Hard Traveling

Early last week, I got the news that my old friend J had passed on.  He had been in a nursing home for a long time, after debilitating head injuries he suffered from a few falls.  J had always been a poster boy for bad habits, particularly smoking and drinking, and these things caught up to him over the years.  From what I gather, the smoking finally did its thing, and an aggressive form of lung cancer took him down for the last time.

I don’t think I’ll be telling any more cautionary tales.  People make their choices and live with them.  And then die, as we’ll all do, whether we’re the pictures of health and virtue, or like J, we let it ride, common sense and longevity be damned.  At the same time, I’ve been reading Night of the Gun by the recently-deceased New York Times writer, David Carr, which bears a passing similarity to J’s wild ways, save that Carr, thanks to the guilt he felt over the fate of his two infant daughters, made himself shift gears and took off in a far more successful direction. 

What I like about the book is the lack of judgment he had on himself, on the people he knew, whether they were light or dark forces.  Not so much “lack of judgment” as the simple realization that people are going to do what they will, and it’s up to them to change if they so desire.  His life spiraled out of control numerous times and as noted, the only thing that finally registered with him was his two kids who demanded his commitment as a father.  But they really didn’t … as he noted, some of the foster families who handled the kids in their infancy seemed to be decent people who probably could have raised the kids as their own.  It was what he wanted, to stop the cycle and take as much control of his destiny as he could.

And that’s where I sense whatever I feel about J now, that concept of taking control of your life.  To an extent, no one really can.  Shit is going to happen that no one could see coming.  In my case recently, a house fire and hernia followed by surgery.  And shit that you know is coming, like my parents passing on.  You would think the unplanned stuff would be more jarring, but I found that the house fire gave me a new perspective on possessions, and the hernia completely changed my life for the better in terms of my body weight and health.  It’s been the expected stuff, the parents departing, that have taken much more of an emotional toll, and remain a much more real, ever-present condition to live with.

J’s passing takes its place in that more permanent emotional condition, granted nowhere near as profound as my parents’ passing on, but something I will dwell on in good and bad ways over the coming years.  And that’s one thing you learn as you age: you’re going to be dwelling on deaths, of family and friends, as they happen more frequently in your life, and it’s a good idea to learn how to handle these things emotionally, otherwise you’re sure to be overwhelmed by the experiences, or more inclined to completely shut down emotionally, which is always an option (and one I've taken with a few people).

When A gave me the news earlier this week, I knew it was a much heavier load on him, as he and J got to know each other in that great open time right after high school.  As A tells the story, they met while working the boardwalk the summer of 1978 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, pick-up jobs around the beach before A went off to college and J got into whatever was coming his way.  They lived in the same boarding house, A in the basement and J on a higher floor, not really knowing each other, when one Sunday morning, A heard The Sex Pistols blasting from an open window.  Understand that history has been re-written with The Sex Pistols in America, like we were all listening to them as if they were Led Zeppelin.  No.  Hardly anyone was.  That sort of English punk was portrayed as a circus sideshow in the American media – very few people took it seriously, particularly kids raised on 60s and 70s rock.  Very few people were even into the American stuff like The Ramones.  So to be into The Sex Pistols in American in 1978 was one very individual thing … to hear someone else blasting it from a stereo at that time was like a Bat Signal being sent out over the land, and the only thing you could do was find that source.

And so A did, and thus was born a thorny, strange friendship over the course of decades, with A cast as the reasonably responsible, relatively straight arrow, and J the provocateur/raconteur, always causing scenes, making shit happen both good and bad, trying to make it as a poet and a musician, never quite getting where he wanted to be, but not inclined to stop trying.  J had been orphaned and raised by a family in Red Bank, New Jersey.  I never knew what his father did, save that he was successful, they were Polish and deeply Catholic, and raised J in that way.  J had been a rebellious kid, possibly because of his orphan status and just his nature, but he always carried that dual sense of wanting to be out of control all the time, yet answering to some higher spiritual authority, ditto the same with patriotism.  He was the wild guy at the party, permanently smoking, hobnobbing with all the prettiest girls, with shoulder-length hair and a “Nixon Now” button on his lapel that in one sense was ironic, but in another, once you got to know him, he really wasn’t fucking around and thought the world of Richard Nixon.

That button best exemplified J, that strong sense of self he had, and knowing that he could play it both ways, that he could find himself sitting in an American Legion hall respectfully listening to and appreciating old war stories, and later do some lines in the men’s room of a local bar with a bunch of wastrels while a local band blasted electric guitars and bass through the walls.  I’m reminded of those occasional episodes of The Sopranos where Tony would be watching a World War II documentary or movie on TV and expound on what great Americans these men were, and he was just trying to uphold that level of manhood and decency as exemplified by that generation’s necessary struggle.  Knowing in the back of his mind that he was full of shit and doing things all wrong, but not willing to disassociate the connection to that sense of decency in his mind.  I feel the same way myself when I watch John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movies: that sense of manhood will always be very appealing, but really, what it has to do with our modern lives and how we live them, I’m not so sure.

I met J via A in the mid 1990s in the infant days of the internet, as we were all connected into an bulletin board dedicated to the New York radio disc jockey Vin Scelsa (whom I still find myself listening to after all these years).  I wrote about the legendary party that “Bob” threw in Hoboken where all those disparate voices on the internet gathered for one glorious night, and that’s where I first met J.  As I described it at the time, he had the persona of someone who had just rolled off the water bed of a smoke-filled Chevy Van, Cheap Trick blasting from the speakers, bong in one hand, can of Old Milwaukee in the other, and barked out, “Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-Where’s the party?”

That was another oddly endearing thing about J: he stuttered.  Totally unexpected and out of character.  This Type A personality trapped in a rock-and-roller’s body, somebody you would figure would have total command of the room, but when he spoke, every few sentences, some word would hang him up completely and have him stumbling over the introductory syllable for seconds on end.  I think he hated when anyone acknowledged this, or at least I know he told me to go fuck myself (always without a stutter) any time I ribbed him about it.  It was one of those J things: either you rode along with it and stopped paying any mind to it, or you got the hell out.  Just another of his strange, somehow sweet contradictions.  It’s hard to get mad at people who stutter.  (But, trust me, in J’s case, you would anyway.)

J’s forte when I knew him was managing his two bands and embroiling himself in the boisterous New Jersey club and bar scene that he knew so well.  He was in his natural element working a club while one of his bands played, greeting strangers at the door, hustling them for drinks and email addresses for the list, making sure everyone knew who he was, that his band was up on stage, and I hope to see you again next week at (insert seedy club name here).  The problem with J as a manager was that he was terrible with money, going into negative balances for the “Twangfest” festivals he’d stage every spring or summer, a gathering of many of the alt country bands around New Jersey.  And he didn’t give a shit because he loved the music so much, and the simple idea that he was making all this happen was good enough.  But that’s one thing I know about successful band managers: they’re all about the cash.

