Most Likely to Be Gladys

This entry isn't going to be one of my picture-heavy, multimedia extravaganzas.  It's just a little story about a high school student named Karen Funk, on the night on one last high school humiliation.  I'll try to make the story uplifting.  Or something.

Fayetteville-Manlius Central High School in Manlius, NY has always been considered an academically superior public school, populated by privileged suburban kids. That's probably a fair assessment, but I was never all that fond of the place.  I was fat, shy, smart, a little awkward socially, and not at all fashionably dressed.  I wore a lot of polyester, partly because this was the 1970s, but mostly because that was the kind of clothing my mom liked.  She therefore bought for me, to the exclusion of all else.  The only shred of pride I had in my appearance came from the jeans that I bought for myself, and wore as often as possible.

It would not be true to say that I'd known the kids in my graduating class all my life, or even since kindergarten.  For one thing, there were many comings and goings of families, transferred in and out by GE, or moving around for other reasons.  Some of the kids I graduated with were certainly there by second grade or so, but not all that many.  But the main reason it would not be true to say that we'd known each other for many years was that they didn't really know me, and I didn't really know them.  I probably know Carly and Becky, neither of whom I've ever met in person, better than I ever knew Jack or Tom, Sharon, Cheryl or... well, to give any more appropriate examples, I'd have to dig out my high school yearbook again.

A quick anecdote will serve to illustrate the point, before I move on to tonight's main story.  I was in the high school choir, but I was never good enough to make the Swing Sixteen singing group, or do solos or anything like that.  I think I made the Choraliers, but I don't remember for sure.  But I did audition for All-County Chorus and make it, twice; and once I got into Area All State, auditioning with Sunrise, Sunset. 

That year, the Area All State concert was held in Fulton, NY, home of a Nestle factory.  It was only 37 miles from Manlius, Google tells me, but it seemed more like 75.  It was far enough that I stayed overnight at the home of a kid in the choir who lived in Fulton, as did all the other kids from F-M who made the trip.

My visit with the girl from Fulton and her family was pleasant enough, but the following evening before concert time, I had a problem.  My peers were washing their hair in the school bathrooms, putting on nice clothes, and doing their make-up.  I became acutely aware that my hair needed washing, but I had no shampoo, and didn't dare ask to borrow any.  I just brushed through it with water, and hoped it would help a little. 

But even that wasn't the main problem.  My parents always came to my concerts, and this was my most important concert ever.  Where were they?  I couldn't find them in the crowd. 

Concert time came.  I scanned the crowd as the rest of the choir and I sang selections from Godspell, conducted by the famous choir director Gregg Smith.  There was no sign of my parents.  The concert ended.  No parents.  Kids were leaving with their families.  Not me.  I would have taken the school bus back, but they'd deliberately not provided one, in order to make the parents come to the concert.

I called home on a pay phone.  My mom was there.  She explained that they'd been to all my concerts, but since this one was so far away, they'd decided to sit it out.  She was distraught to hear that I was both disappointed and stranded.

Enter a couple who were about the last parents from Manlius to leave the concert.  They gave me a ride home.  Their son was one of those obnoxious boys who liked to stand in the hall outside the cafeteria, and make rude remarks to passersby.  But in the car with his parents, he was a perfectly nice, intelligent guy, with college plans and everything.  I even kind of liked him.

At school on Monday, of course, he turned back into a jerk.  If anything, he was even more obnoxious.  But now I knew his secret: he was only human after all, more complex than his hallway behavior would indicate.

But high school society doesn't deal much in complexities.  The other kids knew how I looked, and how I reacted to teasing, that I was smart, and that I liked Star Trek.  Some of them probably remembered the skunk incident from second grade, and other social gaffes I'd made over the years.  That was all they needed to know about me.

Now, if I'd been more self-confident, more socially savvy, I could maybe have laughed off any teasing, taken more care with my appearance, worked to overcome my shyness, and made some friends.  A perusal of my yearbook shows a lot of kids that I barely remember, or remember only as being smart and nice.  But I never got to know them, any more than they got to know me.  In some ways, things haven't changed that much since then.  How many people at my company, or my church, know about my novels?  And how much do I know about their lives?  Not much, in most cases.

But I digress.

There was a nasty little tradition at F-M, in which the senior class put on a little awards ceremony, the F-Emmys.  I was nominated in two categories: Most Likely to Succeed and the Gladys Ormphby Award.

For those of you who may be too young to remember, or who didn't watch tv in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gladys was Ruth Buzzi's most famous character on Laugh-In.  She wore a hairnet, a big brown sweater, a big brown skirt, oversized hose that gathered around her ankles, and oversized shoes. She was quintessentially frumpy, and had an amazing woeful frown.

The series of sketches she used to appear in had a simple premise. Arte Johnson's Dirty Old Man character, Tyrone F. Horneigh, would sit beside her on a park bench, forcing her to move over to avoid him. He would, of course, scoot closer.  Then he would try some strange, silly, relatively innocent pick-up line on her, something that sounded filthy but wasn't.  She would hit him with her purse.  He'd say something else.  She would hit him again.  This would continue until he fell off the bench.

Being named the class Gladys Ormphby was the most insulting award in the whole ceremony.

In a way, though, I'd invited the comparison.  Dan Cheney and I had done a sketch in 10th or 11th grade, in which he was Bobby Fischer and I was kind of a Gladys character.  I played chess with him in order to win a date with him - and I won using Fool's Mate.  The punchline was, "There won't be any cameras, will there?"

For this reason and others, I fully expected to win the Gladys Ormphby award.  I hoped to win Most Likely to Succeed as well.  I decided to make the best of the situation, and laugh along with the class, instead of letting myself be hurt by this.

That was the plan, anyway.

I dressed almost as I had dressed for the sketch.  I even carried a bunch of school books, so I could struggle and drop some as I came up for the award.  I chickened out of going all the way with it, though.  And as I came up the aisle, the auditorium was filled with catcalls and rude remarks. 

My prepared speech was this: "I can't imagine why you chose me for this award."  I don't think I ever delivered it.  I was too demoralized by the walk up the aisle.

Part two of the plan was to ditch the frumpy clothes after that, and collect the Most Likely to Succeed Award  with grace and confidence.

Somebody else won.  What can I say? It was a bad night for me.  And the faculty sponsor, one of my former French teachers, thought it was all in good fun.

But here's the thing.  If I'd learned how to take teasing and give it back without feeling crushed, if I'd made more friends within my graduating class, if I'd paid a bit more attention to the outward appearance stuff I disdained as being shallow and unimportant, that night would have been very different for me.  Too bad it took me 20 more years after graduation to learn this.

At my office now, there's a guy who teases me at least twice a week about the one part of my job that is excruciatingly tedious.  He's basically a good guy, and I mostly take his teases with minimal annoyance.  Only once have I been hurt by what he said, when he kind of crossed the line.  Even then, I didn't act like high schooler Karen Funk.  I handled it, and then griped to someone else later in order to vent.

Take that, Gladys.

Karen

Scooter Stories: Not with a Bang, But a Whimper

Let me start tonight's entry with a quick note about the one from last night.  I've been fretting about it all day.  As originally posted, about a third of it consisted of my trying to explain why the South is not my favorite place in the known universe. It was true, but it was also kind of churlish, rather akin to kicking a sick puppy.  Sorry about that.  I've revised the entry at least four times today, trying to be honest without being  negative.  It's better now.  If I've offended you in the meantime, please accept my apology.

Now for the rather sad denouement to my scooter stories.

When I got back from my 1985 trip from Columbus to Syracuse and Niagara Falls, I ordered a replacement speedometer cable for my Honda Elite 250.  This meant that the Elite was in fine shape when we moved to Tucson the following year.  But shortly after that, one of the tires went flat.  We put it in the back of John's Dodge van (it barely fit!) and took it to Arizona Honda.  For whatever reason, we had to leave it there, rather than get it fixed immediately.

As John and I came home afterwards in the van, we decided to stop at the Circle K at Grant and Silverbell for something to drink.  At the time, we lived on Grannen Road, 2.8 miles from the Circle K.  We should have waited 'til we got home.  When we came out of the convenience store, the van wouldn't start!  We walked up the hill and over to the house.  Then John got on our only remaining working vehicle, his Honda CM450 motorcycle, and drove away, ostensibly to check out our options for getting the van running again.

