Tag Archives: autobiography

September 29, 2015 · 2:23 pm

Why Does Walmart Hate My Car?

I have been having a lousy automotive time for the past few days thanks to Walmart. And the kicker is, it is not the first dent in my soul put there by the Walmart corporate boot. They are out to get me. Specifically me. Well, maybe paranoia and depression from chronic illness are not only good friends, but cousins. But it does seem that Walmart is trying to destroy me.

Episode One : Evil Decorative Parking-Lot Rocks

About five years ago I had a run-in with one of the corporation’s most seemingly innocuous assassins, namely a decorative parking-lot rock.

Look carefully at the expression on this rock’s face. Do you see the vicious smirk? No? Then he has you precisely where he wants you.

A more insidious lurking evil I have never encountered. Why is it even there? Does it make the parking lot more beautiful? Does it make you want to buy hand lotion, bananas, and school supplies from Walmart? Does it make you want to buy car tires? It may make you need to buy car tires. But this particular decorative rock nearly destroyed my car. You see, Walmart parking lot drivers are some of the best drivers in Texas. You can tell by the kill stickers on their driver’s doors. The one that was coming for me that late October afternoon was an Ace. I swear, I’m sure I saw a little stick man, a stick woman, three stick kids, and five stick cats on her car. It only takes five kills to officially become an Ace. She even had one of those stickers in her back window of cartoon Calvin peeing on a Ford logo… and my cars are all Fords. I was trying to turn out of the adjacent parking area in front of her. She was at least thirty yards away and going at a snail’s pace when I turned in front of her. Suddenly she floored the thing and was zooming straight for the driver’s door. I swerved up onto the curb to avoid a grinding death of shattered glass and broken metal (or possibly plastic… it is an American car after all). And guess who was waiting for my car at that precise spot. The front passenger-side tire went up over the rock and the car came down hard on top of it, impaling itself, making a huge dent in the floor of the car right underneath number one son’s passenger seat. We were stuck there. The car still ran at that point, but there was no way to get the car off the rock. The Ace driver sped off down Marsh Lane satisfied with the kill.

So I called Triple A to get a tow truck to come and lift the poor impaled car off the rock. The rock would not let go. A passing guy who had been previously t-boned on that corner stopped to help my son and I get the car off the rock. No matter how we all pushed or pulled, forward or reverse, the car was not going anywhere. So I called the tow truck, thinking surely it could lift the car off the rock and I could still drive away from this. But then we were blessed with the help of a family of portly Mexicans (honestly, the license plate on their car was from Mexico, and they spoke only Castillian Spanish from the central part of that country, so I am not being racist here.) The jolly little man told me in Spanish that I could only partly understand that he had tow cables in his car and could pull me off the rock. I tried to tell him in Pidgeon Spanish (yes, my Spanish is apparently for the birds) that, “no, no… I want to wait for the tow truck I called.” Apparently my no, gracias meant something like “yes, please, and make it snappy,” in his version of Spanish. So, the guy who took pity on us because he had also been a victim at that spot, and the happy Mexican guy hooked the back axle of my car up to the back bumper of his little Mexican car and then he had me put the car in reverse and try to drive backwards while he tugged away with his little chugger of a car that contained his plump little wife and three plump and excessively happy little kids. He assured me in Spanish that he would rescue my car. So… we got the car off the rock. But we left a chunk of the oil pan from the bottom of the engine on the tallest of the three knobs on the top of that evil, evil rock. There was a long trail of oozing black car blood on the rock and on the parking lot. I could envision Walmart handing me a bill for cleaning up the mess in their parking lot and on their evil rock.

The happy smile on the face of the Mexican guy disappeared. He quickly retrieved his tow cable and they chugged happlily off down Marsh Lane too. The man who first tried to help us helped us move the now fatally wounded car in neutral over to an unused parking space to wait for the tow truck. Of course, by the time he got there, the garage where I wanted to take the car was closed, so we had to hitch a ride home, and we arranged for the car-corpse to be towed in the morning. The evil decorative rock had won. There was now a gaping hole in my car, and an even bigger hole in my heart. One would think that fate and evil corporations would be satisfied with such an outcome. But no, there is more to come in Episode Two, which I will have to tell you about tomorrow.

