This Journey

As my son, Ethan, quickly approaches his fourteenth birthday, I’ve found myself reflecting on the wondrous journey that has brought us to this first summit in our lives; the beginning of manhood for himself and the long, slow recognition of this milestone on my part. There is a hint of sadness in this realization, even though I’ve know for years this day was coming. I guess I thought it would be a little later in his teen years (like sixteen or seventeen, which is around the time I started pulling away from my parent’s arms). Either way, I should have been prepared for this unmarked date on my calendar, but truthfully, the years have raced by so quickly that I find myself stunned at where we find ourselves today.

In many respects, he is still the same delightful child that we brought home from the hospital bundled in a blue blanket. He is honest, respectful to adults, opens doors for little old ladies, and works hard at school to bring home honor roll grades. His sparkling brown eyes and infectious laugh still bring a smile to my face, but at the same time he is beginning to assert his independence in a way that sometimes leads us to hours or days of sullen silence. In this supposedly enlightened age of cell phones and instant communication via text messaging, I’m still struggling to loosen the reins and set him free.

Trust is like swimming. I know he can dog paddle from one end of the pool to the other, but could he save himself if he got swept out to sea by an invisible rip tide? Those parents who can cut their kids loose at the county fair with a twenty dollar bill (o.k., maybe two twenty dollar bills) and brief instructions to meet at the entrance in three hours are a marvel to me. In my heart I know he will almost always behave and do the right thing (like staying away from strangers who look like Billy Bob Thornton on a three day Budweiser binge), but I cannot seem to get past that parental hump in the road that our children have to learn from their mistakes.

I’ve also noticed subtle changes in the bonds that have wrapped us together over the years. Many of the activities we used to do together have been cast aside for his need to constantly be around his friends and my growing need for down time from a life that has become more stressful in the last twelve months. Those frequent intersecting times when we would go to see a movie, play golf, or go fishing have dwindled to the point where we seldom spend just father/son time together. Looking hard into the mirror, I have belatedly started coming to grips with the fact that, like his mother and younger sister, he is an extrovert- and I am an introvert.

But the bond between a father and his son is a funny, quirky sort of thing. It hits you very hard and at the least expected times. It happens after a frosty exchange of “Why you can’t spend the night at your friend’s house three nights in a row.” It happens after a bad game where the ball just wouldn’t fall through the basket. It happens when I’ve said the word “no” so many times it flies out of my mouth before I’ve had a chance to consider the question.

Just when I think this impenetrable wall is sliding between us, when I think he only needs me to put a roof over his head or give him spending money, he will ask me something that knocks me back a few steps. Something like “Are you proud of me for getting straight A’s in school last semester?” It’s times like these… that after I’ve assured him how very proud I am and that he has the potential to do or be anything he wants in life, that I find myself getting teary with the knowledge that he is my lovely son, and that we have a bond so strong and resilient that it will never be broken.

Happy Hour at Shooter's Bar, Grill & Crime Scene

Where else but in America can you go out and drink while packing a .45 caliber handgun? Thanks in large part to the election of President Obama and a Democrat majority in Congress, gun nuts across the country have become convinced that Big Brother is going to break down their doors and confiscate their beloved handguns (as well as their Thompson submachine guns, hand grenades and their treasured collection of vintage Hustler Magazines).

Today, the Tennessee State Legislature became the 38th state to allow gun owners to bring their weapons to their local watering hole. The measure, which of course was supported and encouraged by the National Rifle Association (NRA), does have a caveat that you cannot actually drink while playing with your gun, hence, you must be sober before entering the nightly game of Russian roulette at Shooter’s Bar & Grill.

That server not hopping fast enough for you with your drink order? Show him/her your killing piece and you’ll be amazed at how quick that pitcher of beer hits your table. Sick of losing every game of pool? Instead of hitting your opponent over the head with your cue stick, pull your legally licensed six-shooter from your ankle holster and kill the cheating bastard. Tired of getting hit on by Tom, Dick and Harry, ladies? Pluck that nickel-plated nine millimeter from your purse and start shooting. After all, that’s why we call it Happy Hour, right?

