When Michael Prays for Money II

If you've seen this, you know what happens when I pray for money.

To make a long story short, my second career hasn't gone as expected, and since December I've been praying for $10,000 to help tide me over.

Guess what amount my boss offered me a few weeks ago, unsolicited, when I gave him my resignation?

this theme began in 1988, about one year after I graduated from UT and took a job in Washington, D.C.

I had underbid myself when I accepted this, my first employment offer, and within days of arriving in the nation's capital I realized I'd have to drop my car insurance so as not to run a growing deficit. To cope with the crunch, I cashed more than half my paychecks every two weeks and sorted the dollar bills into envelopes, alloting $6 a day for lunch and other sums for gas, groceries, and (hah!) dating.

So you can imagine how high I jumped when, nine months later, I was offered a job 120 miles away for 35 percent more money.

But I couldn't escape a load of credit-card debt from various costs I hadn't anticipated. Plus, landlords in that part of the country demand full payment up front of your first and final month's rent plus the security deposit, which always equals one month's rent. I arrived in Wilmington, Delaware, with no cash cushion and a marinade of $1,500 in red ink—no small sum for an entry-level employee.

When I did the math, I could see no scenario where I'd get out of hock in less than two years—an eternity to a 23-year-old. My new boss had provided me with niceties I hadn't expected, like a walnut desk and leather chair in my own basement office with a computer full of the most advanced software I could think to request. But as I looked out over these luxuries, I realized I'd be willing to trade it all just to breathe again—free of the finance charge that bit a hole in my wallet every month, and did nothing for me in return.

I felt cornered. And although I wasn't very religious—I hadn't gone any further than to give my earnest, intellectual assent to God's existence—I felt, for the first time, completely dependent on him.

In that corner of the basement, behind my massive desk, I knelt and prayed to a God I knew was there but didn't know how to approach. I asked him for money, any amount, just something to help me get out of this dreadful muck of indebtedness.

The moment I stood and straightened my slacks, my boss strode into my office with a handful of envelopes, from which he extracted one and handed it to me, grinning. The look on my face conveyed my question.

"That's your bonus," he said. "Everybody gets one."

He shook my hand and zipped off to the next person's office.

This deserves a bit more explanation.

I had accepted an offer of employment with his personal, nonprofit corporation. His real job was heading a multibillion-dollar investment house, with a mutual fund and portfolios including the Nobel Foundation's. Guys on the floor above me bought and sold stocks each day for clients including some of the East Coast's richest investors, including more than one named DuPont. They created millions of dollars in wealth and took home decimal points of that, which was more than enough to keep them in big houses and high-end, imported sedans. All I had in common with them was a business address.

Yet, something compelled our mutual boss to cut me a "bonus" check after two months on the job. I remember, as if it were five minutes ago, sitting down to read the figures on the green safety-paper: $1,500.

The carpet beneath me still bore the imprint of my knees.

still, it isn't easy for me to pray, even when I know it works.

Prayer requires me to acknowledge that I don't have control of the situation. Try starting your day with that as your first thought. And yet, the best time to pray is a the beginning of the day, before the noise and ego get a running start inside one's head.

And with that thought, I'll move along and wait for my next prayer to be answered.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 09:05 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 736 words, total size 5 kb.

I'll Fly for Who?

Contrary to what you've heard, London is not foggy and the British do not serve warm beer.

They do, however, still use the metric system, and half of them appear to be Pakistanis. This I learned in just 28 hours on the ground between London Heathrow and Newmarket, Suffolk, England.

Why such a long flight for a short stay? Easy: a concert.

half a lifetime ago i was cheated out of hearing the world's finest pop band in person when their saxophonist broke his leg somewhere between Louisiana and Texas. Why he couldn't just honk it out from a wheelchair I don't know. But once Spandau Ballet packed up their gear and flew home, they would never return to the U.S.

Then they sort of broke up after 1991, that is, if "having it out in court" equals a breakup. They remained at odds for almost 20 years, when perhaps the realization that there is no pension plan for aging pop stars began to sink in. Last fall, they re-embraced for a tour.

But they forgot to schedule a stop in Dallas, or for that matter anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. So to see them at least once before we are all in assisted living, I would have to go to England. Newmarket, Suffolk, specifically, at a concert following a horse race.

nine hours in a chair is too much for all but the most patient adults and dullest children, so I kissed the bright-and-beautiful Rittenhousen goodbye and boarded AA Flight 81 on a Thursday. I took my seat next to an off-duty flight attendant, who showed me the secret to obtaining free cabernet, which gave me sweet sleep for 15 minutes then catatonia for the next eight hours. I arrived at Heathrow feeling as if something had kept me awake in an uncomfortable position for a very long time, which is precisely what had just happened.

Then dawn came way too early. The English are on some sort of metric time, which is always six hours ahead of Central. Perhaps it's the 220V current that powers all their clocks. So on arrival I met bright daylight instead of the 3 a.m. gloom my body expected. I washed my face in an airport sink but wisely eschewed coffee. This was going to be a long Friday and I would need a nap at some point.

I headed for the Enterprise counter, where a bottom-dollar, booked-online rental car awaited me, and the staff—as I've come to expect—immediately went after the rest of my wallet. They taunted me with an upgrade to automatic transmission: I declined. They wagged about the inadequacies of credit-card collision-damage insurance: I shrugged. Only after placing an international call to my Visa issuer to satisfy themselves I had the coverage I claimed did they glare ruefully at the phone and relinquish the keys.

Whereupon I realized that while the British go to a great deal of trouble to transplant the steering wheel to the other side of every car they import, they leave the shifter right where it is. So I would not only have to drive on the other side of the road from the other side of the car, but learn to change gears with my left hand. Jetlagged. Beat. Maybe that upgrade to shiftless wasn't such a bad idea. At least the pedals were still in the right places.

I said my prayers and ramped onto the M25 around London. About five miles on I realized I had taken M25 the wrong direction. I figured London couldn't be that large so I continued, which seemed to make sense until an hour passed and I came upon a toll tunnel with nothing but American currency in my wallet. Not on the itinerary; not in their manual. Thank God for supervisors who can make magic happen for idiot tourists.

i am happy to report the british drive very fast on average, and those who don't still yield the inside lane. Freeway traffic flows like a river, the strong current pulling ahead while the backwater clings to the outside. We could learn from this.

And oh, yes, the roundabouts. They feel exactly like that Yes song. Unnerving at first but delightfully simple once you relax, stop thinking, and recite "Yield to the roundabout traffic and always signal."

Driving on the left actually proved to be just an intermittent challenge. Usually one can simply follow other traffic, so you're unlikely to get crosswise. My only foul-up occurred right where I expected, on a back street in Newmarket with no one to lead me.

It's the right turns that get you, unless you comply 100 percent with each of five steps:

1. Look right.
2. Look left.
3. Look right again.
4. Go completely past the lane your monkey-brain says to turn into.
5. Drive right into the lane your panic-brain screams at you to avoid at all costs.

I muffed Step 4 and drove about 50 yards in the wrong lane, much to the astonishment of some chap following me. I corrected my path abruptly and pretended nothing happened, and fortunately, nothing did.

the newmaket races date from 1216 a.d., when King Henward VI proclaimed this region as his horses' summer home, or something like that. See Wikipedia if you must know the facts; Rittenhouse is all about impressions.

Such as: Like everything else in England, Newmarket takes about 1/3 the space it needs to be comfortable. I mean, I drove through miles of wide-open country to enter a town crammed hip-to-gutter with HO-scale housing. It's as if the vassals working the place were legally entitled to only 50 square feet per capita. The titled folk got all they wanted.

At the western edge of Newmarket the July Racecourse stretches out like a long J across low, rolling hills with three grandstands built along the finish line. The most desirable grandstand is, of course, right at the end, and it's the most expensive to enter. Money alone won't get you in; you've got to dress "smart." I wore the same navy sportcoat as on the plane but with a fresh white shirt, after a thorough shower.

Newmarket ticket prices don't pinch because the betting windows make the margin. I don't gamble, not because I think God forbids it, but because it's a fool's errand. Fiscally speaking, I would rather hold shares in gaming companies than supply their revenue.

Still, as I passed one of the trackside betting kiosks I spotted horse No. 9, "Louisiana's Pride," and since I was born in Louisiana (and although they still haven't named anything after me), I placed a £5 bet.

Minutes later a mob of running horses thundered over the hill toward us. I looked up-course just in time to see one of them showing hooves where its ears ought to be, followed by a shower of divots. The crowd reacted, "Oh!" but the pack continued on. As they passed the grandstand I fished out my ticket to see which number my horse was. I looked up again just as my chosen No. 9 galloped past, sans jockey, who was still on the ground where he'd been dropped in all the commotion. Medics hoisted him into an ambulance and he was later reported to be all right.

with three hours of races before the concert I had plenty of time for people-watching, so I walked about the grounds sporting my blue Premier Enclosure tag and looking smart along with everyone else. I'm of English descent, and I felt very much at home. Which is kind of unfortunate. I'm often perceived as standoffish, and so are the English, which makes for lousy interaction between strangers. I did a lot of smiling and took a few opportunities to initiate conversation, none of which got much in return. This wasn't unexpected. I've had the same experience before in Great Britain, and in Europe as well. Whether it's a cultural peculiarity, or some aspect of my personality, or both, I'm not sure. But I hardly interacted with anyone at all on the entire trip, and the racecourse was no exception.

