When I Grow Up

I grew up as a child.  And while my peers wanted to grow up to become train engineers, firemen, and cowboys, I  wanted to become a urologist. I never did become a urologist, probably because my father wound up passing his kidney stones even before I was allowed to stay outdoors after the sun went down.  Besides, I later learned that urologists deal with lots of droopy body tubes near other internal parts that look like raw sausages. 

My father passed his kidney-stone-passing talents on to me.  A few years ago I wound up in the E.R. where, in the midst of a kidney stone attack, I vocalized a now-famous screech the likes of which had never been heard before.  That's why a commemorative plaque marks the place where that ear-piercing echo first erupted.  E.R. staff there still refer to it as the "Tomaso Tremolo".  You must admit, this is quite a feat in a theater where screams of pain punctuate the day. 

But the Tremolo was small potatoes compared to the frenzy of suffering I witnessed circa 1958. My mother banished me to the outside patio while Dad lay prone on our couch, convulsing in pain so extreme that it sent me into hysterics.  My mother ping-ponged between attending to my father and trying to shield me from those horrors and persuade me that my daddy wasn't about to die.  Given the experience, you might have expected that I would grow up wanting to become an ambulance driver.  But by the time the medics arrived, I had already run off into the woods to scream at the Georgia clay and weep violently in the willows.

In my current job, I sometimes encounter young men whose career hopes get derailed because they got arrested for beating their wives and girlfriends. Many had grown up wanting to become police officers, to become just like those brave cops who arrived in the nick of time and saved their mothers from further beatings by their drunken fathers.  These boys grew up wanting to save the day with their badges, shiny belts, and their good guns of justice.  But in the end, they were too much their fathers' sons.

If fathers really are to blame for their sons' career choices, it's possible to trace my seeds to another bout of Georgia screaming.  One night when I was about seven, Dad went into the bathroom, and unleashed in that small space and from the bottom of his guts, profound wails that rattled the walls.  These were not screams of physical pain, but convulsions of outrage and anger, primal and deep.  One scream followed another, and on and on they roared.

What's a seven year-old to do?  Why, join right in, of course.  I opened the bathroom door, walked in, and starting screaming with all that my little voice would carry.  My father seemed oblivious to me, and so together we howled, me in my pipsqueak falsetto, he as turned inside out as a man could be.

Unfortunately, this was a warm Atlanta evening and all this happened with our windows wide open.  Our neighbors, the elderly McConnells, who lived next door and enjoyed their evenings relaxing in their screened-in porch, made a hasty retreat back inside.  What must they have thought?  It must have sounded like murder going down in the neighborhood. Either that or an attack of kidney stones.

But my father wasn't one to spew forth and rage against innocents.  Quite the contrary.  He was a gentle, thoughtful, enthusiastic, pipe-smoking college professor who never raised a hand to his children and who gained fame among his students for expounding the value, of giving and receiving hugs.  On that particular night, Dad simply sought the only sanctuary he could find, and let loose his pent-up store of personal agony.  I never learned what it was about, and to my knowledge, he never had another screaming spell after that.

Now that I am all grown up, what have I grown up to become?  Before drifting off to sleep, I did love the distant sounds of those southern freight trains as they rolled through my Atlanta childhood nights.  Such a comfort it was to feel that low and steady note while gazing half awake through the darkened web of dogwood limbs outside my bedroom window.  I did not want to be the man who led the charge, the grimy engineer, the leader of the pack.  Instead, I dreamed of pulling up the rear, the solitary man in the caboose, keeping the lantern lit, feeding the small coal-burning stove, and smoking a pipe just like the one my father smoked.  Before the next depot, all the while, there's the caboosey cricket call, clickity-clack, clickity-clack, clickety clack, the cool tempo of the railroad track. 

The Caboose Man.  I hope that's who I've become.




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Paint, paint, paint, dip.

When medical marijuana was legalized in Michigan, there suddenly emerged an epidemic of chronic back pain.  From the Porcupine Mountains all the way down to Monroe, doctors' offices were teeming with goateed sufferers in their tie-dyed t-shirts, tattoo artists, and everyday Joes and Jessicas, wincing in pain.  And the outbreak seemed precisely confined within Michigan's state lines. 

Back when I lived day after day, month after month, in that yellow fog, I despised the dreary tunnel of sobriety.  As a young kid, after I first heard the word "sober", I was amazed to learn what it meant.  "You mean, there's a word for feeling like I always feel, for feeling un-drunk?" This made no sense.  But when I got older, but still a kid, I ventured on a constant quest to change the way I felt...  a tough job when expected to play the good son, the good student, and the good citizen.  