Five miles later, he got a ticket.  Two tickets, really. Since we were new in town, and he hadn't been riding his bike, he hadn't yet put new tags on his Honda.  He had them - whether for Ohio or Arizona, we don't remember now - but they weren't on the bike yet.  And we didn't yet have motorcycle insurance for Arizona.  Or maybe I have it backwards - maybe we had the Arizona insurance, but not the Arizona tags.(Yeah. That seems more likely.) You get the idea.  He had one of the two, but proof of neither on that day.

Well, we took care of whatever paperwork we were lacking.  When we went down to the beautiful old courthouse to pay the fine, though, it turned out that it wasn't that simple.  John had to go to court.

The court date came.  Aside from the judge, John was the best-dressed person in the room that day.  The person ahead of John on the docket explained that she had to drive her neighbor's car - without a driver's license, tags, or insurance - because she had to get to work!  Compared to someone like this, I thought, John seemed perfectly reasonable and law-abiding.

Then it was John's turn.  He wanted to plead "innocent with an explanation," but the judge explained that there was no such option.  John reluctantly went with guilty (or "responsible") with an explanation.

"I am now ready to hear your explanation," the judge said.

"Well, your honor, it was a weird day," John told her.  He explained the circumstances, of the two vehicles we actually used suddenly being put out of commission on the same day.

"Is the motorcycle insured now in Arizona?" she asked.

"Yes, your honor.  It already was."

"Does it have Arizona plates?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

She inspected the paperwork, and then waived the fines on both counts.  Hooray for that judge, whoever she was!

The Elite remained my only working vehicle for a couple more years. John had the van, and the Aero 80 was missing an ignition key and needed a new battery or something.  I rode the Elite on my many birdwatching trips in 1986 and 1987: up Mount Lemmon, where the wind blew away one of my contact lenses at 40 mph, despite my helmet; down to Madera Canyon, where I listened to nightjars and fed a carrot to a slightly tame wild deer; and on rough dirt roads and through a wash to Dudleyville, where I saw a Mississippi Kite. The chanciest scooter trips included the time the fuse powering the headlight blew near Globe, and I had to ride over an hour in the dusk with only turn signals for illumination; and the time I got lost at dusk outside Patagonia. 


Map of Patagonia, AZ

That second one was my own fault, really.  I should have gotten more gas earlier in the day, maybe at Sonoita.  I should also have given up on the obscure directions in my Birds of Southeastern Arizona book, once it became obvious that I'd missed a turn somewhere.  Instead I went up and down a succession of hills on the more and more rugged dirt road, heading farther and farther from civilization, as the sun came closer and closer to the horizon.  Cows grazed next to the road, and the outcroppings in the dirt were probably bedrock.  As the sun disappeared, I found myself at the top of an almost 45 degree downgrade.  Even if I got the bike safely down the hill, I'd never get it up the other side.  I was lost, it was getting dark, and I was nearly out of gas.  Oh, and it was rattlesnake country.  So I left the bike at the side of the road, and walked along a nearby dirt driveway to a local ranch. 

The rancher rescued me - up to a point, that is.  He got my scooter, me, and his children into the back of his pickup truck, and got me back to Patagonia. Well, that was a start!  But the local gas station was closed.  I was told that sometimes the owner of the station liked to go into Tucson for the evening--and where did that leave me?

Nevertheless, the rancher said goodbye and drove away, having suggested that I talk to the local police about borrowing some gas.  But the cop I found very nicely explained that he had no way to do this.  I knew I didn't have enough gas to make Tucson.  It was doubtful that I could even make Sonoita, or that the station there would be open if and when I got there.  So I did the only thing I could do.  I headed south - away from Tucson! - toward Nogales.  It was closer than Sonoita, and large enough to have more than one gas station.  I might even be able to make it to one of them. 

I didn't.  I ran out of gas near a subdivision, about a mile outside Nogales. 

But I manage to flag down someone from the subdivision, a middle-aged man who barely spoke English.  (Nogales straddles the Mexico border.)  He drove off with his non-approved plastic container (think antifreeze), filled it with gas, and brought it back to me.  He wouldn't even let me reimburse him for it.  I thanked him profusely, drove off to the gas station to finish filling up, called John by pay phone so he'd know I wasn't dead in a ditch, got some dinner at Denny's, and drove home - by freeway this time, up I-19.

Oh, and there was also the time John and I headed north to take part in Hands Across America, and got stranded under a tree near Sunshine Boulevard outside Eloi.  Actually, John wasn't stranded.  His motorcycle was working fine.  But my Elite blew a fuse and wouldn't start.  So much for Hands Across America!

By 1987 we were running out of money, so I got a job at a video rental place at Grant and Silverbell.  One midnight I hit a piece of gravel at the edge of the parking lot with the front tire of the Elite.  The bike went down, and I lost half a tooth. Another time, the bike skidded on a patch of grease on Grant Road under the I-10 overpass.  Yet another time, I arrived soaked at my second video store job while riding the scooter in the monsoon.  Back in Columbus, I'd barely been fazed by riding in rain, in snow, in 10 degree weather, even across patches of ice!  But these little incidents and disasters were starting to add up, and I wasn't 28 years old any more.  I needed a car!

I bought a 1977 Mercury Capri.  I can't remember whether I've told you the end of that story or not.  But one time, I had to pick up the Capri from the used car dealership after some repair work.  John was working or out of town or something, so I rode the Elite over, parked it on a wedge of curb between the lot and the street (about nine inches above the street and about five feet away), and drove the car home, intended to return for the bike in the morning.

When I did this, I was in for a rude shock.  Someone had driven over the curb during the night, knocked over the scooter, and driven away.  All those pretty champagne-colored parts were only made of plastic, and several of them were broken.  One of the hand brakes hung loose. 

I managed to ride my scooter home, but it really wasn't functional anymore.  And those plastic parts were extremely expensive to replace!  So I simply gave up riding the Elite.  The master plan was to sell or trade the Aero 80, and use the money to fix the Elite.  But that never happened.

The two scooters and the motorcycle have only deteriorated further since then.  19 years in the Arizona heat have cracked the seats, destroyed the tires, drained the batteries and dried out the lubricants.  Fixing my 1985 Elite - if a dealer can even get the parts any more, which is doubtful - is still cheaper than replacing it completely, but we're probably talking about $1,000 or more.  So there it sits. 

But if this darn refi ever happens, maybe I'll eventually be able to do something about it.  If I can, I probably should.  How long do you suppose it will take to recoup the repair costs in improved gas mileage, at $3.00 a gallon?

The End - for now.

Karen

The Scooter Stories, Part Three: The Falls and Falls

Before I rattle on some more about Disneyland (I find I'm not much interested in writing about it anyway), I should wrap up my series of scooter stories.  When we left off last time, I had just bought my Honda Elite 250.

The year was 1985.  Sometime that summer, I was maneuvered into quitting my job at George's record store chain.  I soon found another job at a different record store, working for much nicer people who treated me fairly.  I don't honestly remember when in that sequence of events I took my big scooter trip.  I think it was probably while I was still working for George.  I must have arranged to take six days off.

It was my most ambitious scooter trip ever:  I intended to ride my Elite from Columbus, OH to Syracuse, NY, with a side trip to Niagara Falls.  John had gone along on the Loveland castle trip, but this time I was going alone.

The big day came - and it was raining.  I wrapped most of my luggage in large black lawn & leaf bags, and left town anyway. 

Somewhere around I-270, which rings Columbus, my speedometer cable stopped working.  I didn't let that stop me, either.  I figured I could replace it en route.  And anyway, with a top speed of 71 mph, the Elite was unlikely to garner me a speeding ticket on the Interstate.  I checked with the Honda dealerships in Columbus and Mansfield (or was it Canton?), OH, but neither one had a speedometer cable on hand.

I headed up to Cleveland with no further problems.  I tried to drop in on my brother Steve outside Cleveland (I think I took the photo at right outside his apartment building), but he wasn't home.  I gave up on that little visit, and hit I-90, bound for Erie PA and points east.  I wouldn't see my brother again until after my mom died in December, 2002.