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Tagged as autobiography, car trouble, evil rocks, humor, photo Paffooney, Walmart

September 28, 2015 · 2:27 pm

Toys

A new doll bought to combat depression. Part of a collection of Tinkerbell fairy dolls.

I have basically written an awful awful lot about my toys. (The awful is repeated on purpose because I have been having a really awful time this week for reasons I will post about if I survive them). And there is a reason a retired old man who seems to be rotting away into a second childhood is so obsessed with toys. Playing is my primary goal for every day right now because darkness is closing in and, while play for children is practice for life in the future, play for an old man can be the reanimation of all the good things in life.

A Lego steam engine and a 1000-piece puzzle that my wife bought me to cheer me up.

I have been a toy-maker and a toy-restorer as a part of my over-all quest to be an artist. I even made some money with an online e-Bay store where I sold collectibles and restored toys. I bought toys from Goodwill and re-sale stores, repaired them and cleaned them, and sold them for twice the sum I bought them for. I also made a few porcelain dolls in a kiln I bought in the 1990’s when my mother and I became porcelain doll-makers. I would show you some of my babies, but the real live children have managed to break all the dolls except for a couple my mother made. (Well, toys are made to be played with, right?) But I do still have many of the repaired and cleaned toys that I either didn’t sell or couldn’t bring myself to part with.

Toys in every corner of the house, dang it!

I have also been a model railroader since childhood, spending countless hours building tunnels and repainting rolling stock, and making buildings and scenery from kits and plaster. I haven’t rebuilt my layout since moving north away from South Texas, but maybe I will get to that too in my retirement and second childhood.

I do still have some trolley street scenes on the tops of book cases.

And toys serve as memory objects. They can do magic with time and space. I have saved many of my toys from childhood. Toys were precious and mostly Christmas and birthday gifts. I learned to save and salvage them because they treated me well, and… well, I owed them the same in return. My own children were not like that. They loved toys to pieces and even sometimes ate them, to a point where many of them were un-fixable junk. But toys bring things back to life from the long-gone past. Take for instance the toy in this next picture;

No, I don’t mean the baby doll. He grew up and joined the Marine Corps. I mean the stuffed white tiger in the background. That was the first toy I ever bought for baby Dorin. And it is still with us, though not as fluffy and pretty as it was in the picture. My daughter, the Princess, inherited it and christened it “Baby Tiger”. That is, of course, still its name to this very day. I look at it and see all three of them… my super-destructo toy-flinging and clockwork-wrecking children. And it is the toys that we have all played with that still link us all together even though they are almost grown.

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Tagged as autobiography, humor, kids, memories, photo Paffooney, toys

September 27, 2015 · 3:25 pm

Devotion in Motion

How long have I been a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals? Since Bob Gibson and the World Series victories of the 60’s. When will it end? I have to know if there is baseball in Heaven before I can tell you. And I believe there is.

A true baseball fan never abandons the team he or she loves. They live and breathe and die with the team. In the 1960’s I got to experience my Cardinals win the World Series against the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. I got to experience the defeat in seven games by the Detroit Tigers and Mickey Lolich their star pitcher in 1968. And I followed them mostly by the sports page in the Mason City Globe Gazette. And sometimes second hand when I listened to the Twins’ games on radio with Great Grandpa Milo Raymond. I followed the individual players and their numbers. Curt Flood, the center fielder was a vacuum cleaner with legs in center field. Lou Brock could steal a base, though he was even more amazing at it in the 1970’s with veteran savvy and know-how on his side. Gibson was extraordinary as pitcher. And I followed the others too. Dal Maxvill at short stop, Tim McCarver at catcher. Mike Shannon at third. And a fading Roger Maris in right field, having never reached the heights again as the Yankee slugger who hit 61 home runs in 1961.

I watched and waited in the 1970’s, when I could follow them on television at least occasionally. I didn’t get more World Series victories that decade, but I listened to the ball game on radio when Bob Gibson pitched his no-hitter against the Pittsburgh Pirates. I was giddy about the base stealing record that Lou Brock set in the 70’s, later to be eclipsed by Ricky Henderson. I followed Ted Simmons, the catcher, and Joe Torre the third baseman.

