Another transition
A tinge of sadness as the Texas license plates came off the cars today. I guess we're here officially.
Friday, January 31, 2003
Thursday, January 30, 2003
A memory from the other side
When I was in college -- and when I was supposed to be in college -- I lived in a really awful house on the, um, rougher side of Anytown. A friend of mine owned the house; actually, his parents owned it, free and clear, and charged him $100 a month to live there. Mark turned around and charged his friends $100 a month to live there. Whether there were two of us or five of us, it was $100 a month per person. Pretty good racket for Mark, I'd say.
Anyway, the house was an absolute shithole. Conjure the worst image you can of a place inhabited by men in their early 20s, and make it about five times worse. We once had a 400-cubic-inch Trans Am engine torn down in the living room. One really cold night, we parked our motorcycles in the house. The bathroom was so gawdawful, I wouldn't even use it. I took showers at school or at the health club.
Most of the time, we were too drunk to notice. And when you had 30 or 40 people in the house, as we did on most weekend nights, it was hard to see the crud.
When you have 30 or 40 partyers, it's impossible to actually know all of them. You start with your core group of friends, then a few of their friends show up, then a few of their friends show up, and before long, we were among people who were five or six links removed from us. Occasionally, one of the five-or-six-removed would drop by on Sunday morning, after the revelry died down; or one would show up to a subsequent gathering, despite the fact that his or her original link wasn't there.
That's a really long way of saying I don't know how I met Lee Ann. I have no idea what my original connection to her was. But one day in the spring of 1989, she called our house. She asked for one of our friends who didn't live there. Then she asked for Mark; he wasn't there either. "Then I guess you'll do," she said.
She was stranded somewhere and needed a ride. I said, "Well, OK. Do you mind riding a motorcycle?" She said that was fine. I strapped the extra helmet to the bike, picked her up from wherever she was, and took her to wherever it was she needed to go.
She began showing up to our parties without her original links. She wasn't really becoming one of us, however; she was a few years younger -- I think she was 17 in 1989 -- and, while none of us were exactly Rhodes scholars, she was really not the brightest bulb. Mark took to calling her "Box o' Rocks," as in "dumb as a ... " But she provided us amusement, and that was usually enough to get a beer from our refrigerator. She wasn't particuarly attractive, but she was attractive enough that one of our friends dated her a few times. She kind of merged into the crowd.
She began calling me quite often that summer when she needed a ride somewhere, and if I had nothing better to do, I'd provide. One night, in mid-August, she called. "I need a ride," she said. "Not on the motorcycle, though."
"OK." I found the key to my truck, somewhere, and went and picked her up. She lit a cigarette, and put it out.
"Seems like a waste of a good cigarette," I said.
"I'm pregnant," she said.
Oh. I put out my cigarette, out of courtesy. Waste of another good smoke.
"Um," I said. I knew Lee Ann hadn't been with any of us, but I wasn't sure if that made the answer to my next question any more or less my business. "By whom?"
"Sugar," she said.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Who's Sugar?"
She explained that Sugar was a guy she met at some party. He was going to be a pro boxer someday; he had been a Golden Gloves champion or some such back in Arizona. He also was on probation in Arizona, she said, which made it kind of tough for him to get a job in Anytown, because technically, he was supposed to be in Arizona, not in Anytown. And, oh, by the way, Sugar's black, she added.
In Anytown -- not the most racially diverse place in the world -- it was necessary to point this out. This made everything different, even in 1989. This made her situation, as a white girl in Anytown, even more delicate.
I wondered, for the 4,231st time in my life, why it was that I was tagged with the "Everyone will bare his or her soul to you" designation. I really didn't want to be everybody's confidant; it just happened that way. On that night in August of 1989, I was driving around with a 17-year-old pregnant girl I barely knew, and suddenly I was going to be the person to help her figure out what she needed to do next. I knew then I wasn't going to like where this was going.
"Well, um, what do you do next?" I said. "Are you going to marry Sugar?" You could count the number of interracial couples in Anytown -- a city of almost 135,000 at the time -- on the fingers of two hands. I knew what the answer to that question was going to be.
"I don't know," she said, looking out the truck window. "Probably not. I'm going to live with him, though."
I realized at this point I hadn't asked where I was taking her. I asked. "I don't know," she said. "Sugar's going to be home at 3," meaning 3 a.m. "You can take me there then, I guess."
It was a little after 1. I drove her around Anytown for a couple of hours, listening to her life story. She was living with her grandmother. Her mom was an alcoholic. Her dad lived in St. Louis or Kansas City or somewhere. She had actually been a decent student and a freshman cheerleader at a high school across town, in a particularly affluent area. She decided she didn't fit in, moved in with her grandmother, transferred to a school on the north side and dropped out. It was already clear that she was probably going to function at the level of a high school freshman for the rest of her life.
She was going to keep the kid. She was pretty sure of that, she said. Beyond that, she didn't know.
"When are you due?" I asked. "March," she said.
"Are you seeing a doctor?" I had never used the words "prenatal" and "care" in a sentence at that point in my life, but I knew that a pregnant girl needed to be seeing a doctor. "No," she replied. "I don't have any money."
Nor any insurance, nor anybody to make sure she was seeing a doctor. There wasn't going to be a lot I could do about it at 3 a.m. on that night in August. I took a deep breath and wanted to know if she was ready to go home, wherever home was.
She gave me directions to a place in the really, really bad part of Anytown. "I don't think I'm going to stay here tonight," she said, noting a party was still raging. "But I don't know. Wait for a minute, and if I don't come back out, I'll talk to you later."
I waited for about 10 minutes -- long enough for a violent fight between two young black women to break out in the front yard. One girl's shirt was ripped, revealing that she was braless. The other had a kitchen knife. At this point, I decided Lee Ann was staying. My 21-year-old mind had made itself up -- her situation, it told me. She got herself into it, she can get herself out. She's a big girl. Wasn't going to be any chivalry here. I knew when I was in over my head.
I started my truck, lit a smoke, and left as subtly -- and as quickly -- as I could. I stopped at a nearby Git-N-Go and dialed 911 on a pay phone. I told the voice on the other end that they might want to go check out the melee on Scott Street. I hung up. I went home.
I thought not at all about Lee Ann for about another month and a half, until she called me needing a ride to work. She was living with a friend in a two-room apartment that had seen its better days about 40 years previous. I knocked on the door and let myself in when Lee Ann didn't answer.
I found her curled up on the floor in her work uniform, heaving. Morning sickness at 5 p.m., apparently. Her eyes were bloodshot, her normally pale skin had moved a few shades down to pasty. "You need to see a doctor," I said, stating the painfully obvious.
"No," she sobbed. "If I don't show up today, they'll fire me."
"Come on," I said. "Let's go."
"Just leave me here," she said. "I'll be fine. I'll call and tell them I'll be late."
I helped her up and took her to a walk-in clinic, which was getting ready to shut down for the night. "She's really sick," I said. "I don't know with what. She's pregnant."
The receptionist looked at me. "She's just a friend," I said. "Not mine."
Mollified, the receptionist gave me a clipboard to fill out. Lee Ann, slumped in the seat, helped me fill it out as best as she could. Under "Emergency Contact," she listed her grandmother's name. "I don't know her phone number," she said. "Any chance it's in the book?" I asked. "I don't know," she said. I went to the receptionist and got a phone book. I located her name and address. "This her?" I asked. "Yeah," she said. Yay. An emergency contact number.
The doctor called her back, checked her out, deemed her OK and sent her home with instructions to take better care of herself. Said the kid looked fine.