I'm convinced that had it been available to me, medical marijuana would have helped me discover some hidden back pain or other malady.   I would not have had to play the good son or participate in any other charade.  I could bask in the comfort of constant availability.  I would have gladly eased into a most convenient shift:  from a quest to numb those pesky anxieties, to medicating imagined nerve endings that wreaked havoc in the small of my back... or wherever.  Hell, given the drug's momentum and staying power, chances are good that I would still be bogarting that joint to, you know, treat the pain and wander around shit-faced in muted dreams. 

Way to go, Michigan!  Just don't disclose this little-known fact: many a sufferer will be cured of pain, by necessity, if they move to a different state.  A state where the green leaf is used solely to get high, and to get high again, and again, and again, and again, and again... where the aim remains the same:  to build a cloud of yellow fog from which to preside in bleary and lazy discontent.

I can forestall discontent with a pill and a pail.  I found that my anti-depressant kicks me best when I do the repetitive and menial thing, recently as I painted my house.  Paint, paint, paint, dip.  Paint, paint, paint, dip.  I pay attention to painting and dipping.  I trim the corner and fill the nail hole with acryllic. I watch as my house slowly turns a new and comforting color, and with each paint, paint, paint, dip occurrence, I grow in Presence.  It's a slow process, I suppose, but as there is no expectation in Presence, there is no parameter of speed. 

But the brain wanders, of course, and look, her comes another objection:  Is this really the best use of your time?  Couldn't you just pay someone to do this?  You're cheap. You are a cheap bastard...  But, I like painting.  I like painting and I save money at the same time.  Paint, paint, paint, dip.  Paint, paint, paint, dip.  Another mental wandering:  I might consider less salt next time in the tomato sauce.  Salt will end your life. You, Tom, live your life in a salt mine.  Who can live in a salt mine?  People kick the bucket in salt mines. My house kicks the paint bucket when I am depressed.  The paint depresses the house when it is kicked.   I am against kicking in the door with a paint can.  And ANYWAY, who cares if the doors EVER get painted?

Hey, who is doing the talking here?  There are two me's.  One me who talks to me and one me who answers me.  We all have two selves, but which is which?  I prefer to think our true selves are the meek respondents, and not stern prosecutors.  Little Meek says, "Just kickin' the can down the road, boss, and mindin' my own bizznass."  

I descend and move the ladder.  I am brought back to this place in this time.  This moment.  I climb up again and dip the brush in the can.  Paint, paint, paint, dip.  Paint, paint, paint, dip.  Slowly the house transforms. Sometimes I am present with it, the house, as it transforms.  I am at ease then, and my gladness pills have a heyday, having their merry way with me.  But off the brain wanders again, back to words I never spoke.  Back to actions I never took.  Or I fixate on words I wish I had never spoken, or to the words of others spoken years and tens of years ago, that still whisper purely in the caverns of memory.    

How to slip free from those rusty shackles?  How to become Present after all this time?  After daydreaming out the proverbial classroom window for 50 straight years?  I want to commune with the grasses, with the bumblebees of summer, and the whipping winds of winter.  Okay, maybe not the whipping winds of winter, but you get my snow drift.  It's where you and I belong, after all, not in a snow drift, but in the here and now.  Here, as in, right here.  Now, as in, right now.  But this ego-driving brain of mine willfully ponders the pink elephant even though the instructions explicitly state: do NOT consider the elephant in pink. You will either turn to a block of salt or become banished to wander among mind holes forever!

Eckhart Tolle writes beautifully about the spirit of Now.   I consider this and ponder this and think about this until I'm raw from thoughts.  My thoughts chafe with the collisions of thinking.  The human condition:  lost in thought. I think therefore I am not.  I am when I don't think, when I simply am.  Do dogs think up a plan, then set an agenda for the digging of holes?  Dig, dig, pitch the dirt.  Dig, dig, pitch the dirt.  

My daughter and her boyfriend recently visited and brought along their persistent puppy, Wendy.   Wendy was born and abandoned in rural central Georgia.  Wendy had visited three months earlier when, like most dogs from Georgia, she dug holes to lie in.  When I was a boy living in Atlanta, we had a dog named Josephine. Josephine loved to wallow around in dusty holes, but then again, she may have been part wildebeest.  A Georgia mongrel instinctively seeks the cool red clay beneath a soil that simmers under that sadistic sun.  Three months ago, Wendy dug five holes in our back yard.  Large holes, small holes, three shallow, and two deep.  She lay in them, in our cool Michigan spring, as though she were test-driving Georgia holes as yet undug. 

