Just a Po' Dumb Ol' Country Boy

I had lunch today with a very nice Yankee.  Smart, too, since she had the sense to marry a man from North Carolina.  Though the Bible is against the marriage of Southerners and Yankees (see Second Corinthians, Chapter 6, Verse 14), I think it is the only chance the South has of ever understanding these people.

Liz (I’ll call her that, since that’s her name) thinks her husband talks too slow.  According to her, every time she asks him a question, she can count to ten before he answers.  While she thinks that southerners are slow of wit, I think the poor guy is just mentally checking his answer for loopholes and incriminating content.  Yankee or not, Liz is still a wife.

There is a whole building full of fast-talking Yankees where I work at Enema U.  I think we Southerners are outnumbered about as bad as at the Battle of Pittsburg Landing (occasionally called “Shiloh”).  Each and every one of those Yankees seems to think being born in the South is synonymous with mental retardation.  As far as I’m concerned, this is a good thing.   It is simply amazing the things you can get away with by just saying, “Aw shucks.  I’m just a po’ dumb ol’ country boy.”  It doesn’t even matter how many times you use the line, those “po’ dumb ol’ carpetbaggers” are predisposed to believe it.

Funny thing is that, even as the carpetbaggers are poor-mouthing the country folk, little by little, they are picking up our ways.  Take Liz, for example.  A couple of years ago when she came here, she thought black pepper was a spice instead of a garnish, but not that long ago, I saw her eat a stuffed jalapeno—hell, she had even made it.  Even today, she invoked the ‘great southern curse’ while describing her neighbor.  For those of you who don’t know--the great Southern curse is where you can, with a clear conscience, call someone a lowdown chicken thief who cheats at cards and steals from the collection plate--as long you end the sentence with the phrase: “bless his heart.”

Evidently, we Southerners can get away with this foolish country disguise forever, since our new neighbors and friends never seem to learn that we can turn the “country” on and off like a spigot.  Hell, some of my new friends will even read this and still marvel every time I manage to show up with shoes on.

All this kind of reminds me of the city slicker who went for a drive out in the country in his new Mercedes.  As he went around a long curve, he met a deer standing in the middle of the road. The man frantically swerved the car, missing the deer by only a few inches. Unfortunately, in the process, the car ended up in a ditch, stuck deeply in the mud.

Nearby, the man saw a light from a farmhouse. He walked up the driveway and knocked on the door, which was soon answered by a kindly-looking farmer. The man explained his situation to the farmer, who said, “Don’t worry--I think I can help you.”

The farmer led the man to his barn where he got into his pride and joy--a John Deere 9630 4wd tractor with a deluxe cab, an active seat, and 800/70r38 duals.  After driving to the Mercedes stuck in the ditch, he slowly backed the tractor up to the car, put the emergency brake on the tractor and jumped down with a large heavy chain.  After attaching one end to the pintle hook on the back of the tractor, he began walking towards the luxury car stuck in the mud.

“Wait!” yelled the Yankee.  “You’re not going to tow my $90,000 Mercedes with that tractor, are you?”

The farmer looked at the man for a long ten count, then turned and began walking slowly back to his tractor.  “No,” he said.  “I’m not going to tow your $90,000 car with my $250,000 tractor.”

That ignorant Yankee thought everything in the country was low-class, backwards, and simple.  In so doing, he revealed that it was he that was classless, backwards, and simple-minded--bless his heart!

The History of New Mexico - Part 1

Part 1 -- The Beginning

For a very long time, New Mexico just was.  It was kind of boring.  Actually, it is still rather like that--most of New Mexico is still kind of empty.  There is very little difference between the way the state used to look and the way it looks now, except we used to have grass and more trees.

The state had grass, even though there were a lot of animals that ate our grass--I guess they were on a diet, because they never seemed to eat all of it.  There were a whole lot of camels, horses, giant buffalo, and wooly mammoths.  It is amazing that with all these rather large animals, there still seemed to be lots of grass.

The grass is gone now.  What seemed to be an endless supply of feed for giant elephants was not nearly enough grass for cattle.  The strange thing is that New Mexico is not really even much of a ranching state.  We don't really raise cattle for food--they are more like pets for men who like big hats and even bigger pickups.

And some of the trees are gone.  Many of our mountains used to have trees, but a few of those peaks are bare now.  Lots of trees got cut down by settlers, and as the trees went, so did the thin layer of topsoil.  If we wait long enough, they might come back, (say a couple of thousand years from now).

Yes, most of what New Mexico has now has been here a very long time:  Sand, sun, and a wind that has always seemed to come from the west.  New Mexico is dotted with old volcanoes, and if you look at them, the east, or downwind side always seems to be the bigger side.

Then, all of a sudden, there were little groups of people.  Somewhere about 15-25,000 years ago (unless you ask Dr. Unleashed, anyway) Hunter Gatherer groups began wandering through the state.  During the Wisconsin Glacier Age, so much water was tied up in the form of ice that the level of the oceans dropped dramatically, exposing the land between Siberia and Alaska.  We know this for certain because Sarah Palin saw it from her house.

Anthropologists called this a land bridge, which is a particularly poor choice, since the "bridge" was about 1200 miles wide.  That ain't a bridge, it's just land.  And those Hunter Gatherers never knew they were making a journey to anyplace new, they were just following those wooly mammoths.   The elephants probably knew they were going someplace new, since each of them took a trunk.

Hunter Gatherers had a perfect lifestyle--they hunted when they were hungry, gathered nuts and berries when they found them, and did positively no discernible work when they didn't have to.  Most of the time they sat under a tree and scratched.  Occasionally, more than one kind of itch got scratched.

No houses, no mortgages, no fields to tend--what a life!  When you ran out of food, you grabbed your spear and went hunting for elephant--AND when you killed one it was a giant barbecue!  I'm not sure how long a group of 25--the optimum number for hunter gatherer groups throughout history--could live off an elephant, but I'm sure such a kill dramatically increased the amount of quality scratching time.

We know this happened in New Mexico, because we have found the remains of the hunts, in places like Clovis and Folsom, where spear points have been found.  And the dried bleached bones of a few barbecued elephants have been found, too--a few still bearing the markings of the  stone tools used in the butchering.