The 1980’s brought more World Series with victory in 1981 over the Milwaukee Brewers, and losses against the Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins. I invented some new cuss words the night the Royals came from behind to win the sixth game of the series because an umpire blew the call at first base that would’ve given the Cardinals the series win. That bad call (the runner was clearly out at first) changed the series from a Cardinals’ win in six games to a Royals’ victory in seven games.

In the late 1990’s I cheered for Mark McGwire to break Roger Maris’ single season home run record. I watched on TV as he did it, holding my young son in my lap and cheering loudly enough to scare all the cockroaches out of the house in South Texas. It burned me later that the steroids scandals and Barry Bonds would later tarnish that moment. But I lived it never-the-less, and it was a highlight of my life as a Cardinals’ fan.

And now, this year, as everything is going wrong in my life and my body is breaking down more often than my car does, the Cardinals are surging again. They could win a hundred games this year. They could win World Series number twelve. We have history, this team and I. And I am a devoted fan. I can no more explain my love of the team to you than any baseball fan anywhere could ever explain to you why they love baseball. Or what the heck Fredbird is all about. But there it is. We don’t wait til next year. Not the Cardinals.

Jun 9, 2015; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; Los Angeles Angels first baseman Albert Pujols (5) reacts at home plate after he hit a solo home run during the fifth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Albert Pujols will always be a Cardinal in my mind. We won it all in 2011.

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Tagged as autobiography, humor, sports fandom, St. Louis Cardinals, team loyalty

September 25, 2015 · 2:07 pm

Weirdie Poetry

The Man Who Had Bird Knees

I once knew a man…

Who had knees…

That bent backwards, like a bird’s…

And this man…

Could only walk…

Like a limping, lame old duck.

The children all laughed…

And pointed at him…

When he passed them in the park…

And it made him smile…

And laugh to himself…

That his handicap made them happy.

Every single night…

He oiled his weary knees…

And tried to fight the pain…

And every single day…

He used his silly legs…

To do the Chicken Dance for kids.

And then there came a day…

When the bird legs came no more…

To be noticed by kids at the park…

And the parents all learned…

That the poor man had died…

And the whole world brought him flowers.

The next day in Heaven…

St. Peter saw a man…

Whose knees bent backwards like a bird’s…

And all of Heaven laughed…

As he did the Chicken Dance…

While angels clapped in Heaven.

The thing I find to be most witlessly true about both poetry and life is that things can be funny, and make you laugh, and at the same time make you cry on the inside. Humor is hard to write because it can be both happy and sad at the same exact moment. How do you define that quality? The bitter-sweet nature of nature? That’s saying it in a way that is both contradictory and odd. It can give you a wry smile at the same moment it both confounds and confuses you. So better just to shrug your shoulders and tell yourself you know it when you see it… and this either is or isn’t it. Sorry if I made you think too hard, cause I know that sometimes thinking hurts.

Mickey at the Wishing Well of Souls

I found a country well, and I thought I had a quarter,

But I fished in pockets hard, and found nothing for the warter,

And since I had to warp a line to make the poem rhyme,

I figured I would just look in, because I had the time.

I looked into the warty water which sat there still and deep,

And could not see the bottom, and I began to weep.

The water was clear and dark and black,

And the only thing I saw… was Mickey looking back.

And nothing of the wishing well, its magic could I see,

For only there just staring back, the secret thing was me.

I apologize for inflicting poetry on you when you probably came here looking for goofy stuff to laugh at. But my poetry is just like all my word-mangling and picture-crayoning. It tends to be goofy and weird and walking a tightrope over a shark tank between chuckle-inducing and tear-jerking. You probably can’t even tell which is the poetry and which are the burbled brain-farts of commentary that pad this thing out to five hundred words. Four hundred and ninety six, actually.

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Tagged as autobiography, bird knees, goofiness, humor, misspelled words, Paffoonies, philosophy, poetry, self-reflection, warped ideas, writing humor

September 24, 2015 · 2:04 pm

The Nutter’s Nest

These little birds of gray and white and often some other pastel color are synonymous with crazy people. Why? Because while the rest of the world orients itself upright from gravity, these little nutters are always hopping along the tree bark upside down, or at a truly odd angle from the rest of the world.

