Christi was a beautiful young lady. She was perky, energetic, and absolutely full of life. She was an extrovert, and all about drama before it was fashionable for young women to be dramatic. In describing her like this, it sounds like I’ve written her obituary – but Christi is alive and well. She’s just not around me anymore.
Christi was the kind of girl who, when you were making small talk with her in a crowded cafeteria, would suddenly yell “Hi Robert!” Six guys would turn their heads to her and she’d wave to each one and say hi. Then I’d ask her who she was saying that to and she’d say no one – she just knew it was a common name.
In the very small community of Mormons in Michigan in the 1970’s it was understood that Christi and I would date and, maybe more than just date, it was possible that we would marry. At least, some people were rooting for that.
Christi joined the church while I was a missionary laboring in Japan. She was extremely popular in her high school, and was voted the school’s “Snow Festival Queen” of 1978. She was from a broken family, and when she joined the church, the last of the family members that cared about her quit talking to her. She was alone and on her own by the age of 18.
By the time Christi and I went out on a date, she was living in East Lansing and attending Michigan State University. I had basically been avoiding girls for the two years I was in Japan, so when I drove down to see Christi I was very nervous and awkward around women. It was arranged that I would drive down on Friday night, have dinner with her, then stay on the couch of some guys she was friends with, and then spend Saturday together.
Christi wasn’t weird. But that was the first word people used to describe her if they didn’t understand her. For instance, when asked what her major was in college, she would say, “Puppetry.” Then you would naturally ask, “Does Michigan State have a Puppetry major?” To which she would reply, “Not yet. They’re making me take English, but I plan to start the Puppetry major here.”
On that Friday night of our first date, I got down to East Lansing and she told me wanted to make me a dinner with the theme of “Indian.” I thought she meant we were going to have curry, but no, she meant Chippewa. She baked fish that was burnt and too salty to be edible. We both picked at it but couldn’t eat it. To go with it, she made succotash which was lima beans and corn. I can’t stand lima beans and was choking this stuff down trying to be polite and I noticed she never ate at all, but was just watching me. I asked her what she was doing and she said she hates lima beans so she wasn’t planning to eat that night.
On the second evening of our first date, she asked me to drive her to a graveyard. I thought that was an odd request, but I obliged. Neither of us had warms coats, and this was Michigan in February, but she said she wanted to get out of the car and walk among the graves. It was so cold out there, and she snuggled up to me and said “Hold me.” The whole thing was so strange I felt like I was on Candid Camera!
During the time I was seeing Christi I purchased my first car: a rolling piece of rust called a Ford Mustang II. It was a 4 cylinder car that took one quart of oil for each tank of gas. The driver’s side floorboard had rusted through and I bondo-ed in a piece of wood so my feet wouldn’t hit the pavement when I drove.
It had a tachometer that only worked when the car had been parked in the sun with the windows rolled up. It had the unique combination of no pickup and terrible gas mileage. It was truly an engineering marvel – the pride of 1973 Detroit.
But what the vehicle lacked in body integrity and motor mechanics it made up for in acoustics. I bought and installed a four-way speaker system with the front speakers in the door panels and the rear speakers sitting on the back seat. It had woofers and tweeters like a living room stereo in the back seat and the sound was excellent. If anyone rode in the backseat, they had to hold the speakers on their lap.
I wanted to impress Christi on our date, so I put together a mix tape of Foreigner, Boston, Skynyrd and other cool groups from the era. But when I took Christi for a drive, the first thing she asked me to do was to turn off the music. I was honestly shocked that she wasn’t impressed, and asked her if she wanted some other kind of music.
She looked me in the eye and said, “Wouldn’t you rather talk to me?”
She explained her philosophy that people hide behind noise instead of communicating. She said she liked music, movies and dancing as much as the next person, but she thought that the time two people spent together was precious and shouldn’t be polluted by noise which makes it harder to understand each other. She looked at me and said, “Let’s leave the music off and just talk – unless you’d rather not hear from me.”
That was an awkward moment, but the more I thought about her words the more wise they seemed to be. Why spend money on a date just to hide behind a bunch of noise? After all, isn’t a live person infinitely more interesting than the same old music you can hear over and over with the push of a button?
Showing posts with label Steve Strong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steve Strong. Show all posts
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Friday, December 10, 2010
Steve Strong: The Most Interesting Man in the World
The key to telling good lies is to believe them yourself. They say if you can do that, you can pass a lie detector test. But fooling actual humans who are quickly raising red flags of uncertainly, and who are, in fact, starting to question your integrity - well, that takes a different kind of talent altogether.
The key to telling the biggest whoppers – and getting the masses to actually believe them – requires a special gift of detail. The stories must be sold in such a convincing manner that the hearer feels stupid for questioning any part of them. These crazy tales of pure malarkey need to be told with such conviction and in-your-face detail that the listener will decide to back down mentally before challenging the yarn.
How do I know this? Because I have had the fascinating opportunity for over 22 years, of watching up close, the world’s biggest chronic liar: my ex-brother-in-law Brad.
Let me say up front that Brad is a guy whose life story is quite compelling in its own right. Most people would look at how diverse his life has been, and think, “Why would he need to lie?”
Brad stands six foot seven inches tall and every inch of that frame has been filled with diversity of circumstance. He was hit by a car when he was in high school. He nearly severed a finger in shop class. He served a mission for the Mormon Church. He is a meth addict. He’s been married and divorced three times and has four children he has no contact with. He has hepatitis C; he’s been incarcerated twice in the infamous Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix; and his weight shifts from 180 LBS to over 400 LBS depending on his latest drug of choice.
When I first met Brad he had just finished High School. He was riding in my car and he was telling this tale about a little beater of a car he was driving once when the steering wheel came off in his hands and his car hit a tree. When I started to doubt the story, he made me drive to the tree and showed me the scars on it.
When I got married, he was told to take the wedding announcement to the newspaper office so they could publish it. When the notice didn’t appear after many weeks, we questioned him and asked if he really delivered the notice there. He said for sure he had delivered it, and gave this long story about how the receptionist was on the phone when he got there and how she motioned for him to drop it in her In-Basket.
He tried to recall her name, but couldn’t. But he described her as being cute and in her mid-twenties. A year later, after he had moved away from home, we found the notice folded up and shoved in the glove box of his old car.
So, if you’re looking for pointers on how to lie effectively, note how Brad worked in the case of the wedding notice. Great detail here. Even going so far as to admit he couldn’t remember the woman’s name. Very impressive.
When Brad was 19 he was living in Colorado. I was working and going to school in Utah at the time. A friend of Brad’s from Colorado was visiting Utah and looked me up and upon meeting this man for the first time he greeted me with these words, “How does it feel to be the brother-in-law of the youngest winner of the Talladega 400?”
Wow. How do you reply to that? I know for a fact that the closest Brad came to a NASCAR race was watching “The Dukes of Hazzard.”
Once he was working for a water delivery company in Fresno and I met up with one of his fellow employees and was making small talk with the guy when he said, “Do I know Brad? Sure! He’s told me tons of stories about his days playing for the New York Jets. He even showed me a better way of attacking off the line of scrimmage!”
Well, that would be Brad: Lots of added detail to the lies so they sound more convincing. I know Brad once spent some time talking with Mark Gastineau at a gym in Phoenix, so I suppose that gave him his material to cook up the whopper about playing professional football. He didn’t even play high school football himself.
One of my last conversations with him was when I heard him trying to explain to his parents why he had $700 in his wallet even though he was unemployed. He told them he had “found an ESPN camera” and sold it for the cash. His folks smiled and were impressed with his ingenuity.
But after putting up with his lies for so many years, I couldn’t listen to this last one. So, in front of his folks, I asked him what the camera looked like. He described it as being a shoulder mounted unit with a big sticker on the side that said ESPN. I asked him who he sold it to, and he described in great detail how he first offered to return it to ESPN, but when he called them, the ESPN employee on the phone didn’t seem concerned about the thing and told Brad to just keep it. So then Brad supposedly pawned it.
I tried to act all interested like his parents and asked Brad how he got the phone number for ESPN. Did he look them up in the phone book? He said he used the internet. I said, “What computer did you use? You don’t have one at home.”
That’s when he shot me the murderous look and told me to shut up.
The key to telling the biggest whoppers – and getting the masses to actually believe them – requires a special gift of detail. The stories must be sold in such a convincing manner that the hearer feels stupid for questioning any part of them. These crazy tales of pure malarkey need to be told with such conviction and in-your-face detail that the listener will decide to back down mentally before challenging the yarn.
How do I know this? Because I have had the fascinating opportunity for over 22 years, of watching up close, the world’s biggest chronic liar: my ex-brother-in-law Brad.
Let me say up front that Brad is a guy whose life story is quite compelling in its own right. Most people would look at how diverse his life has been, and think, “Why would he need to lie?”
Brad stands six foot seven inches tall and every inch of that frame has been filled with diversity of circumstance. He was hit by a car when he was in high school. He nearly severed a finger in shop class. He served a mission for the Mormon Church. He is a meth addict. He’s been married and divorced three times and has four children he has no contact with. He has hepatitis C; he’s been incarcerated twice in the infamous Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix; and his weight shifts from 180 LBS to over 400 LBS depending on his latest drug of choice.
When I first met Brad he had just finished High School. He was riding in my car and he was telling this tale about a little beater of a car he was driving once when the steering wheel came off in his hands and his car hit a tree. When I started to doubt the story, he made me drive to the tree and showed me the scars on it.
When I got married, he was told to take the wedding announcement to the newspaper office so they could publish it. When the notice didn’t appear after many weeks, we questioned him and asked if he really delivered the notice there. He said for sure he had delivered it, and gave this long story about how the receptionist was on the phone when he got there and how she motioned for him to drop it in her In-Basket.
He tried to recall her name, but couldn’t. But he described her as being cute and in her mid-twenties. A year later, after he had moved away from home, we found the notice folded up and shoved in the glove box of his old car.
So, if you’re looking for pointers on how to lie effectively, note how Brad worked in the case of the wedding notice. Great detail here. Even going so far as to admit he couldn’t remember the woman’s name. Very impressive.
When Brad was 19 he was living in Colorado. I was working and going to school in Utah at the time. A friend of Brad’s from Colorado was visiting Utah and looked me up and upon meeting this man for the first time he greeted me with these words, “How does it feel to be the brother-in-law of the youngest winner of the Talladega 400?”
Wow. How do you reply to that? I know for a fact that the closest Brad came to a NASCAR race was watching “The Dukes of Hazzard.”
Once he was working for a water delivery company in Fresno and I met up with one of his fellow employees and was making small talk with the guy when he said, “Do I know Brad? Sure! He’s told me tons of stories about his days playing for the New York Jets. He even showed me a better way of attacking off the line of scrimmage!”
Well, that would be Brad: Lots of added detail to the lies so they sound more convincing. I know Brad once spent some time talking with Mark Gastineau at a gym in Phoenix, so I suppose that gave him his material to cook up the whopper about playing professional football. He didn’t even play high school football himself.
One of my last conversations with him was when I heard him trying to explain to his parents why he had $700 in his wallet even though he was unemployed. He told them he had “found an ESPN camera” and sold it for the cash. His folks smiled and were impressed with his ingenuity.
But after putting up with his lies for so many years, I couldn’t listen to this last one. So, in front of his folks, I asked him what the camera looked like. He described it as being a shoulder mounted unit with a big sticker on the side that said ESPN. I asked him who he sold it to, and he described in great detail how he first offered to return it to ESPN, but when he called them, the ESPN employee on the phone didn’t seem concerned about the thing and told Brad to just keep it. So then Brad supposedly pawned it.
I tried to act all interested like his parents and asked Brad how he got the phone number for ESPN. Did he look them up in the phone book? He said he used the internet. I said, “What computer did you use? You don’t have one at home.”
That’s when he shot me the murderous look and told me to shut up.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Steve Strong: The Day the Drug Dogs Caught Me
There was a brief period of peace in Iraq from September 1988 to August 1990. Just two years. After eight years of constant war with Iran, the Iraqi’s took a two-year break, during which time Saddam Hussein decided he had the green light to annex Kuwait. Their brief period of peace ended with the U.S. “shock and awe” that turned Saddam back to his own land and left Kuwait ablaze.
The eight-year war with Iran was straight out of Orwell. Massive defeats were proclaimed to be victories. Young-men-turned-soldiers died inglorious deaths by poison gas on a scale not seen since 1918. Massive posters of Saddam were everywhere. Billboards on the side of the road showed him in a military helmet. Posters in stores showed him sporting a turban. Every home had pictures of him kissing babies, and generally looking lovable.
When I asked Iraqis why there were so many pictures of Saddam, they all replied with the exact same phrase: “Because we love him.”
Crazy. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
I was there once during the last year of the war and again during the brief period of calm before the Kuwait invasion. It was a memorable place, and although I was warned not to walk around on my own, I did it all the time. I wanted to spend as much time with the Iraqi people as I could. I was there to facilitate the sale of passenger car tires to the Socialist government of Iraq, but I took the opportunity to visit Babylon and the National Museum of Antiquities.
I mention all this because it explains why I had two Iraqi visas in my passport when I got in trouble at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). While the United States was bombing bridges, roads and telecommunication centers in Iraq, I was on a business trip in Japan. In fact, I had mostly moved on and forgotten about my business dealings with Saddam’s government. I was in Japan doing some kind of business deal involving collectable antique autos.
When I landed in LA on my return from a week in Japan, I noticed there was a dog running loose in the airport, near the baggage claim. I thought that was strange, so I watched him running around from person to person. Then the little dog came up to me and started sniffing around my ankles and the one bag I had picked up from the carousel.
Then just as suddenly as that dog appeared, he ran off in another direction. Again, I thought that was weird and I was sort of amused at the thought of a dog loose in the airport. That’s when I noticed a beagle sniffing my shoes and legs and my luggage. I thought, “Holy cow, another loose dog in the airport!”
Just then, my last bag came off the carousel. I grabbed my bag, turned around, and the dog was gone. I got my things and started walking to the customs area when I felt someone grab both my arms and pull me away from my luggage.
Two big drug enforcement guys didn’t handcuff me in front of the big crowd, but they certainly had a hold of me and told me to go with them. They took me to a long metal table in full view of people lining up to clear customs. I was embarrassed for sure, so I asked them what was going on.
“You don’t ask us questions. We ask the questions here.”
They searched my briefcase and my wallet before searching my luggage. They took my passport and started going through it. “Why were you in Japan?” Business.
Holy Cow! They saw the Iraqi visas in my passport and turned up the heat. “What were you doing in Iraq?” “Do you have friends in Iraq?” “Why did you have to go to Iraq twice in such a short time?” They didn’t seem to really listen to any of my answers.
“How much money did you take to Japan?” Two-Hundred Dollars. “You only have $140 in here now, what did you do with the other $60?” I really can’t say. I was there for a week, maybe it was food.