J was all about the music, and maybe this was his downfall.  The same way I’m all about the writing and don’t really give a shit about the cash either.  As Bob Seger put it, Beautiful Losers.  Much like J, I’m O.K. with losing in this sense, so long as the art is there, the ability to go on making it, to keep the ball in the air.  But when you’re managing bands, the whole idea is to make a financial profit and hopefully grow it to another higher level.  A good manager will get you shows, make you feel like The Beatles in terms of your talent, and push you into making even better music.  A great manager will do all that … AND make you a truckload of money.  While J understood that on some basic level, I don’t think he understood that this really wasn’t him, that he was too much of an artist himself and didn’t have that financial savvy to push the managerial thing to a level where profits rolled in.  While some of that with bands comes down to shit luck, don’t kid yourself, most successful bands have cut-throat management behind them doing whatever it takes to keep themselves and their artists in the green.

And this just wasn’t J, which I’ve always considered a hard blessing.  The guy had too much heart to be that cut-throat, despite fancying himself as being that hard-edged.  He might have considered it a character flaw in some sense, but we all saw, it was his saving grace.  His generosity, the way he’d put out a meal or spread and invite anyone to join in, to soak up the conversation and company, to bicker about which bands or songs were better, to trade personal barbs and make them good and sharp enough that we’d end up laughing with each other.  J and I saw that in each other and always enjoyed sparring.  Every time I’d phone him from work during the week, he'd mutter, “I’m busy, what the fuck do you want?”  I’d pretend like I was insulted and get ready to hang up in a huff, and he’d immediately change the subject to some song he had just heard or new album, and off we’d go, on tangents involving Korean War Vets, the best whiffle ball bats, who was going to suck worse this year, the Phillies or the Mets, and so on.

I should also mention his wife E here, whom I also met at that party in Hoboken: J’s saving grace.  For however caustic and irritating J could be sometimes, you always had E to balance things out with general sense of compassion and humility.  He knew what he had in her, and dear Lord, that woman had the patience of a saint to roll with some of the shit J would pull over the years, the carousing, drugs and drinking.  Which as David Carr can tell you, makes for a wild, fun ride when things are going well, but things always stop going well at some point.  And that’s where people like E come in to make things whole again, to hang around when no one else will, to be there through the darkest hours.  She rolled with so much over the years, and I’m sure this is far more true for the hard years after the falls when the rest of us just gave up and started going about our lives.  I can say for myself, shit, house fires, hernias, parents dying … my dance card has been full, to say the least.  But I failed in character not to be more helpful and just “there” in some sense when J went into decline.  One of many character failings I’ve had.  With many more to come.  Life’s going to do a pretty good job of beating the shit out of us, no need to do it to yourself.  Acknowledge you fucked up and move on, as J did so many times.

Which was pretty much my attitude this past Thursday when it came time for J’s funeral.  All day long, I sat at work: I’m going, I’m not going, what if I go and get cold shouldered for not being there in J’s life to the end, fuck it, I’m going, no, I’m not going, dude, I’ve buried two parents, I know how this works, just go, no, don’t go, you don’t deserve to be there, but remember all the people who showed up at Dad’s and Mom’s funerals whom you hadn’t seen in years, just go, if you get chased through the parking lot, fuck it, make that your tribute to J, as he’s had a good run through many a parking lot with angry people cursing after him.

At 2:30, I decided, go, just go, be there.  You know the drill now with death, as you didn’t before all this stuff starting going south J, just be there, if only to pay respects and say goodbye to someone who had a real influence on your life.  Naturally, I rushed out of work and got the wrong train in Penn Station, heading out to Long Island after making a mad dash, two trains right next to each other leaving at 2:45, and I jumped on the wrong one.  Got off at Woodside and took the 7 Train back into Manhattan, getting back with enough time to buy a cheap pair of headphones for the iPod as I couldn’t imagine making this long trip to Red Bank, New Jersey without some music.

I got on the 3:45 Jersey Coast train from NJ Transit and got rolling.  Beautiful March day, cold as hell, but season appropriate after weeks of bitter cold and snow, coursing through the shit end of all those northern New Jersey towns.  I was glad to pick up the ear buds as I foolishly left my new expensive headphones back in the apartment.  I sat there watching the miles roll by, punching in songs and bands that I knew J loved: Marah, The Trash Mavericks, Steve Earle, Dwight Yoakam.  It had been a long time since I went through that country playlist, and that’s how I felt myself moving towards J.  He got me into country back in the 90s when we first met.  Like most rock kids, my version of country was “Dead Flowers” by The Stones and more rock stuff like that.  J imparted a deep sense of real country music to me … how he came to love it is someone else’s story to tell.  But he made it O.K. for me to explore this kind of music, find the good stuff, of which there was and is tons, and to love and appreciate the music as much as any rock music I was born and raised with.  Here I was, from deep in the woods of Pennsylvania, fucking hating country music up to that point in my life, and a guy from suburban New Jersey tells me to wait a minute, you should be giving this stuff a real chance.  That was probably the greatest influence J had on me, to get me to at least listen to country music, give it a chance, and find there was a lot to love about it.  I don’t think I can point to any one person in my life who ever had that sort of musical influence over me – plenty of people who pointed me in a good direction, but J was someone who insisted I change the way I perceived the world because I was missing something important.  (Of course, that goes for a lot more than country music with us.)

The shitty lumberyards and warehouse parking lots of North and Central New Jersey started turning into the rolling fields and beautiful seaside inlets of coastal New Jersey, and I knew instinctively that Red Bank was near.  It’s a long ride form Manhattan down to that part of Jersey, and you can really feel the change-over when you get near the water like that.  All that trip, the music was opening up my mind in the right way, relaxing me, reminding me why I knew J and how much he meant in the overall course of my life.  Music has meant so much to the both of us, and that was our main connection.  It made sense that it would guide me back, on this train, to see him one last time and say goodbye.

I got into Red Bank, a nice enough town and walked the few blocks to the funeral parlor.  Made my way downstairs to the viewing area where I saw J laid out in his casket … and I have to admit, all things considered, knowing what I know of how “unreal” my parents looked to me in the same circumstances, J looked pretty good.  I was worried that the passing years might have done a number on him physically, but he didn’t look that far away from how I remembered him.  There were a few dozen people spread around the room, and I saw A across the room.  I hadn’t told him I was coming (because until 2:30 that day, I really wasn’t sure I would), and he just about shit his pants when he saw me walking over.  I knew he had been worried, too, about this whole situation, but felt much more strongly about being there as J and he went back much further than we did.  She had her back turned to me while speaking to A, but E was right there, turned around, and she looked exactly the same as I remembered her.

