Meetings

 

I hate meetings. I know, they're important. They need to happen, but I hate them. It goes all the way back to Boy Scouts. Every Friday I had to show up to the Saint George School basement for boring scout meetings. The only good thing about the scout meetings were the other boys. I didn't realize it at the time, but that was when I had the first inkling I was gay. Fast forward to the 1980's and corporate life. Again, meetings. Stupid, boring meetings that probably needed to happen, but I couldn't stand them. There would always be that one person who took a deep dive into minutia. Things that nobody else cared about would be dug up, and we would have to discuss what font should be used for memos or some other useless crap. I spent twenty five years going to corporate meetings. Nothing good ever came from those meetings. They were almost always called to either take something away from us, or give us more work to do.

Every second Tuesday of the month the Model A Club has their meeting. I love my 1929 Ford Model A. I like my fellow Model A enthusiasts, mostly because they also have an old Ford Model A. Also, the club is a good source of information and knowhow. But the meetings, oy vey they are boring. Ninety five percent of the club members are older than me and probably heterosexual. Not that it should mean anything, but I now know how Mark must have felt when we went to Cracker Barrel for lunch. Most of the members have been members for decades and they all know each other. If the Model A Club served drinks and turned the lights down a little, I'm sure I could deal with it better, but I don't. So I sit there while the meeting drones on and the minutes of the last meeting are read. Melba toast is less dry than sitting through the minutes of the last meeting. Anyway, going to these meetings have only made me miss Mark more.  A meeting is always better when you have somebody with you. Somebody who will appreciate it when you roll your eyes. The only problem with taking Mark to one of my Model A meetings is that he would have never gone again. In fact, he may have died just to get out of going the first time.

Toilet Paper Review

 

Years ago I was into the ecology thing. I was living with my hippie friends out in Iowa, in a hundred year old farm house. We were eating whole wheat pancakes, flushing the toilet once a day. We drank goats milk, and smoked a lot of pot. There was an organic vegetable garden just outside the kitchen door, and we didn't eat meat. We were conserving the planet. We wore recycled clothing, I had a gas sipping Volkswagen van, and we paid for it all with a cool blues/hippie/rock band. Sure the band used electricity for the instruments, but it was music. You have to make some compromises. After a year of living 'off the land' (Which we weren't actually doing) I moved back to Chicago where I continued, off and on, as a vegetarian, ecology loving human. My problem is that I really liked automobiles. Also, meat, cigarettes, vodka, beer, and electricity. I liked heat in the winter. It became apparent to me after a few years that with the human population growing at an exponential rate, we didn't have a chance of saving the environment. At least not for human existence. I gave up worrying about things I couldn't control, like climate change. Still, over the years I have kind of shifted back and forth between complete disregard for environmental concerns, and half hearted participation in saving the planet. So that was where my mind was a few weeks ago while shopping at the Jewel supermarket. I was in the paper aisle. Toilet, towels, tissue paper, that kind of stuff. That's when I realized they were all out of my brand of toilet paper. There was another brand there on the shelf and it was on sale. It was an eco-friendly toilet paper made out of recycled paper. What the hell, I thought, I'll give it a try. I'll do my part helping the Earth and my fellow humans. I finally tried it out this week. I used my last roll of the brand I usually use, and mounted a roll of the 'green' toilet paper. Here is my review of that paper as told to me by my butt. Do not buy toilet paper made from recycled paper. Do not wipe your ass with it. Do not use it for anything other than stationary, or maybe for fine furniture sanding.

Snow Day

 

Last Friday all the weather reporters mentioned that there would be a "dusting" of snow that evening. Nothing to worry about, just a dusting. When I walked out of the bowling alley around nine thirty that evening, the parking lot was covered in snow and flakes the size of quarters were falling thick and fast. So fast that by the time I cleared the last window on my car, the snow on the first window was already too thick to see out of. The drive home was a challenge because the city did not have the trucks out. They also heard that it would only be a "dusting". Western Avenue was slipperier than baby shit on glass. The truth is, weather forecasters are often guessing.

When I was a kid, weather forecasts were kind of like one of those magic eightball toys.

