My first “big trip” was in the summer of 1967

Summer, 1967

I was a college sophomore on break from UNO, LSUNO at the time, and working at my Dad’s shoe store, ShoeTown, in Metairie, Louisiana. I worked the floor most days and when Presley Flakes, the brother who was our utility-man was on vacation, I did his job. He received all incoming shoe shipments, unboxed, tagged and tied together all the new shoes. ShoeTown displayed all shoes on a rack, out in the open. We were a hybrid though as we had salesmen help people measure feet and fit shoes. Some rack shoe stores didn’t have any customer help. ShoeTown did. Presley also swept up, cleaned windows and kept the store up. When we sold women’s formal shoes, he’d dye the shoes to match swatches of color from the formal gown. Real art, eh? I kinda’ liked the utility-man’s job but I also liked helping customers get a proper fit and once in a while I’d get a referral or a returning “call” customer who would ask for you personally to help them get a pair of shoes. I knew to make sure kid’s shoes had plenty of growth room and I would use a stretcher, in the back, to make leather shoes more comfortable on day one.

We lived in Metairie, not far from the Barlon Plaza ShoeTown’s location which was on the corner of David Drive and Veterans Memorial Blvd. The store was part of a chain owned by Abe Wiener. My Uncle Jules had helped my father get the management position when we moved from Ruston back to Greater New Orleans. Metairie is a suburb of New Orleans. My Uncle had worked with and for Mr. Wiener from the time he had one shoe store, Imperial Shoes, on Magazine Street, maybe Dryades St.? My Dad worked as an Assistant Manager at a couple of other ShoeTowns before getting his own store. It was a mixed blessing. Retail was clean, with decent pay and benefits but 60 hours a week on hard terrazzo floors took its toll.

It was toward the end of summer break and I had saved up a few extra bucks and was wondering how to leverage it for some fun when the pay phone in the back of the store rang. When I answered, I heard my old friend, Tommy Rinehart’s voice. “Whatcha doin’ loser, working?” He was calling from Ruston. He had gotten the store’s phone number from my Mom after calling our house on Green Acres Road. He told me he had just taken delivery of a brand new, 1967 Pontiac GTO and was itching to try it out. He had gotten out a map and highlighted a route to Pikes Peak and Royal Gorge in Colorado and Carlsbad Caverns in Arizona. Once his parents, Trudy and JT realized what he was doing, they claimed back seat but wanted to rotate with shotgun. He was offering me shotgun. It was Tommy’s new car and he would drive. Tommy and I were best friends our first two years in Ruston High School. We were in band together, did sleep-overs and went to summer camp. I dated his first cousin, Mary Lane. When my family relocated from Ruston to Metairie in late 1963, we talked on the phone and Tommy drove down to visit during the summer when he could. The timing was impeccable. I had a spare couple of weeks before going back to school in the fall, I had a few extra bucks to spend and Presley had used up all his summer vacation time. I told Tommy I’d try hard to fit in into my busy schedule and would be there by the next weekend. My Mom and Dad liked Tommy and his parents and were on board with the trip. Each slipped me an extra twenty.

By Friday, the end of the week, I threw some clothes in a travel bag and boarded a Trailways bus across the street from Lakeside Shopping Center on Causeway Blvd. and “cushioned” the 300 or so miles due north through Baton Rouge and Alexandria. Note, later in life I worked briefly as lead transportation supervisor at American Bus Lines in Omaha, a Trailways franchise. “Cushioning” refers to riding on the bus, rather than driving it. I don’t remember much of the bus ride but I do remember getting to the Trailways terminal in Ruston and using the pay phone to call Tommy to come pick me up. In ten minutes, I saw the car approaching like it was appearing in a tv commercial. It was a vision, a two door hardtop in a shiny, metallic tan. It burbled with power from a 389 c.i. V8 with a four barrel Holley carburetor and sounded like it would be really, really fast. In the middle sixties, Detroit was a war zone where manufacturers competed to produce the fastest and meanest mid-sized sedans with over-sized truck engines under the hood tuned for acceleration. They were called “muscle cars.” The Pontiac GTO was one of the first in 1964. By 1967 the GTO catalogue allowed the prospective owner to choose from a myriad of performance options. Three two barrel carburetors and a variety of aggressive camshafts, like building a race car were some of the choices. When Tommy would start the beast up in the morning, it would shake like a wet dog while it idled, the aggressive cams loping unevenly. When you stabbed the gas pedal it evened out really quickly and snapped your neck with instant acceleration. I was 19 years old and had driven a Renault Dauphine back and forth to UNO my freshman year. The contrast between our rides was that of a rocket ship to a mule cart and I was ready to rocket. Tommy let me cruise around town in the driver’s seat and give it a bit of juice. My smile was ear to ear. He drove it hard and I buckled up. Drifting through corners at speed puckered me up but couldn’t erase that smile. This… was… fun. I’d say it was so much fun it should have been illegal but really, the speed he was driving, it was illegal.