These guys were all business. I’m 6 foot 3, but they all seemed taller and stronger than me. They were irritable, bossy, and suddenly I found myself sweating there at that table. I don’t know who had access to my bags. No, I didn’t have them locked. Yes, it’s possible that someone put drugs in my luggage.
They pulled a week’s worth of dirty laundry out of my bags and across the table for all the world to see. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. They saved the suitcase the dogs were most interested in for last. They asked me one last time if I had any contraband in there. I told them no.
Then they opened it and started dumping my stuff out on the table. They found a plastic bag full of Andes Mints and asked me what that was for? I told them I was doing Weight Watchers and when the hotel left those on my pillow I was saving them for later.
They all looked at each other and told me they were done with me. That was it. No apology. No help re-packing my stuff. I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible so I didn’t say another word to them.
The eight-year war with Iran was straight out of Orwell. Massive defeats were proclaimed to be victories. Young-men-turned-soldiers died inglorious deaths by poison gas on a scale not seen since 1918. Massive posters of Saddam were everywhere. Billboards on the side of the road showed him in a military helmet. Posters in stores showed him sporting a turban. Every home had pictures of him kissing babies, and generally looking lovable.
When I asked Iraqis why there were so many pictures of Saddam, they all replied with the exact same phrase: “Because we love him.”
Crazy. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
I was there once during the last year of the war and again during the brief period of calm before the Kuwait invasion. It was a memorable place, and although I was warned not to walk around on my own, I did it all the time. I wanted to spend as much time with the Iraqi people as I could. I was there to facilitate the sale of passenger car tires to the Socialist government of Iraq, but I took the opportunity to visit Babylon and the National Museum of Antiquities.
I mention all this because it explains why I had two Iraqi visas in my passport when I got in trouble at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). While the United States was bombing bridges, roads and telecommunication centers in Iraq, I was on a business trip in Japan. In fact, I had mostly moved on and forgotten about my business dealings with Saddam’s government. I was in Japan doing some kind of business deal involving collectable antique autos.
When I landed in LA on my return from a week in Japan, I noticed there was a dog running loose in the airport, near the baggage claim. I thought that was strange, so I watched him running around from person to person. Then the little dog came up to me and started sniffing around my ankles and the one bag I had picked up from the carousel.
Then just as suddenly as that dog appeared, he ran off in another direction. Again, I thought that was weird and I was sort of amused at the thought of a dog loose in the airport. That’s when I noticed a beagle sniffing my shoes and legs and my luggage. I thought, “Holy cow, another loose dog in the airport!”
Just then, my last bag came off the carousel. I grabbed my bag, turned around, and the dog was gone. I got my things and started walking to the customs area when I felt someone grab both my arms and pull me away from my luggage.
Two big drug enforcement guys didn’t handcuff me in front of the big crowd, but they certainly had a hold of me and told me to go with them. They took me to a long metal table in full view of people lining up to clear customs. I was embarrassed for sure, so I asked them what was going on.
“You don’t ask us questions. We ask the questions here.”
They searched my briefcase and my wallet before searching my luggage. They took my passport and started going through it. “Why were you in Japan?” Business.
Holy Cow! They saw the Iraqi visas in my passport and turned up the heat. “What were you doing in Iraq?” “Do you have friends in Iraq?” “Why did you have to go to Iraq twice in such a short time?” They didn’t seem to really listen to any of my answers.
“How much money did you take to Japan?” Two-Hundred Dollars. “You only have $140 in here now, what did you do with the other $60?” I really can’t say. I was there for a week, maybe it was food.
These guys were all business. I’m 6 foot 3, but they all seemed taller and stronger than me. They were irritable, bossy, and suddenly I found myself sweating there at that table. I don’t know who had access to my bags. No, I didn’t have them locked. Yes, it’s possible that someone put drugs in my luggage.
They pulled a week’s worth of dirty laundry out of my bags and across the table for all the world to see. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. They saved the suitcase the dogs were most interested in for last. They asked me one last time if I had any contraband in there. I told them no.
Then they opened it and started dumping my stuff out on the table. They found a plastic bag full of Andes Mints and asked me what that was for? I told them I was doing Weight Watchers and when the hotel left those on my pillow I was saving them for later.
They all looked at each other and told me they were done with me. That was it. No apology. No help re-packing my stuff. I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible so I didn’t say another word to them.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Steve Strong: Beware of Older Brothers Who Will Rock You Like a Hurricane
Man, I am old. When I was a kid I used to think people in their 50’s were ancient, and now I’m the ancient one. My kids remind me how out of touch I am with all the techno devices they take for granted. Things I still can’t seem to figure out.
I try to tell my kids how much technology has changed during my lifetime, and their eyes sort of glaze over. These are kids who can’t tell the 60’s from the 40’s and aren’t sure if I lived during the Vietnam War or the Japanese War (and frankly, I don’t think they could tell the two countries apart either).
I tell them that when I was young, we only had to dial 5 digits to make a phone call and we did it on a rotary dial. They’re familiar with that concept because they saw it in a Cary Grant movie. I tell them that I remember when President Kennedy was shot, and they ask me if that was before President Lincoln or after. I tell them that when I was born there were only 48 States, and they say, “How many are there now, like 80?”
But the one thing that links us more than any other is the music of my youth. My kids love the Beatles. I love the Beatles. Who doesn’t love the Beatles? I was in elementary school when the Beatles got popular in the U.S. I hadn’t heard British accents before and my older neighbor explained it for me. “They speak in English, but they sing in American.”
When I had 90 cents as a child, I would sometimes walk to the record store and buy a 45 of the latest CCR or Jackson 5 record. The first LP I bought was the album Flowers by the Rolling Stones (which I bought from my older sister). The first LP I bought new from a store was the self-titled album by Blood, Sweat and Tears.
It was a blessing and a curse having an older brother and sister. It was a curse because they could be bossy and mean, but it was a blessing because I got to experience the music they brought into the house and played on the big Hi-Fi in the front room.
Of course my older siblings loved the Beatles, but they also filled the house with the sounds of the Herman’s Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, Freddie and the Dreamers, and Peter and Gordon. I was young enough to think that the Beatles and the Monkees were equally talented, and the Monkees had the advantage of being on TV every week. Plus, they were funnier and they spoke American.
As the years went by, my tastes changed as my brother and sister brought newer music into the home. While we were doing Saturday morning chores, my mom would blast show tunes on the Hi-Fi and I’d sing along to Funny Girl and Oliver at the top of my lungs while running the vacuum. Then, in the evening, my brother would put his new “stereo” on the floor of our bedroom so we could lie between the speakers and appreciate Jimi Hendrix with the left and right channels separated.
By the time I was in high school, the older siblings had moved out, and now I was the oldest, so I introduced my little sisters to the music of my time. I read an article in Time about a guy I had never heard of named Bruce Springsteen. On a hunch, I bought his Born to Run album in the fall of 1975. I remember my friends telling me it was no good, because the guy couldn’t sing. But I became a fan then and there.
Even before disco became popular in the later 1970’s there was plenty of wretched music to suffer through in my high school years. For instance, the same radio station that would play “Roundabout” by Yes, might follow-up that song with “Afternoon Delight.” Janis Joplin might pound out a rendition of “Take Another Piece of My Heart” only to have that followed by John Denver telling us how sunshine on his shoulder makes him “high.”
While I’m waiting for the radio to play the next song by Al Green, or Supertramp, I may have to suffer through the 1910 Fruit Gum Company or (Heaven help me!) “Billy Don’t be a Hero,” or “The Night Chicago Died.” Living in the 70’s was a lot like having an older brother and sister: You just had to learn to take the good with the bad.
Springsteen:
“And in the lonely cool before dawn, you hear their engines roaring on. But when you get to the porch they’re gone on the wind. So Mary climb in. It’s a town full of losers – I’m pulling out of here to win.”
Bay City Rollers:
“Who do you think you are? You try to push me a bit too far. And every day sees another scar. So tell me, who do you think you are?”
Eventually my best friend got an 8-track tape recorder and we could record music from the radio and hit “pause” when they announced yet another playing of, “Have You Never Been Mellow.” And then we could hit “record” when they had good stuff like James Taylor, the Moody Blues or REO*.
Today, when I listen to the oldies station in the car with my kids, they’re surprised at how I know all the words to so many old songs. I tell them that back in the old days, before CD’s, and before tape recorders, I would listen to those songs line by line – lifting the needle off the LP and writing notes on scratch paper and then putting the needle down for the next line.
That’s 1960’s technology my friend. Thank Heavens my brother never caught me doing that to his records.
*Yes, I know, REO later stunk big time. But they didn’t start out like that.
I try to tell my kids how much technology has changed during my lifetime, and their eyes sort of glaze over. These are kids who can’t tell the 60’s from the 40’s and aren’t sure if I lived during the Vietnam War or the Japanese War (and frankly, I don’t think they could tell the two countries apart either).
I tell them that when I was young, we only had to dial 5 digits to make a phone call and we did it on a rotary dial. They’re familiar with that concept because they saw it in a Cary Grant movie. I tell them that I remember when President Kennedy was shot, and they ask me if that was before President Lincoln or after. I tell them that when I was born there were only 48 States, and they say, “How many are there now, like 80?”
But the one thing that links us more than any other is the music of my youth. My kids love the Beatles. I love the Beatles. Who doesn’t love the Beatles? I was in elementary school when the Beatles got popular in the U.S. I hadn’t heard British accents before and my older neighbor explained it for me. “They speak in English, but they sing in American.”
When I had 90 cents as a child, I would sometimes walk to the record store and buy a 45 of the latest CCR or Jackson 5 record. The first LP I bought was the album Flowers by the Rolling Stones (which I bought from my older sister). The first LP I bought new from a store was the self-titled album by Blood, Sweat and Tears.
It was a blessing and a curse having an older brother and sister. It was a curse because they could be bossy and mean, but it was a blessing because I got to experience the music they brought into the house and played on the big Hi-Fi in the front room.
Of course my older siblings loved the Beatles, but they also filled the house with the sounds of the Herman’s Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, Freddie and the Dreamers, and Peter and Gordon. I was young enough to think that the Beatles and the Monkees were equally talented, and the Monkees had the advantage of being on TV every week. Plus, they were funnier and they spoke American.
As the years went by, my tastes changed as my brother and sister brought newer music into the home. While we were doing Saturday morning chores, my mom would blast show tunes on the Hi-Fi and I’d sing along to Funny Girl and Oliver at the top of my lungs while running the vacuum. Then, in the evening, my brother would put his new “stereo” on the floor of our bedroom so we could lie between the speakers and appreciate Jimi Hendrix with the left and right channels separated.
By the time I was in high school, the older siblings had moved out, and now I was the oldest, so I introduced my little sisters to the music of my time. I read an article in Time about a guy I had never heard of named Bruce Springsteen. On a hunch, I bought his Born to Run album in the fall of 1975. I remember my friends telling me it was no good, because the guy couldn’t sing. But I became a fan then and there.
Even before disco became popular in the later 1970’s there was plenty of wretched music to suffer through in my high school years. For instance, the same radio station that would play “Roundabout” by Yes, might follow-up that song with “Afternoon Delight.” Janis Joplin might pound out a rendition of “Take Another Piece of My Heart” only to have that followed by John Denver telling us how sunshine on his shoulder makes him “high.”
While I’m waiting for the radio to play the next song by Al Green, or Supertramp, I may have to suffer through the 1910 Fruit Gum Company or (Heaven help me!) “Billy Don’t be a Hero,” or “The Night Chicago Died.” Living in the 70’s was a lot like having an older brother and sister: You just had to learn to take the good with the bad.
Springsteen:
“And in the lonely cool before dawn, you hear their engines roaring on. But when you get to the porch they’re gone on the wind. So Mary climb in. It’s a town full of losers – I’m pulling out of here to win.”
Bay City Rollers:
“Who do you think you are? You try to push me a bit too far. And every day sees another scar. So tell me, who do you think you are?”
Eventually my best friend got an 8-track tape recorder and we could record music from the radio and hit “pause” when they announced yet another playing of, “Have You Never Been Mellow.” And then we could hit “record” when they had good stuff like James Taylor, the Moody Blues or REO*.
Today, when I listen to the oldies station in the car with my kids, they’re surprised at how I know all the words to so many old songs. I tell them that back in the old days, before CD’s, and before tape recorders, I would listen to those songs line by line – lifting the needle off the LP and writing notes on scratch paper and then putting the needle down for the next line.
That’s 1960’s technology my friend. Thank Heavens my brother never caught me doing that to his records.
*Yes, I know, REO later stunk big time. But they didn’t start out like that.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Steve Strong: Incidental Fashion
My kids saw a picture of me from when I was in 9th grade and they asked me if I were wearing Capri pants, and if those were popular for boys in the 70s. No, sorry. The clothes I wore as a youth were never a fashion statement -- just a statement on how poor we were.
By the time I was 13 my waist was probably 28 inches. And it never changed until I was 19, although I grew at least a foot during that time. I literally could wear the same pants in high school that I got as hand-me-downs in junior high. But I was wearing pants much too short for me.
For Christmas one year my sister gave me a pair of cuffed denim bell bottoms that I just loved. As I grew taller, I discovered I could let that huge cuff out and wear them another year. Then, I found out I could take a jackknife and cut out the hem and get another year’s wear out of them. I started doing that with all my pants and I thought I was really clever. But I sort of looked like a tree with growth rings around my ankles.
By the time I graduated high school in 1975 my mom decided it was time to get me some fancy, trendy clothes that better reflected the fashion of the time. I wore with pride the white and blue plaid bell bottoms, with a midnight blue shirt and a white tie and white belt. To be really cool, I tied a double Windsor knot in the tie so the knot was as big as my neck. I was six foot three, but wore this outfit with platform shoes. To top it all off, I wore a double-knit sport coat that looked like patchwork denim from afar. I alternated, either wearing that white tie, or going with a dark blue turtleneck sweater under the sport coat. But either way, the threads were totally far out.
When I turned 19, I bought a couple three-piece suits and went off to serve a mission for my church. When I came back, I found my mom had given away my old clothes to a family whose house had burned down while I was gone. I had nothing to wear but the same three-piece suits, 10 white shirts and ratty old shoes I’d been wearing in Japan for the past two years.
I came back from Japan with $11 in my pocket. So I went to the store and got a pair of jeans and a beret (because it made me look so dashing). I suppose that was the first thing I ever did to consciously try to make myself look more attractive.
I guess I’ll never know if it was the beret, or if Mormon girls are just drawn to returned missionaries like moths to a porch lamp on a summer evening. But I was dating a lot, and every girl had their idea of how to recreate me into their idea of a proper fashion plate.
The first thing they had me do was part my hair in the middle and get a “feather cut” so I’d look more like David Cassidy. That task completed, I then got a pair of white bib overalls called “painter pants” which I wore with a red flannel shirt underneath. I think I looked kind of like a sissy lumberjack on vacation.
When I wasn’t wearing that get up, the girls I dated convinced me to dress in corduroy bell bottoms with Robin Williams rainbow suspenders. I coordinated those pants with long-sleeved shirts with huge lapels.