About 8:30 fans started gathering before the stage, so I took a spot about four rows back. No seats; we would stand for the whole show. After nine hours' sitting overnight I could deal with that. Overcast skies and temperatures in the mid-70s made the evening perfect for an outdoor show.

minutes after the last race, drummer John Keeble climbed into his post and propped his Heineken next to him, followed onstage by lead vocalist Tony Hadley, brothers Gary and Martin Kemp (guitars and bass, respectively), and all-around talent Steve Norman, whose most famous work for Spandau Ballet is on saxophone but he plays just about anything well. They began the set list with their early hits.

To my mind there were two Spandau Ballets: the club version, which made poor use of Hadley's voice and never got across the Atlantic; and the later MTV sensation, in which the boys donned fancy suits and the single "True" conquered pop charts worldwide.

The club tunes "Instinction," "To Cut a Long Story Short," "Chant No. 1," and "The Freeze" belong to the early phase. The guys ripped through these rapid-fire, saving "Instinction" for a mid-program duet with tour vocalist Dawn Joseph, whose 20-something energy had her running rings around her 50ish sponsors.

I was surprised to hear five songs from the album Parade, which followed True in 1984 but lacked a hit single. The band peeled off "Highly Strung" and "Only When You Leave," then the very sexy "I'll Fly for You," which I don't know how author Gary Kemp can get through without smirking at all the girls in the crowd who'd like to be, um, "flown for." Kemp is also supposedly responsible for including "Round and Round," a delightful romantic memoir and minor hit, in every show. I would have been disappointed not to hear it.

for those who only knew the band from its mid-80s videos, Spandau Ballet was all about the handsome Tony Hadley. His soaring vocals made "True" and "Gold" enduring singles. In this concert, Hadley managed his part well until "Through the Barricades," a title-track anthem he delivered masterfully on the album but destroys in live performances with a vaguely Shatner-like narration in lieu of singing. I ignored him and focused on Gary Kemp, who wrote "Barricades" in the first place and really should take it back at this point.

I loved this single the instant I heard it way back in 1986, and have never tired of it. The song inspired me to buy a guitar and teach myself the melody. The lyrics refer to T.S. Eliot (among other poets), and some years back I came across a rare book of Eliot's epic poem "The Waste Land," which included a facsimile of the original manuscript and penciled-in notes from Ezra Pound. I mailed it to Kemp along with my best wishes; he responded with a heartfelt thank-you.

Fourteen years later I stood on the soft ground of Suffolk, U.K., watching Gary Kemp pick the notes out of his guitar so meticulously he had me welling up before the second verse. Around me stood thousands of other transfixed fans, and we sang the chorus together, note for note, word for word, as we'd heard it over and over in our heads for most of our lives. Finally, our vigil got its reward. And none of us wanted the song to end.

The band went on to deliver the crowd-pleasers "True" and "Gold" before taking a big, long bow; this was the last stop on the tour. They promised to be back, and as I searched for my car in the grassy field next to the horse track I passed a carload of fans who'd propped open their hatchback and sat drinking wine while a CD from the tour played out loud. Spandau Ballet will have no problem filling stadiums again if they return as promised.

i drove back into town to Byerley House, a delightful bed-and-breakfast, with my hearing intact thanks to the wax I'd shoved into my ears before the show. Despite being awake for most of the past 24 hours I could not immediately sleep. I chatted with a few understanding Facebook friends, who tolerated my babbling about the program and wished me a good night.

I got four hours of sleep, rising at 5 a.m. having agreed the previous afternoon to breakfast at 8. With nothing to do until then I drove to the Newmarket town center for some photographs, then out to the horse country for more.

Byerley House deserves a little more praise here. "Breakfast included" has gotten a bad name in the States because now that everyone offers it, it's become a lowest-bidder commodity. Read that: cheap carbs.

So, the cooked-to-order eggs, ham, sausage, and potato I was handed at table reminded me of the old British custom of leaving a small amount of food on your plate so your host wouldn't worry you'd been underserved. I blew that off and wolfed every speck, then moved on to the cold cereal and more fruit than I deserved to choose from. The French-press coffee left me feeling as if I were among the landed gentry, or something royal. I checked out regretfully, ready to stay a while and send for my family.

Two hours later I lined up at Heathrow for a flight home I barely remember. Westbound trans-oceanic legs usually mean arriving the same day as departure, but the day ends six hours later than expected. Sleep almost never happens for me on such flights, despite my packing a neck pillow and blindfold. What I really needed was elastic wrap around my head to keep my mouth from falling open; dry gums are their own alarm clock. Also, American should tint their windows.

On arrival this time I didn't start crying at Customs. Family awaited me outside, and I've rarely missed them so much.

i may return to britain someday, but for now I'll be content with my Spandau Ballet CDs and memories of a cool summer evening spent literally rubbing shoulders with my people, my fellow fans. Should the band ever grace the States, I will be there.

I know that much is true.

Here's a pan of the finish line from the Premier Enclosure.

A fish 'n' chips in Newmarket where I dined before the concert. In foreign places I like going where the regular people go.

Architecture in Newmarket.

Amber waves of grain in the incubator of representative democracy.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 2461 words, total size 20 kb.

When Michael Prays for Money

We're supposed to laugh out loud once a day, right? Saturday, I got cheated.

Last Friday night I had the great fortune to be invited to Sarah Palin's appearance benefitting the (Dallas) Uptown Women's Center. At dinner's close, I was handed a card and envelope, which surprised me: This hadn't been explicitly billed as a fundraiser. Still, I said a quick prayer, unfolded the "emergency" check from my wallet, and filled it out.

Good causes are best funded that way, with little deliberation. Although I am not a wealthy man, I lead a comfortable life. Many others don't. So I left feeling okay, though a bit apprehensive, because I'm not in the habit of writing checks that big voluntarily.

Shift gears with me for a moment; this is a transition that will make sense when you're done.

You know how the government's paying Americans to buy new appliances this year? I signed up for the rebate, because our refrigerator is hot. I mean, the unit chills just fine, but the motor windings have shorted into the case, making the outside of the fridge a literal live wire. I tested it after Squeeky felt a mild shock when accidentally touching the sink at the same time as the fridge. My voltmeter, retracing her path, showed 118v AC current between the sink and the appliance.

In short, I am blessed not to be a widower.

So when I heard about the government appliance rebate, I went shopping. Bought a handsome new Maytag with the freezer on the bottom so we don't have to stoop all the time.

Saturday morning, two guys arrived in a truck. One came to fetch the danger-fridge while his boss unboxed the new one. Boss-man lifted the cardboard off the new unit and immediately zeroed in on a blemish way down low on one side, near the back. He pointed to a scratch that had been painted over somewhere up the production line. He said, "I give you $100 for that," and I thought he was kidding.

Then after he wheeled the fridge into my kitchen, he wrote just that on the invoice and handed it to me for a signature.

"If you don't get your check within two weeks, you call this number."

Okay.

Okay. Do you see what happened there?

That is why I wanted to laugh out loud. But I couldn't, because it would have confused the guys.

So after they left, I sat down and had a good snicker.

And that is why I believe in the power of prayer.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:11 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 431 words, total size 3 kb.

Unchange

I'm auctioning off some U.S. coins my father collected over the years—pre-1964 silver, nothing all that rare—and got down to the quarters and dimes when something gave me pause.

A 1952 dime, to be specific.

I pondered how that little Roosevelt had roamed the country at a time when 10 cents meant so much more. Perhaps, in its days going from pocket to pocket in America:

• It clicked through any number of red Coca-Cola machines, settling in a metal box until some fellow named Jake in coveralls came to retrieve it.
  
• A railway clerk used it to free a stuck typewriter key.
  
• A banker fingered it as he waited to testify before a congressional subcommittee. Later, he bought a cup of coffee.
  
• It served as a tip for a shoeshine boy in the lobby of a Cleveland office building.
  
• And who could count the number of phone calls it paid for?

Men wore hats then. Pocketwatch chains were a sign of age, or seniority, or both. Suits were standard downtown, and in the country they marked you as a stranger, except on Sundays.

Civil Defense signs reminded us that we still had enemies.

When a guest in your home fished out his cigarettes, you got him an ashtray—even if you didn't smoke.

Nobody pumped his own gas.

at some point each of these coins wound up in my father's hand, where he noticed the date and decided to place it in a ceramic piggy bank he kept high in his closet. Every once in a while he'd get it down and we'd look through them together, sort them, arrange them by size and year. He had me read the little ones, though at the time I didn't understand why. I'd always have to ask who the figures were, and he'd tell me, and I'd forget. All I remembered was that Kennedy replaced someone on the half-dollar in 1964. All the others had more continuity.

Yes, I know, it's ridiculous to feel so much sentiment for a few dozen coins of the realm. Yet, as I sit in this house—which went up during the Eisenhower administration—and ponder the labor that made it possible, I realize coins like the ones on my desk served as another part of that very exchange. At some point those workers traded sweat for the quarters and dimes that ended up in their pockets. They're all dead now and and the house will someday fall down. But the currency remains, having outlasted what it was traded for.

There's more to these coins than symbols stamped in silver. I'm going to hold onto them for a while.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:04 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 440 words, total size 3 kb.