Everything just slipped right into place, right then, as much as they can in such a horrible circumstance.  E seemed glad to see us both and appeared grateful for everyone who showed up.  If you’re reading this and don’t have much experience with funerals, let me impart some wisdom on you: if you’re sitting on the fence about attending someone’s funeral, get off the fence and go.  Be there.  It gives you a chance to fully confront the emotions associated with that person, and it’s a quiet, soul-strengthening exercise to force yourself into a situation that could go in any direction.  Chances are, it’s going to go well.  Funerals are for honoring the dead and comforting the living.  Unless you plan on showing up and making some tree-stump speech where you set everything “right” in your mind, chances are you’ll go and be immediately welcomed into what is a very fragile, new world for everyone in that room.  And it helps to have warm bodies around, because it’s when the warm bodies fade back into their lives, that the ones left behind start working through all that grief and darkness.  It helps to have that ceremony where everyone gathers and says goodbye, if only to let them know you cared, however distantly, that the person in that box, meant something to you.

When I went up to J’s side to pay my respects, there was a small boombox on the pedestal next to his coffin playing “Beast of Burden” by The Rolling Stones.  E had put together a mix tape of J’s favorite Stones songs.  Well, at least the funeral-appropriate ones as songs like “Starfucker,” “Short and Curlies” and “Some Girls” might night go so well in this environment.  J worshipped The Stones, and it reminded me to relax, you’re among friends and family.  If J really had his way, he probably would have insisted on a spread, big pot of chili, meat on the grill, everyone have some beers, turn up the Stones, A, get out your bag of weed and let’s you and me take a stroll around the parking lot outside.  But this would have to do, J was gone, but the music was still there.

It was a good experience, more of a wake than a funeral, and I know wakes tend to be more reflective and light-hearted, people recalling good memories of the deceased, seeing old faces and such.  The funerals tend to be much harder, much more somber, the finality of it all coming down, that buoyant sea of memories from the wake the evening before replaced with the closing of the casket and the lowering into the cold ground.  But I understand J was to be cremated, and this was it.

And it was a good place to end for me, to travel all this way and find that there were people on the other end whom I could help make sense of this in some small way. But I have to admit I couldn’t bring myself to say a word to J’s mother, whom I only met once before and didn’t know at all.  I could tell by looking at her she was a good person, strong as hell, of my parents’ generation, hard people whom I will always look up to, who came up in a world that seemed much tougher and direct than the one I’ve lived in.  I could only imagine the hurt and grief she was going through to out-live one of her kids.  I recalled how surprised J was when his father passed on that his mother, after feeling bad for a few months, bloomed in a whole new way, joining social groups and making herself start living again after such a grievous blow.  I could only hope that same spirit she took from that bad situation could help her through this one.  I had no idea what to say to someone in her shoes.

So, I tried to sneak out around 7:00 as I had a long ride home, but E grabbed me on the way out, probably remembering how I’d love to sneak out of J’s shows by pretending I was going to take a piss in the men’s room and keep on walking.  And she thanked me for being there.  It was the least I could do, literally, and another reminder of how my life has shifted gears, getting to that place where this will be happening more often from now on.  My parents’ generation is nearly gone, and most people I know are getting older, it’s just the nature of the world that we deal with the harder things in life the longer we hang around.  It’s making more sense to confront death whenever I can.  I know that sounds strange, but what was once a horrible mystery to me now is something I can grasp, if only tangentially while still being alive.  Death is part of the deal, and the time comes when have to learn how to live with it.

It was somehow fitting that this song came up on the iPod shuffle as the train was cutting across those swampy New Jersey inlets just outside of New York City.  If only in spirit and sound, J was riding with me through the dark night.

Mirrors in the Headphone Section

I expect to see mirrors in all sorts of public places.  Gym walls are lined with them, so people can gaze at themselves as they work out.  Stores with clothing sections.  Bars.  Restaurants.  Elevators.  People like looking at themselves.  Part vanity.  Part desire to make sure we don’t look like complete idiots.  As if running our fingers through our hair will change that.

But a few weeks ago, I got a cultural jolt with mirrors.  I try to do all my audio/computer shopping at B&H Photo on the west side of midtown Manhattan.  I love the place.  Owned and operated by Hasidic Jews offering every-day prices on stuff that always matches up to sales prices in big-box retailers.  They’re hard to beat.  And it’s always a kick to have a relevant conversation regarding high-tech audio and computer equipment with deeply Jewish guys, who you would figure would be hard to talk to, but tend to be very hang loose and open, fully understanding their products and customers.

I often go on Fridays, which is a mistake.  They’re Hasidic Jews … they’re home by sunset every Friday, meaning they close down the store around 1:00 that day.  It’s like the fall of Saigon going there over lunch on a Friday, the sense of urgency overwhelming as customers are looking to make purchases before being pushed out of the place by announcements at 12:45.  They’re closed Saturdays, too.  And on many odd Jewish holidays that I’m far from having memorized.

A few weeks ago, I decided to treat myself and buy a real set of headphones.  I’ve written in the past of my trusty Radio Shack Nova 40’s that got me through my teenage years.  They were cheap and dependable, but shitty, much like the now-failing Radio Shack empire.  The earbuds I’ve had over the years, again, dependable, but they’ve all been pretty average under $50 earbuds.

So, I read a few audiophile websites and realized to get a really top-end pair, I’d have to go higher than $300 in most cases.  I didn’t need that level of quality.  I was thinking more the $150-$200 level of headphones that most audiophiles would scoff at, but average people, like me, would find entirely worthwhile.

Once I found the headphone section at B&H, I could see I had dozens of choices, whether I wanted to drop $30 for a very low-end pair, or well over $300 if I wanted that high-end audiophile experience.  (Let's cut the shit: audiophiles tend to be assholes in my book.  I can’t stand them, can’t stand the prissy, precious meticulousness so many of them have towards music and have never picture myself sitting in that mahogany-lined den listening to Dark Side of the Moon on my $5,000 system in my ascot and kimono.  Not my way of life.  Much more in the "wearing my Fruit of the Loom underwear and listening to Rocket to Russia on the Soundesign console in my basement apartment" camp.)

I settled on a pair of Bose headphones for about $180 that sounded very good when I sampled them, very clear, deep and full, the kind of sound that appealed to me in that price range.  Forget about calling audiophiles “assholes” – writing what I just wrote about Bose headphones has done much more to mark me as a rank bullshit artist to these folks.  They hate Bose by the legion.  Bose is everything wrong with audiophile equipment: over-priced equipment aimed at people with too much money and not enough sense.

Yeah, well, they also make pretty good product, whether audiophile snobs can acknowledge that or not.  I’m not a “Bose” man the same way I’m not an “Apple” man.  My audio, video and computer tastes are all over the map, different products for different purposes, I tend to mix and match and like what I have.  I hated iPods for years, until I actually owned one.  I still hate the completely closed system of it, and their inability to grasp that making a larger SSD drive player for people who don’t want to depend on streaming for music would be a good move.  But the 160 GB iPod Classic is simply the best audio invention of my lifetime, in regards to how I relate and listen to music.  The 250 GB version I ordered from some dude in China on E Bay offering these Frankenstein iPods because Apple refused to go past 160 GB?  It’s my prized possession: I use it every day and wonder what’s going to happen when it craps out as Apple shows no signs of making larger-capacity audio devices.

As I was trying on those Bose headphones, I looked at myself in the mirror.