Because I was so thin, I could make a lot of clothes look decent I suppose, but why on earth did I let them convince me to buy a track suit made of yellow terrycloth? Of course, I wore that suit with a pair of blue suede Pumas with yellow striping.
When John Travolta made Urban Cowboy my girlfriends dressed me in cowboy boots, straight-legged Levi’s a long sleeved shirt with white snaps on the buttons and cuffs. When I played basketball, I wore really short shorts, a tank top and a pair of Converse All Stars. For some reason, I figured white sweat bands on both wrists would be a nice compliment for that getup.
By the time I got to college in the early 80s the latest fashion was the “preppie” look. Luckily I had a steady girlfriend by then, and I never seriously considered wearing the Top Siders, Oxford shirt with a sweater tied over the shoulders. It’s bad enough I have old pictures of me dressed the way I was. Thank Heavens I never had preppie pictures to have to live down.
By the time I was 13 my waist was probably 28 inches. And it never changed until I was 19, although I grew at least a foot during that time. I literally could wear the same pants in high school that I got as hand-me-downs in junior high. But I was wearing pants much too short for me.
For Christmas one year my sister gave me a pair of cuffed denim bell bottoms that I just loved. As I grew taller, I discovered I could let that huge cuff out and wear them another year. Then, I found out I could take a jackknife and cut out the hem and get another year’s wear out of them. I started doing that with all my pants and I thought I was really clever. But I sort of looked like a tree with growth rings around my ankles.
By the time I graduated high school in 1975 my mom decided it was time to get me some fancy, trendy clothes that better reflected the fashion of the time. I wore with pride the white and blue plaid bell bottoms, with a midnight blue shirt and a white tie and white belt. To be really cool, I tied a double Windsor knot in the tie so the knot was as big as my neck. I was six foot three, but wore this outfit with platform shoes. To top it all off, I wore a double-knit sport coat that looked like patchwork denim from afar. I alternated, either wearing that white tie, or going with a dark blue turtleneck sweater under the sport coat. But either way, the threads were totally far out.
When I turned 19, I bought a couple three-piece suits and went off to serve a mission for my church. When I came back, I found my mom had given away my old clothes to a family whose house had burned down while I was gone. I had nothing to wear but the same three-piece suits, 10 white shirts and ratty old shoes I’d been wearing in Japan for the past two years.
I came back from Japan with $11 in my pocket. So I went to the store and got a pair of jeans and a beret (because it made me look so dashing). I suppose that was the first thing I ever did to consciously try to make myself look more attractive.
I guess I’ll never know if it was the beret, or if Mormon girls are just drawn to returned missionaries like moths to a porch lamp on a summer evening. But I was dating a lot, and every girl had their idea of how to recreate me into their idea of a proper fashion plate.
The first thing they had me do was part my hair in the middle and get a “feather cut” so I’d look more like David Cassidy. That task completed, I then got a pair of white bib overalls called “painter pants” which I wore with a red flannel shirt underneath. I think I looked kind of like a sissy lumberjack on vacation.
When I wasn’t wearing that get up, the girls I dated convinced me to dress in corduroy bell bottoms with Robin Williams rainbow suspenders. I coordinated those pants with long-sleeved shirts with huge lapels.
Because I was so thin, I could make a lot of clothes look decent I suppose, but why on earth did I let them convince me to buy a track suit made of yellow terrycloth? Of course, I wore that suit with a pair of blue suede Pumas with yellow striping.
When John Travolta made Urban Cowboy my girlfriends dressed me in cowboy boots, straight-legged Levi’s a long sleeved shirt with white snaps on the buttons and cuffs. When I played basketball, I wore really short shorts, a tank top and a pair of Converse All Stars. For some reason, I figured white sweat bands on both wrists would be a nice compliment for that getup.
By the time I got to college in the early 80s the latest fashion was the “preppie” look. Luckily I had a steady girlfriend by then, and I never seriously considered wearing the Top Siders, Oxford shirt with a sweater tied over the shoulders. It’s bad enough I have old pictures of me dressed the way I was. Thank Heavens I never had preppie pictures to have to live down.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Steve Strong: A Tale of Two Attitudes
My oldest son was 13 years old when he told me in no uncertain terms that he would have nothing to do with picking grapes in a vineyard. That was the beginning of the problems between him and me.
I explained to him that this vineyard was an organized Welfare Farm. That the recipients of the raisins will be poor people, some of them desperately hungry, and that this is the least we can do when we’ve been so blessed to live a life of plenty. I was shocked to hear him say that he didn’t care for anyone but himself, and that he’d run away before he made a trip to the vineyard to work in the dust and heat of the San Joaquin valley for poor people he didn’t know.
True to his word, he did run away. He ran out of my reach. He ran down the street. He ran for a mile. And then he walked back to his mom’s house. His mom had no such requirements for a young man to serve other people. His mom would let him sit in his room and relax, while others stepped up and did the work he would have done if he had gone with us.
As it was, my second son (who was seven) witnessed the tension between his brother and me, and quickly volunteered to go with me to the vineyard. Although he was a bit young to be doing that kind of work, we went together. I put a grape harvesting knife in his right hand, a glove on his left hand, and together we went to work, toiling away for the benefit of people we will never meet.
It’s been eight years, and a lot of rough road since that landmark day. I can see the scenes of our lives pass by since then – so many days of heartache, of struggle, of a few precious wins, and many deflating loses. My eldest son’s life has few highlights anymore. He’s 21 years old. A high school dropout. Unemployed. No intention of ever applying for a job. A drug addict.
My younger son is now 15 years old. He is a typical teenager in most respects, and of course, he tries my patience at times. But he is a young man who has never missed an opportunity to work with me at the vineyard on that one day a year we harvest grapes. He gets up with me at 5:00 on a Saturday morning so we can be in the vineyard by 6:00. When we finish our assigned rows, he’s right at my side as we help others who are short-handed. And when we finish, he and I can look each other in the eye and feel like we accomplished something. And we did it together, like a team.
What is it that makes individuals like my sons so different? Is it genetic? Is it the way they were raised? Can it be as simple as the difference in their spirits – that soul that entered their bodies as babies?
I don’t know the answer to those questions, but I feel like it has little to do with work ethic, or respect for parents and their rules. I think the attitude is all about selfishness.
As I get older I see selfishness as the root of so many problems in our families and our society in general. Youth are constantly being told to “be yourself” or “do what makes you happy.” In the 1970’s, when I was a teenager, people used to say, “Do your own thing.”
But that’s certainly not the attitude that made this country great, or enabled us to live an economic life that is so much more comfortable than most other countries. When my father was young, no one cared if he liked his vocation or not. He just went out and worked – and did his best to provide for his family. If he did blue-collar work, or if he worked in an office, it made no difference. It was all about working hard and providing for your loved ones. How did we fall so far from that ethic in just two generations?
To combat the disease of selfishness today, our church manufactures opportunities for youth to be in the service of their fellow man. Teenagers are expected to do service projects on a small scale every month, and once or twice a year they will do a full day of major service for the community (like tree planting, graffiti removal or something like that). And then, twice a year they go to the raisin vineyard to prune vines or to harvest grapes.
With this service training as a background, by the time LDS youth are young adults they have learned to respond quickly when others are in need. Young women can step up to offer childcare to those in a pinch or can quickly whip up a casserole for a neighbor in a time of crisis.
Young men are called on once a month or so to help someone move. By the time an LDS man is 40 years old, he may have helped 50 families move. If he owns his own pickup truck, the number may be closer to 100.
Some families will be totally prepared, with boxes packed, carpets cleaned and the kids sent to grandma’s to be out of the way. But most families will not be pre-packed. Sometimes I’ve had to do dishes before I could pack them. Sometimes I’ve had to do laundry before I could fold and pack some stranger’s items. And yes, I’ve picked up couches and found moldy food underneath.
But I tell my younger son the same thing my mom told me, “Hands are washable.” That was code for: Quit being a baby. Get back to work.
I’m thankful my mother taught me to be a good worker. And I pray both my sons will put their own wants aside, and learn to serve other people.
I explained to him that this vineyard was an organized Welfare Farm. That the recipients of the raisins will be poor people, some of them desperately hungry, and that this is the least we can do when we’ve been so blessed to live a life of plenty. I was shocked to hear him say that he didn’t care for anyone but himself, and that he’d run away before he made a trip to the vineyard to work in the dust and heat of the San Joaquin valley for poor people he didn’t know.
True to his word, he did run away. He ran out of my reach. He ran down the street. He ran for a mile. And then he walked back to his mom’s house. His mom had no such requirements for a young man to serve other people. His mom would let him sit in his room and relax, while others stepped up and did the work he would have done if he had gone with us.
As it was, my second son (who was seven) witnessed the tension between his brother and me, and quickly volunteered to go with me to the vineyard. Although he was a bit young to be doing that kind of work, we went together. I put a grape harvesting knife in his right hand, a glove on his left hand, and together we went to work, toiling away for the benefit of people we will never meet.
It’s been eight years, and a lot of rough road since that landmark day. I can see the scenes of our lives pass by since then – so many days of heartache, of struggle, of a few precious wins, and many deflating loses. My eldest son’s life has few highlights anymore. He’s 21 years old. A high school dropout. Unemployed. No intention of ever applying for a job. A drug addict.
My younger son is now 15 years old. He is a typical teenager in most respects, and of course, he tries my patience at times. But he is a young man who has never missed an opportunity to work with me at the vineyard on that one day a year we harvest grapes. He gets up with me at 5:00 on a Saturday morning so we can be in the vineyard by 6:00. When we finish our assigned rows, he’s right at my side as we help others who are short-handed. And when we finish, he and I can look each other in the eye and feel like we accomplished something. And we did it together, like a team.
What is it that makes individuals like my sons so different? Is it genetic? Is it the way they were raised? Can it be as simple as the difference in their spirits – that soul that entered their bodies as babies?
I don’t know the answer to those questions, but I feel like it has little to do with work ethic, or respect for parents and their rules. I think the attitude is all about selfishness.
As I get older I see selfishness as the root of so many problems in our families and our society in general. Youth are constantly being told to “be yourself” or “do what makes you happy.” In the 1970’s, when I was a teenager, people used to say, “Do your own thing.”
But that’s certainly not the attitude that made this country great, or enabled us to live an economic life that is so much more comfortable than most other countries. When my father was young, no one cared if he liked his vocation or not. He just went out and worked – and did his best to provide for his family. If he did blue-collar work, or if he worked in an office, it made no difference. It was all about working hard and providing for your loved ones. How did we fall so far from that ethic in just two generations?
To combat the disease of selfishness today, our church manufactures opportunities for youth to be in the service of their fellow man. Teenagers are expected to do service projects on a small scale every month, and once or twice a year they will do a full day of major service for the community (like tree planting, graffiti removal or something like that). And then, twice a year they go to the raisin vineyard to prune vines or to harvest grapes.
With this service training as a background, by the time LDS youth are young adults they have learned to respond quickly when others are in need. Young women can step up to offer childcare to those in a pinch or can quickly whip up a casserole for a neighbor in a time of crisis.
Young men are called on once a month or so to help someone move. By the time an LDS man is 40 years old, he may have helped 50 families move. If he owns his own pickup truck, the number may be closer to 100.
Some families will be totally prepared, with boxes packed, carpets cleaned and the kids sent to grandma’s to be out of the way. But most families will not be pre-packed. Sometimes I’ve had to do dishes before I could pack them. Sometimes I’ve had to do laundry before I could fold and pack some stranger’s items. And yes, I’ve picked up couches and found moldy food underneath.
But I tell my younger son the same thing my mom told me, “Hands are washable.” That was code for: Quit being a baby. Get back to work.
I’m thankful my mother taught me to be a good worker. And I pray both my sons will put their own wants aside, and learn to serve other people.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Steve Strong: A Mormon Gorilla with a Human Head
Everyone who knows me knows I’m a Mormon. It’s no secret really. It seems to come up in business conversations all the time because I can speak Japanese, and people seem interested in knowing how I learned that language. So, depending on the nationality of the person I’m dining with, I get loads of questions about my faith/culture.
If I’m eating with Asians, they want to know why I’m not drinking alcohol. Then they spend the rest of the trip trying to entice me to do just that. If I’m eating with a European, they may ask me about Salt Lake City, and assume I make a pilgrimage there every so often. They’re usually shocked to find out that not only am I not from there, I have no relatives or business ties to Utah.
I spent some time last year with a business acquaintance who was also a Baptist Preacher in Brazil. When he found out I was LDS he asked me if I thought Barack Obama is the antichrist. I told him no, he’s a Democrat. Anyway, I thought that was funny. But this guy missed the humor and kept pressing me about the President. He actually was shocked that everyone in America didn’t see that he’s the antichrist.
But it’s Americans who seem to have the wildest questions for me everywhere I go. People often tell me that I’m the first Mormon they’ve met they feel they can speak frankly with and can ask any question without worrying that I will get upset.
So what kinds of questions do I get from Americans?
- Are you Christian?
- How many wives do you have?
- Have you been saved?
- Are you allowed to dance?
- What do you think about Harry Potter?
- Do you celebrate Christmas? (substitute Easter, Birthdays, etc. here)
Maybe you’ve been sitting on some of those same queries too. If so, allow me to help: Yes; one is plenty; so far so good; allowed to but not willing to; it’s a book – it’s not real; yes indeed!
As to that last question, I usually say something to the effect of, “If it’s about kids having a good time, we’re all for it.” So yes, we celebrate Christmas, and yes we hang stockings and have Christmas trees, and yes we think the whole thing is too commercial and takes away from the real meaning of the season, but yet we celebrate the same as other Christians.
Besides the spiritual hymns associated with Easter, we also decorate and hide eggs and give the kids baskets. I have no idea what all this fascination with eggs has to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but I don’t really dig that deep. We celebrate spiritually at church, then go home and have a nice ham dinner with Easter baskets for the kids. So you see, Mormons aren’t really all that different, right? Not so fast. It seems inquiring minds want to know how Latter-Day Saints handle the subject of Halloween.
In the past few years I’ve had well-meaning “Christians” witness to me that Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling were agents of the devil. I’ve been told that Star Wars was troubling because of “the Force.” But perhaps weirdest of all was when I did a little sleight of hand number I freaked out several people at work who told me that if I continued to do that I was opening myself up for demon possession.
OK folks. Let’s relax a bit and take a breath here. Bewitched was just a TV show. Jeannie didn’t really turn into smoke and hide in a bottle. Criss Angel doesn’t really levitate. And by the way, the WWE is fixed. And allowing my kids to dress up as Power Rangers is not paving their personal road to Hell.