There is Always a Way

I like clever people, and I especially like the ones who tell stories of their own cleverness without making it sound as though they're bragging. I always learn something from people like that.

The following was told to me by an acquaintance, many years ago, in another state. I'll leave his name out to further protect his modesty.

he was the managing partner in a restaurant situated several miles outside of town. The place had a country-club feel, being isolated out there in the hills and trees, and the city's leading businessmen liked it because the tables had lots of space between them. It was where you'd go for lunch if you valued your peace and privacy, and if you were the sort who didn't blink at the menu prices.

He served fine food, including foie gras, and this got the attention of the local animal-rights nuts, who scheduled a tantrum in his parking lot. They notified him ahead of time—mighty thoughtful of them—and although they said they only wanted to "call attention" to the inhumanity of serving goose liver, he worried. Would his exclusive, low-profile clientele be put off by the spectacle, perhaps never to return?

There was no stopping the protesters. They would set up on the driveway, which by this state's laws made it illegal for him to have them removed unless they actually prevented him from doing business. He had another driveway, so the cops wouldn't touch them.

He would have to rely on his wits.

one day prior, he called his plumber.

"I want you to send one of your guys out here at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. He absolutely has to be on time, and he has to be in a truck with your logo on it. I will pay your hourly rate, and all I want him to do is sit in my restaurant and enjoy breakfast and a newspaper until I let him go. You can't breathe a word of this to anyone. Deal?"

The plumber agreed. In fact, he would handle the job himself.

The partner also called his best waiter and asked him to show up two hours early that day. No explanation; just be here in uniform at 9 a.m., prepared to serve. And so he did.

The restaurant didn't open until 11:30, but on that cool autumn morning it didn't technically have to be open for what was about to take place.

while the waiter served the plumber breakfast, the partner stood in the foyer, watching the parking lot. When the first of the protesters showed up about 10 a.m., he stayed put. When a TV news van appeared at 10:30, he signaled to his waiter.

The partner walked out to the news crew and let them know they were welcome to film all they wanted, and that he would answer any questions they had for him, but not on camera. The protesters stood shivering nearby while he gave a full interview, and the reporter took notes.

Then the partner greeted the protesters, shaking hands while the camera rolled. He gestured to his waiter, who emerged from the restaurant with a tray loaded with fine breakfast pastries. He also delivered them an enormous coffee pot full of his finest blend. The protesters and the news crew delved in.

"Not a coffee drinker? Would you like tea? Yes, we will bring you some tea."

As the protesters began to tell the partner all their grievances, he stood silently, nodding, and the camera took it all in. After a time, having said all they wanted to say to him, they started passing out their placards to wave at any patrons who'd be showing up soon.

And right about then, dams began to bulge.

The protest leader, who for 20 minutes had been explaining to his host what a barbarian he was, re-approached him with a neighborly request: May we use your restroom?

"I'm sorry, fellows. The plumber is still here. The bathroom's off-lmits until he's done."

With that, he turned to the reporter.

"Do you have all you need from me?"

The journalist nodded.

The partner thanked his guests, shook all their hands, then helped his waiter carry the coffee,  tray, and dishware back into the restaurant.

within 10 minutes, the reporter had finished his "on the scene" shot and the crew started packing its gear. The protesters fidgeted aimlessly for a few minutes, then began piling into cars to seek the nearest bathroom. They would need to go several miles for that. By the time they'd relieved themselves, they agreed their day's ends had been accomplished, and went home.

The restaurant's patrons began arriving for lunch a short while later, having no idea anything had occurred there that morning. Some heard later about a news report on local TV that day, and they shrugged.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 820 words, total size 5 kb.

3,505 Accident-Free Days at Rittenhouse

Actually, that should read "fatality-free." Since Little Roo's arrival three years ago, we've had two emergency-room visits after things collided with his head.

Although our safety record is otherwise superb, I do what I can to keep our insurance agent nervous.

like a couple of weekends ago, when I rented a 19-foot scissor lift to help me reach several big dead limbs hanging over the house. While I have the toughest roof in Rittenhouse Estates (two hailstorms, two denied claims), I doubt the rafters could take a 15-foot log without caving.

Several such Swords of Damocles angled precariously off the big elm out back, waiting for a pudgy sparrow to trigger cataclysm. And of course there was the great Taurus spearing of last summer to remind me how ugly things can get around here in a storm.

In nature, elm trees shed wood all the time. Higher limbs hog the sunlight, and lower limbs die and fall off. But in nature, humans live in caves rather than costly, fragile structures under 50-year-old trees. So the elm would need a trim.

Surprisingly crude-looking, isn't it? Mechanically, it's nothing more than a hydraulic jack laid sideways between steel scissors with a platform bolted on top. For moving it around, an electric motor supplies one-wheel drive. The working floor scales to 19 feet and can extend a sort of diving board off one end. No safety belts, no cover, and no fiberglass in the structure to insulate against power lines. A tort lawyer's dream, and yet, these things are used everywhere.

The rental-yard guy showed me the buttons and, after hitching up the trailer, wished me well. No caveats, no warnings. Could it be that safe?

the answer is "no," if navigating from the trailer to the backyard proved anything. I learned too late that the controls were detachable, making this the ugliest remote-control car I've ever driven. Having the joystick with me on the ground certainly would have simplified getting through the back gate, which is exactly 1.01 scissor lifts wide.

With me atop the platform, the controls worked a little too well. When I tipped the stick forward, the machine lurched ahead, pitching me so that my arm pulled back hard on the joystick, reversing power. That stopped the ride so suddenly that I toppled forward, again tipping the joystick with me. The to-and-fro grew so violent that I had to release the controls and just grab the railing until everything stopped.

Once on the patio, getting myself up into position called for the spatial thinking of an airplane pilot, so that I didn't elevate my head right into a branch, or, on the way back down, take off a rain gutter. I learned to feather the controls and take frequent looks around while moving.

But for my speed, an observer might have been hard-pressed to tell me from a professional. Except I forgot to check the weather report.

Oh, yes: We got rain.

After draping a sheet of plastic over the machine, I sat for a while, staring like a glum soldier at all the work I couldn't do. In the back of my mind I heard a meter running: $100 a day, or about $10 per daylight hour. Tick-tock, cha-ching.

Rust be damned. I found a poncho and rubber gloves I went back up and at it.

The hard hat wasn't for falling objects; you don't usually cut things above your head. I donned it to keep the poncho hood on tight. But it ended up saving my skull the next time I catapulted myself up the ladder onto the platform, forgetting there was an iron railing around it. Bang.

Once I got chest-level with the first limb (about 22 feet up), I buzzed about a yard off it, catching the piece with one hand. So as not to crack the patio, I lobbed it into the backyard, making an impressive divot. Squeeky captured one on first bounce.

Falling logs wasn't the biggest danger, though; it was the bounce-and-ricochet. Sole casualty: a terra cotta pot (visible above in its last intact moments) that failed to move in time.

In this sort of operation, the chainsaw does all the hard work, but you still have to hold it tight. Very quickly, my hands began to cramp, and that caused the biggest time-burner: stretching and resting my forearms after buzzing through each log.

why not hire a pro to do this? For starters, it's too dangerous. No, really: An insured, bonded professional who accidentally drops a log through your roof still has to file paperwork, and then there's the adjuster, and the bids, and the roof leaks the whole time, and before long, you've taken enough time off from work to deal with the whole mess that you might as well have done the damage yourself. I believed I would take more care to saw these limbs off a piece at a time than any paid professional would—and for about 1/4 the cost.

Dallas has no shortage of paid non-professionals, too. I know because for weeks, they've been stopping by our house in pickup trucks, eyeing the lumber dangling over my roof, eager to sling themselves up there on ropes and hack it down. Maybe I'm a fool, but I would rather take the minimal risk of pruning the tree myself than to pay the liability for injury to one of those guys. Too many hungry lawyers out there.

And you have just witnessed a demonstration of Rittenhouse's Third Law. I gave you three sham reasons while concealing the fourth, correct one:

I like doing this stuff.

by the time i was done, HO-scale Lincoln Logs littered the landscape. The backyard looked as if a very polite tornado had passed through, slicing trees into firewood-sized chunks rather than breaking them.

Amazingly, by the time I motored the lift back onto the trailer, no injuries had occurred. Yes, even after taking the kids up 19 feet for a look-around at the neighborhood.

Having whetted their appetite for heights, I followed up the next week with their handmade Christmas gift: a 12-foot rope ladder.

Eight hardwood dowels and 150 feet of rope. A merry Christmas for everyone except the toy companies.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 09:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1043 words, total size 8 kb.

Because Rough Men Stand Ready

The following is a guest post from my sister, known to you in the comments as DawgMom.

Recently my husband and I attended the 82nd Airborne Convention in Indianapolis. There were retired paratroopers, active duty paratroopers, wounded paratroopers, paratroopers who looked like they didn't shave yet, old paratroopers … you get the picture. We didn't know exactly what to expect, this being our first convention, but I knew the beer and the stories would flow freely.

I've never laughed so hard and so long. And cried some, too. The guys we were with had not seen each other in years. It was amazing how quickly they fell into the camaraderie of their glory days. They had a bond that would stay with them all their lives. Of course, the stories abounded and since most of them were laced with initials standing for weapons, divisions, equipment, ranks, and myriad mind-numbing combinations of such, my attention wandered and I started studying people.

