestors maligned as hippies. Really? Hippies? What is this, Haight Ashbury? Yes, many of these people are young, and their choice of hairstyle, clothing, makeup, and body art and/or piercings might be different than your own, but there are also many 40-, 50-, and 60-year-olds mixed in there as well — even an entire cadre calling itself the “Granny Peace Brigade.” This wasn’t a drum circle that got a little out of hand. This isn’t just a bunch of rich college kids with nothing better to do for months on end. This a mixed group of Americans whose only common bond appears to be their willingness to stand up (at long last) and decry the outrage of our own political system being openly bought and sold. They dare to cry foul at a system that allows the corporate elite to knowingly gamble with our entire economy for the their own profit, and ultimately the near ruination of our entire nation, and then laughingly walk away from the train wreck they caused to cash the bonus checks they earned causing it. They also seem pretty upset that no one has gone jail. (Me too!)

I wrote a piece in the April 2011 issue of The Beachside Resident entitled “Double Entendre,” wherein I noted that the last time such an inequality of wealth and power existed in western culture was in France in 1789, just before Bastille Day. I warned that such top-heavy abuse of wealth and power had always led to revolt, if not rampant chaos. Six months later, thousands take to the streets. After eight months, it’s tens of thousands in over 450 different cities around the U.S., and in other nations as well. Will their numbers dwindle in the face of harsh northern winters? Undoubtedly. But in what numbers will they return in the spring, or more importantly in what numbers by next November?

Make no mistake, there is a third battle line drawn, aside from those in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is manned by Americans, in defense of Americans, and may well turn out to be the first salvo of another American Revolution. Just to be clear: I do not advocate bullets; I advocate votes. I would also advocate taking the time to actually read the truth about the Occupy movement before simply taking the word of someone desperately trying to keep you in the dark. ”We the People” was never meant to include corporations. The Citizens United ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court must be undone!

That’s my only gift request this year. (And hot buttered rum, a new native costume, and a trip to Boston.)

Great Things From a Roach Motel
By M. Alberto Rivera

Years ago while listening to a cocksure young artist discuss success and her inevitable collision course with it, I interrupted her well-intentioned rant with some questions she could make neither head nor tail of.

“How do you measure success?” I asked. “Monetarily? By fame or name recognition? By those standards alone, Paris Hilton is a success. What about an influential artist or individual who inspired others to create? Would they count as successes?”

She seemed truly flummoxed by the question, ordered another Pabst Blue Ribbon, and disappeared. I am uncertain as of this writing whether or not she has met her goals. I never saw or heard from her ever again.

But I want to tell you about a friend of mine, and the influence he exerted on me. A friend — a good friend — is someone you look forward to seeing and spending time with. For several years I had a subscription to the then-authoritative magazine on all things punk rock, Maximum RocknRoll.

Every month when my copy of MRR arrived, I’d flip straight to George Tabb’s column, “Take My Life, Please,” so I could spend time with a friend. He really seemed to understand my life in spite of us never having met.

George’s column was also consistently the best-written one in the magazine. Plus, they were almost always funny and painfully honest. Most people outside of therapy or “The Maury Povich Show” don’t reveal their shortcomings and daily travails with the candor George brought to the written page.

Punk rock, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” an infuriatingly dysfunctional relationship with his father, and a complete lack of confidence with the ladies were all covered here, and Lord, I had lived it, or was presently experiencing these things. Thankfully, I never endured the familial psychosis he described. With the accuracy of a Tomahawk missile, those stories could have easily been taken from my playbook with names and places substituted.

But even here, he was a Florida punker when such a creature barely existed. In 1980, George had formed the band Roach Motel in Gainesville when punk rock was a scary bogeyman to shield your kids from. Not long before, the Sex Pistols made network news for
throwing up in some executive’s office.

Things had changed somewhat by the time I discovered punk in the humid, brain-cooking heat that is Florida, but not too much. Punk was still a scary word and not readily found on TV or Hot Topic. Little kids with mohawks only showed up on postcards in funky bookstores. Rednecks were still plentiful and short on tolerance. Being out of step with the rest of the world is never easy.

“Hero” is a word bandied about with far too much frequency and misuse. But in a very real sense George became a hero of mine, if for nothing else, by allowing me to know someone who had experienced everything I then faced. Giving someone permission to pursue their ambitions by the example of how you live your life is no small thing. And in his monthly column he frankly discussed his missteps along with his successes, with equal emphasis and humor.

I didn’t have to explain how and why the Ramones had changed my life. George knew firsthand and when he wrote about it; it was a shared experience separated by 15 years and thousands of miles. We’d both undergone the same transformative moment for all of the same reasons, yet he’d found a way to explain what he had seen and heard. And he didn’t care if you didn’t get it. He wasn’t writing for people who never felt the same emotional charge of connecting with something as intangible and abstract as a musical performance. He wrote for himself first, which was a huge lesson to me at the time. And as a musician he wrote and performed what was a good fit for him, rather than trying to cash in on something he wouldn’t be as comfortable with.

By being honest about unflattering moments in his life rather than focusing on the highlights reel, it made him human, likable, and relatable. I also learned, as an artist, that if you are consistently out of step with the masses, your attitude and integrity may be all you have on that long drive home where 97% of the bar wanted to lynch you.

I’ve had two very long telephone conversations with Mr. Tabb, both of which were incredibly memorable, at least on my end. In the first, he allowed me to pick his brain regarding the accuracy of a rock n’ roll novel I’m still not done with. He didn’t seem put off by the mundane, fact checking questions I peppered him with. The second was an in-depth interview with him regarding his musical legacy. I’m still having trouble finding time to transcribe it, and my residual Catholic guilt still gets at me on this point. He’s been involved with or at the helm of such notable underground acts Roach Motel, Atoms for Peace, False Prophets, Letch Patrol, Iron Prostate, and Furious George. He’s authored several books, all of which are by turns painful and hysterical.

Like so many others who lived near the World Trade Center 10 years ago on 9/11, he’s not well, and I worry about him. He made a living via underground media, music, print and television, and multiple health conditions resulting from the collapse of the towers emptied his savings. I wish I had something to help ease his financial strain, but once again, he and I are in a similar boat.

A distant disembodied voice connected with me via print years ago and helped assure me that others felt the same way I did. That voice gave me the courage to believe in myself, even contrary to popular trends. Success measured in units sold or the number of commas in a bank statement is easy to measure. Success by living life on your own terms as best you can, while harder to measure, makes for a far richer man.

For all things George Tabb please visit www.georgetabb.com

She Calls Me

By M. Alberto Rivera

Twenty minutes after we’d talked, she calls me back to let me know about an event she thought I might be interested in. And that was fine. I’d only found out about the event that afternoon, but appreciated the heads-up. But then she started telling me about her day — what went right and what didn’t, and some of her new interests as well. This was okay, too.

We’d spoken earlier when I called to ask a question. I’d sent an email a few days earlier, but never received a response. So I called like it was still 1993 and had never heard of email. She answered my inquiry, and the idle chitchat that followed lasted about four minutes. We’ve known each other for more than 20 years, probably closer to 30. I found it hard to make an excuse to get off the phone the second time around. Not because I was really interested in what she was talking about, or because I couldn’t come up with a lie. But I knew why she was telling me about the minutiae of her day — because I was there. She knew I was awake and available, and this was enough.

I know what it’s like to scroll through 200 numbers on my phone and feel like there’s no one I can call. If you spend a lot of time working alone, which we both do, you learn to miss the mundane water-cooler chatter. There are days you want to have someone to bounce ideas off of… you know, whaddaya think about this or that, or did you see the latest episode of… ? So I couldn’t hang up on her.

I didn’t have anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation other than my voice punctuating her pauses, acknowledging the fact that I heard her thoughts. This, apparently, was enough. Both of us were in our cars driving home in the desolate dark at the tail end of a long, trying day. She wanted to tell someone about the flowers she received. She doesn’t like flowers, because the very idea of them is absurd to her. To her way of thinking, cutting something living so it dies in a vase instead of connected to the plant was unreasonable. But the guy who’d sent these had been thoughtful enough to send her some potted plants that were flowering, so she thought he might have potential. At least he’s thinking differently. Her voice is animated and excited as she talks about the date she has with him this coming weekend. It’s been a while. And he’s our age. Not 10 years older or younger with misguided fantasies about variable age-difference sex.

We’ve never been overly close, she and I, but we used to play in bars together and have known all the same people for forever and ever… you know, that sort of thing. There’s a mutual respect for each other’s trade and skill. Understanding what it’s like to pour yourself into a project or idea just because you love it is a good enough reason to begin in the first place. But I wouldn’t say we’re close despite these parallel lines. I don’t rush her on the phone as I know exactly what she’s doing.

A few weeks prior to this I had interviewed one of my teenage musical heroes. I’ve never made a habit of listening to mainstream music, so when it was over, I knew only a handful of people would even understand who the hell I was talking about. I called a few people who would get it, but no one picked up their phone. No one was available or in the mood to talk. I was forced to keep this one close to the vest. There were others I could tell, but it wouldn’t be the same. I’d have to spend ten minutes explaining who this artist was and the exact nature of his celebrity, and why any of it mattered to me. In the end, I left it alone. It would be days before I could explain to anyone the euphoria I felt from the exchange.

Now she’s telling me about her roommate who’s getting married soon. Typical girl, she says, moving herself in one item at a time. In the next few minutes she covers her car and its required maintenance. then the impending marriage, her own failed one, the last movie she’d seen in its entirety without falling asleep, and she wonders will she keep the place she’s in and find another roomie or move?

She’s driving home to an empty house where she’ll face 5,000 emails that need answering, including mine, among the clutter. And when she hangs up with me, it’ll be too late to talk to anyone else about everything that’s on her mind. The good people on her phone are asleep, or should be, and are preparing for another day of the same thing they did today.

I listen to her intently and ask some polite questions to let her know I’m still there, interested and listening. Soon she says she needs to go. I’m pulling into my neighborhood and she’s still 40 minutes away from her own home. It was great catching up she says, but she’s got to go. I said goodbye, she replied in kind, and I get it. Really.

That’s the last part of the day before being able to shut it all down. It’d be great to recount the day in some part to somebody. The only sound at this time of night is tires whirring on the lonely asphalt. You can hear the sound of tobacco burning in the cigarette between your lips. The radio stays off because there’s nothing on you want to hear and you’re sick of each and every CD presently residing in the car. Watching the headlights cut through the night, you wish there was someone you could shoot the breeze with, someone who understands what it is you do; someone who’ll be excited or sympathetic, even for just a little while.

The phone sits on the empty passenger seat. You feel for another cigarette, but even this isn’t enough to keep you occupied until you’re safe at home.

Wasted Day
• Rick LaClaire

“And the hangovers hurt more than they used to…” — Hank Williams, Jr.

I have a musician friend with a theory about life expectancy. He claims that each of us is born with a preprogrammed number of breaths and heartbeats; that each of us, regardless of how we treat our bodies, is doomed to wear out anyway at a certain specified point.

G. Gordon Liddy once said that the maximum mileage of the human machine is 125 years. If you didn’t smoke, drink, have any stress, mainline meth or get hit by a truck, your body would wear out anyway at one-two-five. I’ve certainly never known anyone to live that long, but I also don’t know anyone who’s never been stressed (maybe it’s because they know me?).

The point is, we don’t live forever. Time is precious, and time lost is exactly that — lost — because we have only so many breaths and so many years. But that’s only if you believe my bass player or a convicted Watergate burglar…

I have certainly noticed one constant: the older I get, the faster time passes. That’s handy in a way, like when you’re waiting for a flight connection or having a root canal. A couple of hours of unpleasantness were hell when I was 21. At pushin’-60 it’s only Purgatory … Or maybe Limbo. Which place has the calypso Muzak?

So you may suppose a mere annoyance like a hangover, at my age, would be a walk in the park. Its only cure is time, and it passes so quickly at age 57 that — pffft — just like that, it’s over. Not so. Why? Because hangovers, at my age, are actually worse than they were when I was 21. And I also believe that when one has a hangover, time is suspended. It sure felt that way a few weeks ago.

I don’t have a lot of free time. Now I know I have friends who will say, “LaClaire, if you’re so busy how come you have time to write these stupid articles?” And I have an answer for that. Writing stupid articles, like having a hangover, is time suspended. It may not take that long, but it sure seems like it does.

Anyway, I have only a certain amount of hours each week to devote to primping and maintaining this humble pile of rocks I call home. This usually takes place on weekends, Saturday mornings being the prime time for outdoor chores like mowing, pruning, mending fence and snaking drain vents. To avoid the energy-sucking heat of the day, I like to be in the yard by 8 a.m. and in the pool by noon. To lose this window is like losing a week’s worth of chores, so I like to arise chipper, rested, and alert. That having been said, it seldom happens. That’s because Friday night is when my wife and I hit the town.

Recently, on one particular Friday, we didn’t just “hit” the town, we kicked its butt. As usual, we began with a cocktail at home and then walked to a local restaurant for dinner. Service was slow, so we managed to down a few glasses of wine in waiting. Then a beer with dinner, an aperitif in the bar, and the next thing you know we’re at the Oasis and I’m slammin’ Cuervo. Of course we run into neighbors there, and they must buy us a round, and what began as one shot for the road turns into three sheets to the wind.

There are as many cures for a hangover as there are ways to get one. One cure that always comes to mind is what I call “The Otis.” You may remember Otis Campbell, Mayberry’s loveable town drunk on “The Andy Griffith Show.” I’m sure you’ve seen the scene: Otis awakes in his personalized jail cell, hungover as all get-out, and Andy enters with the makings of an instant cure. Somehow this mixture of tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, and a raw egg performs a miracle I’ve never experienced. An obviously nauseated Otis guzzles this potion, and at the cue of a tympanic boom, he is suddenly well. Oh, how I wish that was factual. Oh, how I wish there were some elixir capable of curing this most miserable state of self-infliction.

Some say “hair of the dog.” I’ve never been able to do that. I can’t even look at a bottle of liquor, much less smell or taste it when I have a hangover. I’ve been told that means I’m not an alcoholic. I’ve also been told it means I’m a wuss.

Others have said you should eat a big breakfast. Nothing light and fruity, but something substantial like eggs, bacon, ham, and biscuits with gravy, all washed down with hot coffee or a cold Coke. In my experience, that can help, but there’s no guarantee. Sometimes it only serves as fuel for the malady. Especially if you’re like me, one of the lucky people whose hangovers are primarily in the gastric region.

Many years ago there was an over-the-counter hangover cure called “Quick Over.” Do you remember this? It was a blister pack containing a handful of large pills to be taken all at once. A couple were aspirin and a couple were antacid, combined to supposedly alleviate both the cranial and gastric symptoms of a hangover. I tried this once before a fishing trip. Unfortunately, a couple of other pills were heavy doses of caffeine, for lethargy. Did it work? It made me sick as a dog, worse than if I had taken nothing. If it had worked, it would still be on the market, wouldn’t it? And I’d own stock…

We all know that a hangover will eventually end. The span of that time can vary widely though, depending on what caused your hangover.

Doctors say there are two causes. One is an element known as a congener. Congeners are what make gin taste like gin and sour mash taste so sour. They’re adulterants, mostly. Flavorings. Tannins for color. The Coke in your rum and Coke. So, an easy way to avoid hangovers would be to drink your booze straight, right? Wrong. The other cause is the alcohol itself. Let’s face it, if you drink too much you will be sick. No two ways about it.

Let’s examine the building blocks of my last disabling hangover. A drink at home… well, maybe two drinks. Okay, three bourbon and sodas before deciding on a restaurant. Like I said, service was slow there, so we had some wine. So three shots of bourbon, two merlots, then a Guinness with my grouper sammitch. Then a Drambuie at the rail. So already we’ve had whisky, wine, beer, and brandy. With a nice greasy chunk of fried fish floating around in it. Then the clincher: Cuervo Gold. Three shots. Whisky, wine, beer, brandy, and cactus juice — that’s a certified puker! But I didn’t. Nope. If I had, I probably would have felt better. Instead, I had the mother of all hangovers. I slept through my Saturday morning choretime. Actually, “slept” isn’t the right word. I groaned through my chore time.

Nothing makes you feel stupider than a hangover. It’s not like a regular disease — you don’t “catch” it from somebody. You don’t inherit hangovers through your genes. You bring them on yourself, through a process known as gluttony. And it is a wasteful process. In that case, I wasted an entire Saturday. My most productive hours, hours set aside to enhance the curb appeal of this humble home, my greatest investment, destroyed by wasteful selfish gluttony. Time lost.

Moonrise Serenade (in Gmaj7)

• By Dan Reiter •

Don’t be fooled, friend,
Life undoes itself in every age,
The world cracks and cracks,
Sprouts up again through fissures,
Nothing, everything is new.
Don’t be fooled,
Don’t doubt yourself,
These days are better than before,
These end of summer days,
Swept with wind,
Cusped with gold,
These days of indigo
And storm swells,
Cocoa Beach days,
Days of light,
Days of sadness.

As one empire dies,
And dusts up the skies,
The newborn rose
Pushes up through our toes.

Truth is where it always was,
In the simplest of moments,
In lightning over the islands,
Shivering, pink electric strings,
In gauze-gray clouds,
Smooth as suede,
Smooth as dolphin skin,
In the salt breath of the east,
Or the blue hush of the sea,
In the fading scent of plumeria…
Life undoes itself, always,
Time tangles and untangles,
Twists back onto itself.
(A labyrinth, a haze,
A mangrove maze.)