The tricky part of the driving between Cleveland and Rochester had to do with wind.  The vineyards and fields did nothing to keep the cross currents of air from Lake Erie and Lake Ontario from buffeting me and my bike.  It made for interesting, challenging driving.  I tried to pace myself based on the trucks with whichI shared the road.  They could shield me from the wind somewhat, but I dared not drive too close behind them.  I didn't want my tiny vehicle to hide in a semi's blind spot!


At Buffalo I tried another Honda shop, but no speedo cable was to be found there, either.  I began to feel I was touring the Honda scooter dealerships of the Eastern U.S.  The heck with it!  I drove off to Niagara Falls. 

And just to make a point about what the Elite and I could do together, I crossed the border into Canada, to visit the Falls from the Canadian side, too.  A certain Bruce Springsteen song was a big hit that year, as evidenced by the college-aged girls in the car ahead of me.  When the customs guy questioned them about their citizenship, they sang out, loudly, "Born in the U.S.A.!"  Uh-huh.  I bet the customs agent had never heard that one before!

I'm sorry I don't have a picture of the scooter itself at Niagara Falls, but here I am in front of them in 1985.  Trust me: it was the Elite that got me there.

One thing puzzled me, though.  Why was there a picnic table in the river above the falls?  How did it get there?  Who put it there?  Did anyone ever dare to go out to where it was?  Why didn't it wash away over the falls?  I never learned the answers to these questions.

I stayed until about 5 PM, when the shops and such started to close.  Then I got back on the road, heading east again.  I stayed at a Red Roof Inn somewhere, I think near Niagara Falls.  The next day, I "laid down" my bike, which is to say that it fell over as I was riding it.  There was little or no damage, but it was a little scary - that bike is heavy! 

Nevertheless, I finally made it to Syracuse.  Total distance, one way: about 411 miles.

While I was in Syracuse I visited my dad, who had not yet retired from Syracuse University.  I think we went to a local park by the Erie Canal, and dropped in on Manlius, where I was shocked by the heavy traffic.  I probably went to see my friend Bob, and I know I had lunch with Ed, the ex-priest turned security guard who had performed my wedding to John.  And I checked for a speedometer cable.  No luck, of course.

And I visited Syracuse University itself, or at least Marshall Street.  The neat old gray building up the hill from the scooter in the picture to the right is the Hall of Languages, commonly referred to as HL.  Crouse College is prettier (it looks like a castle!), but HL is the venerable old building that greets visitors as they come up University Avenue.  Besides, it's the home of the English Department.  Crouse is the music school.

On the way to Syracuse, a state trooper had questioned whether my Elite 250 was capable of keeping up with the rest of traffic on the New York State Thruway.  I told him that it was fast enough for me to have gotten a speeding ticket on it, doing 69 miles per hour outside Mansfield, Ohio.  (I don't remember exactly when this happened, but while the traffic cop filled out my ticket that time, I fretted that he would notice my Walkman and give me grief for listening to it while driving.  Also, on the police band during those few minutes came a report about some fugitive that was contaminated by nuclear waste or something.  The radio advised that police not approach the guy.  Or something like that.  It was a long time ago.)

But I digress.  The point is that the state trooper didn't want me on the Thruway on a bike that couldn't go as fast as prevailing traffic - in other words, at least the speed limit.  I gather there was a law to that effect.  And the Elite, being the first of the newer, more powerful scooters, was enough of a novelty that law enforcement people didn't know it was fast enough for the Interstates.  The trooper let me on the Thruway, that time, but I hit a similar snag when the time came to start back to Columbus.  The guy at the toll booth refused to let me onto the Thruway at all.  He claimed that a minimum tire size of 14" was required for a vehicle to drive on I-90.

In tears, I turned around and went to see mydad at University College.  Together we measuredmy tires.  14.5 inches, if I recall correctly.  At any rate, it met the requirement.  "Just get on at another on ramp," my dad advised.  "You shouldn't have any more trouble."  I did that.  Nobody gave me any further grief about the scooter's size or speed.


The ride back was much harder than the ride east.  Even so, I stopped at Nigara Falls again, and crossed into Canada again--briefly.  It was 90 degrees as I approached the Pennsylvania border, and I was getting very sore from all that riding.  Worse, the road itself was a mess.  There was construction for about 50 miles.  This consisted of ten mile stretches of closed-off lanes, with nothing at all going on in the forbidden lanes except one or two five-foot patches of missing pavement.  It bugged the heck out of me that I was struggling along on rough road in the other lane, while mostly-pristine stretches of new pavement lay a few feet to my left.  And there was no road crew working on the road at all.  When I complained about this at a Welcome station, the person said, "You don't want them working outside in 90-degree weather, do you?"  Why, yes.  Yes, I do.

The condition of the road was even worse in Ohio, grooved and pitted.  I was mighty sore by the time I got home.

A week later, I was off again to Mansfield, to collect my favorite pillow, which I'd left at the Red Roof Inn.

One more installment to follow.

Karen

Scooter, Cycle and Castle

Where were we? Ah, yes.  John and I were in Columbus, Ohio, about to take a road trip on our new motorbikes.  John had his 350cc Honda motorcycle.  I had my 1984, 80cc Honda Aero scooter.

The destination, chosen by me from a book called American Castles, was Chateau La Roche, also known as Loveland Castle. It was most of the way to Cincinnati, about 95 miles each way. That's a pretty ambitious distance on a scooter that only does 40 mph.  I was pretty sore by the time we got there, but it was totally worth it.  It was my favorite kind of castle, a Norman keep. 

The Chateau La Roche was built by one man, Harry Andrews, a WWI veteran and boy scout leader.  As a medic in the Great War, he saved the life of a french earl's son, the story goes, and was knighted for it. Later he started building a stone shelter to replace boy scout tents that were falling apart.  He's quoted as saying, “Every knight needs a castle.”  He was still working on the place when he died in 1981, just three or four years before we got there.  Andrews based it on that French earl's castle, Le Chateau de La Roche.


Left:  a much younger Karen looks out from a tower of the late Norman keep. 



   

Left: the actual castle was much bigger than this.  This was just part of the wall around it.  Right: the same bikes that visited the castle, 20 years later.  Below: the Elite, twenty years later and in sad shape.


Well, anyway.  I did have another scooter accident while working at the Buzz, this one minor.  Some kid in a truck (another odd parallel, that!) sidewiped me a little on a blind curve of a two-lane alleyway.  I think I sprained my ankle again, and needed a new footrest on one side of the bike.  No big deal.

But it occurred to me that if I had one of the new, bigger Honda scooters, the 250cc Honda Elite, I would have the power and the speed to get away from some of these bad drivers on short notice, and avoid a collision.  I'd also be able to get farther, faster, and in more comfort.  I set my sights on an Elite.  It couldn't be just any Elite, either: I wouldn't settle for a 150cc one.  It had to be an Elite 250, the Gold Wing of Honda scooters.  It even looked a little like a Gold Wing.

Trouble was, I couldn't afford it.  I really couldn't.

Fortunately for me, the manager of Honda East (Skip, I think he was called) had a solution for me.  An older man (in his 50s, I think, which doesn't sound so old now!) had "laid down" his new Elite 250, and lost his nerve as a result.  I could buy that guy's bike, for considerably less than the cost of a new one.  Okay, great!  How?

I got my first bank loan (an 18 month one, I think). and got my Elite.  250cc, champagne color, top speed 71 mph (downhill with a tailwind), and with a custom locking metal trunk on the back, added by the previous owner. Oh, yeah.  This was what I wanted all along: a scooter that went as fast as a car!

Okay, so now I had my dream bike, one that can handle the Interstate and everything.  You know what that means, don't you?  Yup: another road trip.  Only this time, I was going a lot farther than 95 miles each way.

Next time:  Falls and Falls.

Don't panic (although I probably will, obsessive person that I am!) if I don't post again for several days, breaking my long string of posting every single night.  I may not have Internet access over the weekend.  I'll explain later.  Anything I don't post this weekend I'll make up to you later, including the fiction entry that at least four of you still read.

Karen

My Scooter Stories, Part One: Can't Hold On to a Bike!

