J. Conrad's blog

Next Big Thing

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:39:45 -0500

The Next Big Thing

Narielle Living, author of Signs of the South, invited me to be part of the Next Big Thing Blog Hop. It sounded like fun, and I get to promote my work and the work of other gifted writers. I was tasked with answering the questions below, and to tag three others to be part of the hop. Look for their answers next Wednesday, December 26. You can read Narielle’s post here.

Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing:

What is the working title of your book?
A World Without Music.

From where did the idea for the book come?
I’ve always been fascinated by music. Although I’m tone deaf and won’t sing even in the shower, and I can’t play a musical instrument, I love music and have a rather large collection of CDs—jazz, classic rock, blues, and more. I’ve always wondered how music does what it does: bridge cultures—remember when the Iron Curtain fell and Billy Joel went to Russia? Those in attendance (I imagine most didn’t speak English) cheered and rocked like any American audience. Music can incite a people to revolt, fill us with inspiration, and bring us to tears. It can bring two lonely hearts together.

Well, it occurred to me, what if our civilization had evolved without music? What if ancient man had never learned to communicate over distances by beating a stick on a hollow log? What if he’d never devised stringed instruments, or reeds or woodwinds? What if he’d never learned to write ballads to his lady love? Might we have evolved into a much more peaceful planet?

A spiritual being from a distant galaxy—a walk-in—stumbles upon our planet and shares lives with a number of historical figures: Jesus, during his ministry and crucifixion, and Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, helping him to develop Western Christianity. When he shares the childhood of Johan Sebastian Bach, he becomes fascinated by music because, on his world, although highly mathematic, they never devised music. He leaves Bach, gifting him with his mathematic knowledge (music is numerics), and moves forward, to inhabit the body of Thomas Jefferson, who also loved music and played the violin, during the time of the American Revolution. Eventually this walk-in moves to the twenty-first century where he befriends a musician—a bass player in a jazz quartet who is also a veteran of the first Gulf War suffering PTSD, which cost him his marriage. After fifteen years, his world devoid of music despite playing in his quartet, he contemplates suicide.

How’s that for a short answer?

What genre does your book fall under?
All my novels tend to defy categorization. I’ve written science fiction, sports-themed novels, paranormal, a mystery. I guess the one thing that ties them together is an element of romance, although not in the bodice-ripping sense. You’ll never see Fabio on the cover of one of my books!

In all my novels the protagonist is broken in some way, seeking redemption. In A World Without Music, the protagonist seeks for the harmony his life once was, prior to witnessing a horrific scene in the desert of Kuwait.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I don’t write with a screenplay mentality, and no one has ever asked me the question. But this was a fun exercise, even if I spent more time on it than any of the other questions.

·         Reagan (the Gulf War veteran): Jim Caviezel
·         Prisco (inhabited by the walk-in): Kevin Spacey
·         Sarah (Reagan’s ex-wife): Susanna Thompson (she played Lt. Colonel Hollis Mann, Gibbs’ romantic interest for a few NCIS episodes)
·         Cam (Reagan’s Facebook romantic interest) Claire Forlani (Meet Joe Black)
·         Denise (the groupie who stalks Reagan): Scarlett Johansson

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Can a veteran of the Gulf War suffering PTSD finally leave behind his past, to find love and peace of mind?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
A World Without Music will be traditionally published, likely by a small, independent press.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I anticipate completing my first draft by late winter 2013. I commenced the project in March 2012.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I can’t think of another book to which A World Without Music compares. I would hope that’s a good thing, although the publishing industry often likes to piggyback off the success of works that have come before.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?
Actually, I think I was inspired by events in my own life. More than two years removed from an ugly breakup and going through a career crisis, my own life was devoid of much harmony. As luck, or fate, would have it, a month after I started the project, I met a wonderful woman who has brought the music back into my life. Still, the story was started and I couldn’t bring myself trash it—I’d already gotten too attached to the characters. I also pride myself in finishing what I start.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
All my novels deal with relationships—those between men and women or sons and parents. A World Without Music is no different. The protagonist is broken, seeking love and redemption. Who can’t relate to that? Introspective, A World Without Music also attempts to answer those questions we all ask, at some point in our life, about the meanings of life and love. I hope it will leave readers with their own introspections.

Please checkout next week’s participants:

With ten published books under his belt, Peter Watson Jenkins, an Anglo American, has just added his first collection of short stories. This genre has allowed him to range widely in location, just as he has done in life. Since graduating from Cambridge, he’s been a jack of all trades: a school teacher, minister of religion, journalist, leader of a peace movement, stockbroker, and hypnotist. He hopes this book, Found Money, will prove him a master wordsmith and successful at selling books. He should be, as he was also once a carpet salesman.

Jennie Nicassio is the author of Moondust. While attending Chatham University for her master’s in professional writing, she rediscovered her passion for writing. A clairvoyant with a strong belief in the power of positive thinking, Jennie resides in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her sons, three cats, and dog.

Tigers Sweep Yanks in ALCS

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 09:25:23 -0500

The brooms were out at Comerica Park yesterday as the 2012 Detroit Tigers swept the New York Yankees out of town in the American League Championship Series. Detroit faces the winner of the St. Louis-San Francisco NLCS, to be determined tonight or over the next few days.

Yankee players were humbled, their bats silenced by Detroit pitching that game up six runs in four games. The Yanks, by the way, scored the second most runs in MLB during the regular season. Yankee fans, on the other hand, were humiliated and left scratching their heads—three times in the last six years their team has been eliminated from the postseason by the Tigers.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi was left to wonder aloud, during his post-game interview, what they had to do to improve next season, including himself, to ensure this doesn’t happen again. It was almost as if he couldn’t bring himself to credit Detroit for playing a helluva series, for wanting it more.

Max Scherzer pitched no-hit baseball into the sixth inning—the only Yankee to reach base up until then was by way of error. Phil Coke was stellar, again, in relief, as Jose Valverde, after his performance in game two in New York in which he blew the save and was saved from further embarrassment by the Detroit bats coming alive to win the game in the twelfth inning, once again rode the splinters.

Delmon Young, who was booed much of the season for his inconsistency, got hot at the right time and won series MVP in becoming the first man in MLB to get the game winning hit in all four games.

Even though triple crown winner Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder were relatively quiet (but not silent), other players stepped it up: Jhonny Peralta hit two big flies yesterday. Austin Jackson did his part with both bat and glove, as did Quinton Berry and Omar Infante. Offense is usually difficult to come by in the postseason, but Detroit got it done yesterday in a big way: four big flies, 16 hits and eight runs.

A series for the ages when you look at the numbers: the New York Yankees, as a team, were held to just above a .150 batting average. They looked to be boys playing against men. Quite simply, the Yanks stank. Swisher sat against Verlander. Cano didn’t get his first hit in the series until game three. Axle-Rod was pinch hit for and rode the bench, signing a baseball from the dugout for a young woman and getting a phone number in return.

Colleen and I attended Tuesday night’s game, the first at Comerica Park for the ALCS. It was damp and chilly, and there was a threat of rain; but the atmosphere was electric. Justin Verlander was pitching for the good guys, and when JV pitches, good things often result.