She wanted you to chart her passage,
To navigate in words her way home:

Align the channel with the boathouse,
Veer right at the sandy outcropping,
Skirt the egret isle,
And take the third tunnel,
(Your oar at your eyes
To protect from spiders)
It will open onto a shallow bay.
Cross these redfish flats,
(Tails like rubber,
slicing stillwater vees)
Turn toward the church steeple…

But such directions are useless,
The maze is always changing,
The mangroves regenerating,
New paths form,
Old ones vanish;
She is lost,
Lost on water like glass,
Water still as ice,
Pink, algae-frozen,
Pooled in heat.

Don’t be fooled, friend,
Claim your time here…
Should thunder roll down on you
And threaten at the second point,
Keep paddling,
Strain through the channel,
Up the fallopian waterway,
Seek out this knowledge:
That life is more than suffering,
More than dreams,
As the river sky opens,
And the low moon
Paints itself
In carnation pink
On the horizon.

What did it mean when she said
“In the lee of life”?

The dolphins have been running lately,
Which might explain it,
All this confusion,
All this paddling against the wind…

She waits for you now,
Waits on the dock,
The moon austere, tangible,
Like a golden coin.

“The flowers smell beautiful tonight.
All is right in the world.”

What does it mean when she says,
“To be present is to be observant”?

These mantras confound you:
“I am peace, I am truth, I am one.”
Are they aimed to convince, to reassure,
Or to transform,
To make it so?

Don’t be fooled, friend,
Remember only what is true,
Forget the rest…
That summer gives way to fall,
Like white hairs
Hiding in temples,
That time sweeps at the days,
As wind leveling the sand.
Remember these things,
The simplest, the best,
That life happens only in the now,
That to be human is a sort of artistry,
And that the waves
Are always better
Than they look
From the crossover.

Political Colic

• By David Sherman • 

Twenty-seven years, two wives, and three kids ago (it’s how I tell time), my first wife, Joie, and I owned two horses: Rigel, a big, bay quarter Morgan mix gelding, and Stardust, a beautiful strawberry roan Appaloosa mare. The divorce left my ex with custody of both, because in Florida the wife almost always gets the kids. Sadly, in this case, the cost of maintaining both horses was more than she could handle, but rather than selling either horse, Joie elected to lease Stardust to a family near Orlando. They would handle the costs of room and board, plus any vet bills, and their daughter would have a horse of her own. The hope was that when Joie’s finances improved she could take Stardust back and all would live happily ever after.

Stardust was delivered along with all of her tack and eight bales of hay. It was stressed that she was “a bit colicky” and needed a good amount of hay in her daily diet, and her new family agreed to maintain this. Despite the scrawny appearance of the other horses in their small barn and the close-cropped nature of their pasture, Joie believed them. Any parent has dealt with a colicky baby knows that there’s lots of crying and nobody sleeps. Though it’s admittedly terrifying for first-time parents, the condition is easily remedied. With a horse, the condition can be much more severe. Too much sand, which a horse might ingest grazing on too-short grass, can cause an obstruction in the bowels. With no fiber to sweep it through, the obstruction will eventually cause the intestines and bowel to rupture, killing the animal…  slowly and painfully.

Stardust’s new family remembered the warnings about her diet until Joie’s car was out of sight. Their word on the matter, given verbally and in writing on the lease agreement, lasted as long the free eight bales of hay. Then she was just turned out with the rest of their near knackered boarders to fend for herself amid the close-chewed pasture and all that sand. The end was inevitable. I will always remember the night Joie turned up at my job to say, “I have the final divorce papers for you to sign, and Stardust is dead.” As in most cases, the love and compassion so prevalent in the beginning of the relationship were in short supply at its end.

I tell you all of this because, as usual, I see parallels between this tale and our own current political climate. In the beginning, a vast untamed nation lay before us, a virgin field waiting for the plow and seed of boundless future generations. We the People held the reins, and the government was both the horse and plow with which our dreams would be tilled. Somewhere along the way we allowed the reins to be passed to political parties, just as Washington himself had forewarned, and We the People became We the Horses, existing on whatever diet our new family deigned to give us. But the nation was vast and each year saw more fields planted, so we went along with it. There was hay.

Today the plow is made in China, and We the Horses are no longer needed to pull it; workers in India or East Timor will do that for a fourth of the cost. Today we languish, our strength forgotten and our potential largely unfulfilled, shut away in ever-shrinking stalls of political impotence. Our new families only take us out for a ride during election years, and even then, the reins are held too tightly by uncaring hands, and the bit is cruel.

There is no more hay, as we are fed a regular diet of sand — purposeful misinformation, with no fiber of truth to push it through — and the more aware among us can feel our insides starting to knot up. Illegal immigration, the need for corporate tax breaks, the wealthy are overburdened, Social Security is broke, Bernanke and the Fed are the worst ever for driving inflation, global warming is a myth, creationism is as valid a theory as evolution — these are all lies, all just so much sand, and they are killing us.

Illegal immigration is at its lowest levels in over thirty years. Corporate tax rates are already lower than they have been since World War II. The tax rates on the wealthiest Americans are the lowest they have ever been since the 1920s. Social Security is solvent through 2038.  Bernanke has the lowest inflation rates under his watch of any Federal Reserve Chairman over the last fifty years. The only scientists who disagree with global warming are paid to do so by those who profit from continuing its root causes. The earth is not 6000 years old, and Sunday school and science class are not interchangeable. These points are all the truth, the hay that could clear out our systems and at least allow us to debate matters political based on fact rather than outright lies.

No one knows how long Stardust lay in agony in her stall until someone found her. It could have been as long as four hours. It was another two hours after that before the vet arrived to announce there was nothing he could do but “put her down.” That’s up to six hours with her intestines so knotted up inside that they burst within her, her own digestive fluids then digesting her, while the rank filth of her bowels exploded within her body made everything around them go septic and rot.

How much longer will We the People tolerate such abuse before we remember that it is we who are supposed to hold the reins? How long before we insist that our facts cannot be dismissed by them as opinions and their opinions will not be accepted by us as facts? How long before we at least start demanding the hay?

O, Pioneers! Part IV: Sodbusters

• By Rick LaClaire • 

It is August as I write this… August in one of the driest Florida summers I can recall. You’ve often heard me warn of dry Florida summers — heat, fire, misery… But that’s on the mainland. Beachside’s a different story.

Dry summers mean that every day is a beach day. The surf warms and stays that way (unless we get an upwelling — we’ll talk about that some other time). So what if your lawn is brown? Lawns don’t belong beachside; too much water, too many chemicals. When you get sick of looking at the hell-on-earth your yard has become, just go jump in the ocean. And be thankful you’re not mowing.

When I began this serial I posed a question: What would have happened if the original Florida settlers had arrived during a dry summer? I remember experiencing my first Buffalo winter and telling my wife, “I think the people who settled this place came on the Fourth of July.” Our original Florida Crackers must have come at Christmas. A dry summer would have certainly been a deterrent, as the earliest settlers were primarily mainlanders. It was considered stupid to build on the beach. Thank God we are now enlightened. I think…

And so it was with the great LaClaire emigration of ’87. We became mainlanders. The house is still there, in Eau Gallie. I have no fondness for the place, but I drive by it occasionally. The memories it kindles are forlorn — homesick, broke, heat-stricken… And all in a dry summer. Add to that the pressure of starting a business, and it was some of the worst stress I’ve ever experienced.

But we were pioneers then. We had taken our future into our own hands and would soon find out what we were made of. We’d provisioned and mustered in Buffalo; had our shakedown in the highways and hills of southwestern New York and Pennsylvania; fought hostile commuters on the outskirts of Fort Mom; reconnoitered under the huge sombrero at South of the Border; and had a hoedown in Florence. Now, when I think back, the final leg of our journey was probably the smoothest.

By this point, I had mastered the U-Haul’s retarded stick shift and had become somewhat comfortable in even the thickest of traffic. That was tested again in Jacksonville, but I prevailed. I’d even learned to live with the intermittent radio (skrrrxx, skrrrxx…). I guess it was like living next to a railroad track; after a while you don’t even notice. Driving that beast had become second nature. Then, an obstacle. Not the largest, but the most embarrassing.

It was a mere curb. We’d arrived at our new home and I was attempting to back the U-Haul up to the front door. In all our miles I had never faced the scenario of backing up. All my motions had been in the forward gears. Reverse, I soon learned, was another acquired skill. I tried and failed, stalling again and again, blocking the road and creating ample entertainment for the neighbors. They soon gathered.

“Whatcha tryna do?” a portly man with a mouthful of chicken asked. It was dinnertime. His was in his hand. Not a mere drumstick, but a whole half a chicken. Grease ran between his fingers. I felt like saying something snotty like “going bowling,” but I bit my tongue. I was hungry, sweaty, tired, and suddenly aware of the skrrrxx-ing radio. “I’m stuck on the curb,” I admitted. “It’s been a long day.”

“You sure you wanna cross the lawn with this thing?” He took a huge bite out of his chicken and chewed vividly.

“It’s full of furniture. I wanted to get close to the door.”

“Well, then –” and he pitched the chicken in the yard “– shove over.”

What? Before I could stop him he had displaced me. He was so big I couldn’t resist. Chicken grease on the shifter, grease on the steering wheel… He slapped her into reverse and in a heartbeat we were at the door.

“Uh… Thanks,” I managed.

“Thank me later. We probably just snapped off a half-dozen sprinkler heads.”

Do things ever turn out the way you imagine them beforehand? They never have for me. Our new home in Eau Gallie was no exception. Yes, I had seen the place and a dozen others in my previous trip to lay down a security deposit. It seemed nice then. In fact, it was the nicest I’d been shown. But now that we were actually in the place… I guess I hadn’t looked too closely.

One of the first chores the coonskin settlers had to negotiate was land-clearing. Before you could build a house, corral the livestock, sink a well or plant a seed, you had to carve your place in the wilderness. My land-clearing chores were discovered at first light the next day. When I had seen the place six weeks before, the lawn was trimmed, full, and neat. That was the last time a mower had been pushed over this property. The lawn was now thigh-high. I didn’t need a mower. I needed a reaper. Apparently my neighbors had also noticed. Parked in the center of my lawn were a mower and a can of gas, courtesy of the chicken-eater. I found it rude, but complied. I spent the first four hours of my first morning in our new Florida digs mowing — or should I say reaping.

There were other problems. The carpet was full of sandspurs; you couldn’t walk barefoot in the house. Our two-year-old found that out right away. The bathrooms were moldy. I opened the dishwasher to discover all its parts sitting on a rack within. The toilet ran — who knew for how long? The fridge was skanky, and our AC consisted of two window units: one in the dining area and one in the baby’s bedroom. And there were bugs, lots of them.

There was a shed in the back, full of old plumbing and an ancient trunk. Hoping for treasure, I flipped the lid. I was horrified at the sight of hundreds of huge cockroaches, fairly seething within. I slammed it shut and shuddered all the way to the house. “Don’t ever go in there,” I said to my wife.

Our little wake-up calls were constant. The water tasted terrible. There were fire ants all over the yard. Half the stove didn’t work. And yes, I had broken off a half-dozen sprinkler heads. Compared to the setbacks and disappointments our pioneer forefathers had experienced, our torments were minor, but didn’t seem so then. All contributed to a heaviness, a burden that grew daily and finally manifested itself in deep homesickness. We had left all our friends, good jobs, family, and a comfortable flat in a nice neighborhood for this: a sweltering pile of moldering cinder blocks in a strange and seemingly hostile land.

This was our “soddie,” this Eau Gallie bungalow. It was the first spindly root of our establishment here. The pioneers of the Great Plains built soddies. Generations later, they became a source of pride, these holes-out-of-the-ground. And that’s exactly what they were: dwellings comprised of the land itself. They represented a make-do spirit in a land of no lumber. Though meant to be temporary, some Midwestern farm families preserved them. They proved to be durable, when built right. Cool in the summer, warm in the winter. And they remind you where you came from.

No, I have no fond memories of our first house here. It was gloomy as a cave and rank as the artesian water that spewed from the sprinklers I eventually fixed. Probably just like a soddie… The place seemed cursed to me. Drug dealers had occupied it before us. There had been a big bust. Children were involved. It was a “marked” house — doomed. Consequently, the neighbors were nosy. We felt watched all the time. There wasn’t a chore I could do without the chicken-eater butting in. Mow the lawn? Yer doin’ it wrong. Here, lemme show ya. Change the oil in the Buick? Ya don’t want thirty-weight, ya want twenny. The clincher came when his wife accused my wife of wearing the same outfit two days in a row.

We lived there for nine months. In the space of a marriage, a good one anyway, that’s not a long time. But whenever I drive by, I still get this “clunk” in my chest. The heaviness comes back. After our two-vehicle wagon train emigration I thought we would be through with our adventure. Twenty-four years later, it hasn’t ended yet.

While We’re Gone
By M. Alberto Rivera

(Note left on kitchen counter next to three $50 bills)

Lurlene,

I can’t begin to thank you enough for watching the place while we go visit my mother. Right now the schedule has us returning in 11 days, but if Roy can stage an accident where nothing important gets broken or he might can get some work, we might stay an extra week or two.

I don’t expect you’ll have any trouble at all with the pets, the house or anything at all, but I left some notes, just in case something might come up. If the porch light doesn’t turn on, just wiggle it a little. If that doesn’t work, there’s replacement bulbs in the pantry next to the cases of out-of-date cough syrup.

The dogs should have plenty of food, but if something happens and you run out, we left some money on the counter. But don’t handle them bills before the 9th on account of the ink needs to dry. Also, you might want to go to the nearsighted cashier at the Piggly Wiggly if you decide to use ‘em. She works early in the morning. (She’s the one that smells of Miller High Life and orange blossoms.) You can distract her by gossiping about the headlines of the World Weekly News. Once she didn’t even ring up a tube of toothpaste ‘cuz she was goin’ on about how Brad Pitt was really an alien sent to mate with Angeline Jolie.

The big dogs get a cup of food at 8:00 am, 12:00 noon and 6:00 pm. The little dogs get a half a cup each at 9:30, 1:00 and 7:45. If they seem mopey, you might have to sing to them, otherwise they won’t eat. They like Willie Nelson the best. If the big dogs try to get to their food, you can take the green broom handle and smack them on the snout with it. Don’t mind Lobo. He’s more bark than bite. Just a 173-lb. baby doll. A lot of that stuff you hear about wolf-dog breeds is made up by the liberal media.

The snake gets a live rat once a week. I think there are still some in the crisper drawer. The cold makes them sleepy and easier to handle. I made the mistake of leaving one rat in the freezer for a few days and it ate through all my frozen spinach. I opened the freezer and saw his little pink eyes and I swear he stood on his back legs and waved to me. I never looked at him the same after that. He was sort of funny, so I kept him for a while. He used to make me laugh and I carried him on my shoulder. It was like the little guy knew what I was thinking. I think there’s a video of him being fed to Mr. Huggy Snake on top of the TV if you want to watch it.

There’s a room that can only be accessed through the closet of the master bedroom. DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR. It has alarms and if you don’t give it the proper access code in 1 minute, it will lock the room from the inside. Also, you don’t want your fingerprints anywhere near the room so you can always claim plausible deniability.

If you hear any weird sounds coming from near the compost heap, take a stick with you and maybe 1-3 of the bigger dogs. There’s a raccoon trap that sometimes gets one, and if the raccoon is still alive, it’ll make a racket. You can set it free or club it. I’ll leave that up to you. But you can’t leave them making a fuss, because sooner or later one of them hippie liberals living near here will call the animal cops and we don’t want another Ruby Ridge on our hands. Not like that anyhow.

You’re welcome to watch the movies we have and make use of our home entertainment center. We have a lot of new movies and some that haven’t been released yet because Roy has a co-worker that gets them from the interweb. Some are dubbed in Korean and/or Farsi, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying the sequel to “Thor II: Thor’s Hammer Time.”

The hot tub hasn’t been used in a while, not since Roy’s cousin tried out for the “All-American Skanks” reality show contest. Her audition tape did end up in the bonus features of the Season 1 DVD, but she was mad on account of she didn’t get paid and the producer’s assistant never did call her like he said he would. Honestly, I’d use a lot of bleach and chlorine before getting back in there, but you’re more than welcome to use it.

I don’t want you to get freaked out in case you get curious and start walking around the house, but the middle room is a little odd. It started out as a home office, but when my Uncle Paul passed away we ended up with a lot of his stuff and we haven’t decided what to do with it exactly. Paul was a self taught taxidermist and he used to practice on everything dead he ever found or killed. His wife, my Aunt Beulah, thought it would be fun to dress up all the stuffed squirrels in clothes she made like if they were at a wedding party. I think it’s a Unitarian service, but Paul swore it was Baptist as there was a tiny bottle of whiskey out of sight behind the podium. Aunt Beulah didn’t always take her meds. We’ve been trying to donate this piece to a museum or something, but you’d be surprised at how many people aren’t in a rush to add “Dead Squirrel Wedding” to their permanent collection.

Now there are some buzzers, alarms and the slight sound of running water you might think you’re hearing, but it’s nothing to worry about. The garage is off limits for more reasons than that. We REALLY don’t know anything about that couple that moved in down the street and went missing all of a sudden. And nothing in the garage says otherwise. We re-did the floor because the concrete naturally wore out from the wear and tear of parking a car on it and setting cardboard boxes on it repeatedly.

Thanks again. It’s nice to know we can get away for a few days and not worry about nothing.

As-Salaam Alaikum
By David Sherman

My time of late has been grossly over-monopolized by the silliest of things: a computer game on Facebook. I know it’s a ridiculous waste of time for a man of 50, but I don’t give you grief about golf, so there. For me, one of the fascinating aspects of the game are the Facebook “Friends” I interact with during the course of play. You are encouraged at every turn to add “Friends;” indeed you cannot go far without scads of them. One thing led to another and now I have “Friends” playing this game with me from all around the world. (The game has over 5 million players!)