Now, on the subject of Halloween, yes, Mormons decorate their homes and pass out candy to neighborhood kids who come trick-or-treating. We also usually have a Halloween party at our local church building. But for some of you, it may be a bit different from some of the Halloween parties you’re used to. For one, it’s not all that dark. It also will usually have tons of carnival type games for children. But the biggest difference you will see is that none of the costumes include masks. The simple reason for this is that some people may change their behavior if they think their identity is hidden. So to encourage a good time without nasty teenage pranks, LDS parties enforce the no mask rule. It doesn’t mean you can’t use tons of makeup though. We have some wonderfully frightening vampires and zombies at our parties.
But through the years my favorite attendee at an LDS Halloween party was a 12 year old boy who clearly was having problems with his parents' rules. Andrew had purchased a gorilla costume with his own money and was determined to wear it to the Ward party. But the problem was what to do about the mask. His parents told him absolutely no, he couldn’t wear the mask to the party. But Andrew complained that it wasn’t fair and that he bought the suit with his money. He wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to bounce around in public like a simian.
The compromise was the funniest costume I had ever seen: A gorilla with a boy’s head. Even better, Andrew was a red-haired freckled faced lad. Everyone at the party had the same question I had: What was he? Robin Williams? Some kind of mutant? I guess he was a darling half-man. Maybe some kind of comment on evolution.
But my Christian friends demand an answer: How can Mormons recognize Halloween when its origins are so, I don't know, questionable? Hey, haven’t you ever heard of “don’t ask, don’t tell?” The origins of Halloween are probably no stranger than the way we all celebrate Christmas and Easter.
If I’m eating with Asians, they want to know why I’m not drinking alcohol. Then they spend the rest of the trip trying to entice me to do just that. If I’m eating with a European, they may ask me about Salt Lake City, and assume I make a pilgrimage there every so often. They’re usually shocked to find out that not only am I not from there, I have no relatives or business ties to Utah.
I spent some time last year with a business acquaintance who was also a Baptist Preacher in Brazil. When he found out I was LDS he asked me if I thought Barack Obama is the antichrist. I told him no, he’s a Democrat. Anyway, I thought that was funny. But this guy missed the humor and kept pressing me about the President. He actually was shocked that everyone in America didn’t see that he’s the antichrist.
But it’s Americans who seem to have the wildest questions for me everywhere I go. People often tell me that I’m the first Mormon they’ve met they feel they can speak frankly with and can ask any question without worrying that I will get upset.
So what kinds of questions do I get from Americans?
- Are you Christian?
- How many wives do you have?
- Have you been saved?
- Are you allowed to dance?
- What do you think about Harry Potter?
- Do you celebrate Christmas? (substitute Easter, Birthdays, etc. here)
Maybe you’ve been sitting on some of those same queries too. If so, allow me to help: Yes; one is plenty; so far so good; allowed to but not willing to; it’s a book – it’s not real; yes indeed!
As to that last question, I usually say something to the effect of, “If it’s about kids having a good time, we’re all for it.” So yes, we celebrate Christmas, and yes we hang stockings and have Christmas trees, and yes we think the whole thing is too commercial and takes away from the real meaning of the season, but yet we celebrate the same as other Christians.
Besides the spiritual hymns associated with Easter, we also decorate and hide eggs and give the kids baskets. I have no idea what all this fascination with eggs has to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but I don’t really dig that deep. We celebrate spiritually at church, then go home and have a nice ham dinner with Easter baskets for the kids. So you see, Mormons aren’t really all that different, right? Not so fast. It seems inquiring minds want to know how Latter-Day Saints handle the subject of Halloween.
In the past few years I’ve had well-meaning “Christians” witness to me that Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling were agents of the devil. I’ve been told that Star Wars was troubling because of “the Force.” But perhaps weirdest of all was when I did a little sleight of hand number I freaked out several people at work who told me that if I continued to do that I was opening myself up for demon possession.
OK folks. Let’s relax a bit and take a breath here. Bewitched was just a TV show. Jeannie didn’t really turn into smoke and hide in a bottle. Criss Angel doesn’t really levitate. And by the way, the WWE is fixed. And allowing my kids to dress up as Power Rangers is not paving their personal road to Hell.
Now, on the subject of Halloween, yes, Mormons decorate their homes and pass out candy to neighborhood kids who come trick-or-treating. We also usually have a Halloween party at our local church building. But for some of you, it may be a bit different from some of the Halloween parties you’re used to. For one, it’s not all that dark. It also will usually have tons of carnival type games for children. But the biggest difference you will see is that none of the costumes include masks. The simple reason for this is that some people may change their behavior if they think their identity is hidden. So to encourage a good time without nasty teenage pranks, LDS parties enforce the no mask rule. It doesn’t mean you can’t use tons of makeup though. We have some wonderfully frightening vampires and zombies at our parties.
But through the years my favorite attendee at an LDS Halloween party was a 12 year old boy who clearly was having problems with his parents' rules. Andrew had purchased a gorilla costume with his own money and was determined to wear it to the Ward party. But the problem was what to do about the mask. His parents told him absolutely no, he couldn’t wear the mask to the party. But Andrew complained that it wasn’t fair and that he bought the suit with his money. He wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to bounce around in public like a simian.
The compromise was the funniest costume I had ever seen: A gorilla with a boy’s head. Even better, Andrew was a red-haired freckled faced lad. Everyone at the party had the same question I had: What was he? Robin Williams? Some kind of mutant? I guess he was a darling half-man. Maybe some kind of comment on evolution.
But my Christian friends demand an answer: How can Mormons recognize Halloween when its origins are so, I don't know, questionable? Hey, haven’t you ever heard of “don’t ask, don’t tell?” The origins of Halloween are probably no stranger than the way we all celebrate Christmas and Easter.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Steve Strong: Gramercy Park Place
She was already eighty years old when I first met her, and for the next 15 years I was required to sit with her a few days each year. Although she was a native English speaker, I never understood her. We were from different planets, she and I. I endured our visits. I begrudgingly attended, held my breath, and gave a great exhale as I motored away from her home.
Who was she? Why was I required to do this? She was no relative of mine, and no relative of anyone related to me. She was my ex-mother-in-law’s godmother. A woman with no children of her own. No living relatives of any kind. And anyone she ever loved had died in that very house I visited her in, on Gramercy Park Place, in Los Angeles.
Her name was Helen Browne, but she asked to be called Sunny. She had been a movie star, you see. She had appeared in several motion pictures of the silent era. When asked to identify them, titles rattled off the top of her head along with silver screen stars I’d never heard of. But you know, that’s not what really matters. She told me the really important roles were in the theatre. And she showed me pictures of her playbills and her schedule as she toured the Western U.S. in theatre troupes with the likes of Ralph Bellamy and Jason Robards, Sr.
She had a birth name, a married name, a nickname and a stage name. And she was all about drama. You see that house across the street? Why, that’s where the young man lived who wrote “When the Swallows Return to Capistrano.”
I had no idea if that was important or not. I was a Michigan country boy. I’d never heard of the song. I’d never heard of the town. I kept trying to find a way to relate to this ancient woman, but it wasn’t easy. Something told me she was a big fake. I was convinced all this strangeness just couldn’t be for real.
When she was still mobile, she insisted I drive her to the Brown Derby or El Chollo for lunch because that’s where the stars eat. I had my choice of driving her dusty old 1966 Mustang or her dusty old 1966 Continental. Both had under 30,000 miles on them, and both only moved if I drove them.
She would tell me things like how healthy urine is for your eyes, and how to communicate with the dead through séances. But mostly, she would talk about the life of an actress. Oh! How the young men adored her. Oh! The suitors. Oh! The proposals of matrimony. But she had steadfastly fended them all off. She remained aloof until middle aged when she married a ship pilot for the Port of Los Angeles who died ten years later.
The house. The house was her mausoleum. Her father built it in 1905 and she moved in when she was two years old. And she never moved out. Her parents each died in that house. Her husband died in that house. Eventually Sunny died in that house in 1998 at the age of 95.
In her final years she was confined to her bed and often mistook me for a doctor or some kind of accountant. She would tell me how she had been dancing around downstairs earlier in the day, and I would tell her how nice that was.
Having no offspring, she left the bulk of her estate to the Norman Vincent Peale foundation. But the task of sorting through her home fell on me. I was supposed to clean it out and look for items of interest for my in-laws to sell at auction. I figured I could go through the whole house in two days. I ended up being there seven.
I started out down stairs, which was sort of clean and always ready for company. I found the Chinese snuff bottle collection which was the most prized asset in the house. In a cabinet in the living room I found an unused Lone Ranger game from 1936. It was in mint condition, so I delivered it to the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in exchange for a lifetime free pass.
When I made my way upstairs my task became truly strange. Most rooms were stacked to the ceiling with junk so that the doors couldn’t be opened. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, the hallways, closets, offices were packed to the ceiling. In fact the only room that had an access way was the room Sunny died in.
So I started in the corner bedroom. I had to pry open the door, and then reach my arm around and start pulling things out to give me space to open the door wider. I used this technique for all the rest of the rooms in the house. For the next two days I worked in that room and the hallway. We ordered in a forty-foot dumpster, and I ended up filing more than two of those.
I discovered all kinds of weird things in that room, and was always worried I’d find a skeleton. But I didn’t. Instead, I found boxes of canceled checks from the twenties and thirties. I found hundreds of dresses, shoes, jewelry. When I got down to the floor level, I found a made bed, and items on the dresser that had been covered for 50 years.
It took a full day to get to floor level in the hallway, but at the bottom I found a cedar chest with two newspapers on it. Both were defunct Los Angeles papers and both were dated November 11, 1918 and the headlines heralded the armistice.
In the hallway, when I could finally get into the cabinets I found glamour shots of silent movie stars I’d never heard of. I recognized the names of Lillian Gish and Tom Mix. But beyond that, they were just stacks of head shots.
And then I found the pictures of Sunny. They were stunning. She was certainly beautiful back in her day. She had long flowing blonde hair and often had furs draped strategically around her bare chest. It was so hard to picture her as a teenager and starlet. But there was the proof in front of my eyes.
In the second bedroom upstairs I worked my way to ground level again to find a bedside table. I think this was Sunny’s room as a child. In the drawer by the bed I found love letters. Dozens of them. I read the words of Ralph Bellamy and Jason Robards, Sr. as they confessed their undying love to Sunny. These were passionate letters.
There were many other letters from actors and names I didn’t recognize. I put them all in the stack of stuff for the auction house to sort out.
I spent a full day cleaning out a big walk-in closet, only to get to the bottom and discover it was actually a small office. There was a working desk in there. As I went through the desk I found the police files for a case from Philadelphia for indecent exposure against her husband Brownie. It was funny reading it. Who knows what he was up to our how drunk he was, but the charge was from the 1930’s and described in detail chasing him down and arresting him. At my in-law’s request I destroyed the file.
Towards the end of the week I was working very late hours. I would work about 14 hours, then go to a hotel and sleep and start again the next day. Whenever I was on a roll, I hated to stop. Frankly, the stuff I was finding was so interesting I was running on adrenaline a lot of the time.
The last room I ventured into was the storage room at the top of the stairs. Like the others, the door wouldn’t open, so I had to reach in and start pulling things out. It was getting late, and I was excited to see what this room had in store, so I pushed myself to work late into the night.
The light was very poor, so I got floor lamps from around the house and set them up in the hallway as I started pulling things out of this storeroom. When I pulled enough junk out to get the door open halfway, I saw the room had shelves around all four walls, and there was a closet in the back.
The shelves were filled with black boxes about 18 inches square. There were probably 100 boxes in there in total. Each box had a sign on it. Some said, “Fall 1938”. Another might say, “Winter 1927”. I was absolutely mad with curiosity to find out what was in these boxes. As soon as I could push my way in, I started pulling those boxes out to find each one had a fancy women’s hat in it!
By the time I had reached the closet in the back of that room it was nearing midnight. I had to step over a pair of beautiful green marble lamps that I took home and re-wired for myself.
At last, I opened the closet door to find it was also packed to the ceiling. By one o’clock in the morning I was ready to go home, but I saw in the back of the closet a most unique object. It was a treasure chest, like a pirate might have used to keep doubloons in. I was intrigued and got a new burst of energy as I lugged that trunk into the hallway.
I positioned the floor lamps and took off their shades so I could get the maximum light from the bare bulbs. As I opened the trunk, I found it had been filled with newspapers as packing material. The dates of all the newspapers were 1919. It occurred to me that this trunk had not been touched since it was sealed up 79 years ago.
One of the first things I pulled out was a little Eskimo doll made with real seal fur. It had a badge on it that said, “Admiral Byrd Expedition – 1919.” I also found several toys, including a little hand-held game called “Beat the Kaiser” in which you tried to roll little BB’s into Kaiser Wilhelm’s eyes and mouth.
At the very bottom of the trunk I found what looked like three small logs wrapped in newspaper and neatly tied with three strings each. As I inspected the first, I noticed that it too, was wrapped in 1919 newspaper. My heart was pounding with anticipation to find what was hidden in the most remote corner of the most remote room in that creepy old house. I tugged on the bows of the string and it easily removed itself. I unrolled the newspaper to find two blue eyes pop awake to look back at me!
My heart stopped, and I nearly dropped the thing. When I caught my breath I realized it was a doll. All three were antique dolls from France. Their eyes could open and close. I was relieved, but I called it a night after that.
As I look back now, I can picture a 16 year old girl, active in drama and looking for a career on the stage, putting away the things of her childhood. She wrapped up those pretty dolls and saved them for the children she’d never have. And she never opened that trunk again for the rest of her long life.
Who was she? Why was I required to do this? She was no relative of mine, and no relative of anyone related to me. She was my ex-mother-in-law’s godmother. A woman with no children of her own. No living relatives of any kind. And anyone she ever loved had died in that very house I visited her in, on Gramercy Park Place, in Los Angeles.
Her name was Helen Browne, but she asked to be called Sunny. She had been a movie star, you see. She had appeared in several motion pictures of the silent era. When asked to identify them, titles rattled off the top of her head along with silver screen stars I’d never heard of. But you know, that’s not what really matters. She told me the really important roles were in the theatre. And she showed me pictures of her playbills and her schedule as she toured the Western U.S. in theatre troupes with the likes of Ralph Bellamy and Jason Robards, Sr.
She had a birth name, a married name, a nickname and a stage name. And she was all about drama. You see that house across the street? Why, that’s where the young man lived who wrote “When the Swallows Return to Capistrano.”
I had no idea if that was important or not. I was a Michigan country boy. I’d never heard of the song. I’d never heard of the town. I kept trying to find a way to relate to this ancient woman, but it wasn’t easy. Something told me she was a big fake. I was convinced all this strangeness just couldn’t be for real.
When she was still mobile, she insisted I drive her to the Brown Derby or El Chollo for lunch because that’s where the stars eat. I had my choice of driving her dusty old 1966 Mustang or her dusty old 1966 Continental. Both had under 30,000 miles on them, and both only moved if I drove them.
She would tell me things like how healthy urine is for your eyes, and how to communicate with the dead through séances. But mostly, she would talk about the life of an actress. Oh! How the young men adored her. Oh! The suitors. Oh! The proposals of matrimony. But she had steadfastly fended them all off. She remained aloof until middle aged when she married a ship pilot for the Port of Los Angeles who died ten years later.