The old guys broke my heart. There were proud old warriors from WWII! Imagine that, something we read about in books and see in movies. They hobbled along, still with a saunter in their gait, moving up close to each other, rheumy eyes gazing into the same. They would wrap their arms around each other and nod, almost touching foreheads in long moments of silence. When the flag passed by, they slowly got to their feet and saluted, their posture erect, their arms straight.

Then there were the guys who were in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic. They are from my era. Now here were some hard drinkers. They were watchful, with heavy, lidded eyes and could be very still, almost eerily so. A lot of smokers. There was a whole table of the Golden Brigade from Vietnam. They made a special toast each year, and each year the table got smaller.

The young guys had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. Some were going back the next week. So full of energy, they bounced in and out of the hospitality suites, always searching, alert for the next excitement. They were strong and vital and just so damn young, their faces unlined and shining with life. They called the men "Sir" and the ladies "Ma'am." They trailed behind the storytellers and hung on every word, their eyes avid with fascination.

But it was to my husband's group that my heart belonged. These men had been to war, had relied on each other for their very lives. They had been in Panama, Honduras, and Desert Storm. They were cocky and smooth and arrogant and sure of themselves. They had an easy banter and ready laugh and loved each other without end. I watched them move through the crowd with that innate paratrooper swagger that I knew so well. These guys were so attuned to each other, even after all these years they still moved as a unit.

One night during a ceremony, I looked around the room. These men, these soldiers, loved their country and their flag unabashedly and with all their heart. They would defend either, without question, with honor. And as I gazed up at my husband as he stood ramrod straight and stock still, I knew that this man, here beside me, would give his very life for me.

And there, is my heart.

In observance of Veterans' Day, fly your flag. And if you will, please observe the Armistice Day tradition: two minutes of silence at 11:11 a.m.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 01:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 595 words, total size 4 kb.

Autumn Spring

When I can hear traffic from the Interstate two miles away, I know autumn has returned.

Temperatures, you know. Colder air conducts sound better. I wonder if farmers wake up to the dull roar from a distant highway and know it's time to harvest.

At Rittenhouse Farms, it's jalapeño time.

Our first garden produced a bumper crop of these. Also some miserable cherry peppers, which no one likes. The banana peppers came in strong, but the tomatoes only reached marble size before season's end. Now I know why people start tomatoes as plants, not seeds.

The basil, however, outgrew its progenitor.

it's been an exceptionally fertile season at Rittenhouse: We had another baby. I haven't come up with a good pseudonym for her yet (see "Who Lives Here?" in the right margin). With the third of three, it's tempting to give her a diminutive like Bitty, but those have a way of sticking through adulthood and perhaps fostering a resentment that will send her into the arms of a dirtbag, or to welding school. Besides, she wasn't "bitty" at all: 7 lbs. 5 ozs., for those keeping score at home.

We hired a midwife this time, having seen enough interventions from what we believed were "granola" gynecologists. This lady has less med school than a doctor, but more instinct. I watched her closely during Squeeky's 75 minutes of heavy labor, and there was a moment where her demeanor changed completely. If she'd been at bat, she'd have planted her spikes in the dirt. Preparing for a heist, she'd have ground out her cigarette, lowered her hat brim, and muttered, "Let's go." She knew Squeeky's next push would be the last. And so it was.

As these things go, the birthing went uneventfully. Healthy baby, healthy mama, the latter having earned my eternal respect and admiration for bearing all three of our children without anesthetic. We hit a minor bump with the hospital staff, but later heard praise from them for declining all the standard practices that invade a newborn's bloodstream and separate him from his mother. Granola Republicans, I guess we are. Odd birds no matter who's looking at them.

So, Squeeky's mom is in town, and the Rittenhousehold is consuming toilet paper at a ferocious rate. I know that's a standup cliché, but sometimes life affirms standup. A house full of women goes through bathroom tissue exponentially faster than a house with the same number of men. I can hear the rolls spinning as I write.

Or it might have to do with the volume of food we're consuming. I get all weepy at the sight of a refrigerator stuffed with packages from friends, neighbors, and parishioners. If Facebook facilitated food gifts, I'd have to store them off-site.

naming our children has always been a schizophrenic undertaking, because we never try to find out the sex ahead of time.

It's also a breathtaking act, when you think about it. To name someone is to exert power over him; this was openly acknowledged by the ancient Hebrews, when Adam named every creature on earth as God presented them, putting them under his dominion. I've rarely felt so magnanimous as when the hospital staff hands me the clipboard and leaves the room: Today, I will name someone, for life.

Anticipating another daughter, we'd toyed with the botanical Jasmine. Ulitmately I demurred, because the second daughter is supposed to be the rebellious one. She can't ever quite get the same attention as Number 1, so she tries harder. I pictured "Jazz" in late adolescence, spending a little too much time with the boys, head cocked and smiling in her jeans, fingers twirling a lock of butterscoth hair.

For sons, some families have a tradition of using the wife's maiden name as his first name, then going by his middle name. That's how you get boys named Pendleton James McKay, whom everyone calls "Jim." Too complicated for us.

This one settled the matter by turning out concave rather than convex. We went with a name that Squeeky heard in dream, and it happens to be that of a girl I adored in junior high, who was two years older and rode the same school bus. She brushed her hair at least twice on the way to and from, and it always shone like gold.

A little golden dream. Soon as I can spin that into a pseudonym, I'll name her for you.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:32 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 741 words, total size 5 kb.

Do You Have a Prayer?

i stepped into the cape town tobacconist's shop and immediately got an earful from the owner.

Perched on a stool just inside the door, he looked as if he hadn't moved in about 10 years. With a cell phone clamped to his ear he let loose on some government official who—I gathered as I studied the selection in this narrow, old store—wasn't able to locate his son.

None of my business, of course, but when angry words fill the room you're in, you can't help but follow the narrative.

A clerk assisted me in picking out several cigars. As she rang up my purchase, the owner finally flipped his phone shut and sighed.

"My ex-wife," he said directly to me, as if we were on a first-name basis. "She took my son, right from the caretaker's, just walked off with him. And these people won't go and get him from her."

I nodded, then shook my head, the international gesture for Bureaucrats: What good are they?

"I pay taxes on everything I do," he continued, "and this woman, this drug addict, she laughs at me, steals my son, and nobody will do anything."

Something clicked in my mind about then. In all his ranting, there was no mention of the boy's welfare. It was all about this fellow, the father, and how he'd been inconvenienced and insulted. I gathered my receipt and bag, and paused to address him.

"What's your name?"

He suddenly looked me in the eye, as if a veil had fallen from between us.

"My name?"

"Your first name," I clarified, motioning to the clerk for a pen and paper.

"Grissly."

I leaned forward and wrote that on a scrap of paper, then tucked it into my pocket.

"I'm going to pray for you, Grissly," I announced, "and your son."

He seemed about to scoff, then caught himself. An uncomfortable moment passed. Then he spoke, very calmly.

"One of my school friends, he became a priest," he said. "He says he prays for me. I don't know."

"That makes two of us, Grissly. I wish you well."

He took my proffered hand and shook it. I returned to the busy sidewalks of Cape Town.

so i prayed for grissly, promptly and repeatedly.

But I didn't just pray for his son's return. I prayed for his wife, his son, and for Grissly. The latter, I think, needed prayer most of all, because (from what I heard), Grissly seemed to be obsessing on himself. It was his honor, his inability to get results, that consumed him. I saw little evidence of what should have been his focus: the boy's welfare. Of course, I wasn't there for very long, so I can't be certain Grissly didn't come to realize his state of mind, and walk it back, or that there wasn't more to the story. But in case he's as stubborn as I am....

the phone rang just as i was vesting for the 10 o'clock mass. I'm not a priest, of course, just a helper, swinging incense, holding books, or toting the crucifix as needed. There's a phone in the sacristy, and I always answer it because it could be someone needing directions. Not this time.

She asked for the priest, and I said he wasn't around, but could I help? This triggered her pitiful recount of how her rent was due at noon and she was about to get kicked out onto the street and nobody could help her and she just found out her father, who's in another state, has been diagnosed with lung cancer, and then her voice dissolved into sobs.

Somewhere, maybe in the Handbook for Clergymen, there's a procedure for this. I had no idea what it was, so I thought fast.

"I don't have a way to help you with that right now. Will you pray with me?"

The sobbing ended rather abruptly.

"When will the priest be available?"

"Probably in an hour."

"Will you have him call me?"

"I don't have a pen. How about you call back later?"

She hung up.

A few minutes later, as the other ministers assembled, I began to tell our priest about the call. He nodded. He'd dealt with her many times before. She's dialing the phone book, running a scam.

I still prayed for her. Because if your situation is so bad that you'll lie to a phone book full of people just to get what you need, you certainly need prayers.

i buy shrimp, limes, and beer at Fiesta even though it feels like visiting a foreign country, or maybe because it does.

One Friday I stood with my goods on the conveyor, enjoying the ambience with the piñatas and conjunto music and all the little kids running around. Behind me, a young man leaned over his cart, his tank top straining around a mass of tattoos and well-developed muscles. Overall, he looked to be consciously imitating one of those Homies figurines, except for the little boy seated in his cart, whom I took to be his son. But it wasn't their appearance that caught my attention. It was what came out of the man's mouth.

"See that guy?" he pointed to the recently deceased Michael Jackson on the cover of a tabloid, "He's a faggot."