You’ve heard the expression “Must see TV,” in reference to your favorite prime time drama? In Detroit, during the baseball season, we do it a little differently. When Verlander takes the mound, Comerica Park sells out to SRO crowds. Fewer lawns are mowed than on any other day of the week, and people stop at their favorite watering hole on their way home from work to watch JV work his magic with a baseball. It’s called “Must see JV.”

When Verlander pitches, there’s always the possibility of seeing something great. He’s already pitched two no-hitters in his young career, and the last few years he’s been at the top of the league in innings pitched and most strikeouts. Last year he won League MVP and the Cy Young.

But he has been human in the postseason, simply because he is his own worst enemy. During the regular season he pitches to hitters’ weaknesses, watches them to see what they’re looking for; but in the postseason he tends to amp it up, wants to get hitters out with what he wants to throw—usually that 100 mph fastball he features—instead of setting up hitters and letting his defense play behind him.

Which Verlander would show up for game 3? Colleen and I were about to find out.

After Detroiter Jeff Daniels sang the National Anthem—accompanying himself on acoustic guitar—a not so memorable rendition but a vast improvement over Jose Feliciano’s interpretation at game 5 of the 1968 World Series at venerable Tiger Stadium, Verlander took the mound to a thundering ovation. We wanted to let him know he wasn’t alone out there, that we were behind him 100%.

Opposing hitters know the importance of hitting a pitcher early, before he settles in, and it’s no different with Verlander. He sometimes gets hit around in the first inning; but Tuesday night he was awesome, taking but ten pitches to retire the side, and Colleen and I hoped it was a precursor for a complete game performance.

Verlander was perfect through three innings and allowed only one run on three hits over 8 1/3 innings. The Yankees were forced to go to their bullpen in the fourth when Phil Hughes exited with a stiff back, but not before he gave up a solo homerun to Delmon Young. Detroit would add another in the fifth frame.

Colleen and I had a grand time, sipping beers, eating a hotdog and keeping each other warm as the temperature dropped to under 50 for a few minutes before heating up again to 51 for the last couple innings, even as a drizzle began to fall, and stopped only to start up again.

The crowd was boisterous but not mean—no Detroit fan is ever mean when the Tigers are ahead, despite what Tom Monahan once said about Tigers fans. A brief political disagreement broke out between two fans—one a row in front of us and the other across the aisle—but I put a stop to it before it got too heated, calling out, “Leave your politics at home, this is a ballgame!” and received a short cheer. Baseball and politics don’t mix.

Late in the game, after a Yankee hitter fouled off a Verlander heater, I called down to the Yankees’ dugout—yeah, like Joe Girardi could hear me—“Hey, Joe, maybe you want to call for an instant replay review on that one!” That earned me a fist bump from the young man seated in front of us. He, too, recalled Girardi’s comments in the aftermath of game two concerning the missed call at second base, when Infante, clearly out, was called safe. In his post-game comments, Girardi suggested MLB implement instant replay. But a couple years ago, when the Twins were burned in the ALDS against the Yankees by a bogus call, Girardi was quoted, “I like the way it is now.” The grass is browner on the other side, eh, Joe?

Eduardo Nunez led off the Yankee ninth with a solo homerun—the first run given up by a Detroit starting pitcher in 37 2/3 innings. Leyland came out to ask Verlander if he could get one more out. Verlander told him, “Yeah.” And I imagined Leyland’s reply: “Well then why did you make me come all the way out here to ask?”

Leyland later said, “Normally, I guess you don’t take Secretariat out in the final furlong, but that was pretty much it for him.”

Box score on Verlander: 132 pitches, one run, three hits. Yeah, must see JV.

One out later, Detroit manger, Jim Leyland, brought in Phil Coke to get the final two outs and the Tigers were within one game of clinching their eleventh appearance in the Fall Classic.

A high-five, a hug and a kiss from Colleen, a second fist bump from the guy in front of us, and Colleen and I were on our way home, thinking sweep and wondering who Detroit would meet in the World Series.

Early prediction: Detroit-St. Louis, with Detroit winning in five games.

And Wrigley Makes Three

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 09:25:45 -0500

I can’t say I’m a Chicago Cubs fan, mostly because I’ve always been a Tigers fan; but also because the Cubs are in the National League and I don’t get to see them play often. More than one ex-girlfriend would argue that I’m a sports junkie, but I disagree. To me, a sports junkie is someone who watches one game after another all weekend long as well as weeknights. He schedules his vacation around sports events. Doesn’t matter to him if his home team is playing—game on? Well, game on. I follow the Tigers and, this time of year, check the box scores to see how the White Sox fared the night before. Not because I’m fan of the Pale Hose, but because they happen to be the team at the top of the Central Division, the team the Tigers are chasing to make the postseason.

My girlfriend is a Cubs fan. Colleen grew up on the north side of Chicago. I forgave her earlier in the season when the Tigers played at Wrigley Field in interleague play and she cheered the Cubbies. I could afford to: my team took two out of the three games. But I loved her all the more, too, because I understood, even though she now lives in Michigan after spending a few years living in California, that her connection to the Cubs is a bond to her youth—a much simpler time before the Internet, when talking on a phone meant being tied to a wall by an eight-foot curly cord. When she rode a bike at breakneck speed, hair flying behind her, and she played softball Chicago style: without a glove. When she was Daddy’s little girl. Before she was ravaged by adulthood and learned that fair play does not always beget fair play in return, and before she experienced her first bloodied and bruised heart. I’ve been there, done all that.

Something happens when one takes in their first baseball game. I recall my dad taking me to Tiger Stadium to see the Tigers play the Angels. I was seven and had only seen a game on TV. No HD back then. No color TV either. We had a black and white Magnavox and, because cable had not yet been born, games were telecast only on weekends. When I walked up the ramp and caught my first glimpse of the playing field, looking so green and perfectly manicured, I thought this surely wasn’t real—my own field of dreams a few decades before the movie.

And every game I’ve attended since takes me back to that moment: I’m a kid again watching grown kids playing a kid’s game, a game that hasn’t changed in more than a hundred years. Yes, the mound was lowered in the late 1960s and they added the designated hitter rule and now use limited replay review; but the basic concept of the game hasn’t changed: hit a ball squarely with a round bat. It’s a game of statistics like no other game. ERA, batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage; homeruns, extra base hits, runs batted in, runs scored, stolen bases, wins, saves, and on and on. Sometimes it gets annoying, like when the announcer cites that a certain player hits fifty points higher under the lights than during day games; but that, too, is part of the beauty of the game.

Baseball is the only major sport in which the defense puts the ball into play. The ball is pitched, it is hit and fielded—or not—by the opposition. There are no penalties in baseball. Simply errors when a fielder boots a ball, and a fan can disagree with the official scoring on whether it was an error.

The NHL eliminated the center line a few years ago to open and speed up their game; they added a trapezoid behind the net to limit the wandering goal tender. In today’s game a player will find himself in the penalty box for something that, a few years ago, was considered a good, clean check. Football has ruined their product by taking instant replay to an extreme, and they change from year to year not only what constitutes a penalty, but also what constitutes a catch or a fumble.

But baseball remains a beautiful game because of its simplicity and its roots to its origins: Who is the greatest player to ever play, Ruth or Cobb? (Cobb.)