This sounds pretty close to perfection to me--my goal in life is to be a hunter gatherer.  According to my wife, I've been one for years.   She may be right, because I have noticed a marked difference in the way we go about acquiring possessions.  Say my wife needs a pair of shoes (evidently, someone has been saying that a lot!).  She goes to  the mall (think of that as a forest) and will try on shoes at every store in the mall before going back to the first store she entered and buying the first pair of shoes she tried on.  Chances are, a week later, she will return to this resource site and acquire another pair of the exact same shoes, only in a different color.  This is a classic example of gathering.

On the other hand, I do things differently.  When I need something, I call ahead to the store to check availability.  This is a scouting report.  Then I drive to the mall, go into the store, locate the item, kill it with a credit card, take it outside and tie it onto my pickup truck, and drive home.   Total time round trip--15 minutes.  This is called hunting.

Almost everything about hunter gatherers is perfect.  A varied diet, plenty of leisure time, and lots of outdoor exercise.  The only small drawback was the piddling little problem that by the time they got to be my age, they had been dead for a quarter century.

Well, there were a few other problems: about 11,000 years ago, the weather changed again.  Even though Al Gore wasn't there to make money out of it, the weather got warmer, the ice melted, the seas rose, and a long dry spell began.   Either the weather or over-hunting meant the end of many species, including the giant wooly mammoth, the saber-toothed non-house cat, and the giant bison.  (Spear Control!  Spear Control!)

With the loss of large game, our tribe had to adapt, find new methods, and think a little outside the ...cave?  They needed a new approach.  They could hunt smaller game, learn to use snares, perfect fishing, and even depend a little more on gathering.  Probably hunter gatherer groups all over the world were dropping like flies, but a few, (quite a few) figured it out and survived.   For a while, hunter gatherers ate damn near anything in a desperate gamble to survive.  To them, five miles of highway road kill would have looked like a gourmet drive up restaurant.

And a few of them began to engage in proto-agriculture, which is just a fancy way of saying they maximized their resource sites.  Someone might remember that cattails grew along the bank ten miles upstream, so they might want to transplant a few plants downstream.

Let me give you a little proto-agriculture homework.  This fall, go to your local feed store and ask to buy about two pounds of seed corn.  You may have to repeat that request a few times before they believe you, since feed stores are used to selling that commodity by the hundred-weight.   They probably lose more than two pounds a day to crows and rats, so they might just sweep up a couple of handfuls and give it to you.  Thank them politely, and tell them you are working on a science project.  Actually, it won't matter what you say--they're going to think you're a loon.

Divide up your seed corn into 7 piles and start driving around your county.  Stay within 20 miles of your home and find 7 out-of-the-way places to plant your seed corn.  The edge of a golf course, a hundred yards away from the interstate, or the garden of the local library.  Pick seven spots at random for your impromptu farm, then forget they are there until spring.  Then go inspect your crops.  Chances are that at least one of your sites has somehow, miraculously, grown corn.  The other six are probably as dead as that wooly mammoth.

Our hunter gatherers did not want to become farmers.  Farming is hard work, and hunter gatherers had the kind of aversion to hard work that you normally associate with preachers and senators.  But they were going to be forced into it, screaming and fighting all the way.  And it was not their fault, it was population pressure.  Remember all that non-scratching activity under the trees?  Even though it took a long time, one day, our hunter gatherers climbed to the top of the next hill, looked down into the valley and saw a large group of hairy men down there.  Prudence demanded a change of course.

Unfortunately, no matter which way our band went, they found a group blocking their path.  Whatever valley they happened to be in, there was where they had to stay.

Of course, they are going to develop agriculture, but I will talk about that again in two weeks, when we continue with the History of New Mexico.

By the way, there may be hope yet for that furry 'phanty: after a ten thousand year absence, the Wooly Mammoth is considering a come back tour.  Having discovered enough frozen carcasses to provide adequate DNA material, scientists around the world are working on cloning the animals.  And if they are successful, the critters are going to need a whole lot of big empty to live in.  I think I may know a place that might suit them.  Besides, I may want to hunt them.

If You Plant It

I listened to a great lecture this week by one of my colleagues: “The Four Great Chinese Inventions”.  These were gunpowder, the egg roll, paper, and rice wine.  Or something like that—I wasn't really listening all that closely to Dr. Holland--I was just waiting until it was my turn to talk.  I learned this behavior in faculty meetings.

Actually, like my students, I smiled a lot and nodded my head periodically while I let my mind wander out of the classroom door, down the street and out in the fields and pastures that surround Enema U.  We are an ag school, so it isn’t that far to travel—or at least not currently.  If the Board of Regents get its way, we will pave over the last of the fields, build another parking lot, erect a second indoor equestrian center, or throw up a building to house the world’s largest ball of string that some rich—and bat shit crazy—alumnus gave us. 

While I don’t know for sure, I imagine the Dean of Agriculture has nightmares that the Regents will suddenly want him to convert the ag program to ‘virtual farming’.  We could become the University of Farmville. Don’t laugh--I bet you that even as you read this, one of my colleagues is writing a grant proposal to the Department of Agriculture for a manual on how to safely drive the virtual tractor on the virtual farm.  And if he can work the words ‘social justice’ into the title of that grant, the check is as good as written.

No, I wasn't really listening as Dr. Holland droned on about the Tang Dynasty.  (Who knew?  I thought NASA invented that.)  I was wondering why the seed drill wasn't included in that list of great inventions.  For those of you who don’t work at an ag school, a seed drill is a device that plants seeds at a uniform depth in the ground and at a uniform distance between the seeds.  Without a seed drill, the farmer is forced to wander around the field, throwing seeds into the air, plowing the fields a second time, all the while hoping that some of the seeds end up where they more or less should be.  Most of the seeds don’t cooperate—so the farmer has to work twice as hard to produce much less of a yield.

Without a seed drill, the population of China never would have grown so rapidly.  Without an abundance of food, China never would have had large numbers of people turning their attentions away from agriculture to perfecting art or technology.  Without the seed drill, China never would have developed those four great inventions: the paper umbrella, printing, kung fu movies, and the compass.