I hadn't heard that word since high school. My head snapped around.

"He needs somebody to kick his ass."

His volume told me he didn't care who heard him, and he never looked up at me, instead focusing on the picture and his boy.

"He looks like a girl. Do I look like a girl? Do you look like a girl? He's a faggot."

In that instant I remembered my thoughts on Mel Gibson's liquor-lubricated meltdown. And here I stood, witnessing another child being poisoned by his own father.

I wanted to act. To say something, do something, to get this man's evil hands off his little boy's future. Direct confrontation didn't look promising; the best I could hope for is not remembering what, exactly, had put me on the floor.

I wish I could say that I stepped between the carts and looked at the same tabloid, then turned to the fellow and said I didn't want to kick Michael Jackson's ass, but I did want to pray for his soul.

Perhaps this would have occurred to me if I'd said a prayer before acting. Instead, I sheepishly paid for my groceries and left.

in prayer, timing may be the most important part. I don't think we should pray only "as a last resort," or because we can't think of anything else to do. That puts prayer on the same level as worry, or wishing—something the faithless do when they have no other means of influence. It also assigns God the role of custodian, which doesn't seem very reverent.

We should pray first, then act if we are guided to do so.

In any case, prayer is certainly better than ignoring another's plight. True hatred isn't manifest in anger, but in dismissal. To be angry is to care at least enough to focus negative energy toward someone in the hope that he will change. To ignore is to condemn. 

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:48 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 1228 words, total size 8 kb.

Wreckenhouse

We finally got the rain we've needed. All at once. And I take full credit.

Because one week prior, in another of my regular rounds of cost-cutting, I looked at the comprehensive insurance I carry on both our cars. One of them is 15 years old, the other 12. It makes little sense to have full coverage on vehicles that old, as neither one is likely to survive a crippling blow for anything less than total value. So I'd get a check for maybe $1,500 or so, after years of shelling out for full-price insurance. So what was the point? I canceled those parts of the policies online.

anyway, we got rain, all right. A deluge. Every drop that hadn't fallen over the past 12 weeks came together in a two-hour flying tsunami, propelled by paint-stripping winds and thunder that shook the rafters. Here's a slightly mad Michael, outside in it for reasons that will be apparent soon enough.

The insurance? Yes, that's coming back to the narrative in a moment.

Little Roo has a peculiar grasp of his own abilities. He'll lose all recollection of how to walk if it's in a direction away from where he really wants to go. But if Squeeky and I speak in excited voices about something big outside, he'll scurry around the house for his raincoat and umbrella and don his galoshes by himself if it means the chance to follow Daddy outside. Even in a thunderstorm.

That night, I'd left my car outside the garage, having displaced it with preparations for a money-raising garage sale the next day.

Anyway, yeah, here's the result.

One ginormous piece of elm tree came a-loose directly above the Taurus, turning a sheet of thermal-tinted glass into about 50,000 silicon crystals.

I never heard it happen. I just glanced outside to see if I'd closed the garage, and noticed the backyard's greenery seemed a bit thicker than usual. Then I yelled holy smokes there's a tree in my car and ran out to grab whatever tarps I could find to keep the rain out. Managed to round up a sheet of painter's plastic (worthless in the wind) and a child's wading pool (surprisingly effective), then ducked back inside before the wind, which hadn't let up, threatened to drop another log on me. At least for that I was still insured.

Next morning, a fellow parishioner referred me to an auto-glass service. For $380 they sent a guy out to make everything right (which is a hell of a bargain no matter how you look at it), but he warned that I'd be finding fragments in and around the car for months. There was just no way to get every bit out of every crevice.

The next afternoon, I set about sawing up the fallen branch and dragging it out to the curb. Naturally, Little Roo wanted to be part of that, and Squinx had to be included. I offered each of them a penny for every bit of glass they found on the driveway. The little eagles ended up draining me for nearly a dollar.

i rationalized the overall cost by adding up the insurance savings minus the deductible and the price of the window, and figured I'd break even by Christmas.

As for the rain? You're welcome.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 09:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 552 words, total size 4 kb.

Today's Non Sequitur

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 3 words, total size 1 kb.

International Mystery Guy

After one week in South Africa I've acquired a lovely accent.

Anglo South Africans sound like well-heeled Australians; Afrikaners (Dutch descent) speak through a unique historical filter, which produces an English akin to that of a Norwegian reared in Quebec: soft Rs with rounded vowels (roondid vewills). I adjusted instinctively so as to sound less like the phonetical American. Now I'm somewhere between Cary Grant and William F. Buckley, Jr. after a strong cigar.

I picked up this affectation in Cape Town, which is a town on a cape. Cape Town's most prominent feature is Table Mountain, which is a mountain shaped like a table:

And South Africa is, of course, a republic in the south of Africa.

For the Afrikaners who named everything here, abstraction didn't seem to count much.

Regardless, their city comprises just about everything, as if the ships that used to sail by pre-Suez Canal dropped off 1 percent of their cargo as tribute, including people, cuisine, and architecture. I stayed in a 100-year-old house built by Englishmen and owned by an Afrikaner who drives a German car:

In the marketplaces, store shelves look fairly American in content and layout, and they all take Visa. The waterfront district resembles any recent U.S. seaside development, its nightlife pulsing to familiar pop tunes from the '80s and up. (Way better seafood, though.) One obvious colonial curse is right-hand drive, which makes crossing the street a calculated process for anyone but the British and Japanese. One's instinct to look left just before stepping off a curb can result in a flattening.

Also, they're still on the metric system. I think they do that just to be different.

getting to this part of the world calls for a New Zealand level of endurance. This flight marks the first time I've ever heard an airline PA specifically warn passengers against sleeping on the floor. I spent almost as much time in transit as in country, but that was my own devise, including a Washington-Johannesburg leg that stopped off in Dakar, Senegal, where the airport has one runway and no taxiways. As we were two hours late leaving Dulles, the possibility of a Casey Jones finish loomed large in my imagination. To my relief, from my viewpoint in the cabin (illustrated), I saw no near-collisions, nor cargo cults. An hour to refuel, and we were off.

Crossing this much of Earth puts a nasty spin on the usual time-disorientation. Were it simply a matter of adding or subtracting six hours on the body clock, I'd be fine. But the bonus north-south stretch confused me. I felt as if I'd burned two days flying, and I probably did. My only reliable gauge of time passing was the feel of my chin: A day's growth is a day's growth.

for the trip, verizon supplied me a GSM-compatible "world phone" for about $10, all of it shipping. Unfortunately their partner in sub-Saharan Africa is Vodacom, at $2.98 per minute. I resigned myself to texting for five cents incoming, fifty cents out. Fortunately, the time difference meant I could also chat online with Squeeky before my bedtime, which was the middle of her day.

In Cape Town, I watched a guy pull a nifty trick with Skype. He tuned his iPod Touch to a free wi-fi source, plugged in a headset, and called halfway 'round the world for almost nothing. At some point I expect dentists to wire our fillings for stuff like this.

Why was I in South Africa? Well, I was protesting apartheid. Yes, I know it ended in, like, '94 or something. But it's never too late for a little moral vanity.

the return trip seemed to burn less daylight, but I knew better. The trailing sun plays a cruel trick on the perceptions, its effects leavened only by the elation of reaching home again. To pass the time, I read a book and learned how to use my MP3 player, and watched He's Just Not That Into You start-to-finish before realizing it's a chick flick. Even so, being confined to a chair for 15 hours beats sailing for a month.

Snaking through a long line at U.S. immigration under the influences of jetlag and sleep deprivation, I wondered what Customs inspectors look for in the dishonest. (Not that I was re-entering the country with African beef jerky and Cuban cigars: Of course not.) To help us relax, Customs kindly hung enormous LED screens above us and showed a "Welcome to America" video, with heart-swelling music and quick cuts of happy citizens enjoying everyday life all over these United States. When a young woman on horseback raised the Stars and Stripes before a roaring crowd, I suddenly welled up. What would happen if I wept while handing over my passport? Would my agent understand that I was glad to be home, or just point me to the special line for smugglers who obviously couldn't hack it?

Right then I realized how badly I needed sleep. (Also a shower.) The longest hour still lay ahead of me, between Houston and Dallas. Even if I succeeded in eluding Customs scrutiny, my biggest carry-on prize—a bottle of codeine-fortified cough syrup obtained over-the-counter in Cape Town—could have gotten the heave-ho from a TSA official. Too many ounces. Narcotic content? Secondary.

I dropped the accent and glided through, unmolested.

Rittenhouse is home again, and happy about it.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 02:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 911 words, total size 7 kb.

I Guess I'm Sorry

I didn't really mean to miscue the bishop.

He presided over mass last Sunday, and he packed the house. He has a monstrous reputation as a stand-up guy, and lots of people turned out to see him. For support, they even had extra servers on the altar—six or seven total.

No seats remained by the time we got there, so we took the ones nobody wants—front row—and settled in.

I really didn't mean to mess him up.

See, there's this moment just after the corporate confession where we sing "Glory be to God on high/And on earth peace, goodwill toward men...." and it goes on a little while. Then it closes with a collective "Amen," and we make the sign of the cross.

Except a couple of lines before that, I went to scratch my eyebrow, and the bishop was looking at me, and he immediately crossed himself.