Reading the posted messages of these diverse people is as riveting for me as the actual game itself. I’ve commented on several, and thus now interact regularly with other players in Scotland, Turkey, Thailand, Canada, and of course all around the U.S. The game is primarily one of industrial development and military conquest, and players are constantly requesting various items from one another. It amused my liberal conspiracy-tinged mind to think of someone in a post-Patriot Act office somewhere whose computer is suddenly deluged with messages from people with names like Ahmed and Mohammed that read “I need torpedoes. Can you send me one?” or “I need to upgrade my bombers!”

This is how I was spending my idle hours when the recent turmoil erupted in Egypt. One of my “Friends” was a man from Cairo named, you guessed it, Mohammed. I inquired after his safety and that of his family and asked him for his views on it all. A series of messages followed, during which virtual Facebook “Friends” became actual friends. Among other items of note, Mohammed once said of Israel, “I do not hate Israel. I do not like them because they kill Palestinians, but I do not hate them. I am neutral.” It struck me that for this alone Anwar Sadat is smiling somewhere. Mohammed also told me that “evil” men who grew rich doing illegal and “evil” things are spreading lies to try to return to power. You all know my liberal mindset, so you should not be surprised that I saw parallels here.

Then, without explanation, Mohammed went silent. His corner of the game was obviously untended. Concerned messages went unanswered, and I began to fear the worst. After two weeks of anguish on my part, Mohammed finally contacted me. He was fine. His father, Mahrous, was not. No bullets, no military police, no rioting accident had befallen him. Instead it was cancer, the spectre that has no regard for political niceties, the reaper’s blade that cuts ever-widening swaths through both the fair and the foul of our world. They gave Mahrous two weeks. Mohammed tried to hide from his grief in this silly game, but it was no help. Mostly, as a good son, he spent his time at his father’s bedside. He asked me to pray for his father.

Many of you know that I am not Christian, but I do pray. Mohammed and I had never touched on topics of faith, but considering his name and his Egyptian heritage, I assume he is Muslim, just as I imagine he assumed I was Christian. It did not matter. He asked me to pray for his father, and so I did. I prayed for Mohammed and his own family as well, for a lessening of their grief. In this I found a greater lesson than any of the trivial, politically motivated parallels that had occupied my thoughts before. This was my newfound friend from the other side of the world, but suddenly the man who had lost his own father years ago found deeper commonality with the man who was facing that loss now. A man named David and a man named Mohammed.

When I first conceived this article, I had thought to ask you all to put aside whatever preconceived notions or fears you may have about Arab peoples, Muslim peoples, and to pray for the father of a man named Mohammed. I just learned that Mohammed’s father went ahead on Friday, in what for Muslims the holy month of Ramadan. I will still ask you for those prayers, but now I would ask that you pray for the safe journey of Mahrous, a father gone ahead. I would ask also that you pray for the son and the family left behind. I would also ask that when you see the chaos in the Arab world playing out on your nightly news, you see not people who are inherently different from you — Arabs, Muslims. See people. See fathers and sons. See mothers and daughters. Maybe it will mean more. And perhaps if it comes to mean more to us, we can make it mean more than profit and military considerations to our leaders. Maybe we can help assure that our nation chooses more wisely which regimes to support in the future.

For Mohammed, my friend, who has a keen mind, a good heart, and a kind Soul. As-Salaam Alaikum. (Peace be upon you.)

Mosquitoes love my feet. There, I said it. I attract biting insects. It was even this way when I was a kid. I complained to my mother once, and she said it was because I was so sweet. My dad said maybe it was because I smelled like something rotten.

For some reason I attract a lot of things, some less onerous than others. For example, babies like me. But then, so do winos and panhandlers. Cats like me. Someone told me cats are good judges of character, and they can tell right off if you’re a decent person. Someone else said maybe it’s because I smell like fish. Regardless, I’m allergic to cats. I think they like me because they like to watch my eyes get all red, itchy and swollen.

There are things that don’t like me, too: Mexican food, hot chicken wings, draft beer… How do I know this? Because I keep trying to make them love me (I love them) and they treat me worse every time I imbibe. Truckers don’t like me either. This I discovered while piloting the only truck I’d ever driven on our great emigration south in May, 1987.

It was our first full day on the trail. We’d mustered, had our shakedown, and were now actually heading south — well, more like southeast, because our next stop would be Fairfax, Virginia, also known as “Fort Mom.” Our entry into Pennsylvania was Route 15, which in those days was a mere two lanes until you were in the heart of the state at Williamsport. Truckers didn’t treat it that way, though. To them, it was a major route. he road was wall-to-wall semis. They had no patience for an old, underpowered, undergeared U-Haul driven by a white-knuckled, inexperienced wannabe trucker tormented by a faulty radio (skrryyxxxx). These hurtling behemoths roared past me one after another, honking and blinking their brights, reminding me constantly that I was out of my element.

Look at a road map of Pennsylvania. Why are the roads so squiggly? Nothing is straight, and south of Williamsport they all seem to slant in the same direction. Then take a look at a topographical map. Whoa! That’s why! Ol’ Pensy is one rugged state. In fact, it looks like a rug from the air. A very wrinkled rug.

There are beautiful river gorges, the West Branch of the Susquehanna and the Juniata come to mind, and everything’s covered with trees. It also means driving a standard shift on hills — not my greatest talent — and my trucking buddies never let me forget it. However, by the end of that day, as we crossed the Potomac into Virginia, I had finally mastered the technique. In fact, I learned more about driving that day, shoulder-to-shoulder with the finest drivers on the planet (truckers), than I had in the past fifteen years. Like the clerk at the U-Haul repository in Buffalo said: “Everybody learns on these things.” Then, right when you think you know it all, you find yourself in Fairfax County, Virginia, during rush hour.

D.C. has the worst traffic in the world. Whether you’re in Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, or Vienna, yep, you’re in D.C. Traffic is so bad it spreads like a disease across northern Virginia. If you’re anywhere within thirty miles of the District of Columbia, you are infected. And on this warm evening in May, it was all under construction.

Everything down to one lane, everything dirt, stops and goes over the nastiest of humps… Supposedly this was Route 50, the main trail to Fort Mom. Of course the pioneers had stretches like this — swamps, creeks, broken ground. In a way, they probably had it better in those situations. For one thing, their vehicles were pulled rather than pushed. I think that’s a more efficient way to ford a snag. My wheels spun, my gears slipped, but I did not stall. I wouldn’t have dared. The coonskin types faced hostile natives. This was worse. These were government employees freshly released from work. Tens of thousands of them. If I had stumbled, I would have been trampled. Finally, Fort Mom.

We had a mini family reunion that night; my mother, my sister’s family and mine. Alcohol flowed freely, as it always seems to do, and for some reason (I can’t remember what) I had to practically unload and re-pack the U-Haul. It was a search for something, a toy or teddy bear, and I remember being extremely annoyed. I was also extremely apprehensive. This was the end of our family ties, the southern limit of our blood. From here, we would truly be on our own.

On our first trek South in ’79, I-95 was still a dream. Segments were finished, but there were long breaks of two-lane dirt construction. It was neither reliable nor complete as a North-South route. On many stretches we were the only subscribers. Not so in 1987. Between Washington and Richmond we encountered near-deadly congestion, not with our four-wheeled brethren, but that of the eighteen-wheeled type. I was like a mite among elephants — it could only have been more menacing for my poor wife and child in the Buick. It was white knuckles all the way. Then, an accident. Somewhere… For hours we sat stalled in the Virginia heat as our gas burned away and my daughter filled her pants. Glad that was in the Buick.

In oxen and Conestoga days the going was so slow the trailmasters had to factor in the seasons. This meant setting up a timetable which coincided with places. In other words, you didn’t want to be doing the Rockies in winter (the Donner Party is not just a reindeer’s birthday). One of the most important milestones on that schedule was a place called “Chimney Rock.” No, not the one in North Carolina, but the one at the butt-end of Nebraska. And if you weren’t there by the Fourth of July you would not cross the Rockies before winter.

What a sight this must have been for the old coonskinners. After endless weeks of trudging the vast flat plains, finally, terrain. The Indians had a more colorful name for this landmark but my mother’s probably going to read this, so I’ll let it drop. It is impressive, however — erect like an obelisk and visible for miles. On our route there was a similar location: that big sombrero at “South of the Border” on the North Carolina/South Carolina line. I have a colorful name for that place also: “Tacky Eyesore.” But you shore can’t miss it, and that’s where we decided to reconnoiter our own wagon train after leaving Fairfax.

It was an odd parley, this huge dilapidated sombrero. I guess it was a snack bar of some kind. Our engines echoed beneath the brim. The place was so big and dreary I couldn’t tell if it was open. “Pedro” had teased us for scores of miles: fireworks, food, gas, amusements, rooms… Why was this place so run-down? The sun was goldening and our daughter fidgety. Our decision was “Florence.” That’s where we’d make camp: Florence, South Carolina.

The ideal campground in the pioneer days had several requirements: level ground, peripheral visibility (to detect approaching hostiles, be they white or red), water, fuel, and ample room to circle the wagons and conduct a proper hoedown. A hoedown, you ask? Come on, you’ve seen “Wagon Train,” that endless ’50s western drama that chronicled the endless trials and tribulations of pioneers on the endless trail. In short, they never got where they were going because they were constantly waylaid by subplots. Sounds like everyday life, doesn’t it? And like anybody’s everyday life, we all need a cocktail hour. What better place than around the communal campfire, surrounded by wagons, fueled by jugs of whiskey and a Juilliard-class fiddler?

Florence, South Carolina is definitely level ground. For peripheral visibility we occupied a room on the second floor of the Days Inn. Water? There was a swimming pool! Fuel? Right at the corner. All we needed was to put the wagons in a circle and find stoke-juice for the hoedown.

The wagons-in-a-circle thing wasn’t going to work, not in this parking lot (and not with only two vehicles), and for a moment even the hoedown whiskey seemed in jeopardy. We couldn’t find a liquor store anywhere. So I drove thirty miles in that crummy truck to finally find a booze drive-through two exits back. Never take liquor for granted in the South.

The Conestogans most likely supped on bacon or rehydrated salt-beef and beans. We had similar fare, tastewise, something I like to call “McReflux.” A swim in the pool, then, in lieu of a fiddler we had television, enhanced by bourbon and motel ice. A hoedown indeed.

Little did I know that it would be a long time before I slept in another motel bed or peeled the wrapper from another greasy McReflux. The real adventure was just beginning.

The Big Heist
By David Sherman

It was a brittle, bright Tuesday, not unusual in the middle of January, not unusual in any way, save that this was Audit Day. It happened at the Bank every year. Perhaps the only indications that this was no normal Audit Day were the names of the Auditors themselves.  Credentials presented at the security desk showed them to be Rick Pekoe, Michelle Oolong, and Rand Darjeeling. The head of the team was John Lipton. John had been a member of several previous Auditor teams, though this was his first time heading one. The odd part was that John’s last name had never been “Lipton” before. Many would later surmise that John had changed his name in order to ingratiate himself with his newfound friends. It seemed they had a common theme. They certainly had a common goal.

The Auditors were shown to the offices set aside for them, and apart from a few snickers around the water cooler about the whole “Tea” thing, business returned to normal. Then the CEO of the bank showed up and tried to log onto his computer. The moment his security password was entered his entire terminal shut down, as did every other terminal in the building. Frantic calls to the corporate Tech Division showed that the same thing had happened in every office, every branch, and every home computer affiliated with the Firm! Then came the demands… at which point “ominous” and “weird” were both up-graded to “bizarre” and “stark raving mad”!

“We have seized control of your entire financial system,” said the note delivered by a local courier service. ”We shall not relinquish control of your system until our demands are met. We know you are the largest single bank in the world. We know that with your funds, those of your depositors, and those of your investors locked away and at our control, thousands may suffer,” the note went on to say. ”We do not care!”

The note continued:  “We realize that this may cause businesses to fail, rents to lapse, and mortgages to go into default. We realize that the entire economies of many developing nations rely on this bank, and this may cause their collapse. We further realize that food and medications may not be purchased, and some may even die. To all of this, we repeat: WE DO NOT CARE!” It took every scrap of control the CEO possessed not to smash something. Anything. The note was signed: ”The Tea Party.”

Security rushed to the offices of the Auditors only to find them calmly sitting at their desks. Only the smug little smirks on their faces betrayed the fact they had any hand in the chaos that had gripped the entire building. ”Without us,” John (newly) Lipton calmly told the CEO, “It all disappears! Harm us and it all comes crashing down!” Despite his rage, the CEO recognized the precarious nature of his firm’s situation. He sat down, and after taking a few moments to compose himself, asked about the demands. The demands were without doubt the most mind-numbing twist of the entire affair:

Every account holder in the Bank who had assets in excess of two million dollars would receive a gift of a full million dollars. The money for these gifts would be taken from the accounts of the less wealthy account holders. Also, every corporation with accounts in the Bank would receive a bonus of two million dollars, the funds again to come from the accounts of the less well-to-do. Furthermore, the Bank would amend its bylaws to include said gifts and bonuses every year from that day on.

Beyond these points, on which all the Auditors were in complete agreement, each of the four had their own individual demand as well. Mr. Pekoe wanted Western Union to be forced to change its name to Western You Can All Be Replaced. Ms. Oolong wanted all of those swishy people to stop being so swishy, and to stop calling her husband at all hours and trying to get him to be swishy, too. Mr. Darjeeling wanted somebody, anybody, to make him a doctor, not a pretend doctor, mind you, but a real Doctor, one other doctors would acknowledge as an equal. Saddest of all was Mr. (newly) Lipton, who wanted a lifetime’s supply of spray tan, and a law forbidding that he or any of his descendants ever be picked last for anything or ever be beaten up behind the big slide.

I cannot tell you how this story ends, for as I am writing this, the “Drama at the Big Bank” is still playing out. Rest assured that in the end, in this story, they will all go to prison… for EXTORTION! (There may also be some mental health counseling involved.) What confuses me is why, when the same scenario is played out on an ever grander scale with our nation’s economy, as well as that of the rest of the world, no one is screaming, “EXTORTION!” from the highest rooftop. It is surely nothing less.

What a Rip Off!
By E. Boston

Rip Off: a. rob, cheat, defraud.; b. steal
Synonyms: burglarize, burgle, knock over

Saturday evening July 16 was another gloriously sunny wrap-up to a weekend day here in Cocoa Beach. As there was a bit of swell (considering it is summer, shin- to knee-high constitutes “a bit”), I was out surfing with a friend at 5th Street South here in town. Nothing special — golden, late afternoon sun and fun little curling rides on my 10′ all the way to the sand for an hour or so. It was a picture that was probably painted at all the beaches that early evening from Daytona to Sebastian.

There are things one can try to explain to others, but until you experience it firsthand, you don’t truly get it. Like sex or faith. Understanding something is nothing like experiencing it. There’s a moment when, upon discovering that you’ve been robbed but not yet fully comprehending it, your brain scrambles to process why things are different. Your reality is not as you left it! What was once whole may now be shattered, like your window or door, and what was once yours and secure is GONE! Anyone who’s been robbed, burgled or ripped off is familiar with this moment. You look and look again, almost speechless, muttering, wondering, processing, until finally, realization hits you. You can recognize the “realization” when cursing commences.

The first thing I noticed was the unlocked driver-side door. That set off the alarms in my head and put comprehension and processing into overdrive. I opened the door and my reality underwent an immediate adjustment. My hat and slaps were there, but the other things? GONE! I checked the toolbox in the truck bed, where the key should be. No key, no beat-to-crap backpack with salt-ceased zippers that only served to hold board wax.

I stood there looking walleyed, mouth agape and confused, until my friend stated in words that snapped me to realization: “We’ve been nicked.” I’ll skip over the initial realization/reaction part. Suffice it to say that those of you who know me can imagine the creative outpouring of rage-infused cursing that ensued. But the ballbuster was that they took the key! I couldn’t even drive home! Luckily, some mates were painting an apartment nearby and provided a phone to use.

According to my filed police report, taken were: one Ford electronic truck key, two leather wallets, cash, license, credit cards, my friend’s apartment keys, two pairs of baggies (one Quicksilver, one Billabong, and my friend’s underdrawers), one Blackberry, one iPhone (both in Otterboxes), one pair Spy and one pair Ray Ban sunglasses (mine less than a week old!), and one set of HammerHead darts with blue spinner shafts and white Chicago Cubs flights in a blue, fold-top nylon case. Not a bad haul. Total retail value, plus cash, about a grand. I’d have given $500 to not be robbed and saved the anguish and hassle.

My wife and I had dinner plans at the Fat Snook that evening at 8. Instead, we drove around town chasing the GPS as we traced our stolen phones via my wife’s iPhone. We didn’t catch anyone or find the phones in a dumpster (though I checked many), but we did follow someone from the Lido to Cheaters as they made it rain with our cash. I also filed a police report and rode the roller coaster of anger, outrage, disbelief, and eventually acceptance that the stuff is gone. I took the necessary steps to deal with things and recover. In the end it’s just stuff. On a karmic level, maybe I didn’t need the stuff.

No. You know what? Screw that! There’s no such thing as honor among thieves. Anyone who steals is a worthless turd who needs a good beating. If one is destitute, homeless, hopeless, and must steal, I can forgive stealing my cash. Thieves take it all, and it’s more than just your stuff. They don’t care what hassle, imposition, anxiety or loss they inflict. Robberies happen every second, every day in America and elsewhere worldwide. If prostitution is the oldest profession, theft is the oldest crime. Being robbed is a right of passage in NYC. Here in Cocoa Beach, theft is a scourge that will swell if it goes unchecked. Like cockroaches seeking a comfortable environment, thieves are close to becoming an infestation here.