I wanted a moped.

I can't remember why, but that's what I wanted.  I hadn't had my $115 ten-speed bicycle (as seen here) more than a year or two, and I'd really wanted that, at least until I had it.  But now I wanted something with a motor in it. 

The year, I think, was 1983.  I'm not sure whether we had shut down Rockarama yet, but it was somewhere around that time.  The place:  Columbus, Ohio.

If we had closed down Rockarama by then (the store never did make us any money), that means I was working at Buzzard's Nest on Morse Road, or possibly about to start there.  The new job was a seven mile commute from our duplex on 13th Ave.  It makes sense that I would have wanted a vehicle that made the ride a little easier.  There was no money for a car (I earned $4.00 an hour at the Buzz), but a moped was affordable--barely.

Maybe it was the slick radio ads from Rick Case Honda that got me interested in mopeds.  The ads promised that they would beat anyone else's price, "or give you the Honda for free!"  Even gullible Karen saw through that one.  It would always be more advantageous for the dealer to beat a price than to give the bike away, and yet it wasn't false advertising.  As I said: slick.  But it meant that the price would be low, and that's what I was aiming for.

John said I could get the moped if I sold the bike to help pay for it.  So we set up at one of the drive-in theatre flea markets, and I did sell the bike and some other stuff.  Then we went off to Rick Case.  I came home with my little red moped.  Top speed: 20 mph.  That part was a little frustrating, but otherwise I loved it.  I'm pretty sure I gave it a name, but I don't remember what it was.

You see those blurry blue steps on the right in the photo above?  A couple of feet away from those, on the side of the house, was a length of pipe.  I think it was a drainpipe, but it could have been a gasline, or a water pipe.  I just remember that it was attached to the house at both ends, or else one end went into the ground.  You get the idea, though: both ends were secure.  Therefore, locking my moped to it with a bike lock should have been secure.

Nope.  One evening, while we were home, someone cut off the lock and made away with the moped.  I'd only had it a couple of months.  I reported it to the police, but of course nothing ever came of that.  I don't recall whether it was covered by renters' insurance.  Probably not.  And I don't think Jenny Dog even barked at the thief.

Well, I was fed up with 20 miles per hour anyway.  And now tv was advertising a new kind of Honda, one that made the moped seem like a kid's toy.  It was called an Aero scooter.  It came in 50cc and 80cc models.  Top speed on the 80cc: 40 mph!  Maybe as much as 44 mph, I later discovered, but only while going down a steep hill with a strong tailwind.

I had to have one.

Harry Nilsson's song Me and My Arrow played endlessly in my head as I planned the purchase, made possible by the $4.00 an hour George was paying me.  Maybe my mom or dad chipped in with a loan, but I don't really remember.  The bottom line is, I went to Honda East, where the staff was much more personable and service-oriented, much less pressuring than the other place.  I got my Aero 80.  I had to pass a motorcycle test, but that turned out to be easy to do.

That first scooter was great to ride, especially between 13th Ave and Morse Rd.  The speed limit along my route was pretty much the same speed the Aero could do.  I'd never be able to take the Aero on the Interstate (actually I think I tried it once or twice, for all of one exit), but it worked great for getting to work--as long as it wasn't snowing or icy.

Then one day, perhaps nine months later, I was on Karl Rd as usual, coming up on an intersection.  I know it was near Colleen's Collectibles and the cake shop, but I'm not sure of the street name after all these years.  Olentangy?  Oakland Park?  Lane Ave.?  Something else? Whatever. It may have been where McGuffey Lane sorta-kinda turns into Karl Road.  Don't expect me to remember the exact grid, because I haven't been there in nineteen years.

What I do remember is the layout of that part of the intersection.  Picture this:  I'm going north.  Immediately in front of me, the only northbound lane splits into two lanes, a couple hundred feet before the light.  The right lane is not a "right turn only" lane.  The left lane is not a "left turn only" lane. Both lanes continue after the light.

On the right (SE corner), just at the light, is a gas station.  In the left lane, three cars are backed up, waiting for the first car to  get an opening to turn left.  The light is green.  The right lane, all 200 feet of it, is empty.

Got it?  Now here's what happened.  Since I needed to go straight at the light, and didn't want to sit behind the guy turning left, I got into the right lane as soon as there was one.  Yes, of course I signaled, but people don't watch for 80cc scooters.  Nothing smaller than a car even registers in the brains of some drivers.

A woman was leaving the gas station.  The third car in line in the left lane saw her car sitting there, and kindly waved her in.

She never paid attention to the fact that there was another lane between her and the waving driver.  She sure as heck didn't look to see whether there was a scooter in that lane.

I have never been able to remember the moment of impact.

My glasses flew off, even through the used helmet we'd painted silver.  The helmet flew off, too, I think.  I sprained my ankle for approximately the 17th time, and needed stitches in my heel.  The Aero, of course, was totaled.

The woman whose car hit my scooter told me she was afraid to drive in the day or two after the accident.  But she had no clue why she was the one cited for it.  "Because I'm the one with the car," she said.  She had no idea what had really happened, where I'd appeared from.  She didn't understand that it really was her fault, until I explained it to her.

Ironically, this is very similar to the way the 18-year-old in the 1965 Ford pickup totaled my Saturn on March 30th, 2005.  The cop had to explain it to him, too.

The insurance settlement on the Columbus accident got me a 1984 Aero 80, replacing my 1983 model.  The "pain and suffering" check went most of the way toward buying John a Honda motorcycle.

Can you say "road trip?"  I knew you could.

Friday:  An American Castle.

Karen

Memorial Day, Then and Now

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Take a picture of something that shows what Memorial Day means to you. This can mean something directly related to remembering soldiers and others who have served their country -- but if Memorial Day also means fun, sun, cookouts or other things, you can use that as well.- JS

Y'know, when I was a kid, Memorial Day meant a parade down Fayette St. in Manlius, followed by badminton and a picnic.  That was thirty-five to forty years ago.  Although I have no pictures of the parades, I was astonished tonight to find that I actually have pictures of the badminton net and the picnic table, and even of me on some patriotic holiday in 1970 or 1971.  The one of me was definitely taken by Joel R.  The other black and white ones may be his, too.

I marched in that Memorial Day parade in Manlius a couple of times, first as a Girl Scout, and later carrying a white, non-working, ceremonial wooden rifle in front of the marching band.  The highlight for me as a marcher was at the corner of Seneca and Fayette, where I could usually see a cobblestone and a tiny bit of exposed trolley track from the early 20th Century.

Other years I'd be on the sidewalk with my family, holding a little flag or a newly-purchased pinwheel in one hand, a twist cone from Sno-Top in the other.  We'd cheer on the bands, marvel at the World War I vets in their old cars, and I'd wave at my seventh grade social studies teacher, Mr. Hennigan, as he marched with the volunteer fire department.

Maybe after the parade we'd stop for milk or something at Temple's Dairy Store.  Then we'd go home.  I'd insist on setting up the badminton net, or else (if it was hot enough) we'd grab our swimsuits and head over to Snook's Pond.  Dinner was steak or charred chicken or hot dogs or hamburgers cooked on a cheap grill outside, served at the faded redwood picnic table with Mom's potato salad (with egg, mustard, cucumber and chives) and Mom's fruit salad (mostly melon, with a can of fruit and a banana added at the last minute).

 

Fast forward to 2005.  I haven't been to Temple's Dairy Store in over a quarter century, nor seen a Memorial Day parade in thirty years. Dad is in Wilmington with Ruth, and I'm sure he didn't grill a steak or burgers.  Steve is in Cleveland, and he probably worked today.  And my mom, being dead, will never make another potato salad or fruit salad.  I'd make them myself, but they're too high in carbs.

For me in 2005, Memorial Day is mostly about having the day off, and spending it with John.  Today we signed up with L.A. Fitness, and then went shopping at Wal-Mart.  It doesn't get much more post-modern American than that.  We spent $100, ninety-four cents at a time.  Well, the gym bag and padlock and sweats cost a bit more, but nothing was over $15.  I also finally found a pair of my Athletic Works Silver Series shoes, under which (unlike my office shoes) I can wear an ankle brace.  (This ankle is NOT healing quickly,  probably because I've been walking on it so much, without any support or protection.)