I wasn't sure what to do at this point, until we saw the receptionist again. She certainly knew what to do. "Forty-five dollars," she said. I looked at Lee Ann. Her face said I don't have it. I wrote a $45 check to the walk-in clinic. I made a mental note to figure out another way to get food and beer that week.
I took her to her workplace -- by now she was two, maybe three hours late -- and asked her if she had a ride home. "I can get one," she said. "I'll pay you back next week for the doctor."
"Whenever," I said. "Get better."
Summer became fall, which became winter. I moved out of the shithole house and moved in with my mom, needing to get my finances back in order after a several-month just-turned-21 drinking binge. The day after I finally got my checkbook back up to zero, I received a call.
"It's Lee Ann," she said, weakly. I hadn't spoken to her since that day in the walk-in clinic. "I had my baby. It's a girl."
"Congratulations," I said, not really enthusiastically. It was Saturday morning, four inches of snow were on the ground, and it took me a minute or two to remember who "Lee Ann" was.
"The doctor said I can go home," she said. "But Sugar's working. I need a ride."
I got in my truck, backed out of the driveway, and realized there was no way I could put a baby seat in my truck. I went back in, told Lee Ann's story to my mom in about a minute, and asked to borrow her car.
"I wonder sometimes how you get yourself into these situations," she said.
"At least I'm observing them from the periphery," I reminded her.
"That makes me feel a little bit better," she said. "I think."
I drove my mom's car to a south-side hospital. It was just Lee Ann and her baby. No boyfriend, no other family. Just the two of them.
I greeted Lee Ann and looked at the baby. At that point in my life, the little girl was the youngest person I had ever seen. She had a full head of wiry hair, and her skin was a light coffee-with-cream color. She still had the scrunchy baby face, and was opening her eyes only briefly enough for me to determine that they were big and brown and beautiful.
I looked around the empty room. No balloons, no flowers, none of the accoutrements I always imagned a new mom's room would have. Little girl, I thought, you have no idea what you've gotten yourself into just by being born.
A nurse was walking out as I was walking in. "Hi," she said, perkily. Then, more of a question, "Congratulations ... ?"
No, I said. Just a friend.
I helped Lee Ann with the paperwork the nurse had left. "What's her name?" I asked.
"Keisha," she said, smiling weakly.
Keisha. I looked over the paperwork Lee Ann had already filled out. "Keisha" on one page, "Keshia" on another. "How do you want to spell it?" I asked.
She looked at the two pieces of paper. "Which one do you like better?" she asked.
I haven't spoken to you for five months, I thought. Now I'm naming your kid. "K-E-I-S-H-A," I said. "Less likely people will mess that up."
When she received the official OK from the nurses, I helped Lee Ann buckle the kid into the car seat the hospital mercifully provided. We wheeled her to my mom's car. The nurse showed me how to strap in the car seat. "Congratulations," she said to Lee Ann.
"Thanks," she said weakly.
I took Lee Ann to yet another residence, a duplex on the north side. "It's only $199 a month here," she said. "We're sharing it with Sugar's friend and his girlfriend. They have a 2-year-old. Keisha can play with him."
I wished her luck. I wasn't sure what else to say. She went inside, and I went home.
Later that night, I found myself in the baby aisle at the grocery store. I didn't know what any of the stuff was. I knew even less what a 2-day-old kid would need. I finally settled on buying a big package of newborn-sized diapers and a six-pack of baby formula. I took it to the duplex. I knocked on the door. I heard a TV going, but nobody answered. I left the stuff by the front door and drove off, slowly, wishing I was intelligent enough to know what I really should have done in that situation. Wondering what I should have done for a girl I hardly knew.
I heard from Lee Ann one more time after that, in about August or September of '90. She called me at work and left a message with one of my co-workers. I called the number she left. The voice on the other end of the line answered with the name of a local, notorious "companionship" service.
Um. I said I was returning Lee Ann's call. The voice hesitated, and said, "Just a minute." I heard her put the phone down. After a few minutes, she came back. "She'll be here in a minute," the voice said. "Next time you call her here, ask for Brandy."
Brandy. OK. Lee Ann came to the phone and made small talk. "I'm engaged," I said. "Getting married next month."
"Good for you," she said. "I've done nine tonight. Nine!"
"Look, you know I don't judge anybody," I said, "but ... never mind. Where's your kid?"
"With my mom," she said. "Or my grandma."
"DId you need something?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I was just calling to say hi. I gotta get back to work."
Yeah, I said, me too.
Little Keisha was born on Feb. 28, 1990. Wherever she is, she'll be a teenager very soon. I think about her about once a year, when it gets really cold in late February. I think about her and I wonder how it is that some people can view human life as so disposable, how parents can just abandon their kids, and how the cycle will continue forever unless somebody way smarter than me can figure out a way to make it stop.
When I was in college -- and when I was supposed to be in college -- I lived in a really awful house on the, um, rougher side of Anytown. A friend of mine owned the house; actually, his parents owned it, free and clear, and charged him $100 a month to live there. Mark turned around and charged his friends $100 a month to live there. Whether there were two of us or five of us, it was $100 a month per person. Pretty good racket for Mark, I'd say.
Anyway, the house was an absolute shithole. Conjure the worst image you can of a place inhabited by men in their early 20s, and make it about five times worse. We once had a 400-cubic-inch Trans Am engine torn down in the living room. One really cold night, we parked our motorcycles in the house. The bathroom was so gawdawful, I wouldn't even use it. I took showers at school or at the health club.
Most of the time, we were too drunk to notice. And when you had 30 or 40 people in the house, as we did on most weekend nights, it was hard to see the crud.
When you have 30 or 40 partyers, it's impossible to actually know all of them. You start with your core group of friends, then a few of their friends show up, then a few of their friends show up, and before long, we were among people who were five or six links removed from us. Occasionally, one of the five-or-six-removed would drop by on Sunday morning, after the revelry died down; or one would show up to a subsequent gathering, despite the fact that his or her original link wasn't there.
That's a really long way of saying I don't know how I met Lee Ann. I have no idea what my original connection to her was. But one day in the spring of 1989, she called our house. She asked for one of our friends who didn't live there. Then she asked for Mark; he wasn't there either. "Then I guess you'll do," she said.
She was stranded somewhere and needed a ride. I said, "Well, OK. Do you mind riding a motorcycle?" She said that was fine. I strapped the extra helmet to the bike, picked her up from wherever she was, and took her to wherever it was she needed to go.
She began showing up to our parties without her original links. She wasn't really becoming one of us, however; she was a few years younger -- I think she was 17 in 1989 -- and, while none of us were exactly Rhodes scholars, she was really not the brightest bulb. Mark took to calling her "Box o' Rocks," as in "dumb as a ... " But she provided us amusement, and that was usually enough to get a beer from our refrigerator. She wasn't particuarly attractive, but she was attractive enough that one of our friends dated her a few times. She kind of merged into the crowd.
She began calling me quite often that summer when she needed a ride somewhere, and if I had nothing better to do, I'd provide. One night, in mid-August, she called. "I need a ride," she said. "Not on the motorcycle, though."
"OK." I found the key to my truck, somewhere, and went and picked her up. She lit a cigarette, and put it out.
"Seems like a waste of a good cigarette," I said.
"I'm pregnant," she said.
Oh. I put out my cigarette, out of courtesy. Waste of another good smoke.
"Um," I said. I knew Lee Ann hadn't been with any of us, but I wasn't sure if that made the answer to my next question any more or less my business. "By whom?"
"Sugar," she said.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Who's Sugar?"