We left Sunday and headed west through Dallas, turned Northwest through Dalhart and Dumas and up to Amarillo, yellow, right? and stayed a night or two on our journey to Colorado. I remember driving up the dusty, unpaved road to the top of Pikes Peak. Tommy’s Mother, Trudy couldn’t deal with the narrow, dirt roads and increasing altitude and had to lay flat on the floor in the back seat and cry softly. It was a spectacular view and we felt the altitude in our lungs. Another day we drove to Royal Gorge and walked across the historically high suspension bridge and gazed down. Trudy demurred. There was also a tram ride down to the Colorado River deep in the canyon which gave you the reverse view up from the river to the bridge. We stayed a couple more nights in Colorado and Tommy and I drove around the small towns checking out the locals and going to the movies. We even managed to find a dance at a local place and met a girl or two.

Finally we drove down to Carlsbad for dusk and sat in the amphitheater and watched the million bats fly out, into the dark as the sun descended. The next day, we took the lengthy tour of the caverns which was truly spectacular.

I do remember stopping at a gas station in rural Texas and fueling up and hearing the car knock while trying to accelerate and having to slow down to let the lower octane fuel get used up. The car needed high octane premium. Anything less and it wouldn’t run right. A real problem in some areas of rural Texas, it seems. Premium fuel wasn’t.

That was my first “big” trip. It only wetted my appetite for more, thanks to Tommy, Trudy, JT and that crazy GTO. I can hear and smell the car loping at idle, early in the morning and I will forever hear the sound of a ringing back wall payphone. “Hey Loser, whatcha doin’?”

I’m ready, Tommy. I’m all the time ready and I always will be.

It was like flying with the geese or swimming with the dolphins.

 So, as is my want, I ride a bike. We live on a defunct golf course, a victim of golf’s waning popularity and a global pandemic. The bad news is the course is ill-maintained and nobody plays golf. The good news is the cart path remains and nobody plays golf, i.e. the old cart path = my new bike path. We live near the 4th green. The course is on 46 acres. There is an open field of another 30 or so to the east. A rudimentary cattle fence separates the two.

I ride mainly on the front nine. Most days I do between 6 and 8 miles of streets and cart paths. The course has a few ponds. I see lots of wildlife, mostly common birds and now and again migratory birds, rabbits, and ground hogs. Hawks circle the course looking for mice. We have a few canada geese and one day I even got to see some fledglings on one of the practice greens near the old clubhouse accompanied by their parents.

Even though the course is no longer mowed by the owners, the city sends a crew out once or twice a year to knock down the weeds. Home owners also tend to migrate out onto the course to keep the grass down around their area. This summer, right before the city dispatched a crew, the grass had begun to get out of hand. Wildlife started appearing along the cart path as they were hidden by the three to four foot grass and the path made a nice highway to use from location to location. As I would make a turn onto a curve on the path, I’d see rabbits hopping in front of me and then plunging into the high grass. The ground hog sat up as I approached, looked at me and began to scurry out in front and jumped off when he realized I was moving along pretty good.

One nice day I approached the 4th tee area which is contiguous to the open field to the east. It narrows there between the road and the field with the cart path the only way through to the tee area. I had my head down and I was cranking out 13 mph on the gps speed-o. The grass to my left between the cart path and the roadway was 3-4 feet high. I heard rustling to my left and turned my head to see a deer’s eye looking back at me at the same level. She was running, having gotten flushed by my approach, neck and neck with my bike. She didn’t need to look my way, her eyes look to the side but it was clear she was attempting to clear the area. The street was to her left and I was to her right and the only way clear was straight ahead. She was motoring alongside me at my speed. I looked at her running alongside me, not four feet away. Our heads were side to side and I was looking straight into her eye. It was like flying with the geese or swimming with the dolphins. I was bicycling with a running deer, one of the herd. We ran neck and neck for what seemed like a long time but at 20 feet per second, it couldn’t have been more than 2-3 seconds and she popped it into overdrive, jumped ahead, leaped the cart path directly in front of me and then leaped the fence to go back to the adjacent open field. Bang, bang... bang. Instantly moving alongside me and just as quickly, up, up and away. A silent departure . I had not altered my speed one iota. As I rode, I shook my head and tried to look to the right but the experience was over, forever. Off I went on my way and off she went on hers.