During Wendy's recent visit, I went to work one morning.  When I returned in the evening, there were five fresh holes in the back yard.  Large holes, small holes, three shallow and two deep.  These five holes were in the EXACT LOCATION as the previous holes, the EXACT SIZE as the previous holes, and the EXACT SHAPE as the previous holes.

Salmon return to spawn and die in the exact locations were they were hatched.  Just like these mysterious creatures, dogs, at least central Georgia dogs, must hold a genetic code that wills them to dig holes repeatedly at the same locations in the exact same way. 

With my shovel, I again filled them in.  Dig, dig, fill with dirt.  Dig, dig, fill with dirt.  All the while I sang, "I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in, that stops my mind from wandering, where it will go-o-o-o-o."  Later, I wonder if I filled the holes in exactly the same way as I filled them the first time around.  I doubt it. What am I, a salmon?

All that digging and all that ladder-climbing gave me an aching back, but it feels fine now.  No yellow fog was prescribed.




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A Gas By Any Other Name

My wife has changed her nickname for me.  She used to call me "Slush."

This originated early in our marriage one time when I had strep throat.  Apparently I was moaning in my sleep, delirious with fever, and she reached over, put her hand on my forehead, and asked, "Are you okay, Honey?"

I woke up slightly and blurted assertively, "Don't call me Honey...  call me Slush."

I could have said, "Call me Ishmael."  Or, "Call me in the morning."  Or, "They call me Mr. Tibbs."   But no, up from the depths of mental quicksand, I burped, "Call me Slush."  Don't ask me why.

And for years and years, that's exactly what she did.  And sometimes she would embellish the word with an affectionate Southern drawl, as in:  "Now don't leave your clipped toenails on the coffee table, Sluuuuuuush."  She would often cushion such wicked commandments with this term of endearment.

But no longer.

Now she calls me "Beaner."  I assumed, as anyone would, that this was a nasty reference to the frequency with which I experience a profusion of intestinal gas.  This was cruel, I thought.  I probably enjoy asparagus and frijoles as much as the next guy, and I don't think I am a standout in the area of sound effects.  So, "Beaner" seemed a bit harsh and inappropriate.

There was a vaudeville performer in the 1890s, I read about years ago, whose talent was this:  he could fart at will.  Out on the stage he would go, and with certain "maneuvering", he could produce musical tones of varying pitches and volume.  I am not proud that I have made this factoid available in my memory reserves in case I have needed it.  But the point is this:  If ever an individual earned the nickname, it would have been that brilliant vaudevillian:  "And now ladies and gentlemen, presenting for your auditory and olfactory amazement,  Beaner the Magnificent!"

But as it turns out, I misunderstood my wife.  Recently while she was on the phone, I was talking to Dog, as I often do, in high-pitched Spanish.  Dog was groggy, had just left her nap on the couch, and both of her ears were inadvertently turned inside out.  You can often see Dog with one of her ears all cockeyed this way, but two for the price of one, au naturale, was kind of a treat.   As such, I was trying to tell Dog, in high-pitched Spanish, that she looked like an Italian prostitute.  I'm sorry, but such a one-sided conversation in our house is not that unusual.  Dog is used to it.  She just yawns, shakes her head to right her ears, and wants to be let outside.  She is either trying to ignore me, or maybe she hasn't learned Spanish.

Apparently, the person on the other end of the line asked my wife what all the noise was about, because I heard my wife say, "Oh that?  That's just Beaner."

"That's just Beaner"?  When she hung up, I asked her if Dog had been having gas.  No, she explained, "Beaner" had nothing to do with beans, that I was the Beaner.  It was an expansion of B.N. and that at those times when I was manic, such as then, it helped her focus on tasks by referring to me as B. N., or BeaNer, short for...   "Background Noise".  My betrothed, for richer or poorer, believes I resemble background noise.

In elementary school I was called "Shrimp" because I was so small for my age.  In junior high, they called my "Bonnie", short for Bohnhorst.  In college, I became known first as "Turk" because I lived in Turkey, and then it expanded to "The Lustful Turk", the name, apparently, of an old silent film.  But mainly, The Lustful Turk fit the persona I had created at parties and impromptu jam sessions, when I would down about 10 beers, grab the microphone in front of my rockin', electric guitar totin' friends, and famously wail and strut and kick out the vocal jams to rock "songs" never before heard and never heard since.  The unbridled energy and sheer (drunken) showmanship of The Lustful Turk would have shamed Mick Jagger and his meek brethren by comparison.