There is something eerily off about an upside-down bird. And you should listen to the bird calls on the Audubon website; https://www.audubon.org/bird-family/nuthatches Don’t they sound like absolutely demented little buggers (bugger in the sense that they pick bugs out of bark and then eat them)? And where do they keep their nests? In those holes? Yes!

What a truly daft little bird! And why is daft little Mickey obsessing today about nuthatches and where they keep their eggs? Because the nutsy noodler needs a new idea every day to make a completely daft and dewy-eyed post about something that could possibly only matter to Mickeys. So where does Mickey get his ideas to screw into concentric circles of purple paisley prose? Does he make a list of ideas and schedule his posts? Does he keep notes?

Of course not! That would make too much sense. No, he putters around the house all day, retired and ill, but with his brain constantly on fire. And he keeps all the pots of memory, trivia, silliness, and factoids boiling as they perch upon the grill in the kitchen of his mind. Something is constantly cooking.

Take, for instance, the matter of moose bowling. Where does an ultra-goofy idea like that come from? Well, that was in the memory pot. Having been a teacher for kiddos that don’t handle English very well, I have a number of mangled-language stories to share. One time I had a drawing of a Bullwinkle-like cartoon on the board (which I generally refer to as a Moosewinkle). A Vietnamese child was asking me about the Moosewinkle, wanting me to explain what that was all about. I said something about him being a really good guy, someone I would like to go bowling with some time. So, the boy asks me, “Mr. B, how is that you throw a moose to knock down the bowling pins?” He understood about bowling, but not about how you could have a moose as a friend. And this from a culture that thinks Doremon is perfectly normal and okay to live with.

So it can be said that Mickey picks random memories out of the air and twists them into pretzels to get an idea for a post. Or maybe it is not totally out of the air. I don’t know how many times Mickey has seized on an idea from Facebook, posted by friends of all kinds… former students, fellow teachers, other writers, racist cracker friends from Iowa and Texas, and a distinct lack of normal people. They post all kinds of weird stuff… not pictures of food and kids and kids eating food like normal people. And Mickey’s brain is always on fire and boiling up the pots. He makes connections to random things and ends up with a post about nuthatches. What a Nutter!

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Tagged as Audubon, autobiography, birds, goofiness, humor, nuthatches, paffooney, prewriting ideas, writing

September 23, 2015 · 3:34 pm

Overcoming

When you have six incurable diseases, are a cancer survivor since 1983, and were forced to retire early due to health and income problems, you have probably seen your share of really, really bad, horrible, rotten, no-good, black-hearted, totally-depressive days. Yep, me too. I just made it through a four-day, no-air-breathing illness, potential car problems, and too much work with too little energy to apply to it. But I made it through. I have secret knowledge.

I have restored myself to light and life in a number of ways. One was through happy discovery. I was able to peanutize myself with the help of a movie promotion I have been following on Facebook. http://www.peanutizeme.com/ This link allows you to turn yourself into a Charles M. Schulz comic strip character with Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the gang. Doing something nutty and foolish is a way to charm and dig and laugh yourself out of depression. It wasn’t all easy and stuff, though. I had to copy my hair and twirl it upside down to get the beard. And I also had to laugh about the chimney growing out of the top of my head like a brick unicorn horn. It’s the kind of goofy stuff that gives a semi-serious artist fits of giggling. So I owe BlueSky Studios not only my thanks, but the link in this paragraph as well. The advertising campaign for the new movie may have saved my life.

Another thing that helped was solving the automobobble problem. My little Ford Fiesta, the Ozzy Osbourne of motor cars, had a heat-fit yesterday in the middle of Lewisville, Texas, Interstate Thirty-Five rush-hour traffic. It developed a seemingly permanent “check-engine” light that threatened an Ozzy at the Alamo moment on the access road. The rush-hour stress built up in me to the point that my blood-sugar dropped and we barely crawled into Taco Bueno to cure it with crispy beef tacos and bean burritos. I have absolutely no money left in savings for more car repairs. So, I crawled into the Walmart oil-change center this morning and pried twenty dollars out of my wallet to get the car-juice sloshed and swirled. Low and behold, after having to sign a waiver that said the problems the car had were the ones it came in with, the new car-juice solved the problem. The engine purrs again and the car has completely forgotten about that “check engine” light, and possibly the biting-the-heads-off-bats thing as well.

