Today’s Gag

Copyright © 2018 Jim Sizemore.

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Today’s Quote

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Three-Minute Memoir

Lost Coast

By Barbara Kaplan Bass

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We found ourselves at a crossroads: which route should we take from Humboldt down to Sausalito, the next stop in our California adventure? 101 would be faster, more direct and purposeful, but we had just come from communing with the Giant Redwoods, which left us—so to speak—peaced-out. And it was Thoreau who said, “The swiftest traveler is he who goes afoot.” We weren’t exactly “afoot,” but we were open to exploring, taking the slower route, Thoreau’s spirit of exploration and Robert Frost’s “road less traveled” were guiding our way: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/And I took the one less traveled by/And that has made all the difference.”

We chose Route 1, a winding two laned road that would take us along the Pacific Coast. It was about an inch and a half on the map, not much out of the way. The few towns mentioned sounded alluring: Shelter Cove, Westport, Mendocino. We looked forward to breathtaking views of the Pacific coast, opportunities to explore virgin territory. Feeling adventurous, and maybe a bit overconfident, we headed away from the highway and drove south to the sea.

As we descended into this northern coastal forest, we discovered that we were farther from the ocean than expected. We would have to wait to glimpse the Pacific. When I put the nearest town into our GPS, we had another surprise: no cell service. What if there were an emergency? As we drove on, we noted sparsely placed call boxes located in small pull-off areas. Suppose we needed help and weren’t near these links to civilization?

Engulfed by the forest, we saw the last of the afternoon light filtering hazily through the towering trees. Then we noticed that the road had no shoulder. We hadn’t seen another car —or a place of business —since we began our descent. We soldiered not so merrily along, no longer feeling to be intrepid explorers out for an adventure.

As the sun began to sink behind the redwoods, we also realized that there were no streetlights on Route 1. Once the sun slipped below the horizon, we would be driving in pitch dark on a two-lane road with no shoulders, no cell service—only the occasional call box. It was then that our fuel gauge light began to flash on and off. We’re out of gas?

My husband put the car in neutral and let it coast on the downhill slope. Our little adventure had become a scary trip into the unknown. In the 51 years that we have known each other, we have never run out of fuel. “We ‘re not empty yet,” my husband said, as we coasted into the next pull-off. He pushed a few buttons on the callbox and the Highway Patrol answered. Hooray! Wait, what? “You won’t come until we are completely out of gas? What if we hit empty and we’re not near a callbox? How long will it take to reach us?”

As I think about this, we may have overreacted. What was the worst that might have happened? Anyway we could have flagged a passing motorist after perhaps an hour or two, then waited for the Highway Patrol to show up—or just spent the night in the pull-off. But these possibilities only occur to me in retrospect. Back in the forest, things looked bleak. However, right before we began scratching our last-will-and-testament into the paint on the car door, and drafting a final farewell note to our children, two “angels” appeared in a late model Ford: Claudia and her daughter, Christine. “Can we help you?” Why is it that when someone is kind to me, I start crying? I had been dry-eyed, but when these two Samaritans stopped to help us, I broke down in sobs. They didn’t have extra gas, but they promised to follow us to Westport, the first town on the map, just twenty miles away.

Their presence calmed us enough to continue, still mostly in neutral, still panicking on every upgrade, checking every few seconds for Claudia and Christine in our rear-view mirror—but we finally made it out of the forest and were treated to the magnificent view of the North Pacific Coast. I would like to say that the view made it worthwhile, but it didn’t. I still get palpitations thinking about what could have happened on that treacherous stretch of highway—bandits , Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers—they all haunt by dreams.

When we coasted into Westport, our sense of relief began to wane: a few scattered houses and no downtown. We may have been literally out of the woods but not figuratively. We pulled up alongside a lone citizen walking along the road and asked if there were a gas station in town. “No gas station,” he said, “but there’s a pump outside the general store,” and he pointed across the street and down the road. “There’s not another pump for 40 miles. That’s why they call it the ‘The Lost Coast.’”

Gas was $4.99 a gallon, but who cares? Hearing the gurgle of fuel through the hose was pure music, worth every penny. We waved goodbye to Claudia and Christine, blowing kisses of gratitude, and headed toward Mendocino with a full tank, relieved and now confident we would survive.