Wait a minute.  Let me think about this.  What the fuck am I doing staring at myself in the mirror of an audio department?  Why is there a mirror here?  Have I ever seen a mirror in any audio department before today?

This snapped me out of my Bose reverie and made me realize: there are mirrors here for all the dipshits buying Beats headphones.  Let me clarify: there’s nothing really wrong with Beats headphones.  The pair I sampled before the Bose pair really didn’t sound that bad.  It’s just the comparable version to what I was buying was just over $200 as opposed to under $180 and sounded very bass heavy, which I guess is more a demographics than audio thing with how they're built and for whom they're built.

I’m forever seeing guys (always guys) wearing Beats headphones on the streets and subway.  I’d hardly call the people wearing them "assholes."  They’re not rapping to themselves like idiots have in the past.  They’re not audio snobs.  They’re not solely hipsters (although I’ve seen more than a few hipsters wearing them).  They’re usually younger guys, sometimes stylish, sometimes not.  But proudly wearing their Beats headphones.

What I really liked about the Bose headphones: they were light and looked very cheap.  They looked basic.  Which is exactly what I want from a headphone!  Black, small ear cups, close-fitting, they don’t look like anything special, don’t draw attention to the fact that I’m wearing a $180 pair of headphones for a $300 listening device.  There were a few other name brands in the same price range, like Sennheiser, that would draw accolades from audiophiles, but they simply looked too bulky to wear in public, or had wires coming from the cups, looked too fragile in some cases, etc.

Headphones are not a fashion statement … to me.  But that mirror made me realize, read it and weep, THEY ARE a fashion statement to some people.  Mostly younger, in their 20s, maybe 30s at the latest, who want to appear stylish and “with it” in some sense.  Frankly, I liked the Beats headphones I sampled, they weren’t bad, but I can’t stand the logo, the act of drawing attention to something I’m wearing on my head in public.  It’s probably why I avoided iPods for years: I never could stand the “fashion sense” attached to these things.  I’m about the music, not the device, not the headphones, not the receiver, not the speakers, not the turntable, not the CD player.  I care about the music.  Period.

But what kind of dick poses in front of a mirror in a headphones section of a store to see how he looks wearing a pair of Beats headphones?  Making a duck face?  Snapping a selfie and tweeting it to various friends: How do I look?  Of course, not one has the heart to honestly respond: Like a dick.  Because chances are he’s tweeting other dicks.  Who are probably thinking: Bro, chill!

It unnerved me.  And from what I’ve heard from friends, it’s not unusual to see mirrors around headphone sections in any store now.  I really don’t get the impression anyone buying Sennheiser or Bose or Audio Technica or Beyer or Grado cares all that much about how they look while wearing them.  I do care, but more so in the sense of not wearing a gaudy/flashy piece of audio equipment that would encourage someone to rob me at gun or knifepoint.  Then again, I’ve had that concept driven home to me by moving to New York City in the 80’s and living in ragged neighborhoods for a long time, knowing that people can and will be targets for the things they wear in public.

It’s not even that.  It’s that nagging self absorption I’ve been noticing since the turn of the century, the turning inwards of an entire society, the gazing at one’s self routinely and constantly, whether literally in a mirror in a headphone section of a store, or on Facebook or any other social media, or with a cellphone on a crowded staircase during rush hour … or, shit, let’s face it, everywhere now, all the time.  I’m forever hustling around people on the sidewalk who, I can tell coming up behind them by their body language, are so self absorbed and unattached to their surroundings that it’s too irritating to get stuck behind them for more than a few feet.

Then again, why am I buying headphones?  To turn on my music and turn inwards in some sense, away from the world, into myself.  Headphones are all about self absorption, when you think about it.  Always have been: put them on and tune the world out.  I realize that in some deep, abiding sense.  It just seems like overkill and a radical error to attach fashion sense to something that already implies self absorption, literally in the act of using the product itself.  Nobody should be using the headphones for any reason but to listen to music in a better manner than ear buds.  But now we have this creepy, physical aspect of using headphones as another layer of narcissism for something that’s already insular enough.

I give up?  No, like most of you, I just shake my head and walk on.  The world will move forward with me, and these assholes, and everyone else who doesn’t even pay attention to nonsense like this.  When the cyborgs are killing us with laser beams a few years down the road, I can assure you, none of them will be wearing Beats headphones or have any need for Twitter, mirrors, iPhones or headphones.  Robots, take over the world and kill us already!

Mirrors in the headphone section ... and pink champagne on ice.  We are all just prisoners here of our own device.

Snow Day, 1982

A few weeks ago, my old high school had a fire.  It turned out to be not so big a deal, a small fire in a heating duct that was discovered and extinguished quickly.  This was a Thursday, and the administration decided that since there was an ongoing smoke condition, school would be cancelled on Friday and marked as a snow day.  That Friday, the sun was out, temperatures in the high 20’s, no wind, maybe some residual snow on the ground from a previous storm.

And that got me thinking ... January and February are such odd months that most of us just write off as a “woodshedding” time of year.  Stick to some bullshit resolutions.  Lay low.  Dread Valentine’s Day.  Don’t really reap the full benefits of having MLK and Presidents Days off.  Life will start again when the weather gets better.

Growing up in the Coal Region of Pennsylvania, I viewed January and February as bleak times.  They’re bleak times anywhere, I’ve learned since.  In New York, it’s a time of howling winds and gray corner slush moats.  But something about the Coal Region: the snow, those great, black coal banks by old mines between towns, looming like Transylvanian mountains through the fog of a defrosting car windshield on a cold, slushy day.  It was pretty god-damned depressing sometimes.

By the same token, a sunny, clear day like that Friday the kids recently got jailbreaked from school?  I can guess how elated they were.  A gift like that in the dead of winter is a great thing, and I’m certain most of them seized the day as opposed to lazing around, Facebooking, watching shitty reality shows and pounding junk food.

What would I have been doing given similar circumstance circa 1982, given a gift of a day like that?  My high school days winding down, feeling that directionless pull of a senior not quite sure how the world is going to change when all this ends.

I’d have gone running, as I did every day back then.  That shorter route around Hampton’s Hill (as described here in my recent dog bite misadventure).  I miss running in the morning as I recall how relaxed I felt after working out at sunrise.  Doing the same now would require getting up before 6:00 am, and it just aint happening.  It was nothing to run four miles in the morning, and I hated myself if I skipped for any reason, which was rare.  Snow?  I loved running in snow.  As noted in the dog-bite story, I was elated to do so again recently.

After that, sure, the TV would have been on, like on a sick day, and I’d have been drawn into shitty Love Boat/Gilligan’s Island reruns, or worse, The Price Is Right.  Sick days, and I mean real sick days which were the only kind I’ve ever taken, often lost their allure after two or three hours of reruns of bad 70’s shows, which seemed like Citizen Kane compared to the afternoon soap operas soon to follow.  (I recall one of the cool things about college was having time off during the day one could use any way he saw fit, which just as often found me hitting the great pool hall on campus or listening to cool shit on a friend’s stereo in his downtown apartment.  I’d love to have a lifestyle again with that sort of informal breathing room, but it hasn’t happened!)