That's all it took to get the other half-dozen servers going—sort of haphazardly, since they all kinda knew we were ahead of the choir—and when they started crossing, the whole congregation joined in.

Then we got to the "Amen," and nobody was sure whether to cross himself again.

So I guess I'm sorry, but really not, because we could all stand to make the sign of the cross more often, rather than less.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 225 words, total size 1 kb.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall

You never expect to watch someone die, do you?

Oh, there are exceptions. Terminal illness, executions, accompanying a friend to his first open-mic night.

But this one, I didn't see coming.

Squeeky returned from the grocery store with a worried look. Seems there's an old man on the next street, lives alone, house nearly burned down a few years ago, and now he's outside dragging ladders and a chainsaw around the yard, sporting a mountaineer's harness.

You know, the sort of foolishness I would entertain if I didn't have dependents.

I got the message: Go see what the old coot's up to and do what you can to keep him from killing himself. Because, you know, he's a lot like you, 40 years from now.

Okay, I made up that last sentence.

i set off around the corner and found him sitting on his porch with an extension ladder across his lap. He seemed perplexed at how the ladder's rope had gotten misrouted; he couldn't make it extend. But he'd installed the rope himself.

This was my first indication that he wasn't all there.

He introduced himself and looked me over. Must be an engineer, he surmised, some sort of thinking man who knows a little about everything. I allowed that I was a writer, an engineer of words.

Close enough. Then he began a monologue on his theory about photons having mass. Including his detailed description for mounting lasers atop two mountains, using cesium clocks to time the discharges, provided Earth's rotation was factored in. He'd called some sort of research facility and laid out his theory for a genuine physicist.

Right about then I concluded he'd gone 'round the bend, and plotted to head off any attempt he might make to scale the ladder with his chainsaw. I helped him re-thread the extension rope so the ladder would work properly, but when I went to stand it up, he waved me off. You've got affairs to manage, he said. Finish your walk.

He didn't directly order me off the property, so I stayed. It took everything in me not to grab the ladder as he walked it, wavering, over to an enormous red oak.

That limb up there, you see. It's dead. Got to cut it down before it falls on somebody.

The branch stretched across the walkway, but with the number of visitors he probably had, the odds on it actually braining someone seemed remote. But nothing would stop him, now that he had the harness cinched up, the ladder extended, and the chainsaw plugged into an extension cord.

I know that feeling. It's called momentum, and it's the most irresistible and stupid force in Rittenhouse's brain.

i studied the ladder and noted that if I were climbing, I'd want it set back a bit so it was less steep. He took a sidelong look and agreed, dragging it back about four feet. This would lower its height slightly, but he'd be safer reaching a bit for the branch than keeling over just as he got situated.

He tied a rope to the saw and started up, hooking his harness to each rung as he progressed. I figured when he took the plunge, he'd bring the ladder down with him.

He got to the top before stopping my heart completely with the announcement that he'd need to turn completely around and face away from the ladder to reach the dead limb.

With a chainsaw. On a rope.

About then I recognized my only possible part in this scene: I would summon help on my cell phone while administering first aid with ... what?

He ground at the limb with his saw until the strain of holding it out at arm's length made him pause. After wheezing for a moment, he went at it again. I could see the chain was making little dust, but a lot of smoke. He wasn't holding it straight in the groove, and the motor strained. On his next break he blamed the dry wood. I allowed it was difficult to get the right angle from where he stood. He hefted the saw up and went at it again.

After another couple of minutes the branch started to crack. By then the old man had the chainsaw extended at the full length of his arm. I could see it coming: the limb would give, the saw would swing down, and the chain would slice into his leg, buckling his knees. And no way could I do anything to break his fall. He would just have to hit the dirt and I'd pray it was soft enough not to kill him outright.

Or, maybe that would be the best outcome. What 84-year-old wants to lie in a hospital bed for weeks while his hip, femur, vertebrae, and humerus knit back together?

When the limb finally gave, the saw did plummet, but it only smudged his pants with oil. I dragged the fallen branch to one side of the walkway while he trimmed up the cut.

Nice of you to stop by, he said. Go along and tend your family now.

I took that as my direct invitation to leave, and headed off. But then I hid by some bushes where I could watch him climb down. Once on the ground, he might let the ladder crash, or drop his chainsaw, but he wouldn't topple over without my reacting.

He made it. He didn't actually die.

But he could have, easily.

This is still a good story, right?

back home, inspired by the old goof, and having just replaced my computer's decade-old CRT with a snazzy new widescreen, I decided to try something ill-advised for your amusement.*

Possibly the biggest letdown in Rittenhouse comedy history.

I even tried it again.

Unlike men, monitors stop working before they get hard-headed.

* All computer equipment used in this production was properly disposed of in accordance with local, state, federal, and United Nations protocols.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:57 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 1014 words, total size 7 kb.

Dear Hugh Hewitt:

I have a temporary dilemma you may be able to help me with.

Each weekday afternoon, if I leave my office promptly at 5 p.m. CDT, I can turn my car radio on just as your opening monologue begins on 92.9 KSKY.

From there, I head home, and if the traffic lights click just right I can stop at the grocery store during the first commercial break (sorry, sponsors) with just enough time to get a couple of items through the self-checkout before you retake the mic.

Over the past couple of weeks, however, there's been a problem.

My Ford Taurus, an exceedingly reliable car for many years now, has developed an electrical quirk. It's the transmission control switch, and when the TCS fails on this particular car it has some rather bizarre consequences.

Intermittently, it knocks out the power steering, windshield wipers, power windows, and—here's the worst part—the radio.

In the time it's taken to diagnose this and order a replacement part, however, I've learned that I can make all the symptoms disappear by shifting into park or neutral. This opens up a workaround.

I still leave the office at 5:00, then punch the throttle hard out of the parking lot, shifting into neutral after a bit so I can listen to your show while coasting. This works marvelously on Thursdays, when I goose it during your questions then throw it into neutral as Mark Steyn responds. However, at some point I usually wind up nursing the car along at school-zone speeds waiting for Steyn to wrap it up. My fellow commuters seem to dislike this.

So, until I can get the car fixed, I need a favor. Perhaps you and Steyn could take frequent, simultaneous, deep breaths during your exchanges. Or, smoke cigarettes. (Can you get a tobacco company sponsor?) Short interruptions like that would give me the seconds I need to keep up with traffic in drive while missing as little of your commentary as possible.

Cordially,
Michael Rittenhouse
www.michaelrittenhouse.net

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 336 words, total size 2 kb.

Marriage and the Mob

My thanks to Scott Braddock of KRLD 1080 for having me on his Nightly News Roundup Tuesday night.

Braddock refereed between me and Gary Nolan on the subject of Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean's now-famous answer to a pageant judge's question about same-sex marriage. The controversy wasn't Prejean's words but the later, nasty reaction from the judge and his allies.

As the audio tells, Nolan and I agreed that in an ideal world, government ought not to be involved in defining marriage. However, we don't live in an ideal world.

Braddock gave us a generous chunk of time to hash this out. Still, there are a few points I wish I'd had time to make:

• Marriage is organic. It pairs man and woman as they are made. The church institutionalized this, and the state followed suit.
  
  
• Natural law is critical to the recognition of marriage. To redefine marriage as anything other than one-male-one-female doesn't follow natural law. So at the outset, the concept of same-sex marriage is morally disadvantaged. It has no inherent value to warrant state (or church) recognition.
  
  
• Furthermore, neither the church nor any civilized state recognize polygamy, which also contradicts natural law because it awards more than one female to a male.

Let me elaborate on polygamy, because its history illustrates so clearly what happens when we disregard natural law in favor of mere "want."

By nature, humans are created male-female at roughly a 50-50 ratio. Consequently, in a polygamist society, many males—namely the least wealthy and powerful—will never marry. With no place in society, these "lost boys" end up as poorly educated exiles with no support from their family. It's a recipe for a life of nihilism.

It is no coincidence that of the 19 young men recruited to carry out the 9/11 suicide missions, 15 were from the polygamist state of Saudi Arabia.

So, to preserve the peace, the state simply must follow the church in defining marriage as spelled out in natural law.

a thoughtful host, braddock posed a question I didn't anticipate: Wasn't the nastiness directed at Prejean similar to that vented toward the Dixie Chicks some years back when their lead singer took a cheap shot at President Bush during a concert?

Something about that metaphor didn't sit right with me. On reflection, I'd say it would have been more apt if the Dixie Chicks were compared to Prejean's questioner.

Prejean didn't ask to talk about gay marriage on the Miss USA stage. It was a pageant judge who introduced politics where no one ever had before.

Natalie Maines also hauled a hot political matter into a forum where her fans didn't expect it—the entertainment stage. For that, she and her band got a reaction they well could have anticipated. They cannot claim to be victims of others' intolerance any more than President Bush could if he were jeered for breaking into a song at his State of the Union address.

So I'd put the judge, not Prejean, in the same category as the Dixie Chicks—one who violated his audience's trust by misappropriating a forum.

Unfortunately, Prejean was his innocent victim, unwilling to speak anything other than the truth, and she suffers for it.

As did the savior she follows.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 09:04 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 542 words, total size 4 kb.

Your Gitmo Uighur and You

Thank you for volunteering to house and feed one of the 17 Chinese Muslims released from our now-defunct terrorist-storage facility at Guantánamo Bay.