To these former names, I could identify.  I didn't like Shrimp, but I was small.  Bonnie was said with affection, the way a puppy gets a pat on the head.  The Lustful Turk made a name for himself on the Michigan State University circuit of alcohol abuse mixed on weekends with roaring rock.  Slush, I brought on myself.

But, Background Noise?  Like elevator music heading up to the fifth floor?  Like frogs in concert on a spring night in a meadow pond?  My incessant chucklehead chortling had become synonomous with the indistinguishable croaks of frogs?  What was that familiar yet strangely annoying sound?  Oh that?  That's just Beaner.

I feel a case of strep throat coming on. It will be the middle of the night. I will become delirious as my faux fever soars.  I will moan.  And my wife will touch my forehead and whisper, "Are you okay, Beaner?"

To which I will counter, "Don't call me Beaner.  Just call me Honey."




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Self Golfulation

If I play golf well, for days I feel sweet.  If I play golf like a hack, for days I feel sour.

Ah, me. During golf season, I'm usually puckered up like a rich boy in an outhouse.

If I play well, I reek of compassion and charity.  I greet the shy neighbor.  I whistle while I weed.  Dog gets the extra biscuit. If I roll in a 30 footer and sink everything under six feet, Putter gets to ride shotgun on the way home. If I hit some beautiful sand shots, I want to reserve a condo at the beach.  If I hit beautiful iron shots, I want to brand a barn full of cows.  If I hit long and lusty drives, I want to buy some dirty magazines.  If I escape disaster with a miraculous shot, I want to watch the Shawshank Redemption.

But when I slice a drive deep into the woods, I want to assault any nearby chipmunk.  When I chunk my ball into a pond, I want to foul any nearby goose, or if no goose, foul any fowl at all.  When I miss a two-footer, I want to swing said goose by its neck. If no goose, I want to insert my tongue in a ball washer.

My ego is a yoyo, bound to the string of the golf god's whim.

Once when a friend missed a two-footer, he spontaneously heaved his putter skyward.  The thing got hung up on the top branches of a pine tree. My muttering mate had to climb aloft, limb by limb, while several groups behind were allowed to "play through."  They must have wondered, "Why is that fat man in the plaid shorts climbing that tree?"

Furious golfers always entertain. I used to live near a golf course and every day would drive around the front nine en route to work or errands. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of some poor hack, after a pathetic whack at his ball, hurl his golf club at full throttle like a whirling boomerang up the fairway.  One time I saw some miserable bastard, after he missed a short putt, break his putter over his knee and throw the two pieces into the long grass that rimmed my road.  I completely sympathize, but when you're on the outside looking in, it's pretty damn funny. I would like to view a montage of such candid scenes placed on film. For comic effect, they could be juxtaposed with shots of volcanoes erupting.

I know a guy, we'll call Mr. Nice Guy, who once couldn't get out of a bunker.  Mr. Nice Guy kept chunking his ball about a foot in the air before it would roll back gently by his sand-immersed feet.  After his last failed attempt, he hurled his sand wedge into a nearby pond.  This forever enshrined Mr. Nice Guy into the local Golf Hall of Infamy. A month later, a full four weeks later, someone in the pro shop teased him by asking him which brand of sand wedge he would recommend. Mr. Nice Guy recoiled like a shotgun, screamed a shrill expletive, and stormed out. 

Go ahead and say it:  "It's just a game." To normal people it is. My father-in-law played the game like it was a game, and felt the game was a game.  He laughed at his many foibles and when he made a rare par now and then, he would celebrate with a happy "hooray!" His wife, my mother-in-law, however, was over-the-top serious and constantly shoved her irons down his throat, so to speak, which constantly endangered his emotional health.  For him, it was just a game, unless he was playing with his wife. He would try to soothe her. Can you soothe a wounded hornet by pointing out its swing flaw? No, you get a seven iron shoved down your throat. 

You can hear laughter on a golf course when normal people play the game.  Like my father-in-law, they cheer at the flukish par and howl at the absurdities.  When an errant shot careens off a tree and plops back into water, they are overjoyed.  But I, like my non-human ilk, just simmer and stew just below the boiling point.  I can't laugh at myself, the stubbed chip, the bladed wedge, or the fat iron shot that splashes like a breeching whale into a water hazard. I may chuckle to dampen my embarrassment, but inside, and I hate to admit this, I pout.

I once was a pretty good golfer.  I could launch straight and nicely arcing drives from the tee box.  I could hit crisp and consistent irons that took toupee-sized divots. I could pitch and chip short shots that mostly wound up near the hole. And I was a great putter. I could almost close my eyes.