As for the memorial part of Memorial Day, it should surprise no one that for me, that means thinking about my mom.  I've never known anyone who died in battle.  Heck, the only dead veteran I remember is my grandmother.  But Mom's only been dead since late 2002, and on holidays (and other times) I think of her often.

Memorial Day is a big day for cemeteries.  I discovered this two years ago, when I stopped by East Lawn in the early afternoon.  The staff had a tent set up near the entrance, and were handing out little flags for free.  Their rules say that such holiday decorations will be removed a couple of weeks after the holiday, but in the meantime there are flags.  On Mother's Day, they do the same thing with flowers.

Today I was there late in the day, almost at sunset.  The office was closed, and there was no tent set up. Large flags flew above the entrance drive, on poles that will probably be back in storage tomorrow.  There were a fair number of people around, but not as many, I suspect, as earlier in the day.

 

My problem with going to the cemetery is that I never know what to do when I get there.  I don't believe that my mom is hanging out at her grave, waiting to hear from me.  It doesn't seem like the right place to talk to her.  Really, no place does seem like the place to talk to her.  What do I say, anyway?  "Hi, Mom.  I graduated from college, and got a good job."  She knows that already.  I don't need to stand above her bones to tell her that.

So instead I make sure the marker is clean and the grass is healthy, and maybe take yet another picture with my ubiquitous digital camera.   Today I take extras, specifically to do this photo shoot thing.  Then John arrives with the car, back from Target, and we drive away.

Karen

Visiting the Stone

Time Traveler's Holiday Picnic, Part One

Time Traveler's Holiday Picnic, Part Two

A Gallery of Teachers: Snapshots in Time

Weekend Assignment #59: We've all had teachers who have made a difference in our lives. Tell us about one of yours. It can be a teacher from any level of education, from kindergarten to graduate school.

Extra Credit: Tell us your second favorite subject in school.

There really wasn't a single teacher who turned my life around, or encouraged me when no one else would, or inspired me to become what I am today.  My memories of teachers are made up largely of incidents, snapshots in time, illuminated by moments of learning.  I remember Miss Pisano, who was the head of the Eagle Hill Junior High English department at the time, telling us about attempts to ban Huckleberry Finn and A Separate Peace from the school; and I remember that her vocabulary words always seemed to come "from a Latin root meaning..." (with the occasional Greek root thrown in).  I remember a nun in a religious ed class, giving me extraordinary advice about not hating people, advice I remember four decades later, although I forgot the nun's name a very long time ago.  I remember Thomas Murphy Hennigan's trick question in seventh grade social studies about the Iroquois and the corn plant. I remember from Home Ec that lettuce should be ______, not ______, into bite-size pieces.  I remember that Mr. Goldberg showed us the lyrics to Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, taught us songs by Chicago and the Moody Blues, and liked Cat Stevens better than Elton John.  I remember which songs we used in Miss Maitoza's English class to prove that "Some Rock is poetry."  And I remember that Ms. Hiestand had a Who's On First poster on her classroom wall, and that Karen Keane recommended that I read the "ABCs of science fiction: Asimov, Bradbury and Clarke." 
But there was no one teacher who had a big impact on my life, based on a sustained effort or relationship rather than a single quirk or incident.  Still, I owe a lot to a whole slew of teachers.  And this isn't the first time I've said so.

I've already written in this journal about Mrs. Livingston (first grade--not entirely positively), Miss Olds (third grade--a great teacher), Miss Skinner (fourth grade, another great one, who later became a school librarian), and Ms. Gordon (high school English, a very good teacher, who cut me no slack).  On my sidebar here is a link to buy books written by my ninth grade social studies teacher, Mr. Farrell, who used to tell us to "polka in place."  And twice before, I've mentioned Mr. Hayes, the motorcycle-riding creative writing teacher, in whose class Dan Cheney started the book that Shane Johnson finished.  (I probably worked on the beginning of Heirs of Mâvarin in one of Mr. Hayes' classes.)  I've even posted a picture of Dr. Bogoev, a French teacher who made very little impression on me one way or another, along with Mr. Procopio, another French teacher who was a lot more fun. 



Okay, so who have I not written about yet?  How about college?  I can't say I remember Jean Howard, my Shakespeare professor in the 1970s, well enough to say much about her.  I'm pretty sure I once attended a party at her house, and if I remember correctly, I also had her for an English poetry course.  The class was discussing Ode on a Grecian Urn one day, and going around and around in discussing the terms carpe diem and fruit de temps.  I finally raised my hand, and cut to the heart of the matter with a direct quote from a beer commercial that was current at the time:  "In other words, 'You only go 'round once in life, so you've gotta grab for all the gusto you can!'"  The other students got mad and said no, that wasn't it!  But of course it was.  I remember that Dr. Howard was cool, and a good teacher, but that's the only anecdote that comes to mind.

Then there was Randall Brune,  the Sherlock Holmes fan I had for Romantic Poetry.  (He never did turn in my grade when I made up my incomplete for that class, but that's water under the bridge now.)  I can't say I was a big fan of the material, but I did like Coleridge and Blake.  I later sent him a pastiche of Rime of the Ancient Mariner, about Sherlock Holmes. 

Dr. Brune told a story at a Mycroft Holmes Society meeting about visiting the moors in England, where Hound of the Baskervilles takes place.  The landlady where he stayed warned him, "Don't go out on the moors at night!"

"Why?  Is there a gigantic hound, or some other dangerous beast out there?"
"No, nothing like that.  But don't go out on the moors at night!"
"Well, are the paths not well marked?"
"Yes, they are.  But don't go out on the moors at night!"

Unfortunately, I don't remember anything resembling a punchline to this story.

I think I need to skip ahead to University of Phoenix to do this assignment properly.  We'll pass lightly over the one instructor who made everyone's life miserable for five weeks, and the quirky business law instructor that I liked better than my classmates did.  (I will say, however, that I loved the Business Law textbook by Henry Cheeseman so much that I wondered how and whether to try to shift gears into some aspect of the legal profession.)

That leaves Fred Lewis and Loren Yunk.

I had Fred for Financial Accounting I & II, Corporate Finance, and Advanced Financial Accounting.  He was laid back and encouraging, explained concepts effectively, and kept the class involved.  Even better, he had a tendency to hang out in the UoP lobby before class, where he was eminently approachable.  Even when I wasn't in one of his classes, I'd say hello, tell him where I was in the program, and get some off the cuff advice.  If I was in his class at the time, I could get extra help and encouragement and pointers. 
And oh, yeah, he's a handballhall-of-famer.  That's not strictly relevant here, but it does give me an excuse to post a link to a somewhat better picture of Fred than the horrible one on the left.

The last time  I saw Fred was at commencement in March.  He was the marshall for our little band of graduating accounting majors.  He agreed to  let me list him as a reference, offered to write a letter on my behalf, and advised us on CPA exam study tactics and on home refinancing.  I sat next to him at the graduation ceremony.  At one point I started crying.  I confided to Fred that I hadn't been this emotional at my own wedding.

"This is more of an accomplishment," Fred said.  "Any fool can get a marriage license. Not everybody can do this."

Thanks, Fred!

I had Loren Yunk, CPA, for Accounting For Decision Making, Accounting Information System I, and Contemporary Auditing I & II.  Loren was even more laid back then Fred, if that's possible, but just as good at explaining concepts.  He told amusing stories and showed videos, and his exams could have been written in collaboration with Garrison Keillor.  I would post a sample of his final exam hilarity, but that might help people to cheat on a future exam, so I won't.  Anyway, I learned a lot from him, too, so thanks, Loren!

Extra Credit:  Hmm.  Tough.  I'm not sure I can honestly say that English was my favorite subject in school, although I went out of my way to take four years' worth at F-M High School, and majored in English (two different specialties thereof) at Syracuse.  Yes, I loved the writing classes, the Shakespeare,  Ms. Gordon's comedy class, Ms. Hiestand's essay class, and probably other specific courses over the years.  Other classes I actively disliked, such as the American Realism one, which seemed to consists of unlikeable or weak characters having a miserable, bleak life before coming to a horrible end.  Yuck.  But if English is my favorite subject, is accounting my second favorite?  Should that be the other way around, with Accounting #1 and English #2?  Does Business Law (just two classes' worth) beat them both?  I'm so confused!