That you did not actually volunteer for this is a compliment to your high standing as an American citizen of the world. You have been pre-selected based on your credit scores, distance from Washington, and record of support for the previous administration. Thank you!

welcome details
When your Gitmo Uighur arrives next Tuesday, he will be accompanied by two towels, a toothbrush, one pair of slippers, a PDF of Uighur dietary requirements, and a check for $100, which is just the first of 48 monthly installments.

Approved wardrobe for each of your female family members and neighbors will have arrived the previous day. Please ensure that all within line-of-sight are correctly dressed.

Federal Marshals will accompany your Uighur for two hours after his arrival. Once the paperwork is complete, the manacles will be removed.

accommodations
Gitmo Uighurs are accustomed to small spaces. A cozy guest room should suffice; however, make sure you do not accidentally guide your Uighur into a closet or other space with standing room only.

entertainment
All Gitmo Uighurs love Bob Newhart. The six-season DVD set is all you will need to keep your Uighur occupied on a rainy day. For some reason they especially enjoy the outtakes when Bill Daily blows his lines entering Bob's living room. Do not pause the machine during those outtakes.

activities
Uighurs are infused with the Chinese spirit of entrepreneurship. They've been known to start up corner grocery stores, small manufacturing concerns, and jihadist cells. However, if your Uighur seems inclined to open a restaurant, carefully communicate to him certain market research that demonstrates Americans' lack of appetite for yak.

One known issue is Gitmo Uighurs' tendency to self-detonate. To avoid this, keep him away from buses, Olympic events, and Chinese government officials. If your Gitmo Uighur explodes, call our 24-hour toll-free support line.

internet access
Like all young people, Gitmo Uighurs have a fascination with video technology. Yours may request his own basement studio fitted with black curtains, along with poster board, Marks-A-Lots, and a scimitar. You may permit this, but take the demand for a sword as an opportunity to bond on a project: An excellent, camera-ready scimitar can be constructed at low cost using plywood and aluminum foil. In fact, supplying your Uighur with an actual scimitar voids his warranty.

decorum
As traditional Muslims, Gitmo Uighurs have a strong sense of propriety. You would not be embarrassed by him at a dinner party, for example, as his table manners reflect the finest of Eastern traditions. Simply ensure that all female guests and pork dishes remain covered.

Finally, do not be alarmed by exaggerated news reports of Uighur-instigated violence in Kyrgyzstan. Odds are, your fourth-grade educated Uighur can't even spell "Kyrgyzstan"! Still, take care to censor news reports before they reach your Uighur. Also, don't pop balloons.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 496 words, total size 4 kb.

Bellaire: Biggest City in Houston

Bellaire, Texas, seemed to exist only as long as Houston allowed it.

Boomtown Houston always seemed to be pawing and snorting at the border. Straddling two major east-west commuter routes, Bellaire struggled to contain the psychotic rush-hour traffic that filled up Bissonett St. and Bellaire Blvd. and eventually spilled onto residential streets.

Our city fathers fought back with barricades for a while, but eventually widened the arteries just to get the craziness over each day with fewer headaches. Was it our fault all these people lived so far from their workplace? It seemed to be, and if so many of us locals didn't also make our livelihood in the big city, we might have just walled our little town off.

Meanwhile, Houston struggled to keep up with itself. At the peak of the 1970s oil boom, 1,000 new families a month poured into Harris County. The roads to its burgeoning western suburbs were mostly two-lane blacktops flanked by ditches—satisfactory when all they carried was power-line crews and dairy trucks. But once commuters overran them, they crumbled under the stress and cost a fortune to upgrade—utility poles had to be moved and drainage ditches reconstructed into storm sewers before more lanes could be laid.

By contrast, Bellaire never changed unless it wanted to, and growth was out of the question because all its land had been developed by the 1960s.

to people unfamiliar with it, the name Bellaire sounds more upscale than bucolic. From its founding, however, Bellaire developed as a solidly middle-class community.

A close-in enclave that always seemed about 10 years behind the times, even the pastoral names on Bellaire's signature red street signs—Laurel, Mimosa, Birch, Oleander—suggested the hush of virgin land.

On the grid, Bellaire fit in with Houston's block-numbering sequence, but commissioned its own police, collected its own trash, and doused fires with its own independent source of groundwater. In the '70s there was a brief effort to form a separate school district, but public opinion saw that for what it was: a desegregation dodge.

The late '60s had been a harrowing time for white homeowners, who comprised virtually all of Bellaire. Once the Fair Housing Act went through, realtors discovered they could sell one house to a black family in the middle of a white neighborhood, and suddenly all the surrounding homeowners needed a realtor, too. Prices fell while sales soared. The losers were those residents who didn't or couldn't bail out right then, whose resale values quickly fell beneath their mortgages. Far from alleviating racism, housing desegregation hit the pocketbook, and many suburbanites nursed a simmering resentment over a loss they'd had no control over.

Somehow this all just rolled past Bellaire. If a black family lived there in the '70s, I never knew it. In elementary, there was one black apartment kid, and on occasion the county children's home, Burnet Bayland, sent one or two our way. But none of them lived in Bellaire.

our municipal center filled a whole square block with a baseball field, police station, City Hall, gymnasium, and pool, with lush St. Augustine turf filling in the crevices. Over by the water tanks, a plaque marked the memory of William Stevens, one of the town's two young men who went to Vietnam and didn't come back. Nearby, an iron, push-it-yourself merry-go-round got so hot in the summer sun that no one could touch it after 11 a.m.

Every boy I knew played baseball. The high school's team was an annual force within the state, a springboard to UT-Austin, producing Jose Cruz, Jr., Chris Young, and Chuck Knoblauch.

At our city ball field, though, nobody felt like a big deal. Our parents watched us play, perched on plank-and-angle-iron grandstands, surrounded by the smell of popcorn and sidestream smoke. If you were at least 12 years old, and not known for clowning, the league manager might pick you to announce the batters on the PA from a booth over the concession stand.

If not, you could still earn yourself a free soda by returning a foul ball to the umpire, provided you got to it before Tony, the scoutmaster's son, who spent every weeknight shagging fouls and nearly got himself killed by passing cars more times than anyone could count. You could also collect enough discarded cups, napkins, cigarette butts, and pop-tops to fill a gallon-bucket, then trade it for a soda at the concession stand. The trick was to put uncrumpled cups upside-down at the bottom of the bucket, to fill space. One old guy who worked the stand would catch that, though. You tried to avoid giving your bucket to him, because he'd empty it, spot the filler, and tell you to start over.

The games began at 6:30 and 8:00. We had lights and an electric scoreboard, with concrete dugouts that flooded every spring. Someone had added a wooden fence around the outfield, but left the rusty, four-foot chain-link outside of it, and you could climb up onto the top pole and peep at the game until an umpire waved you down.

On the field, we chattered at batters; from the grandstands our parents cheered our plays; while outside the chain-link the little kids played mockup games, batting a wadded-up paper cup with their bare hands.

But everything stopped when a call came in to the fire station across the street. The umpire had to pause the game: No schoolboy has ever been born who could do anything other than stand and stare when a fire truck howled past.

twice, as a texas leaguer, i won the Best Sportsman award, though I'm still not sure what for. Coaches usually put me near the top of the lineup because I never swung at anything and the pitchers weren't accurate enough to throw three strikes to one batter.

I played right field because I was afraid of fast-moving balls. In Little League, once I'd gained some confidence, I agitated for a chance at third base. In my first outing there I suffered a fielding meltdown over several innings that cost us the game. I returned to the outfield, which was a nice place to watch those who could, play.

Local businesses sponsored our teams. No matter who you played for, you wanted Charlie's Hi-Lo Auto Supply to buy your uniforms, because everybody knew and respected them, and their team always seemed to fare better. Ditto for Wagner Hardware and First State Bank of Bellaire, names everyone trusted. One year, we had a newcomer, The Blue Note. Only the adults understood why the word "Lounge" had been left off. The bigger mystery was, Who had approached the bar's owner for a sponsorship?

As the sun went down and the cicadas began their evening drone, our unofficial game clock, First State Bank's towering "1" sign, turned slowly over the distant trees, broadcasting the time and temperature. All summer the mercury never fell below 70 and neither did the humidity.

And if your parents allowed, you could spend all evening at the ball park, then bike home all by yourself in the tall shadows of the cottonwoods and sycamores shrouding every street.

bellaire was just a little too big for us all to know each other, but small enough that anonymity wasn't an option.

If we ever had an accident at home (as I did in falling head-first out of a tree one Saturday afternoon), we might find ourselves revived under an oxygen mask held by a schoolmate's father, who was also one of Bellaire's paramedics.

If we got into trouble with the police, as one of my friends did as a teen, we might wind up cowering across the desk from a sergeant whose son had played basketball on our team. (His conversation with our father would occur in private—possibly the most dreadful 15-minute wait of one's life.)

But as youngsters, we learned not to fear the police. Officer Holloway directed traffic at First State Bank, which in the days before Direct Deposit boasted more than a dozen drive-through tellers and little guidance on how to approach them. Officer Holloway, in his aviator sunglasses and rugged farmer's tan, always found time to proffer a paper bag full of candy and bubble gum to the little ones whose patience had run out during the interminable wait for an open teller.

in a way, there were actually two bellaires. By the early 1960s, IH-610 Loop had cut an eight-lane gash through town. Eastward lay the lesser Bellaire, with smaller houses and, seemingly, smaller, skinnier people, like North Koreans. Their stretch of Bellaire Blvd. had just a narrow strip of parched grass in the median, and they were bordered by two railroad tracks and zoned for Pershing Junior High, which graduating elementary schoolers would run away from home to avoid. (Pershing had vicious upperclassmen who forced you to smoke, and there were fights every day after school. We knew because someone's brother told us.)