But I’m sure the main draw of the day would have been gathering the tribe for a long lunch at the Ponderosa Steakhouse at the mall, followed by shooting pool at Holiday Lanes.

This meant rock and roll, too.  Listening to it on a car stereo, driving from place to place.  If it was my friend G driving, that would have meant Zappa, T. Rex, Joan Jett, The J. Geils Band, Billy Squier, and a host of other 70’s and early 80’s rock acts.  If T was driving, one thing and one thing only: Van Halen.  However many albums they had by that time in the 80’s.  David Lee Roth, only.  Sammy Hagar was a solo act at that point (and G had a few of his albums on cassette).  I grew to hate Van Halen at the time (but changed my mind later when not being force-fed their music multiple times a week).

Just because Ponderosa was a steakhouse didn’t mean we had steak.  In fact, I don’t think I ever had a steak at that Ponderosa.  They had an open salad bar for some outrageously low price (less than $5.00 if I remember correctly).  And while you think we would have eaten an endless supply of lettuce and tomatoes, it was more like all that other hideously wrong shit you’ll find at cheap steakhouse salad bars: really bad soup, potato salad, mac and cheese that was somehow worse than the instant shit we made at home, and I can’t recall much else.

Actually, I did eat a lot of vegetables, probably two or three plates worth.  The absolute worst though was the soft-serve ice cream.  We would see people getting large dinner plates piled four inches high with soft-serve ice cream.  Of course, judging by the size of most of them, they were on a diet, and this was some sort of concession.  We ate like horses and had free soda refills.  Back then we were kids and seemed oblivious of the fact that a glass of non-diet soda was over 200 calories, and we’d have five or six.  In theory, salad bars should be healthy, but steakhouse salad bars were more like the cheap end of a very unhealthy trough, for pigs like us on a budget.  We thought actually ordering a steak along with an unending salad bar was ostentatious over-abundance.  This is what Rome must have been like before it fell!  (Rome, Georgia, maybe.)

Sometimes we’d end up puking in the parking lot, JB in particular who seemed to have an aversion to any non-meat related food.  Those Ponderosa lunches were essentially drinking sessions without the alcohol: those freewheeling, hours going back and forth types of myth-making bullshit sessions were the same kind of things we’d do a few years later in bars, with the added allure of beer and women.  We already had it all in some sense, that underlying sense of camaraderie which is what most guys really want from a good night out at the bar (despite telling themselves they’re trying to get laid).  And the older I get, the more I miss those sort of informal male-bonding sessions as it grows so much harder to get adults on the same page to enjoy each other’s company.

From the Ponderosa, it was a short ride to Holiday Lanes just outside of Shenandoah.  It became a pierogie factory after that, then a storage space, then I don’t know what.  Last I saw, they were trying to launch a farmer’s market there.  It’s hard to believe I spent so many teenage nights in that space, working on my pool skills.  While the bowling lanes took up most of the space, I don’t think I’ve ever bowled more than a handful of times in my life.  Off to the right side of the entrance was the pool hall, where you’d pick up a rack of balls from the counterman and work up a few hours at an open table.

I can see why we never got laid in high school when the most fun we were having was in exclusively male-bonding scenarios, like the Ponderosa and pool shooting.  Aside from G, who had a table in his parent’s basement, we were all pretty average players, despite getting off the occasional Minnesota Fats, table length, multi-bumper shot that always felt like a gift from God.  Such a shot would usually come with a game on the line, a desperation hail-mary of a pool shot that found us aiming in the general direction and praying the crappy side bumpers actually responded according to our on-the-fly geometrical projections.  Such a winning shot would generally be followed by our opponent ass-hammering us in the next game, and so on, all night long, until we got tired of taking up space and hit the road.

As usual, rock and roll was blasting the whole time, adding to the cool factor, I recall many air-guitar solos fingered on pool cues, pretending I was Neil Young when "Powderfinger" came blasting over WZZO on the radio.  There were no jocks, or stoners, or kids who got A’s, or kid’s who got D’s, in the pool hall, just guys shooting pool, from the ages of about 14 through 30.  Pool is one of those things that just fell away for me after college.  I recall going to a few radically over-priced halls in Manhattan when I first moved here, but it just didn’t take hold and no longer had that same allure of a gritty place like Holiday Lanes.

How many hundreds or thousands of hours did we waste there?  Of course, none of it was a waste.  That time we spent as kids, who had just learned how to drive as teenagers and reveled in those new senses of freedom and identity, it’s the kind of time I no longer have a sense of after decades of adulthood.  Everything I do now in a similar sense of spending leisure time has a purpose of some sort.  Whether that means working on my physical and mental health in a gym, having dinner with a friend, or going out for drinks with coworkers and such, everything feels weighted with purpose, even if it’s the same purpose (bonding) as we had back then.  I felt directionless back then doing stuff like the Ponderosa/Holiday Lanes circuit, in a good way.  Time suspended, all the time in the world to hang loose, let’s just hang out and enjoy each other’s company.

That’s what we would have done, set free a glorious, sunny school day in late January.  I can see the physical impossibilities with ever having that same sense of freedom again.  Everyone I knew back then was in the same school, so we all had the day off.  We all had nothing to do.  We all did the same things in our spare time.  So it only made sense that we’d band together and take advantage of a free shot like that.

Flash forward a few decades.  Everyone I know is spread out among various jobs, living in various states (and even countries), living in various circumstances (married, with kids, divorced, working 14 hour days, etc.).  Some of us aren’t even on the same page, warring over various issues that sprung up over the years, falling in and out of touch, whatever time brings, I can see it brings strange sometimes troubling shit no one saw coming.  I’m finding, even with an old friend, that when she gets on Facebook and tries to gather troops for a night out when I’m back there visiting (really, just an excuse for anyone to hang out for a few hours in a nice bar/restaurant to have a few drinks), people either play dead or act like it’s pulling teeth to make time to spend 2-3 hours of their lives doing this.

Once upon a time, we’d do that with no warning, on a moment’s notice with a phone call, and everyone saying why the hell not, got nothing better to do.  I would love my life to be that way again, and if there’s any sort of resolution I’d make, for a new year or otherwise, it’s to allow that sort of freedom into my life again, instead of acting like I’m too important or busy to have that sort of important fun.  I like to think kids are idiots, but so long as they understand this, they’ll always have something over adults.  And I don't know why we're so stupid.

Let the Zombie Bite You

I’ve been thinking a lot about zombies lately.  The concept of zombies and how this whole bizarre culture surrounding them has formed over the years, mainly thanks to the AMC television series, The Walking Dead.

Not just with this series, but with zombie movies in general, there are some serious flaws with the concept.  We’re talking zombies: formerly living, healthy humans who, through some type of virus, or being bitten by another zombie, become this “undead” type of being who may have technically died, but has “come back” as this crazed, flesh-eating zombie with apparently no flicker of its former humanity, no ability to communicate, just this permanent, blood-crazed haze where the zombie exists only to find normal human beings to eat their flesh, particularly their brains.