The house. The house was her mausoleum. Her father built it in 1905 and she moved in when she was two years old. And she never moved out. Her parents each died in that house. Her husband died in that house. Eventually Sunny died in that house in 1998 at the age of 95.
In her final years she was confined to her bed and often mistook me for a doctor or some kind of accountant. She would tell me how she had been dancing around downstairs earlier in the day, and I would tell her how nice that was.
Having no offspring, she left the bulk of her estate to the Norman Vincent Peale foundation. But the task of sorting through her home fell on me. I was supposed to clean it out and look for items of interest for my in-laws to sell at auction. I figured I could go through the whole house in two days. I ended up being there seven.
I started out down stairs, which was sort of clean and always ready for company. I found the Chinese snuff bottle collection which was the most prized asset in the house. In a cabinet in the living room I found an unused Lone Ranger game from 1936. It was in mint condition, so I delivered it to the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in exchange for a lifetime free pass.
When I made my way upstairs my task became truly strange. Most rooms were stacked to the ceiling with junk so that the doors couldn’t be opened. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, the hallways, closets, offices were packed to the ceiling. In fact the only room that had an access way was the room Sunny died in.
So I started in the corner bedroom. I had to pry open the door, and then reach my arm around and start pulling things out to give me space to open the door wider. I used this technique for all the rest of the rooms in the house. For the next two days I worked in that room and the hallway. We ordered in a forty-foot dumpster, and I ended up filing more than two of those.
I discovered all kinds of weird things in that room, and was always worried I’d find a skeleton. But I didn’t. Instead, I found boxes of canceled checks from the twenties and thirties. I found hundreds of dresses, shoes, jewelry. When I got down to the floor level, I found a made bed, and items on the dresser that had been covered for 50 years.
It took a full day to get to floor level in the hallway, but at the bottom I found a cedar chest with two newspapers on it. Both were defunct Los Angeles papers and both were dated November 11, 1918 and the headlines heralded the armistice.
In the hallway, when I could finally get into the cabinets I found glamour shots of silent movie stars I’d never heard of. I recognized the names of Lillian Gish and Tom Mix. But beyond that, they were just stacks of head shots.
And then I found the pictures of Sunny. They were stunning. She was certainly beautiful back in her day. She had long flowing blonde hair and often had furs draped strategically around her bare chest. It was so hard to picture her as a teenager and starlet. But there was the proof in front of my eyes.
In the second bedroom upstairs I worked my way to ground level again to find a bedside table. I think this was Sunny’s room as a child. In the drawer by the bed I found love letters. Dozens of them. I read the words of Ralph Bellamy and Jason Robards, Sr. as they confessed their undying love to Sunny. These were passionate letters.
There were many other letters from actors and names I didn’t recognize. I put them all in the stack of stuff for the auction house to sort out.
I spent a full day cleaning out a big walk-in closet, only to get to the bottom and discover it was actually a small office. There was a working desk in there. As I went through the desk I found the police files for a case from Philadelphia for indecent exposure against her husband Brownie. It was funny reading it. Who knows what he was up to our how drunk he was, but the charge was from the 1930’s and described in detail chasing him down and arresting him. At my in-law’s request I destroyed the file.
Towards the end of the week I was working very late hours. I would work about 14 hours, then go to a hotel and sleep and start again the next day. Whenever I was on a roll, I hated to stop. Frankly, the stuff I was finding was so interesting I was running on adrenaline a lot of the time.
The last room I ventured into was the storage room at the top of the stairs. Like the others, the door wouldn’t open, so I had to reach in and start pulling things out. It was getting late, and I was excited to see what this room had in store, so I pushed myself to work late into the night.
The light was very poor, so I got floor lamps from around the house and set them up in the hallway as I started pulling things out of this storeroom. When I pulled enough junk out to get the door open halfway, I saw the room had shelves around all four walls, and there was a closet in the back.
The shelves were filled with black boxes about 18 inches square. There were probably 100 boxes in there in total. Each box had a sign on it. Some said, “Fall 1938”. Another might say, “Winter 1927”. I was absolutely mad with curiosity to find out what was in these boxes. As soon as I could push my way in, I started pulling those boxes out to find each one had a fancy women’s hat in it!
By the time I had reached the closet in the back of that room it was nearing midnight. I had to step over a pair of beautiful green marble lamps that I took home and re-wired for myself.
At last, I opened the closet door to find it was also packed to the ceiling. By one o’clock in the morning I was ready to go home, but I saw in the back of the closet a most unique object. It was a treasure chest, like a pirate might have used to keep doubloons in. I was intrigued and got a new burst of energy as I lugged that trunk into the hallway.
I positioned the floor lamps and took off their shades so I could get the maximum light from the bare bulbs. As I opened the trunk, I found it had been filled with newspapers as packing material. The dates of all the newspapers were 1919. It occurred to me that this trunk had not been touched since it was sealed up 79 years ago.
One of the first things I pulled out was a little Eskimo doll made with real seal fur. It had a badge on it that said, “Admiral Byrd Expedition – 1919.” I also found several toys, including a little hand-held game called “Beat the Kaiser” in which you tried to roll little BB’s into Kaiser Wilhelm’s eyes and mouth.
At the very bottom of the trunk I found what looked like three small logs wrapped in newspaper and neatly tied with three strings each. As I inspected the first, I noticed that it too, was wrapped in 1919 newspaper. My heart was pounding with anticipation to find what was hidden in the most remote corner of the most remote room in that creepy old house. I tugged on the bows of the string and it easily removed itself. I unrolled the newspaper to find two blue eyes pop awake to look back at me!
My heart stopped, and I nearly dropped the thing. When I caught my breath I realized it was a doll. All three were antique dolls from France. Their eyes could open and close. I was relieved, but I called it a night after that.
As I look back now, I can picture a 16 year old girl, active in drama and looking for a career on the stage, putting away the things of her childhood. She wrapped up those pretty dolls and saved them for the children she’d never have. And she never opened that trunk again for the rest of her long life.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Steve Strong: A Change in the Weather
There’s a change in the weather. A bitter helplessness in me.
Life and love once in my grasp now drifting out to sea.
Attitudes once sunny now seem doomed to cloudy skies
And people you once trusted are now telling only lies.
You can’t understand the mind of people looking at their skin
And the treachery within a heart is hidden deep within
But comes racing to the surface to bear its wretched fangs
Destroying any innocent who trusts or loves the thing.
You can blame it on the weather – say these changes come with time
And like seasons change, so people too, naiveté is blind.
Warm breezes change to winter snow and icy winds that freeze
And hearts once filled with tenderness, now pain that has no ease.
Like children born with promise - a laughing smile upon their face
The winds of age have hardened them, and scowls now take their place
While simple joys that we all shared, of trips, and games, and love
Become nostalgic memories of a home that’s torn apart.
Children have better things to do than listen to old men
Besides, they say, they’ve heard it all, it’s just the same old vent
And like the fools who insist on learning from their own mistakes
They travel down those well-worn roads to the darkness that awaits.
And lovers too who pledge their love, their life and all they’ll be
Forget those vows and plans they made for all eternity
And chase the dream that can’t be reached or thirst that can’t be quenched
Because the answer lies within the home they’re looking past.
O tormented souls with wanderlust who search outside their vows
O children of a loving God, who push against their bonds
If you could view your future with the wisdom of the past
And understand that wickedness never was happiness.
Tie down your tents and hold on as the winds of change will blow
Pound deep your stakes and steel yourself from the icy wind and snow
Protect your little ones from howling monsters as they roar
And lock your home against the wolves that beat upon your door.
And hold on to the fragile string of love that holds us bound
Draw near to struggling lambs who are crying to be found
Though rain may sting and snow may blind, and feet may feel the frost
Gird up your strength; you’re needed now to gather in the lost.
Life and love once in my grasp now drifting out to sea.
Attitudes once sunny now seem doomed to cloudy skies
And people you once trusted are now telling only lies.
You can’t understand the mind of people looking at their skin
And the treachery within a heart is hidden deep within
But comes racing to the surface to bear its wretched fangs
Destroying any innocent who trusts or loves the thing.
You can blame it on the weather – say these changes come with time
And like seasons change, so people too, naiveté is blind.
Warm breezes change to winter snow and icy winds that freeze
And hearts once filled with tenderness, now pain that has no ease.
Like children born with promise - a laughing smile upon their face
The winds of age have hardened them, and scowls now take their place
While simple joys that we all shared, of trips, and games, and love
Become nostalgic memories of a home that’s torn apart.
Children have better things to do than listen to old men
Besides, they say, they’ve heard it all, it’s just the same old vent
And like the fools who insist on learning from their own mistakes
They travel down those well-worn roads to the darkness that awaits.
And lovers too who pledge their love, their life and all they’ll be
Forget those vows and plans they made for all eternity
And chase the dream that can’t be reached or thirst that can’t be quenched
Because the answer lies within the home they’re looking past.
O tormented souls with wanderlust who search outside their vows
O children of a loving God, who push against their bonds
If you could view your future with the wisdom of the past
And understand that wickedness never was happiness.
Tie down your tents and hold on as the winds of change will blow
Pound deep your stakes and steel yourself from the icy wind and snow
Protect your little ones from howling monsters as they roar
And lock your home against the wolves that beat upon your door.
And hold on to the fragile string of love that holds us bound
Draw near to struggling lambs who are crying to be found
Though rain may sting and snow may blind, and feet may feel the frost
Gird up your strength; you’re needed now to gather in the lost.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Steve Strong: Shanghaied in Shanghai
It seems that every time I go to China something traumatic… or at least unusually dramatic happens. I was almost carjacked once. There had been an accident and farmers were commandeering vehicles to take injured people to the hospital. They stopped our car and had me by the shirt, yanking me out of the car, when they saw how tall and big I was they realized I was a foreigner. They dropped me and yelled at us to pass through.
On a different trip, I had some free time and took a water shuttle from Hong Kong to Kowloon to get a suit made. I was in Kowloon until after dark, and I just hopped in the boat to return to the hotel. But it turns out there are several water shuttles and they all looked alike to me, so I got dropped off in a totally different part of Hong Kong. It was 11:00 at night, and the city was almost deserted, but I was able to flag down a car of young people who understood English well enough to help me get a taxi and were kind enough to explain to the driver where I needed to go.
On some trips I’ve had to eat scorpions. I’ve eaten dogs, frogs and cold goose stomachs. Since they didn’t have English or American songs in the Karaoke machine, one night I had to do an a cappella solo of the lullaby, “Baby Mine” from the movie Dumbo. Since I don’t drink alcohol, I was the only sober one in the room, and I felt like an idiot singing alone on that microphone. My only hope was that they were too drunk to remember my performance the next day.
A few times I’ve had to wear a parka, hat and gloves indoors for a business meeting in a conference room with no heat in December, and I’ve had to take a shower with no hot water in an unheated hotel room. After traveling without a hotel for several days, once we made a deal with a local fitness center for us to go in and use their shower facilities. And remember, I’m not in my youth doing this. I’m a middle-aged businessman who made the mistake of letting my Chinese business partners make all the domestic travel arrangements.
Once we traveled through the night and we got a sleeping berth on the train. Unfortunately I was too tall for the bed, so my feet stuck out of our room and into the hallway where they were bumped by passengers all night. Our berth only had a curtain for a door, so I was told to sleep with my hand on my luggage all night.
Another time I was in Beijing at some kind of street festival enjoying a barbecued sparrow on a stick, when this girl came up to me and asked me if I were an American. I thought she was friendly, so I told her I was. She asked me if I was staying in a local hotel, and I pointed to the hotel I was staying at – It was just a short walk from there. Then she asked me the craziest thing. She asked me if we should go to my hotel room. I thought that was so rude of her to ask that.
Why should she be trying to send me back to my hotel? I was enjoying my little sparrow on a stick and I was having fun right there. Then she told me she would go with me to the room, and said we could have a party. That’s when I decided she must be the rudest girl ever, and I told her I was staying at the party out there in the street. Later, my Chinese business partners told me I missed the point completely.
So you see, sometimes I just didn’t seem to be on the same page as the good people of China. And for me, the craziest of all was the night I lived through my own version of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride through the streets of Shanghai.
It happened on my first trip to China. I flew China Air, and they lost my luggage on the way over. Because we were traveling by train and car all over Eastern China during the week, there was no way for my luggage to catch up to me for eight days. I finally met up with my luggage the night before I was traveling home. I had spent eight wretched days squeezing into little, tiny Chinese underwear and a long-sleeved shirt that went just past my elbows. I was forced to wear the same pair of tennis shoes and blue jeans that I had worn over on the plane because there were no others that could fit me.
So when I finally got my luggage, and took a long hot shower in the Shanghai Holiday Inn, I felt like I was in Los Angeles. The place was so modern that everything just felt right and I was excited to be there.
My business partners had left me and I was on my own that night and to get to the airport the next morning. From the hotel, I could see the bright lights of a shopping area so I told the English-speaking bellboy at the Holiday Inn I wanted to go there and he explained to the cab driver, and I was off.
I spent a couple hours buying knock-off name brand stuff until I got hungry for dinner. I saw a McDonald's. Judge me if you will, but what I did next might make you uncomfortable. I went into the McDonald's and ordered a Big Mac, fries and drink. I ate it at the table upstairs. Then went back down and ordered another Big Mac, fries and drink.
It just felt so good! I felt like I was safe. The world was right. People weren’t making me eat horrible things. I was full, and it was a great feeling.
I walked out of McDonald's to get a cab back to the Holiday Inn. But first a Chinese man came up to me and said, “Are you American?” I said yes. He said, “You want a Chinese girl?” I said, “No thank you.” He said, “Ah… you want a Chinese boy!”
I yelled “No!” and ran for the street. A taxi saw me and swerved over and slammed on the brakes. I jumped in and he took off very fast.
Now… I found it odd that he would race off with me when I hadn’t told him where I was going, so I said to him in English, “Holiday Inn, please.” He replied in Chinese and kept driving straight. I said again in English, “Yo dude. I’m staying at the H-O-L-I-D-A-Y I-N-N. Do you know where that is?”
This time he started looking over his shoulder and speaking in Chinese very fast, and kept driving straight. I handed him my room key, which had the Holiday Inn logo on it, and asked again if he knew where the hotel was. The more I spoke, the more agitated he got, and now he was driving very fast on those Shanghai streets. He tossed my room key on the dashboard.
I started saying things I knew for sure he couldn’t understand, but I was getting a little concerned by this point. “My man. Are you kidnapping me?” “Do you have any idea where we’re going?” “Are you nuts, or what?”
We came to a huge intersection with a blinking red light, and I figured I’d jump out when the car slowed down. He saw me start to open the door, and he started reaching for me, and yelling in Chinese.
And then he hit a woman on a bike!