So, here is me. You can compare Grumpy-Me to the Peanutized-Me and evaluate whether I appear to be worth saving or not. Notice, I am either holding a newly-purchased Barbie’s little sister doll to add to my maddeningly growing doll collection, or I have managed to kidnap a middle-school girl from Lilliput. I am happy again. At least, I have that old goofy grin again that indicates the pain is not overwhelming… and once again I have overcome!

I should also add that I have been getting work done on my novel, Snow Babies.

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Tagged as autobiography, car problems, depression, doll collecting, humor, illness, overcoming, Peanuts, the Ozzy Osbourne of motor cars

September 22, 2015 · 2:16 pm

Remembering Puppy Love

Yes, I admit it, I had some serious crushes when I was but a boy. Mickey (himself) always said that he hated girls. He said that repeatedly until he was fourteen and that lie could be twisted into some kind of “you-must-be-gay” sort of insult. Couldn’t have that, could we? Especially since my only experience of sex was violent and with another boy. But how could I ever admit the truth about the girls I loved? It was all too silly for words.

All pictures of Annette that I didn’t draw are from her Facebook page, borrowed (or stolen) with love.

Annette Funicello was someone I only saw in Disney movies. And she was quite a bit older than I was. She was born in 1942, and when I was a lovesick puppy of twelve, she was already an old woman of 26 years. I am thinking about her again now, and she has already preceded me in death. I was able to reconnect to her through her Facebook page here; Annette Funicello. But there was never a chance to meet and pursue her in real life. So, naturally, she is the one I told my friends about as the woman I loved when I was twelve and wise in the ways of the opposite sex.

I did not draw this. It is from Facebook.

But the real, secret truth is… ta, ta, ta, taaaah! I really loved another. She was in my class. She was, as my friends and I all agreed, the most beautiful girl ever born into our little community of Rowan, Iowa. She was a farm girl named Alicia Stewart (this, of course, is a lie. I fictionalized the name because we are actually friends on Facebook and she might actually read this post. It doesn’t bother me if she reads this and figures it out, but I want to provide her with deniability so no one else has to know. She has a beautiful family complete with grandkids, and I would never embarrass her in front of them.) To me, she looked like Annette Funicello. I never admitted my deep and abiding puppy-love crush on her to anyone. I loved her never-the-less… and probably still do.

There was that night when I was eleven, and snow was falling heavily after choir practice at the Methodist Church. The walk home was extra difficult. It was becoming a minor blizzard and I was plastered with snow from walking into the teeth of the wind. When I got as far as the Library on Main Street, Mrs. Stewart and Mrs. Kellogg called me into the Library to warm up. They called Mom and Dad to come get me because I really had no business trying to walk home in a snowstorm like that. Alicia was there.

HOLLYWOOD, FL – SEPTEMBER 14: Annette Funicello (R) kisses Mickey Mouse 14 September 1993 after she received a star on the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame in California. The U.S. actress and singer is best known as a famous mouseketeer on the popular 1960’s television show, “The Mickey Mouse Club” as well as the beach movies she made with Frankie Avalon. (Photo credit should read VINCE BUCCI/AFP/Getty Images)

I had my Russian cap with the ear-flaps on and everything pulled down to protect me from the snow, including the front board which was like the bill of the cap, but could be snapped up out of the way. Snow was caked even on that little front flap. My eyes were mostly covered by that frozen and snow-encrusted front flap.

I said, “Gee, I think it might be snowing outside.”

Everyone laughed. Alicia lifted up the front flap and looked me right in the eyes.”Michael, you are so funny!” she said.

I wasn’t really that funny with my stupid little understatement. But her smile was priceless. And I keep it in my heart to this very day. It was the greatest gift any girl ever gave me during my sorry little childhood.