She explained that Sugar was a guy she met at some party. He was going to be a pro boxer someday; he had been a Golden Gloves champion or some such back in Arizona. He also was on probation in Arizona, she said, which made it kind of tough for him to get a job in Anytown, because technically, he was supposed to be in Arizona, not in Anytown. And, oh, by the way, Sugar's black, she added.
In Anytown -- not the most racially diverse place in the world -- it was necessary to point this out. This made everything different, even in 1989. This made her situation, as a white girl in Anytown, even more delicate.
I wondered, for the 4,231st time in my life, why it was that I was tagged with the "Everyone will bare his or her soul to you" designation. I really didn't want to be everybody's confidant; it just happened that way. On that night in August of 1989, I was driving around with a 17-year-old pregnant girl I barely knew, and suddenly I was going to be the person to help her figure out what she needed to do next. I knew then I wasn't going to like where this was going.
"Well, um, what do you do next?" I said. "Are you going to marry Sugar?" You could count the number of interracial couples in Anytown -- a city of almost 135,000 at the time -- on the fingers of two hands. I knew what the answer to that question was going to be.
"I don't know," she said, looking out the truck window. "Probably not. I'm going to live with him, though."
I realized at this point I hadn't asked where I was taking her. I asked. "I don't know," she said. "Sugar's going to be home at 3," meaning 3 a.m. "You can take me there then, I guess."
It was a little after 1. I drove her around Anytown for a couple of hours, listening to her life story. She was living with her grandmother. Her mom was an alcoholic. Her dad lived in St. Louis or Kansas City or somewhere. She had actually been a decent student and a freshman cheerleader at a high school across town, in a particularly affluent area. She decided she didn't fit in, moved in with her grandmother, transferred to a school on the north side and dropped out. It was already clear that she was probably going to function at the level of a high school freshman for the rest of her life.
She was going to keep the kid. She was pretty sure of that, she said. Beyond that, she didn't know.
"When are you due?" I asked. "March," she said.
"Are you seeing a doctor?" I had never used the words "prenatal" and "care" in a sentence at that point in my life, but I knew that a pregnant girl needed to be seeing a doctor. "No," she replied. "I don't have any money."
Nor any insurance, nor anybody to make sure she was seeing a doctor. There wasn't going to be a lot I could do about it at 3 a.m. on that night in August. I took a deep breath and wanted to know if she was ready to go home, wherever home was.
She gave me directions to a place in the really, really bad part of Anytown. "I don't think I'm going to stay here tonight," she said, noting a party was still raging. "But I don't know. Wait for a minute, and if I don't come back out, I'll talk to you later."
I waited for about 10 minutes -- long enough for a violent fight between two young black women to break out in the front yard. One girl's shirt was ripped, revealing that she was braless. The other had a kitchen knife. At this point, I decided Lee Ann was staying. My 21-year-old mind had made itself up -- her situation, it told me. She got herself into it, she can get herself out. She's a big girl. Wasn't going to be any chivalry here. I knew when I was in over my head.
I started my truck, lit a smoke, and left as subtly -- and as quickly -- as I could. I stopped at a nearby Git-N-Go and dialed 911 on a pay phone. I told the voice on the other end that they might want to go check out the melee on Scott Street. I hung up. I went home.
I thought not at all about Lee Ann for about another month and a half, until she called me needing a ride to work. She was living with a friend in a two-room apartment that had seen its better days about 40 years previous. I knocked on the door and let myself in when Lee Ann didn't answer.
I found her curled up on the floor in her work uniform, heaving. Morning sickness at 5 p.m., apparently. Her eyes were bloodshot, her normally pale skin had moved a few shades down to pasty. "You need to see a doctor," I said, stating the painfully obvious.
"No," she sobbed. "If I don't show up today, they'll fire me."
"Come on," I said. "Let's go."
"Just leave me here," she said. "I'll be fine. I'll call and tell them I'll be late."
I helped her up and took her to a walk-in clinic, which was getting ready to shut down for the night. "She's really sick," I said. "I don't know with what. She's pregnant."
The receptionist looked at me. "She's just a friend," I said. "Not mine."
Mollified, the receptionist gave me a clipboard to fill out. Lee Ann, slumped in the seat, helped me fill it out as best as she could. Under "Emergency Contact," she listed her grandmother's name. "I don't know her phone number," she said. "Any chance it's in the book?" I asked. "I don't know," she said. I went to the receptionist and got a phone book. I located her name and address. "This her?" I asked. "Yeah," she said. Yay. An emergency contact number.
The doctor called her back, checked her out, deemed her OK and sent her home with instructions to take better care of herself. Said the kid looked fine.
I wasn't sure what to do at this point, until we saw the receptionist again. She certainly knew what to do. "Forty-five dollars," she said. I looked at Lee Ann. Her face said I don't have it. I wrote a $45 check to the walk-in clinic. I made a mental note to figure out another way to get food and beer that week.
I took her to her workplace -- by now she was two, maybe three hours late -- and asked her if she had a ride home. "I can get one," she said. "I'll pay you back next week for the doctor."
"Whenever," I said. "Get better."
Summer became fall, which became winter. I moved out of the shithole house and moved in with my mom, needing to get my finances back in order after a several-month just-turned-21 drinking binge. The day after I finally got my checkbook back up to zero, I received a call.
"It's Lee Ann," she said, weakly. I hadn't spoken to her since that day in the walk-in clinic. "I had my baby. It's a girl."
"Congratulations," I said, not really enthusiastically. It was Saturday morning, four inches of snow were on the ground, and it took me a minute or two to remember who "Lee Ann" was.
"The doctor said I can go home," she said. "But Sugar's working. I need a ride."
I got in my truck, backed out of the driveway, and realized there was no way I could put a baby seat in my truck. I went back in, told Lee Ann's story to my mom in about a minute, and asked to borrow her car.
"I wonder sometimes how you get yourself into these situations," she said.
"At least I'm observing them from the periphery," I reminded her.
"That makes me feel a little bit better," she said. "I think."
I drove my mom's car to a south-side hospital. It was just Lee Ann and her baby. No boyfriend, no other family. Just the two of them.
I greeted Lee Ann and looked at the baby. At that point in my life, the little girl was the youngest person I had ever seen. She had a full head of wiry hair, and her skin was a light coffee-with-cream color. She still had the scrunchy baby face, and was opening her eyes only briefly enough for me to determine that they were big and brown and beautiful.
I looked around the empty room. No balloons, no flowers, none of the accoutrements I always imagned a new mom's room would have. Little girl, I thought, you have no idea what you've gotten yourself into just by being born.
A nurse was walking out as I was walking in. "Hi," she said, perkily. Then, more of a question, "Congratulations ... ?"
No, I said. Just a friend.
I helped Lee Ann with the paperwork the nurse had left. "What's her name?" I asked.
"Keisha," she said, smiling weakly.
Keisha. I looked over the paperwork Lee Ann had already filled out. "Keisha" on one page, "Keshia" on another. "How do you want to spell it?" I asked.
She looked at the two pieces of paper. "Which one do you like better?" she asked.
I haven't spoken to you for five months, I thought. Now I'm naming your kid. "K-E-I-S-H-A," I said. "Less likely people will mess that up."
When she received the official OK from the nurses, I helped Lee Ann buckle the kid into the car seat the hospital mercifully provided. We wheeled her to my mom's car. The nurse showed me how to strap in the car seat. "Congratulations," she said to Lee Ann.
"Thanks," she said weakly.