But in golf, thine opponent is thyself.

Of course, there are the external challenges that lurk: the bunkers, the swamps, the woods, the ponds, the grasses, the humps, the dips, the mud, the rocks, the winds, the rains, the heat, the cold, the sun, the bugs, the crappy lies that befall unfairly.  Even alligators.  In Turkey, I had to watch out for wild dogs.

And golf makes for strange bedfellows. I have a friend who pays off his golf debts in nickels and dimes. I have another friend who suddenly suffers from "tendonitis" whenever his game goes awry.  I have another friend who is consistently calm and cool when he plays, a sweet and regular guy, except for about two times a round when he releases a piercing primal scream. Then, like it never happened, he's fine again.

Three cronies and I once went out to Sundance Golf Course, overlooking beautiful Torch Lake, for our regular Tuesday outing. I was looking forward to it. To further tantalize, here is the description of the 17th Hole on the Sundance website:

 "A magnificent setting with an eighty-foot drop to the green. A breathtaking view is yours from a tee complex that overlooks the shimmering Caribbean blue waters of Torch Lake and the pristine beauty of the forested horizon surrounding it. Below you, surrounded by deep bunkers and aggressive heather, the green awaits as a rose among thorns."

A rose among thorns, my ass. There was nothing magnificent about Torch on that Tuesday, or should I say nothing visible, blinded as we were by driving drizzle under a low-slung cloud cover. We slogged around the front nine with our golf balls splatting down on saturated fairways and squirting chaotically on super fast greens. I wore light gray trousers that wound up heavy and dark gray from the knee down as water continually seeped up and through. Even so, I hit the long ball fairly well, but my short game lacked any common decency. After I four-putted the sixth hole, a depression emptied me, fathoms below the plunging barometric pressure. The strain, for me at least, is always compounded by the competitive spirit of the group, as gambling for precious quarters torques the pressure. I was losing and I was wet and I was pissed.

But the golf gods smiled down on the 11th green. I snaked in a long and (heretofore) impossible par putt that not only won the skin, but bested my opponents by several strokes and put me squarely in the driver's seat to win, win, win! It was as though the finest strain of Prozac found traction in my brain. Despite the added weight of my soaked shoes and socks, I found a sudden lightness in my step, a grin undid my face, and I even found love for my freshly flattened friends. And in this fresh momentum of joy, I did go on to win the match, collected a few dollars, and on the drive home, felt an unfamiliar hope against the wicked ways of the world.

As I retrace those soggy steps, I am stunned at the sheer shallowness and smallness of it all. To be plunged headlong into despair, and then thanks to a blind-squirrel putt to become at once resurrected, I admit to feeling ashamed. Those down and up feelings weren't guided by beliefs or values, but the knee-jerkiness of a needy ego.

Should I not, therefore, take up pickle ball instead?  Listen, there are cows to brand and chipmunks to chase and dirty magazines with which to read my putter to sleep.  Besides, I've just started a collection of old nickels and dimes. 

  

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A Plaque on Both Your Houses

At a recent staff meeting, my boss presented me with a plaque.  The plaque conveys appreciation for 20 years of "dedicated service."  There was also something engraved about "commitment, compassion, and leadership."  The staff gave me a round of applause and I took an embarrasingly lengthy bow.  And in my 30-minute appreciation speech, I pointed out that there were only two faces present at that meeting who had been there before I arrived in 1991.  I informed the rest of the staff I thought of them as rookies, always rookies in my book.

Don't get me wrong:  I did appreciate it.  I do appreciate it.  Even though the plaque etcher made a typographical error, I still hung it on my office wall near the scorecard that recorded my second hole-in-one.  It was at Mistwood's White Number Two hole about four years ago.  Eight iron, 140 yards.  Trickled in at the last moment.  My opponents had to pay me 50 cents each.

Anyway, boss, thanks.

Speaking of typos, I worked at a golf course about 20 years ago which opened an attached restaurant.  The owner hired a sign-maker to advertise the place, to give it character and pizzazz.  The sign maker charged hundreds and must have toiled away for dozens of hours.  And at the unveiling, he presented an enormous and beautifully carved cedar sign.  There it was, prominently affixed to the main exterior wall,  for all of Benzie County to behold:  "DINNING".  The owner could not have been more pleased and took the wood carver inside and bought him a beer.

The plaque from work was almost the first plaque I ever received.  I got my first in 2003 when I was on the foursome that took first place at the Leelanau Children's Center fundraiser.  That plaque is also in my office juxtaposed ever so nicely to the scorecard that recorded my second hole-in-one.  Just thought I would mention that again.