Got that?  It was a pretty cool concept when George Romero first came up with it way back when, my favorite example being Dawn of the Dead, which perfectly sent up the relatively new shopping-mall culture by setting the flesh-eating frenzy in an abandoned mall turned fortress for some desperate, ass-kicking humans trying to stave off the zombie hordes.  Hard to believe that was 1978 … I took special pride in that movie as it took place at a shopping mall outside of Pittsburgh that some kids I went to Penn State with actually shopped at back then.

In the context of those first few zombie movies, what was happening made perfect sense.  The action took place in a matter of hours or days, and the audience got a real sense of the humans fending for themselves in the here and now, fighting desperately for their lives against overwhelming odds.

But … we eventually got into the concept of 28 days later (after the zombie apocalypse), then 28 weeks later.  Bear with me on this.  A zombie appears to be nothing but a human body, with the mind completely gone or replaced by this animalistic mind that exists only to hunt down uninfected humans to eat them.  The zombies still have human bodies.  Put your mind in another context, bereft of zombie culture.  The human body will cease to function without nourishment, zombie or not.  Eating is part of it, but without water or some other type of fluid, the human body will perish in a matter of days.

When’s the last time you saw a zombie in a zombie movie drinking water?  Craving water?  Having anything to do with water?  OK, they crave brains and flesh.  The same way I crave, say, frozen yogurt or pizza.  The reality is without water, I would be dead within a week, much less 28 days later, much less however many weeks, months or years are supposed to be inferred in the plot line of The Walking Dead.  Presumably, zombies would die in a matter of days without water as their bodies are essentially the same as when they were alive.  Their minds are gone.  They no longer have human sense enough to turn on faucets or pull beverages off supermarket shelves.  Even if they did, we never see that as the viewing audience.  I know, movies don’t dwell on seemingly mundane trivialities like drinking water, or taking a shit.  (Besides, unless you’re really quirky, do you really want to watch someone taking a shit?)  But we’d be dead inside of days without these “trivialities” … God help you if you ever go a week or two without shitting, you’ll surely be hospitalized if you’re still alive.

That’s one major problem with zombie culture.  The other major problem is food, i.e., in the case of zombies, normal humans.  I don’t quite grasp this.  Zombies in these movies don’t seem to grasp the fact that they could eat each other … they’re human flesh.  They only respond to the “warmth” of humans as they’re somehow cold and dead?  I don’t know … I can eat a cold turkey sandwich the same way I’d eat roasted turkey on Thanksgiving.  Turkey is turkey.  Flesh is flesh.  Maybe zombie flesh won’t taste as good, but it would be sustenance, wouldn’t it?

Still, as portrayed in movies and television, living humans are the only food that zombies can eat.  Never mind that they could still eat the food they once ate as normal human beings.  It doesn’t seem as though they crave that sort of thing.  But in lieu of a rapidly diminishing human population, wouldn’t they?  If I’m a zombie, maybe some flicker of memory plays in my mind, and as I walk past a supermarket, I go in, pop open a bag of potato chips and start mushing them into my slobbering, gaping mouth.  I groan.  Good, I think, even if I can’t formulate the word.  Not as good as a nice warm human brain I’ve just gnawed out of someone’s skull, but this will do.  Seeing as humans flee zombies or try to blow their brains out when they see each other, wouldn’t my mute zombie mind think, this is so much easier, I should hang around this place and break open more bags.  So I’m not eating at the zombie equivalent of The Four Seasons.  I’m getting by.  Nobody’s trying to kill me (again).  I’m already dead.  And these chips taste pretty good.  Not brains.  But I’ll make-do.

So we have this unrealistic, unsustainable mass of zombie hordes, always traveling in hordes, it seems, chasing after these few remaining humans in hopes of eating them.  A vast army of zombies.  Think about armies roaming the land.  We don’t have that concept in our minds anymore because that sense of warfare doesn’t exist.  We have occupying forces, like in Afghanistan and Iraq.  But not vast, roaming hordes of warriors like there used to be in military history.  Think the American Civil War.  Hundreds or thousands of soldiers walking the country side, looking to engage and defeat opposing forces.  When not doing that … these men need to be fed.  They need water.  Every day.  A few times a day.  There’s a lot of work involved in doing just that, whether it means carrying around enough supplies to at least have a base level of sustenance, or pillaging the land, killing local cattle, confiscating local harvests, finding clean water supplies in terms of rivers or lakes.

Hundreds or thousands of zombies clawing at the gates or windows of some temporary fortress the remaining humans have set up?  That’s a very real moment.  But it’s not a very real week.  Or month.  Or year.  If those humans just sat still and defended their ground for a week or two, most of those zombie would be dead-dead from lack of sustainable nutrition and water.  No need to waste ammunition on them.  Their bodies simply would stop functioning.  But then again, wars of attrition, while often more real than war itself, don’t make for good movie and television viewing.

Those are the physical issues I have with zombie culture.  Let’s get into the mental ones.  The whole zombie culture may have started with the Richard Matheson novel, I Am Legend, from back in the 1950’s.  One of my favorite childhood movies was based on this novel, 1971’s The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston as one of the few survivors of a plague that had turned most people into strange, nocturnal zombies.  Not vampires or even flesh-eating zombies: sentient beings with greyed-out hair and eyes who couldn’t stand the daylight.  Heston holed himself up in a townhouse in Los Angeles and spent most of his nights shooting at the zombies with a high-powered rifle and his days trying to find their nesting places in hopes of wiping them out.

As usual, Heston is cast as the tragic hero who goes down fighting in the end, trying to save the rest of whatever unaffected humanity remains, with the hope that a serum he’s developed can be administered to the zombies to bring them back to normal humanity.

I never read I Am Legend, but from what I gather, there’s a stark, shocking difference to how the protagonist ends up in that novel as opposed to the movie.  (I’ve never seen Will Smith in I Am Legend and can’t vouch for how that movie plays out.)  He comes to realize that it’s not the zombies who need to be exterminated … he needs to go.  For whatever reason, even if it’s some type of plague, disease or fallout from nuclear war, these zombies now represent the mass of humanity, with isolated humans like him fighting for their lives.  He’s spent so much time feeling threatened by the zombies that he can’t unravel his memories and emotions to realize that his horror and revulsion were conscious choices he made when first faced with these zombies.  Chances are, they had done nothing to him.  He just saw groups of them after dark, felt threatened as he knew there was something “wrong” and not traditionally human about them, and most likely started killing them as a defense mechanism.  Naturally, like any threatened beings, they came to hate him and defend themselves accordingly, knowing that they had to kill him before he killed them.

That’s not the sort of thought process that makes for good movies.  Self realization rarely is, as the clouds parting that way always occurs as voice-overs or montages leading up to the protagonist staring off into the middle distance while this new wisdom sinks in.  It’s bullshit from a movie and television point of view.  But it’s something I can relate to as a relatively normal, thinking human being.  I’m surrounded by nocturnal zombies.  Hundreds or thousands of them.  How long can this go on before they kill me?  How much effort will it take for me to kill all of them when it appears there’s no end in sight for how many of them there are?  What’s the point?  All wars end.  This war would never end, or at least not in my favor.