Like most of us in the 2020s, I wanted something electronic to share on social media to prove it happened. Stop the deer and ask for a selfie. But I learned two things:

1. I do not have nor will I ever have the juice to match up with a deer. 

2. What makes this encounter amazing is that it shouldn't have happened, see #1. 

All I have is the memory of looking into that deer's eye and realizing we were moving in a serendipitous synchronicity. That'll have to be enough.

"Cool Hand Luke" is an allegory

 Cool Hand Luke is an allegory.

Luke is the cog that wasn’t machined accurately. The chain-gang prison and the society it represents, is the machine he doesn’t fit.

Luke is an everyman who values his individualism over “striving for success.” What he’s learned so far in his thirty-something years is he has low value cards in his poker hand. No way to win, at least conventionally. He tires of that convention. He begins to question everything he hears. It sounds like he has been set up to lose. He tends to sneer at things that make him a loser. He lives in a society that only understands and values winning by the rules. Choosing to believe that he has free will, he decides not to play by other’s rules. He’s sick of losing. He self medicates with alcohol and for amusement decapitates parking meters. It’s not that he can’t understand what is being asked of him, he just can’t and won’t answer yes any more. For him, so much of what he sees and is asked to comply with, is arbitrary anyway. Who says so? So he rebels.

His token act of rebellion, the destruction of public property, earns him society’s recognition. It’s a society that can’t tolerate Luke’s non-conformity any more than he can tolerate the daily arbitrariness of life. He will need to stop thinking so much. Luke now qualifies for “re-education.” The prison represents modern society’s “school.” To the machine, Luke non-conforms in an arbitrary manner. If the rules say he loses, well he loses. The only place for him is behind a fence, in a box, until he learns to quit questioning the fiat of society. Cogs do not question why. They work at fitting in a slot. The Captain becomes Luke’s anti-teacher. His stick-carrying anti-mentor. Society, represented by The Captain must unteach Luke’s endless jobbing of the rules. Learn to stop questioning everything and looking for solutions. He is a “problem.” For that, Captain has his “rules.” No grab-ass and keep track of your spoon.     [see: Errata, below]

Society has no place for anybody who can’t manage to hold on to their spoon. Luke’s a fork person, it seems. That won’t do. Non-conformists need to be isolated and when necessary, beaten senseless. “Lessons” are unnecessary. Rules override them. Otherwise, others will begin to believe society’s rules are arbitrary, capricious and sometimes meaningless. Start thinking for themselves? Nonsense. Besides, non-conformists can’t be reintegrated, thinking society is a self-perpetuating, meaningless exercise in conformity. Luke’s spirit must be broken, his fork replaced with a spoon. Then he won’t need to be locked up any more. That can get expensive. He will be “rehabilitated.” He will get his mind “right.” Cleansed of useless, non-productive thought. The irony of the message, which is also the point, is those minority of humans who reject the conforms of society will be punished until their spirit is broken and their mind cleansed. “Rules Learned.” “Mission Accomplished.” 

Society neither requires nor desires independent thought. Just the opposite. It requires obedience. Ultimately Luke is broken. His body, while robust, ultimately can’t stand up to the relentlessness of society’s machine. Slowly, Luke capitulates and becomes No Eyes fetch-dog. He is the one man Luke respects. No Eyes is Death. There is no winning or losing, only a bolt of lightning that brings peace. But Luke is Luke and in time, his rebel core regenerates and, once again, he decides to escape, knowing it's his last time. The ultimate irony of “failure to communicate.” He is a thinking man. The man/cog who refuses to fit into the place society requires of him. He is what the machine must avoid: ignis spiritus chao. The only way to excommunicate a hard case like Luke is to cancel his ability to reason. Ultimately Luke welcomes it. He’d rather be sacrificed than lobotomised. He raises his arms, the anode to No Eyes cathode and in a flash, Luke is transformed. He has made his final escape.

Errata:

Cool Hand Luke (1967) movie script

by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson.
Based on the novel by Donn Pearce.

[excerpt]

Floorwalker Carr’s speech, for all newcomers

“Them clothes has got laundry numbers 
    on 'em.You remember your number and 
    always wear the ones that has your number.

 Any man forgets his number 
    spends a night in the box.

(passes out spoons)

    

This yere spoon you keep with you 
    and any man loses his spoon spends a 
    night in the box.

There is no playing 
    grabass or fighting in the building. 
    You got a grudge against another man 
    you can fight him Saturday afternoon. 
    Any man playing grabass or fighting 
    in the building spends a night in 
    the box.