We both got out of the taxi to see if she was OK. She seemed unhurt, but was furious and yelling at the driver, who seemed to be apologizing profusely. I took that as my sign to get out of there, but he saw me leaving and ran around and was trying to push me back in the car.
I said in English, “Man, you’re out of your mind. You don’t have any idea where we’re going. You’re just racing through this town. Are you on drugs?” Of course he couldn’t understand me, and just kept speaking that same agitated, worried Chinese.
Who knows why, but I did get back in the taxi. Off we sped in that same straight line down that street. Now, probably five or six miles from where he picked me up.
I saw the light of a small hotel up ahead and the driver started pointing to it. I thought this guy must be crazy if he thinks I’m staying there. But we headed to that hotel, and he sped up the driveway to where a nice bellhop in a fancy uniform stood. The driver and I both jumped out of the cab and ran up to the bellhop and both started telling our stories in our native tongues – each trying to be louder than the other as we fought for the bellhop’s attention.
The bellhop motioned for both of us to settle down, and first the driver, and then me, we both got to tell our story. The bellhop was very cool and had good English. He told me the taxi driver was so excited to see an American that he wanted to pick me up even though he had no way to communicate. He didn’t want to lose the good fare.
So he was trying to bring me here so the bellhop could speak English to me and find out where I needed to go.
The bellhop thought it was all rather funny. After a while the taxi driver and I did too.
He took me to the Holiday Inn and I gave him a hefty tip for all I put him through that night.
On a different trip, I had some free time and took a water shuttle from Hong Kong to Kowloon to get a suit made. I was in Kowloon until after dark, and I just hopped in the boat to return to the hotel. But it turns out there are several water shuttles and they all looked alike to me, so I got dropped off in a totally different part of Hong Kong. It was 11:00 at night, and the city was almost deserted, but I was able to flag down a car of young people who understood English well enough to help me get a taxi and were kind enough to explain to the driver where I needed to go.
On some trips I’ve had to eat scorpions. I’ve eaten dogs, frogs and cold goose stomachs. Since they didn’t have English or American songs in the Karaoke machine, one night I had to do an a cappella solo of the lullaby, “Baby Mine” from the movie Dumbo. Since I don’t drink alcohol, I was the only sober one in the room, and I felt like an idiot singing alone on that microphone. My only hope was that they were too drunk to remember my performance the next day.
A few times I’ve had to wear a parka, hat and gloves indoors for a business meeting in a conference room with no heat in December, and I’ve had to take a shower with no hot water in an unheated hotel room. After traveling without a hotel for several days, once we made a deal with a local fitness center for us to go in and use their shower facilities. And remember, I’m not in my youth doing this. I’m a middle-aged businessman who made the mistake of letting my Chinese business partners make all the domestic travel arrangements.
Once we traveled through the night and we got a sleeping berth on the train. Unfortunately I was too tall for the bed, so my feet stuck out of our room and into the hallway where they were bumped by passengers all night. Our berth only had a curtain for a door, so I was told to sleep with my hand on my luggage all night.
Another time I was in Beijing at some kind of street festival enjoying a barbecued sparrow on a stick, when this girl came up to me and asked me if I were an American. I thought she was friendly, so I told her I was. She asked me if I was staying in a local hotel, and I pointed to the hotel I was staying at – It was just a short walk from there. Then she asked me the craziest thing. She asked me if we should go to my hotel room. I thought that was so rude of her to ask that.
Why should she be trying to send me back to my hotel? I was enjoying my little sparrow on a stick and I was having fun right there. Then she told me she would go with me to the room, and said we could have a party. That’s when I decided she must be the rudest girl ever, and I told her I was staying at the party out there in the street. Later, my Chinese business partners told me I missed the point completely.
So you see, sometimes I just didn’t seem to be on the same page as the good people of China. And for me, the craziest of all was the night I lived through my own version of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride through the streets of Shanghai.
It happened on my first trip to China. I flew China Air, and they lost my luggage on the way over. Because we were traveling by train and car all over Eastern China during the week, there was no way for my luggage to catch up to me for eight days. I finally met up with my luggage the night before I was traveling home. I had spent eight wretched days squeezing into little, tiny Chinese underwear and a long-sleeved shirt that went just past my elbows. I was forced to wear the same pair of tennis shoes and blue jeans that I had worn over on the plane because there were no others that could fit me.
So when I finally got my luggage, and took a long hot shower in the Shanghai Holiday Inn, I felt like I was in Los Angeles. The place was so modern that everything just felt right and I was excited to be there.
My business partners had left me and I was on my own that night and to get to the airport the next morning. From the hotel, I could see the bright lights of a shopping area so I told the English-speaking bellboy at the Holiday Inn I wanted to go there and he explained to the cab driver, and I was off.
I spent a couple hours buying knock-off name brand stuff until I got hungry for dinner. I saw a McDonald's. Judge me if you will, but what I did next might make you uncomfortable. I went into the McDonald's and ordered a Big Mac, fries and drink. I ate it at the table upstairs. Then went back down and ordered another Big Mac, fries and drink.
It just felt so good! I felt like I was safe. The world was right. People weren’t making me eat horrible things. I was full, and it was a great feeling.
I walked out of McDonald's to get a cab back to the Holiday Inn. But first a Chinese man came up to me and said, “Are you American?” I said yes. He said, “You want a Chinese girl?” I said, “No thank you.” He said, “Ah… you want a Chinese boy!”
I yelled “No!” and ran for the street. A taxi saw me and swerved over and slammed on the brakes. I jumped in and he took off very fast.
Now… I found it odd that he would race off with me when I hadn’t told him where I was going, so I said to him in English, “Holiday Inn, please.” He replied in Chinese and kept driving straight. I said again in English, “Yo dude. I’m staying at the H-O-L-I-D-A-Y I-N-N. Do you know where that is?”
This time he started looking over his shoulder and speaking in Chinese very fast, and kept driving straight. I handed him my room key, which had the Holiday Inn logo on it, and asked again if he knew where the hotel was. The more I spoke, the more agitated he got, and now he was driving very fast on those Shanghai streets. He tossed my room key on the dashboard.
I started saying things I knew for sure he couldn’t understand, but I was getting a little concerned by this point. “My man. Are you kidnapping me?” “Do you have any idea where we’re going?” “Are you nuts, or what?”
We came to a huge intersection with a blinking red light, and I figured I’d jump out when the car slowed down. He saw me start to open the door, and he started reaching for me, and yelling in Chinese.
And then he hit a woman on a bike!
We both got out of the taxi to see if she was OK. She seemed unhurt, but was furious and yelling at the driver, who seemed to be apologizing profusely. I took that as my sign to get out of there, but he saw me leaving and ran around and was trying to push me back in the car.
I said in English, “Man, you’re out of your mind. You don’t have any idea where we’re going. You’re just racing through this town. Are you on drugs?” Of course he couldn’t understand me, and just kept speaking that same agitated, worried Chinese.
Who knows why, but I did get back in the taxi. Off we sped in that same straight line down that street. Now, probably five or six miles from where he picked me up.
I saw the light of a small hotel up ahead and the driver started pointing to it. I thought this guy must be crazy if he thinks I’m staying there. But we headed to that hotel, and he sped up the driveway to where a nice bellhop in a fancy uniform stood. The driver and I both jumped out of the cab and ran up to the bellhop and both started telling our stories in our native tongues – each trying to be louder than the other as we fought for the bellhop’s attention.
The bellhop motioned for both of us to settle down, and first the driver, and then me, we both got to tell our story. The bellhop was very cool and had good English. He told me the taxi driver was so excited to see an American that he wanted to pick me up even though he had no way to communicate. He didn’t want to lose the good fare.
So he was trying to bring me here so the bellhop could speak English to me and find out where I needed to go.
The bellhop thought it was all rather funny. After a while the taxi driver and I did too.
He took me to the Holiday Inn and I gave him a hefty tip for all I put him through that night.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Steve Strong: A Year Lay-Off
I was only 23. But I felt like an old man as I sat in that class full of guys just home from their missions. I hadn’t been in a scholastic setting since I was 18 and I had no confidence about college life in general, but specifically about this Japanese 202 class.
During the previous 5 years I had toiled in a pickle factory, served two years in Japan as a missionary, and worked for two years repairing audio visual equipment for a school system in Michigan. By most American standards, I was still considered fluent in Japanese, but all these young guys seemed so much more confident than me. They all seemed to know each other too. Their Japanese was funny, clever and I just knew that if I tried to speak in front of them, I’d make some grammatical error that would leave them in stitches.
I would never have chosen Japan as a place to serve a mission. It was chosen for me. I saw the formal notification as I opened the letter from Salt Lake City addressed to an “Elder Strong.” The letter said I would be spending the next two years of my life in Sendai, Japan. Like most boys my age, I had never heard of it. I had tried one year of foreign language in high school. I took German because the teacher was pretty, and I sort of wondered what Hitler was raving about in all those old movies. I got a D in the class and never really learned more than how to count to twelve and say a few inappropriate phrases.
Studying Japanese was very difficult for me. I used to tell myself that I could never learn a foreign language. But that darn letter said I was going to Sendai, Japan. There just was no way to get around that. So rather than get too worked up with grammar, I mostly studied vocabulary, and tried to mimic the way Japanese men spoke. I tried to use their phrases. I tried to slur my speech like they did. I tried to sound kind of tough and speak from my gut like they did.
It pretty much worked. By the later end of my two years in Japan, I could speak on the phone without someone realizing I was American. I dreamed only in Japanese. I even found myself bowing slightly when talking on the phone. My immersion seemed complete.
But sitting in that university class two years later, I found I had lost all my confidence. I had only spoken Japanese a few times since leaving Japan. The university said I could enroll in Japanese 202, and after two weeks take the CLEP test for Japanese 101, 102 and 201. If I scored 82% or better on the test I could purchase the credits for those classes and only need three more classes to have a Japanese minor. But if I scored below 82% I would get no credit and be asked to leave the Japanese 202 class.
I was a bottled up ball of tension and stress as I took that test. I think I got an 85% on it. I passed, but not with flying colors. After the test I slunk back into the 202 class and tried to keep a low profile. I took the required three extras classes to get a minor, but I never wanted to speak Japanese in front of other gaijin because I felt so intimidated.
I later found that most people feel that way. When I got to grad school and enrolled in the MBA program, the school required fluency in a foreign language as part of the international program. I tested for them, and they said I could only take one class at their school (Business Japanese) because it wouldn’t be fair to the other students. I took that as a complement, and spoke up like crazy in the business Japanese class because I was the best there. But because I never spoke English with the Japanese instructor the other students hated me. Quite a switch from my undergraduate program!
As I reflected back on my feelings in the Japanese 202 class, I thought about what it must have been like for my mother when she went back to college as a single mother of five when she was 40 years old.
My mother graduated Valedictorian of her high school class in 1949. She had a complete scholarship to both the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. You can imagine how excited she was to start school. And then you may imagine how distraught she was when shortly after the start of classes she discovered she was two months pregnant.
She immediately dropped out of school, forfeited her scholarship and married the father of her child. That was 1949, and that’s how things were handled back then. She became a stay-at-home-mom like most others in the fifties.
Seventeen years later she found she was a newly divorced mother of five with no child support and a household to feed. She found a job as insurance underwriter by day and started attending the local community college at night. She supported the family this way for four years until she was able to transfer to Kalamazoo College when she turned 40 years old.
Because of her JC transfer credits, she was able to enter Kalamazoo College as a Junior. After one semester there she somehow convinced Western Michigan University to accept her into the English Master’s Program (even though she hadn’t completed her BA). By doubling up both programs at the same time, she was able to graduate from both programs simultaneously.
As kids, we were sort of aware that we were poor while mom was going back to college. We had free lunches at school, and we shopped with food stamps. For one birthday my mom gave me 8 books of S&H Greenstamps that I carried to the outlet and got myself a Pancho Gonzales tennis racket (which I still have today). My kids saw a picture of me from that time and they thought I was wearing Capri pants. I told them back then we wore pants until they wore out – regardless of how they fit.
But that’s how my mom juggled all the parts of her life. We had birthdays. We had Christmas presents. We had Easter baskets. We had a hot cooked dinner every night. Not once did she neglect any of us kids or make us think we weren’t her top priority.
And there she sat each day in class. She was a 40 year old mother of five, in classrooms full of teenagers and twenty-somethings. How awkward it must have been for her after her 21 year absence from academia to return to the classroom.
When compared to my mom, my troubles seem to diminish in importance. She is a living example of how resilient we can be. She taught us kids through her example to be thankful for the things we had. She taught us to work hard. She taught us to set goals and not settle or make excuses for failures. She never paid a dime for any of her children to go to college. No tuition. No books. No living expenses when we left home. And yet, of her five children there’s an Associate Degree, four Bachelor Degrees and three Masters Degrees.
And I love her.
During the previous 5 years I had toiled in a pickle factory, served two years in Japan as a missionary, and worked for two years repairing audio visual equipment for a school system in Michigan. By most American standards, I was still considered fluent in Japanese, but all these young guys seemed so much more confident than me. They all seemed to know each other too. Their Japanese was funny, clever and I just knew that if I tried to speak in front of them, I’d make some grammatical error that would leave them in stitches.
I would never have chosen Japan as a place to serve a mission. It was chosen for me. I saw the formal notification as I opened the letter from Salt Lake City addressed to an “Elder Strong.” The letter said I would be spending the next two years of my life in Sendai, Japan. Like most boys my age, I had never heard of it. I had tried one year of foreign language in high school. I took German because the teacher was pretty, and I sort of wondered what Hitler was raving about in all those old movies. I got a D in the class and never really learned more than how to count to twelve and say a few inappropriate phrases.
Studying Japanese was very difficult for me. I used to tell myself that I could never learn a foreign language. But that darn letter said I was going to Sendai, Japan. There just was no way to get around that. So rather than get too worked up with grammar, I mostly studied vocabulary, and tried to mimic the way Japanese men spoke. I tried to use their phrases. I tried to slur my speech like they did. I tried to sound kind of tough and speak from my gut like they did.
It pretty much worked. By the later end of my two years in Japan, I could speak on the phone without someone realizing I was American. I dreamed only in Japanese. I even found myself bowing slightly when talking on the phone. My immersion seemed complete.
But sitting in that university class two years later, I found I had lost all my confidence. I had only spoken Japanese a few times since leaving Japan. The university said I could enroll in Japanese 202, and after two weeks take the CLEP test for Japanese 101, 102 and 201. If I scored 82% or better on the test I could purchase the credits for those classes and only need three more classes to have a Japanese minor. But if I scored below 82% I would get no credit and be asked to leave the Japanese 202 class.
I was a bottled up ball of tension and stress as I took that test. I think I got an 85% on it. I passed, but not with flying colors. After the test I slunk back into the 202 class and tried to keep a low profile. I took the required three extras classes to get a minor, but I never wanted to speak Japanese in front of other gaijin because I felt so intimidated.
