One afternoon, I was playing on the jungle gym on school grounds while my dad caught up on some work. He was a band director and there was a playground nearby.
Suddenly a couple of Cedar Chopper boys showed up, pushing us off the equipment, threatening to beat us up. The meanest kid was a 7th grader. I as the oldest and I was only in 2nd grade, so I stayed there while brother number 2 ran to the band hall to get help.
Pretty soon Dad came walking up, saying, “Leave these kids alone.” The boy started cussing him and then took a swing at him. Dad, being a full grown man, grabbed his fist and bent his arm behind his back, saying “Go home!”
The kid ran down the street, yelling “I’m gonna suuuuuueee!”
And that was it. Dad never got sued.
A couple of days later Dad was driving us kids and a friend of his was riding in the passenger seat. I wanted to brag about my dad so I said, “My dad beat up a 7th grader!”
And Dad goes, “Shhh no. No I didn’t!”
I didn’t understand. I thought Dad would be proud. 7th graders could be dangerous.
The year I got married, 2014. Dang I looked young back then.
My wife and I got married the day before my birthday, so we wouldn’t forget our anniversary, but as it turns out, we don’t much care about that. We celebrate Gotcha Day. The day we met.
We don’t do anything too extravagant. We reminisce about our date, which started out as a Craigslist hookup and ended up changing both our lives.
We listened to Violator from Depeche Mode (my pick) and Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, by Neko Case (her pick), music we listened to at her old apartment.
Depeche Mode – Policy of Truth. Favorite song from my favorite Depeche Mode album. For a while, I thought Violator was a Greatest Hits album.
Our date started as a Craigslist hookup, back when they still had personals. My previous dates were so awkward and frustrating, I decided I just wanted to have sex with someone I liked.
She had good grammar and spelling. Her ad gave me an idea of her personality and she shared a lot of my interests. She was into sci fi. That was rare.
At the very least I thought she’d be fun to talk to. She was.
Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. I was already a big Neko Case fan, but my wife got me to give this a good listen on our first date.Gorgeous, like most of her music.
We met at a Greek restaurant, near my old neighborhood. I decided to get it out of the way early: “I’m an atheist. I hope you’re OK with that.” I didn’t want to get trapped in that world again.
She surprised me. “Me too.” She was from Austin, but this was still Texas.
The chemistry was pretty obvious even to me, who tended to have a bad read on those situations. We took it to the sports bar next door.
She blushed. I thought it was so cute, I got her to do it again. Finally, she got me to go with her and I followed her home in my car.
The rest is history. At age 47, she became my first girlfriend. I robbed the cradle. She was 36. And yes, she took my virginity. I think I did quite well, thank you very much.
We were both ready for each other. I was ready to stop being alone. She was ready to value herself and quit settling for men who neglected her and took advantage.
I wasn’t in the strictly “hookup” part of the personals – those ads grossed me out – but Craigslist had a reputation.
We’ve been through a lot since then. Our mothers dying, hers while sharing an apartment with us. Covid and the lockdown. Jan. 6. But going through those things together made them bearable.
As long as we have each other we can deal with whatever comes next.
March Slave by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
To say I don’t like the direction much of Southern culture has taken would be an understatement. Though not all of us are so resistant to change. I know I changed a lot over my lifetime.
But there’s another reason I can’t give up on us: My dad.
My wife and I were chilling out, listening to music yesterday.
Out of nowhere, I suggested we listen to some classical music. I especially wanted to hear Tchaikovsky’s March Slav and Capricio Italien.
But it wasn’t out of nowhere. Sunday was Father’s Day.
If I ever wanted proof that the unconscious mind is always busy…
Dad has been gone for almost 30 years now, but I still miss the guy. Dad had failings. He was a man. But he gave me the parts of myself I’m most proud of.
When I discover a new band or a new type of music I always have this impulse: I have to see what Dad thinks of this. Then I remember I can’t. Dad was all about music. He played clarinet, directed high school band for many years.
He taught me to love music. Music was always playing in the house. He especially loved classical. I learned to love it myself. Also turned him onto the Alan Parsons Project late in life – he finally gave rock a chance.
When I read a book that makes my head spin, I wish I could talk to him about it. I can still see him lying on the couch with his nose in a book, or sitting at the kitchen table with a book and a bowl of popcorn.
He turned me onto science fiction by handing me a copy of The Star Beast by Robert Heinlein when I was 9 or 10. He turned the walls of our house into a library, full of history, literature and science. I could read anything I wanted.
Capriccio Italien byPyotr Tchaikovsky, Berlin Philharmonic Conducted by Herbert von Karajan
He’s the reason it almost seems like I’m still in college. He talked to me like an adult, and could converse about nearly anything. I can’t stop reading the hard books and searching for Truth. That’s how he was.