I took Lee Ann to yet another residence, a duplex on the north side. "It's only $199 a month here," she said. "We're sharing it with Sugar's friend and his girlfriend. They have a 2-year-old. Keisha can play with him."
I wished her luck. I wasn't sure what else to say. She went inside, and I went home.
Later that night, I found myself in the baby aisle at the grocery store. I didn't know what any of the stuff was. I knew even less what a 2-day-old kid would need. I finally settled on buying a big package of newborn-sized diapers and a six-pack of baby formula. I took it to the duplex. I knocked on the door. I heard a TV going, but nobody answered. I left the stuff by the front door and drove off, slowly, wishing I was intelligent enough to know what I really should have done in that situation. Wondering what I should have done for a girl I hardly knew.
I heard from Lee Ann one more time after that, in about August or September of '90. She called me at work and left a message with one of my co-workers. I called the number she left. The voice on the other end of the line answered with the name of a local, notorious "companionship" service.
Um. I said I was returning Lee Ann's call. The voice hesitated, and said, "Just a minute." I heard her put the phone down. After a few minutes, she came back. "She'll be here in a minute," the voice said. "Next time you call her here, ask for Brandy."
Brandy. OK. Lee Ann came to the phone and made small talk. "I'm engaged," I said. "Getting married next month."
"Good for you," she said. "I've done nine tonight. Nine!"
"Look, you know I don't judge anybody," I said, "but ... never mind. Where's your kid?"
"With my mom," she said. "Or my grandma."
"DId you need something?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I was just calling to say hi. I gotta get back to work."
Yeah, I said, me too.
Little Keisha was born on Feb. 28, 1990. Wherever she is, she'll be a teenager very soon. I think about her about once a year, when it gets really cold in late February. I think about her and I wonder how it is that some people can view human life as so disposable, how parents can just abandon their kids, and how the cycle will continue forever unless somebody way smarter than me can figure out a way to make it stop.
Let's get a rivalry started
I have had a very enjoyable regular discourse with utexas.edu for a while. Now, I see in the logs that Anytown, USA, was visited yesterday by somebody from tamu.edu; Texas A&M University, the dreaded Aggies. If you drop back by, tamu.edu, click on the Enlighten Us link. We're always looking for an Aggie perspective. Really.
I have had a very enjoyable regular discourse with utexas.edu for a while. Now, I see in the logs that Anytown, USA, was visited yesterday by somebody from tamu.edu; Texas A&M University, the dreaded Aggies. If you drop back by, tamu.edu, click on the Enlighten Us link. We're always looking for an Aggie perspective. Really.
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
Monday, January 27, 2003
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl
Roll those words around a few times. Sounds ridiculous, huh? Kind of like, "Saddam Hussein just agreed to disarm and live in exile in Antarctica," or "Al Gore is President," or "I just had the most enjoyable root canal." The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl. That's like Lucy holding the football and letting Charlie Brown kick it. It's like Arkansas high school students leading the nation in SAT scores. It's like snow in Florida -- oh, wait a minute, that happened, too, this week.
For Christ's sake, what's next?
Roll those words around a few times. Sounds ridiculous, huh? Kind of like, "Saddam Hussein just agreed to disarm and live in exile in Antarctica," or "Al Gore is President," or "I just had the most enjoyable root canal." The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl. That's like Lucy holding the football and letting Charlie Brown kick it. It's like Arkansas high school students leading the nation in SAT scores. It's like snow in Florida -- oh, wait a minute, that happened, too, this week.
For Christ's sake, what's next?
Friday, January 24, 2003
Two posts for the price of one!
Because I am a so-called manager, I tote around a work-issued laptop computer -- so that I can do more work at home, of course. Having a work-issued laptop feeds not one, but two of my personality disorders. I am a workaholic and I am a technogeek. So imagine the nirvana into which I've been launched. After a several-week delay, I received my new work-issued laptop yesterday. It ain't no beat-up ThinkPad; I'm toting a Mac Titanium PowerBook G4, with 1 GB of RAM and a 1 GHz processor. Now I'm looking for excuses to do work at home. (Confidential to utexas.edu: I'm becoming a Mac person again. I'm returning from the dark side.)
As a transplanted Midwesterner, I know a thing or two about being really, really cold. It's really, really cold here on the Edge of America, by Floridian standards, but the reaction is a tad absurd. The NBC affiliate posted a little box on the bottom of the screen with the temperature -- and left it there all night, over Will and Grace and Good Morning Miami and ER. It had made its way down to 35 degrees by the time the news was over. In the early morning sun, it's 29 right now. The National Weather Service says it hit 27 overnight -- making that my personal Florida record low. It hit 28 here one day the last time we lived here. One school district north of here, expecting an overnight low in the mid-20s, canceled school on Friday. For cold. "We don't want kids standing out in the elements waiting for buses," they said. The day in January 1994 when it was 24 below outside our apartment in Cincinnati, you can bet your ass the kids were going to school.
I'm going to go let the battery from my PowerBook keep me warm.
I'm going to go let the battery from my PowerBook keep me warm.
Monday, January 20, 2003
The Raiders and ... who?
Rich Gannon had a message to send to the Tennessee Titans. It went something like this:
I'm throwing to a Hall-of-Famer on one side. Jerry Rice. Remember him? And I'm throwing to a Hall-of-Famer on the other side, this guy Tim Brown. But hey, while you're covering them, don't forget to watch 84, this Porter guy. Best of luck. Enjoy the Super Bowl from your armchairs back in Nashville.
All of a sudden, Rich Gannon is the best quarterback in the NFL. He's the best quarterback in the NFL because he's surrounded by all these geezers Al Davis signed, guys who were supposed to break down in December, guys who were supposed to be one-and-out in the playoffs.
And it's only fitting that the best quarterback in the NFL -- and his Hall of Fame receiving corps -- is in the Super Bowl. I don't care what uniform Jerry Rice is wearing or how old he is. It's damn good to see him in the Super Bowl one more time.
What's not so fitting is Gannon's opponent. We knew and loved them as the Yuks when we were in Florida the last time. We have not-so-fond memories of tuning into Sunday afternoon football games and being forced to watch the Yuks because they were the local team. We turned the channel once just because those atrocious orange uniforms were so hard to look at.
Probably never in the history of sports has a team become so much better just by changing their uniforms.
Back in my sportswriter days, it would have been kind of fun for the quasi-local team to wind up in the Super Bowl. It was a chance to do some special stuff in the newspaper, lots of big extra sections, chances to write a couple more stories, lots of overtime but worth every hour.
Of course, I was younger then. Now, having the quasi-local team in the Super Bowl is simply going to be a pain in the ass. I was probably the only person in the state emitting a loud groan when Ronde Barber swiped that pass there at the end.
But hey, it's only a week of maddening hype. We'll get through it and watch a hell of a fun Super Bowl. And as much as I respect Rice and Gannon and the Raiders, it'll be fun to see Jon Gruden shove it up Al Davis' ass.
Go Yuks.
Rich Gannon had a message to send to the Tennessee Titans. It went something like this:
I'm throwing to a Hall-of-Famer on one side. Jerry Rice. Remember him? And I'm throwing to a Hall-of-Famer on the other side, this guy Tim Brown. But hey, while you're covering them, don't forget to watch 84, this Porter guy. Best of luck. Enjoy the Super Bowl from your armchairs back in Nashville.
All of a sudden, Rich Gannon is the best quarterback in the NFL. He's the best quarterback in the NFL because he's surrounded by all these geezers Al Davis signed, guys who were supposed to break down in December, guys who were supposed to be one-and-out in the playoffs.