And where the game is played is as important as the game itself. No identically configured ice rink or gridiron for baseball. Baseball is played in a park. The infields are measured identically, distance from base to base and from rubber to plate; but the outfields are limited only by imagination, both in distance and configuration. When Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Texas, was built, they added a second deck in right field as a tribute to old Tiger Stadium in Detroit—the upper deck overhung the lower deck by several feet and robbed many a right fielder of making an inning ending or game saving catch. A routine out in many other parks, at Tiger Stadium a hitter might find himself circling the pillows with a walk-off homerun.

It hurt to see Tiger Stadium retired, labeled too old when, in actuality, the old Corktown neighborhood in which it resided had been allowed to deteriorate. Comerica Park, where the Tigers now play, is a beautiful facility. But despite the statues of Cobb, Greenburg, Gehringer, Newhouser, and Kaline, their ghosts are painfully absent from the playing field.

So now there are only two classic ballparks in existence: Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago. Fenway opened the same year Tiger Stadium did—although at that time it was called Navin Field and, later, Briggs Stadium. Wrigley opened a few years later.

In July my girl, Colleen, and I made a drive to Boston to see the Tigers play the Red Sox. It was our first extended trip together and our first visit to Fenway. When we took our seats, a few rows back of the Tiger dugout, and I gazed at the field I’d seen many times on TV and looked at the Green Monster in left field, I was taken back to my youth and a tear came to my eye. This was grand; but a part of me was green with envy—that Boston had managed to save this landmark treasure, while in Detroit, Tiger Stadium had been cast away, considered too old to renovate. No plastic surgery for this grand old gal where the likes of Cobb and Greenburg had thrilled previous generations. Where, on July 13, 1934, Babe Ruth hit his 700^th career homerun.

As thrilled as I was to visit the place where Ted Williams, the Splendid Splinter, once played, and before him, Cobb, too, if only as a visitor, a part of me grieved for the loss of my childhood friend, where I once sat alongside my dad as Denny McLain served up a blooper pitch for Mickey Mantle to hit over the wall in right field in his last ever plate appearance at Tiger Stadium.

After we returned from Boston, I realized that was two down. I had one to go if I was to visit the three oldest ballparks in America, and so we made plans to drive to Chicago to see the Cubs play.

September 15: Cubs versus Pirates. We took our seats, a few rows back of home plate—God bless Colleen. How she managed to score such great seats I have no idea and I don’t want to know. I felt a boy again as I gazed out on the green velvet playing surface. Against Wrigley’s famed ivy outfield walls, we looked over the shoulder of the home plate umpire as the pitches came in. Three left the building—two hit by the Bucks and one by one of the good guys.

By the end of the afternoon we’d enjoyed two of the best ballpark franks we’d ever had—Chicago style, with grilled onions and mustard—and a couple beers, Guinness for me and Old Style for Colleen.

The Pirates led throughout the afternoon, but a gallant comeback by the Cubs fell one out short. If Colleen was disappointed, she hid it well.

Later, as we sat sipping beers at Sheffield’s, within walking distance of Wrigley Field, Colleen told me that her summer, our first together, had been the best in her life. I smiled back at her, nodded, and told her I felt the same way.

Colleen has put me to shame, having visited twelve major league ballparks; but on our way home we talked about next year, taking trips to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.—all parks to which Colleen has not been. I suspect it’s going to be a long winter.

It’s true, one can never go home. Tiger Stadium is gone, and with her vanished a part of my youth. But I have my memories, which can never be taken from me. Yet it’s only right that new memories are created, with a new love.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Wed, 1 Aug 2012 18:59:35 -0500

What better way to spend my summer vacation, with my best girl touring the nation’s oldest brewery and attending a Red Sox-Tigers game at venerable Fenway Park?

Best girl you say? I’ve known Colleen for only three months; but after several dates of my asking, I suggested that she ask me on one. The next day she called to say she’d gotten tickets to the Tigers-Yankees game at Comerica. I knew then that this gal was special. That the Tigers beat the Yanks that night in walk-off fashion—the only game they won during the three-game series—was the icing on the cake.

We drove from Michigan to Pottsville, Pennsylvania, home to D.G. Yuengling and Son, Inc., where they’ve been brewing bitters since 1829—ample time to get it right.

After sampling several brews, we purchased four cases of our favorites and headed to Boston.

We arrived in the early evening, warmly welcomed at the desk by Frannie, whose Boston accent confirmed her origins. The lobby was filled with a wedding party and I asked Frannie, “If all brides are so beautiful, where do all the homely housewives come from?” Another guest, a woman, quipped, “It’s because of guys like you.” Ouch. It was only later that I came up with my own retort; but my daddy taught me that in the art of repartee, it is better never than late.

After we settled into our room, we ordered a Uno’s pizza from around the corner, walked to pick it up, and returned to our room to celebrate a safe arrival with pizza and beer. Colleen insisted we crack open a couple of the Bocks that we’d brought along from Yuengling and Son. I didn’t argue.

The next morning, after breakfast—Colleen (a self-professed coffee snob) was happy to find a Starbuck’s within walking distance of our hotel—we rode the bus to Fenway, where we found an Irish Pub across from the ballpark. We toasted ourselves with Laphroaig scotch—a tasty single malt—and a couple of beers.

Once we were pleasantly buoyant, we headed across the street to take the tour of Fenway Park, where we stood atop the green monster, toured the press box and, from the right field porch, gazed down on the loan red seat in a sea of green in section 42, row 37, seat 21 —a tribute to the longest homerun ever hit at Fenway (502 feet). Hit off Tiger hurler Fred Hutchinson on June 9, 1946, the ball was deposited onto the straw hat of a slumbering fan by none other than the Splendid Splinter, Ted Williams. Legend has it that Williams later said he saw the snoozer and decided to send him a wakeup call.

We also had our picture taken against the backdrop of the field.

From Fenway we took the T to the Haymarket district in the north end where, surprise, we found another Irish Pub. Because it finds itself on the Freedom Trail, the pub serves Sam Adam’s Brick Red Ale, which Colleen had quickly adopted as a favorite of hers from earlier in the day. A seasonal brew, it can be found only in Boston.

We roamed the streets and shared a cigar at a cigar bar. Smoking a couple of La Gloria Cubana’s, I lost the longest ash contest, but only by a smidge. We ended our day at McCormick and Schmick’s for dinner, washing down our seafood with more Brick Red.

After boarding the wrong T, we found ourselves well south of Fenway Park and, after some good-natured ribbing over my sexist behavior, I grudgingly allowed Colleen to get us back to the bus stop—she grew up in Chicago and was used to traveling the city by train. I thanked Colleen for saving the day and not holding it against me.

We rode back to our room discussing the marvels of the day.

The next morning, after we got Colleen Star-bucked up, we headed into the city for some sight-seeing and more pub crawling. A great part of vacationing is finding pubs empty of patrons and being able to talk to the bartender. Ours told us that our accents betrayed us as out of towners. We told him we were heading down to Fenway for the game and he advised us to checkout Beer Works, across from the stadium. He recommended we try the sour cream and onion fries. When Colleen found out the Beer Works is on the Freedom Trail, she wanted to go.

When we got to Beer Works, we found the place hopping with baseball fans—many of them from Detroit. The Tigers have a great fan base across the country. After we finished our Brick Reds, we headed across the street and entered Fenway through Gate A.