First bell is at five minutes 
    of eight when you will get in your 
    bunk and last bell is at eight...
    Any man not in his bunk at eight 
    will spend a night in the box.

There 
    is no smoking in prone position in 
    bed. To smoke you must have both 
    legs over the side of your bunk. 
    Anyone caught smoking in prone 
    position will spend a night in the 
    box.

You get two sheets. Every 
    Saturday you put the clean sheet on 
    the top, the top sheet on the bottom 
    and the bottom sheet you turn in to 
    the Laundry Boy. Any man who turns 
    in the wrong sheet spends a night in 
    the box.

No one will sit on the bunks 
    with dirty pants on. Any man sitting 
    on a bunk with dirty pants will spend 
    a night in the box.

Any man who don't 
    bring back his empty pop bottles 
    spends a night in the box.

Any man loudtalking spends a night 
    in the box.

You got questions you 
    come to me.
    I'm Carr, the floorwalker. I'm 
    responsible for order in here and 
    any man that don't keep order...
    ...spends a night in the box.
       

(to Cool Hand Luke, sincerely)

    I hope you ain't gonna be a hardcase.”

by the time we were some six or seven blocks down 32nd Street, the first (bus stop sign) was clanging its way past our location, being dragged behind a pickup truck on a length of steel chain

So I became Safety Director of Louisiana Transit Co., Inc. in late 1975. Our Operations Manager, Byron Kohoutek (like the comet, if you’re old enough) believed in training incoming office employees as regular bus operators. No heads-up to the lead operators who did the training. You were just another bus driver-hire thrown into the mix. I learned a lot. The Operators filled my ears with tips and tricks. One such Operator, Sam Ford, impressed me with his conscientiousness. He wanted me to learn all the bus stops out on the highway before I was on my own in regular revenue service. He told me that he did it by requesting a written copy of the bus stop list from the office, in this case for Airline Hwy. Taking his own time, after hours, in his POV, to ride up and down the highway and memorize where each stop was located. He said the office did a pretty poor job of putting up bus stop signs, so you were pretty much on your own. I learned about running “hot” (early). How to signal across the street to other operators how hot you were. Sam didn’t run hot but he explained why other operators were holding up fingers across the way. I got yelled at, cursed, and threatened for not stopping my bus in the middle of the road to let people on by belligerent passengers. Drunks dribbled pieces of transfers into the fare box instead of cash. We had to roust other drunks to get off at the end of the line. I could never drive fast enough to keep the schedule much less run hot but Sam said it would come in time.

I learned that Sam was conscientious.

I also learned the office needed to procure more bus stop signs and go out on the highway and put them up.

For that, we used a pickup truck, a 6 foot aluminum step ladder, nine foot long, dark green painted steel posts with mounting holes up and down, nuts, bolts, lock washers and a very heavy, cast steel, cylindrical post driver that had handles on each side, weighted at the closed end. Oh, and a collection of narrow yellow fiberglas bus stop signs with BUS STOP screen printed in paint running longitudinally with holes drilled strategically to match the holes in the steel posts. It was a two man job. One office weenie, me and one shop worker, in this case our utilityman,TJ Howard. TJ was analogous to a blocking tight end. Big, strong, powerful, tough. He was gentle, taciturn, confident and reliable as rain in the afternoon in New Orleans. His hands were toughened from years of changing tires. I wore gloves.

The bus line with the sorriest set of signs was the Kenner Loop, a kind of bastard bus line we ran under contract with the City of Kenner. Most of the lines we operated traditionally made enough income from fare payment to cover their operating costs. The company ran charters for profit while the core transit lines covered basic expenses. The Loop was a dog. Kenner paid us $35 an hour (in 1975 dollars) to cover the meandering loop of the city with two buses in service. It was a 90 minute loop with a 45 minute headway. What little fares we collected also went to cover expenses.

I picked the Loop for the initial sign blitz because bus stop signs were few and far between in Kenner. Bus stops were spaced every other block. Sometimes we nailed them onto telephone poles and when no pole was near an intersection we drove a post and mounted a sign. One guy opened the step ladder and center positioned contiguous to the designated stop location. He then went all the way to the top of the ladder and sat facing perpendicular. The other guy placed the bottom of the post directly on the ground at the mounting point (to be the bottom), laid it down all the way, slid the post driver over the other end (to be the top) and then walked it upright to 90 degrees. At that point, the guy sitting on top the ladder took the handles of the post driver and began wanging away, up and down and up and down, using the weighted end of the post driver to drive the post down some 2 feet (1/2 inch at a time) until it was properly set. You had to leverage your feet on the steps to generate torque. Then opposing signs were mounted on the post and the screw ends of the bolts damaged to prevent removal.