And it's only fitting that the best quarterback in the NFL -- and his Hall of Fame receiving corps -- is in the Super Bowl. I don't care what uniform Jerry Rice is wearing or how old he is. It's damn good to see him in the Super Bowl one more time.
What's not so fitting is Gannon's opponent. We knew and loved them as the Yuks when we were in Florida the last time. We have not-so-fond memories of tuning into Sunday afternoon football games and being forced to watch the Yuks because they were the local team. We turned the channel once just because those atrocious orange uniforms were so hard to look at.
Probably never in the history of sports has a team become so much better just by changing their uniforms.
Back in my sportswriter days, it would have been kind of fun for the quasi-local team to wind up in the Super Bowl. It was a chance to do some special stuff in the newspaper, lots of big extra sections, chances to write a couple more stories, lots of overtime but worth every hour.
Of course, I was younger then. Now, having the quasi-local team in the Super Bowl is simply going to be a pain in the ass. I was probably the only person in the state emitting a loud groan when Ronde Barber swiped that pass there at the end.
But hey, it's only a week of maddening hype. We'll get through it and watch a hell of a fun Super Bowl. And as much as I respect Rice and Gannon and the Raiders, it'll be fun to see Jon Gruden shove it up Al Davis' ass.
Go Yuks.
Friday, January 17, 2003
" ... the cancer is in her lungs and other organs. She started aggressive chemo yesterday and will go through five days of treatment this week. The treatment will continue, and if that doesn't work, she'll go to MD Anderson for other treatment. ... I don't know much more than that but will keep you posted."
My God. Last year, she just had a spot on her face. She had it removed, and had to wear a big bandage for a while, but otherwise, she was fine. Aggressive chemo?
The above update was in reference to a friend in Texas. A mutual friend sent me that update today in an e-mail. It's the first time I've ever opened an e-mail with the word "cancer" in it in reference to one of my friends.
She's 36. We worked together at the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper. Her second child was just born a few months ago. Her first child was born on the same day as our son. She's a hell of a journalist and, much more importantly, she's one of the nicest, smartest, gentlest people I know.
Cancer. Newborn baby. 36 years old. I'm at a loss. It seems so empty to say, "God, I hope she's OK." Well, no shit. And clearly, she's not OK. I know very, very little about cancer, but I know that the words "aggressive chemo" and "OK" aren't often found in the same sentence.
But, dammit, the English language fails me. Or I'm failing it. It's all I can do.
God, I hope she's OK.
My God. Last year, she just had a spot on her face. She had it removed, and had to wear a big bandage for a while, but otherwise, she was fine. Aggressive chemo?
The above update was in reference to a friend in Texas. A mutual friend sent me that update today in an e-mail. It's the first time I've ever opened an e-mail with the word "cancer" in it in reference to one of my friends.
She's 36. We worked together at the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper. Her second child was just born a few months ago. Her first child was born on the same day as our son. She's a hell of a journalist and, much more importantly, she's one of the nicest, smartest, gentlest people I know.
Cancer. Newborn baby. 36 years old. I'm at a loss. It seems so empty to say, "God, I hope she's OK." Well, no shit. And clearly, she's not OK. I know very, very little about cancer, but I know that the words "aggressive chemo" and "OK" aren't often found in the same sentence.
But, dammit, the English language fails me. Or I'm failing it. It's all I can do.
God, I hope she's OK.
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Wow! And, just, um, wow
Hearty congratulations to our friend Sy-rah, who's having a baby! Apparently we didn't frighten her away from parenthood, but she certainly took her time. She was stranded in Cincinnati one night and spent it with us. The Old Daughter was about 13 months old at the time. She took eight years to reflect on that experience and decided to take the plunge. All the best to her and Mr. Sy-rah.
Be happy you don't work for this person. I'm not interested in showing up as a referrer in her logs (she may not understand the phrase "server's log files," but I do), so you'll have to take my word for it. If you're interested in reading an incredibly self-absorbed newsroom leader tell the world about everything that goes on in her TV newsroom, e-mail me and I'll send you the link. Because it's a small world, I'll reserve further opinion.
So much for the insomnia thing (see below)
Apparently, I was almost right on my political leanings. I always thought I was a right-leaning centrist. According to this, I'm a left-leaning centrist.
Apparently, I was almost right on my political leanings. I always thought I was a right-leaning centrist. According to this, I'm a left-leaning centrist.
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
It really could be worse
A long day ended on kind of a crappy note. But there's plenty with which I can console myself. Thankfully ...
I don't work at Kmart. Pretty soon, a lot of other people won't be working for Kmart, either. I've never had a big preference for one discount store over any other; I go wherever's closest. I got a lot of my clothes from Kmart when I was a kid; I got plenty from Wal-Mart, too. I was equally made fun of for either. But apparently Wal-Mart is doing cheap better than Kmart. It's the American way; may the stronger company live.
I wasn't the TV reporter who had to interview the convicted sex offender tonight. Said offender was accused and acquitted of a subsequent offense. Actual question: "Sir, did you show them your personal parts?"
The wife is feeling better, and nobody else is showing any sign of catching whatever she had.
I didn't drink that second cup of coffee tonight. I'm actually tired enough to sleep tonight. Here's to sleeping.
A long day ended on kind of a crappy note. But there's plenty with which I can console myself. Thankfully ...
Monday, January 13, 2003
Hey, could you come in and ... oh, never mind
At work, when somebody calls in sick, it's a relatively simple issue. I call somebody at home, most likely waking this person from an I'm-off-today-leave-my-ass-alone sleep. I beg and plead and make deals with the devil to persuade the person on the other end of the phone to drop by and pick up some time-and-a-half. The lure of semi-free money being what it is, they usually say, "OK," shake off the cobwebs, and come on in to cover for the sick person. I'm happy, the person who just came into semi-free money is happy (eventually), and the world keeps turning.
When The Wife calls in sick, however, it's a different story. Our budget being what it is here at Mom-and-Dad, Inc., I haven't been able to hire a backup. So, when the wife calls in sick, I go home, as I did today.
It's rare that illness renders the wife basically non-functional, but that was our situation today. I blame some Chinese food from last night. It didn't sit very well with me, either. Thankfully, it was a relatively easy day: no scheduled activities, no out-of-the-ordinary events, just me trying to keep the Mini-Humans from causing injury to themselves or each other. Feed them a couple of times, bathe them, put them to bed. It was about one-third the degree of difficulty of her average day. And I still worked twice as hard as I would have if I had stayed at the office. And most of my days at the office don't involve poop, or dishes, or laundry, or having to read the same book repeatedly over the course of the day. The Wife does this every day, and she doesn't even get the paltry wages most day-care workers get.
But she does get to hang out with three of the coolest little people in all the world. Can't measure that in dollars.
At work, when somebody calls in sick, it's a relatively simple issue. I call somebody at home, most likely waking this person from an I'm-off-today-leave-my-ass-alone sleep. I beg and plead and make deals with the devil to persuade the person on the other end of the phone to drop by and pick up some time-and-a-half. The lure of semi-free money being what it is, they usually say, "OK," shake off the cobwebs, and come on in to cover for the sick person. I'm happy, the person who just came into semi-free money is happy (eventually), and the world keeps turning.
When The Wife calls in sick, however, it's a different story. Our budget being what it is here at Mom-and-Dad, Inc., I haven't been able to hire a backup. So, when the wife calls in sick, I go home, as I did today.