I later found that most people feel that way. When I got to grad school and enrolled in the MBA program, the school required fluency in a foreign language as part of the international program. I tested for them, and they said I could only take one class at their school (Business Japanese) because it wouldn’t be fair to the other students. I took that as a complement, and spoke up like crazy in the business Japanese class because I was the best there. But because I never spoke English with the Japanese instructor the other students hated me. Quite a switch from my undergraduate program!
As I reflected back on my feelings in the Japanese 202 class, I thought about what it must have been like for my mother when she went back to college as a single mother of five when she was 40 years old.
My mother graduated Valedictorian of her high school class in 1949. She had a complete scholarship to both the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. You can imagine how excited she was to start school. And then you may imagine how distraught she was when shortly after the start of classes she discovered she was two months pregnant.
She immediately dropped out of school, forfeited her scholarship and married the father of her child. That was 1949, and that’s how things were handled back then. She became a stay-at-home-mom like most others in the fifties.
Seventeen years later she found she was a newly divorced mother of five with no child support and a household to feed. She found a job as insurance underwriter by day and started attending the local community college at night. She supported the family this way for four years until she was able to transfer to Kalamazoo College when she turned 40 years old.
Because of her JC transfer credits, she was able to enter Kalamazoo College as a Junior. After one semester there she somehow convinced Western Michigan University to accept her into the English Master’s Program (even though she hadn’t completed her BA). By doubling up both programs at the same time, she was able to graduate from both programs simultaneously.
As kids, we were sort of aware that we were poor while mom was going back to college. We had free lunches at school, and we shopped with food stamps. For one birthday my mom gave me 8 books of S&H Greenstamps that I carried to the outlet and got myself a Pancho Gonzales tennis racket (which I still have today). My kids saw a picture of me from that time and they thought I was wearing Capri pants. I told them back then we wore pants until they wore out – regardless of how they fit.
But that’s how my mom juggled all the parts of her life. We had birthdays. We had Christmas presents. We had Easter baskets. We had a hot cooked dinner every night. Not once did she neglect any of us kids or make us think we weren’t her top priority.
And there she sat each day in class. She was a 40 year old mother of five, in classrooms full of teenagers and twenty-somethings. How awkward it must have been for her after her 21 year absence from academia to return to the classroom.
When compared to my mom, my troubles seem to diminish in importance. She is a living example of how resilient we can be. She taught us kids through her example to be thankful for the things we had. She taught us to work hard. She taught us to set goals and not settle or make excuses for failures. She never paid a dime for any of her children to go to college. No tuition. No books. No living expenses when we left home. And yet, of her five children there’s an Associate Degree, four Bachelor Degrees and three Masters Degrees.
And I love her.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Steve Strong: One Last Summer, Before Growing Up
“Johnny! Check it out, slow down.” “Turn up the 8-track.” “No. Forget the Beach Boys. Lay rubber.” “Yeah, peel out. That’ll get their attention.”
It was the summer of 1974. My buddies Johnny and Steve had just graduated. I had my senior year still ahead of me. We were three long-haired, teenagers, crammed in the bench seat of 1966 Ranchero. Well, not actually a real Ranchero. It was a 1966 Chevrolet station wagon that had a chopped-off backend which was cut down and converted into a sort of pick-up bed with the original station wagon back door serving as a tailgate.
It was Johnny’s car. As funny as that wannabe Ranchero looked, at least Johnny had a car. Steve and I were resigned to borrowing our folks’ car anytime we had something to do in our little town.
Johnny spent his money on the Ranchero where it would have the most impact. He did his own custom body work, and the three-toned paint job featured metallic blue quarter panels which faded to sky blue doors, and then faded back again to the metallic blue rear end. The rims and wheels were new, and cost more than the rest of the vehicle was worth.
In our little group of three, we each had our assignments. Johnny’s dad was a lawyer, so naturally we thought of him as the rich kid. He had a swimming pool at his house and a freezer in his garage full of steaks that we were allowed to have any time we wanted one. He owned the car, so he was the driver. Steve could play any musical instrument and had perfect pitch, so of course he directed which music we would consider cool, and which music was off limits.
Me? The previous summer my girlfriend had broken up with me in a most public manner when she discovered I had been kissing her little sister. This gave me some sort of god-like status among my friends. I was the only one of us three who had been on a date or kissed a girl, so I was the designated guy who would do the talking if we found a group of girls who seemed impressed by the car.
The problem for us was the town itself. Fremont, Michigan had 3,400 citizens and was proud to be called the “Baby Food Capital of the World.” Gerber was headquartered there, but beyond that, there wasn’t much else.
We were a good 45 minute drive away from anything that would interest a teenager. The nearest McDonalds was in Muskegon. Instead of the normal fast food hangouts, we had an A&W with carhops on roller skates that was only open from May through August. We had a movie theatre that sat 60 people and played movies from two years ago. We had the only stop light in the entire county, and it had a sign on it that said “No Turn on Red.” Honestly! Was that really necessary?
So there you have it. Johnny driving his car with the three of us in that single seat. Steve in the middle so he had control of the music. Me at the passenger seat window so I could talk to people.
Up and down Main Street we drove. From the high school, straight through the stop light, and to the park. A total of 4 blocks. We would turn around at the park and perhaps lay a little rubber by the cannon to mark the territory.
Other boys were thinking the same thing and we’d give a respectful wave as we passed each other. Up and down Main. Up and down Main. Turn around at the park, give a wave, and do it again.
After an hour or so of that, it gets old. Not only that, but even if there were girls in the park or on the street, did we really want to talk to them? I mean, these are the same girls we went to school with, and if we were interested in them we would have just asked them out in the first place.
So, when my dad told me he was driving out to Michigan to pick us kids up for our summer visit with him instead of flying us out to Seattle, I thought, “What the hey… it might be fun to do the road trip with my dad, his wife, her two daughters and my two little sisters.”
It turns out this was to be my summer of station wagons, because my dad showed up in Michigan with a three-seat station wagon with the suitcases on the roof. We were already packed and eager to go, so we hopped in the vehicle and were off.
It was already determined that Dad and his wife would ride in the front seat with my youngest step-sister. The back seat would have my two sisters and the older step-sister. That left the back end of the car for me.
The last row of seating in that station wagon seemed to be a design afterthought. It was a hideaway rumble seat that when set up, faced out the back window. I immediately decided I loved it. For the next 3,000 miles I enjoyed seeing where we had been.
My Dad decided it was best to leave the radio off for the entire trip, which of course, was a blessing to me. Who knows what kind of music I would have been subjected to. As it was, I made my rumble seat my private castle, and I nuzzled in among the pillows, boxes and camping supplies and read book after book.
As I looked up from time to time I saw the Great Mid-West passing by. I started reading The Valachi Papers just outside of Chicago. I thought that was fitting, even though Joe Valachi was a New York City mobster.
I looked up from the cosa nostra initiation long enough to see the Badlands go by. I took an hour nap, and when I woke up, the Badlands were still going by. So I guess it wasn’t a great stretch for whoever named that region. That was really some boring, bad land.
Mt. Rushmore was cool – for the 30 minutes we were there. Then it was back in the car and into my cocoon in the back.
I finished The Valachi Papers as we were pulling into Cody, Wyoming. Needing a new book, I was impressed by the locale to buy a paperback called Billy the Kid and Outlaws of the Old West, which I read for the rest of the trip.
I saw a demolition derby in Wyoming. I saw Old Faithful in Yellowstone. And I saw a moose in Montana. But more importantly, I learned that Billy the Kid escaped from custody using a shotgun hidden in an outhouse. How cool is that?
When summer was over, my Dad flew my sisters and me back to Michigan where life hadn’t changed one bit. Having graduated, Steve went to work for his Dad sharpening drill bits in a small machine shop. Johnny went to a trade school in Big Rapids, Michigan to study auto body repair.
And me, I had one more year of high school. Although the three of us had big plans for getting out of Michigan, Steve and Johnny never did. Steve ended up taking over his Dad’s business, and he lives quietly in Muskegon with his wife and son.
Johnny finished his tech degree and with his rich dad’s financing, opened up an auto body repair shop. He married, and had five sons – each name beginning with the letter J. He lost his home last year in the mortgage foreclosure crisis.
Sometimes I think back about those days when the three of us were a team, and they both thought I was so worldly and wise. They still think about me that way now. I guess I’m worldly and wise because I had the good sense to get up and leave that little town.
I had no idea at the time, but that would be the last two-month summer vacation I would ever have. The rest of my life would be about earning a living, getting college degrees and supporting a family.
When you look at me today, you may see an old man – an overweight guy with thinning hair and out-of-control children. But when I look in the mirror, I can still see that skinny, long-haired innocent. I’ll be forever riding with friends, making each other laugh, and rocking out to the sounds of the Beach Boys.
It was the summer of 1974. My buddies Johnny and Steve had just graduated. I had my senior year still ahead of me. We were three long-haired, teenagers, crammed in the bench seat of 1966 Ranchero. Well, not actually a real Ranchero. It was a 1966 Chevrolet station wagon that had a chopped-off backend which was cut down and converted into a sort of pick-up bed with the original station wagon back door serving as a tailgate.
It was Johnny’s car. As funny as that wannabe Ranchero looked, at least Johnny had a car. Steve and I were resigned to borrowing our folks’ car anytime we had something to do in our little town.
Johnny spent his money on the Ranchero where it would have the most impact. He did his own custom body work, and the three-toned paint job featured metallic blue quarter panels which faded to sky blue doors, and then faded back again to the metallic blue rear end. The rims and wheels were new, and cost more than the rest of the vehicle was worth.
In our little group of three, we each had our assignments. Johnny’s dad was a lawyer, so naturally we thought of him as the rich kid. He had a swimming pool at his house and a freezer in his garage full of steaks that we were allowed to have any time we wanted one. He owned the car, so he was the driver. Steve could play any musical instrument and had perfect pitch, so of course he directed which music we would consider cool, and which music was off limits.
Me? The previous summer my girlfriend had broken up with me in a most public manner when she discovered I had been kissing her little sister. This gave me some sort of god-like status among my friends. I was the only one of us three who had been on a date or kissed a girl, so I was the designated guy who would do the talking if we found a group of girls who seemed impressed by the car.
The problem for us was the town itself. Fremont, Michigan had 3,400 citizens and was proud to be called the “Baby Food Capital of the World.” Gerber was headquartered there, but beyond that, there wasn’t much else.
We were a good 45 minute drive away from anything that would interest a teenager. The nearest McDonalds was in Muskegon. Instead of the normal fast food hangouts, we had an A&W with carhops on roller skates that was only open from May through August. We had a movie theatre that sat 60 people and played movies from two years ago. We had the only stop light in the entire county, and it had a sign on it that said “No Turn on Red.” Honestly! Was that really necessary?
So there you have it. Johnny driving his car with the three of us in that single seat. Steve in the middle so he had control of the music. Me at the passenger seat window so I could talk to people.
Up and down Main Street we drove. From the high school, straight through the stop light, and to the park. A total of 4 blocks. We would turn around at the park and perhaps lay a little rubber by the cannon to mark the territory.
Other boys were thinking the same thing and we’d give a respectful wave as we passed each other. Up and down Main. Up and down Main. Turn around at the park, give a wave, and do it again.
After an hour or so of that, it gets old. Not only that, but even if there were girls in the park or on the street, did we really want to talk to them? I mean, these are the same girls we went to school with, and if we were interested in them we would have just asked them out in the first place.
So, when my dad told me he was driving out to Michigan to pick us kids up for our summer visit with him instead of flying us out to Seattle, I thought, “What the hey… it might be fun to do the road trip with my dad, his wife, her two daughters and my two little sisters.”
It turns out this was to be my summer of station wagons, because my dad showed up in Michigan with a three-seat station wagon with the suitcases on the roof. We were already packed and eager to go, so we hopped in the vehicle and were off.
It was already determined that Dad and his wife would ride in the front seat with my youngest step-sister. The back seat would have my two sisters and the older step-sister. That left the back end of the car for me.
The last row of seating in that station wagon seemed to be a design afterthought. It was a hideaway rumble seat that when set up, faced out the back window. I immediately decided I loved it. For the next 3,000 miles I enjoyed seeing where we had been.
My Dad decided it was best to leave the radio off for the entire trip, which of course, was a blessing to me. Who knows what kind of music I would have been subjected to. As it was, I made my rumble seat my private castle, and I nuzzled in among the pillows, boxes and camping supplies and read book after book.
As I looked up from time to time I saw the Great Mid-West passing by. I started reading The Valachi Papers just outside of Chicago. I thought that was fitting, even though Joe Valachi was a New York City mobster.
I looked up from the cosa nostra initiation long enough to see the Badlands go by. I took an hour nap, and when I woke up, the Badlands were still going by. So I guess it wasn’t a great stretch for whoever named that region. That was really some boring, bad land.
Mt. Rushmore was cool – for the 30 minutes we were there. Then it was back in the car and into my cocoon in the back.
I finished The Valachi Papers as we were pulling into Cody, Wyoming. Needing a new book, I was impressed by the locale to buy a paperback called Billy the Kid and Outlaws of the Old West, which I read for the rest of the trip.
I saw a demolition derby in Wyoming. I saw Old Faithful in Yellowstone. And I saw a moose in Montana. But more importantly, I learned that Billy the Kid escaped from custody using a shotgun hidden in an outhouse. How cool is that?
When summer was over, my Dad flew my sisters and me back to Michigan where life hadn’t changed one bit. Having graduated, Steve went to work for his Dad sharpening drill bits in a small machine shop. Johnny went to a trade school in Big Rapids, Michigan to study auto body repair.
And me, I had one more year of high school. Although the three of us had big plans for getting out of Michigan, Steve and Johnny never did. Steve ended up taking over his Dad’s business, and he lives quietly in Muskegon with his wife and son.
Johnny finished his tech degree and with his rich dad’s financing, opened up an auto body repair shop. He married, and had five sons – each name beginning with the letter J. He lost his home last year in the mortgage foreclosure crisis.
Sometimes I think back about those days when the three of us were a team, and they both thought I was so worldly and wise. They still think about me that way now. I guess I’m worldly and wise because I had the good sense to get up and leave that little town.
I had no idea at the time, but that would be the last two-month summer vacation I would ever have. The rest of my life would be about earning a living, getting college degrees and supporting a family.
When you look at me today, you may see an old man – an overweight guy with thinning hair and out-of-control children. But when I look in the mirror, I can still see that skinny, long-haired innocent. I’ll be forever riding with friends, making each other laugh, and rocking out to the sounds of the Beach Boys.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Steve Strong: Fun with Ben Cartwright and Hoss
I learned to read with “Fun with Dick and Jane.” Everything was so neat and tidy. Dad wore a suit and hat and went to work. Mom wore a house dress and baked. Dick, Jane and Sally always dressed like they were going to church. When I was at school, I started thinking everyone’s family was like that. And I would have persisted in that belief if it hadn’t been for the magic of television.