Is it any wonder that we have the highest death by handgun rate of any civilized country on the planet? The inmates are running the asylum in this country these days, and with the paranoid greenbacks of the NRA fueling their political fervor, politicians are passing some of the most asinine gun laws this country has ever seen. I have nothing against people owning guns (I even have one myself)- but mixing alcohol with stupid people who have a John Wayne complex or the mind of a frat boy, is a recipe for a sloppy reenactment of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral every Saturday night at your favorite watering hole.

I guess we’ve reached a point of lunacy where if you live in one of these 38 states where you can carry and imbibe (I’m not sure if we can in Indiana, although you can carry a weapon in our state parks- just in case you get attacked by a rabid mole on a grub binge), it’s probably safer to stay home and listen to the crickets from your back deck while you knock back a Budweiser.

The World Without Us?

I’ve never considered myself to be a day-to-day environmentalist, but late last year I read a book titled The World Without Us, written by Alan Weisman. The book was a fascinating “what if” scientific perspective of what might happen to the planet and all the crap we’ve built- if one day man simply vanished from the face of the earth. Not exactly a pleasant thought (especially since we’re planning a family vacation in early August), but a very interesting thesis given how mankind has treated our home as if it were a giant porta-potty.

I have to admit that I picked up the book primarily out of a fascination of how long it might take the average American home (like mine) and the Gotham-like super structures of our cities to erode, corrode, and simply fall apart or collapse. The book didn’t disappoint in that regard. I was simply amazed at how short a lifespan my house, and for that matter, New York City, would have if we were gone and nobody was home to take care of basic maintenance.

I was also pleasantly surprised to read that cockroaches might soon follow our great leap into oblivion. Apparently without our nuclear-fired squalor and propensity for leaving Cheetos laying around the house like stale popcorn on the floor of your local cinema, these disgusting little bastards would starve to death. Other than mosquitoes and the common house fly, I can’t think of another creature I would rather have rotting beside my dusty corpse.

However, the true beauty of Mr. Weisman’s tome wasn’t the scientific expertise of how our post Dark Ages structures would fall apart, but the resurging aftermath of nature taking back the earth once we are all gone. No more fishing trawlers (or human demand) decimating the ocean’s vast species of aquatic life, no more man-made poisons in the fields, and no more cars spewing carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. Environmentalist or not, it’s hard not to fall in love with the thought of a distant future where plants and animals reclaim what was, and is, rightfully their place in the cycle of this planet.

We currently live in a worldwide culture (with apologies to China and their one child per couple policy) where we have lost our ability to count. I’m not even remotely capable of doing the math on how we are going to feed the estimated 10 billion people who will probably be walking the earth in 2075, but I do know that too many people equals not enough food, a messy kitchen, and a very empty refrigerator.

Except for the premise that all mankind would simply disappear with the snap of Mr. Weisman’s talented fingers, I really don’t think it’s such a far-fetched scenario. At the rate mankind is overpopulating the planet, catastrophic disease and famine could be a very real possibility in our lifetimes. Add into the equation our reliance on everything nuclear, and you have the recipe for a disaster of biblical proportions. Given the scenario of the earth looking like a poisoned version of the moon or a landscape repopulated with towering forests and pristine waterways, I’ll take the National Geographic version every time.

Seriously, would it really be all that horrible to imagine a world without us?

Elkhart Will Be Back

Just a few scant years ago, when the manufacturing sector of the economy was humming along at a breathtaking pace, Elkhart was turning out record amounts of recreational vehicles, musical instruments and marine products. Fast-forward to 2009 and Elkhart has become the symbolic dust bowl of America’s faltering industrial machine. Elkhart is down- and the referee in the ring is counting upward to the apocalyptic number ten, but we are rising confidently to our feet, refusing to take the count while lying flat on our backs.