Part of the processing of being robbed — even if the act wasn’t committed violently or in person — includes feelings of vulnerability and a disheartening loss of faith in the community, which make you wizzed all over again. Yes, wizzed. Ya with me? In the long run, it’s the community that loses. There are no victimless crimes. Crime begets crime and somebody always gets screwed. As more and more citizens become disheartened and lose faith in their community, the more crime will increase. I’m not promoting vigilantism, but any action taken by citizens to confront and/or report thieves will only serve to fortify our community. If I see some fool in my black Quicksilver baggies with the tribal head print and my brand f*@kin’ new Ray Bans talking on my flip-up Blackberry in the black Otterbox and my shooting my darts, I most certainly shall say: “Hello, motherf#@ker!”

In reaction to this unfortunate occurrence we’ve been offered condolences and seen responses from friends. I was made aware of crimebreak@cityofcocoabeach.com and am happy to see reports of arrests, especially of thieves, by our local law enforcement. The officer to whom I reported the robbery treated me professionally. I am also realistic about of the number of crimes, disturbances, and daily occurrences our law enforcement deals with and I applaud them in their efforts to serve and protect.

I don’t hold faith that I will see the return of my stuff. I’ve reported stolen and replaced my necessary IDs and CCs. I bought my friend new shades and he gave me a new wallet. We have replacement phones and are underway with the task of replacing all our contacts. You move on from the stuff. It’s the stuff you don’t move on from that gets you.

I haven’t been surfing since I got ripped off. Someone has a key to my vehicle and knows where I live. I still have feelings of vulnerability, disbelief, anger, and anxiety. Living here in this community and enjoying all it offers is a treasure I relish. To be denied that by criminals is something I will not abide.

So I’ll move on and go on dawn patrol for surf tomorrow and onward, because if I don’t, I’ll truly be ripped off.

Everybody’s heard of Wilbur and Orville Wright, right? You know, the guys who invented the airplane. Some say others invented it, but history books today credit the Wright boys with the first reusable airplane. They were the pioneers of air travel.

Now what if, on that blustery December day in 1903, after strapping himself onto that kite with a motor, Orville Wright suddenly changed his mind? What if, at the last minute, he said, “Hey, Willie (he called his brother “Willie”), let’s bag this flimsy bundle of bedsheets and go back to Ohio and fix bicycles like we’ve always done”?

You know what would have happened. Somebody else would have done it and the Wright brothers would have secured their not-so-lofty place in obscurity just like the rest of us schmucks. And after all that planning, all those trials, all that expense… After suffering all those skeptics… “Hey, Willie, let’s bag this.” What a letdown for all involved.

I’ve let people down in my life. I’ve walked out on jobs, on bands, on friends. Second thoughts are easy to conceive. The night before my own wedding I got drunk in a motel room with my brother. It was probably the booze, but suddenly this freezing bolt of panic hit me and I thought of running. Funny thing: my wife said she had the same experience. No, she wasn’t drunk. She was sitting in a hot bath. But she thought about it. Wouldn’t it have been funny if we’d run into each other at the airport, each holding a one-way ticket to Pago-Pago?

The coldest feet I ever had came in May 1987, when my family and I embarked on our final move to Florida. Like the Wright brothers, we’d spent years planning and suffering skeptics (“Yeah right, LaClaire, you’ll never leave here.”). We’d quit our jobs, cancelled our lease, sold off all that was unnecessary, and crammed everything else in a decrepit U-Haul with no first gear and a faulty radio (“skrrrxx, skrrrxx…”). Our bridges were burning brightly. I’d eaten my first and last Buffalo fajita, and there we were, standing in our empty apartment, about to turn in our keys. Panic.

The first colonists must have felt this way, having lived in the same town, the same country, eating the same cuisine, and enjoying the comfort of generations of family and friends, and then, after severing all those ties, facing the great unknown. What if the Pilgrims had said, “Hey, let’s bag this”? You know what would’ve happened. Instead of the Plymouth Fury, we’d probably be driving the Jamestown Fury. (Ahem…) Anyway, someone else would have gotten the credit. Confucius said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Our first steps were downstairs. To the landlord’s. To turn in our keys. My wife, our baby and I crowded into the tiny alcove and rang their bell. This was hard. This was final. I was scared. The door creaked open.

“Hi, Mrs. — ”

I couldn’t get another word out. She began screaming at me. She was a tiny old lady, 80 years if a day. I didn’t know so small a package could pack such a wallop.

“What’s wrong with you people? You left the side door open all night! We could have been robbed! We could have been murdered! I could have been raped!” We had sold the washer and dryer the day before. Apparently, the buyers had left the door ajar. “Don’t you have any sense of responsibility? I could have woken up dead! I could have been raped!”

I looked at her tiny shriveled presence. In your dreams, lady. I handed over the keys. She kept yelling. “Irresponsible! That’s what you are! You never think of anybody else! I could have been raped! Murdered! Robbed!” My wife and daughter were already gone. I softly closed the door. “Raped! Murdered! Robbed!” I heard her all the way to the truck. In two years of tenancy we’d never exchanged a harsh word. I guess she’d been saving them up. All second thoughts on leaving evaporated. Goodbye, landlord. Goodbye, Buffalo. And good riddance.

The coonskin pioneers would begin their emigration with a muster. That is, they would gather. Ranks and rules having been defined, the initial leg of the journey was known as a shakedown. This was when you found out if your rig was sound. It also tested your commitment. We U-Haul pioneers had our shakedown.

Our first leg involved the Scajaquada Expressway, the New York State Thruway, State Route 400, and a somewhat hilly passage known as Route 16. Our mileage would have been a major feat in coonskin times. Conestogas, at a max, might make 12 miles per day. We’d covered 60 miles in less than an hour and a half. Regardless, our experience was still a shakedown.

I’d discovered this ancient truck was horrible on expressways. It was slow. It crowded the lane. Wind blew it around. And even though I was sitting way up high (so it seemed, compared to a car), the visibility was bad. I got lots of honks.

Hills were a new set of procedures. I spent five minutes trying to get into gear without stalling when traffic was stopped on a grade. This was embarrassing. People were honking, yelling. And that radio: skrrrxx, skrrrxx…

At last we’d reached our first destination: the in-laws’. I climbed down from my cab and banged the old beast on the fender. “Cheated death again,” I muttered and headed straight for the saloon — that is, my Father-In-Law’s built-in bar. My wife and baby had been there for 15 minutes (they drove the family Buick). I was greeted with, “What kept you?”

“Traffic was stalled on Route 16,” I half-lied. “Some jerk in a broke-down truck.”

I didn’t stay long at the bar. I needed to learn how to drive this thing, even if it meant practicing all night. And that’s about what I did. As soon as the dinner dishes were cleared I was back in the cab. For the next two hours I circled the neighborhood, clanging and grinding, in a desperate attempt to decipher the standard shift. I even parked it on a hill and tried to put it in gear. I don’t know why, but that skill kept eluding me. Finally I was satisfied, or at least sick of it, and resigned myself to take what the road may give.

I won’t say our departure the next morning was tearful, but it certainly was somber. At this point in our marriage, my wife and I possessed the first and only grandchild in the entire family. I suddenly felt selfish. Here we were, pursuing some half-baked dream while denying our in-laws the access to their greatest object of affection. There were promises to visit, to keep in touch, handshakes and hugs, and then we were off. It’s best to do these things quickly. It’s less painful. Or so I thought. A heavy sense of guilt fell upon me as the U-Haul lurched into gear. What would the coonskin crowd have done? Mail delivery was sketchy (that hasn’t changed). There was no long-distance telephone service then; no direct flights; not even buses or trains. A separation like this would’ve been final. Then I realized that in those days, the in-laws would have probably come along.

I pondered that scenario. We would have shared the same Conestoga. The women would have slept inside, up off the ground and the men beneath. We’d share every meal together. We’d work together, or try to. We’d have cholera together. And when we finally reached our Promised Valley, we’d probably spend at least a year together under the same roof, if not longer. Hey, I love my in-laws, but…

If there’s one thing to be said for driving an over-stuffed, under-geared antique U-Haul with a radio going skrrrxxx every six seconds, it’s that there’s never a dull moment. My depressed ponderings disappeared a mere five miles later. I was stuck. On a hill.

It wasn’t really a hill; it was a little hump over an intersecting street. But any obstacle is huge when you’ve no low gear. I was like, snagged. Five, then six times I started, only to flub the clutch and stall. A kid yelled from the corner; something about giving me a driving lesson. People honked. I needed to back up. Finally the guy behind gave me some rocking room. The gears engaged, and I was on my way.

There comes a point in every emigration where there’s no turning back. With the Pilgrims, it was the open sea (though one of their ships, the Godspeed, actually did turn back). With the coonskin types, it was the Mississippi. With us U-Haul pioneers it was a mere sign: “Welcome To Pennsylvania.” Now we were definitely on our way; committed, as it were.

Southward ho!

Ah, the days of summer are here. After our very enjoyable two-month spring, the days are longer and hotter. Not “Dog Days” yet — those insufferable August and September days which make our streets a ghost town in mid-afternoon, everyone seeking the relief of shady, air-conditioned homes, bars, and movie theaters — we’re not there yet.

We’re just in the warm-up phase. The smell of charcoal on the grill is appetizing and swimming pools and the ocean are refreshing and not just liquid relief from the oppressive heat and humidity. The NHL Stanley Cup and NBA Championship are decided and their accompanying parades and riots are completed. Interdivisional Major League Baseball is in full swing and though not halfway through the season, the Cubs manage to be eleven games out of first. The saga of the Casey Anthony trial plays out daily on all three network channels. Folks have many varied discussions on that story… Some guys just think, “If she let her hair down and put on a little makeup, she’s hot!” Hey, how many women marry death row inmates? Charles Manson still gets mail from chicks. I can’t explain it, but like one of our good friends says, “You can’t fix stupid.”

I’m reminded of a childhood summer, 1973 I believe. It was a typical Chicago summer; hot steamy days building up to terrific weekly thunderstorms. This predates central air, and like most of our neighbors, the window unit air conditioner stuck out of the window in the dining room, hanging over the gangway or sidewalk beside the house. The units typically were about the size of an MG convertible, meant instant death if per chance it fell on some unfortunate passing below, ran 24/7 from June through August, and were in every house citywide. In our house it cooled the living room, dining room, and our parents’ bedroom. Maintaining the coolness in those rooms was paramount. Children were required to use the back door all summer; it entered the back porch and then the kitchen. Woe to you lest you forget and enter through the front door or leave the kitchen door open, letting the cooled air escape. The only problem was that we had one bathroom, located off the dining room, in the Air-Conditioned Zone. I was 7, and thus made many a heated, sweaty dash into the house to use the facilities.

“Close the door!” “Don’t let the cool air out!” “We need a bathroom in the basement!” These were refrains I heard daily, all summer. I couldn’t distinguish this summer from another but for what was on the TV. As I passed in and out the house numerous times each day, the Watergate hearings were always on the tube. I never stopped to watch, or cared about what they were, but they were like a backdrop for that summer.

I get a similar feeling in regards to the trial currently ongoing. It’s sort of become the TV backdrop for summer 2011. Should I be more concerned or attentive to its process and outcome? It’s a three-year-old story and the trial has sunk to the depths of theater of the absurd, which only the televised American justice system can provide. My participation, even on a mere observational level will not affect the outcome or possible years of appeals to follow.

Meanwhile, Congress is back to work… or are they still on vacation? It’s hard to tell since they do nothing either way. But about a month ago, as I readied for Memorial Day weekend, eagerly awaiting the aroma of grilled meat and the taste of cold beer, I saw a flash, a glimmer of hope, in the television news industry. For a full week or so, I saw concentrated, sober discussion about the federal debt ceiling, the enduring mess of our economic status, the possibility that the United States could default on its debts, and the ensuing catastrophe that would ignite worldwide. I was rapt, almost giddy that real issues dominated coverage not only on the networks, but on CNN, MSNBC, etc.

And then… As if someone decided we were way out of whack with all this intelligent discourse, like a buffoon farting loudly at a debate, it happened: WEINER!

I try not to be a conspiracy theorist, but I swear both political parties keep an ace up their sleeve and when real attention shines brightly on their ineptness and lack of work towards progress. BAM! Weiner Roast! Truly I say, “You can’t write this stuff!” Young Democrat golden boy named Weiner sends package pics on the web. Um, debt ceiling? Financial ruin of the country? Fuggedaboudit! WEINER! WEINER! WEINER!

Each day brought new revelations, more kink, denial, and accusations of hacking and character assassination, until finally, a mere 15 days later, Weiner was a blackened, split-skinned and blistered hot dog on the grill of the news media and our mindset. You couldn’t not see it if you tried. It was like a third grade classroom with a substitute teacher, or the opening riff of Rage Against The Machine’s “Renegades Of Funk,” or French police sirens in a Bourne movie: WEINER! WEINER! WEINER! WEINER!

Alas, he’s disgraced, banished. The Democratic majority is now in danger. A month passed with nothing done on the real issues, time having been spent instead investigating and commenting on the young perv Democrat and whether he should resign, his ethics… blah, blah, blah. And for what? What did he do? Send some horndogs pics of himself and his manhood?

BFD! What he did wouldn’t have gotten him invited to a Ted Kennedy barbecue! Was it that long ago that our president was defiling an intern with body parts and Cohibas, staining her dress, and not paying for the dry cleaning? I’m not saying Weiner’s not a kook, but take a look at Myspace, Craigslist and Facebook; many folks are doing the exact same thing and teenagers are sexting like crazy monkeys. We got duped again by the real criminals; they shifted the attention to some rube caught in the crosshairs with his pants down, or rather on the web. It’s shameful for the news media, our government, and our society that it was a story for more than a week. The efforts, rhetoric, time, money, and career that have been wasted, while the big issues are ignored and worsen daily is shameful.

Light up the grills, everyone! Roast them weenies, grab a cold brew, and have a great summer… before hurricane season ramps up.

By the time you read this it will be July and summer.

I often write about the seasons in Florida. We do have them, contrary to popular belief, and though it might feel like May in January, there’s no way you’re going to confuse July with anything but July. It’s hot, and it’s gonna stay hot probably till November.

If we’re lucky, it rains every day. Yeah, I get sick of the rain too, but it sure beats a dry summer. Those mean only two things: record-breaking temperatures and fire.

I wonder what would have happened if our first Florida settlers had arrived for a “dry summer.” Would they have stayed? The crops they planted wouldn’t grow. There probably weren’t any fire departments; there would be the constant threat of being burned out. I wonder if they’d seen that, in their initial encounter with Florida, if they’d just figured “Hey, this place sucks” and headed back to… Well… Wherever it was they headed here from.

Anyone who leaves somewhere of their own volition has done so for a reason. Usually it’s economic, but it can also be the climate, politics, or even the neighbors. It can be a combination of these things too. Prime examples were America’s early emigrants, the pioneers, as it were. Most left their homes for the promise of free land and a place to make their own life. That’s economics. Some left to escape religious persecution or bigotry. That’s politics. Others left because of famine or crop failure. That’s climate. And probably a few split because a storm flattened their crops, a mob burned their church, and the neighbors played a continuous ear-splitting tape loop of “That’s the Way (I Like It)” by KC and the Sunshine Band. That’s economics, politics, climate, and bad neighbors. Regardless, they became our pioneers, the ones who risked everything to build a better life.

Unless you’re a member of the extinct Ais tribe, or were born in Florida, you too are a pioneer. I like that notion. The common image of the American Pioneer is the coonskin-hatted, rifle-totin’, buckskin-wearing, ox-driving, covered wagon pilot. It’s time to shatter the stereotype. If you went anywhere to escape something and make a better life, in my opinion, you’re a pioneer.

So there. I’m a pioneer. Let’s compare Now with Then and see how I stack up.

First, you gotta be from somewhere else and you gotta have a reason to leave. Okay, I used to live in Buffalo, New York. Do I need to list reasons? Just kidding… Buffalo, to the folks born there, is the only place in the world to be. When I announced to my landlord that I was moving to Florida, her immediate reaction was: “Oh! I’m so sorry! You have to leave Buffalo!” But I was not born there. Those ties were not that hard to cut. My reasons for leaving were two: I was going to start my own business and I was going to do it where there was better fishing. Now that’s not to say the fishing in Western New York was bad, I’d had plenty of fun, but in Florida you could fish year round. So there are the reasons: economics and climate.

Once the decision is made, the pioneer must pack and provision. This involves choosing what to bring that you already have and what to purchase to get you there. The buckskin crowd would gather the Bible, the muskets, a stick of furniture, and maybe a hand mirror and hook up with an outfitter or trail master. Provisions such as bacon, hard tack, and dried beans would be loaded into the U-Haul of its day, the covered wagon, or more succinctly, the Conestoga wagon. Have you ever seen one of these things? I have. They’re pretty hefty, about twenty feet long, and built like a ship. Big iron-rimmed wooden wheels and no suspension nearly guaranteed a bumpy ride—kinda like a U-Haul! And that’s what my family packed for our great migration: a U-Haul, the Conestoga wagon of the 1980s. And like a Conestoga wagon, the U-Haul was barely equipped.

Over the phone I was promised a recent model, automatic shift, A/C, and AM/FM/cassette sound system. I was psyched. I’d never driven a truck before, at least not for 1,500 miles, and the fact that all would be up-to-date was reassuring. They had my deposit a month in advance.

I remember the scene well. They tossed me the keys and I strode into the lot. This beast was 30-years-old. There was paint missing, an oil puddle beneath, and the seat was covered with what looked like chicken wire. “That’s to keep the springs from stickin’ you in the butt,” the trail master — I mean, the clerk — said. No A/C. AM radio. And worst of all, a stick on the floor. “I can’t drive this,” I admitted.