Although I wasn’t a great TV watcher as a child, the shows I did watch tended to be a lot like the neat and pressed world of Dick and Jane. Opie Taylor may not have had a mom, but he had his Aunt Bea right there for him. My Three Sons may not have had a mom, but they had their Uncle Charlie. The Cartwright boys may not have had a mom, but they had Hop Sing. Hey, now that I think about it, my family was the functional one. At least I didn’t have an old Chinese man for a mother figure.
But without a doubt, the best family show for my generation was Lost In Space. The Robinson family had it all: A perfect mom (so perfect in fact, she was the same mom in Lassie), a tough (but fair) dad, two daughters and a son, and - best of all - a robot. What could be better than a family from the future with their own robot? And he wasn’t a wimpy cartoon-robot like the Jetsons had. The Robinson’s robot could get tipsy, be patronizing and lovable all in the same episode. With his power-pack removed, he was useless, and was oblivious to everything around him. But best of all, if you really got him angry, he could shoot lasers out of those crab-like claws of his. The robot was sort of like your 40 year old confirmed bachelor uncle, if your uncle could shot lasers from crab-like claws.
But wait, that’s not all. To make this family even cooler, they rode around in space with an extra dad-like guy named Don, plus a bad guy they never seemed to be able to ditch, Dr. Smith.
Instead of wonderful adventures on remarkably similar-looking planets, nowadays we have reality television. We can be a fly on the wall of normal American families like the Osbournes, the Hulk Hogans, the Gene Simmons and the Kardashians. But back in the day, only cool boys like Will Robinson got TV shows about their family. If Hollywood would have made a TV show about my family, they certainly could have employed a large cast of actors.
My original family consisted of my mom and dad, me, my brother and three sisters. Really, a very regular sort of group for the 1960’s. But then things started getting interesting.
When my folks split up, my dad married a woman named Judy, so my second family would have been her and her two children, but by the time I met them my dad told me the marriage had been “annulled.” So, do I count that, or no?
My third family was my mom and her second husband, Roy. He had four kids, and they lived with us for a year, so that was cool having two more brothers. But that marriage only lasted a year too.
Next was my fourth family, which I inherited when my dad married his third wife Joni. She had two daughters and they were married long enough that I came to think of them as sisters. That marriage lasted about 10 years.
My fifth family was my mom and her third husband Dan. He had two little girls who we didn’t see that often, but were fun to have around when they visited. This marriage lasted about 12 years, I bet.
I guess my sixth family would be my dad’s fourth wife Fran. She has two daughters that I see every once in a while. Hard to think of them as sisters really, since we only knew each other as adults.
My seventh family would be my mom’s fourth husband Buzz. He was a good guy (passed away now) and has two sons that I’ve met a couple times.
So if I throw in-laws in the mix, I’m looking at six “fathers” and six “mothers” in my short little life. Final count for siblings (including step-siblings, and in-laws) seems to be nine brothers and 17 sisters. That is, unless I’m missing some. At some point I figure I ought to just round it up to 30 and call it good, right?
When I was a young adult, and about to be married for the first time, I worried a lot about the kind of husband I would be - And about the kind of father I would be. I worried that maybe I was tainted by my past and that I had no right to be a father because I didn’t have a clear picture of any male role models in my own life.
But when that first baby boy arrived, in addition to the panic I felt at being a real father, I found I could tap into an inner strength that I hadn’t ever considered before. I did have some role models for fatherhood I could try to emulate from time to time.
I could try to be as loving at Andy Taylor. I could try to be as sincere and wise as Steve Douglas. I could try to be as fair to my children as Ben Cartwright. And most of all, I could try to be as adventurous as Dr. John Robinson.
I found I could change diapers, play on the floor with action figures and sing a child to sleep. I discovered I could coach soccer and baseball, read to my children, or pretend the floor was made of hot lava. I realized I could tell stories, act like a fierce cheetah, or play basketball in the driveway.
I wonder how my children will look back someday and think about their dad. What things will they be nostalgic for? Which of my sayings will they use on their own children? What will they do to be a better dad than I’ve been?
Maybe they’ll compare me to Billy Ray Cyrus or Danny Tanner, or even Jesse Katsopolis. We may not have gotten lost in a spaceship together, but in my own defense, I think they’ll look back on the times we had together as the best times of their lives.
I think I would, if I had a dad at home when I was young.
Although I wasn’t a great TV watcher as a child, the shows I did watch tended to be a lot like the neat and pressed world of Dick and Jane. Opie Taylor may not have had a mom, but he had his Aunt Bea right there for him. My Three Sons may not have had a mom, but they had their Uncle Charlie. The Cartwright boys may not have had a mom, but they had Hop Sing. Hey, now that I think about it, my family was the functional one. At least I didn’t have an old Chinese man for a mother figure.
But without a doubt, the best family show for my generation was Lost In Space. The Robinson family had it all: A perfect mom (so perfect in fact, she was the same mom in Lassie), a tough (but fair) dad, two daughters and a son, and - best of all - a robot. What could be better than a family from the future with their own robot? And he wasn’t a wimpy cartoon-robot like the Jetsons had. The Robinson’s robot could get tipsy, be patronizing and lovable all in the same episode. With his power-pack removed, he was useless, and was oblivious to everything around him. But best of all, if you really got him angry, he could shoot lasers out of those crab-like claws of his. The robot was sort of like your 40 year old confirmed bachelor uncle, if your uncle could shot lasers from crab-like claws.
But wait, that’s not all. To make this family even cooler, they rode around in space with an extra dad-like guy named Don, plus a bad guy they never seemed to be able to ditch, Dr. Smith.
Instead of wonderful adventures on remarkably similar-looking planets, nowadays we have reality television. We can be a fly on the wall of normal American families like the Osbournes, the Hulk Hogans, the Gene Simmons and the Kardashians. But back in the day, only cool boys like Will Robinson got TV shows about their family. If Hollywood would have made a TV show about my family, they certainly could have employed a large cast of actors.
My original family consisted of my mom and dad, me, my brother and three sisters. Really, a very regular sort of group for the 1960’s. But then things started getting interesting.
When my folks split up, my dad married a woman named Judy, so my second family would have been her and her two children, but by the time I met them my dad told me the marriage had been “annulled.” So, do I count that, or no?
My third family was my mom and her second husband, Roy. He had four kids, and they lived with us for a year, so that was cool having two more brothers. But that marriage only lasted a year too.
Next was my fourth family, which I inherited when my dad married his third wife Joni. She had two daughters and they were married long enough that I came to think of them as sisters. That marriage lasted about 10 years.
My fifth family was my mom and her third husband Dan. He had two little girls who we didn’t see that often, but were fun to have around when they visited. This marriage lasted about 12 years, I bet.
I guess my sixth family would be my dad’s fourth wife Fran. She has two daughters that I see every once in a while. Hard to think of them as sisters really, since we only knew each other as adults.
My seventh family would be my mom’s fourth husband Buzz. He was a good guy (passed away now) and has two sons that I’ve met a couple times.
So if I throw in-laws in the mix, I’m looking at six “fathers” and six “mothers” in my short little life. Final count for siblings (including step-siblings, and in-laws) seems to be nine brothers and 17 sisters. That is, unless I’m missing some. At some point I figure I ought to just round it up to 30 and call it good, right?
When I was a young adult, and about to be married for the first time, I worried a lot about the kind of husband I would be - And about the kind of father I would be. I worried that maybe I was tainted by my past and that I had no right to be a father because I didn’t have a clear picture of any male role models in my own life.
But when that first baby boy arrived, in addition to the panic I felt at being a real father, I found I could tap into an inner strength that I hadn’t ever considered before. I did have some role models for fatherhood I could try to emulate from time to time.
I could try to be as loving at Andy Taylor. I could try to be as sincere and wise as Steve Douglas. I could try to be as fair to my children as Ben Cartwright. And most of all, I could try to be as adventurous as Dr. John Robinson.
I found I could change diapers, play on the floor with action figures and sing a child to sleep. I discovered I could coach soccer and baseball, read to my children, or pretend the floor was made of hot lava. I realized I could tell stories, act like a fierce cheetah, or play basketball in the driveway.
I wonder how my children will look back someday and think about their dad. What things will they be nostalgic for? Which of my sayings will they use on their own children? What will they do to be a better dad than I’ve been?
Maybe they’ll compare me to Billy Ray Cyrus or Danny Tanner, or even Jesse Katsopolis. We may not have gotten lost in a spaceship together, but in my own defense, I think they’ll look back on the times we had together as the best times of their lives.
I think I would, if I had a dad at home when I was young.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Steve Strong: Baseball in LA
There’s nothing better for young boys than having a day out at the ball park. That’s where memories are made. Fathers and sons get to cheer for the same team, sing the same songs, and eat the same food – perhaps the only time in their life they’ll really be on the same page!
I became a Dodgers fan because: a) I lived in L.A. for eight years, and b) growing up I was a Tigers fan, so the National League Dodgers were no threat whatsoever. When I lived in L.A., I tried to attend 10-15 games a year, and when I moved to Central California I had to cut that back to one or two games a summer.
In the summer of 1995 I took the four-hour road trip from Fresno to L.A. to watch the Dodgers play the Cubs. We timed the drive to get to the park an hour before the first pitch, and planned to drive home at the end of the game.
With me in our group was my wife, my five-year-old son, his five-year-old best friend and my four-month-old baby boy. I bought five seats so we’d have plenty of room for the baby and we could sort of spread out.
We got to our seats early, and of course the two five-year-olds wanted all kinds of cotton candy, hot dogs, Skittles, and anything else that would make them more wired and hyper than they would normally be.
Now, you should know that Los Angeles is full of people like me who grew up elsewhere, so you see a lot of visitor’s apparel in the bleachers. In the seats in front of us was a real Southern California Classic. They were a husband and wife - she was decked out in a complete Cubs uniform, and had Walkman headphones on. Yes, she looked like a female Steve Bartman. Her husband, on the other hand, couldn’t have been less interested in anything, as he slouched there reading a novel.
As the game started, I noticed they were turning around and looking at me a lot, and I had no idea why. Turns out they were irked that the two five-year-old boys who were hyped up and full of energy and were “kicking” their seats from the back as they were generally horsing around.
When I figured out what the dirty looks were for, I told the boys to knock it off and control their legs. But you know… trying to get a couple of kindergarteners to control their legs in those seats that are too big for them anyway is like trying to get Mark McGuire to admit performance enhancing drugs actually enhanced his performance.
It’s just not going to happen.
To her credit, the woman in front of us was pretty cool. She cast all her nasty glances to her husband. And, of course, he then started getting confrontational with me.
He would turn around and tell me to make the kids stop, and then go back to reading his book. He would take his arm and kind of swipe at the kid’s legs, and then go back to reading his book. He would make a big grunting noise and lean way forward, and then go back to reading his book.
Mind you, all this time I’m trying to take care of the baby, keep the Kindergartners under control, and watch a bit of the game myself. My wife? She was out of it completely!
When the guy in front of me couldn’t take it anymore, he stood up, turned around and got in my face and yelled, “This is no place to take children!”
I was shocked at how illogical that sounded. I said, “I think it’s the perfect place to take children. Baseball is all about children. This is where they’re supposed to be.”
The guy scolded me and said, “This is an activity for adults only. I’m going to report you to the ushers.”
I was so shocked, I said, “You’re going to call the ushers and tell them I’m not supposed to be sitting here with children? Oh, I’ve got to hear this. In fact, let me call them for you. This is going to be great.”
At this point I think even the bookworm realized how stupid that sounded – and what made the whole thing especially ridiculous was the fact that the stadium was less than half full! He and his wife removed themselves a few rows away and lived happily ever after.
I, on the other hand, still had the misery of taking care of the baby, two hyper five-year-old boys, and managing the grumpiness of my wife. So for me… no difference really.
But I think we all learned a beautiful lesson that day: I think Rodney King said it best, “Can’t we all just get along – and sit as far away from others as possible?”
I became a Dodgers fan because: a) I lived in L.A. for eight years, and b) growing up I was a Tigers fan, so the National League Dodgers were no threat whatsoever. When I lived in L.A., I tried to attend 10-15 games a year, and when I moved to Central California I had to cut that back to one or two games a summer.
In the summer of 1995 I took the four-hour road trip from Fresno to L.A. to watch the Dodgers play the Cubs. We timed the drive to get to the park an hour before the first pitch, and planned to drive home at the end of the game.
With me in our group was my wife, my five-year-old son, his five-year-old best friend and my four-month-old baby boy. I bought five seats so we’d have plenty of room for the baby and we could sort of spread out.
We got to our seats early, and of course the two five-year-olds wanted all kinds of cotton candy, hot dogs, Skittles, and anything else that would make them more wired and hyper than they would normally be.
Now, you should know that Los Angeles is full of people like me who grew up elsewhere, so you see a lot of visitor’s apparel in the bleachers. In the seats in front of us was a real Southern California Classic. They were a husband and wife - she was decked out in a complete Cubs uniform, and had Walkman headphones on. Yes, she looked like a female Steve Bartman. Her husband, on the other hand, couldn’t have been less interested in anything, as he slouched there reading a novel.
As the game started, I noticed they were turning around and looking at me a lot, and I had no idea why. Turns out they were irked that the two five-year-old boys who were hyped up and full of energy and were “kicking” their seats from the back as they were generally horsing around.
When I figured out what the dirty looks were for, I told the boys to knock it off and control their legs. But you know… trying to get a couple of kindergarteners to control their legs in those seats that are too big for them anyway is like trying to get Mark McGuire to admit performance enhancing drugs actually enhanced his performance.
It’s just not going to happen.
To her credit, the woman in front of us was pretty cool. She cast all her nasty glances to her husband. And, of course, he then started getting confrontational with me.
He would turn around and tell me to make the kids stop, and then go back to reading his book. He would take his arm and kind of swipe at the kid’s legs, and then go back to reading his book. He would make a big grunting noise and lean way forward, and then go back to reading his book.
Mind you, all this time I’m trying to take care of the baby, keep the Kindergartners under control, and watch a bit of the game myself. My wife? She was out of it completely!
When the guy in front of me couldn’t take it anymore, he stood up, turned around and got in my face and yelled, “This is no place to take children!”
I was shocked at how illogical that sounded. I said, “I think it’s the perfect place to take children. Baseball is all about children. This is where they’re supposed to be.”
The guy scolded me and said, “This is an activity for adults only. I’m going to report you to the ushers.”
I was so shocked, I said, “You’re going to call the ushers and tell them I’m not supposed to be sitting here with children? Oh, I’ve got to hear this. In fact, let me call them for you. This is going to be great.”
At this point I think even the bookworm realized how stupid that sounded – and what made the whole thing especially ridiculous was the fact that the stadium was less than half full! He and his wife removed themselves a few rows away and lived happily ever after.
I, on the other hand, still had the misery of taking care of the baby, two hyper five-year-old boys, and managing the grumpiness of my wife. So for me… no difference really.
But I think we all learned a beautiful lesson that day: I think Rodney King said it best, “Can’t we all just get along – and sit as far away from others as possible?”
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