As any fan of the game can tell you, entering a major league ballpark is like entering a cathedral. Having taken the tour the previous day was one thing, but entering the park, the stands already filling and the Tigers taking batting practice, was a rush. It looked strange, seeing my Tigers in their road uniforms.

After trying, unsuccessfully, to take a picture of us with her cell phone, we asked another fan if he’d do us the honor, and he took several great pictures of Colleen and me. We looked as if we were in baseball heaven—our own field of dreams.

We settled into our seats with our beers, Fenway Franks and peanuts, and took in the sights. Four rows behind the Tigers’ on-deck circle, the Green Monster was to our left, while the Budweiser sign rose up proudly in the distance in front of us.

Tigers manager, Jim Leyland, came out to talk to some fans behind home plate, while nearby backup catcher, Gerald Laird, signed autographs as the grounds crew finished dressing the infield.

Two brothers, one a jazz trumpeter and the other a drummer, played a wonderful rendition of the National Anthem, and the Tigers jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the top of the first. The young man next to me sighed and told us the last game he’d attended had started in similar fashion.

Colleen snapped pictures with her cell phone of Cabrera and then Fielder as they each waited their turn to bat—they were ten feet away from us—and I wondered how she could enjoy the game that way.

Soon she began texting with Rory, her youngest son who lives on the West Coast. He was watching the game, green with monster envy. He texted that every time a right-handed batter came to the plate, we were on TV.

The Tigers would go on to lose the game, a game that passed all too quickly, but that did nothing to diminish the thrill of seeing them play at Fenway.

Fenway. She opened the same year old Tiger Stadium opened, as Briggs Stadium—1912. Sadly, Tiger Stadium was demolished a few years ago, and the Tigers now play in their new home, Comerica Park. The CoPa is a beautiful facility. Several of the new parks around the league have done a good job of capturing the aura of the old time parks. Unfortunately, the ghosts of the great players from bygone eras are left behind.

At Tiger Stadium, where my dad introduced me to this great game of baseball, I could feel the presence of Ty Cobb, Hank Greenburg and “Prince Hal” (Newhouser). While at Fenway, I could feel the spirit of Ted Williams, the last man to hit .400 for a season.

We returned to our hotel, where the desk clerk informed us that he, too, had seen us on TV. We got to our room tired from the day—the tiredness of contentment.

The next morning, Colleen and I left Boston for home, promising each other that we’d repeat this custom again, and I told her I wanted to take in a game at Wrigley—the other oldest field in the major leagues.

What’s my fixation with all things old—scotch, cigars and baseball parks? The truth is this country is fixed on the new. We fear death and dying, and spend money on plastic surgery to hide our lives. In Europe, buildings a millennium old remain standing, while we build disposable homes and cars. Our laptops have a life expectancy of maybe five years. Cell phones are obsolete the day after we buy them. Behind Fenway and Wrigley, Dodger Stadium is the oldest park, and it opened its gates in 1962. There aren’t many things in this country that are older than me.

As for Colleen, well, what can I say? It was our first road trip together. What better way to discover compatibility than during a fourteen-hour road trip?

After more than half a century, I think I may finally have found the keeper. Now I just need to convince her that I’m a keeper.

After our Boston trip, I think I’m nearly there.

Tigers Spank Yanks

Sun, 3 Jun 2012 11:55:46 -0500

Prior to last night, the last Tigers-Yankees game I attended was nearly forty-four years ago. The year was 1968: Denny McLain would win thirty-one games—still a record in the modern era—and the Tigers would go on to beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the Fall Classic, coming from a three games to one deficit to do it, and single-handedly healing a city that had, the previous summer, been in the throes of race riots.

I watched from the upper deck behind first base, sitting alongside my dad, when Mickey Mantle stepped up to the plate. It was late in the game; the home team was comfortably ahead, and what took place next was the stuff that makes for a young boy’s fantasy to one day play major league baseball.

After shaking off several signs from catcher, Jim Price, McLain leaned back and held up the ball to Mantle, as if to ask him where he’d like the next pitch. Mantle gamely swung his bat through his wheelhouse and McLain went into his windup and blooped the pitch, right where Mantle wanted it. Mantle returned the favor by hitting the ball into the right field stands. It was Mantle’s final at-bat at venerable Tiger Stadium, and it would stand as his next-to-last homerun in his illustrious Yankee career: he would retire from baseball the following spring.

So why has it taken me so long to attend another Tigers-Yankees game?

The easy answer—perhaps the most poetic response—is that I didn’t wish to diminish the images of that long ago memory. Although truth be told, Dad cursed McLain that day, saying he’d committed the ultimate sin in sports: allowing a team to score. At age eleven, I thought, No harm no foul; the home team still won. I wanted to say to my dad, “Dad, it’s only a game.” But I was at a tender age and my dad was a retired drill instructor in the United States Marine Corps. He instilled in me the fear of the Corps. So I kept mum, and years later learned of Mantle’s off the field drinking habits.

I’m not sure why I haven’t been to a Tigers-Yankees game since 1968. In retrospect, the Tigers weren’t a very good baseball team in the seventies, and I might’ve found girls more interesting to watch and be around. In the eighties, they won a World Championship under the auspices of Hall of Fame manager, Sparky Anderson. I attended a handful of games during those years, but I was also married, to a woman who didn’t much care for sports. Besides, we were both struggling with launching careers and we didn’t have much disposable income.

In the nineties, the Tigers again weren’t a very good baseball team, and that trend continued into the early twenty-first century. It was difficult enough watching them on TV as they found new ways to lose a hundred games a season. Why would I want to spend money to see them do it in person?

But last year, the Tigers beat the Yankees in the ALDS which, to me, was like winning the World Series. They did the same in 2006, as a wildcard team. They were sweet moments, both.

It doesn’t help that a Tigers-Yankees series is a sure sellout and I don’t much care for fighting traffic and crowds. Add into the mix the unbalanced schedule, with the Yankees coming to Detroit but once a year, and, well, there you have it.

So to sum up, I guess I just haven’t found reason enough to go to a Tigers-Yankees game at Comerica Park.

Until this year.

I met a woman in April. We corresponded by email and talked on the phone a few times. I learned she was a baseball fan. Born on the north side of Chicago, she’s a Cubs fan but roots for the Tigers unless the two teams meet in interleague play. She plays softball on a couple of women’s leagues. After a couple weeks, we agreed to meet. I suggested coffee at a Barnes and Noble we both frequent. About halfway between her place and mine, I figured it was a good place to meet; after all, we both love books. On the other hand, if it ended up being a disaster, I could be on my way in ten minutes.

But it wasn’t a disaster. From Barnes and Noble we found our way to an Irish pub across the street, had a couple of beers, enjoyed getting to know each other, and agreed to another date.

Eventually I invited her to a Tigers game. I was in the midst of changing jobs and had a week off in early May. The Tigers had struggled on a road trip and I thought a three-game series with the Kansas City Royals would be just the thing to cure whatever was ailing them.

It was an afternoon game and Verlander was on the mound for the good guys; but he struggled and we lost, and I wondered if this might be a precursor of doom for this budding relationship. But we forged onward.

I took her to dinner in Ann Arbor—Old Town is one of my favorite watering holes, with its tin ceiling and history dating back to just after the Civil War. The pictures on the walls of people date back so far no one knows who they are, and the painting of the nude woman on the back wall would make Peter Paul Rubens proud.

