Guitar

In my retirement I’ve decided to pick up my guitar and play it again on some regular basis, daily if possible, only for me. It’s a part of keeping my mind and body active – walking, fishing, reading, writing – and the guitar is both, in a small way, both physical and mental.

My guitar is a 1968 or 1969 Gibson Blue Ridge that I bought in late 1969. I paid $200 for it, and from what I can tell online, I could get $1000-$1300 for it today on eBay. But I’d never consider selling it. It’s basically a stripped-down version of the Gibson Hummingbird – take away the oversized tuning pegs, pearl inlays, and etched pick guard from the Hummingbird (all style) and you have the Blue Ridge – same design, wood, construction, and sound: “simple looking, has an overall good sound, rich bass and thinny bright highs. Great guitar for blues, slide and bluegrass.”

But I can no longer make it sound as good as I once could, 30 or so years ago. My hands have become arthritic and I suffer from Dupuytren’s Contracture. I can’t use my pinky on my right hand to finger pick at all, as it’s curled into a hook, and my left hand can’t stretch more than three or four frets, as opposed to four or five in earlier days, the stretch constrained by thickened tissue. And I can’t move my fingers as quickly up and down and across the strings as I once was able.

So I play slower, jazzier, not as hard. Within my means. And for myself.

Wichita Braves

Each year in March, as Spring Training begins, my mind returns to my early teen years as a sometime pitcher and sometime outfielder and mostly bench-warmer on my Little League team, the Braves. Our team was fashioned on the Milwaukee Braves (Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Eddie Matthews) and to a lesser extent on the Wichita Braves, Milwaukee’s single-A affiliate at the time, our uniforms, not our abilities, being the sole hint at any connection. The fact that our coach owned a Dairy Queen where we would go for free ice cream after every game, win or lose, added to our prestige in the league.

I was not by far the best player on the team. That would have been Will Robinson, David Goodpasture, Ronnie Kaiser, or the coach’s son, Mike Lindley. But I wasn’t the worst, either. (That probably would have been my cousin, Allen, who when he was in a game was consigned to right field where he spent most of his time picking either dandelions or his nose. He’s now the Economic Development Director for a medium-sized city in the Midwest, dispelling any idea that performance in Little League is a predictor of future success. Last I heard, Ronnie Kaiser was dealing blackjack in Vegas.)

The only lasting memory I have of playing for the Braves was a game in which I fouled off 12 pitches against Benny Banta of the Yankees before grounding out to second base for the ninth and final out, called because we were behind by more than 10 runs after our bat in the third inning (it’s called the “mercy rule,” sometimes the more accurate “slaughter rule”). This at-bat was actually the highlight of my Little League career. The Yankees were the perennial champions of our league (as the major league Yankees most often were as well back then). They rarely, if ever, lost. And Benny Banta was by far the best pitcher – the best player – in the league, the size of most of the coaches, a power hitter, and a strikeout pitcher with a fastball, curve, and slider, when most of us other pitchers were just glad if we could fling it somewhere near the plate without hitting the batter or throwing it over the backstop (as I once actually did).

Our coach chose me to pitch this particular game, which was why (among other reasons) I was batting ninth. “Fat chance” wasn’t a concept I was familiar with then, but I’m sure our coach was. The game went pretty much as every parent in the stands and player on the benches could have foreseen: The Yankees’ sides of the innings would last perhaps an hour, my tossing up pitches that they would either take for eventual walks or if I somehow got a pitch anywhere near the plate they would smack to one of my teammates for an error or just knock it neatly over the fence. Our sides of the innings were brief affairs, mostly Benny Banta hurling three-pitch strikeouts, occasionally a weak pop-up or maybe an infield groundout. When I came up to bat in the bottom of the third, it was Yankees 10+, Braves 0, there were two outs, Benny Banta was pitching (another) perfect game, and there wasn’t a person in attendance (myself included) who thought I would do anything except strikeout, finally ending the game. But to everyone’s surprise (and I suppose some parents’ annoyance), I began swinging at everything Benny Banta gave me, thinking that he isn’t going throw anything but a strike, and I successfully (today they call it, positively, “extending the at-bat”) was able to foul off 12 pitches. I could hear encouragement coming from my father in the stands and my coach and teammates on the bench, as if somehow fouling off all these pitches was a sign that we were somehow going to make up the 10+ runs that we were behind. But of course that wasn’t to be. I did, however, connect with a pitch, and the ball rolled (in my memory it’s a hot grounder) to second base, and I was thrown out to mercifully end the game (or slaughter).