"Will is snow?"

"Reply hazy, try again later"

"Okay, will it snow tonight?"

"Signs point to a dusting, no worry"

We would go to bed at night and wake up in the morning to a winter wonderland of snow. So much that maybe school would be closed that day. Mom always had the radio tuned to WGN and we would wait around the kitchen table waiting to hear our school announced.

"...no school today for Tinley Park district 146... no school for Saint George Elementary School, Tinley Park..."

Joy would fill the kitchen and within five minutes all my brothers and sisters would have our boots on, coats, mittens, hats, snowsuits, and run out to play in that beautiful snow. The snow that was so bad we couldn't possibly go to school in it. But hell, snowball fights, snowmen, and snow forts, yes. Also, there was the added bonus of my getting a reprieve on that homework I was supposed to do.

Fun in New Orleans

 

I think everyone should experience Mardi Gras at least once in their life. I went two years in a row, forty seven years ago, and it is burned into my memory. Most of it, good memories. Well, maybe not good, but fun. Yes, fun memories. Like people fighting for worthless aluminum coins and plastic beads thrown from parade floats. I learned not to bend over and try to pick them up off the ground. That's how you get injured. Beside the never ending parades on Canal Street, there is the crush of people on Bourbon Street. Colorful, drunken men on balconies yelling at women to show their tits, and colorful, drunken women actually showing their tits. Which they get paid for doing with those cheap plastic beads. Throw in a few men showing what they have, and you got yourself a show. By the way, this might be happening around nine in the morning because in New Orleans you can always find an open bar. Not to say it doesn't happen later, like at noon, or three in the afternoon. It does, all day long because the drinking never ends. Speaking of fun memories, you can always try to wedge yourself into a bar, specifically a gay bar, where you might find more explicit diversions. I can't say the same for the straight bars. I never went inside one of those. But with wall to wall sweating gay men in a dark bar, things might happen. None of the titty showing out on the street, or drunken debauchery inside the gay bars is legal. So you're kind of taking a chance should you partake. I would think that the cops probably aren't that happy to be working Mardi Gras. And that brings me to one bad memory of Mardi Gras. Finding a place to pee. There are places, but they have long lines and smell really bad. Don't pee on the street. The cops will humiliate you and drag you away. It's why at my age I could not deal with Mardi Gras again. I pee just about every fifteen minutes when I'm drinking beer.

So, if any of that sounds like fun to you, do go to Mardi Gras sometime in your life. Then go see your doctor when you get back home. Never hurts to get tested for contagious diseases.

Nebraska 1978

 

They stared at me like I had just stepped out of a flying saucer.

Sometimes I'll lay in bed trying to fall asleep, but my brain won't let me. It starts with a short memory triggered by something that happened earlier in the day. It's like pulling a loose thread only to have the whole garment unravel. Last night it was a photo of my old house from almost fifty years ago. That made me think of the cat I had at the time, Amanda. Which made me think of the time she climbed the Christmas tree, and rode it crashing to the ground in the middle of the night. That reminded me of the fact that when I sold that house, Amanda and I loaded up a 1965 Chevy pickup truck and moved to California. (Yes, I kept the cat because by this time she was my best companion. Instead of getting rid of the cat, I quit putting up Christmas trees.) I then remembered driving that pickup truck across the country on interstate 80, towing my eighteen foot sailboat also loaded with more crap. My memories continued. Somewhere west of Lincoln, Nebraska, while listening to Bob Seger's album, Stranger in Town, the Chevy's engine blew up. It was late winter, it was nighttime, and it was cold. What I don't remember is how I got a tow truck to come and get me. I do remember being stuck in a cheap motel next to interstate 80, in very rural Nebraska with Amanda. It took three days for the local mechanic to find another engine for the truck, and install it. I was bored, so on the second night I decided to go into the little town about a mile south of the interstate. The town was very small and had only one tavern. I went into that tavern. You would think that I had walked into a stranger's living room. The patrons that were there stared at me, and they didn't look happy. This was when I still had longish hair and everybody in the bar had flat top, buzz cuts. For about half an hour I sat there, and the only person who talked to me was the bartender. All he said was, "That's a dollar." as he put the gin and tonic I ordered in front of me. Which was another thing I remembered. When I ordered a gin and tonic, everybody in the bar looked at me as if I had just ordered a glass of piss. This included the bartender who had to search for the bottle of gin. 