China invented the seed drill 2200 years ago, and agriculture immediately made a great leap forward.  In Europe, a good working seed drill wasn't perfected until 1701, by Jethro Tull, more than 1900 years later.  While this was an important invention that started the European agricultural revolution, today no one would remember him if he hadn't started a progressive blues band.

In America, we seem to take agriculture for granted.  (Or, possibly, we just don’t care.)  As long as the supermarket shelves are full, where it came from is not important.  While millions in the world go hungry, the average American is so confident of his food supply that he only keeps a three-day supply of food in his house—at most.

Did you recognize the caricature at the top of this post?  Need a hint?  Well, in an era where the Nobel Peace prize is occasionally awarded for dubious political achievements, this man won his (along with his Presidential Medal for Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal) for saving a billion people from starvation—so far. 

I cannot imagine why every university throughout the world does not have a statue of this man.  Certainly every ag school should have one.  This shy, modest man was Norman Borlaug, who worked extensively in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to develop high-yield and drought-resistant strains of wheat.  Without a doubt, he doubled the yields of farms throughout Asia and Latin America.  Yet, when he died three years ago in Texas, most Americans had never heard of him.

Even a great ag school like Enema U (a school wise enough to pay me to drift off during Dr. Holland’s lecture) doesn't have a course on the history of agriculture!

The Jaw Bone of an Ass

Briefly, years ago, I entertained the idea of becoming an archaeologist.  Several things deterred me, such as the inevitable conclusion that while a degree in history might lead to a career involving a deep fat fryer and a lot of potatoes, this was still preferable to living in a VW camper permanently parked in a desert (that being the usual result of a degree in anthropology/archaeology).

Eventually I decided to get both degrees, and sure enough, I do seem to be parked permanently in a desert.  While I was a grad student, I tried to visit as many active archaeology sites as I could.  Eventually, this led to me meeting Dr. Robbie Unleashed.  At least that is what I am going to call the distinguished scholar (it doesn’t seem fair to use his real name since he can’t fight back).  I have no doubt that most archaeologists will figure out who I am talking about, and probably a few of them will want to challenge me to a duel with Marshalltown trowels--the preferred weapon of the true archaeologist.

Don’t get me wrong--I am an admirer of Dr. Unleashed, who had a long and distinguished career, winning awards from the Sherman Wayback Museum, writing several brilliant books, and conducting famous digs in Turkey, China, and New Mexico.   Robbie Unleashed was always controversial, more than a little irascible, and constantly outspoken.  He died in Central America at the age of 82 while visiting Mayan sites.  I want to die like Robbie--peacefully in my sleep--not screaming my head off like the passenger in his car.

When I heard that a famous archaeologist had a project underway about two hours from my home, I immediately began maneuvering for permission to visit the site.  Eventually, one of my professors arranged for me to drive over on a weekend and visit the dig, where I was to get a personal tour by Dr. Unleashed.  I gassed up my 4-wheel drive truck, drove to the motel, and picked up the distinguished scholar.  It was a long drive through the desert to the remote site that Dr. Unleashed was working on, and along the way he explained his theory about some of his controversial discoveries.

Most anthropologists believed that humans migrated to the New World from Siberia about 12-15,000 years ago during the Wisconsin Glacier Age, when so much water was bound up in ice that the level of the world’s seas had dropped dramatically.  This meant that a 1200-mile-wide “bridge” linked the two continents.  A band of hunter-gatherers following game crossed the bridge and inadvertently settled both North and South America.

“Wrong!” said Robbie Unleashed.  “I have proof that man lived in southern New Mexico at least 60,000 years ago.”  Perhaps now would be a good time to mention that Robbie could find a 25,000 year old Coke bottle while attending a backyard barbecue party.  Still, he claimed to have proof at the site, and he was going to show it to me.

After a long drive across the desert, we came to the cliff where Robbie was conducting a dig inside a rock cave he called Pinche Cuevo.  This is Spanish for “Home of the Nice Guy”.  (Or something like that.)  We climbed the ladders to the cave and carefully ducked under the low opening.  While the cave was not very large, the contents were astounding.  I vividly remember looking at straw sandals and the remains of a cooking hearth.  Carbon dating had determined that most of the material from the top layer of stratigraphy dated back between 300 to 500 years, meaning that most likely this cave had been used by the Apache right about the time Columbus was getting lost.

Lower strata contained artifacts dating much earlier--indicating that this cave had been used for at least centuries, and (according to Robbie) millennia upon millennia.  The question was just how old those lower strata were for it was at one of these lower levels that Robbie had discovered his prize.

“Look!” he commanded and pointed toward a fossilized bone.  It was a strange looking fossil, and certainly not one from a deer or any animal that I had ever hunted.  While it was obviously a knuckle bone, it was not from any animal I knew about.

“That is from a camelop.”  Robbie explained.  “And carbon dating says that this camel died over 50,000 years ago—yet we discovered the bone inside this cave.   This is obvious proof of human habitation reaching far earlier than previously proposed.”

For the Education and English majors among you, I should point out that the camelop did indeed live in North America, becoming extinct about 10,000 years ago from the effects of climate change and probable over-hunting by the descendants of those hunter-gatherers who got lost up in the Arctic.  (My wife, The Doc, says the length of that last sentence is proof that a German is perched somewhere in my family tree.)  The camelop was bigger than today’s camels and would indeed have been hunted in southern New Mexico.  You may have heard them called by a more common—and unfortunate—name: the “Wal-Mart Camel” after the fossilized remains of one was found while digging the foundation of a new superstore in Phoenix a few years ago.

Looking back at this incident, I would really like to think that I disagreed with Robbie because I had been taught to always challenge and question my teachers.  (This is something I am still trying to teach my students—just last week I taught my students about the giant wooden rabbit used at the battle of Troy.) An alternate theory is that I challenged Dr. Unleashed because I subconsciously realized that extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.  Unfortunately, I probably argued with the famed archaeologist because there was more than one irascible pinche man in that cave.

“Yes…that could be.”  I heard myself say.  “Or maybe 500 years ago, an Apache saw a weird bone out in the desert and brought it home with him.”