But I’d fouled off 12 pitches from Benny Banta. And I’d grounded out, not struck out. And not for that game, but at least for that at-bat, I’d been successful. That’s one of the things I like about baseball, and maybe it’s this experience that instilled the idea in me: Success is not just in winning. It can come in small, tiny, inconsequential moments, moments when the context of the game allows for success, even if personal and fleeting

Gas Stations, 1965

As gas prices rise to the inevitable $4.00+/gallon this summer, I dwell nostalgically on the year 1965, the first year that I had a driver’s license, a car (a 1959 Ford Fairlane, my parents’, though I’d claimed it by being the first-born male, and by upgrading the paint job from baby blue to a much cooler navy blue), and a part-time job that gave me at least enough money to keep a puddle of gas in the tank. But keeping a puddle – or even a few gallons – of gas in the tank back then wasn’t the financial burden it is these days. Readers under the age of 50 might think that the following description is codger hyperbole, such as walking five miles to and from school each day, in the snow, uphill both ways (which I do recall doing), or being made to finish my brussel sprouts before allowed to leave the dinner table (sometimes not until The Tonight Show was about to start (Johnny Carson had just take over from Jack Paar)). No, what follows is the absolute truth, not just as I remember it, but as it actually was.

All gas stations were full-service. There was no self-service. When you pulled your car up to a pump, an attendant (or two or three, all wearing uniforms) would approach your car, as you remained sitting in it, ask you how much gas you wanted ($1.00 worth was common), pump the gas into the tank, clean the windshield, check the oil, and if you wanted, check the pressure in the tires. Just about all of the stations employed or were owned by at least one mechanic and had a couple of lifts for doing oil changes and repairs of all types.

The price of gas varied greatly, day to day and from station to station. In the mid- to late-60s, it was usually around 25¢-30¢/gallon. But there were also these archaic things called “gas wars,” periods of days or weeks where stations across the street from one another or down the block would lower their prices in order to lure customers and increase volume. There were occasionally signs for gas at 16¢-19¢/gallon.

And if price didn’t draw drivers in, there were any number of promotions – glassware, silverware, dishes (curiously, nothing to do with cars) – where each week you could get another item in the set by buying so much gas. If you were persistent at frequenting a particular station, you might be able to acquire a complete table setting.

There were vending machines for soda and candy, and if you were beyond an urban area, perhaps minnows and worms for use in fishing in the nearby river or lake. But there was nothing close to today’s convenience-stores-that-also-require-you-to-pump-your-own-gas-clean-your-own-windshield-check-your-own-oil-and-tire-pressure “service stations” that make most of their money from junk food, soda, and beer. And still, sometimes, the farther you go out, minnows and worms.

Work-Diversion/Diversion-Work = Retirement

It struck me today that the difference between my pre-retirement days (three face-to-face classes, two online classes, office hours, department and committee meetings, a 30-minute commute each way) and my semi-retirement days (two online classes, at home) is a shift between spending most of each day working, with the occasional diversion, and spending most of each day in diversion, with just occasional work. The latter, as you might well expect, is the more agreeable condition.