After dinner I took her to a cigar bar in the basement of La Dolce Vita, where we smoked cigars and enjoyed scotch. I was embarrassed for the young kid who brought us our smokes—a Hemingway Short Story for my date and a Romeo y Julieta for me. The poor kid tried cutting the wrong end of the Short Story, and afterward tried to light the wrong end. After setting him straight, hopefully to the benefit of the next customer to order a Short Story, we discovered the kid was from Boston and a Sox fan. One of the other wait staff was a New Yorker and a diehard Yankees fan, and so we enjoyed trading barbs.

From there we strolled Nickels Arcade, built in 1918, and ended up at another pub, where we enjoyed brews, darts and pool.

A few days later I asked her when she might ask me on a date. A few days later she asked me if I’d care to go to one the Tigers-Yankees games the weekend of June 1-3. It took me all of three nanoseconds (three billionths of a second) to say “yes.”

But then logic kicked in and I added, “But good luck getting tickets. With the game but ten days away, they’re likely sold out.”

But God bless her—I don’t know how she did it—she managed two tickets ten rows back of the Tigers dugout.

And so, after dinner at Pizzapapalis in Dearborn, we found our way to our seats just as the skies began to darken. It seemed the threat of rain would soon become a reality.

Tiger starter, Rick Porcello, stranded a Yankee at third when the rain started; a light drizzle initially, as Quintin Berry—doing a more than credible imitation of Austin Jackson, our starting center fielder who is out with a strained abominable muscle—got himself a free pass from Yankee starter Hiroki Kuroda to start the bottom of the first. Berry is a journeyman who has kicked around the minor leagues for several years. But since his first major league hit with Detroit—a bunt double—he’s been keying our offense by getting on base by dragging bunt singles down either line and stealing bases with reckless abandon.

After reaching first, Berry promptly stole second and was sacrificed to third when the rains halted the game for about forty minutes.

When the game resumed, the Tigers stranded Berry at third.

The game settled into a pitchers’ duel for the next three innings, with Kuroda holding the Tigers hitless through three innings.

In the top of the fourth, Don Kelly, playing left field for the injured Andy Dirks, reached over the wall of the bullpen to rob Mark Teixeira of what should’ve been an opposite-field homerun. In the bottom of the inning, Cabrera homered to open the scoring, the ball hitting the ivy in straightaway center field. The ball left the building in a hurry, as if it wanted to beat the next rain delay, and traveled an estimated 466 feet.

In the fifth, Don Kelly singled and scored on Quintin Berry’s single to give Detroit a 2-0 lead.

The Yanks close to within a run in the sixth and tied the game in the eighth.

But the seventh inning saw Yankees manager Joe Girardi tossed for arguing, from the dugout, the strike zone with home plate umpire Bob Davidson. He stormed onto the field, tossed his cap and grabbed a handful of dirt near home plate before heading for the clubhouse.

Cabrera came to the dish in the bottom of the eighth frame and I turned to the young man seated next to me, who’d traveled down from Ubly, Michigan, in the thumb of the mitten that is Michigan, ten minutes from Bad Axe, with what appeared to be his buddy (or maybe his brother) and their dates. One of the girls held a pink sign that said hello to her grandparents on one side and on the other professed her love for Miguel Cabrera. She spent the night trying to get on camera.

“This is a good time for Cabrera to have a two-homerun night,” I said to him.

“You calling it?” he challenged.

“Write it down,” I said.

On the next pitch, Cabrera drove another bomb that landed near the camera well in straightaway center field, this one measured at 444 feet.

The kid couldn’t believe it, but he high-fived me and I turned to kiss my date; but the game was far from over. We needed to close out the Yankees in the ninth, and Valverde, our closer, after a perfect 49 for 49 save situations in 2011, has been struggling, having already blown three saves.

Valverde takes a page out of the Todd Jones book of closing out games. Todd Jones was our closer in the early to mid 2000s, and rarely made it look easy. After getting the first hitter, he’d inevitably put a runner or two on before getting the last out. He once said, “Hey, if you’re squeamish, go to the kitchen and get yourself a beer.”

Well, Valverde loaded the bases, courtesy of two hit batsmen and a walk, before walking in the tying run. He finally got out of the jam by getting Raul Ibanez to ground out.

That left it up to the Tigers to prevent extra innings.

Brennan Boesch hit a one-out single and went to third on a single by Jhonny Peralta. Tiger manager, Jim Leyland, sent in Ramon Santiago to pinch hit for Kelly. The Yankees intentionally walked Santiago to load the bases for Omir Santos. Santos had been called up from Triple AAA to fill in for injured catchers Alex Avila and Gerald Laird. With one out, the Yankees were playing for the double play—Santos has deceptive speed for a catcher: he’s slower than he looks. Santos also dropped a foul popup in the Yankee ninth that would’ve ended the game before the tying run scored.

Santos later said, “I was trying to forget all of that stuff that happened in the game. I got a feeling that if I got an at-bat, I was going to be the hero.”

And he was. He drove a ball into the gap in right center that was deep enough to score the winning run as Boesch trotted home.

After the game, my date and I stayed for the fireworks display, which was spectacular enough that even the three-quarters full moon peaked out from behind the clouds to check out.

On our way out of the park, my date told me that was flat out the most exciting game she’d ever attended, and I had to admit that it was for me, too, and I’d been at Comerica the night Armando Galarraga tossed a perfect game against the Cleveland Indians that wasn’t a perfect game, courtesy of a blown call at first base by umpire Jim Joyce.

I told her it was my first rain delayed game, the first game I’d attended that had resulted in an ejection, as well as two Homeric homeruns to straightaway center field. That it had ended with a win over the dreaded Yankees was but the icing on the carrot cake from Brighton Bar & Grill.

And now, this morning, as my date drives to Chicago to attend lunch in celebration of her niece graduating from college, I’m wondering how another trip to Comerica Park can top what we saw last night.

We’ve already talked about a road trip next month to Boston to see the Tigers do battle with the Red Sox. But somehow, even with a Tiger win in my first game at Fenway, I can’t imagine it could possibly top last night’s spanking of the Stankees.

A Fistful of Polyphemus

Sun, 4 Mar 2012 07:15:56 -0500

A piece of flash fiction I imagine will one day find its way into a novel ...

Nothing like a Saturday morning with a woody staring you in the face.

“Where is she?” Polyphemus asked me.

“Who?” I said, teasing him, knowing full well to whom he was referring.

“You know damn well to whom I’m referring—Kitty.”

“That’s Miss Kitty to you. You treat her with respect.”

“Where is she? I want her.”

“Who?”

He was starting to turn purple with rage.

“That ’Bama Baby you keep ogling on your desktop—damn, she looks fine nekkid—and that you take to bed in your mind’s eye when you climb into the sack every night. The one you fantasize about—running your hands all over her smooth skin, sticking your tongue in her navel, suckling her breasts, sucking her toes, kissing and tonguing your way up her soft legs, feeling her thighs clasping your ears as you—”

“Careful,” I said. “You’re getting excited and you know what happens when that happens.”

“Where is she?” he demanded, ignoring my admonition.

“Where do you think she is? She’s in Alabama.”

“Where’s that?”

I laughed.

“Are you laughing at me? You know I don’t like to be laughed at.”