“You can’t drive a standard? What are you, retarded?”

“Uh, yeah — I mean, no! I just, well… Yeah, I’m retarded.”

“You want your money back?”

“Well… They told me automatic, A/C, AM/FM… ”

“Who’d you talk to?”

“I booked it through the main office. Phoenix… ”

“This ain’t Phoenix. It’s Buffalo.”

“Believe me, I know.”

“You want your money back?”

We’d sold almost all our furniture. We had two days left on our lease. Everything was in boxes on the porch. “No,” I sighed. “I have to take it. Can you… I never… ”

“Aw hell,” the guy laughed. “Everybody learns on these things. You’ll get the hang of it!”

Yeah, I got the hang of it. I also learned it had no first gear, but soon I was barreling down the Niagara Extension, anticipating the wife’s reaction. The pioneers used oxen, for the most part, to haul their Conestogas. If things got real bad on the trail, you could eat an ox.

Even if a 1956 GMC oil-bath air filter V8 was edible, I wasn’t about to eat this one. This truck was a turd. Even the AM radio — the only amenity — was a bust. Every six seconds, no matter what channel, it emitted a loud skrrxxx. I jiggled the knobs. Skrrxxx! I banged on the metal dash. Skrrxxx! One of the euphemisms the early pioneers had for their experience was “Seeing the Elephant.” I was riding one.

Have you ever been on the verge of something — a great adventure like going off to college, or marriage, or a new job — and suddenly wanted to rethink it? Maybe even … back out?

I’ve had my share of life-changing precipices — all the above and more — but the “rethink” urge never came on as strong as it did the afternoon we left Buffalo in May, 1987. My last meal in the Queen City on that day was lunch. One thing Buffalo did have was a plethora of great eating establishments. And on this day, our last day, we discovered a brand new one. It was the first time I ever sampled a fajita. Don’t laugh folks, but that fancy taco almost changed the course of my history. The truck was loaded, the last of our furniture had been sold, and we were waiting for the baby to finish her nap before turning in the keys. We sat on the floor of our bare kitchen and my wife said: “Why don’t you go down to the corner and pick up something for lunch?”

Sadness fell upon me as I walked our street to Hertel Avenue. It was a beautiful day, a weekday. I was never home on weekdays. The lawns were green, the trees were lush, and neighbors smiled as I passed. Why would I ever want to leave this place? Shortly I was amid the bustle of Hertel Avenue, with its bars, bistros, and boutiques. I could smell souvlaki, garlic, and sausages mingled with “that old Detroit perfume” (car exhaust), and for the first time in ten years I felt at home in that city. Here was a bar my band used to play in. There’s where I bought my olives every Thursday. Here was my bus stop. There was my newsstand. And there… There… Was a fajita joint. It wasn’t there a week ago. Hmm…

The owner was a kid. Or at least he looked like a kid to me; maybe twenty-five. He had that eager look of a first-time entrepreneur. “What’ll it be?” he greeted.

“What’s good?” I’d never had a fajita before. I didn’t even know how to pronounce it.

“It’s all good,” he urged. “Order the beef.”

I did. As the meat sizzled, I looked around. “This used to be a music store,” I commented.

“And a sausage packer before that,” the kid added. “Got a beautiful clean room in the back. My Dad worked here.”

Peppers and onions hit the griddle. The smell was intoxicating. I wondered if I would ever smell it again. “I bought strings here just a year ago.” There was one of those old glass stand-up coolers stocked with Canadian beer. I wondered if I would ever taste that again. The meat was flipped, the whole shebang was herded into soft shells and wrapped deftly in deli paper.

“Onions too strong, maybe?” the kid asked as I fished a couple of bills from my wallet.

“No… Why?”

“Your eyes… They’re watering.”

My first fajita.

It was delicious.

How could I leave this place?

Cocoa Beach has a Vision Plan for its downtown. But a vocal minority stands in opposition.

It’s summertime, and somewhere near Minutemen Causeway, some stalwart young gentlemen emerge from a yellow Mustang, hats angled sidewise, necklaces glinting in sunlight. They flick their cigarettes to the curb as they unburden their car of beer, footballs, snack bags, beach paraphernalia. One of the gentlemen squares himself up to an abandoned building, unzips, and moans gratefully as he relieves himself upon the stucco wall.

This is downtown Cocoa Beach: a wasteland of asphalt, overhead wires, tattoo parlors, neglected commercial facades, memories. The years have not been kind. Iconic restaurants have locked their doors. Another bank has been boarded up. What’s left for this beachside town? Have we been reduced to this… a urinal for weekenders and Orlando day-trippers?

It’s summertime, and the waves are gone. With nothing else to do, I find myself shambling to City Hall, climbing up to the office of Tony Caravella, Director of Development Services. He invites me to have a seat and presents me with a pamphlet, something he calls a “Vision Plan.”

The Vision Plan — 136 full-color pages — was drawn up by Bernard Zyscovich, an urban planner with intimidating credentials, wire-rimmed glasses and a basso profundo voice. Packed with photographic spreads, soaring descriptions, and design initiatives to add character to Cocoa Beach’s downtown district, the Vision imagines a surfside town adorned with shade trees, shopfronts, wide sidewalks, gardens, permanent art installations, awnings, restaurants, bike paths, retail shops, boutique hotels, and residential apartments.

“In order to thrive as a community,” Caravella says, “we have to become economically competitive. How do you do that? First, you show that you’ve thought about it.”

A few months ago, Bernard Zyscovich hosted a public workshop to flesh out the ideas outlined in the Vision. Citing historical buildings like the Cocoa Beach Casino and the Starlight Motel as possible inspirations for a new architectural code, he stressed the importance of respecting history, and promoted eco-tourism and green initiatives. He described the barrier island as one the world’s greatest natural treasures — a narrow stretch of land dividing two great bodies of water.

On July 7, the city commissioners will vote to pass an ordinance — ordinance 1528 — which would allow the city to re-zone the downtown in accordance with Zyscovich’s Vision Plan. Once passed, the City will begin the long process of redevelopment.

There’s only one problem. Ordinance 1528 will not pass on July 7. Or anytime in the near future.

Look carefully at the language, and you’ll see that 1528 “allows for mixed residential and commercial land uses on the same tract,” within the downtown core area. There’s the rub. In 2003, during condo-mania, the city passed a resolution which banned the commission from increasing “density or intensity” without unanimous approval of all five city commissioners. While mixed-use is not technically an increase in density, it brings up the issue of higher population, and so 1528 has been deemed by the City Attorney as needing a 5-0 vote.

“There are a lot of great things in the plan,” says commissioner Skip Williams, who has promised to vote against any increases in city density. “But they could have built a plan that didn’t break the rules.” Williams is concerned that adding residential units might have permanent effects on downtown, not all of them positive. “Under this plan, there could be 545 more people living downtown, which would mean at least 290 more cars.”

In the past seven years the population of Cocoa Beach has decreased by over 600, so the addition of 545 new residents would not significantly increase the total city population. And Zyscovich’s plan calls for parking structures, accessible via alleways, which would accommodate the additional vehicles.

But does the Vision Plan hinge on mixed use in the downtown district? Many argue it does. Mixed use is a vehicle to “attract people to live and socialize and shop,” according to Zyscovich. “By increasing the downtown’s overall population, we foster social interaction, generate foot traffic, and help create a more memorable image of downtown.”As examples of the success of mixed use, he gives Cocoa Village and Melbourne. Both towns were in a comparable state of degradation in the 1980s, but have since become prosperous, cultural hubs.

Tony Sasso, who was elected city commissioner in 2001 on a “control growth” ticket, and who helped pass popular height restrictions in 2003, hopes the Vision will come to light. He sees it creating a successful and vibrant downtown center while maintaining a small, quaint downtown feel and a sense of community. He backs the idea of mixed use downtown. “More residents downtown will only benefit the area,” Sasso says. “Locals take pride in ownership. They’ll help to regulate the noise, the litter, the crime. Locals decide what kind of community we live in.”

While Sasso supports the plan, he urges caution. He wants the City to outline in more detail the height and setback regulations before this goes to a general ballot. Regarding commissioner Williams’ promise to vote no on 1528, Sasso says, “I wish he would just vote yes. It would make it easier on everybody. But how can we fault an elected leader who keeps his promise?”

Commissioner Kevin Pruett, a longtime resident of Cocoa Beach, hopes residents rally behind the Vision Plan. “If the whole city could paddle the boat in the same direction for one year, we’d make huge progress.” He urges people to educate themselves by reading the Vision Plan, which suggests limiting storefronts to two stories, and setting the third stories back from the road. “Nobody wants 45-foot boxes,” he explains.

What is the cost of waiting until the next election? Redevelopment could bring much-needed jobs and money into the area. “The longer we wait, the harder it will be to turn it around,” says Pruett.

Unless the anti-growth faction suddenly decides to take up the oars, Cocoa Beach’s downtown will remain zoned commercial for now. It could be as long as January before the voters decide on this issue. Unfortunately, most locals will never read Zyscovich’s plan. The people of Cocoa Beach will likely cast their votes based on hearsay and 75 ballot words, one of which is sure to be “density.”

“I read the proposed ballot language,” Williams says, with a hint of irony in his voice. “It sounds like roses and champagne. I’m not sure why people would vote against it.”

While we wait, the ocean draws up steam, another shop shuts its doors, and the Kelly Slater statue glistens in the noonday sun. A few cafés provide peaceful bastions among the asphalt jungle. You can still get a slice of pizza, frozen yogurt, a shaved ice. You can get your hair cut, go to the dentist, buy plumbing supplies. But don’t go downtown on the weekends. And don’t imagine that it is a safe, family-friendly venue at night. Look carefully into the heart of Cocoa Beach, and you will see a squalor, much like the black rot which has been eating away at the Glass Bank for over a decade now, growing on its walls.

Somewhere in the world, the light is waning along some tree-lined street. A family sits in repose beneath a café awning, the adults discussing politics, or art, or metaphysics. They tilt their champagne glasses to the afternoon light. The windows above them are draped with rose bushes, which dance in the sea breeze.

Roses and champagne? Or Natty Light and Marlboro Reds?

Cocoa Beach is torn between two visions. Both are ridiculous. Only one of them is real.

Read the Vision Plan at: www.thebeachsideresident.com/VisionPlan.pdf

Dim Light
By David Sherman

For all of you conservative readers who have cringed, if not outright railed and raged, every time I have sung the praises of our current president, this is the article you have all dared me to write. At least it’s as close as I can get, which is much further than any of you probably ever thought a self-proclaimed, far-left, tree-hugging, hippy wackjob would dare to go.

I recently found myself in a political discussion with a gentleman who is highly placed in conservative politics — and “highly” in this case is a conservative estimate. (Pun intended!) He asked me if I ever felt that “my president” had lied to me. I equivocated, reluctant to air my home team’s dirty laundry in front of the opposing bench, but the gentleman pressed on. Surely there must be some things that Obama promised during the campaign on which he failed to deliver. I had to admit it was a valid point. Sadly, it was a whole fistful of valid points. I even went so far as to list the most disappointing of the lot:

* The codified bigotry of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was to be abolished. It’s still there.

* The elimination of Bush tax cuts for the top 2%. He caved!

* The closing of Guantanamo as a prison site. It’s still there.

* The reestablishment of the Rule of Law, in that accused terrorists would be publicly tried in open court. He caved.

* Holding Wall Street accountable for the nearly averted financial collapse that began with the failing of Lehman Bros. Still waiting.

* Comprehensive, socialized healthcare, built around a single payer, public option. He didn’t really even seem to try. (You’re welcome, Insurance Industry.)

* The reining in of industrial control of Federal watchdog agencies. Check who got the first new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico, with safety plans that pre-date Deepwater Horizon.

This was just my bullet-point hit parade, but it was enough for my conservative friend to reply with, “Then why do you still support him?” That answer was easy: ”Because even with all that, Barack Obama is still a better alternative than allowing the Republicans back into the White House.” Reasons for that viewpoint abound in every state where the GOP took control in 2010.

GOP-controlled Wisconsin and Ohio have tried their best to destroy union bargaining rights in those states. In Maine, the GOP is actually trying to roll back child labor laws! In most of these Republican-controlled states several laws have been passed to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to have any sort of voter registration drive. Many also go so far as to restrict voters’ accessibility to vote! None of these is the act of a Free Democracy.

In Michigan, the Republicans have pushed through a law which allows the Governor to declare a city fiscally unsound and then appoint one person, an Emergency Financial Manager, to take over that town. That person has unlimited power to void any union contracts entered into by the town’s duly elected officials. He can even sell off property in that town, including property he seizes through eminent domain. This is not an exaggeration. It’s happening right now in a small town called Benton Harbor.

Lastly, in every Republican-controlled state multiple laws have been passed, or are in the works, to restrict a woman’s right to choose. In our own Florida, any woman seeking an abortion must listen to her doctor reading a prepared text citing false medical information specifically geared to dissuade her from her choice. This from the party that just two years ago was screaming that “government has no business coming between a doctor and their patients”? The Republican Party, in flagrant pandering to their most conservative base, will stop at nothing until Roe v. Wade is overturned. The problem is that this will not eliminate abortions in this country; it will merely drive them underground to back-street butchers and fly-by-night after-hours charlatans. Thousands of women will die.

That’s what a Republican-controlled White House in today’s political climate will lead to. With that as my alternative, even a watered down Obama is better than any Republican alternative. Could “my president,” as the gentleman called him, do more to live up to his campaign promises? Absolutely! Has he proven to be everything I had hoped he would be? No. I guess what I really want in a president is a man (or woman, I don’t care which) who has the bulldog tenacity of Winston Churchill, the compassion of Mother Teresa, the strategic acumen of Scipio the Elder, the swagger of Teddy Roosevelt, and the oratorical skills of…  well, Barack Obama. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to make do with one-in-five and hope for the rest. I’ll still take dim light over total darkness. If nothing else, “my President” got Bin Laden!

Reality TV Gets Really Real
By M. Alberto Rivera

Every time I watch a reality TV show, I feel a bit of my brain begin to atrophy. After enduring five minutes of mind-numbing, scriptless drivel from self-absorbed halfwits, I feel dumb for having believed this show might be different. My thought processes shut down like Levi Johnston attempting to utter a coherent sentence.

Since reality TV appears to be here to stay, for a while anyhow, I wondered what could be done to improve upon it. Hiring writers and actors seemed like a good place to start, but too obvious and contrary to the premise. But after musing a while, I considered that the shows need to be more adventurous. And audiences, not having changed all that much since recorded time began, will continue to have the depth of an inflatable kiddie pool.

Here are my suggestions for the new lineup of reality TV shows. So if network executives are reading this (reading; it’s like TV, but without the pictures), feel free to get in touch. We’ll do lunch.

Commanding male voiceover: Next on Monday night’s primetime lineup: “Dancing with the Porn Stars!”

Male announcer: First up, the star of over 200 feature films you love but won’t admit to having watched, Lance Manly!

Female voiceover: I hear this is the closest he’s been to a woman since he was born.

Male announcer: You’re probably right! What’s this? He’s waved off his partner and now he’s making shadow puppets of all 50 states in alphabetical order by himself!

Female announcer: He’ll lose points for that! Puerto Rico is a territory, not a state… Next up is adult film starlet Lotta Honey, legendary for being double-jointed and her complete lack of shame. Both served her well last week when she was able to curry favor with the judges and avoided being voted off. Tonight she’s wearing — correction, she was wearing a slinky red gown by Dulce & Yo’Mama. Still, it looks nice on the floor there!

Male announcer: Isn’t that split normally performed with the feet on the ground? … And now here’s the crowd favorite, Ron Jeremy! To the delight of the audience, he’s performing no handed push-ups! (cheering and applause) Would I be wrong in saying that we’ve never seen a cattle prod used as a prop before on this show?

Enthusiastically excited male voiceover: Wednesday Night you don’t want to miss “What’s Cookin’”, where celebrity chefs get back to their roots. Tonight we’re visiting the hottest young chef from southeastern central Malibu, Taylor Von Haus Frau! (The camera pulls in close on a chef in a pristine and heavily starched white jacket. There is a cutting board, a knife and a variety of vegetables on the shiny stainless steel table before him.)

Chef Taylor: Hey there everybody, I’m Chef Taylor and we’ve got a great episode in store for you. Today we’ll be working with arugula and romaine…

Disembodied male voice: Taylor! Knock it off! (The camera pulls back and a large man in a too-tight polyester shirt and hairnet comes into frame.) Arugula ain’t comin’ in today! He got picked up for not payin’ his child support — again! And Romaine was huffin’ floor stripper, so he’s makin’ burgers. I need you on the drive thru an’ the fry machine! (The yelling man throws a headset at Chef Taylor.) Now! The cars is startin’ to pile up!

Chef Taylor: Hi there! Welcome to Wunder Burger! How may we satisfy your palate today?

A man’s voice comes through the headset, punctuated by profanity-laden hip hop blasting from his car speakers. ”Yeah, do you still haaaave the half-dollar menu?”

“Why yes we do, sir! Might I suggest the double-battered, deep-fried, jalapeno pork rind casserole on our classic off-white bread?”

“Yeah, gimme six of those, the colossal defibra-fries, upsized, and a half-gallon of Ultra Jolt.”

“A splendid choice, sir. Please pull around to the window.” Chef Taylor looks directly into the camera and says, “I love making people happy in the kitchen!”

Assertive and confident male voiceover: Here’s a Thursday night doubleheader you don’t want to miss, unless you’re a sad excuse of a life form: two hours of “Trailer Trash Housewives!”