Karen

Nightmares and Mrs. Livingston
The Monkees and Miss Skinner
Ms. Gordon and My "Remarkable Facility"
A Gallery of French Teachers

Tags: Weekend Assignment, Teachers

My Beloved Toros, 1993-1996

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Show yourself (and/or family in friends) enjoying yourself playing sports, or watching them. Yes, all that fresh air willl be good us all. Remember your Claritin.

Okay, I don't do participatory sports, unless you count hiking/birdwatching (and I haven't done that on a regular basis in years and years). But John and I did go to baseball games, once upon a time.  I don't have pictures of us at Tucson Toros games, but I do have pictures of some of the Toros.  They were sort of friends of ours, especially the 1993-1996 teams. We hung out and got autographs often enough to be on a first name basis with a number of those guys: James Mouton, Brian Hunter, Chris Hatcher, Orlando Miller, etc.  I'm not sure they knew our names, but she did recognize us after a while.  Pitcher Alvin Morman once gave me his leftover tokens at a Peter Piper Pizza party for the Booster club.

First picture:  John is probably in this picture--somewhere.  Chances are he's either in the clump of people waiting for autographs on the first base (Toros) side, or in the clump of people waiting for autographs on the third base (visitors) side.  Taken in 1993, during the summer of the Toros' second Pacific Coast League championship, it also records the summer John and I discovered baseball.  John was into the autograph end of things, and I was into scorekeeping and hanging out.



Second picture:  I think this is pitcher Dave Veres, but I could be wrong.  Dave has been with the Houston Astros and the St. Louis Cardinals.  I've lost track of him now, but he's a good guy. 1993.



Third picture: cow milking contest, 1996.  Toro means bull of course, so there was a dairy night, with cow milking and free cow bells.



Fourth picture:  Roll Back the Clock Night, 1996, with a disco era theme.  The mascot is Tuffy the Toro, after whom our dog is named.

We got hooked on the Toros in June or July 1993, and went to almost all the home games in 1994-6.  At some point, though, it all changed:

• The Toros' longtime affiliation with the Houston Astros ended.  They became the AAA team for the Brewers for a season, and then began their current association with the Diamondbacks.  This affiliation makes perfect sense, but it means that the players we'd followed for years either moved thousands of miles to New Orleans, were called up to Houston, or were traded to Detroit. The continuity was gone, and the Toros from the Brewers year were, in effect, just temps as far as Tucson was concerned.
• The team moved from good old Hi Corbett field, about a mile from Worldwide Travel, to Tucson Electric Park, way out on Ajo Way.  It was less convenient to get to, and had a much less fan-friendly layout.  Autographs were much harder to get, and it was no longer possible to interact with the radio broadcasters.
• The team was renamed the Sidewinders, to be more compatible with the name Diamondbacks (both are Arizona snakes).  The wonderful Tuffy the Toro was phased out in favor of Sandy Sidewinder, an entirely unconvincing snake with arms.
• Longtime General Manager Mike Feder was canned.  Exit Mike and Patty Feder, who were largely responsible for great promotions and the "family" feeling people used to get at Toros games.

In short, the only thing the 1995 Toros had in common with the 2005 Sidewinders is that both teams play baseball in Tucson.  Oh, and I think they have a Toros night on Thursdays.  They dismantled everything else I loved about the team over the course of just two years.

Some people enjoy the Sidewinders.  They were so integral to the Diamondbacks a few years ago that they picked up the nickname "Baby 'Backs."  But the handful of times John and I have gone to their games in recent years, we got bored and restless, and left early.  The dream is over, and we can't seem to get back to sleep.

Karen

P.S. Claritin doesn't work for me.

Surviving the "Failed" Clarion

 This is Algis J. Budrys, affectionately known as Ayjay. He taught the third week of Clarion '77.  He was the last (and pretty much the only) person there to really encourage me about the potential of The Tengrim Sword, the manuscript that decades later became Heirs of Mâvarin.  I liked him a lot, and learned from him. I especially admired the only book of his I'd read, The Falling Torch.  What I liked best about it was the way the space war in the book was treated. The protagonist spends two thirds of the book basically playing Hamlet, trying to decide whether to lead his people into battle to save his planet. Finally he decides to do it.  The next chapter disposes of the entire war in a couple of paragraphs.  The implication is clear: the important part is the decision, not the shoot-'em-up.  I mentioned my admiration of this to Ayjay, only to be told that this had not been the way he'd written the book.  The editor had cut a third of the book to meet length requirements!  Oh, well.  I still think it's brilliant.

Week Four was Peter S. Beagle, author of two of my favorite books,The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place. I had great hopes that as a fantasy novelist, he'd be able to help me solve the problems with The Tengrim Sword, or at least encourage me as Ayjay had.  No such luck!  He didn't like the three chapters I had by then, and couldn't really tell me why.  It turned out that he was largely an instinctive writer, as opposed to a planner and analyzer.  At least one other person learned a lot from him, but I sure didn't. The only bright spot was listening to him reading from his latest manuscript each evening.

Yes, I was getting discouraged by then.  People had questions about why my characters did this and that, why their religion required them to behave foolishly, why they didn't know a key bit of information, and why the creature had a name that sounded like a brand of shampoo (that was John's comment!). They wanted to know about the political system and the level of technology, and thought that Rani was acting younger than was appropriate for his age in a pre-technological society.  Some of it was picky stuff, and some was fundamental, and most of it was stuff I couldn't fix--not back then, anyway.  I shelved the novel for a while, and instead workshopped something I'd written in high school, about a disk jockey who doesn't kill himself.  The Clarionites thought that was a much more "mature" and developed piece of work!

Weeks Five and Six were taught by Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm, a married couple with many years of experience teaching at workshops.  Many years later, I bought a book of Damon's called Creating Short Fiction, and it was like a Clarion refresher course.  There was a difference, though.  The advice I found somewhat helpful in 2003 was clear as mud in 1977.  As a group, we started to feel that the various writers-in-residence all contradicted each other, and that Damon even contradicted himself!  A lot of us got so discouraged that we stopped writing by the end of Week Five. I don't think I was the only one to start referring to our year as "the failed Clarion."  Although D.M. Rowles sold some short shorts to Harlan Ellison's legendary unpublished anthology The Last Dangerous Visions, the only person from our year that I know to have published any sf or fantasy novels since 1977 is Gael Baudino, whose work I like a lot. 

But here's the thing.  Despite the fact that Clarion put me off writing fiction for over a decade, I don't at all regret going.  First of all, I met my husband there, which is an excellent reward all by itself!  But aside from that, I did learn a lot, even though it would be many years before I could assimilate and apply the information. For one thing, I learned that I really and truly wasn't ready to write that novel.  After Clarion I'd pull it out every four years or so, revise the first couple of chapters, get stuck, and put it away again, because I didn't know what came next. Then in 1989, when John was out of town on business for a month or more at a time (long story, and one I won't be telling you), I took to sitting in restaurants, writing scenes on scraps of paper.  I discovered that if I let the characters talk about what to do next, they'd start moving the plot along with little or no help from me.  Yay!  I finally got through a complete draft that year, after twelve years of getting stuck around page 50 to 70. I still had some problems to solve and a major rethinking of tengrem (sic) psychology ahead of me, but it took me another decade to find all that out.

And here's the other thing I should have learned from Clarion, something I didn't really understand until I started reading Patricia C. Wrede's postings on AOL message boards three or four years ago. The reason all those writers contradicted each other was that there was no one method that worked for all of them.  That can even be generalized: there IS no one method of writing, no "right" way to do it, no set of rules that must be adhered to or that guarantee success.  The only valid rules are that you have to write to be a writer, and that it's probably good to get the spelling, punctuation, and grammar right, and preferably the formatting as well. Once in a while, someone will teach the method that works for him or her, and try to promulgate it as the "right" way or as "rules."  Don't believe it. Maybe that method and those rules will work for you, but the chances are excellent that some or all of it will only mess you up.  The lesson of the Clarion experience is that you have to experiment to see what works best for you as a writer.  If writer X seems to have the same basic approach as yours, then maybe's X's tips will prove helpful.  Or if that method consistently leaves you stuck, then it may be time to give writer Y's approach a shot.  Take what you need, experiment, and find out what works for you.