“I know,” I said, recalling my wedding night more than twenty-five years ago, when my wife giggled at her first sight of Polyphemus in his rain gear.

Where’s that, Allybammy?”

“Alabama.”

“Yeah, that. Where is it?” He was getting persnickety.

“What do you mean, ‘where is it?’”

“You know geography was never my strength.”

“I know,” I said. “You always preferred biology—particularly where the female anatomy was concerned.”

“Why is it you always send me in to mop up after you finish with your tongue?”

“Because it’s about my pleasure, too, you single-minded goofus—and hers. It’s about anticipation. Are you complaining?”

He ignored me: “Where is she? Where’s Alabama?”

“Way down south in Alabama.”

“South! Yeah, there’s where I want to go … south … I want to go spelunking. Take me spelunking. Pah-lease!?”

I felt like choking the spit out of the little fucker, but instead I opted to douse him with cold water in the shower.

Oh, yeah. It’s allll about the anticipation …

Mommies Do Too Lie

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 09:43:00 -0500

Tina was not yet quite five years old, but she knew Mr. Binkley was up to no good when she saw him in her backyard at three o’clock in the morning.

Tina was not what her mommy would call a light sleeper, but she awoke with a start when she thought she heard Mommy cry out. After a few moments, when she heard nothing more than the crickets outside her bedroom window, Tina convinced herself she’d been only dreaming and rolled over onto her other side, where she found Lucretia staring back at her with black button eyes.

“What should we name her?” Tina recalled asking Daddy the day he’d brought her home. “How about Lucretia?” he suggested. “That’s a good name for a teddy bear, don’t you think? We can call her ‘Lucy’ for short.”

“Lucretia,” Tina said. She liked the sound of the name, and enjoyed how it made her mouth feel when she said it, so she giggled and promptly affixed the name to her new best friend, and loved her daddy all the more—not only for bringing Lucretia home, but also for naming her.

Tina clutched Lucy and tried to fall back asleep; but the harder she tried, the more difficult it became.

Tina had just recently learned to tell time; the clock in her bedroom had no big and little hands, like the clock in her kindergarten classroom. The clock in her bedroom had numbers only—numbers that changed every minute. When she first awoke, the numbers showed 2:45. Now they showed 3:00. She knew that was fifteen minutes, but even though a minute can be only a minute—sixty seconds can no more take seventy seconds to elapse than it can take fifty seconds—from the perspective of a five-year-old (and insomniacs unable to sleep through their disorder), time passes much more slowly.

Eventually she heard Mommy’s voice whispering from down the hall, and then she heard footsteps followed by the creak of the third riser from the top of the stairs. She wondered why it creaked twice.

Tina set Lucy on her pillow and told her, “I’ll be right back.”

Then she hopped out of bed and pushed both her feet into her pink slippers and slipped on her just as pink robe. Was there truly a prettier color than pink?

It was then, as she passed her bedroom window, that she saw Mr. Binkley walking quickly past her swing set toward the fence at the back of the yard. It seemed he had come from the back of her house.

He must be up to no good, Tina thought, recalling that her daddy once told her that people out after midnight are likely up to no good.

Curious, Tina went to find her mommy.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” Mommy said, startled to see Tina standing at the top of the stairs, waiting for her. Tina yawned and rubbed her eye with a fist before sitting on the top step. A moment later her mommy sat down beside her.

“I woke up and heard you talking to someone,” Tina said.

“Me? Talking to someone? Are you sure you weren’t just dreaming?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Mommy said, “I couldn’t sleep either, so I went downstairs for a glass of milk. Come to think of it, I was talking to myself, trying to remind myself to add a couple things to the grocery list for when I go shopping later.”

“Oh.” And then, “What was Mr. Binkley doing in our yard?”

“You saw Mr. Binkley in our yard?”

“Uh-huh. And I wasn’t dreaming.”

“I … I don’t know, honey, what he was doing in our yard.”

“I think he was up to no good,” Tina said knowingly, not knowing how she knew, only that if her daddy said that people out after midnight were up to no good, then it must be so.

Tina was suddenly very tired again and so she rested her head in her mommy’s lap, the mystery of the third riser on the stair creaking twice a forgotten curiosity. Mommy said nothing, so Tina asked, “When’s Daddy coming home?”

“Honey, I told you. He’ll be home in time for Christmas.”

Tina sighed. It was early September. Christmas seemed a lifetime away.

“Why did he have to go away to A … Af—”

“Afghanistan. Daddy is a marine, honey. He had to go fight to protect the Afghans.”

Tina knew what an afghan was. Grandma had one that she covered her lap with when it got cold outside and she sat in her rocking chair rocking and reading her bible. So Tina surmised her grandma’s afghan had come from Afghanistan, a place she knew was very far away. What she couldn’t quite grasp was why they needed her daddy to fight for them.

“I miss Daddy,” Tina said, and yawned.

“I know you do, sweetheart. So do I.”

And Tina believed her mommy, because her mommy had always been truthful with her. And because her mommy had always been truthful with her, Tina knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Mommy was truthful, too, to Daddy. If Mommy said she missed Daddy, it was true.

It would be a few years before Tina uncovered some of the untruths her mommy had told her. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy—those are untruths all parents tell their children. But there would be other untruths Tina would uncover that would rock her small world to the core—like how missing someone doesn’t necessarily equate to remaining true to them.

But on this night, Tina believed her mommy, because she was nearly five years old and a good girl, and that’s what good girls did—put their trust and belief in their mommy.

After all, why would her mommy lie to her?

In time, she would come to understand that, too.

Should the Uninsured Be Left to Die?

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 09:08:43 -0500

During a recent GOP debate, Ron Paul was asked if an uninsured man should be left to die and the audience screamed “yes!”

Initially, I was horrified by this response, but I was prompted, again, to consider the issue of health care in this nation.

Let’s face it, health care in America has been changing for decades, and not for the better.

The health care industry would have us believe that health care in America is the best care in the world. That’s like the airline industry saying that flying is safer than driving because more people die while driving than flying. Well, yeah. More people drive than fly, too. And most traffic fatalities occur within twenty miles of home—you don’t fly to the grocery store and the post office, so opting to fly instead of taking the car to run your Saturday morning errands or the kids to the mall isn’t going to skew those figures. The bottom line for me is that when an aircraft goes down it’s going to be catastrophic. There’s no such thing as a fuselage bender.

How does this translate to healthcare? How about this statistic: more people die annually while under the care of a physician than by guns.

The cold, harsh reality is that the cost of dying (it happens to all of us—if ever we live that long) is going up and, like the plastic surgery industry takes advantage of our fear of growing old, the health care industry takes advantage of our fear of dying.

How many times are they going to flip-flop on the “a glass of red wine every night is good for your heart” matter?

But the question, really, is not so difficult, even if the answer is complex: If I exchange money for health care (services) from my physician, why should the government tax me so that others can get health care?

The easy answer, and the rhetoric President Obama spouts when discussing health care reform, is that everyone in this country has a right to health care.

If that’s true, that health care is a right guaranteed by the Constitution, then the government must provide it, as it provides for our national security, public safety, and our judicial system.

“No!” you say? “That would amount to socialism.”

So on that premise, it is not such a right, right? After all, the Constitution is largely about what the government can and can’t do (also known as infringement) to We, the People. Nothing in the Constitution, or in the Bill of Rights, says anything about what others must do for us.