It's rare that illness renders the wife basically non-functional, but that was our situation today. I blame some Chinese food from last night. It didn't sit very well with me, either. Thankfully, it was a relatively easy day: no scheduled activities, no out-of-the-ordinary events, just me trying to keep the Mini-Humans from causing injury to themselves or each other. Feed them a couple of times, bathe them, put them to bed. It was about one-third the degree of difficulty of her average day. And I still worked twice as hard as I would have if I had stayed at the office. And most of my days at the office don't involve poop, or dishes, or laundry, or having to read the same book repeatedly over the course of the day. The Wife does this every day, and she doesn't even get the paltry wages most day-care workers get.
But she does get to hang out with three of the coolest little people in all the world. Can't measure that in dollars.
Sunday, January 12, 2003
Amateur geopolitical analysis
Iraq, I can take or leave. I don't feel particularly bothered by Iraq, and I am not convinced we should be sacrificing American lives there.
These f---ing North Koreans, however, scare the hell out of me. I sense some desperation emanating from north of the 38th parallel. It's almost like they're trying to goad the United States into giving them a reason to fire off their atomic bottle rockets.
Unfinished business from 1991. Unfinished business from 1953. I'm not liking the way this feels.
Iraq, I can take or leave. I don't feel particularly bothered by Iraq, and I am not convinced we should be sacrificing American lives there.
These f---ing North Koreans, however, scare the hell out of me. I sense some desperation emanating from north of the 38th parallel. It's almost like they're trying to goad the United States into giving them a reason to fire off their atomic bottle rockets.
Unfinished business from 1991. Unfinished business from 1953. I'm not liking the way this feels.
Saturday, January 11, 2003
Jonesing
I can tell you this: If a heroin withdrawal is worse than this, I can't imagine anybody living through it.
Ran out of coffee yesterday. Forgot to buy more coffee. Also out of Coca-Cola and other caffeinated treats. The Wife left me wtih kids and without a car while she went off to sell some of our junk at a friend's garage sale. And I am hurting.
My head feels like it's absolutely going to explode -- that is, when I'm not experiencing fits of narcolepsy. I think nodding off and leaving three kids in charge would be a bad thing. Florida has laws against that, I think.
I need a drink. Coke. Pepsi. Dr Pepper. Mountain Dew, for Christ's sake. Anything. And fast.
I can tell you this: If a heroin withdrawal is worse than this, I can't imagine anybody living through it.
Ran out of coffee yesterday. Forgot to buy more coffee. Also out of Coca-Cola and other caffeinated treats. The Wife left me wtih kids and without a car while she went off to sell some of our junk at a friend's garage sale. And I am hurting.
My head feels like it's absolutely going to explode -- that is, when I'm not experiencing fits of narcolepsy. I think nodding off and leaving three kids in charge would be a bad thing. Florida has laws against that, I think.
I need a drink. Coke. Pepsi. Dr Pepper. Mountain Dew, for Christ's sake. Anything. And fast.
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Happy birthday to The Wife
Our ages don't matter anymore. That's a good thing. Once you pass 16, 18, 21, 25 (that was very important to me; car insurance decreased by half) and 30, there's not much reason to count anymore. And I don't ever do any more math than absolutely necessary.
Neither, of course, does The Wife. She has been fully aware for several months that she was going to turn 33 today. This, of course, until she did the math and realized that the correct answer to 2003 minus 1971 is ... 32.
So The Wife has received a bonus year. Wish her a good one.
Our ages don't matter anymore. That's a good thing. Once you pass 16, 18, 21, 25 (that was very important to me; car insurance decreased by half) and 30, there's not much reason to count anymore. And I don't ever do any more math than absolutely necessary.
Neither, of course, does The Wife. She has been fully aware for several months that she was going to turn 33 today. This, of course, until she did the math and realized that the correct answer to 2003 minus 1971 is ... 32.
So The Wife has received a bonus year. Wish her a good one.
Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Tightly Wound Insomniac
Like most people, when I'm under stress of any sort, I have trouble sleeping. Unlike most people, however, during these fits of insomnia, I develop super-sonic hearing powers. I become sensitive to every little noise in and around the house, and they become louder and louder, eventually convincing me that my home is surrounded by criminals waiting to break into my house and steal all my stuff and break my kids' toys.
So, in an effort to ward off these phantom ne'er-do-wells, I ... well, apparently, I get out of bed and come to the computer.
It turns out that tonight is a banner night for strange noises in and around the house. The Young Daughter has a cough, which I'm sure is annoying her intensely. The dogs are out by the pool. One of the dogs had a fit of barking earlier, but The Wife groggily contended that particular dog wouldn't be smart enough to bark if anything was amiss and was likely barking just to hear the sound of his own voice. The pool pump is making periodic strange hissing noises, for reasons that I don't completely understand. There is much about the pool that I don't completely understand, but if I was to think too much more about that, it would just add to my stress and probably would keep me awake another hour.
One time about 12 years ago, one of these fits of insomnia exploded into a full-blown panic attack. It was less than two months before we got married. I was completely convinced my wife's ex-boyfriend was outside our apartment, wanting to do harm to both of us. He wasn't, and he didn't, but my mind and body reacted 100 percent as if he was and he did. The reaction came complete with a full-volume, blood-curdling scream. It still ranks as the No. 1 most frightening experience in my life, and probably of The Wife's, too. It convinced me that I should never own a firearm; if I had access to one that evening, I might very well have used it for no good reason. It scared me because I felt like I had absolutely no control over my reactions, and to have something like that happen during what was essentially a bad dream made me wonder what other sorts of chemical imbalances I might have had.
It scared me to the point that I actually made an appointment with a psychiatrist. The doctor assured me that I was fine; she noted that the fact that I was checking to see if I had a problem was a good indication that I didn't. She pointed out that I was under incredible stress, being that I was about to get married and all. Her advice to me was to find some sort of release and to stop worrying quite so much.
That, of course, is easier said than done.
My yawn just now was interrupted by some unintelligible gibberish coming from the Young Daughter's room. She's apparently having trouble sleeping, too. However, being only 2, her options for dealing with her insomnia are limited. She's not awake enough for me to go in there and rock her to sleep; that would just wake her up further, which would only make her mad.
When I was in college, I'd deal with one of these episodes by calling my mother in the middle of the night. I'm sure it annoyed her, but I also know in a twisted way it made her happy to be needed. She was the one who moved out when my parents divorced, so she missed out on seeing most of the teenage angst first-hand. I think she saw my 3 a.m. calls as a way of making up for that. This, of course, is further evidence of the goofy nature of my childhood; when my mom's phone rang at 3 a.m., it was a signal to her that everything was all right.
When I became more adjusted to working late at night, most of my REM sleep was occurring during daylight hours, so I began to worry somewhat less about intruders and security breaches. Not so long ago, I'd just now be ending my work shift, rather than facing the prospect of an alarm clock blaring in six hours.
Quick inventory of the noises: low hum of the computer fan ... refrigerator ... ceiling fan ... holy shit! what's that? oh, the icemaker ... furnace ... cat ... kid with a cold. I think I can go back to bed now.
Like most people, when I'm under stress of any sort, I have trouble sleeping. Unlike most people, however, during these fits of insomnia, I develop super-sonic hearing powers. I become sensitive to every little noise in and around the house, and they become louder and louder, eventually convincing me that my home is surrounded by criminals waiting to break into my house and steal all my stuff and break my kids' toys.
So, in an effort to ward off these phantom ne'er-do-wells, I ... well, apparently, I get out of bed and come to the computer.