That’s how my mind would work in that scenario.  In other words, I’d let the zombie bite me.  I’d become one of them, the slobbering, stumbling, stinking, flesh-eating shit bags waiting to be blown away by someone who hasn’t grasped how the world has turned.  Probably wouldn’t like it, but I’d look at the big picture and realize, man, do I want to spend the rest of my days fighting for my life?  Fighting for a past version of the world that no longer exists and will never exist again? 

(I often get the same feeling on the rare occasions I watch cable TV now and see ads for survivalist reality shows … I think I’d rather die than live in a world filled with these people.  Then again, if I’m being totally honest, I’d rather die than live in a world filled with reality-show people … and it’s too frightening to contemplate how vast and close to every-day reality in America circa 2014 these fucking awful shows are.  Wait a minute ... are these d-bags on reality shows, the overweight, tattooed, shaved-head, bad-facial-haired, do-ragged, white-trash jackasses ... the zombies ... and I am the Omega Man in this scenario?  Sometimes I frighten myself.)

This makes me want to read I Am Legend because I can sense that when it was written, the world was changing fast, in that post World War II haze of the 1950’s, just before the 1960’s kicked into high gear, and there were surely a lot of people hankering for “the old days” much as many of us do now as we age.  Imagine a world ravaged by war, millions of Jews exterminated, millions of people, soldiers and civilians, killed and maimed in an insane war that had to be fought, countries decimated and destroyed by bombs … you get a sense of what Matheson was shooting for in his novel.  That your perspective must change with time, whether you like it or not, whether you understand where the tides will carry you (and no one ever does).  This really rings true to me now that both my parents are gone, and that orphan sense one develops without those very real guides in one’s life.  I’ll always have the past, but there’s no fighting for a world that no longer exists, just the realization that I have to step into this new world and find my way.  Sure, the memories of them walk with me like comforting shadows, every day.  But in effect, I become a zombie, forget the complexities and desires of the old world, the myriad number of ways I felt I had to justify my existence, all that matters now is brains.  No worries.  No legacies.  Just now.

Food for thought?  Or have they already eaten my brains?  For the love of God, if anyone receives this transmission, I’m running low on ammo!

Dog Bites Man

Until this past Wednesday, the last time I got bit by a dog was about 1973 or so.  Way back.  And it happened in roughly the same area, the back roads running through the farms and open fields around my hometown in Pennsylvania.  In roughly the same fashion, passing through, in 1973 on a bicycle, Wednesday while on a morning run, along a route I first started running in 1978.

It was a traumatic experience that first time.  We called that stretch of road “the Milee,” I think after the mile-long creek that ran parallel to the road.  Back then, housing was sparse: a few old single-frame houses, but mostly bolted down trailers on small parcels of lands between wooded areas.  I’m sure if someone had filmed a simple car trip along those road back then and showed it to me now, I would be shocked at how “wild” the area was, as compared to the dozens of small, sometimes expensive homes that have sprung up in the woods and fields in the passing decades.

But there was that one stretch of straightaway road that remains virtually the same today, a few small trailers, two or three houses, farm equipment.  One of the home owners has expanded over the years and now has a field for two horses and a mule, along with a bunch of ducks and dogs that I hear barking every time I pass.  All behind fences.  Unlike back then, when it was common for all those farmers to have dogs wandering free in their fields.

This became a problem periodically.  The worst incident was the big German Shepherd owned by the Hampton family, I think his name was King, getting loose and killing a few chickens in a neighbor’s coup.  Only to be shot dead by the teenage son in the family that owned the chickens.  Unfortunately, he was in his right as the dog was trespassing on their property.  We all sided with the Hamptons, because the kid shooting King seemed like a wild over-reaction.  But looking back now, King was a pretty frightening animal, a large dog, who loved to bark and chase.  He would often pick up small, cut-down railroad ties with his mouth and carry them around.  I never got bit by King, but I got chased many times, and had I not known the dog as well, would have been scared shitless in his presence.

A German Shepherd much like King attacked me one day in the summer of 1973.  We would often take field trips on our bicycles back then, along the Milee, where we’d park and drink from the streams or simply go in the woods and enjoy them, skipping stones, swimming, playing hide-and-seek.  I wouldn’t dream of going into the woods today, and couldn’t as most of that land now has homes nestled between wooded lots.  Going out to the Milee Road seemed like a big adventure, and it was to our pre-teenager minds where every distance more than a few hundred feet seems impossibly long.  It was only about two miles from our house: I would go on to run five and seven mile routes along those roads in a few years.

But I recall riding along that road with my brothers and sister, probably another kid or two from the neighborhood.  We knew about that dog who lived in one of those farm trailers, but also knew if you sped up around there and kept your mouth shut, you’d be way past the property by the time he started barking.

It was drizzling that day, a misty summer rain, and I recall us picking up speed as we pushed our 21-inch Huffy’s fast through that forbidden zone.  But it was hardly forbidden, just an area of public road where a guy was too cheap to buy some fence to keep his dog in.  I recall that dog snarling and barking, which of course scared the shit out of us.  I was bringing up the rear, peddling my ass off, and I could hear the dog’s nails clicking on the macadam of the road as it approached.

Next thing I knew, I heard a ripping sound, could feel the dog’s snout on my upper thigh, then a searing pain shooting down my leg.  I knew he had got me, and I started screaming.  But didn’t stop pedaling.  I figured, this son of a bitch will kill me if I stop.  I don’t remember much after that, save all of us pulling over a few hundred yards away, me sobbing, and showing everyone my leg, where there was a six-inch long gash where the dog had bit tried to get hold of my leg then slid off, blood seeping into my shorts.  I don’t even know how we got home, as I was carrying on as though a shark had chewed off my leg, but we did.  My parents rushed me to the hospital, where I got tetanus shots, and various ointments and bandages for the leg.  As bad as it looked, it didn’t take that long to heal.

I can’t remember how the situation with the dog was handled, save to say my parents called the cops, and we never had a problem with that dog again, whether it was put down or sent to a shelter or what.  It was like a demon being removed from our collective dreams, just one less thing to worry about when we got on our bicycles.

This past Wednesday, I got the nostalgic thrill of getting bit again.  Honestly, I was surprised that this still could happen today as most farmers with dogs either have them trained not to go near the road, put them on long chains or build fences so they have an area to wander.  Everywhere I go on my runs around the woods back there, dogs are there.  Always barking.  There’s the family in the log-cabin house with the old Irish setters coming up the Spring Crest Hill, dogs that don’t bark, but will chase.  And those dogs have always been friendly.  When they catch you, they want to be petted.  Unlike the dog at the house on top of Hampton’s Hill, which will bark horrifically at anything non-automobile that passes.  Then again, I haven’t heard that bark in at least two years, so maybe he finally died.  I think the same happened to at least one of those nice Irish Setters, and the one I still see looks pretty old.