Me As a 22-Year-Old Would-Be Writer

About a year ago I received an email from a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in maybe 40 years, forwarded to me from a mutual friend who I hadn’t seen in maybe 20 years. In going through the detritus in her attic, she had come upon an envelope I had sent to her some 40 years ago (soon after I had last seen her, visiting her and her husband in Denver) that contained two short stories and a half dozen poems I had written that year (“merely things I had hanging around in zerox [sic] form” is how I put it in the cover letter). Did I want her to send it to me? I hesitated at first. As a teacher of literature and sometimes creative writing for the past 35 years, did I really want to revisit my own writing from that long-forgotten undergraduate past? How embarrassing would it be to find my 22-year-old self to be just as vapid and facile as most of my 22-year-old students? But finally I decided that I should confront this past, if only just to check in and offer whatever consolation I could (“It’s not really going to be as bad as it might look right now . . .”).

Thankfully, reading these stories and poems ended up not being as embarrassing as I had feared, though I can certainly see how only one of the poems made it into publication, and that only in an undergraduate literary magazine at my school. The stories are achingly derivative of Kafka and Barthelme, my two influences at the time:

He had found the secret of life. Or of staying alive. Or rather of not dying. So he said. Few believed him at first. Of course. There are always skeptics in a crowd. Even if that crowd consists of only two. This crowd consisted of more than two – many more. We’re not exactly sure how many were in the crowd, for they had never really gathered together in one place, not even a telephone directory. So we’re still somewhat uncertain as to how many were in the crowd. But we are certain that of this uncertain crowd there were many skeptics, certainly. They didn’t believe him when he came on television one night and said that he had found the secret of life, or of staying alive, or rather of not dying. “I know how to live forever,” is what he said exactly.

Shades of “The Hunger Artist” channeled in a postmodern style? Still, if a student of mine now were to submit this beginning of a story, I’d be pleased – at least there’s a sense of style (however derivative, and derivative is not necessarily a negative at 22; style has to mature out of something; how many writers emerge from the womb as original?) and there’s an interesting conflict suggested between the first person plural narrator and the “he” protagonist.

The poems are occasionally palatable, promising (albeit not publishable):

At the Movies

In the dark rows
their childhood dreams
rise from the screen

In technicolor
merging with the still smoke
and silent kisses

of young lovers
who only dream
with their eyes closed.

Here is fantasy
without shame;
what tension exists

beyond that found
in the image?
Reality is fixed.

Or this:

Circle

We feel
a slight hint of order
and arrangement
within the circle of chairs:
the friends sitting there.

Or this one, probably written as an exercise in a class:

Sonnet

How silent you were this morning
when you left, brushing me only slightly
with the blanket as you rose.
Yes, I was awake, if only for that moment,
long enough to see your face in the early light
as you leaned over to kiss me good-bye.
Somewhere in that conscious-unconscious state
I heard the pigeons outside the window,
calling you. And I saw your body, naked,
outlined on the shade as you stretched, yawning,
pulling your clothes carelessly over your white flesh.
Then you were gone. I lay there asleep and not asleep,
listening to your steps upon the stairs,
your shutting the door, the pigeons in flight.

OK, not Literature with a capital L (or probably even a small l). But there is promise evident for this undergraduate English major, if only in an emerging understanding of the forms and language of literature. I’m glad I went back and met up with him again. Too bad he has more to say to me than I can to him.

Action Heroes

As if we needed further evidence of the crass commercialization of popular culture, there comes now from a company called HeroBuilders (“The Last American Toy Company”) a trio of new action figures, not superheroes from comic books, or manly heroes from movies or TV programs, but rather three studly characters from current TV commercials – the “Old Spice Guy,” Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man in the World,” and the “Mayhem” guy from Allstate Insurance:

It takes a bit of imagination to see the resemblance between these action heroes and their commercial counterparts (though the Dos Equis guy is in a tux, holding a beer bottle, and the Old Spice guy can arrive “Anatomically Correct!” (if you’re at least 18 and pay an extra $10)). And I can’t imagine what kind of “action” these characters might play out in a young boy’s room, though they do come with some snappy action dialogue (Old Spice, Dos Equis, Allstate). But then I don’t think these action figures are targeted to boys, if their cost ($49.95-$59.95) and slogan (“Here are the men you wish you could be and the Men your women wish that you were”) are any indication. No, I think they’re headed to the top of my next year’s Christmas wish list. Fortunately, Christmas is still ten months away, so there’s plenty of time to forget.