Therefore, government should remain apart from health care, yes?

I grew up in the 1960s and had an uncle who worked for General Motors. He had three boys who liked to roughhouse, and for every bump and bruise, every nick and cut, my aunt took them to the doctor and presented her insurance card and it was covered—all of it. Nothing out of pocket was ever required, no deductible ever needed to be met.

Flash forward forty-five years: a colleague recently informed me that she has carpal tunnel in one of her wrists. She can’t afford surgery because she’s still paying off last year’s deductible for other health issues. On top of that, she tells me a friend of hers, who is on Welfare, would be able to have the surgery and it wouldn’t cost her a dime.

Now, maybe if I was unemployed and uninsured and needed treatment for some serious ailment I couldn’t put off, I’d feel differently, but how is that fair? My colleague has a right to health care; but because she is employed she is penalized? And her friend, who for whatever reason isn’t contributing to society, gets a free ride because everyone in this country has a right to healthcare even though the Constitution makes no such claim?

Basically, my colleague and I contribute to our health care, which we select from a menu of benefits—the cost of which goes up a few dollars every year—incur a co-pay for each visit to our physicians, and have an annual deductible we must meet before our insurance kicks in, all so that those on Welfare and those who can’t afford health insurance, can get treatment for free. What’s my incentive to continue to function in the workplace, contribute to society, to go into debt to pay for health care, or file bankruptcy in the aftermath of a heart bypass?

I get it. It’s a global village in which we live. I do it because it’s right. But sometimes I struggle with doing what’s right because it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes I fail to do what’s right, and other times I do it and grumble about it. And sometimes it’s the right thing to do—grumble about it that is. Because only when one grumbles is there a chance to fix something that’s broken or wrong. Say nothing, bear the cross in silence, and you give a nod of approval to the status quo.

So maybe it is right, that the many pay so that the few can be cared for.

Or maybe it’s wrong because it’s a conspiracy: healthcare for the rich, let the rest of us die, especially now that the Baby Boomers are approaching that age when we’ll most need health care. Think about it—letting us die will help solve the Social Security dilemma.

Then again, maybe it’s right only because the health care system is broken, and why bother to fix it as long as it’s profitable—at least until the back of the middle class can carry no more?

“Broken?” you say.

Yes, broken. Consider that the pharmaceutical industry spends more money on advertising than on research and development—just about every station break in prime time has at least one commercial peddling some med with a list of side effects that’s nastier than the malady it purports to treat. How much of the cost of the average prescription goes into running those ads?

Heck, even hospitals, medical centers and cancer treatment centers spend millions on TV ads. Yep, my co-pays and deductibles at work.

Maybe it’s smart to shop ahead—like buying a casket ahead of time allows you to dicker over price—but I can’t help but think I’m not going to recall an ad for St. Joseph Mercy Health System when I go into cardiac arrest.

Consider the frivolous malpractice suits that drive up the cost of malpractice insurance—how much of the cost of open heart surgery goes to malpractice insurance?

But, perhaps most important, consider the profit margin in treating a symptom over finding a cure.

We put a man on the moon, are building an orbiting space station, have designed a car that can parallel park itself, can increase fertility and create man-made erections, and enhance the female body with silicone and Botox. We’ve even cloned a sheep. But we still haven’t found a cure for cancer.

Or have we?

Why would the health care industry want a cure for cancer if it cut into profits by eliminating the need for long, drawn-out treatment?

Imagine what legalized assisted suicide would do to profits.

How does profit margin fit in with the Hippocratic Oath anyway?

500 Miles

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 09:05:37 -0500

An excerpt from my novel in progress, 500 Miles.

Chapter 23

We bypassed the next event on the circuit, the Pikes Peak Hill climb, a twelve-mile, one car at a time timed dash up a hill. The next event, the Hoosier Grand Prix at Indianapolis Raceway Park, was three weeks later. Unfortunately for me, that left me far too much time to lose myself in thoughts of how Mindy had dumped me, my rivalry with Barkins, and missing Gail.

One day, while driving home from the post office, I drove past Brown’s and caught a glimpse of Mindy waiting on a car. Brown’s was the classic drive-in restaurant of the 1950s. She looked very desirable in hot pants and a tight blouse, and I recalled the evenings we’d spent together. I nearly gave in to the urge to pull in to talk to her, but then I remembered our last night and I felt anger well up.

I just think you’re more serious about us than I am.

“Shit,” I muttered to myself. If she only knew how unserious I’d been about “us.” But I missed my chance to tell her, which, I knew, was for the best. She could never provide what I wanted even if she’d become all too adept at providing for my needs. I never should’ve slept with her; but I’d hoped she would help me to forget Gail. Instead she’d only made me miss her all the more even as I despised myself for having sex outside of marriage; that I enjoyed it only made it that much worse.

Instead of stopping at Brown’s I drove to my folks’ house for lunch. On the way my thoughts turned to Barkins and our meeting with USAC. I wondered if their warning would make a difference.

Probably not, I concluded, deducing he’d just become more adept at making it look like a racing accident.

I wouldn’t always be able to avoid him on the track. I was always careful, but careful around Barkins meant nothing. He was intent on beating me in any way he could, which included wrecking me, and himself in the process, and I refused to not race him.

“Shit, shit.”

As I parked my car in front of my dad’s barn an image of Gail popped into my mind and I wondered if she ever thought about me anymore. That she hadn’t contacted me since she told me I would one day leave her a widow seemed to indicate she hadn’t.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

After lunch, Dad went out to the barn while I helped Mom clear the dishes.

“You okay?” Mom asked. “You seem sad.”

“I’m okay, Mom.”

“Alex, I’m your mother. Mothers sense when something is troubling their son. Talk to me.”

I said nothing.

“You miss Mindy?”

“Not really.” Although my hormones felt otherwise.

“Why don’t you give Gail a call?”

Her question startled me. Although my thoughts often wandered to Gail, especially when I was on the road, she was a topic that hadn’t come up with my parents since she turned down my marriage proposal. I’d said little to Mom and Dad in the aftermath. I hadn’t even told them I’d popped the question, and their efforts to draw me into discussion were met with silence. Eventually they stopped asking about her.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Mom.”

“Why not? She was good for you. You were good together, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure she’s gotten on with her life.”

“You don’t know that for certain. She loved you very much. I don’t think you’ve gotten over her. Maybe she’s just waiting for you to call.”

“The phone fits her hand, too, you know.”

“It’s not a woman’s place to take the initiative.”

“Except where breaking a man’s heart is concerned.” I startled myself with that confession. It was the most I’d told either of parents concerning my feelings over the matter.

“Yes, well, it’s a gentleman’s place to pursue.”

I sighed and said, “And what of a woman’s place? I’m not a mind reader. If she still cared, she should tell me. After all, she’s the one who broke it off.”

“She was a shy girl, Alex.”

Mom put her arm around my shoulder and added, “All I’m saying is don’t let pride stand in your way. The worst that could happen is that she tells you ‘no.’”

I laughed. “The worst? As worsts go, that’s pretty damn worst. Why would I want to put myself through that?”

“Because,” she said, squeezing my shoulder, “the best that could happen is that you get back together. It would be a shame to waste even a day more because your pride stopped you from finding happiness.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, but already I knew I wouldn’t.