We are staggering to our feet financially poorer, but yet somehow wiser. Gone are the days of decent working wages on the backs of a high school diploma or G.E.D. The classified section of the local newspaper, The Elkhart Truth, has dwindled from three or four pages of “Help Wanted” ads to a quarter page on a good day (like Sundays). A weekend drive along County Road 6 or State Road 13 reveals a montage of industrial “For Sale or Rent” signs in front of empty factories that used to teem with activity five or six days a week.

Many of these hard-working neighbors and friends have packed up and left, leaving foreclosed homes and vacant rentals behind after losing their jobs. The sad thing is that many of these people are not moving to some industrious promise land, but are moving back in with family, even if that means shacking up in Grandma Jean’s spare bedroom in Fort Meyers, FL. But those who have remained, both native Hoosiers and migrants from Mexico and Central America, are doing what is necessary and planning (not hoping) for a better life.

While compacting our lives into manageable means, we are staring hard into the mirror and peering into the future. It is a future where you absolutely must have a skilled trade or education to survive and flourish. Local colleges and trade schools have seen their enrollment skyrocket as the unemployed have enrolled in welding, medical and business classes. We are collectively thumbing our noses at the paradigms of yesterday and shouting “To hell with minimum wage fast food jobs and temporary employment on manufacturing assembly lines!”

We are also recognizing the importance of family versus a monotonous existance of punching the clock and working that Saturday shift for overtime. We are spending more time with our children, an investment that will pay us back in spades with precious memories of mom and dad at Little League games and taking walks in the park. You can’t measure family leisure time spent with grandparents, parents and children in monetary terms, but you can measure it in quality of life.

Mark my words, Elkhart will be back. We may have fewer people and fewer national chain restaurants and stores in the future, but so what? We will be better educated and less dependent on manufacturing, even more culturally diverse, and more appreciative of having battled through the worst of times as a community- a populace that refused to roll over and die.

Goodbye, Texas...

Will the last five people in Texas who don't have tails and crossed eyes please hop the state line and relocate to Louisiana? According to a recent Rasmussen Poll, 33 percent of Texans believe their state has a constitutional right to secede from the Union, and 20 percent would actually like to see it happen. The current talk about secession in the Lone Star State is just another example of why Santa Anna and Mexico should have kicked Sam Houston's ass back in 1836 and taken back the godforsaken place.

The current governor of the Redneck State, Rick Perry, recently flamed the secessionist fires during an anti-tax, tea party in Austin. Terrified that he's going to lose a primary fight to current U.S Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison next year, Perry was at his political worst pandering to the "tea party" idiots and the right wing freaks that produced the likes of Timothy McVeigh.

"We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their noses at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

Huh? Have you forgotten about the Civil War and the fact that 600,000 plus Americans died in an apocalyptic excursion that nearly destroyed our great Union? You're not independent, Rick. You're a bunch of racist, misanthropic assholes, who have bought into the Marlboro Man fantasy that Texans are characters in a Zane Grey novel.

The last great governor of Texas, the late Ann Richards, has got to be laughing her ass off somewhere in the great beyond while watching this latest version of "Quest for Fire" meets "The Alamo." The intellectual bastion of Austin aside, Texans should pull out their history books and reflect on the fact, that for better or worse, we are stuck with their sorry, chapped asses.

Unless of course, we can talk Mexico into re-annexing the entire state. Or better yet, allow Texas to leave without so much as a whisper of protest. The new replublic could be called Texico, a funky mix of oil wells, steers, beers, and enough defective people to make Cro-Magnon man look like John Houseman in "The Paper Chase."

Bad Used Car, Bad Buyer

My 2004 Buick Rendezvous has accumulated a fair amount of body damage over the last four years. Every day when I go to work, I stop in front of my car and quickly glance at the broken rear tail light (I backed into a garbage can), several paint scrapes and dings on the back doors (where my daughter has single-handedly managed to door-ding one third of all vehicles on the road today), and the eighteen-inch crack that is creeping up on the passenger side of my windshield (it started out very small until one idle Saturday morning when I decided to wash it- and voila, the damn thing blossomed into a cracked web so big that Charlotte could birth a billion little baby spiders on it and still have room for more).