And we can still say that we have never run out of gas. We also learned that an inch and a half is not always an inch and a half—at least not on a map—and that there are helpers out there when we need them.

I must return to Robert Frost here – a different poem, but an insight into our experience: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep/But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep.”

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Barbara Kaplan Bass was a member of the English Department at Towson University for 43 years, teaching writing and American literature before retiring last June.  She is now enjoying the luxury of spending time reading and writing and traveling.  She is currently working on a book of essays—one for each year of her life—for her three granddaughters.

Today’s Gag

Copyright © 2018 Jim Sizemore

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Today’s Curse

Two paragraphs and an image from a Wikipedia entry:

“May you live in interesting times” is an English expression purported to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. While seemingly a blessing, the expression is always used ironically, with the clear implication that ‘uninteresting times’, of peace and tranquillity, are more life-enhancing than interesting ones, which from historical perspective usually include disorder and conflict.
Despite being so common in English as to be known as “the Chinese curse”, the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced. The most likely connection to Chinese culture may be deduced from analysis of the late-19th century speeches of Joseph Chamberlain, probably erroneously transmitted and revised through his son Austen Chamberlain.

Three-Minute Memoir

Me and the Big Guy

 By Jim Sizemore

It’s the early1960s. I’m driving home west to east on Northern Parkway from my GS-2 clerical job at SSA Headquarters in Woodlawn. We live in a small apartment in a new duplex on a street of old homes in Hamilton. That “we’ includes my wife and toddler son, but I’m also talking about “The Big Guy” who lives downstairs. That’s my nickname for him. He and his wife moved in after we did. My wife and I have a one-bedroom and she’s pregnant with our second son. Once home, my little family and I will sit down to a pleasant dinner. But, as usual, I’m really looking forward to later in the evening when my son is in bed, my wife relaxing and watching TV. That’s when The Big Guy usually calls me down to his apartment for several games of darts. He has his own dartboard and we play almost every night.

The Big Guy, who is 6’ 4’’and 230 pounds, is super-competitive. Me, I’m 5’ 8” and 150 pounds on a good day, but I can be pretty competitive myself—depending on the game. And I love darts. I get the idea that the Big Guy has too much time on his hands—which in his case translates into to plenty of time to practice darts. That’s because he’s sort of out of work—recovering from an injury to his shoulder. (Not the shoulder of his dart-throwing arm, thank goodness.) I guess being home with very limited physical or social activity all day, he’s ready for company—sort of lonely, you might say. So he asks often and I often agree. After many months, “competitive” or not, he still hasn’t managed to beat me at darts.

My darts friend is Jackie Burkett, a Baltimore Colt rookie. You may have heard of him. His wife, a very attractive “Southern Belle” is also a Jackie. They’re from Alabama. They met as kids in high school and both graduated from Auburn University. He was a star in all kinds of college sports, especially football—big-time famous at that. He was drafted by the Baltimore Colts as a linebacker, but was injured in a pre-season game. Jackie had surgery on his shoulder at Union Memorial Hospital on 33^rd Street. My wife and I visited him there. We are all about the same age, so young, so very married, and we are pretty close. In fact, my wife’s parents are godparents for one of their kids. So what is he doing in my neighborhood at all? Well, rookie footballers don’t make a lot of money, so they tend to live in modest local areas with the rest of we civilians. Which is kind of nice.

Tonight’s dart game begins as usual; Jackie is full of fun and fire, joking around. It always starts this way. I’m thinking he’s over-confident as usual, despite or because of all of his lengthy practice sessions. I have no reason not to think that it will end as usual, too—after three or four games, me the big winner. But tonight the first game is very close—too close for comfort—and I only pull it out at the very end. The second game I also win. Game three? There is no game three tonight. Jackie has lost interest. This has not been his evening, and it’s even worse than usual. His stance is off, lower arm not level, his release point inconsistent, his follow-through nonexistent. So of course he loses again. After only two games, Jackie seems to somehow shrink in size. Not really sink, of course, but his shoulders slump when he loses. And with me he always loses at darts.