Mom was right, I wasn’t yet over Gail; but I couldn’t be certain Gail wasn’t over me. If she was, then it was pointless to open the past; reconciliation would be out of the question. And reminiscing about the past would be too painful for me. I was convinced that time healed all wounds. Eventually enough time would pass to heal the hole Gail had left in my chest.

I went out to the barn to help Dad finish up rebuilding a transmission on a 1957 Chevy. We worked in silence, a father and son bonding not with words, but instead with grease and gears, wrenches and winches.

“Sounds to me as if you embraced your grief, wore it like a badge,” Alicia said.

Alex finished blowing a series of smoke rings and said, “So what if I did? It was the sixties. It was what was expected of men. Hell, it’s little different today, even if women claim they want a warm and caring man, someone not afraid to show his feelings. Inevitably the sensitive and compassionate man is passed by or cast away in preference for the bad boy.”

“Your mother was right, though. The worst that could happen would be learning that she’d moved on.”

Alex nodded. “And why would I want to know for certain that she had?”

“You’d rather not have known?”

“Why would I want to know that she’d married another man—someone I might’ve known—that she’d started a family, had convinced herself that what we had was simply puppy love?”

“That sounds like your ego speaking.”

Alex bristled at Alicia’s accusation.

“Maybe it is and so what?” he said, a little too forcefully. Alex took a deep breath before he added, “Your ego wouldn’t be bruised if your husband told you he was leaving you for another woman?”

Alicia looked away and Alex saw her complexion flush and he knew he’d struck a nerve.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“That’s okay,” Alicia said. “I sometimes forget that men, too, can be hurt.”

“Hell, Alicia, men don’t have a corner on the bad behavior market.”

“I know that.”

“Not that Gail behaved poorly. She just did what she felt was right, even if it was only for herself.” Alex shrugged. “She was protecting herself. As for the rest of it, well, not knowing if she’d chosen to spend her life with someone else left open the possibility that she might yet contact me. It drove me to excel on the track, to prove her wrong—that I wouldn’t get hurt—and to make her proud of me, even if she never picked up the Monday sports section. The phone might ring and I, expecting a call from Mom or Dad, might be surprised to instead hear her voice on the other end, asking me how I was doing, that she was following my career, was proud of me. It may have prolonged the healing process, but I preferred it to taking the cold turkey approach.”

Alicia appeared to doodle on her steno pad; Alex considered that perhaps she was still coping with the memory of her own unpleasant “profile.”

“Not all men’s fantasies have to do with sex, you know.”

Alicia smiled and looked up at Alex.

“That’s better,” he said. “You have a beautiful smile.”

Alicia rolled her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve heard that before, many times.”

“I have,” she said, “but thanks just the same.” Then she added, “I have my parents to thank. Two years of braces in my teens. You know their generation. They hoped to increase my attractiveness to men so they could see me married off. They lived at a time before women’s foray into careers.”

“But you followed your calling.”

“I wanted both.”

Alex ran a finger around the lip of his empty glass.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“I had both, for a time. And I still hope to have both.”

“I suspect you will, Alicia, and not just because of your braces.”

“Thank you again,” she said. “But what about you?”

Alex laughed. “Look at me. I smoke cigars.”

“So what? So do I,” Alicia said with a laugh.

Alex joined with her laughter and said, “If for no other reason than to get the story.”

“I’m more adventurous than you think.”

“Somehow I can’t imagine you returning to Michigan to invest in a humidor and keeping it stocked with Cohibas.”

“Probably not. But I wouldn’t not consider a relationship with a man who indulged.”

Alex wondered if Alicia were perhaps knocking on his door but chose instead not to crack the door.

“I’m approaching the double-nickel age. Love is for the young, those willing to make fools of themselves, like Romeo did.”

“Romeo killed himself.”

“I know,” Alex said. “What a fool.”

“Love is for anyone and everyone, age notwithstanding,” Alicia said. “Love is all there is. It’s why we’re put here.”

“Really? And here I thought my parents were responsible.”

Alicia smiled and said, “We learn from the mistakes of our youth to hopefully make wiser choices.”

“Are you a product of a poor choice, Alicia?”

“Let’s just say, in hindsight, I should’ve seen it coming.”

“Hindsight is only foresight but after the fact. If you should’ve seen it coming, chances are you did, but you just chose to ignore the warnings.”

Alicia nodded. “That’s beside the point. To find love you need to leave yourself open to the probability.”

“One doesn’t find love, Alicia. It’s not some object to be unearthed at an archeological dig. Love is a choice, something we choose to give another.”

“But—”

“Besides, I have a business to run—an auto parts store and shop not far from here. It takes up most of my time.”

“That sounds like an excuse.”

“Maybe so, but as excuses go, it’s a good one.”

Eking One Out

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 19:34:52 -0500

“E-K-E?”

“Eke.”

“What is that?”

“Are you challenging?”

“Believe it.”

Greg reached for the Scrabble Players Dictionary and began flipping its pages. He’d played this game against his old nemesis, Barry, plotting his strategy carefully. Playing his last tile a few minutes ago, Greg held a slim lead—347-341. The nearly three-and-a-half-hour epic battle had gone nearly the way he’d planned it. Barry had darted out to a quick early lead; but Greg had slowly reeled him in and, by the halfway point, he’d gone ahead, keeping it close, trading Barry’s scores nearly point for point. Greg’s catch me, kiss my ass strategy was to win by a single point if he could manage it, first pouring vinegar into Barry’s wound before rubbing salt into it; however, whether he won by a single point or six points, the shame would be all Barry’s.

Greg had only to wait as Barry futilely searched the board for someplace to play his final tile, “K,” and come up empty. Maybe he hoped to tag it onto the end of a word somewhere—how many words ended with a “K?” Ink, blink, think, sink, lick, stick, seek, peek, kick, monk, blank, click, tick, pick, pack, back, sack, peak, book, luck, cock, work, milk, chick, walk, talk, flick, link, bank, rank, drank, frank, junk, oak, quick, suck were just a few (Greg had played “pee” horizontally early on, scoring double word points, then made a new word of it a few turns later by adding “R” to the end of it when he played “harem” vertically, scoring triple letter points for the “H”). Or maybe Barry hoped to nestle it in between two letters to create something that, in his moody blues wildest dreams, would amount to seven or more points.

And so Greg had settled back into his chair, lips besmirked (not in the SCRABBLE Players Dictionary), smugly waiting for Barry to concede checkmate; the chair creaked from the weight of his great bulk, and he listened to the clock on the kitchen wall tick its tock. Greg was about to clean Barry’s clocK. All he had to do was wait for his capitulation.

This was going to be sweet.

FreaKin’ great.

Until clicK went the “K,” onto the plastic surface of the deluxe SCRABBLE playing board: EKE.

“Fahk,” Greg said.

“No, eke.”

“To supplement with effort; to obtain with great effort.”

Barry nodded. “Eke. Five points for the ‘K’ and one each for two ‘Es.’ I guess I managed to eke out this one, old friend.” Barry did his best Ricardo Montalbán impersonation from The Wrath of Khan, as Khan had repeatedly referred to Captain Kirk as “old friend.”

“I fuckin’ hate you, Barry. I fuckin’ hate you.”

Barry didn’t think Greg sounded at all like William Shatner.