So really, just two plaques, not counting the plaque I had when I was about 27.  I had not been to a dentist in eight years, and even though I brushed twice a day, the build-up of plaque on my teeth was just spectacular.  It took three hour-long appointments with a muscular dentist and his jackhammer to chisel through the petrified crap and unearth my teeth.  He was a paleontologist digging for bones.  Never mind that I needed a few units of O-positive for all the blood that gushed from my gums, I soon got back to decent dental health.  There should be a plaque in that dentist's office to commemorate his bravery in the face of my plaque disease.  It was a bubonic plaque.

It's very nice that my boss thought to honor my so-called compassion and leadership the way he did.  I realize his secretary was behind it all -- everyone gets a plaque for staying put.  Turn a calendar page and somebody gets to throw some hardware on their wall.   I didn't expect the cool hundred dollar bonus though.  I really needed it to fill my gas tank.
If the Brutal Truth were really known by those lofty plaque writers. they could have etched far different commemorations, to wit:

To Thomas Bohnhorst:  In appreciation for wearing a clean shirt every day for 20 years.  Sometimes the pants were stained and looked like they just weeded the garden, buy hey, the shirts were terrific!

To Thomas Bohnhorst:  In appreciation for 20 years of repeating the same old social work jargon to the point that you can recite this moronic stuff to clients while simultaneously stressing about that blown putt on the 17th hole last Tuesday.  Amazing accomplishment!

To Thomas Bohnhorst:   In appreciation for 20 years of showing up.  For this money, how many people would actually show up for 1,040 weeks minus vacation?  Zero.  Thanks!

To Thomas Bohnhorst:  In appreciation for finally removing that phallic cactus and spread-eagled Barbie from your window sill.  Sad that staff no longer linger at your office door.  By the way, where did you put those items?

To Thomas Bohnhorst:  You have been tolerated for 20 years.  We know what you do.  Let's just leave it at that.




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Postcard from Traverse City

Having a wonderful time.  The weather is great.  Wish you were here.

Last week's New York Times Sunday Crossword puzzle has caused me indigestion and to spew vulgarities.  One of the clues is:  "Bass lover."  Which bass?  The fish?  The guitar?  The lower musical clef?  Who the hell knows?  As a friend pointed out long ago...  I may be dumb, but at least I'm stupid. 

After I imposed on her some inventive forms of torture, Dog has stopped running through the invisible fence.  This has brought peace of mind to the squirrels who now jeer and catcall from just outside the wire.  Weird:  she went for a few years without ever going through, then suddenly started globetrotting.  Gone are the days when neighborhood dogs can roam around unimpeded by property lines.  When I was a kid, we had a dog named Josephine.  We would let her out, and if she went galavanting around the town, no big whoop.  All the neighbors knew Josephine and she knew them, and if she pooped in someone's yard, it was chocked up to "some poop in someone's yard."   Maybe Dog is hanging closer to home because the strata of snow have slowly melted, unveiling whole new sets of shit smells with each passing day.  Dog may be dumb, but at least she's stupid.  Bottom line: she is mainly interested in chasing squirrels and smelling stuff.  Come to think of it, sort of reminds me of my college days.

It looks like the answer to "Bass lover" is "oldman"  That makes no sense, unless you think, "Okay, an old man might love to fish for bass." Give me a break.

When I was four years old, we lived in Atlanta and took a week-long vacation to Jekyll Island, Georgia.  The main thing I remember about that trip was that my sister, Terry, mass-produced peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches by applying the peanut butter and mayonnaise to separate pieces of bread before mooshing them together.  I had a fit about this.  My mother always applied the mayonnaise directly on top of the peanut butter on one slice of bread before putting a blank piece on top.  That's how it was done, and that's how I liked it.  In my book, Terry had done the unthinkable, and I let the whole island know about it.  Anyway, we took Josephine with us on that trip and when we returned, our house was electric with jumping fleas.  There were thousands of them bouncing off the walls.  So... when I think back to our Jekyll Island trip, I think of mismatched peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches and those rowdy fleas who welcomed us home.