Anyway, by the time we were some six or seven blocks down 32nd Street in Kenner, having driven three or four posts with signs, the first one was clanging its way past our location, being dragged behind a pickup truck on a length of steel chain. Somebody didn’t want the stop near their home and was giving us the finger as he drove by us pulling the sign behind his truck. At this point TJ began to jump up and down and scream. He ran into the street and began to de-pants himself, slapping his thighs and sitting down in the street to remove his boots so he could get his pants all the way off. His legs were crawling with red fire ants. We had driven a post into an area with resident fire ants and they had crawled into his pants while he held the post steady. The bite of one fire ant brings tears to the eyes. Did we quit? Did TJ say “enough?” Was it hot? You bet. Was TJ hurt and embarrassed? Yes. Did it slow TJ down? No. We proceeded to cover every bus stop sign on the Eastbank of Jefferson Parish over the next few weeks. I had to purchase dozens more signs. Signs disappeared at a rate of one or two per month from each bus line (souvenirs?) so we had to stay the battle but soon we added a column to the bus stop printed list. It was headed: “Posted” with brackets for a check mark. 

For one brief shining moment in 1976, all the brackets bore check marks:

Check mark = TJ

TJ =The Man  

What happens when you can't run as fast as an old, fat, diabetic.

 What reduces stress?

Running

What about walking, biking, swimming, playing a musical instrument, petting an animal, hugging a cow, etc?

Fine. There are other ways.

We can beg the question but today we’re here to praise running, not bury it.

Running (jogging?) reduces stress, weight and blood pressure and it is a mood elevator.

My story:

In my early 20's, D.I.s at Lackland got me into shape. It was mandatory, eh?

We ran every day in basic training (at least we were supposed to) and at the end of six weeks we ran 1.5miles in under 15 minutes. 1970 style baseline fitness. Our D.I. didn't run us for a few days and then upped the time and mileage so we'd suffer at the beginning. What can I say? In any case we eventually adapted and got it done.

Thereafter we were (supposedly) running each year to re-qualify that time.

I say (supposedly) because we cheated.

After four years, I mustered out and didn’t need to cheat any more.

In my late 20s, early 30s my weight gradually climbed and my overall health declined while my BP rose.

I was working a stressful job and spent a large part of my day at a desk.

Post military, I had slacked off and gradually became unhealthy.

Once I realized my health was declining, I tried getting up earlier and going out and jogging. Kinda like going back to Basic.

For me, getting up earlier than I had to was unsustainable. I could do it a for a couple days but long term, I just rolled over and reset the clock.

The other alternative, post-work exercise wasn’t much better. By the end of the day, I was exhausted and exercise was not going to happen.

That left the only other free time I had in a nine hour day, that was the noon hour.

I visited the local gym and played pickup basketball. I read about the New Orleans Corporate Cup, a 5K race downtown. I decided to jog. I could run around the gym a few times and then get out of breath. To improve my fitness I quit the basketball, which was half court and began jogging. The Canadian Air Force fitness standards and the understanding of aerobics and target pulse rates were all now basically standards for fitness. I read the books and applied the science and logic. We worked near the Mississippi River levee and I started trying to run the half mile to the levee and then out and back on the levee. In time, after weeks and weeks, my lungs gradually expanded and I could run without stopping for a mile. My initial goal was to unofficially re-qualify for the AF yearly fitness test. It then became a kind of “my time.” Changing out to running shoes and shorts at noon and hitting the road was something I looked forward to. Not just running to relieve stress but running away from it, eh? The Times Picayune began running articles in the sports section about getting in shape, having goals and running in local average joe/jill races. Lots of 5Ks and 10Ks with tee shirts. My kid’s schools had fun runs. It was faddish. I began to lose weight and get a lot more healthy. It took time and effort but like I said, I started looking forward to it. I increased my distance and reduced my time.

Then my goal was to compete in the Corporate Cup with a team of four from our organization. In time, sometimes with friends like Terry and Jerry I ran a half mile to the Mississippi River levee, two miles out and two miles back and then the half mile back to work. We worked up to that over a couple of years so that we could maintain the Air Force standard 10 minute mile and run the five miles in under an hour and then go back to work. The 5K was 3.1 miles so the daily 5 mile run was overkill but we liked doing it anyway. I ran in all kinds of weather. I have a malignant melanoma (excised) to show for my years of running the direct sun without a tee shirt, which I would strip off after leaving work. Over thirty years I ran over 22,000 miles. Never more than 7 miles at a time. When I got a noticeable limp, I bought new shoes.