Boy, it was quiet in that cave for a few seconds.  Then Robbie blew up like a slow moving frog on the interstate. 

“GET OUT OF MY CAVE!” he screamed.  “How dare you?!  Get out!  Get out!  Go away!”

No matter how hard I tried to apologize, Robbie just kept screaming for me to leave.  He was furious, and looking back on it, I was being rude to a man who had gone out of his way to do me the huge favor of guiding me through his site.  I left as fast as I could, and the last I saw of Dr. Unleashed, he was sitting inside that cave.

I wonder how long it took him to remember that I was his ride back to the motel.

Please Don’t Let the Students Read This

A little more than forty years ago, a horrible injustice was done in Houston.  Lee Otis Johnson, a student activist, supposedly gave an undercover policeman a single marijuana cigarette.  Despite the fact that the joint was a gift--an act that Johnson denied had ever occurred--he was arrested for “selling” drugs.  A new district attorney (seeking to further his political career) personally prosecuted a case that normally would have been dealt with by an Assistant District Attorney so fresh out of law school that he hadn't yet learned how to play golf.

Why would a district attorney prosecute such a small case?  Did I mention that the defendant was black?  Hell, he was a Black Panther.  And worse, he had been a voice for civil rights at Texas Southern University!

The district attorney pulled out all the stops and passionately demanded that the jury give Johnson 15 years in jail.  The jury, equally impassioned, gave Lee Otis Johnson 30 years.    Thirty years for a single marijuana cigarette—even after more than forty years, this stings to even think about.  

Naturally, this became a cause among the students.  “Free Lee Otis” became the rallying cry on campuses in many towns in Texas.  There were bumper stickers, signs, and a lot of chanting at protest marches.  We students wanted Johnson freed!  We wanted civil rights!  We wanted an end to irrational drug laws.  It turned out that it didn’t matter what we wanted: what we got was a harsh education in reality.

Governor Preston Smith came to the University of Houston and gave a speech.  For the life of me, I can’t remember what he talked about.  Probably omething about hosing the homeless and two legs being better than four—it was an election year.  Not that any of the students were listening--we were too busy shouting.   “FREE LEE OTIS!”  “FREE LEE OTIS!”  “FREE LEE OTIS!”  God, it felt so good to be young and involved.  I can’t remember, but we were either passionately brilliant or brilliantly passionate.

Then Governor Smith put his hand over the microphone, turned to his aide and asked—loud enough for all of us to hear through the public address system—“Why are they yelling ‘frijoles’?”

That crowd got as quiet as a funeral—aptly, it turned out—as a lot of young idealism died right there.  The shouts stopped as wide-eyed and freshly-matured students began slowly leaving the auditorium.  We had peeked into the back room of the political butcher shop and caught a glimpse of how sausage was really made. The process was ugly and quite a few of us became social vegetarians.

The conviction was eventually overturned and Lee Otis Johnson got out of jail after serving four years.  He lived a rather quiet life and passed away ten years ago.  Very few attended his funeral.  On hearing of Johnson’s death, the former district attorney told reporters:  "Times have changed so much that the sentence he received would not make sense in accordance with today,"   It is nice to see that one thing has not changed: the district attorney is still a jackass—that thirty year sentence makes no sense in any age.

It has been an interesting week at Enema U, a week that has frequently reminded me of my sudden disillusionment at the hands of Governor Smith.  Increasingly, the faculty seems angry, but it is a little difficult to understand exactly why.  Is it the sudden realization that after years of neglect, the state pension fund has a wealth of empty promises and not nearly enough assets?  Or is it the gloomy acknowledgement that this may be another hard money year when it comes to raises?   Or maybe everyone is just tired of the administration of Moose and Squirrel being about as organized as a soup sandwich?  Whatever the cause, you can see all the evidence you want on the faculty email listserv.

A listserv is a group mailing list where any member can mail a message to the email server and every member gets a copy of the message.  Then any of the recipients can respond.  Run properly, it is a great tool for communication; it is a public bulletin board where anyone can voice his opinion.  This same tool, when given to faculty members turns a few of them into angry children with magic markers scrawling graffiti on a public restroom wall.  Thank God only the faculty can read these messages.

I think it would be safe to generalize that the vast majority of the messages come from the same tiny handful of people, say a dozen people out of a total faculty of almost a thousand.  If each member were restricted to only a single comment a month, it would improve the quality of the postings immensely.  

What would happen if our students could read these postings?  Would they suddenly question why so much time and money was spent on learning from people who cannot even hold civil conversations among themselves?  Would they suddenly silently stand and slowly walk out of our classrooms?  I can just imagine the students whispering among themselves; “With so many important issues out there, why are they talking about frijoles?”

Packing It In

My one true talent is falling asleep.  I have no musical ability, no artistic talent, and few out of the ordinary capabilities.  But I can fall asleep on a concrete floor within minutes.  And in a bed, when I say goodnight to The Doc, if she doesn’t answer me quickly, I won’t be awake to hear her answer.

I don’t think I would trade this skill for the ability to play the piano like Van Cliburn.   Hell, even Van Cliburn has to sleep, and I have a CD of him playing the piano.

Tonight, I feel generous and will share the secret with you—why not?  It’s free, and so far, I have shared the method with dozens of people over the years, and not one of them has ever tried using it.  I sincerely doubt that you will, either.

Forty years ago, I was working my way through college as a night watchman at the Shamrock Hilton Hotel in Houston.  It was a great job for a student with few job skills, I could study in solitude and all I was expected to do was stay in a guard shack and keep an eye on the alley.  I did this job so well, that even now, years later, though the hotel is completely gone, that alley is still there and in perfect shape.

One of the problems with working the ‘graveyard shift’ is that your biological clock needs constant rewinding.  It is hard to sleep when the sun is out and everyone else is up and making noise.  (And it is impossible to find a restaurant that will serve you dinner while everyone else is eating breakfast, but that is a different story.)  Worse, when you have a couple of days off, the tendency is to stay up all day and sleep at night like everyone else, thus re-breaking your own sleep cycle.