Our little flea-infested house in Atlanta was surrounded by forest, and I spent days out in those woods, adventuring away in that red clay world.  As a second grader, I went through a cigarette smoking phase and sometimes my friends and I would get naked and light up five Kools at a time.  One day, I was secretly following my brother through the woods when I came face to face with an enormous snake lazily slithering down a log.  I ran like hell for home, screaming "Snake!" all the way there.  My father pulled out the "S" edition from our World Book Encyclopedia and the whole family congregated around those snake pictures to identify the species I had seen.  I saw immediately that it was a yellow rat snake, but when my father read that it was non-poisonous, I passed on it.  When they showed me a picture of a copperhead and told me that the copperhead was VERY poisonous, then yes, by God, I swore that was the very snake I had seen.  I felt my family loved me all the more because I had come eye to eye with the vicious copperhead, and had barely escaped a gruesome and very, very sad death.  Even though everyone long ago forgot about it, I was reminded of my little lie whenever snakes came to mind.  I'm sorry Mom, Dad, Terry, Mark, Julie, and Josephine.  It wasn't really a copperhead after all.  It was a yellow rat snake.




Comments are welcome at tombohn2@yahoo.com








 



  

Pelican Brief

Pelicans are underrated.  They don't get the credit they deserve.  Well, just listen to this:  My niece, Olivia, once wrote an ode to a pelican when she was about ten years old.  Here it is:

A clumsy pelican
glides above
the crystal blue
ocean          
Its cream beak
as long       
as a sword
but as dull 
as              
a boring poem.
Its sharp  
oak brown eyes
scan the water
searching                  
for colorful fish.

It dives

into the water

and disappears

under

a crashing wave

Waiting

watching

waiting,

SPLASH!

It shoots up

with a peach fish

in its mouth.

It sways a while

then soars away

into the big

tangerine sun.

This little piece of writing should be required reading for all students everywhere.  It describes a miracle just as it happens.  Pelicans are dinosaur throwbacks with attitude.  Pelicans are the underappreciated soldiers of the oceans' edges. After watching these "swords" dive-bomb into chocolate Jekyll Island waters against that "tangerine sun", I knew it was time.   I vowed to carry a pelican back to Michigan.  I vowed to plant a concrete pelican to stand sentry over my Michigan yard.

*     *     *

While vacationing on Jekyll Island a few years back, my wife, Sue, came down with a sudden and convenient urinary tract infection which made a purchase possible.  When a thing like a cement pelican comes together with a thing like a bladder infection, it's called a thing in Turkish known as "kismet".  And amazingly, the Turkish word for "bladder infection" is "pelikan".

So when there was a lull in Sue's urgent need to pee, we shot off the Island and over the sprawling bridge and causeway to the city of Brunswick, Georgia. Sue got on her cell phone to her doctor's office about her symptoms and reported that she's had these UTIs before, and that all she really needed was for them to prescribe some antibiotics, and to fax the prescription to Rite Aid in Traverse City, and we would call and have them fax the prescription to the Rite Aid in Brunswick...  all this talk occurring while we sat in our car in the Brunswick Rite Aid parking lot.  They said they would let us know in a while.

Waiting for the callback, we killed some time by asking random people where we could buy a pelican.  Finally at a Target store, I sheepishly asked a cashier, "Ma'am, where can I buy a CEEment pelican?"  (Later, I would learn that Sue, who was having a hard time NOT peeing herself as it was, came very close when she heard the "CEEment" come out of my mouth.  I told her I was just trying to relate to the natives.) The cashier studied me for a few silent seconds, and when I explained that I was looking for a CEEment lawn sculpture, her brain light came on.  "Oh yeah, one of those things," she said.  She didn't know, but she would ask the store manager who was organizing shopping carts a good thirty yards away.  I figured she would ask the manager to come over to help, but instead she yelled across the store, "Juanita!  These people want a pelican!  Where can they buy a pelican?"

Juanita yelled back, "A WHAT?!?!"

The cashier yelled back, "A pelican, a CEEment pelican, you know, like you put in your yard."

At this point, I figured every customer in Target was pondering where the hell a person could purchase cement lawn ornaments in Brunswick.  But Juanita took full charge and yelled from in great volume and from a great distance that you go down the I-95 spur, then take a right at the light, then two more lights, then take a left across from the Nissan dealer, and there you are.

*     *     *

Sue again called her doctor's office, this time from the Target parking lot, who then informed her that they refused to write her a prescription for her bladder problem, that she would have to see a doctor in Brunswick, come hell or high water, like it or lump it, and while you're at it, don't call us again.

Because of this, I recalled right then the name of an old Frank Zappa album, "Weasels Ripped My Flesh."  Weasels certainly were ripping the day apart in a bloody, fleshy mess!  As much as we might scream, "FAX the damn prescription, you bastards!", the more they wouldn't.

After a minute of spewing some cuss words, we calmed down and set out.  With the help of a receptionist at a chiropractic office, we found our way to an urgent care clinic.  And while Sue waited for a doctor, I ventured forth to pursue a pelican, per the shouted directions from Juanita.