It’s been a hectic week here at Toxic Trails Trailer Park, where life is always sunny in the shade of the aging power plant located directly behind us! These ladies — Trixie, Bijou, Oksana, Naydeen, and Daquiri — are going to allow us into their trailers and into their lives to see how the other, other half lives!

The scene cuts to the inside of a trailer, and a woman with a platinum blonde haystack of hair with black roots stands adjusting her self in the mirror. “Hey ya’ll, I’m Trixie. This one — the left one — is bigger than the right one by almost half a cup. That’s the whole reason I wanted to go up in size to begin with. My right was a C, and the left was a B … More like a B flat!”  She lets out a too long, braying laugh that causes the cigarette behind her ear to fall and become tangled in her hair.

“Anyhow, the Doctor says he done did it right, but I can’t hardly trust him. He did the surgery in a Motel 6 out by the interstate, behind Buck’s Bait N’ Stuff. Said his office was being repainted. Oh well. Least now they’re bigger and paid for. Don’t have to worry about them being repoed.”

Camera cuts to Bijou, a rail-thin brunette with a bad spray tan, Nascar tank top, and pitch black shag hair covering her hair like a sheepdog. She’s filing her nails while blowing a bubble half the size of her head.

“I’m excited ‘cuz I started another job to supplement my income. At first I was thinking about getting another webcam, but Tremaine, he’s not really the jealous type, but he wasn’t crazy ’bout it on account of how we met that way. But he ain’t here much since he got that job transporting federal inmates, what with all the insider trading guys being extradited. So my choices were either nail salon, meth lab, daycare, or hosting oil wrestling.”

“The secret to a good oil wrestling match is preparation and talent. If you put up enough industrial plastic and prep the room ahead of time then it’ll take care of itself.”

Camera cuts to the other “Real Trailer Trash Housewives,” Oksana, Naydeen, Trixie and Daquiri primping and preening in a cramped space, vying to see themselves in one small mirror. They apply lipstick, glitter and tease their hair while thumping hip hop plays at a volume that sets off car alarms. Camera follows the four of them to the trailers living room where sheets of clear plastic and blue tarps cover the entire space.

Approximately 75 people scream in unison in the cramped space. A beer bottle flies in front of the women as they walk to the makeshift ring. Naydeen looks nervously at Oksana. “Bottle is plastic. I make sure with vendor,” Oksana says matter-of-factly.

Bijou addresses the camera directly. “That’s where the real money is: concessions. The ticket sales just cover the cost of glitter, baby oil, painkillers, and the clean up. But we should do really well after this so long as no one gets carried away and has to go to the dentist.”

She smiles and turns her head to show a smile like a jack-o-lantern. “Let’s get this started!”

Now that’s TV worth watching!

Gardening 102: Tomatoes
By Rick LaClaire

Melbourne Harbor was a different environment years ago. It was a working harbor; boats were hauled and fitted, sails were stitched, and a number of people (myself included) managed to squeeze a few bucks out of that place. I learned the difference between garboards and leeboards, ship’s logs and shaft logs, a transit and a transom. I got to know the cats and the bums and where to hang when your stomach was growling. Those were wonderful days, and the friends we made are friends still.

Buffalo and Melbourne have some things in common. Water is everywhere. So are boats. When my wife and I returned to Buffalo in 1981, our first attraction was to the many marinas. There were great buys to be had. That became our goal: to buy a live-aboard yacht, fix it up, and sail her back to Florida.

We perused issues of Yachting and Sailing. I bought every copy of Wooden Boat on the newsstand. I even bought a kit and built my own canoe on our apartment balcony (the landlord was not pleased). We borrowed books from the library and saw how people lived aboard worldwide. Then my wife gave me a book called “Sailing the Farm” by Ken Neumeyer. It touted “independence on thirty feet” and was supposed to be “A survival guide to homesteading on the ocean.” We were hooked.

I learned you could eat seaweed. You could live on sprouts, preserved eggs, and something called “spirulina.” You could even grow a garden in containers. Right on your deck! Why, that was almost like having your own garden right on your — dare I say — apartment balcony? And so we became urban gardeners. And that’s when we learned about late blight.

It was hot on that balcony. It faced south. By summer the spinach and lettuce had dried up. The chives were next to go. The tomatoes looked great though, as long as you kept them watered. We had a few cherries, then the blooms began to drop. The beefsteak specimens had gorgeous green globes, and slowly, as the summer wore on, they began to pale and appear to ripen. Then, a slight blush. Then… Then… What the heck was this? A black spot. On the very bottom. No matter. It’s small. No, wait… Now it’s not. Aw, gee, it’s only August and what gives? Pretty soon half the fruit was black. We had discovered late blight. But how could that be? It wasn’t that late! It was the heat. A south facing porch, a steel deck, white siding reflecting the sun; it was an oven out there. We had picked the wrong place to grow.

No matter. We’ll try other varieties. A different side of the house… There had to be some way to grow fresh veggies while we sailed the world. Our lives would depend on it. We got into sprouts big-time and grew them all winter. We ate them with everything. I ruined Thanksgiving dinner by putting them in the dressing (yes, we had company). It made the whole bird taste like lawn clippings. Also, be careful with radish sprouts. They burn at both ends. Okay, sprouts get tiresome and veggies don’t handle tropical heat. Was there anything else that could stop us from realizing our dream of living aboard in complete and utter independence? Yep. We had a baby.

Cut now to 1996, Melbourne Beach, Florida. September 21st, the first day of autumn… Ninety-two degrees… It would be tomatoes-only this season. I would stare down the “Jane Kaczmarek Challenge” and grow enough tomatoes to feed all the boat people I knew. And you know what? In 1996, I did.

’96 was probably the best season I ever had with Florida tomatoes. After two seasons of trying to grow full-size northern varieties like Beefsteaks, I was advised by a radio talk show to try a smaller, faster-ripening breed like “Better Boy.” It made sense; my cherry tomatoes flourished. So in ’96 I planted a dozen Better Boy plants. That was a big crop, and coupled with two Sweet 100 cherry bushes, I soon had buckets of tomatoes. For a Christmas Eve party that year I brought a three-quart bowl of vine-ripened cherries. They were gone in twenty minutes. The Better Boys began ripening soon after. It was a forgiving winter ’96-’97 and we had Better Boys from New Year’s till Easter; not just for ourselves, but also for neighbors, friends, and customers. I even shipped a couple dozen to my mother and anxiously awaited her verdict. “They’re okay,” she said, “but not as good as the ones we grew in New York.” I knew she was right, but was proud anyway. How many tomatoes were New Yorkers picking at that time of year?

I also had good advice from my neighbor Jerry. Jerry lived beachside for decades and had gone through his own tomato phase. He claimed the old-timers grew vegetables in pits lined with marl, filled with cow manure and peat moss. That made sense. What’s marl? So in ’96, pits it was. Was I actually starting to listen to advice? That was so unlike me. But hey, there I was at the post office shipping tomatoes to my mother. …After having a tomato and cheese omelet for breakfast …Then going home to a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich for lunch…

I got bad advice, too. I got this from a book on Florida gardening: mulch. Don’t mulch here. It breeds nematodes. Use amendments every season instead (manure and peat moss). Yeah, mulch is cheap and it’s a great way to recycle your yard waste, but the things that make mulch mulch will also eat the roots off your plants. Up north they have freezes every year. That keeps the mulch-making nematodes in check. We can go a decade without a freeze here. Each season they just keep multiplying. They love tomato roots.

There are lots of leaf and fruit eaters. Everybody’s seen tomato hornworms. I found the best way to get rid of them naturally was to check the plants with a flashlight at night. They hide well, but you get the hunter’s eye pretty quick. Just look for turds, then look up. They get so big you can hear them chewing. There are lots of nifty frogs out at night too. Leave them alone. Another planteater is the orange-head, a medium-sized caterpillar. You can pick them too, but they get pretty numerous. So do leaf-girdlers and leaf-rollers. Soon it gets out of hand and the next thing you know, out comes the insecticide.

I don’t like using chemicals, but this is Florida. Tomatoes are not native. You need all the help you can get, natural or unnatural. I tried going “natural” with insecticide. The same book that told me to mulch said you could make a multi-purpose insecticide by using a “tea” made with tobacco. After all, the book claimed, many insecticides were tobacco-based. So I steeped-up a gallon of Red Man and proceeded to spray. It did nothing. Apparently, beachside caterpillars don’t mind a good chaw. I only have one more word about insects: Sevin. And spray the soil…

’97-’98 saw another good crop and I was so psyched I tried a summer crop. More bad advice… Someone at Mao Mart said to grow Romas, those pear-shaped beauties from Italy. I planted in May. Yeah, they popped right up, and looked great. Then we took a week’s vacation in New York. The neighbor kids were supposed to water them for me. They swore they did, but all the plants were dead in a week. There were also signs of late blight. Things started going downhill. With each season the yield shrank. By 2000 I was no longer giving them away. We were lucky to get one or two a week for the table by ’04. Cherries, yeah, but you get sick of cherries; you can’t put them on a sandwich. The problem? Nematodes. I even replaced the soil two years in a row. By ’08 I couldn’t get the plants to reach maturity; they just shriveled, choked off at the roots. I tried Nemacide, and it worked for a few weeks but soon lost its oomph. Then they quit making Nemacide.

My last crop was ’09-’10. Again, no yield, due mainly to the weather. We finally got those long-awaited freezes. Last fall I did not plant. I’m giving it a rest. I’m glad I did. I would have lost it all by December.

So there you go, Jane Kaczmarek, I have witnessed failure. Will I plant again? Of course. Because failure is part of the game. Right, Jane?

By Rick LaClaire

“I like to watch things suffer and die slowly. That’s why I garden.” — Spoony Spoonicus

By now, everyone has seen the TV series “Malcolm In The Middle.” You can’t miss it. It’s on four times a day. Whether it’s lunch, breakfast or suppertime, if you flick the TV on for company, there it is. Since I usually eat breakfast and lunch by myself, I’ve seen the episodes many times over. The first season was the best. Then, like any other TV series, it degrades season after season until mercifully, it’s pulled.

Unlike most sitcoms though, “Malcolm” didn’t disintegrate as completely as, say, “All In The Family” or “M.A.S.H.”. This, I believe, was due to its consistent cast and their dedication to fine acting. It was most evident in Bryan Cranston, who played the father and went on to star in the acclaimed series “Breaking Bad,” which if you haven’t seen, you should; it was one of the most unique television series ever, on par with “The Sopranos” and “Mad Men.”

Now, I know what you’re saying: “LaClaire, you watch too much TV, and what does ‘Malcolm In The Middle’ have to do with gardening?” Well, it’s like this. After so many years of seeing Malcolm and family on the tube, you begin to feel as if you know these people personally. Every time one of their faces appears in another presentation, you are compelled to watch, and usually compelled to approve. Why? Because you have become a fan. The same goes for any printed material about these people. And so it was with Jane Kaczmarek (Lois, on the show) who gave an interview some time ago stating that she grows tomatoes for diversion. Tomatoes? For diversion!?! That’s what she said, or at least implied. She also said that you have to be prepared to fail. Amen!

My mother grew the best tomatoes on this planet. I used to pick them when they were still warm from the sun and eat them like an apple, sometimes with a couple of shakes of salt. We would have so many she would can them, and in the midst of a cold New York winter they were welcome indeed, almost as good as from the vine. Late August, early September, I could always count on a case of “tomato-itis,” which was a mild bowel disorder from too many tomatoes. It was very similar to the “collywobbles,” which was an affliction brought on by too many crabapples. It’s not to be confused with “Wing’s Disease” though, which is an acute, singular event, brought on by a mix of multiple draft beers and hot Buffalo wings. For that disorder, I am still involved in the research and development of a non-melting ice-cube suppository.

College, marriage, a job in the city… An apartment lifestyle doesn’t lend itself to gardening, but my wife and I attempted anyway. We were soon introduced to the concept of container gardening, and began growing our own salads on our balcony. Well, maybe salads is not the right term; perhaps a salad is more accurate. In the one season we nursed cherry tomatoes, spinach and bib lettuce in the stifling carbon monoxide of Buffalo; we may have eked enough for a single appetizer. Once the cherries ripened they were popped immediately into the mouth, and most of the bib lettuce was used to decorate tuna sandwiches. We also discovered a malignancy known as “late blight,” which greatly shortened our harvest window. But what the heck, we tried, and soon were introduced to Ms. Kaczmarek’s “failure” concept.

As soon as I bought this pile of rocks I call my beachside residence, I began making way for a garden. There was a concrete sidewalk leading from the side door to the driveway, enclosing a patch of soil roughly four by twenty feet — a perfect tomato patch. It being June when we moved in, all I did at that time was turn the soil and add amendments (lawn clippings and manure). By September I was ready to plant, hoping for a winter crop. I’d had no instruction on Florida gardening and was essentially shooting from the hip. But you know, even if someone had tried to teach me, I probably wouldn’t have listened anyway. I was now a homeowner, a member of the “landed gentry,” and nobody was going to tell me what to do. After all, my mother grew the best tomatoes on the planet in Northern New York — as harsh an environment as was ever created — what’s to know? There was one piece of advice I did adhere to though: keep a journal.

I can’t find it. I put it in that place where you put things so you’ll always remember where you put them, and naturally, I can’t find it. Someday I’m going to open a door in this place and all that stuff is going to fall on me. And then I won’t remember why I kept it.

That journal would sure come in handy. I’d like to know what the hell I was thinking when I first decided to put seeds in this ratty-ass barrier island soil. I only kept it for two years, and it was basically a chronicle of when I planted, what I planted, and where. Like I wouldn’t know the difference between a wax bean and a pea… I experimented a lot then. I tried cantaloupe, strawberries, bell peppers, Swiss chard, spinach, onions… Each succumbed to one malady or another, and I soon learned this place was full of maladies.

Things sprouted and grew okay, which was a surprise considering this soil is 99% sand. Even after amending it with a hundred pounds of cow crap, this stuff was so porous that any trace of organic matter was percolated out with each rain. But if it was kept watered — with city water, not artesian — the plants looked healthy and put out foliage. Miss a day of watering though, and, well…

I remember watering knee-high bracts of Swiss chard one evening and finding every leaf skeletonized by some unseen herbivore next morning. I recall checking my onions by pulling a bulb only to find a half-inch hole perfectly bored through the center, then pulling another, and another, and another, finding they all had the same hole. I found that stinkbugs love bell peppers, and all they have to do is pierce the skin of the fruit to rot it. If strawberries touch the ground, something eats the bottoms off them. Cantaloupes attract a worm that eats the rind. Don’t even bother with peas; you need an acre of those to fill a soup pan.

But I did have luck with three crops that season: spinach, wax beans, and yup, you guessed it, tomatoes. I grew Sweet 100 cherries to die for. The bigger tomatoes were another story. They had to be watered almost constantly, and when they finally ripened — even though red and plump — they were nowhere near as good as Mom’s. They were mealy and tasteless.

The spinach was a godsend. It came up fast, loved this sandy loam, and put forth sheaf after sheaf of dark green nutty crispness. Boy was it good. Tossed in a salad, or better yet, layered on an egg-salad sandwich, we reveled in it. I vowed to grow more, and tried. I could never get another crop. Something else decided it liked spinach more than we.

Now wax beans are another story. They, too, love this place. We had wax beans out our ears. These things were eight, ten inches long; fat and juicy. But let me ask you a question: how many wax beans can you eat?

After two years of assorted crops — their progress noted in some lost journal — I began to focus. I would accept what I have now come to call the “JKC”: the Jane Kaczmarek Challenge. I would concentrate on tomatoes. I would plant and fail, plant and fail, until I could find a variety, season, and method that would afford me tomatoes like Mom used to make. I would grow so many I would give them away to my neighbors and friends. I would grow so many I would can them, just like Mom.

I might even ask someone for help.

Well, maybe…

By E. Boston

“America, what a country!” Remember that line from Yakov Smirnoff? What ever happened to that thought? Today it’s more appropriate to say, “America, what the hell is going on?” Now before I get hit from the left and right about bashing the U.S.A, just hold on a minute. I love America! I am the spouse of a military veteran, a member of the VFW men’s auxiliary, a voting, tax-paying, law-abiding (the important ones) citizen. From sea to shining sea, from wine racks to gun racks, red states and blue states, this land was made for you and me. God bless America! Or, more apropos, God help America! I’m as red, white and blue as anyone, but we’re waving Old Glory over a steaming pile of crap and WE need to take some action.

Lately I’m an A-lister in regards to our economy, our government, and our country — angry, anxious, ambivalent, alarmed, amazed, abused, annoyed, affronted, accosted; these are but a few from the handy online thesaurus to convey my utter disgust with the current state of affairs. Conversations with my stepson about politics and society often leave me with some or all of these feelings. He is 28, intellectually inquisitive, reactionary, hopeful. I’m 45, cynical, pessimistic, despondent. I admire and pity him simultaneously. Why? Because I have no answers for his questions; I concur with his frustrations but lack his spirit of confrontation. Perhaps this little piece will ignite a flame beneath my butt and the derrieres of other proud Americans, because truth be told, we’ve sold out our country. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Teapartiers, non-participants, communists, anarchists, ecologists, punks, hippies: everyone living under the oppression and injustice perpetrated by our government, justice system and banking industry; we have no one to blame but ourselves. WOW! Heavy stuff from a guy who usually writes nice anecdotal bits about our local community and current holidays. Trust me, I wish I had a good story about a barbecue/pool party or how great fireworks night is at Space Coast Stadium.