So that intro leads me a valuable learning experience that I wanted to share.

While all this was progressing I read another book on health and fitness. It was by Dr. Nathan Pritikin. It was in the news in GNO because our local Sheriff Harry Lee was overweight and wanted to improve his health. He enrolled in the Pritikin system fat camp and went away for a few weeks. We all read about Harry’s visit in the local papers. I read the book because reading about aerobics and fitness had really benefited me.

I’ll condense Dr. Pritikin’s book for you. Eat mostly unleavened pita bread and seaweed, avoid potato peelings, drink lots of water and run your ass off and you can lose a ton of weight and throw away your high blood pressure medicine. It was a miracle cure for obesity and type 2 diabetes. Anyway, coterminously, I’m running on the levee everyday. For a while I fluctuated with 12, then 11 minute miles and finally could do consistent 10 minute miles. Early on I couldn’t maintain it for the whole five miles but I was encouraged. 10 minute miles, while not exactly fast was well, respectable, at least for a slub like me. Or so I thought.

Dr. Pritikin relayed the story of a 60-ish fat guy who was on death’s door who visited his camp and ate pita bread and seaweed and drank water and began to jog every day. In a few weeks he was able to run a mile in just under 6 minutes. This obese diabetic: was running 6 minute miles. He’s 60 something. I’m 32. I read it again. I began to realize I wasn’t trying hard enough. I needed to pick up my game or be shamed by fat, old, newly healthy, guys.

I resolved to stop doing distance and concentrate on intervals and to improve my time. My shame was real.

Now for the fun.

On the levee there are 1/5 mile markers but I also got a speedo for my bicycle and over a few days marked off pretty accurate mile markers. I marked a start and finish line for my mile quest which coincided with the levee markers. This was around 1980+, so no gps time and mileage aids, unless you were military and had very expensive equipment.

The weather was decent and I pre-hydrated. I warmed up by jogging the half mile to the levee and spotted myself at the start mark. I got a Timex Ironman (or something like for the time). I took off and went for it. No more aerobics for me. Anaerobics would be the new order of the day. I took a minute off my 10 minute mile. I did 9 minutes. I stared at my time for a long time. Something wasn't computing. I was pushing and running but I was slow. Real slow. The next day I ran harder and so on and so on. Eventually, my time dipped down into the medium 8’s. But hey, I was way, way away from a 6 minute mile. Something was off here. I lived in a different universe from the 60 year old, fat diabetic who casually ran off a 6. I needed more motivation, it seemed. Eat more pita. Something. Did I question Nathan Prinkin’s writing? Well, yes, I did. But looking at what other's achieved, a 6 minute mile wasn’t particularly fast. I could doubt Pritikin but I needed to pick up my game.

Thus began “the quest.” Days of 8:40s, then 8:20s, etc. This was not fun. I lost weight. I worked on exercises. I ran under 8 minutes, into the 7's. Weeks went by. Now reducing my time by 5-10 seconds per mile required pain. That's right, pushing and pushing rewarded me with 5 seconds. I cursed Nathan Pritikin and the old, fat guy. It was really hard in the dead of summer. When it got hot, pushing yourself to limits was well, dangerously stupid. Luckily, I was an all season runner and once summer was over, I could begin to push again.

What worked? The only thing that got me over the hump to push myself beyond the threshold of oxygen debt was fiction. I began to motivate myself that random thieves and murderers were closing in on my wife and kids and their very existence was predicated on me reaching down to rush to their aid. There were many days I rode a bicycle against the wind in the mud and rain on the levee (before it was paved) that I just forced myself to do it. Physically it was very, very hard. Mentally it was harder. The same was true of getting my time down to 6 minutes. I got closer and closer in decent weather and one day, after months and months of trying my times did drop into the 6’s and my best was 5:53. There were weeks when I was in the 7’s. It needed to be a good conditions day. Of course my 5K times dropped based on the interval training. My best 5K was 26 flat. Not great, eh? Runners are special people. I am a jogger. I can run but my times and attitude is that of a jogger. Nowhere in high school did I realize that people who ran track had to build up their lung power over weeks and months of training. I just didn’t know. I know now.

Is there a moral? For me the “exercise” of challenging myself to find a time, place and distance to run changed my life. I wish I could convey to others what I felt like before I started to exercise and what I felt like after a few years of daily running. It requires decent shoes and running on grass or other soft surfaces saves on joint ache. But overall running helps you mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and of course, physically.