In any event, while I hear dogs all the time on my runs, I’ll often only see them through rails or fences, hear them barking through windows.  There are public ordinances back there against dogs roaming free that apply whether you live in town or along the rural routes.  Some owners of dogs out there along the back road tend to be oblivious of these rules.  Their dogs are nice to them, but bark like hell at anything else, often aggressively, which I’m sure they’ve been trained to do.  Unfortunately, not trained to be real guard dogs, but sort of morally-retarded guard dogs: make noise at anything that moves.  They somehow know not to bark at cars, but go crazy over everything else that: a. moves, and b. isn’t their master(s).

There are two such dogs like this on the other side of the Spring Crest Hill.  Again, farm folks, not sure exactly who they are, but I gather a young couple owns one of the two houses next to each other just over the top of the hill.  Each has a dog, both barkers, both usually locked in on their porches.  They go nuts when I run by, only to start dolefully howling after I’m about 30 yards down the road.  Their howling usually alerts another dog just down the road who used to roam free years ago, but must have been chained up since as I haven’t seen him in ages.

I like dogs but can’t stand idiot dogs.  Much like people.  Most farm dogs are idiots.  They’ve been trained to be friendly to maybe five or six people, immediate family or neighbors, and treat everyone else like potential meat, despite the fact that public roads snake all along these properties, and I can’t be the only one out there running, or walking, or biking.  Generally when I’ve had snags with dogs along these roads, there’s always something annoyingly condescending about the owners, who are invariably rednecks.  I don’t say that as an insult, more as shorthand for you, dear reader, to gather with whom I’m dealing.

I’ll be there, in my shorts and t-shirt, paused as I try to coax a barking dog to get off the road so he doesn’t get run over as he chases me down the road, then backs off when I run towards him, then chases me down the road as I start running again, then backs off when I again run towards him, repeat for about five minutes.

If anyone should be pissed off and condescending, it should be me.  I’m minding my own business, traveling on a public road, and this shithead animal, who is illegally roaming free, is making me stop.  But the farmer who comes out tends to have a bit of a been here/done that attitude, oh, you’re messing with my dog again, don’t worry, I’ll save you, here Schep, leave that wandering homo in shorts alone now, I know he’s a dick, but humor him, old canine friend, he doesn’t know any better.

I’ve been on the receiving end of that attitude literally since 1978, when I first started running those roads.  Back then, daily, now more like every two months when I visit.  And it’s a rare occasion when I have to deal with an unchained dog, as I gather most dog owners foolish enough to let their dogs run free have either paid the price with dogs run over by cars or euthanized by the SPCA for attacking pedestrians.  It’s a no-win situation for the fools who do this, and they’ll surely spend the rest of their days cursing the 10-year-olds or relatively innocent car drivers who lead to the pre-mature deaths of their family pets.  Never once realizing they essentially killed their own dogs with their rank stupidity.

With the dogs on the Spring Crest Hill, this wasn’t the first time I’ve dealt with them running loose.  I gather both dogs are normally locked in on the porches of those houses, and there doesn’t appear to be any fenced-in area for them to roam around.  But back in September, I came over the hill, and sure enough, coming up the house, the smaller black dog (not a pit bull, but some type of larger terrier) came barking up towards me on the road.  I’ve learned with dogs to not show fear, to either stop, or if they appear not to be in attack mode (and aside from that crazed dog in 1973, I’ve never seen this), to run towards them, as nine times out of 10, that dog will retreat, still barking.

Sure enough, I ran towards him, and he retreated.  Just as I did, a guy in his 20’s came down the hill from the house, calling out the dog’s name.  I told him, I’m trying to get your dog off the road so he doesn’t get hit by a car.  Thanks, buddy, I appreciate it, Red (not real name), come on over here, stop barking now.  Again, that sort of casual attitude that I don’t equate with a dog running loose.  No apologies, again, the vague attitude that it’s somehow my fault for inconveniencing this asshole animal who can’t stop making noise.  I’m used to that, no need to escalate the situation, which I’ve often thought to do, but I know it will lead nowhere good as this horse’s ass will feel threatened on his home turf and respond accordingly.  When I used the word “redneck” before … this is what I mean, that attitude, the counterfeit authority from someone who is exerting no real authority.

Well, Wednesday morning, I come over the hill, and sure enough, I see that black dog rooting around in the tall grass on the downside of the road away from the house.  I can only imagine how many cars have had to slow down coming over the lip of that hill to avoid killing this animal.  Then again, I don’t live there, I have no idea how much they’re allowed to roam free like this, but if I see it twice in four months, I have to assume it’s too regular for their own good.

I approach, dog starts barking, and now I hear the other dog barking, a large mixed breed from the other porch, who is also roaming free.  Not a big deal, just slow down, make the occasional charge towards them, and they back off.  The usual.  But this time, as I start to run away, the black one comes towards me.  I stop and hold out my gloved hand (it was in the 20’s that morning) so he can sniff.  He does.  I start running.  He lunges out and nips at my hand, doesn’t hurt, but I find it annoying that this dog is playing games with me.  As I start running, the other dog comes up behind my right leg and snaps at my calf.  I felt a slight thud on my leg, like bumping into a hard object, but make no note of it.  A woman in her 20’s on the porch finally calls out to the dogs, and they run away.  We wave at each other, and I take off running again.

I really didn’t think anything was off until I got home and saw there was a small puncture in my sweat pants on the back of my leg.  I then rolled up my pants leg to see that there was a small blackish-red spot on my calf where the dog must have bit me, with a small trickle of dried blood beneath it.  It looked more like I had fallen and scraped my leg.  It didn’t really hurt; I hadn’t even felt or acknowledged it when it happened and ran four miles afterwards.  I guessed that the sweat pants absorbed most of the blow, and I was left with this flesh wound that would have been a whole lot worse had I been running in shorts.

In any event, I gave it a thorough cleaning and have been treating it with Neosporin and a bandage every day – it’s not a problem.  When I got back to New York yesterday and told a few people, the response was the same each time: are you going to sue them?

Sue them?  I didn’t even bother going to a doctor.  Those are essentially kept family dogs, not wild, rabid wolves, and people get bit by dogs all the time.  I know I did when I was a kid and had dogs, nips here and there, dog grabs your hand while you’re playing and inadvertently draws blood.  Shit happens.  Not going to be suing anybody.  Not going to the doctor.  It’s been enough to annoy and inconvenience me, but not enough to worry me or have me thinking we’ll have to amputate.

By the same token, the experience has brought back memories of when that dog ripped into my ass back in the 70’s, and it has unnerved me in that sense more than any.  I realize if I were to report this thing to the local police, chances are good those people could lose or be forced to put down that animal, which I don’t want.  I guess I just wish rednecks could be a little smarter?  Have a little more common sense?  See the world from someone passing them along the road instead of that same place they remain along the road?  That sort of healthy realization has clearly happened with most of the people along those country roads back home, but every now and then I’m reminded that some things don’t change.