What worked for me was not to write fiction for twelve years, and then to go sit in restaurants.

Karen

Harlan Ellison, Matchmaker

 Here are some of the people of Clarion '77. I can no longer name them all, but that's John in the khaki shirt. Mike McNevin Hayes (correction: Mike Orgill) is the guy hugging the black-shirted D.M. Rowles, and, on the other side,  Fax Goodlife. No, I'm not making this up! The guy with the sideburns is probably Peter, or possibly Rand.  I'm not sure about the other two. Dave Deacon and...Lester? TJ? It's been too long.  Sorry.

So anyway, I was accepted as a student of the Clarion Worksop for 1977.  Under the terms if my agreement with my dad, I worked as an enumerator for R.L. Polk from May until the end of June.  Clarion started July 3rd, for six weeks. I got to East Lansing by bus and by train, not necessarily in that order.

The first night, there was a get-acquainted party at the home of the late R. Glenn Wright, the M.S.U. prof in charge of the workshop.  I don't think John had arrived yet.  People introduced themselves, but I didn't really connect with anyone that night.  I was lonely and a little scared.

The workshopping began the next day.  Robin Scott Wilson, founder of Clarion, was there the first week to get us started.  The first material workshopped was everyone's submission manuscripts.  Chapter One of The Tengrim Sword went over okay, but not great.  People had a lot of criticisms, and a lot of questions I couldn't answer yet.
 
I was introducing some of my fellow Clarionites to D&D the afternoon that Harlan Ellison arrived for Week Two. It was not a successful game, and I think at least one of the players was tripping at the time.

Harlan arrived, and posted a set of rules. I don't remember it all, but a big one was no drugs.  There may have also been something about keeping cigarette smoke "away from good old Harlan." I'm not sure about the nature of the prohibition, but the "good old Harlan" part is a direct quote.

I'd met Harlan before, in connection with his speaking appearance at Syracuse University the year before (which is a whole story by itself), and again when I showed up outside his house one rainy day to take a picture or two.  What can I say?  I was young and foolish.  Harlan's opinion of me was that I was a fan, which in his lexicon was not a good thing.  Once he saw some of my writing, he upgraded me to "amateur."  Well, I couldn't let that stand!  I was determined to prove myself to my favorite writer.  At the end of the week, I turned in a story called "Rivals," in which an angry fat girl uses magic to switch bodies with the pretty girl in the next dorm room.  Harlan left a note on his way out, saying nice things about the story.  It ended by saying that I was a writer after all: "Just flense yourself of the fannishness and amateurism, and you may just make it."

 


By the time Harlan arrived, there were two male Clarionites I had my eye on.  They were both smart, and interesting, and unattached to female Clarionites.  Peter turned me off one day by showing a side of himself I didn't like.  That left John. Like me, John Blocher had a weight problem, but that didn't matter much to me.  In fact, it was probably a plus. He was smart, and funny, and talented, and he seemed to like me.  He even liked Howard the Duck. He didn't like my writing, but oh, well, that was a genre thing. Harlan asked me one day whether I was interested in one of the guys.  When I said yes, he said, "Well, then go and get him, girl!" Come to think of it, he may have used the word "woman" instead of "girl."

Harlan was a lot of fun, but also stressful and exhausting.  He ordered me to read Remembrance of Things Past, and threatened not to talk to me until I'd at least read Swann's Way.(All these years later, I still haven't read it.)   He suggested thatI cultivate a Liv Ullman image, strong and silent.  He went out to restaurants with us,and played mind games on us by pretending not to like someone's story, just to see whether we would fall in line. He even hosted a Synanon-style game one night. This consisted basically of people attacking each other. John wisely declined to attend this, but I was accused of - well, let's not go PG, okay? When I refused to fight back, Harlan said, "You may be too gentle for this game, Karen." Well, yes.  I was.  Still am, for that matter.

But I did take Harlan's advice in one thing.  I started hanging out with John Blocher, whom Harlan had labeled a "dilletante."

Next time: Ayjay and Pete, Kate and Damon.

Karen

Photo credits: I may have taken the top one.  Mike Orgill (see comments) took the black and white ones.

Related entries:

Less Gullible at Six Than I Am Now (Updated)

Teenage Crush? I Didn't Have...Oh. Maybe I Did

Technorati Tags: Harlan Ellison, Clarion

The Mumps Story

Usually I try to make the rounds on weekends, check out all the journals John Scalzi mentions for the Weekend Assignment, and leave comments if I have something to say.  If I like the writing and I'm not too pressed for time, I'll read more entries by that person.  Pretty standard, right?

Well, I tried to do that today, but although I looked at every journal on his list, I left very few comments. Why?  Because most of the party stories were about alcohol.  And even though I understand intellectually that people I like and respect do drink the stuff, sometimes even to excess, I can't take the subject light-heartedly.

It's not you.  It's me.

Let me tell you about it.

When I was in fifth grade, the family next door had a girl named Sarah, one year older(?) than me, a boy, Brad, two years younger, and Cathy, who was in first grade.  Brad was an amazing artist.  He used to design Hot Wheels cars on paper, and could draw all the Peanuts characters about as well as Schulz could, at least in my estimation at the time. Sarah was mostly friends with Sue, who lived next door to me on the other side. But we all hung out together at least part of the time, all five of us, when we weren't starting competing "clubs" of two or three members each.

Well, one day I was hanging out with little Cathy.  I don't remember anything we did, just that we were in her back yard.  The next day, my parents got a call from her parents that Cathy had the mumps. So I heard all about mumps and incubation periods.  The next day I went to school and told people that I would be getting the mumps in two weeks.

Two weeks later....

My brother Steve had borrowed my mom's Rambler station wagon to go to a party.  This was about 1967 or 1968, so he was about 17 or 18 years old at the time.  I was 10 or 11.  I had braces, and had reach the stage in the process in which I had to wear headgear at night that hooked onto the braces.  I think I had just had my bands tightened, a rather uncomfortable procedure, if not usually too painful.

But that night, I woke up and my teeth hurt.  So did my cheeks, my face, my throat, my whole head.  I had forgotten all about the mumps, and was blaming the discomfort on the headgear and the braces. As I lay in bed, trying to decide whether to wake Mom up and tell her about it, I heard the door open downstairs.  Soon Mom and Steve were talking rather loudly on the stairs about the fact that he'd rolled and totalled her car.  Yes, he'd been drinking.  (The drinking age in New York State at the time was 18.) And in the middle of all this sturm und drang, I finally got up and announced, "Mommy, my bands hurt!"  Oh, yeah.  I had the mumps.  I was in bed for a week or more--which wouldn't have been so bad had my parents not chosen this occasion to replace my ancient outer spring bed mattress with a hard, modern inner-spring one.  It was agony to lie on that thing!  Took me years to break it in properly.

Fast forward to Christmas (December 23rd, actually)  when I was in eighth or ninth grade.  Steve was in his first job as a professional computer programmer. This particular day, I had just had a staph infection lanced by the family doctor.  I was in the bathroom, using Betadine and trying to soak in hot water as instructed, when Steve came home from the company Christmas party.  He'd been sick in Dad's car on the way home, and I kind of gather his co-workers weren't too pleased with him. (Let me hasten to assure you that Steve was not in the habit of getting drunk.  These were unusual occurances, which is part of why they were so memorable.)  As I kept reheating and reapplying the washcloths, every few minutes I'd head Steve call out, drunkenly, "Tell Karen I hope she feels better!"

Somewhere in the lower reaches of my brain, I'm sure the following is firmly entrenched on an emotional level:

Someone drunk = Karen hurting = bad things happening.

Add that to the following facts:

* I hate the smells of wine and beer and the taste of alcohol,
* My mom treated alcoholics for a living for years and years at Soule Clinic,
* My high school boyfriend (Dan) was killed by a drunk driver,
* My mom had another car totaled and her neck injured by a drunk one year as she drove home from the Speakman camp, and
* John's mother was an alcoholic,

and I think you begin to understand why I have such a hangup about alcohol. I suppose I could try to overcome it, but why should I?  As long as I'm not putting other people down about it, it seems like a pretty pro-survival trait to have.