Can’t run? Walk. Bicycle. Swim. Skate. Your body is a dynamic system. Made to move. Make it move. It will improve your health and your attitude. You will sleep better (assuming you cut back on caffeine after noon). The chore is to set aside a time to do it and then prioritize it. If you find it isn’t getting done, then adjust what you are doing and when. Keep trying until something sticks. If you need friends to help you get motivated, fine. Ultimately it is up to you. What you do is less important than scheduling it daily and doing it. It is as important as breathing, sleeping, drinking and eating. Exercise, daily exercise, will change and improve you. Count on it. Do it at lunch. Tell the boss your doctor recommended it for your health. Write it down somewhere and keep writing it until it’s done. Then tell others. Advocate for health and wellness.

Be your own hero.

Fail if you must, but fail at trying. Fail at trying...

Every day

TJ and the Shovel

Our 2003 Yukon XL drips oil. The rear engine seal in the 5.3 litre V-8 is notorious for leaking. Expensive to fix. So it drips oil. Not much but over time it can accumulate. We always park it in the same place. Back part of the driveway. Yesterday Ruth took it on an errand. Walking by it’s greasy parking spot, I noticed there was a build up of thickly congealed oil on the driveway. The neighbour’s wheat straw-like, genetically-engineered grass clippings was trapped in black ooze. Yuck.

There is was: Time to act. "Scrape it up, you should," whispered Yoda. I nodded. It was wise. I knew what I needed but could I place my grubby hands on it? I flipped on the light and fished in the utility closet. Dangerous duty. All sorts of shovels, tools and large implements hanging around the wall edges waiting to fall on your head. But there it was. The tool of choice. The flat blade shovel. Terrible for digging. But for scraping? Nothing better. I struggled to reach back and release it from it’s two pronged hanger, just dodging a metal, one armed, dandelion plucker that released itself from its perch at my shoulder. Barely injured, I wrestled the would-be concrete grader down and admired it’s hefty utility. This would do it. I found a piece of cardboard to use for a reverse trowel and a bag to seal it all up. I set the cardboard contiguous to the muck and began a forward scraping of the concrete. Each scrape captured a layer of ooze. I had to bear down to get it scraped close to the concrete. I had to use a smaller shovel to scrape the muck from the surface of the flat blade onto the make shift trowel. I worked at it for a few minutes, scraping and scraping then stopped staring at the straight edge of the shovel blade. My shovel, though several years old, was 100% intact. 

At this point I was dumb struck. I could see back 40 years. Standing next to me was Louisiana Transit’s Utility Man, TJ Howard. He showed me the end of his flat blade shovel with a smile. The blade was shiny and no longer flat. It was also thinner inches from the edge toward the handle. The size of his blade had been reduced to less than 50% of original. He was asking me to pick up a new flat blade shovel from Harahan Hardware. He had gotten his so worn down, shinier, thinner, smoother and more rounded, that he couldn’t get much grime up from the floor any more.

It took me a second or two to register what I was seeing and re-seeing 40 years hence. TJ… had… worn… the steel blade of his shovel to less than 50% of it’s original size by a daily scraping of the concrete floor of our shop to remove built up oil which had dripped and been spilled from our bus fleet. There was a daily build up of dripped oil which TJ scraped up every morning before performing tire change duties. You could hear the sound every morning as he scraped and scraped the floor to remove the built up oil muck.

Then the backward vision expanded. He was first in before the crack of dawn to bump all the bus tires to look for flats. He single handed broke down about 200 bus tires with a tire tool and hammer and remounted tires on rims with HAND TOOLS. After over a decade and after receiving federal funding, we got TJ a hydraulic tire mounting aid but prior to that he did it with hand tools. By himself. Bus tires. When he took vacation, we had to have 3 guys working together to do the job of one TJ. I worked with him to mount bus stop signs throughout the parish. His hands were large, powerful and rugged. He had never used gloves because they fell into nothingness in a couple of days. His hands were tougher than leather. He came in, on time, day after day, year after year and decade after decade. He was as automatic as a human being can be. He was the ultimate grinder. Tough job. Fine. Complain? Never. Cold? So what? Go on the road to change out a flat tire on the highway, in traffic? No problem. Rain? Sure, why not. I’d like to compare him to a machine but machines break. Shovels wear down to a nub. TJ was made of sterner stuff.

I blinked my eyes and was returned to the present, shovel still in hand. I scraped up some more oil muck and looked at the edge of my shovel and tried to imagine how many scrapes it would take to wear down the blade to less than 50% of the original and I couldn’t imagine it. Just trying to imagine making it shiny and thinner, much less worn down that far. I couldn’t do it. It's not just that I couldn't actually wear it down that far, I just couldn't even imagine what it would take to do it. I’ve known grinders before. But I’ve never known anybody like TJ. Not before. Not since.