He was a deacon in the Baptist Church. He directed the choir. He had four or five versions of the Bible, all highlighted and marked. He regularly consulted Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, even knowing that Asimov was an atheist.
If you couldn’t tell already he was not a typical Texan, Southerner or Baptist. But he had a curious mind and he grew, and changed. He came from poor and working class Southerners transplanted to West Texas. He served in the military, went to college and found a way earn a living from music in rural Texas.
Many of his best qualities came via education and the military, but some of them came from Southern culture. If Southern Culture managed to produce someone like my dad, there has to be something in it worth saving.
It’s true that I’ve been dealing with joint and muscle pains that make it hard to write, but that’s not the real reason I haven’t posted much over the last few weeks.
Truth is, I’ve been constipated. Mentally constipated.
I’ve been trying to express some complicated thoughts that are just not coming together. As a matter of fact I have been writing. I just haven’t been finishing. I get two thirds of the way through a post and realize I’m stuck.
There is a general theme: What to keep, what to discard? I come from the country. I had a connection to the land once. I shared the religion and politics of the people in rural Texas and the broader South. Today, I very much do not.
I’m educated, progressive, “cultured.” I live in the city. I thought I had left it all behind. But something in me doesn’t let me forget. I think of old songs and get a lump in my throat. I dream of the hills, the wildlife, the cattle. The stories I was told. I remember Trivial Pursuit with my favorite preacher. I remember the old farmers and their wives’ casseroles.
How to explain to the people I identify with most today why I still care about those people? People whose politics threaten their very existence? Those who are being targeted by reactionary politics have every right to be angry.
I just can’t help thinking it would be a mistake to let it all go. That culture made me who I am. There has to be something of value. Some wisdom that can be extracted.
I’m still mildly constipated, but deep down I’m still working on the problem. Those thoughts want out. It’ll happen sooner or later.
Sorry for the lack of content lately. I slept wrong the other night and got my shoulder all jacked up. Got one of those deep tissue massages where the lady walks on you and beats the crap out of you. Straightened me right out. Once the bruises healed.
Gotta get serious with the yoga if I want to keep it that way.
BTW, just tried a trick I read about for killing a fly with your bare hands, and it worked! Flies have to jump before they can fly. If you hold your hands a little way above them and clap, they’ll jump right in the middle and it’s RIP fly. I don’t know whether I won or lost…
I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet. I just got back from a hike in the Franklin Mountains. Sometimes I forget I’m old.
I love seeing the cholla cacti in bloom. Nothing can match that color.
El Paso is down there somewhere.
The trail turned out to be an avalanche that hasn’t quite finished avalanching. Big rocks and small boulders on the side of a slope that teetered and tumbled under my feet.
I never get tired of prickly pear blossoms. They catch my eye every time.
I was very surprised to see Indian paintbrushes in the Franklin Mountains of El Paso. I remember them as more of a coastal plains flower.
I was trying to get to a spring only three miles away, but uphill miles are a lot longer regular miles. Finally I had to admit I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Those rocks were a recipe for a broken leg or at minimum a sprained ankle and I was alone.
I might take another crack at it when I get a couple of those poles I’ve seen the spandex crowd use. I found a stick I could use as a cane and it made a huge difference.
Worn out as I am, I needed this. the modern world is too noisy for me. Some days I have to go to the desert. the thorny shrubs and cacti remind me how resilient life is. I can feel the wind on my face and hear myself think.
Toadstools, berries, dead bugs and cicada shells. Those were some of the many ingredients. I stirred them into a bucket of water and left them next to the fence, as far as I could get from the house. Dad could be a spoil sport.
I wasn’t sure what, but I knew something magical would happen eventually. I’d heard you could put a horse’s hair in water and it would turn into a worm, so I figured anything was possible.
Unfortunately, I never got to find out. Just as my brew was reaching maturity, Dad smelled it from inside the house and said “God what’s that smell?” and tumped it over. I said, “Dad, no! My potion!”
But Dad didn’t believe in magic.
After losing several potions with a lot of potential, I gave up on magic and turned to science.
I mixed household items like Windex, perfume and shampoo and put my “experiments” in the freezer. And in a few days, voila! They disappeared. I never saw it happen, but I was impressed.
Sometimes I got into the medicine cabinet for more scientific looking items. I learned that dropping Dad’s Alka-Seltzer into a sink full of water would make them disappear.
Then I turned to the kitchen. Baking supplies were a goldmine for science.