The disparity between rich and poor in the U.S. has not been greater since the Great Depression. I wasn’t there, but most folks were poor. Nowadays, thanks to the endless cycle of spin we choke down daily, millionaires aren’t rich, we have working class poor, and the poverty level is a dollar amount set by the government that continually drops, thus making all of us wealthier. How many folks have felt wealthier since the rape of the American economy in 2008? Now that was a crime! A crime built up by poor economic fundamentals, negligence in oversight and greed. It’s documented in Congressional reports and various films. The business plan of it all: banks and Wall Street get the government and law enforcement on board so that in the “name of prosperity” the public gets ripped off and then stuck with the bill, and no one goes to jail. Well, except Bernie Madoff, who had the audacity to rip off stupid rich people. If you’d like to read some in-depth articles on the incestuous nature of Wall Street, the SEC, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the New York Attorney General, see “Why Isn’t Wall Street In Jail” (Rolling Stone, 3/3/2011) or “In Financial Crisis, No Persecutions of Top Figures” (Wall Street Journal, 4/14/2011).

Now it’s said statistics can be made to tell any story, but here are some numbers regarding the fallout from the “crisis” that should illustrate the magnitude of this crime upon Americans and the injustice of the lack of prosecution upon the guilty. From “Adding Up the Government’s Total Bailout Tab” (New York Times, 2/4/2009): “Government as Investor: $9 trillion; Government as Insurer: $1.7 trillion; Government as Lender: $1.4 trillion.” Combine those figures with the woes of Medicare and Social Security and it’s not hard to see where our deficit comes from. Is it coincidence that Goldman Sachs got $800 billion and was the largest Obama campaign contributor? How about contributions from the rest of the TARP recipients? Like any other mafia, they bought their boys into office and then used them when they needed to make a profit and escape the law. The U.S. Government, as part of the bailout for B of A is now legally known as the Bank of America (did you notice the Cocoa Beach branch is gone?) and so saddled with debt that S&P (Standard & Poor’s) may consider lowering our AAA credit rating. Also, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) predicts we’ll be the second largest economy by 2016. Meanwhile, nationwide in 2010, there were 2.9 million home foreclosures — on top of 2.8 million in 2008. Remember the stimulus movement and tax breaks of $8,000 to new homebuyers? About 20% of those were actually paid out; probably at a lower percentage than those who sought TARP money.

As for criminals and arrests: (from Snopes.com) “1999 stats of Members of Congress — Accused of Spouse abuse: 29; Arrested for — Fraud: 7; — Writing bad checks: 19; — Assault: 3; — Drugs: 14; — Shoplifting: 8.” Also, 117 have bankrupted at lease 2 businesses, 71 can’t get credit cards due to bad credit, and 84 were stopped for drunk driving and claimed congressional immunity.

In 2010, 393,000 people were deported from the U.S. at a cost of $5 Billion. And based on a listing of 2009 arrests (per drugwarfacts.com) comes this: total U.S. arrests: 13.6 million; violent crime arrests: .6 million; total drug arrests: 1.6 million; marijuana trafficking/sale arrests: .1 million; marijuana possession arrests: .8 million.

So, since Wall Street blackmailed all of us in 2008: 5 million homes have been foreclosed, 400,000, probably hardworking illegals, have been shipped out, 1 million potheads or dealers have been arrested, and Washington is still full of do-nothing, b.s. artists who con us every election and are mostly degenerate, millionaire lawyers who pass nothing across the aisle but campaign contributor listings, and Wall Street is back in business with AIG and others reporting profits and bonuses while less than 1/4 of TARP money has been repaid. Does this enrage anyone else? Our next big vote comes up in 2012.

I’ll vote “No Confidence.”

Thank goodness Memorial Day weekend is coming up! Nothing soothes us Americans like BBQ and beer! I’m also going to Hangout Fest in May (check out the lineup of bands for that one!). A three-day rock n’ roll party is sure to right my ship.

Besides, it’s not like I owe $14 trillion!

By Dan Reiter

Here’s another exercise for those of you in need of a good soul rattling. I always find writing these lists is like cracking the shell of a hard-boiled egg with a spoon; bit by bit you chip away that calcified layer of cynicism, until all that is left is the truth, glistening from within.

It’s a wish list, simple enough. My hopes and desires for the month of May. I admit I was feeling somewhat mired in the sludge when I scribbled it down last night… caught in a flat spell, you might say. It took me half an hour, but most of that was spent on the first three items. The rest flowed out in a few minutes. I tried to keep it realistic, stay local, and I limited myself to a budget of zero dollars.*

I think May is an appropriate month for such a list. The sun gains weight in May, heats into molten bronze, becomes ideal for burnishing the spirit. It is a transformative time. I hope you enjoy it, and perhaps get some ideas for a list of your own. Please, sit back and enjoy your drink…

Sip coffee in the early morning sun, Saturday.

Spread a blanket over the grass on a clear night. Lay back, breathe deeply, wait. See a shooting star.

Consider this: To measure your seasons in gentle touches, in insinuations… spring as the most unassuming packages, green-wrapped bulbs on naked branches, monarch cocoons hanging in secret corners of the garden… then the blooms of summer, plumeria, cassia, oleander, hibiscus opening like the fingers of a hand… autumn and winter only in the breath of the wind and the sea, half invisible. Consider, also: to make it as a lover of aesthetics on the Space Coast, you must take time, learn to revel in nature’s minutiae.

Dig caverns in the sand at low tide; connect together with rivers; sit at a distance to watch the children inhabit your fleeting kingdoms.

Hang up your wetsuit for the season.

Smile at a local… someone whose name you don’t know but whose face you’ve seen a hundred times before.

Stand in quiet contemplation as the sun wobbles red into the river.

Cruise out for a bike ride on a balmy morning. Happen upon a swarm of bright yellow butterflies.

Check out a local art show.

Celebrate the miracle of motherhood. Appreciate her. Surprise her. Embrace her. Make her laugh.

Linger over the yardwork. Draw in the sicksweet scent of jasmine and gardenia. Press fresh-born rubber leaves between your fingertips.

Step into the ocean, morning. Allow the energy of the seawater to rise up through your feet, like the first rain sucked up by the thirsty roots of a tree.

Listen to the chittering symphony of migrating gulls, from inside the flock.

Sit on the warm, rolling outside. Study the coastline as you wait for the set wave. Share the peak with a friend.

Watch a young sea turtle duck its head beneath your wave. Coast high up the wall as you pass it by.

Be astounded by a cloud-painting… a lacework of sunlight breaking through the dark eastern sky, or clouds lit from within like some anenome, or like a dandelion fanning out light in petals… or a low veil of broken morning silver, splaying the light over the ocean like pixie glitter. Try to describe it to yourself.

Stand with both feet over the nose of your longboard. Cruise impossibly onward. Without intention or artifice, arch your back.

Watch a space ship fire into the blue dusk over the Banana River.

Attend an outdoor concert.

Have a picnic under the shadow of a live oak.

Watch the first gleam of the sun unfold like a rose petal on the eastern line of the ocean.

Breathe in the last of the winter winds. Remember their scent, so that you might stir them into the mix one humid summer day.

Go to a surf contest.

Walk down the warm sand, barefoot, early morning. Run back up, feet burning, late afternoon.

Toast yourself in the sun. Urge red skin into healthy brown. Tan peace signs into your feet.

Re-evaluate your perspective. Notice new details along the same old roads.

Stand-up paddle among the mangroves. Drink in the golden light.

Smile at a dolphin. Receive a smile in return.

Be a summer person. Take on a sultry perspective. Succumb to the thick, dank air. Prowl through the day at the sun’s pace. Become immune to mosquito bites. Accept that you will sweat. Be prepared, on any given day, to strip down to nothing and go tribal.

Enjoy moments as they come. Live in the now. Seek out the beauty in all things.

* A few non-budget items did creep onto the list — I’m including them here. The “discretionary earmarks”:

Dine on cheese fondue at Heidi’s. Have a cocktail and let the sweet sounds of the Ron Texeira trio usher in the night.

Drive over the causeway for a slice of real pizza at Ryan’s Village Pizza in Cocoa Village.

Satisfy your health food craving with a Maverick’s at The Green Room.

Drop into Oasis Shaved Ice for old-school kitsch and a Hawaiian-style treat. Ask for condensed milk on top.

Crack open a cold bottle of Cote de Provence rosé wine.

Indulge yourself with an evening at the Fat Snook.

DOUBLE ENTENDRE
By David Sherman

The last time a major western nation experienced this level of disparity in wealth, with so much being held by so few while so little is held by so many, was in France, just before Bastille Day. How did that one end again?

I recently lobbed that line over the net in an exchange with a longtime friend of mine, whose political affiliation shall remain nameless (though it’s purportedly both Grand and Old). He immediately fired back with, “Don’t you mean America in the 1920s?” I’ll give my friend this. He has an encyclopedic mind, and in political conversations he plays the net like a ninja possessed. It’s quite frustrating, sometimes withering, and always impressive. It’s why I still enjoy discussing matters with him over which I know we will never agree, even after almost 24 years.

I’ll leave the Bastille Day vs. 1920s America debate for another day. Mainly because, for the moment, both serve my purpose. In the case of France, an overextended and near-bankrupt government sought to alleviate its debts by disproportionately adding additional taxes to the poor and politically weak rather than the wealthy and powerful. (Sound familiar?) In modern scientific terminology, “THEY FREAKED!” And we got the French Revolution. (And you thought the peasants were revolting before…)

In 1920s America the Roaring 20s were truly roaring. I believe the scientific terminology here is, “Train kept a rollin’ all night long.” That is until the tracks ran out at a place called Wall Street. And we got the Great Depression. (And you thought you were depressed before…) While I will applaud the ultimate democratic results of the French Revolution, make no mistake: its immediate effect on the populace of France was every bit as dire as that of the Great Depression 140 years later.

Is it just coincidence that in both cases specific words stand out in double meaning — “revolting” and “depression”? Or, as I suspect, is this really a cynical and sarcastic sentient universe’s way of slapping us in the face with a big, sloppy, wet double entendre as a way of hoping to underscore what should be, to all but the most obtuse of students, a glaring fundamental fact of socio-economic existence: THIS S@#% DOESN’T WORK! When your economy becomes a pyramid stood on its point, it will topple. Usually with disastrous results.

After the Great Depression regulations were set in place to stop the sort of reckless, irresponsible, and often intentionally predatory and deceitful practices which led to that calamity. Practices that, while unchecked, had contributed to an ongoing cycle of boom and bust since our nation’s inception. The systematic dismantling of these safety measures has been the sole aim of the monied interests in our country ever since. The evidence of their success and the inevitable results thereof was the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the near collapse of the rest of our economy in the chaos that followed. I would love to lay all the blame at the feet of the Republican Party, but the truth is that no small number of Democrats had their hands in this betrayal of public trust as well, hands no doubt just as tainted by corporate and special interest campaign funds as those of their Republican colleagues. Need I repeat what we should have already learned: THIS S@#% DOESN’T WORK!

Now, Republican-controlled state governments are cutting millions in spending on education and assistance to the poor, while at the same time granting billions in tax breaks for wealthy corporations, many of whom made millions in campaign contributions, and most of whom shall undoubtedly express their thanks with millions more. Our own Governor, Rick Scott, proposes cutting education by $3.3 billion; that’s $703 per pupil. This is in a state that ranks 35th in primary and secondary spending, 50th in higher education spending, and 48th in overall education spending! On top of this, Scott also wants to gut the prison system, slashing 1,690 jobs from a department already dangerously understaffed. If this weren’t enough, our new governor wishes to reduce the corporate income tax from its current 5.5% to 3%.  That’s a loss in state revenues of over $1.5 billion over the next two years. He hopes to phase it out completely by 2018! That’s less for our children so we can give more back to the corporations! (And the pyramid gets fatter at the top.)

If we the people don’t come to our collective senses and see this systematic plundering of the public coffers for corporate profit as the irresponsible abuse of public power that it so obviously is, our entire socio-economic infrastructure will collapse. We will be bankrupt. We will be France in 1879. We will be us in 1929 (again). The pyramid will fall. Again.

I wonder what double entendre history and a snickering universe will slap us with this time?

DEEP INSIDE COSMO’S FACTORY
By M. Alberto Rivera

I asked the question I always ask at yard sales: “Do you have any old records?” I say this with a real emphasis on old so as to stress how they’re not worth much, no matter what the seller has heard. Even if they are worth a substantial bit of money, I don’t foresee myself shelling out full value for them on my budget.

After asking this question the man holding the sale said, “I do. I just didn’t think to put them out.” He disappeared from sight and I could hear him pushing aside clutter before saying, “Come here, you.”

He reappeared and set the cardboard box on the counter. “Knock yourself out, chief.” He then turned his attention to some other people who were walking up the driveway.

I flipped through the stranger’s records, a favorite pastime of mine. I have spent countless hours doing so, and love to talk to people who are similarly afflicted. I found some folk artist I’d never heard of on the Vanguard label and a few others that piqued my interest. The seller asked if I’d found anything I liked, and as he looked at some first-generation punk albums I’d set aside he said, “I bet these were ever only played once.”

An older woman started asking him about the price of golf balls, and once more, he excused himself to conduct business. And there it was — a faded copy of Cosmo’s Factory, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s fifth album, the one with the overlong version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and my favorite CCR tune, the dark and haunting “Run Through the Jungle.” I was well familiar with this album, as my neighbor had been obsessed with CCR for a time and played them incessantly at top volume for the better part of a summer.

The cover was incredibly haggard and peeling. Much of the color photo had fallen away in the upper left corner. It was well worn, but not beat up. I flipped it over to look for a date, but after seeing the seller once again, I knew exactly what it was.

I flagged him down. “Hey man, you don’t want to sell this. I bet you bought it when it came out. Even if you don’t have anywhere to play it, you should probably hold onto it.”

He took it from me, examined it carefully, and his face changed immediately. “Wow. We must have played this thing every day I was in Vietnam.”

He was quiet again for a long moment, lost in thought. I could picture him, a too-thin boy, just turned 19, wearing oversized government issue glasses, which aren’t flattering on anyone, and regulation olive drab green BDUs soaked with sweat stains and sticking to his skin as he sat in a tent alongside his friends, knocking back can after can of cheap beer at the end of a work day, no longer bothering to count how many days he had left in the humid squalor of this country no one in their right mind would want, let alone want to fight for; sitting on an empty wooden ammo crate listening to Cosmo’s Factory as “Up Around the Bend” cranked out of the turntable’s single speaker, singing along with every word, escaping back to whatever world he’d so recently left, the world where he dated pretty girls with blonde hair, ran track, and liked drinking beer with his buddies alongside some muddy creek on Friday nights, just like he was doing now.

He looked at me and said, “You’re right.” He promptly took the record inside his home.

The punk albums in his collection I understood too. A reinvention phase, brought on by turning 30, when you’ve become tired of everything you like, and want — no, need — to try something new. But I could tell it hadn’t been a good fit, as there were only three albums like that in the box.

I paid for the records, and he and I silently understood each other. Cosmo’s Factory had taken him from 19 to 21. He probably played it once when he got home, and then never again. It didn’t sound the same back in the real world. It was something he bought at an Army PX during his overnight stay in Hawaii, his last night in the U.S. before going around the world for God knows what reason. Or maybe his little brother had mailed it to him. But whichever way he came to posses this, it helped him clear his thoughts from another long day, where he no longer noticed the sound of helicopters coming and going; where the sound of distant mortar fire was a mere nuisance until the shelling began to encroach on the camp’s perimeter.

We both understood how a song is able to completely define a moment in time, moments you couldn’t possibly expect anyone else to understand what’s felt when certain music plays or the memories attached to them.

I was privy to this incredibly personal moment when this stranger, a spry 60-year-old man faced the boy he used to be and took him in from a cluttered and confused past to a more comfortable place inside his home. Each man finally at peace with the other.

MY PERSONAL GRAMMYS
By Rick LaClaire

From the time I was a teenager, and until my early 30s, my goal was to be a musician. Not a rock star, per se, but a respected singer and songwriter. Rock stars were meat puppets, in my opinion. They were clothes-hangers and “frontmen,” mere purveyors of the actual art. The art was in the writing, and I began very young.

From the get-go, I eschewed anything glitzy. My guitars were old, cheap, and beat-up. I wore jeans and t-shirts when I performed. No smoke bombs or props. Even our light show was cheesy. I had something to say and didn’t need visuals to clutter the message. Mostly, that message was: “I’m lonely and no one understands me.”

Of course I wanted to impress girls, especially as a teenager. I couldn’t do it on the athletic field, and I couldn’t do it with my devastating good looks, so I chose a more cerebral route: I was going to be deep. Did it work? Yes and no. Yes, I got dates and a second glance, but no, I wasn’t what you would consider a ladykiller. That title went to the athletes and rock stars.

Rock stars had sound systems. Our amps had cracked speakers. Rock stars had groupies. The girls I attracted were much like me: lonely and misunderstood. Rock stars snorted coke and drank champagne. We were into Marlboros and quarts of Schlitz. Rock stars arrived in a bus with the band’s name on the side. We packed all our homely gear in a Saab and a ’62 Buick.

College brought contact with some truly talented musicians. When my school days were done, we continued playing. For eleven years I played the bars. Hooked up with an indie label in Buffalo, N.Y. Made records. Got to do a couple concerts as an opening act. Did interviews, in print and on the air. Made a music video. Sold a song… I guess I was a rock star and didn’t even know it.

No, I didn’t get rich. I didn’t get famous. Never had groupies… But yeah, it was fun. I stopped when I started to feel foolish. I was chasing an unattainable goal and I chose Buffalo as the place to play it out. Rock stars went to New York or L.A. But I didn’t want to be a rock star. I just wanted to be a musician.