One of my co-workers was an elderly man who had been working the front desk for decades and seemed to have no problem with this weird sleep cycle.  And when I asked him how he did this, he told me it was a form of self-hypnosis.  At this, I almost stopped listening.  Hypnosis was, and still is, mostly the kind of bullshit that is relegated to infomercials and quacks too stupid to pass the test to be a chiropractor. 

To be polite, I kept listening, and it didn’t take too long before I was interested.  I’m not sure this is even hypnosis; I think it might be nothing more than developing a habit.  What my friend did was simple—when he shut his eyes and tried to go to sleep, he started thinking about his next spring garden.  He would imagine getting the tiller out of the garage, turning the soil, and planting the vegetables.   He would imagine deciding how many rows of corn, where to plant the tomatoes, and how to fertilize his crop.  He would keep this up until he finally drifted off to sleep.

According to my friend, he had no measureable success for weeks, then for months it didn’t work very well, but before long, as soon as he started to mentally work on that garden, he fell asleep.

I was way too young to think about a garden, that sounded like something that would interest some ancient person-say about 30.  While I wasn’t interested in tomatoes, I was interested in traveling.  I longed to travel through South America, Europe, or damn near anywhere but the all-expense paid tour of Southeast Asia my government was planning if I flunked out of school.  And flunking out was a real possibility if I didn’t start getting more sleep some place outside of my freshman English class.  (Though I have to admit, that even today I wonder about some classes at Enema U.  If they don’t want students to fall asleep, why do they let a jackass drone through a lecture?  Sleep is a very objective student evaluation about the quality of teaching.)

So, every time I went to bed, I would plan how to pack a suitcase.  I would imagine that I was about to go to Paris for a month—what should I pack?  How many shirts should I take?  Should I wear my cowboy boots on the plane and pack the tennis shoes?  Mentally, I would carefully stuff that suitcase. 

I didn’t always go to Paris; I mentally packed for trips all over the world.  Sometimes, I was packing for a hunting trip, or a hiking trip through the Grand Canyon.  The destination didn’t matter, and I didn’t think about the destination much, I just mentally made a list of the things I would take and imagined packing the bag.

For a very long time, it didn’t work.  Some nights, I packed that bag several times while I tossed and turned in bed.  I was beginning to think it was an absolutely idiotic idea and probably only kept it up because I was stubborn.  

Then suddenly, it started working.  And it worked very well.  I rarely get that bag anymore.  Hell, most of the time I have mentally placed the suitcase on top of the bed and I’m just opening it up when….Zzzzzzzzzz.  And the alarm clock goes off.

This really pisses my wife, The Doc, off.  First, she has a horrible time going to sleep.  Now The Doc is a great person with the patience of a saint.  There is not a mean bone in her body and she has an alabaster conscience.  By comparison, my conscience was misplaced in the dark and hasn’t yet been located.  (See last week’s blog for an example.)  In spite of this, most nights she has a horrible time falling asleep while I snore blissfully beside her. 

Secondly, as it turns out, there is a side benefit.  It takes The Doc roughly two days to pack for a weekend trip.  Invariably, she ends up packing enough bags so that we resemble an African safari.  Unfortunately I’m the only bearer.  It takes me about 30 minutes to pack my one soft-sided suitcase for a two week trip to Europe.  It usually takes longer to get the cat out of the open suitcase than it does to pack.

The Doc spends half the night before the trip finishing packing.  I fall asleep.

Man Vs. Nature, Part 2

Hardly a week goes by without reading a story about someone doing something incredibly stupid with deadly animals.  This week, an idiot in Alaska was killed and partially eaten after getting more than 10 times closer to a full grown grizzly bear than was allowed.  When he received his permit from the park officials, he indicated that he had 30 years hiking experience.  Still, he went through the mandatory bear avoidance course that mandates a minimum distance of a quarter mile from bears.  Then our “expert” hiker got within 40 yards of the bear and took a couple of dozen photographs; the last few show a bear looking directly at the hiker with what could probably be labeled as ursine annoyance.

If the hiker had been using a video camera, I’m willing to bet that last photo would include the photographer saying something like, “Oh, Shit!”

So far, this is okay with me.  The photographer was a grown man and if he wanted to become part of a balanced diet for a bear, I think he had the right.  Unfortunately, at this point the story turns tragic.  Park Rangers shot and killed the bear.  Evidently for the crime of being and acting like--a bear. 

It wasn’t that many months ago that we heard the shocking story that a man had been killed while swimming with a killer whale.  He broke into the amusement park, voluntarily jumped into a tank and swam with a killer whale.  Evidently, the name was not a sufficient clue.  Hell, I’m not swimming with anything that big and with that many teeth--even if it were called a Happy Smiley Bunny Whale. 

But the best story of the summer, hands down, is about the Pentecostal snake-handling preacher who, during a religious service, was killed by his co-preacher, a timber rattlesnake.  And it wasn’t like the preacher didn’t have an advance warning-- just a few years ago the man watched his father die in exactly the same way.  I wonder if it was the same snake.   I hope they didn’t shoot the snake--that preacher may have had a son who wants to follow in the family business, and ordained snakes are hard to find.

I believe that everyone has a right to be eaten by bears and whales, bitten by snakes, or even buy tickets to a Will Ferrell movie.  The first freedom that we allow someone is the freedom to make mistakes.  Even massive ones.  Survivors are seldom burned the same way twice.  And sometimes, you can make a conscious decision to take a large risk because of the reward.

While I was in high school, I dated a girl that I’m going to call Melinda.  Why not, that was her name and I haven’t seen or heard from her in over 40 years.  Last time I saw her, she was furious, and there is no particular reason to change her mind now.

Melinda and I went to movies, ate pizza, and occasionally went with friends to the lake.  I owned a car, but had very little money.  I can distinctly remember one night where we parked at our high school and I got the jerry can out of the trunk and poured a puddle of gasoline on the sidewalk.  Then, we sat on the hood of my car looking at the pretty colors the moon made in gasoline.  I am beginning to understand why I haven’t heard from her in 40 years.