My biggest discovery: You know how baker’s cocoa floats on top of the milk and refuses to sink? Green food coloring worked like a charm. Add a little sugar and you have green chocolate milk. Red, blue and yellow had no effect. So what if Mom and Dad wouldn’t buy more Hershey’s Quick . We had it covered.
I admit I was unethical. Green chocolate milk looked like it might be poisonous, so I tested it on my little brother. When he liked it and didn’t die, it was Katie bar the door. Green chocolate milk was on the menu.
Mom asked, “What on earth is happening to the green food coloring?” But I never gave up my secret.
Who needs drugs when you can trick people’s brains into making their own drugs?
I used to use OK Cupid in my lonely old bachelor days. I got a few nice dinner dates out of it, but they had gaming features that kept you on the site. Veeery counterproductive if you wanted to find a mate.
People thought they could trade up from an 80 percent to a 90 percent match, so you kept seeing the same faces pop up over and over. After meeting my wife, it really seemed like bullshit. My wife and I are practically opposites and we’re stuck together like magnets.
I have actively prevented myself from becoming a gamer, because I don’t think I can handle it. I had issues with simpler games before. I got tendonitis saving the Princess in Mario 3 (twice). I thought Angry Birds and Wordfeud were gonna get me fired. Bathroom breaks can only be so long till the boss notices.
When I first discovered Reddit, I let that take over my life. I became addicted to “karma” and spent hours upon hours trying to figure out how to get more of it.
I finally broke the cycle by nuking my account and getting another one I didn’t care much about. Downvote away…. Same way I kept those apps from getting me in trouble. Deleted the apps.
I also saw a marriage break up because of World of Warcraft, so however legit gaming might be these days, I just can’t.
I know my weaknesses.
Language learning app Duolingo uses gaming features to keep you motivated and it has helped me learn a fair amount of Spanish. I was able to have a basic conversation with a Venezuelan after just under a year.
But again, I have to face it. I have other activities that need my attention. And early arthritis in my thumb…
I hate cleaning house, but sometimes it’s got to be done.
I have a rule of thumb: If it takes more work to step over the piles than to pick them up, I pick them up.
Dad had to threaten us with a spanking to get me and my siblings to clean our room. “It better be clean when I get home from work or else!”
So we got home after school and immediately began wasting time, watching Gilligan’s Island or whatever was on. Until suddenly we realized Dad would be home any minute. The dogs’ ears perked up when the Ford pickup got close. Two minutes’ warning.
So it was into the bedroom, throw the toys into the closet, make the beds and get done just as Dad was pulling into the driveway. In the nick of time. Just enough to make it look like we made an effort. Just enough effort to dodge a whipping.
And Dad of course marched right to the closet and said, “OK. Now clean the closet.”
Easy peasy. Just push everything under the bed. Until one day Dad got wise, swiped a broom handle under the bed and pushed it all out in the middle of the floor. “Now put everything where it goes. Don’t just dump it in the closet!”
Dad figured out the problem: three channels of bad TV for us kids to waste time and fight over. He finally got fed up and banned us from watching TV until he got home. “If you don’t have time to do your chores or your homework you don’t have time to watch TV.” He pulled out the channel dial and took it to work every morning.
All it took was a pair ofneedlenose pliers and the bad TV-watching shenanigans continued.
Then it escalated. Dad began taking the electric cord to work.
Luckily the mixer cord fit. So we watched TV till we got nervous, then crammed everything under the bed like always.
Dad got so frustrated he nailed a long piece of paneling to the bottom of the bed frame so nothing except maybe a sheet of paper would fit.
When our strategy changed to piling it up between bed and wall, he kind of gave up. The man was a fearsome spanker, but I don’t think his heart was in it. Being a drill sergeant took time away from what HE wanted to do after work.
Me in the ladies’ glasses I had to wear for two weeks.
Sometimes I like to play a game where I lose things and try to find them with my glasses off. It’s like a scavenger hunt. It’s especially fun when I hide my glasses which I can’t see without.
Strangely enough I discovered that my wife’s prescription is practically the same as mine, minus the astigmatism. That came in really handy when I accidentally lost the game by sitting on my glasses. As if I needed another sign that we were meant to be.
Since I know I have th at option, the game is less of a challenge, so I have a rule that if I have to put on her glasses, I lose. They might not look good on her but they’re damn silly on me.
While ago I tried to turn on the living room light by mashing on a packet of gluten-free soy sauce. in this house you turn on the light and the ceiling fan with a little plastic doohickey. With my glasses off, I couldn’t tell the difference.
I won the game even though I had to hunt all over the room, because I didn’t have to put on those silly red glasses.
Late Boomer's Den 
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