Random India Observations

· One of the first things our driver on the short drive from the New Delhi airport to our hotel asks us is “Do you have children?” (a question we’d be asked several times by others). Another question: “How do you like me?”

· In the bedside drawer in our hotel in New Delhi are both a Gideon Bible and a Bhagavad-Gita.

· Almost all the men in India wear long-sleeve shirts, some with sweaters or coats. It’s 90° and I’m conspicuous wearing short sleeves. I get stares.

· There are apparently no words for “oxygen mask” or “life jacket” in Hindi.

· The northern Indian landscape is mostly barren, lacking almost any sign of human habitation or presence (towns, farms, roads, etc.). The 1.17 billion people are apparently crowded into the cities.

· The traffic in Mumbai is insane, a congested chaos of cars, taxis, trucks, motorcycles, autorickshaws, mostly stopped at traffic lights or traffic jams in general or attempting to funnel eight unmarked lanes into two unmarked lanes.

· One of the views across the street from the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai is slums.

· Slums are also visible from the $1.8 billion, 27-story “home” of the wealthiest person in India (and the fourth wealthiest in the world).

· The traffic snarls at intersections attract both peddlers and beggars, tapping on the car windows. We take the cue from our first driver who automatically locks the doors at the first beggar’s approach and ignore her and the infant on her hip.

· Everyone you talk with in India sound like they’re tech support.

· 18 million people live in Mumbai. We tell our driver we live in a city of 60 thousand. He finds this quite humorous.

· We bump into a massive (and massively expensive) wedding celebration at our hotel. But it turns out to be a pre-wedding (massively expensive) celebration. Apparently weddings are no minor events here.

· The caste system is very much in evidence throughout India. We never do get used to viewing our drivers as inferiors, servants, at our bidding, but it is clear – and we are told – that that is the case.

· Most every public area is populated by beautiful Indian woman in wonderfully colored saris (their beauty no doubt accentuated if not effected by the wonderfully colored saris).

· There’s an awkwardness visiting Buddhist sites or temples, wanting to experience, not wanting to offend – take off shoes? not take photos? avert eyes from those in prayer? One of my photos of a temple doesn’t come out.

· With a computer connection, we’re able to read US papers daily, listen to NPR. On the cable TV we’re able to watch CNN and BBC. I go to the gym in the morning and walk on the treadmill, watching CNN. I check my email and my online classes a couple of times a day. There is no electronic or digital isolation.

· Just about everyone we meet everywhere is helpful, pleasant, accommodating to the point of obsequiousness (colonial residue or ethnic character?).

· We have problems understanding our driver, and he has problems understanding us. But if he had any command of English, he would be something more than a driver (the better-paid staff at the hotels speak generally good English).

· You hear both Mumbai and Bombay. Though Mumbai is official, Bombay is still common.

· The price of a 12-oz. beer ranges from Rs 60 ($1.30) to Rs 340 ($8.00). All is location.

· Getting lost in Mumbai (though not too lost) is probably a good thing in terms of seeing the city as it is day-to-day.

· We see very few Americans, virtually none beyond the business hotel we stay in, a number of Brits, especially in Goa (apparently a sort of British Riviera).

· Cattle and water buffalo have right away on all roads. It adds somewhat to the danger of a traffic that ignores lanes. But it also slows things up, sometimes to a complete contemplative stop.

· In the city, honking horns are the sound that dominates. On the coast, in Goa, it’s the squawking of crows.

· I only once barter for something, a t-shirt in Goa. They ask Rs 250 ($5.50), but I hold firm at Rs 200 ($4.50). I probably could have gotten Rs 175 ($3.75). But why? They certainly need the money more than me.