The next night Jackie suggests another activity altogether. He loves golf almost as much as football, and is really, really good at it—as I come to find out. Out of the blue, Jackie asks me to go along with him to a local driving range to, as he says, “slam a bucket” of balls. I have never hit a golf ball in my life, but with my natural physical ability/agility—darts, of course, and military marching moves: Right Face, Left Face, About Face, etc.—I figure I’ll be right at home. At least I’ll not make a fool of myself with the golf challenge. Long story short, I make a fool of myself. Jackie’s golf balls, even the weak drives, travel 200+ yards. He slams some in a straight line 300+ yards. All of mine, if I manage to make contact at all, trickle off the tee.

Many years have passed since we lived in Hamilton. My toddler and his brother are now grown men with their own families. I have Grandchildren and even a couple of great-grandchildren. My wife and I split up after a too-short marriage and I’ve lived many places and worn a number of hats in the interim. Jackie Burkett, well, he went on to play for the New Orleans Saints and the Dallas Cowboys. He co-owned a restaurant in New Orleans and was the marketing executive for an engineering firm. In politics, he became the Fort Walton County Commissioner. And his marriage remained intact throughout his life, his children and grandchildren close. Anyway you look at it, Jackie proved to be a winner.

As for me, it’s still all about the darts.

Thanks to Florence Newman who helped me shape this essay—suggesting changes and additions to greatly improve it. She understood what I was trying to do and helped me do it. Flo is another big winner in my life.

Postscript: It saddens me to report that Jackie Burkett died from leukemia, September 1, 2017, age 80.

Today’s Quote

By James Thurber When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother’s house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer then twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.

Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.

“The Little Girl and the Wolf”

Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated, 1939

Sam Shepard, R. I. P.

The following is one of seven blog posts that have appeared on doodlemeister.com featuring Sam Shepard talking about his craft over the years. To read all seven posts, type his name, including capital letters, into the search window off to the right.

Adapted from: The Pathfinder

By John Lahr, The New Yorker, February 8, 2010

The male influences around me (growing up) were primarily alcoholics and extremely violent. I listened like an animal. My listening was afraid.

I  just dropped out of nowhere. It was absolute luck that I happened to be there (NYC, 1963) when the whole Off-Off Broadway movement was starting. I think they hired everybody. It was wide open. You were like a kid in a fun park—trying to be an actor, writer, musician, whatever happened . . . . For me, there was nothing fun about the sixties. Terrible suffering . . . . Things coming apart at the seams.

I had a sense that a voice existed that needed expression, that there was a voice that wasn’t being voiced. There were so many voices that I didn’t know where to start. I felt kind of like a weird stenographer . . . . There were definitely things there, and I was just putting them down. I was fascinated by how they structured themselves.

When you write a play, you work out like a musician on a piece of music. You find all the rhythms and the melody and the harmonies and take them as they come  . . . . Break it all down in pairs. Make the pairs work together, with each other. Then make ’em work against each other, independent.

I preferred a character that was constantly unidentifiable . . . instead of embodying a “whole character,” the actor should consider his performance “a fractured whole with bits and pieces of character flying off the central theme,” . . . . to make a kind of music or painting in space without having to feel the need to completely answer intellectually for the character’s behavior.

Character is something that can’t be helped. It’s like destiny . . . . It can be covered up, it can be messed with, it can be screwed around with, but it can’t be ultimately changed. It’s like the structure of our bones, and the blood that runs through our veins.

(I was) dead set against revisions because I couldn’t stand rewriting . . . . (The plays) were chants, they were incantations, they were spells. You get on them and you go. Plays have to go beyond just working out problems. (They have to move) from colloquial territory to poetic country.

I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing, and endings are a disaster.

Today’s Quote

“Orwell would have despised Trump as a kind of fat, dumb, uneducated oligarch,” Ricks said last month in a podcast produced by the magazine Foreign Policy. “Churchill would  see America as somewhat childish. We occasionally stumble and elect a childish president, and that’s what we’ve done here, but Churchill would also appreciate how robust the American government is. Basically, we’ve had a decapitation strike that we executed ourselves. We no longer have a working presidency. There’s nobody at home, mentally, running the U.S. government. And guess what? It runs pretty well by itself. Probably better. If President Trump were competent, he’d be much more dangerous.”

Thomas E. Ricks, N.Y.T. Book Review, June 11, 2017

Today’s Quote

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