Thomas Howard, I raise a toast to you, wherever you are. You always were and always will be: The Man.

Why results matter

People hate Trump because he’s not an idealist, he’s a realist. The thing that matters most to the Donald is results. He’s also not a statesman, a healer, a bring-us-together guy, or much of a nice guy. He’s a sonavabitch. He probably secretly wants to be liked but he seems to be oblivious to constant, withering criticism levelled at him not just from true conservatives, all liberals, most mainstream media and a lot of the rest of the world. From the moment he announced he was running for President he was the target of attacks from just about every corner of the establishment. The attacks continued unabated up to and through the election process. The week before November 8th, 2016, the New York Times gave him about a 10% chance of winning. He was a clown. A pretender.  A homophobe. A racist. A xenophobe. It would be a disaster. A catastrophe. This was true by rule. It was an a’ priori truth. Nothing else mattered. He was wrong. He was opposed. He couldn’t win. In fact, even though he won, it’s still likely the Times would have not changed their prediction. In their opinion, he couldn’t win because he shouldn’t win. Hell, I believed it. I’ve shared before and I’ll share again, I voted for Hillary Clinton for lots of reasons. Part of it was reading columns written by people I trusted who considered him dangerous and well, he was. Then, I was amused beyond-what’s-proper when the clown won. Why? Part of the reason is it’s always fun to watch a pin jabbed into the big, over-inflated, self-righteous balloon called bi-coastal liberalism. The idea that a candidate can label “fly overs” as “deplorable” for their beliefs in God and guns is part of that bi-coastal prejudice. A prejudice for which they are proud. Seeing mainstream media look sick was kinda fun. They also can’t be wrong, (by rule of course) so watching them rationalise the whole thing was a scream. Because the left believes in “whatever means necessary.” I get it. They’re righteous. The far right is no less crazy, believe me. But something came out the day of the election. The New York Times printing that Trump had no better than a 10% chance of winning on the eve of the election he won, showed they were oblivious to results and reality. They knew, or should have known, it was a lot closer than 90/10. It just didn’t matter. They would oppose him on principle. The 4th estate was driven to distraction by a reality distortion field. It may not be fake news but it is distorted news. It is distorted by that reality distortion field which says "it doesn't matter what results may come, we believe in our principles and that's more important than any reality." Don't be surprised if fly over deplorables take notice but then the Times isn't aimed there, is it?

The main reason I get nervous over a’ priori (true by definition) “truths” is large bureaucracies are run by process. Government is a large bureaucracy. Process is it’s most important product. Results aren’t the issue. If the rule says lunatics will be released into society to reek havoc, it will be done. Right wing politicians believe in less government. Laissez faire capitalism rules. Standard Oil drives everybody else out of business. That’s not important. Less government is better. If African Americans are denied the vote in the south, or access to schools, well that’s okay because less government says, stand back and let it be. If welfare (ADC) over decades leads to generations of illegitimate children and absentee fathers and rampant crime, so be it. It’s the right thing to do. If the war in Vietnam costs millions of lives and is virtually unwinnable, so what? It’s what we do. Let’s keep it up. Process based decisions made by rule alone aren’t dangerous to the deciders. But they are still right by rule and wrong by result. Those who die or denied their rights by the result do kinda' notice however.

So?

Trump’s not interested in right or left rules? He wants to the know the bottom line? Yeah, I get that feeling. Pisses off the establishment? Yeah. Refuses to apologise for seeking economic independence? I got a kick out of Clinton when he was President because he knew what poverty was all about. A knowledge the Kennedys could never really assimilate because they were theoretical liberals. Bill knew what beanie-weenie tasted like. The results of policies of welfare, like ADC, just didn’t matter to theoretical liberals. It would be done forever because it was a’ priori truth. Bill knew what the RESULTS of long term welfare relief were. Bill was also a results oriented politician when it came to the economy and he made necessary changes not based on theory but on results. Obama was a a social idealist. Militarily he was results oriented. He served two terms.

The conservative establishment is rules based. The liberal establishment is rules based. The majority of the citizens of the United States are more interested in results than rules. You want to know who people are going to vote for in the next election? Some will lock step to the polls and vote for liberals or conservatives, no thought needed. By any means necessary. But most will wait and see and vote what they think is going to work for them. Not everything Trump will author will be the advantage of liberals or conservatives but if he authors enough policies that are to the advantage of most of the voters in the United States don’t be surprised if principles are less important than results. That shouldn’t surprise the New York Times but believe me it scares them to death.