It turns out that tonight is a banner night for strange noises in and around the house. The Young Daughter has a cough, which I'm sure is annoying her intensely. The dogs are out by the pool. One of the dogs had a fit of barking earlier, but The Wife groggily contended that particular dog wouldn't be smart enough to bark if anything was amiss and was likely barking just to hear the sound of his own voice. The pool pump is making periodic strange hissing noises, for reasons that I don't completely understand. There is much about the pool that I don't completely understand, but if I was to think too much more about that, it would just add to my stress and probably would keep me awake another hour.
One time about 12 years ago, one of these fits of insomnia exploded into a full-blown panic attack. It was less than two months before we got married. I was completely convinced my wife's ex-boyfriend was outside our apartment, wanting to do harm to both of us. He wasn't, and he didn't, but my mind and body reacted 100 percent as if he was and he did. The reaction came complete with a full-volume, blood-curdling scream. It still ranks as the No. 1 most frightening experience in my life, and probably of The Wife's, too. It convinced me that I should never own a firearm; if I had access to one that evening, I might very well have used it for no good reason. It scared me because I felt like I had absolutely no control over my reactions, and to have something like that happen during what was essentially a bad dream made me wonder what other sorts of chemical imbalances I might have had.
It scared me to the point that I actually made an appointment with a psychiatrist. The doctor assured me that I was fine; she noted that the fact that I was checking to see if I had a problem was a good indication that I didn't. She pointed out that I was under incredible stress, being that I was about to get married and all. Her advice to me was to find some sort of release and to stop worrying quite so much.
That, of course, is easier said than done.
My yawn just now was interrupted by some unintelligible gibberish coming from the Young Daughter's room. She's apparently having trouble sleeping, too. However, being only 2, her options for dealing with her insomnia are limited. She's not awake enough for me to go in there and rock her to sleep; that would just wake her up further, which would only make her mad.
When I was in college, I'd deal with one of these episodes by calling my mother in the middle of the night. I'm sure it annoyed her, but I also know in a twisted way it made her happy to be needed. She was the one who moved out when my parents divorced, so she missed out on seeing most of the teenage angst first-hand. I think she saw my 3 a.m. calls as a way of making up for that. This, of course, is further evidence of the goofy nature of my childhood; when my mom's phone rang at 3 a.m., it was a signal to her that everything was all right.
When I became more adjusted to working late at night, most of my REM sleep was occurring during daylight hours, so I began to worry somewhat less about intruders and security breaches. Not so long ago, I'd just now be ending my work shift, rather than facing the prospect of an alarm clock blaring in six hours.
Quick inventory of the noises: low hum of the computer fan ... refrigerator ... ceiling fan ... holy shit! what's that? oh, the icemaker ... furnace ... cat ... kid with a cold. I think I can go back to bed now.
Monday, January 06, 2003
Sunday, January 05, 2003
Why we're all doing this
Back in August, we talked here about making a Major Lifestyle Change. It was not the change we ultimately made. Before the whole move-back-to-Florida thing came up, we had our eyes on a piece of property in deep rural Texas.
The house was situated on 10 acres of land approximately 15 miles south of nowhere. It was built, depending on which property record one believed, in 1893 or 1912. It was in remarkably good shape for a house that old, but it was going to require a lot of work. But we saw what the place could be. As soon as I made my peace with the idea of living in a rural area and having my Very Long Commute made even longer, I was excited about the idea. I had a vision of a place where my friends and co-workers from the Very Large Metropolitan Area could come spend a weekend far away from the city lights and the traffic and stuff. They could bring their kids to ride horses. They could bring guitars for all-night jam sessions on the second-story porch. It would have been an escape hatch, a place where my family would welcome everybody we know to come and experience some much-needed simplicity.
But, in a world where all things happen -- and don't happen -- for a reason, the deal fell through. Our house didn't sell in time, and another buyer showed up with cash in hand. That buyer showed up the day I was interviewing for the job in Florida.
The thing about that house was this: It was the closest thing we had seen so far to a place that fulfilled a vision.
------------------
One night in 1990, not long before we were married, The Wife and I had one of those up-all-night talks. In that conversation, we described to each other what our Home would be like. It was going to be rural, but not so rural that a career wasn't accessible; it would be old, a place with a history; and it would be surrounded by so much land that our kids wouldn't even know how to spell "neighbor." It was going to be about 10 miles north of Anytown, where I was going to fulfill my goal of being sports editor at the Bugle. I was going to work 11-4, come home for supper, and go back to work about 8-11, to make sure the paper got out.
Reality, of course, has thrown us some curves. Reality dictates that:
a) We live within access of a major metropolitan area, because that's where the career opportunities are.
b) We live in a house that's not going to cost us a lot of money.
c) We live in a house that's not going to require extensive construction.
d) We live in a house with access to high-quality public schools.
When we moved to Cincinnati to fulfill (a), we bought our first house. The family at the time was me, The Wife and The Old Daughter, who had just turned 1. It was a 2-bedroom, 1-bath built in 1912. It was in a neighborhood that admittedly had seen better days, and it wasn't going to be a good long-term solution for us, but it was a great experience and fun while it lasted.
The house, on Taylor Avenue in Bellevue, Ky., was three miles from my office in Cincinnati. We could see the Ohio River, Riverfront Stadium and the Cincinnati skyline from our backyard.
The house was part of the 1912 version of a subdivision. It was identical to the house next to it, and you couldn't walk between the two houses with your arms outstretched without touching both houses. The lot was 30 feet by 112 feet. The house was red brick, with a big porch (on which we immediately installed a swing) and the hardwoods inside were beautiful. The place had actually benefited from neglect; as nobody had ever bothered to "update" the place, much of the original house was intact. Old, but intact.
In a kitchen drawer, we found the receipt for the work to uninstall the original gas light fixtures. The receipt was dated 1977.
The house also had a story, which I unearthed by spending a day at the county courthouse.
At the courthouse, I followed the deeds backwards through the big books. The house's first owners were a young couple named Knaebel. A 1913 city directory listed Mr. Knaebel as a "laborer;" a 1933 city directory listed him as a "foreman." The Knaebels had one son, sometime around 1915. The son was listed in a city directory from the late 1930s as an "artist," and he lived in his parents' house.
The elder Knaebels died in 1952 -- she on Oct. 4, he on Nov. 18. The obituaries noted that she died in the house on Taylor Avenue, and he died at his son's residence in a nearby town. The son received the house and the remainder of his parents' estate, valued at something in the high four figures.
He owned the house and rented it from 1952 to 1977. The next owner rented the house out from 1977 until 1995, when a well-moneyed couple bought the house as a rehab project. We bought the house from them three months later. The first time I walked on the front porch of this place, as soon as I turned the knob on the door, I told The Wife, "We're home."
This place was Home for 13 months. Then, in pursuit of a better job and a better neighborhood for our daughter, who was going to be school-age at some point, we moved to Florida.
We bought a typical Florida suburban place -- one story, 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, about 2,000 square feet. The Wife put her considerable decorating talents to work, and when we left 2 1/2 years later, it was a typical suburban place with a seriously cool personality. It was a very comfortable house, in many ways.
Having made that place our home, we left it behind to move to Texas in 1999. We moved for two reasons -- it was a good career move, and I had long held a desire to live in the homeland of my ancestors. I am, at heart, a Texan, no matter what my address says, and it seemed to be destiny that we live there.
Our search for a house led us into suburbs that were a long way away from downtown, because, they said, that was our best chance of fulfilling criteria (d) above. One of the benefits of this is that we were able to look at very, very nice houses in our price range, houses that we wouldn't have come close to being able to afford without a Very Long Commute. I did, in fact, openly express skepticism that I had done anything to deserve to live in a house as nice as the one we finally settled on. The house was not even 10 years old, but for what we needed, it was perfect in every way -- except, of course, its location, 33.8 miles from work.