Our favorite activity, (well, one of them) was to go down to the piddly little 9 hole local golf course and sneak through a break in the fence so we could go skinny-dipping in the water hazard on the 8^th fairway.  In the night, that pond was magical, and it was our own special world.  We went as often as the weather would allow.  Even now, when I hear that song from the Broadway show Cats, I think of Melinda.  I don’t remember the name of the song, but the words go something like this:  “Mammaries… All Alone In the Moonlight…”

Months later, the father of a friend of mine decided to teach us the rudiments of the game of golf.  So, for the first time, I got to see what that golf course looked like in the daytime.  I discovered that golf (or pasture pool as we say in Texas) is a lot of fun, as long as you don’t take it too seriously.   And I was anxious to get to the 8^th fairway to see what “our” pond was like in the daylight—but when I got there, I was horrified.  That water hazard was infested with water moccasins.

For the Yankees among you, water moccasins are not the newest type of boat shoe.  The cottonmouth, stump-tailed viper, or Texas moccasin is a nasty, mean-looking poisonous snake that is about as evil as Darth Vader with hemorrhoids.  These snakes can swim, they are territorial, and their bite is as painful as it is deadly.  And Melinda and I had been swimming with them for months.  I have no idea how we survived the experience.  Hell, the damn things even scare Pentecostal preachers!

The very next night, I had a date with Melinda.  We went to Shakey’s Pizza and listened to Cozy Powell on the jukebox.  When we finished eating and I asked her what she wanted to do next, she gave me a little smile with a mischievous glint in her eye and suggested that we go swimming.

I thought about those snakes, the risk, the danger…for at least ten seconds.  Then we drove to the golf course.  I never did tell her about those snakes.  I think that any man that doesn’t want it bad enough to swim with snakes…just doesn’t want it.

Man Vs. Nature, Part 1

Every so often, a news story just grabs you and runs through your head like an ear worm. (If you don't know what an ear worm is, that is one of those inane songs you can't stop humming until your brain rots.  Sandy, a colleague of mine at Enema U, claims to possess the perfect cure for ear worms—she is adamant that singing The Girl From Ipanema will work like antivenin.  This doesn't explain why she started screaming when I began singing the old Doris Day theme song, Que Sera', Sera'.)

The news story that caught my attention was the story about the West Nile Virus in Dallas.  From the news, this is the biggest disaster to hit Dallas since November, 1963.   Personally, I think the town is overreacting to a rather mild problem.  While I don't want to catch West Nile, Dallas has gone a little nuts.  West Nile won’t kill half the people this year that will pile up in deadly car crashes trying to negotiate a screwed up freeway system that has been under construction since my father built highways for the CCC.

My Dad always told me to be careful about Dallas---he said it was full of Yankees and Wanna-be-Texans.  According to him, if Fort Worth was where the West begins, then, by definition, Dallas is where the East peters out.

First of all, West Nile is not exactly Ebola.  The flu kills a lot more people every year than West Nile; over 80% of the people who catch the disease never even know they have it.  Most of the rest have relatively mild, flu-like symptoms.  While even one death is too many, this still doesn't explain the reaction in Dallas.  A problem does not sell newspapers or grab our attention on the evening news, but a panic will.

Dallas County has decided to use crop dusters to spray the suburbs with insecticide.  I have this sneaky feeling that the spray may be more of a problem than the mosquitoes.  I can confidently say this for two reasons:  First, I wouldn't trust the officials of Dallas with anything more deadly than a potato gun.  Second, insecticide is only effective against adult mosquitoes.  If you want to stop the spread of the disease, you need to kill the larvae.

And it seems that Dallas is having a little problem with the spraying.  They have sprayed some neighborhoods without warning, missed others, and worst of all...the devil has interfered with the weather.  Clay Jenkins, a Dallas County judge, recently told reporters, "I am asking all faith-based communities to please pray for no rain and light winds from 8:30 to 1 Sunday."  Evidently, God runs the weather (when the devil doesn't interfere) like a Swiss train.  Still, I can't help wondering why the judge doesn't just ask the faith-based community to pray for God to stop the epidemic.

When exactly did Dallas become a "faith-based community"?  Was it before or after the Caddo Indians were forcibly moved out of North Texas?  Was it just before the Civil War, when a fire broke out in the community of 700 and was blamed on the roughly 100 slaves--three of whom were lynched and the rest whipped?  The Klan showed up almost immediately after the war--did the night riders bring faith with them?  I could go on, but if you are looking for the golden age of enlightenment for Dallas--it hasn't happened yet.  As far as I am concerned, if God were going to give Texas an enema, he should shove the hose into Dealey Plaza.

Still I sympathize with the people of Dallas---killing bugs is tough, even if they aren't the disease-carrying Culex mosquito.  Years ago, a guy almost got himself lynched in the area when he advertised a device that could "kill every insect within two blocks."  Hundreds of people sent money and in due time--about a week after the salesman had fled—each received a device that would do exactly as promised.  It was two short pieces of 2x4 joined together with a rusty hinge, and---if you could get a bug to stand still while you slammed one end of the contraption shut---it would indeed kill any bug between the two blocks.

Years later, in my own modest fashion, I followed the example of that salesman myself.  While I was at college, I took a temporary job during the summer at a hardware store down on the Houston ship channel.  The store sold industrial items to large corporations on the docks.  I was assigned to handle the needs of Armco Steel.  Their purchasing agent routinely gave me a very hard time, usually referring to me as the 'Fuckin' College Kid' or worse.  No matter what I did, he gave me a rough time.  On my last day before the fall classes were going to start, I got the usual daily call from him.

"Hey, College Boy," he said.  "Send over something that will kill roaches.  And it sure as hell better work."

It was my last day, so I filled out the charge slip, and had the driver make a special delivery.  I never heard how it worked out, but I'm pretty sure that twelve pound sledge hammer was effective.

Hey, Judge Jenkins, here's an idea for you: Make another special prayer request to the faith-based community.    I can just picture the results now: all of Dallas armed with sledge hammers and blocks of wood.  The mosquitoes won't stand a chance.  Judge, if you can promise to deliver this, you've got my prayer.

Buy Enema U!

It is that time of year again, and the students are returning to Enema U.  On campus, you see a few more of them every day.  They come looking for classrooms, trying to find the cheap used textbook, moving into the dorms, and seeking out professors for advising.  I generally enjoy the latter, even though I tell every student pretty much the same thing:  “Sex and real estate—get all you can while you are young.”