I took my I-95 spur, took my traffic lights, found no Nissan dealer but found a Honda dealer, took my left, and wound up at a city cemetery.  There were plenty of cement sculptures around, mostly Jesuses and Marys, but none of them were for sale, and none of them were pelicans.  So I aimlessly drove the asphalt streets of Brunswick, lonely as a cloud, until I came upon a traffic light into a Home Depot, with a Home Depot Garden Center of Hope, I hoped.

The guy in his orange Home Depot apron, "Wayne" on his nametag, couldn't have been nicer.  I told him what I was looking for and he dropped everything, actually looked up, rubbed his chin whiskers, and pondered.  He was the vision of pondering.  "I can see it in my head," he said.  "I pass it every day, a great big fenced-in yard with with all these concrete statues.  But where is that?  I drive down from the overpass every day and I can see it from above on the left.  But where is that?  How do you get there from here?"  He finally seized on the solution and gave some clear directions which involved only three nearby traffic lights.

As I was winding my way out through the crowd, Wayne hailed me from quite a distance away.  I figured he wanted to amend the directions somehow, but when I walked up to him he said with a grin, "Do you want to hear my joke about a penguin?"  All these needy customers milling around, and laid-back employee Wayne wants to tell me a goddamn joke!

So he told me this story about a penguin whose car breaks down, and while the penguin's waiting for it to get fixed, he walks over to a nearby ice cream shop to wait, (he was a penguin, after all) and in an hour returns to the garage.  The mechanic walks up to the penguin and says, "Man, looks like you blew a seal."  The penguin replies, as he's wiping his chin, "No, that's just vanilla frozen yogurt."

A pretty good joke, I thought.  But here's an interesting thing about Wayne's telling:  When the mechanic recommended that the penguin wait in a nearby ice cream shop, the penguin told the mechanic that he was allergic to ice cream.  The mechanic pointed out that the shop also served frozen yogurt, which the penguin was okay with.  I've wondered, why the embellishment?  Does it really advance the story by bringing in an irrelevent fact?  Was Wayne just trying to deepen the realism by saying the penguin was allergic to ice cream?  If so, who would believe that a penguin might be allergic to ice cream?  I mean, penguins and ice cream bars are so synonymous.

What I'm wondering is this:  Why do so many storytellers get lost in tangents?  Just get to the point, for godssake.

*     *     *

Wayne's directions were spot on, and within minutes I pulled into one of those concrete statuary businesses that sell all manner of earthly species and inspirational objects. There must have been an acre of CEEment statues. My favorite was a laughing Buddha, but I had come for a bird and, by God, I would leave with one.  The proprietor in her sweet Georgia drawl walked up and greeted me as I perused a throng of Jesuses.

"May I help you?"

To which I replied, "Yes, ma'am.  Do you by chance sell CEEment statues?"

This old wrinkled woman threw back her head and howled at the gods.  She was very happy with me, indeed.  If you can share a bit of irony right off the bat, it makes any interaction with strangers a whole lot of fun.  "Well, I reckon I do," she laughed.

Turns out she had a nice selection of various-sized pelicans, all looking quite content behind their boring-poem beaks.  I picked out a small-to-medium sized statue for 21 bucks, a fair price for the guardian of the realm, I thought.  The Buddha, although adorable, would have to laugh another day.

In the office, the wrinkled woman took my Mastercard and she talked about her "angels", her grandchildren who adorned the office walls in several photographs.  I said, "It's clear you don't like 'em much," to which she threw back her head, howled again at the gods, and wished me a safe journey back up north.

When I arrived back at the clinic, Sue was being discharged with a prescription for the antibiotics we had hoped Michigan would give her.  A urinary tract infection, sure enough. But the wait wasn't long, the staff there were exceptionally friendly, and I had a small-to-medium sized pelican riding in the back seat.  We stopped at Rite-Aide for the medicine, and before we reached the causeway taking us back to Jekyll Island, the antibiotics were coarsing through her veins.

From the top of the bridge south of Brunswick, you are perched atop an enormous expanse, a hundred square miles of salt marsh, a secondary protective buffer lying leeward to the Golden Isles of Georgia. It is a magnificent sight. And from way up there, you can see in the distances squadrons of pelicans in single file as they maneuver for prime position to dive-bomb over peach-colored fish in the shallow waters.

Sue got better almost immediately. She claims it happened when we paid the five dollar entry fee to get back onto the island. I claim it happened the moment the wrinkled woman with the concrete statues swiped my credit card under the laughing eyes of her grandchildren.