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September 20, 2015 · 2:43 pm

Flag Football

Yesterday was a long trek by car followed by what I thought was going to be a second straight flag football wipe-out all to get to see number two son play in a game. I spent four years as a band parent lugging kid and equipment to and from band practices, bus-catches, concession stand work, fund-raising, and performances. Number one son was a gung-ho marcher with dreams of joining a nationally ranked drum and bugle corps. Wow! The effort almost killed me. But number two son reached high school with a different set of goals and skills, and due to educational forces beyond our control, and evilly opposed to us, he didn’t even stay landed in the big Texas 5A School he wanted to be in. We settled for a charter school that provides a completely different format that Henry can handle. Number two son is more like me than the first one was. He’s brainy and thin and athletically capable, but not athletically experienced. He is gifted in so many ways, but not in ways that are normally considered acceptable in cowboy country and the Greater Dallas Cowboy Area Football Imperative.

Henry is number 3, and like usual, back to the camera.

So this year we are taking on football. I mean, not ferociously Texas high school tackle and kill football, but FLAG FOOTBALL. The teams wear two yellow or white flags that have to be grabbed and pulled to stop the advance of the ball. As a parent, I appreciate the sissy version of the meat-grinding, brain-fracking sport that Texas loves more than pornography. I know it is not considered as manly to play flag football, but having been subject to a hospitalizing head trauma in my own high school football days, I would rather have him play the safer, cleaner version. And, let’s face it, he weighs a hundred pounds less than some of the high school guys that would be chasing him to bulldog him in regular high school football. And his school, a small charter school, is just starting it’s flag football program. That allows Henry to be on the starting team, and play a sport that he wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance of even making the team otherwise.

So, how did we get to yesterday? Well, a week ago, the very first game for the Mighty Ospreys was a total disaster. It started before two of the required seven players even arrived. So, the first touchdown was scored by the other team when they intercepted the pass from the only girl in the game, playing quarterback for us even though she couldn’t throw the ball at better than a wounded-duck wobble. We played a good portion of the first half, five players against seven. And when the other two showed up, the other side was still the only side to score. And they scored at will. It ended mercilessly at ungodly-high-score to nothing.

So I was expecting another humiliation yesterday. This reveals the true advantage of being a total pessimist. I can only be pleasantly surprised. The other guys were almost all shorter than our guys. And our guys, after an extra week of practice, were handling the ball BETTER. We found a quarterback who could throw the ball on target. We scored two touchdowns and a two-point conversion to win 14 to 6. And Henry was almost able to catch a touchdown pass. It was deflected and he almost caught it anyway!

So, I came home sicker than Marmaduke after rancid pork, but happy. Of course, the Princess mentioned that she wants to be in marching band when she gets to high school next year. Oh, my aching sit-down parts!

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Tagged as autobiography, flag football, goofiness, humor, photo Paffooney, sports, Texas high school sports

September 19, 2015 · 2:03 pm

Playing Checkers With Old Guys

Amongst those who play checkers frequently and well, there is an unwritten rule. He who moves first wins. No matter how well you play, the other guy knows all the moves too. You can’t help but follow the same two or three patterns for the flow of the game if you are determined never to lose when you don’t have to. So, if you play checkers with old gassers who have glasses and bald spots on their heads, liver spots on their arms, and Buddha bellies, then there are no surprises. You can play checkers like the clock ticks, moving relentlessly and without thinking. It allows you to discuss the world, solve the European immigration crisis in the cruelest possible way, watch the grandkids rolling skating in the neighbor’s driveway, complain about frequent bouts of cramps and flatulence, and just generally enjoy life in a way that is as Norman Rockwell as all hell… without actually having to think about it.

Today is a day like that for me. Diabetes ravaged me yesterday, my blood sugar playing a fierce game of Chinese world-champion ping pong between high and low… all day long. My brain is full of sand today and I cannot think. I can write, but the only thing that comes out is sludge as boring as watching old guys play checkers. But I have a young family and duties that will not give me a break. Number two son is playing flag football for his charter school, and we have to get him to a game in Grand Prairie, Texas today, over an hour away through the metroplex in good traffic.

Flag football, of course, is not real football. But this is Texas. Anything even remotely related to football is super serious business in a cowboy-centric world. You have to get out there and cheer. You have show team spirit. You have shout bad words at the other team when they invariably intercept your son’s pass and run it back for a touchdown. And I don’t have the energy today for the drive, let alone the actual football. All things considered, I’d really rather be playing checkers with old guys.

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Tagged as autobiography, checkers, flag football, flatulence, humor, illness, old guys, paffooney

September 17, 2015 · 2:23 pm