My brain wouldn't stop. Memory after memory flooded my mind. Finally, after not being able to fall asleep and not wanting to lay in bed remembering all these weird things I'd done forty five years ago, I got up and went into the kitchen. I ate a small bowl of Cheerios, let Scout lap up the bottom of the bowl, and went back to bed.

Death Pool

 

Our backyard in Tinley Park, 1970.

Yesterday, late in the day after all the doctors had gone home, I went into the bathroom and urinated. Something was very wrong. My urine was dark, very dark. As a cancer survivor, I of course panicked. Bladder cancer? Kidneys failing? Every known bit of my inner plumbing came under scrutiny. I had a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner. Could the cheese have had orange food dye in it? Seriously, I started thinking that whoever had me in the family death pool was going to win. I knew that I would have to call my doctor first thing when he opened in the morning. Then I remembered the new modern way to figure out such emergencies. Google! I would Google 'Dark Urine', which I did. Talk about scary shit. There were all sorts of horrendous possibilities that could kill me if I didn't run to the doctor right away. Some of the possibilities weren't curable. I was in a sweat and a bit scared. Then I saw it. Down at the bottom of the 'What to do if your urine is dark' page that I had Googled, it mentioned a laxative. It said that sometimes when you take a certain laxative, your urine will turn dark the next day. I had taken a laxative the night before, for that gentle overnight relief they advertise. When I Googled the brand of laxative I had used with the added words, 'Dark Urine', Google came back with what I wanted to see. Yes, that brand does turn your urine dark. I am not going to die. I will live another day, maybe another year. "May turn your urine dark" should be printed in giant letters on the front of the package. Finally, as for the family death pool, it doesn't really exist. But it might not be such a bad idea. Eleven siblings, all of us aging rapidly, it might take the sting out of losing a loved one.

Effedex

 

I drove a delivery van for five years back in the 1970s. It was a very easy job and my all time favorite job. Although I eventually regretted giving it up, I wanted to move on. The man I worked for was generous and pretty much let me be myself on the job. Oh, and he let me use the delivery van as my own vehicle when I wasn't working. Five years of not worrying about car payments or insurance. Why did I quit such a cushy job? California was calling me, but that's another story.

Yesterday, Sunday, I got a delivery from a Fedex truck. There are four basic delivery options that deliver to my house. Amazon is probably the best. The drivers are courteous, always leave the package inside the front door of our building, and park their trucks in legal parking spaces. Also, they send me a snapshot of my package in the vestibule. Second is UPS. Their drivers are usually pretty friendly, generally deliver the packages to the correct address, and look hot in their summer shorts. Third delivery option is the United States Post Office. They don't leave a snapshot of the package in my email, but they almost always get the address right. At least within sight of my house so they're easy to track down. At the bottom of the list of delivery companies, is Fedex. I'm sure there are some fine people who work there, but I've seen the crazy shit. Often Fedex drivers do not pull over into a parking space, even if the street is full of empty spaces. No, they like to stop in the middle of the street and turn on their blinkers. On more than one occasion I've seen a Fedex driver get into an argument with drivers they've blocked. Man, this is Chicago. People carry guns in their cars so you should never get into an argument, or cut somebody off on Lake Shore Drive. That thought alone is enough to make me a very courteous driver. Now to the reason I'm bitching about Fedex. I got a delivery yesterday. It was Sunday and the item being delivered really didn't need to be delivered on a weekend day, but it was. I saw the big Fedex van pull up in front of the house, in the middle of the street with blinkers on. What I didn't hear was the front door to our building vestibule open and close or my doorbell, nor did I see the top of the delivery man's head pop up by the front window. He simply tossed it onto the porch, turned and ran back to his truck. On a wet, sloppy day, he left the package outside on the porch. He was so stealthy that Scout didn't even bark. Like I said, I was a delivery guy back in the 1970s. It's not a hard job.