The university is doing a lot of advertising.  Signs, banners, and flyers are all over the campus.  Our bookstore has thousands of sweatshirts emblazoned with the school name and colors.  Every fraternity is pushing for fresh meat, professors are advertising half-filled boutique courses, and the Athletic Department is desperately begging students to attend games.  There is a frantic feel to some of the advertising, which is baffling when you consider that almost all of this can only be seen by students who have already “bought the product”.  Before any student sees this advertising, we have already cashed their tuition checks.

Instead of posting yet another flyer on an overladen bulletin board, perhaps the university needs to be a little more creative.

Years ago, I used to be a little more involved in advertising.  My company bought and sold computers and the various manufacturers all had co-op advertising programs to help small stores defray the large cost of marketing.  The typical arrangement was a 2% budget.  If I bought $100,000 worth of computers and printers from Epson, they would give me $2,000 for advertising as long as their products figured prominently in my ads.  I can remember negotiating a 4% budget once on a quarter of a million dollars of computers, but this only happened after the salesman and I killed two bottles of Absolut vodka in my backyard.   We woke up in the grass when the timer kicked on the sprinklers, but by then the contract had been inked.

Over the years, I have paid for advertising on the radio, have placed ads in newspapers, and have bought a lot of signs.  So it was only natural that, when one of my friends opened up a bar just off the docks of Galveston, he came to me for advice about how to publicize his new business.

“How much money have you budgeted for advertising,” I asked.

He scratched his head, looked at me and said, “I guess I can spare a hundred dollars.”  It was less than a week from the opening, and my friend had evidently thought that the advertising was something that would take care of itself.

Worse, the hundred dollars was not his advertising budget for the next week--this was all he could afford to spend for the next several months.  He had a bank loan to repay, and the bar wasn’t likely to turn a profit until the summer tourist season began in six months.  This was a challenge, but as we spent the evening testing his new bar taps, we worked out an ambitious advertising campaign.

This was more than thirty years ago, and the internet has changed our world so much that we missed the passing of some small ordinary items of our lives.  At one time, if you wanted to sell Aunt Tilly’s teapot, you posted a cheap ad in the local newspaper.  Before eBay, before Craig’s List, and before the internet, the local newspaper carried page after page of inexpensive want ads.  You could post a three line ad every day for a week for as little as $3.50.  This was a price that fit my friend’s advertising budget perfectly.

The first ad was posted in ‘Help Wanted—Professional’.  “Poet Laureate wanted for public cat neutering ceremony.  Apply Anchorage Bar, Canal Street,”

When the ad came out, I think it only took about four days before every person on the island knew about it.  By word of mouth, alone, everyone heard of it.  A few people even applied for the job, but they were disappointed to learn that the poet had to speak Gaelic.  Strangely, no applicant was qualified.

The second week, we posted an ad in the ‘Want to Buy’ section.  “Desperately needed, left-handed Camel blanket.  Anchorage Bar, Canal Street.”  No one showed up with a camel blanket, left or right-handed, but the need for one was discussed at length about town.

We offered employment for a steeple jack, but he had to be experienced and furnish his own safety equipment.  We also offered to sell the Canal Street lighthouse (there isn’t one), and at one point offered ‘Genuine Imitation Moon Rocks’ by the ton.  Business at the bar flourished, the newspaper probably sold more copies than normal, and we kept to the original budget.

Perhaps the university could try something similar.  They could try posting an ad in the student newspaper.  “Wanted—administrative harmony.”  “Desperately Needed--Students with a desire to challenge their preconceived ideas.”  “Library Seeking Patrons.”  “Now Hiring--Faculty who yearn for the classroom.”  “Lost--Regents who care more about the attendance in the classroom than the stadium. (Everyone will be rewarded).”

This Too, Shall Pass

Almost 25 years ago, the History Department at Enema U had a visiting professor.  Keith and his wife were only going to live in New Mexico for a year, but they quickly became good friends with The Doc (my wife) and me.  Keith lived fairly close, and the four of us frequently had dinner together.  So, I was not surprised one night when Keith called me at home.

“Mark, I feel horrible,” Keith said.  “I think I need to go to the hospital.  Can you give me a ride?”

By the time I got to his house, Keith had collapsed onto the floor. Waking him, I made my first (and only) diagnosis; Keith had a kidney stone.  Now, unlike my wife, I have never been to medical school, so I had the kind of absolute certainty that only comes from total stupidity.  Around our house, my wife allows me to put Band-Aids on the children, trusting only that I can remember to put the sticky side down.

Now this is a little unfair, because I have had several decades of semi-alert instruction.  You see, The Doc gets a hell of a lot of phone calls in the middle of the night.  The doctor at the emergency room calls my wife, who asks questions, makes a tentative diagnosis, and then orders lab tests and x-rays.  Over the years, I bet I have heard this done five thousand times.  So, when Keith was moaning on the floor, one hand between his legs and the other holding one side of his back, I knew exactly what to do. 

As I helped him through the emergency room door, a nurse came over and I very confidently said, “I think he is passing a kidney stone.  We need a CBC, a urinalysis, and an IVP.  And run a blood chemistry.”

Damn!  Even Dr. House couldn’t have done this better.  And to my surprise, people actually did what I had ordered.  By the time the test results came back, The Doc was in the exam room with Keith and me.  To her great amusement, they handed the test results to me, not her.  And it was at this point that I discovered the flaw in my unorthodox medical training—I had heard only half of all those phone calls--I had never heard the results.  Those lab results were as meaningless to me as listings in a Hong Kong phone book.  Neither Keith nor I appreciated The Doc’s laughing.

Keith, at least, had a happy outcome.  It turned out that he actually did have a kidney stone, and in time, he passed it.  A few years later, the story had a less than happy sequel.  This time, it was I who was passing the kidney stone.  I would have gladly given the honor back to Keith.

As I went to the emergency room, I was very conscious of the fact that this was a place where my wife worked, and I really did not want to embarrass her.  Now a kidney stone hurts like the hammers of Hell are beating you in a place that usually does not stand much…hammering.  I know women will disagree, but it must hurt a hell of a lot more than childbirth.  After a few years, women will frequently happily decide to have another child, but I have never heard of a man wanting a second kidney stone.