The other Bellaire, west of 610 Loop, boasted big front yards, wide avenues, lots of big grocery stores, and the town's only post office. Plantation-style homes lined our stretch of Bellaire Blvd., with fountains and a walking trail winding down its broad esplanade. To new arrivals this must have looked like a trip back to the Roaring Twenties.

After that big opening act, though, Bellaire was all bathos. For most of my youth, I never thought of my neighbors as anything other than regular people.

I once saw a map of Harris County that was shaded according to household income, and right there in the relatively affluent light-gray southwest Houston sat a dark-gray block-letter J: that was Bellaire. That's when I first realized we were different from our neighbors just across the city line.

If other kids hadn't gotten this message, it would dawn on them the day they walked into Bellaire High School. Situated on the southern edge of our town and—as were all our schools—part of H.I.S.D., Bellaire High drew students from its namesake city but also from Houston's Meyerland area, where all the houses had two or three bathrooms and some even had backyard swimming pools.

Looking back, however, I can see that Bellaire had its own grades of relative affluence. Most of the clapboard houses along the curbless, ditch-lined streets north of Jessamine St. bore gravel driveways and flat roofs—low-rent trademarks, as I came to know them. Meanwhile, along oak-shaded Pine and Braeburn, there were two-storey homes with pillars out front and two-car garages tucked behind.

Most of Bellaire's homeowners, though, had three bedrooms, one bath, and one living area. Claustrophobia drove many of our fathers to tack on a den or bedroom, sometimes both.

the first sign of change, in the early 1970s, was a townhouse project that popped up on the corner of Evergreen and 610 Loop. These looked strange to me, with zero lot-lines and little indication of where one house ended and another began. I studied them every time we passed. It was Bellaire's only multi-family dwelling—save for a couple of legacy apartment blocks along Bissonnett—and I never saw the owners; they drove around back through an alley and shut their garage doors behind them. Nobody did any yard work or played outside, because there wasn't any room.

Thereafter, no more multifamily permits were issued. Bellaire knew what it wanted to be, and densely populated wasn't it.

Meanwhile, Houston's overgrowth took an enormous face-plant in the 1985 oil bust. Whole subdivisions emptied, taken over by shell-shocked lenders.

Capitalism abhors a vacuum, of course, and within a few years new industries moved in to fill the void. And at some point, the idea of living close to work began to take root among the new arrivals.

By the late 1980s, Bellaire's secret was out: Residents could commute downtown in about 10 minutes. Developers started bulldozing the city's 3-1 postwar bungalows, replacing them with multistorey brick-façade castles that pressed right up against the property lines. Homeowners who'd bought into Bellaire in the late 1960s for less than $25,000 could recoup their whole mortgage five- or six-fold. Of course, then they'd have to live somewhere else, because Bellaire had been priced well out of middle-class range.

The shaded map went monotone.

Houston had won.

 

See also Condit Elementary School.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:45 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 2078 words, total size 14 kb.

A Horrible Gardening Incident

I had such a thoughtful essay in the can.

It was one of those cultural thought-pieces, the kind you can't resist commenting on.

It had to do with my growing into a responsible husband, father, and homeowner, and the effects this has had on my ethics.

Specifically, it described how the sight of thousands of dollars' worth of untended merchandise no longer tempts me, despite the property offenses of my youth, simply by virtue of the type of merchandise in question:

Garden supplies. Who would steal garden supplies?

Gardeners? Homeowners? People with families, mortgages, a reputation and neighbors, who would never risk all that just to make off with a few bags of cow manure and step-stones?

Of course not. So the home centers leave that stuff out front all the time without so much as a video camera trained on it. Because who would—or wouldn't—steal it?

To put that in perspective, imagine if we were talking about chrome wheels.

Anyway, I had this essay all mapped out and written, the kind of thing that makes you, the reader, place your chin in your hand and say, "Hmm. That Rittenhouse sure is insightful."

Then I saw this.

A small businessman does not spend hundreds of dollars on fencing except to stem hundreds more dollars in certain losses.

So, someone was making off with the local hardware store's bagged mulch. Or cinder blocks. Or cow manure.

Today, I am ashamed to be a resident of Rittenhouse Estates.

unrelatedly, this weekend the rittenhouses started a garden of their own, and paid for everything themselves.

Except the framing of the bird net. Most of that was wood I "found" when the local developer flattened a house and left the wreckage untended overnight. Otherwise, it would've gone to a landfill, so there's my moral vanity.

I also came across a 16-foot 2x4 on Inwood Road one afternoon, stopping to heft it atop the Explorer with no idea, at the time, how I planned to use it. Split in two, it made the perfect top lengthwise members of the framing.

Also the horse manure I picked up, free of charge, at a nearby stable where the owner piles it up next to his fence fully expecting his neighbors to cart it off.

It's not child labor if it's family.

Right, then. I did pay for the bird netting and the seeds. Here's the result.

You can't see the nylon mesh in the picture, and neither could Wolf Dog when he spotted an unauthorized cat in the alley and executed his usual high-hackles charge-to-the-fence, which ended with a very confused German Shepherd tangled nose-first in the bird net. As you can see, I immediately propped various implements up against it to remind him he no longer has a straight shot to the chain-link.

we suburbanites go to such lengths planting gardens, knowing we'll probably get two meals' worth of vegetables out of them. I'm just grateful I don't live in the era of subsistence farming. Squeeky and I would have starved to death, our fossilized skeletons found clutching hoes in the middle of an empty field, having failed to get a single tuber to take root.

Nature seems to know better: Overwhelm adversity with numbers. Currently, the giant elm tree is in must, dumping shovelfuls of this stuff

… which resembles oatmeal, onto every square inch of Rittenhouse.

Including the gutters. Even if I'd sprung for those leaf-guard types, they'd still clog with elm-meal.

I'll report back shortly on the garden's progress. We've sown tomatoes, basil, cilantro, sweet peppers, sugar peas, and broccoli.

Here's Squinx's contribution:

Happy springtime.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:22 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 606 words, total size 5 kb.

Saw You There

Where: Metro Orange Line, Washington, D.C.
When: 5:40 p.m., July 8, 1988

You: Slim, straight-haired brunette holding a binder. Your right hand has only one finger and a thumb.

Me: I thought you were pretty hot-looking for a girl with only seven fingers. 

— ¤ — ¤ — ¤ —

Where: Club Soda, Washington, D.C.
When: May 14, 1988

You: Gave my buddy a prison-yard stare as your friends dragged you backward out the door. Your girlfriend stayed behind to warn us, "He will kill you."

Me: All the rest of the night my friend kept telling me what a moron you were. Which means you scared the crap out of him. 

— ¤ — ¤ — ¤ —

Where: Westbound U.S. 183 near Valley View Lane, Irving, Texas
When: June 17, 1996

You: Ran up behind me in the fast lane pretty quick. I must have been daydreaming, because I didn't notice until your pickup filled my rear-view, and I'm usually conscientious about yielding to faster traffic. Anyway, instead of just passing me on the right (which is illegal, I know), you kept riding my bumper—which is also illegal, and even more asinine. So I touched my brakes to encourage better manners before I changed lanes. But you wouldn't ease up. Then you swung completely around me and, to cap it all off, deliberately cut me off and stood on your brakes. I nearly lost control trying to dodge you.

Me: Dude, what? It's just a lane. 

— ¤ — ¤ — ¤ —

Where: Inaugural Ball for Young Americans
When: January 20, 1989

You: The sweetest-looking girl I'd ever seen up to that point, you kept holding eye contact with me and smiling from about 15 feet away, all the while ignoring your date.

Me: Confused. If you thought I looked good in the too-short tuxedo I bought used from a Mexican dry cleaner's, I probably should have proposed to you on the spot. 

— ¤ — ¤ — ¤ —

Where: University of Texas at Austin, east mall
When: April 9, 1985

You: A cheerleader from my old junior high, you were one year older and so pretty that most of the guys were afraid to speak your name. At college that day, you were walking opposite me toward the shuttles.

Me: Saw a flash of recognition as we passed. Also noticed the effects of late-adolescent acne on your face and thought, Man, even I might have a shot at you now. 

— ¤ — ¤ — ¤ —

Where: Northbound I-95, Baltimore, Md.
When: March 5, 1989

You: Cute girl in the car behind me in the tollbooth line. On a whim, I paid your toll. You looked at me as I pulled away, then kept at least 500 yards between us for the next hour.

Me: Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking. Can we start over?

— ¤ — ¤ — ¤ —

Where: Cactus Cafe, Austin, Texas
When: Election Night, 1984

You: Showed up to counter the abundance of College Republicans who turned out to watch the returns at a campus bar, one of several locations spot-covered by NBC that night. When the camera turned your way, you held up a hand-lettered sign reading too bad hinkley missed. You couldn't hear my angry shouting over the din.

Me: You misspelled "Hinckley."

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 06:02 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 562 words, total size 4 kb.