Writing songs, recording songs, learning other people’s music to flesh out a set list; these things gave me a certain slant on the songs I hear every day. Even now, decades after my “rock star” days, I tend to deconstruct music when I hear it. After six years of analog recording in Buffalo and another three of digital here in Florida, I can pretty much tell how a song was put together in one listen. I’m sure anyone who records does the same thing, and at first I found it annoying. Now I find it fun. I also feel it qualifies my opinion. And that’s all you can really have with music: an opinion. Music, like all art, is neither good nor bad, it’s just music. What tickles my fancy might make you throw up. But like anything acceptable, the quality of effort put forth greatly affects the end product.

It is February as I write this, and on the thirteenth of this month the music industry will once again gather to pat itself on the back with the 53rd Grammy Awards. Had I ever been nominated for a Grammy I would probably have a different opinion, but I’ve always viewed this as pretty silly and never pay it much mind. As I stated, I like what I like and no award is going to sway me. But what if every listener could grant his own awards, and in categories he or she picks? And why limit it to one year? I say let’s make the playing field a lot broader by including popular recorded music from many decades. And let’s start with categories like this:

The Best Year For Rock Music: In my opinion the award goes to 1982, with 1978 a close second. ’78 saw Punk turn into New Wave with emergent acts like Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Talking Heads, and The Cars. Punk was a breath of fresh air after the mindlessness of Disco, and New Wave made it more listenable. ’82 saw those acts mature and included newcomers like Men At Work, Culture Club, Wall Of Voodoo, Berlin — it seemed like every day there was a new act, a new sound. ’82 also saw a resurgence in rock’s roots. Cases in point: Stray Cats, The Blasters, and Los Lobos. It was suddenly like, “anything goes.”

Rock’s Most Unique Act: The Doors. Listen to the song “Strange Days.” Morrison whispers the lyrics over the main vocal. Nobody ever sounded like those guys, before or since.

A Lifetime Achievement Award for the First Heavy Metal Band: Blue Cheer. Rumor had it they were so loud they recorded their first single in a boathouse — no studio would accommodate them. And this was in 1966! Eat your hearts out, Black Sabbath. You can have my copy of Vincebus Eruptum, but first you’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

The Best Two Songs In A Row On Vinyl: The Beatles’ Yesterday and Today LP, side two: “And Your Bird Can Sing” followed by “If I Needed Someone.”

Worst Follow-Up Album By A Major Act: Tusk by Fleetwood Mac. I wasn’t a big fan of these guys, but I never saw a band fall off the face of the earth so sharply.

Second Worst Follow-Up Album: Thick As A Brick, Jethro Tull. Reading the cover was more interesting than listening to the music. But how could you follow Aqualung? Especially after an ascendancy like Stand Up and Benefit?

Worst Single Ever: This is my favorite question. I have asked this of dozens of people my age and it usually boils down to two: “MacArthur Park” by Richard Harris and “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. Both these songs were huge hits in their day, which also means somebody thought they were pretty good. I would like to meet those people (and herd them into a storage container for shipment to Pago-Pago). Every now and then some erudite DJ will pose this same question. Many of the answers are hilarious and I tend to agree with almost all of them, but when it comes down to a final decision I have to place myself in the “Bohemian Rhapsody” camp. I suppose it’s unfair, in a way. I have only listened to the song all the way through once. I never could stand to do it again. It is said that Queen was two different bands: a studio band and a live band. Supposedly their live show was just their rock songs, the opera-like stuff was reserved for vinyl only. I dunno… I had no desire to hear “Fat-Bottomed Girls” in any context.

Most Talented One-Hit Wonder: Seatrain with “Thirteen Questions.” Yeah, the Doors were unique but so were these guys, especially for 1970, which was when rock was getting a bit stale due to corporatization. Sea Train did leave its mark though, the great picker Peter Rowan, a driving force in West Coast folk rock. He wrote “Panama Red” (one of my college anthems) and was a member of Old and In the Way, a group that helped popularize the new Bluegrass movement in the ’70s.

Coolest Album Cover: Osibisa by Osibisa. Their music sounded like Santana meets the Pygmies (“criss-cross rhythms that explode with happiness”), but what a cover by Roger Dean. Elephants with insect wings… Waaay trippy… Yeah, I bought it for the cover. I was only 17 and soon discovered I didn’t appreciate African rock yet. I’ll have to dig that out and give it another listen — or at least a look. Dean went on to do tons of album covers for bands as diverse as Yes, Uriah Heep, and Budgie.

Worst Album Cover? The so-called “White Album” by The Beatles. You can’t argue with that. The only thing worse than a bad effort is no effort at all. It was the first double album I’d ever seen. And why? In my opinion they could have dumped half the cuts anyway. It’s almost like they were too lazy to edit as well as too lazy to come up with an acceptable cover.

Best Debut Album: Dire Straits by Dire Straits, from my second favorite rock year, 1978. Not a bad cut on the platter.

Best Live Band: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Seeing is believing. They have so much fun playing that you can’t help but catch it. They’re good, too!

All right, now here’s the Big Award, the one everybody wants to know:

The Best Make-Out Album Of All Time: There are lots of “good” ones: The James Gang, Thirds… Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin… Country Joe and the Fish, CJ Fish… Leo Kottke, Greenhouse… But there’s only one BEST: that has to be none other than Avalon by Roxy Music. Try and keep your pants on during that one.

I’m sure that not everyone will agree with these opinions, in fact I’m sure that no one will completely. I’d sure love to hear your ideas. My editor probably would too. He loves feedback; it means somebody’s reading this thing!

Pot ‘O Gold
By Rick LaClaire

As my readership (Hi, Mom!) alreaady knows, I do not sleep well. At my age this is a common malady, exacerbated by a shrinking bladder and an annoying recurrence of something called “acid reflux.” I have also heard it referred to as acid reflux disease, but I find that description a bit harsh. To me, a disease is something you haplessly blunder into; something you catch. Acid reflux is basically self-induced (What? You mean tequila and birthday cake don’t mix?), and it was that affliction which drove me from my sheets a few days ago, gasping for breath.

What a lousy way to wake up. On fire from paunch to palate, jerked upright with the worst taste in the world in your mouth, flailing the nightstand for the Tums. ‘Course then, once you’re up, you have to pee. On go the blinding bathroom lights and they induce a sneezing fit.  This one’s for the boys: have you ever tried to pee during a sneezing fit? Not a pretty sight.

After breathing flames, blowing your nose and mopping the wall, sleep becomes elusive. It being a weekend night, I figured I’d stay up and read till I got sleepy again. But then, what the heck, there sits the tube and remote — why not take the couch potato route?

There’s not much on television at 2:30 in the morning. You can get yelled at by religious people, yelled at by appliance salesmen, yelled at by pitchmen hawking bathroom cleaner, or yelled at by somebody cooking a chicken in what looks like an old mimeograph machine. I don’t watch TV to be yelled at. I want escape. And finally, after four full minutes of being yelled at, I found it on the “Cheesy Western Channel” (CWC, for short): back-to-back episodes of “Bonanza” till dawn.

What about “Bonanza” does not cry out “escape”? It’s got everything. You have three sons, a paw, a Chinaman, and scads of horses, ensconced firmly upon the glittering waters of Lake Tahoe. Supposedly they raise cows, but I’ve never seen one on the show. Maybe they’re raising something else… Supposedly, Ben Cartwright made his fortune at sea, outlived three wives and then bought two-thirds of the Wild West. Something fishy there. How come his wives keep dying? How do you make money at sea? Smuggling? Piracy? How do you segue from seafaring to animal husbandry? They do not relate. Lots of unanswered questions here, Ben.

I’ve assailed “Bonanza” before (see The Beachside Resident, July 2008: “AC/TV”). My readership (Hi Mom!) is already keenly aware of the fact that they never change their clothes and never eat Chinese (couldn’t Hop Sing put the Kung Pao on a cow?). My favorite “Bonanza” episode is the one where Adam wears black, Little Joe shmoozes a girl, and Hoss says “Dad-burn it, Paw.” (Old joke…) Anyway, the episode I caught on this particular foray had to do with leprechauns. Have you seen it? The boys are out poking cows or whatever they do on that ranch and Hoss starts seeing Little People. Of course everyone thinks he’s been sampling the local cactus, but a veritable gold rush occurs as all the neighborhood cowboys invade the Ponderosa attempting to capture a leprechaun with hopes of getting their hands on the ubiquitous pot o’ gold. Madcap slapstick ensues, but I will not reveal the outcome. That is not the point. The point is that the entire metropolis of Virginia City is turned upside down while everyone scrambles for a quick buck. Except of course Ben Cartwright — he’s already rich as Croesus from his piracy/smuggling/wife-killing/cow-poking days, and doesn’t need to.

What if you really did stumble upon a pot of gold? How would you handle it? I’m of the opinion that when you really go looking for something, you don’t usually find it. Like buying lottery tickets, dropping coins in a slot, guessing at beans in a jar — you never win; at least I don’t. But then you’ll just be walking along and, well… Like the time I found a pot of gold.

Actually, it was silver, not gold. And it wasn’t in a pot. It was in a gutter. Loose. Thousands of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters just laying there. I was on my morning walk and happened to look down and there they were.

Now were this pile of money in someone’s yard or driveway, I would have kept walking. But this was fair game in my opinion. It was in the gutter of a public street. No man’s land… No, I did not dive on it, even though it looked like a few score bucks. I let it go that first day, because I wanted to make sure I gave the owner a chance to reclaim his loss. Two days later, on my next walk, it was still there. Hmmm… I gave it two more. Bingo, still there, and this time I bent and filled my pockets with all the quarters I could find. This was nine or ten bucks worth and it almost pulled my shorts down with the weight. I jingled all the way home.

Two days later the pile was still there, minus the quarters, naturally. I stuffed my pockets with dimes. There were hundreds. I wore a belt that morning, so’s not to moon the dog-walkers. This was just too easy.

I hoisted the nickels on my next walk. How come no one else had found this? Maybe other people are too proud to bend for change. I’m not. Especially when there’s so much. I stopped at the bank that day, not to deposit but to get coin wrappers. I asked for extra penny rolls.  There had to be a of couple thousand of those in the pile. That would be my next quest, and for it I rolled up a Crown Royal bag and stuffed it in my gym shorts. I was going to clean the gutter.

It didn’t happen. Someone had beat me to the pennies. Not a big deal, I’d already harvested the meat of the pile. But so ended that Pot O’ Gold — or Pot O’ Copper by this point. I hope a kid found it. The fact that someone found it at all made me feel guilty; maybe it was the person who lost it. Such is luck: someone wins, someone loses,  right? That’s what I tried to tell myself.

I once knew a guy who found two hundred bucks on a barroom floor. That was a lot of money in 1974. He was broke, a barfly who owed everybody money and immediately wanted to pay everybody back. A nightlong bar crawl ensued, and our host paid for everything. We’d finally hit every bar in town and were back at the bar where he’d found the money. It was closing time and ours was the only table still drinking. A distraught college coed interrupted our brew-ha, tears streaming, and inquired if any of us had seen a packet with $200 — it was her monthly paycheck from a work/study job, and all she had to live on. That was a buzzkill, to say the least. Our host produced the envelope and apologized. There was only $40 left. Lessons were learned on both sides that night: if it’s not yours, it’s not yours; and pay attention to where you put your money.

My next pot of gold was neither monetary nor metallic. It was plastic, vinyl to be precise. You may recall the gift my sister gave me last year, a rack of old 45s from the ’50s and early ’60s (see The Beachside Resident July, 2010: “Big Sis”). In retrospect, that too was a pot of gold, but I found another, right here in my house.

It seems that some time ago my father-in-law was cleaning out the closets in the old homestead and he too came across a stack of 45s. They were shipped in an old “train case” — you know what I’m talking about; one of those small, deep suitcases with a mirror on the inside of the cover (also known as an “overnighter”). The records, being concealed in luggage like this, went unnoticed. The bag had been moved from pillar to post and never opened. Well, the other day, while searching for something else, I opened it. It’s been kicking around so long, we don’t even remember when or if it was sent. We might have carried it ourselves, we don’t recall. But what a treasure trove it is!

There’s a good hundred discs in that train case, all classics from the late ’60s to about 1972. It’s Beatles mostly, with some Creedence, the Mamas and Papas, and the Rolling Stones scattered amongst for good measure. Got some real classics in this pile, too. “Spirit In the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum, “Abraham, Martin and John” by Dion, “Eight Miles High” by the Byrds…. And of course some clinkers: Bobby Sherman, the Monkees, Herman’s Hermits… The funny thing is, this collection seems to pick up right where my sister’s collection ends. So I’m good from about 1956 to 1972, almost the entire length of my childhood. A pot of gold, indeed!

Now I need to find an old jukebox. I’d love to have these things all together, ripe for spinning. Think I’ll find one in the gutter or the back of a closet? Probably not. But I’ll keep my eyes open.

Who says leprechauns don’t exist?

The Green Scene
By E. Boston

Spring has sprung at last on the Space Coast. That means warm days and comfortable nights sleeping with the window open; baseball spring training; hitting the beach, riding bikes, and afternoon barbecues and nighttime fire pits. Plus, NHL and Euro soccer seasons are shaping up and there’s the impending March Madness… Spring is just a great season. But the big day in March, of course, is Saint Patrick’s Day.

Though not a national holiday in the U.S., March 17 is observed as a celebration of Irish culture and heritage in cities worldwide. To say that the current format of the day’s observance has lost all of its original context and integrity, or that plastic green derbies have replaced any religious notion of a saint’s feast day is a matter of opinion.

Is it the celebration for the patron saint of Ireland, or is it for Ireland and the Irish, no matter how far descended one’s lineage might be? What do we even know about Saint Patrick?

Okay, I hope my Irish friends are sitting down: St. Patrick was English. He was a Roman Briton, from Britain. But this will make you feel better: in his youth he was enslaved for six years by a Celtic chieftain in the kingdom of Dál Riata. After Patrick had a vision of his 200-mile flight and escape via ship, he up and split. In 433, he returned to Hibernia (Ireland) as a priest and missionary who wrote two letters in Latin — called the “Confessio” and the “Epistola” — telling of his life and servitude to Christ. He landed near Wicklow Head, much to the chagrin of the local Druids. On his way to see his former master, whom Patrick was going to pay the ransom for being a runaway slave and “impart to him the blessings and freedom of God’s children”, he performed his first miracle at Sabhal. The arm of Dichu, a Druid who intended to smite Patrick with his sword, was held rigid until he declared himself obedient to Patrick. Benen, the son of the Celtic chief Secsnen, was so converted that he “clung to Patrick’s feet, vowing never to leave him.”

The ultimate victory of the power of prayer over the paganism of the Druids came at the gathering at Tara by Leoghaire. Kneeling in prayer in front of Brehons, Celts, and Druids, Patrick made the brightest beams of sunshine break through the darkness brought about by Druid incantations. The finale involved a flying Druid “dashed to pieces” upon a rock. The Druids were done. Their own oracles announced that “the messenger of Christ had come to Erin.” Patrick then picked a shamrock as a metaphoric teaching instrument to relate the Holy Trinity to the crowd.

But St. Patrick’s banishing the snakes from Ireland is uncertain. I’ve been to Ireland twice, traveled through three-fourths of the island, and never once saw a snake. Not quite empirical evidence, but hey, who knows? St. Patrick died on March 17 either in 461 or 493; research has developed support for both estimations. Though declared a “Saint In Heaven,” no Pope ever formally canonized Patrick. He is venerated as the patron saint of Ireland, and County Kilpatrick and Kilpatrick Street in Chicago are named for him, as are St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City and St. Pat’s H.S., which my nephew attended. Liturgical observation of the Holy Day of the Feast of St. Patrick is held by Christians worldwide.

For many, it’s become a day when “Everyone is Irish” and people wearing shirts bearing slogans like “___ Me, I’m Irish!” or “Erin Go Bra-less!”. There are parades with pipe bands; dancers performing jigs and reels; corned beef and cabbage; green beer; “car bomb” shots (ask your bartender); green-dyed rivers, and green Major League Baseball team hats and NHL sweaters (hockey players wear sweaters, not jerseys). I myself have both a Cubs hat and Jonathan Toews #19 Blackhawks sweater in green with white shamrocks on them. Top cities for Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations include Boston, NYC, Chicago, Savannah, and N’awlins. From personal experience, San Francisco’s festivities are pretty fun as well. Cocoa Beach celebrates St. Patrick’s Day too, with the arguable epicenter being Paddy Cassidy’s Irish Pub. It’s a real event: an exhausting day for the staff that transforms the familiar, comfortable local into a fenced-in, jam-packed music, beer and food fest that rages well through the night. If I’m not out of town for work, I go late afternoon to early evening before the crowd gets too much for me.

St. Patrick’s day has become serious business for Hallmark, Guinness, Budweiser, and thousands of bars and taverns. And it’s serious business for many celebrants as well. Some take the day off, if not the following day, because it’s a day to paint your face and hair green and PARTY! To American descendants of Irish ancestors, it’s a day of Irish pride — of the challenges faced by those immigrants and of their contributions to developing our nation and themselves. Other nations have made equal contributions, but none have a day that rivals Saint Patrick’s Day. For the Irish now in America, it’s a mixed day of celebration and lament — of pride in their culture and heritage and the sadness of missing home, and the pain of knowing that a better life lay beyond Erin’s shores.

The countdown clock in Paddy Cassidy’s ticks off the remaining days by the second. It’s time to find that green St. Patty’s day outfit and get the brisket, potatoes, and cabbage ready, whether you attend mass to pray and contemplate the mission and faith of St. Patrick, or flaunt a green mohawk and drink Guinness all day — or even if you’re somewhere in between. If you’d like to meet a real leprechaun, he’ll be working at Paddy’s on St. Patty’s day. Just ask for Good-Natured Ray.

Erin Go Bragh!