The house was nice, but it just never quite became Home. This led us to the house out in the sticks, the place that could have been our Home. Yeah, it was a hell of a long way from work, too, but it was going to be worth it. It was in a rural school district that was fairly well-respected. But it wasn't meant to be, and, as it turned out, it wasn't meant for us to stay in Texas. We wound up making a complete U-turn.
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Now, back in Florida, we're in a house that's much different from the one we left. It has flaws, but we're in the process of making it ours, and I have no doubt that The Wife will inject this place with a personality all its own.
I also have no doubt that this place will be, as has been our history, temporary. At some point -- maybe many years in the future, when the fact that Florida's rural schools are atrocious will no longer matter to us -- we'll pursue the rural dream again. Hopefully there'll be some "rural" left in Florida by that time. At some point, maybe we'll be able to afford a better suburban house, and we'll move there instead.
But Home is not just about a house, or what the license plate on your car says. It's not about your job. Have we found our home yet? I don't know.
But I do know that we have found Home.
Back in August, we talked here about making a Major Lifestyle Change. It was not the change we ultimately made. Before the whole move-back-to-Florida thing came up, we had our eyes on a piece of property in deep rural Texas.
The house was situated on 10 acres of land approximately 15 miles south of nowhere. It was built, depending on which property record one believed, in 1893 or 1912. It was in remarkably good shape for a house that old, but it was going to require a lot of work. But we saw what the place could be. As soon as I made my peace with the idea of living in a rural area and having my Very Long Commute made even longer, I was excited about the idea. I had a vision of a place where my friends and co-workers from the Very Large Metropolitan Area could come spend a weekend far away from the city lights and the traffic and stuff. They could bring their kids to ride horses. They could bring guitars for all-night jam sessions on the second-story porch. It would have been an escape hatch, a place where my family would welcome everybody we know to come and experience some much-needed simplicity.
But, in a world where all things happen -- and don't happen -- for a reason, the deal fell through. Our house didn't sell in time, and another buyer showed up with cash in hand. That buyer showed up the day I was interviewing for the job in Florida.
The thing about that house was this: It was the closest thing we had seen so far to a place that fulfilled a vision.
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One night in 1990, not long before we were married, The Wife and I had one of those up-all-night talks. In that conversation, we described to each other what our Home would be like. It was going to be rural, but not so rural that a career wasn't accessible; it would be old, a place with a history; and it would be surrounded by so much land that our kids wouldn't even know how to spell "neighbor." It was going to be about 10 miles north of Anytown, where I was going to fulfill my goal of being sports editor at the Bugle. I was going to work 11-4, come home for supper, and go back to work about 8-11, to make sure the paper got out.
Reality, of course, has thrown us some curves. Reality dictates that:
a) We live within access of a major metropolitan area, because that's where the career opportunities are.
b) We live in a house that's not going to cost us a lot of money.
c) We live in a house that's not going to require extensive construction.
d) We live in a house with access to high-quality public schools.
When we moved to Cincinnati to fulfill (a), we bought our first house. The family at the time was me, The Wife and The Old Daughter, who had just turned 1. It was a 2-bedroom, 1-bath built in 1912. It was in a neighborhood that admittedly had seen better days, and it wasn't going to be a good long-term solution for us, but it was a great experience and fun while it lasted.
The house, on Taylor Avenue in Bellevue, Ky., was three miles from my office in Cincinnati. We could see the Ohio River, Riverfront Stadium and the Cincinnati skyline from our backyard.
The house was part of the 1912 version of a subdivision. It was identical to the house next to it, and you couldn't walk between the two houses with your arms outstretched without touching both houses. The lot was 30 feet by 112 feet. The house was red brick, with a big porch (on which we immediately installed a swing) and the hardwoods inside were beautiful. The place had actually benefited from neglect; as nobody had ever bothered to "update" the place, much of the original house was intact. Old, but intact.
In a kitchen drawer, we found the receipt for the work to uninstall the original gas light fixtures. The receipt was dated 1977.
The house also had a story, which I unearthed by spending a day at the county courthouse.
At the courthouse, I followed the deeds backwards through the big books. The house's first owners were a young couple named Knaebel. A 1913 city directory listed Mr. Knaebel as a "laborer;" a 1933 city directory listed him as a "foreman." The Knaebels had one son, sometime around 1915. The son was listed in a city directory from the late 1930s as an "artist," and he lived in his parents' house.
The elder Knaebels died in 1952 -- she on Oct. 4, he on Nov. 18. The obituaries noted that she died in the house on Taylor Avenue, and he died at his son's residence in a nearby town. The son received the house and the remainder of his parents' estate, valued at something in the high four figures.
He owned the house and rented it from 1952 to 1977. The next owner rented the house out from 1977 until 1995, when a well-moneyed couple bought the house as a rehab project. We bought the house from them three months later. The first time I walked on the front porch of this place, as soon as I turned the knob on the door, I told The Wife, "We're home."
This place was Home for 13 months. Then, in pursuit of a better job and a better neighborhood for our daughter, who was going to be school-age at some point, we moved to Florida.
We bought a typical Florida suburban place -- one story, 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, about 2,000 square feet. The Wife put her considerable decorating talents to work, and when we left 2 1/2 years later, it was a typical suburban place with a seriously cool personality. It was a very comfortable house, in many ways.
Having made that place our home, we left it behind to move to Texas in 1999. We moved for two reasons -- it was a good career move, and I had long held a desire to live in the homeland of my ancestors. I am, at heart, a Texan, no matter what my address says, and it seemed to be destiny that we live there.
Our search for a house led us into suburbs that were a long way away from downtown, because, they said, that was our best chance of fulfilling criteria (d) above. One of the benefits of this is that we were able to look at very, very nice houses in our price range, houses that we wouldn't have come close to being able to afford without a Very Long Commute. I did, in fact, openly express skepticism that I had done anything to deserve to live in a house as nice as the one we finally settled on. The house was not even 10 years old, but for what we needed, it was perfect in every way -- except, of course, its location, 33.8 miles from work.
The house was nice, but it just never quite became Home. This led us to the house out in the sticks, the place that could have been our Home. Yeah, it was a hell of a long way from work, too, but it was going to be worth it. It was in a rural school district that was fairly well-respected. But it wasn't meant to be, and, as it turned out, it wasn't meant for us to stay in Texas. We wound up making a complete U-turn.
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Now, back in Florida, we're in a house that's much different from the one we left. It has flaws, but we're in the process of making it ours, and I have no doubt that The Wife will inject this place with a personality all its own.
I also have no doubt that this place will be, as has been our history, temporary. At some point -- maybe many years in the future, when the fact that Florida's rural schools are atrocious will no longer matter to us -- we'll pursue the rural dream again. Hopefully there'll be some "rural" left in Florida by that time. At some point, maybe we'll be able to afford a better suburban house, and we'll move there instead.
But Home is not just about a house, or what the license plate on your car says. It's not about your job. Have we found our home yet? I don't know.
But I do know that we have found Home.
I am so plugged in
At this very moment, I am:
having an e-mail exchange with a friend who just moved to San Diego
having an IM conversation with a co-worker, who's holding down the fort at work
updating this forum
having an IM conversation, using another program, with a friend in Missouri, about yet another piece of software I just downloaded.
I don't know when I became such a geek, but it's kind of cool. Beats watching TV.
At this very moment, I am:
I don't know when I became such a geek, but it's kind of cool. Beats watching TV.