So if I don't comment appreciatively about your funny stories of drunken people at parties, I hope you'll understand. 

I'll appreciate you the next time around.

Karen

Photo by Joel Rubinstein, 1971.  The mumps was behind me, Steve's Christmas party ahead. That's the bed and the mattress I was all mumpy on, but by 1971 it was much more bearable. The wooden "Love" sign was left over from a hippie costume, and painted in neighbor Sue's art studio / garage.

The Cheese Story

Note: Noodle is not in this story.  I just like the picture.

It was about 1992. John had not seen his dad in roughly 30 years (divorce, parental kidnapping, detectives, new family, blah blah blah and it's not for me to tell the story anyway).  That was about to change. Sometime around Thanksgiving that year, John's sister, Martha, got us to drive up to Phoenix for a couple of hours with her and the elder Mr. Blocher.  And he was just this guy, you know?  There was no big emotional reconnection, no plan for father and son to reenter each other's lives, no fighting, no tears, nothing.  Just some guy John hadn't seen since he was ten or eleven years old. It wasn't until Martie's wedding and the telling of the Michael Jordan Story* that we learned that John's dad was a flagrant racist. That was the last time we ever saw him.

But this is not the Michael Jordan Story*. This is the Cheese Story. John says it's his story, not mine, but I'm the blogger in the family, so I get to tell it.  Anyway, I don't think he ever tells the story in real life.  I do.

So anyway, there we all were at Martie's condo or apartment (whichever it was), somewhere near Metrocenter.  For whatever reason, we decided to go to dinner together at the Phoenix location of La Parilla Suiza. These Arizona-based restaurants pride themselves on serving Mexico City-style food. "All our tacos, meat and cheese dishes are cooked on charcoal or grilled," their meager web site says.  Yes, there are tortillas and chips and guacamole, but it's not all carbs like most Mexican food. It's actually possible to get a Mexican-style steak there.

Did you notice what they said up there about cheese dishes? Aha!  Now we're getting somewhere.

All the menu items at La Parilla Suiza are numbered, so that gringos and gringas (especially snowbirds) don't have to struggle to pronounce the word "queso" correctly.  So anyway, John ordered a #25 (I'm guessing at the number here; it was a long time ago) and  a #5, when he meant to order, let's say, #24 and #5.

One of these was cheese soup.  The other was, quite simply, a large dish of melted cheese.  Queso con queso. The first, John had ordered intentionally, the second, really not.  No meat, no veggies.  Just cheese.

Rather than tell the server he'd made a mistake, or order something else, he ate some of each, filled up on chips and salsa, and called it a meal.  Did he want a box for the rest?  No, thank you; he did not.  A man can only eat just so much melted cheese at one sitting before getting tired of it.

Still chuckling about John's meal of cheese with cheese, we paid the bill and went back to Martie's place.  When the time came to drive back to Tucson, Martie presented us with the leftover cheese, which she'd had the restaurant pack up for John anyway. John laughed and took it--and then snuck it into Martie's fridge.  See you later, Martie!  And off we went.

The next time we saw Martie was about nine months later, and without Mr. Blocher around. Sometime during the visit, Martie gave John the leftover cheese again, having stored it in her freezer all that time.  John made a big show of throwing it away--and then snuck it back into Martie's freezer before we left for home. 

We haven't seen it since.

It's been over a decade.  Martie is married now and living in Hawaii.

I can only assume that the cheese didn't make it to Hawaii.

Karen

* That's a pretty good story, too, but it's got kind of a downer ending.

Oh, speaking of John, there's good news today! John got a job! It's just a three month contract, editing technical manuals for a mining equipment company; but it's something.

When They Were Toros

What do the following baseball players have in common?

Curt Schilling
Kenny Lofton
Craig Biggio
Travis Lee (DL)

They're all former Tucson Toros whose 2004 MLB teams made it to the postseason. Half of them are hurt, but only one is actually on the disabled list. The other injured player threw 99 pitches Tuesday night, with three sutures holding the tendons together over a dislocated, bleeding ankle.Now try these names:

Bob Abreu, Ron Belliard, Luis Gonzalez, Jason Grimsley, Trent Hubbard, Geoff Jenkins, Todd Jones, Mark McLemore, Tom Martin, Jose Mercedes, Mel Mora, Phil Nevin, Shane Reynolds, Steve Sparks, Kelly Stinnett, Jim Tracy (Dodgers Manager), Fernando Vina and Billy Wagner.

Yup. More ex-Toros in the majors.

One more time:Mike Brumley
Dave HajekChris HatcherFrank KellnerJoe Mikulik
Ray Montgomery
Scooter TuckerNever heard of them? Then you weren't in the stands at Hi Corbett in the early 1990s, watching the Tucson Toros take the PCL championship twice before the team morphed into the Tucson Sidewinders in 1998. Joe Mikulik had "never surrender" written on his wristbands, and was the big hero of the 1991 championship. John and I didn't start going to games until 1993, but he was still around then, and for a year after that. Scooter Tucker was the Toros' catcher in summer, a UPS guy in the winter. "Double Dave" Hajek never really got his shot in the majors because he'd been a replacement player during the strike. Chris Hatcher was a big kid with a big bat, who never seemed to get it going until about June. Mike Brumley was a good journeyman player with heart, solid fundamentals, and (eventually) his own line of t-shirts. Kellner was a secord or third generation ballplayer whose father and uncle had played at Hi Corbett in an earlier era. Ray Montgomery couldn't shake the Spiderman nickname he got after a spectacular catch at the outfield wall.

Hi Corbett Field, where the Toros played, was a two minute drive from Worldwide Travel (still is, for all the good it does me). It had been around for many years, refurbished and upgraded several times. It was the spring training home of the Cleveland Indians when the movie Major League was filmed, and later became the spring training home of the Rockies. It had a green monster, an overhang to huddle under while waiting to find out whether the game would be rained out, and relatively easy access to ballplayers and broadcasters. I used to pass notes of trivia up to the radio guys, who would sometimes use the material.

It all came to an end in the late 1990s. First the team lost its Houston Astros affiliation, ending years of continuity. The 1997 Toros were baby Brewers, except for Travis Lee, the Diamondbacks' only AAA player to that point. The 1998 team was the Tucson Sidewinders. They were Baby 'Backs, as a 2002 (2003?) t-shirt called the team. They played at a new, fan-unfriendly ballpark at the edge of town, Tucson Electric Park. TEP originally charged $2 for parking half a mile away on grass or bare dirt. I had a broken ankle that spring, and was NOT amused by the long, expensive hobble on my crutches. The broadcasters were hidden away from public access, and so, for the most part, were the players. Longtime General Manager Mike Feder, who did as much for the Toros over the years as any ten players, lost his job. Tuffy the Toro, the wonderful team mascot for whom I'd named my dog, was replaced by Sandy Sidewinder, an improbable and unconvincing snake with arms. In just two years, the team had jettisoned absolutely everything I liked about the Toros, except the game of baseball itself. I don't go to games any more, not more than once a year or so.

The 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks got us back into baseball, this time at the major league level. Their spring training was in Tucson, but unfortunately at TEP instead of Hi Corbett. We therefore never got anywhere near Curt Schilling or Randy Johnson for an autograph. Still, they did extremely well, and the Diamondbacks had their share of ex-Toros to cheer on. The team fell apart after that, but 2001 was great.I gave up on baseball again when the Diamondbacks made fire sale transactions, dumping Schilling and Finley and Womack. But this postseason, I've been rooting for Houston, with its one remaining ex-Toro, and for Boston, with Schilling and the whole romance of battling back from 0 and 3 to beat the Curse of the Bambino.  So if I watch ESPN a few minutes longer to see whether Schilling gets an interview, can you really blame me?

Go Sox. Go Astros.

Go Toros.

Karen


Tucson Weekly: Toro! Toro! Toro!

SportyReporter's Tucson Toros page
Tuffy Toro, Superstar
All photos by KFB, except for the Karen & dogs one. That's by JBlocher.

Tags: Baseball, Tucson, Tucson Toros