I took a book to the ER, sat as quietly as I could in the exam room, and calmly read a Tom Clancy novel while a rock the size of my pickup truck (trust me--I saw the damn boulder) slowly ground my insides into paper pulp.  Well, that’s my memory of it.  After ten hours, I passed the misshapen monolith.  The ER doctors had not given me even an aspirin.

“You know,” the doctor said, “we didn’t think you actually had a kidney stone.  Usually, people who have a kidney stone make a lot more noise than you did.”  To this day, I sincerely hope that lightning hits that doctor--in the crotch.

Adding insult to the injury, the insurance company steadfastly refused to pay the hospital--claiming that the entire event was “elective,” as opposed to a real emergency.  An elective kidney stone?  Evidently, the insurance company believed that I had taken a rock to the emergency room and asked to have it shoved up me.  In front.

The years went by, and last week, it started all over again.  This time, I went to the university clinic.  (I just realized how predictable I am—I didn’t take a book, but I was listening to a Stephen King book on my iPod.)  Don’t get me wrong--the clinic was great--they gave me great service, and I really like those people, but the lab tests were inconclusive.  The last thing the doctor said to me was, “You don’t act like someone with a kidney stone.”  I must really suck as a historian because I missed the obvious connection.

Less than an hour after the clinic closed, I passed the stone in the men’s room down the hall from my office.  Before they paint, they will need to use some putty to get rid of the claw marks in the wall above the urinal.

According to The Doc, men who have one kidney stone have a 50% chance of having a second one.  After the second stone, you are probably pretty well doomed.  Only now do I realize what kind of rock Sisyphus was pushing.

Men, I have a plan, and I encourage you to adopt it as your own.  At the first sign of pain from a kidney stone, go to the nearest emergency room.  Walk in, look carefully around the room… then punch the smallest person in the room right in the mouth.  Scream at the top of your lungs, then drop to the floor, rolling and moaning piteously.  At the very least, you will get some aspirin.

Don’t Eat Chicken?—Go To Hell!

I am so tired of the Chick-Fil-A controversy.  I am equally tired of the gay marriage controversy.  I am beyond tired of the hate-filled rhetoric from both sides of each question.  We have mayors of major cities vowing not to let businesses expand into their cities just because the corporate managers are narrow-minded paranoiacs.  We need to remember that Chick-Fil-A is a franchise--not every owner necessarily agrees with the company president.

And a peaceful colleague of mine, a woman who is probably incapable of any physical violence, is publicly hoping that the people who eat at that restaurant die from arteries choked with chicken fat.  This is a warm-hearted individual whom I respect, and while I know she doesn’t really mean this, it shows the level the rhetoric has reached. 

The problem, of course, is not the food, but that the president of the company has a narrow interpretation of what constitutes a marriage.  This angers the more “open-minded” people so much that they are staging protests and boycotts in front of the franchise owners' property until the corporate president agrees with them.  People who agree with the company president and wish to show support are force-feeding themselves chicken in the name of God.

If I am supposed to choose between these two positions, I pass.  I don’t eat at that restaurant very often as I don’t like the food that much and I don’t frequent the mall.  If you want to eat there, that is fine with me.  If you don’t want to eat there, then it is like the advice I gave my maiden aunt: “Let them that don’t want none have memories of not getting any.”  The president of the company is allowed to have his opinions and make up his own mind (tiny though it obviously is). 

Since neither side will settle this argument with the time-honored tradition of pulling a wishbone apart, I have a suggestion:

Why don’t we just ignore what other people do as long as it doesn’t abuse children or bother me?  I am particularly interested in the latter.  Let's all agree:  the people who are against gay marriage will not be forced to participate in one.  I can just hear the arguments now:

 “But if we allow gay marriage, somebody will want polygamy or will want to marry a horse.”  I really don’t care.  How many consenting adults have to have a polygamous relationships with farm animals in order for the polar ice caps to melt?  Until we reach that number, I do not care.  I have owned horses and spent more time than I care to admit with livestock (platonically, of course).  When it comes to livestock, as long as you own it, I don’t care if you marry it or kill it with a power sander. 

“But my religion is against it.”  Read your bible.  Your bible—and every other version of the bible—is against every damn thing.  The Old Testament will freely allow me to sell my sister into slavery, stone most women, and smite parking violators.  If we strictly followed the words of just the King James Bible, there wouldn’t be enough people left on this planet to play bridge.

Personally, if I had spent my whole life waiting for a direct personal message from God, I would be a little disappointed if it turned out to be nothing more than, "Eat mor Chikin."

And this whole religious argument could be nothing more that an accidental misreading of the bible.  If you will consult Mark 11: 13-14, you will see it is  FIGS that God hates.

“But marriage is about taking care of children.”  The Doc and I are finished having children, but I’m reasonably sure we are sticking together.  When the preacher said, “Til death do you part,” little did we know we were setting a goal.  And we continue to call this a marriage.  If marriage were really just about raising children, wouldn’t a partnership with multiple partners provide for more stability for the family, anyway?  

Robert Heinlein, in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, described a linear marriage: a pairing where the collective marriage added a new spouse every few years, alternating the sex of the new partner.  Over time, the marriage would acquire property and wealth, care for aging spouses, and be the most stable possible home for the children.  If marriage were only about caring for children, this might be the only permissible form of marriage.

“But this violates my freedom of religion.”  If that’s so, don’t participate.  There are seven billion people on this planet, and the overwhelming majority of them have a different imaginary friend than you do.  If your religion is against something, odds are that somebody else is worshipping a sentient mailbox who commands them to do just the opposite.  And I don’t care what either of you do--just leave me (and each other) alone.

The famous English actress, Mrs. Pat (Beatrice) Campbell once said, “My dear, I don’t care what people do as long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”  While this may have been excellent advice 100 years ago, it is irrelevant today—there aren’t that many horses on the street.    As far as I’m concerned, go ahead and do it in the street, just stay close to the curb so as not to block traffic.  My pickup has seen worse.