After four years together, I have finally come to realize how much I hate my car. In fact, hate might not be vitriolic enough to convey my feelings for a silver piece of space junk that’s spent so much time in the shop that I’m now on a first-name basis with the manager of the local Enterprise Rental Car franchise. I’ve seen soap box derby cars engineered and put together better than this vehicle. I’m also pretty sure that the design team behind my weathered hunk of metal and rubber was not only hitting the bottle on Friday afternoons, but every single day of the week. In other words, if these bozos had built Noah’s Ark instead of Buicks, there wouldn’t be a fucking animal walking around on the face of the earth today…

Here are just a few of the brilliant features included on my SUV-wanabee:

A battery that’s so hard to reach, a cardiologist could change out your aortic valve faster than me trying to attach jumper cables to the posts. By the time I finished jump-starting my wife’s minivan half-a-dozen times this winter, my hands looked like I had run them through the meat grinder at the local Kroger’s store.

A funky plastic knob for adjusting the driver’s seat that falls off every other day, and I still haven’t figured out exactly what it does adjust when the damn thing stays on. If I wasn’t so afraid that this do-nothing knob was my car’s linchpin, that one stop-gap device which keeps my Buick from running head-on into a 1985 Peterbilt carrying a load of hogs to slaughter, I would have thrown the damn thing away years ago.

Two compartments for storing four pairs of sunglasses. Who in the hell carries four pairs of shades in their car? Maybe the designers were watching an endless loop of Top Gun, and thought every future Buick owner was either a test pilot or Tom Cruise.

A molded plastic piece for holding drinks that you have to slip into a plastic sleeve before firmly placing your beverage of choice in the cup holder (my "special" sleeve lasted about a week before I accidentally pitched it out the window still firmly encased around a half-empty bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper).

I could easily add another three pages of design insanities, but it won’t make feel any better. In retrospect, I only have myself to blame. I am the world’s worst car shopper. I should have let my wife, Julie, go out and buy me a car while I mindlessly spent the day watching Sports Center on ESPN. She’s a tougher sale than me, knows more about cars in general, and doesn’t view the whole buying process as a complete waste of time.

I was at my absolute worst the day I bought my car from hell. Instead of researching the vehicle on the internet, I was watching the U.S Open Golf Tournament on television and the endless play of Tiger Wood’s Buick commercials. Two hours later, I decided I was going to trade in my trusty Ford Explorer and buy something new. Maybe even something like the cool Buick Rendezvous Tiger Woods was racing around the streets of New Orleans to the tune of “I Put A Spell On You.”

My biggest mistake was probably talking about all of the things that didn’t trip my trigger during the test drive with the salesman (his name was Nate, and he looked like he was thirteen year’s old). Instead of discussing all of the negatives, I spent twenty minutes driving around Goshen talking about golf. I didn’t even object later that day when I picked the car up and found a purple sucker stuck to the fabric in the cargo hold (that would later have to be cut out with a pair of scissors), the gas tank only a quarter full, and the somewhat important fact that the car had done its first 15,000 miles of life as a rental car in San Francisco (which might explain why the shit-faced brakes had to be replaced six months later).

The rest is history. In the span of a summer’s solstice I came to despise my Tiger-inspired purchase. I’m stuck with it for at least another year or two because of the economy, and I’m going to drive it until the damn thing shudders and collapses. I have no clue what vehicle I’ll be driving after that, but you can bet the farm that Julie will be out picking my new ride while I sit impatiently at home, Tivoing through every damn car commercial featuring Tiger Woods or Buick…

The God Question, Part 3

Now, at 46, I find myself lost in limbo. Intellectually, I cannot fathom that anything but evolution has gotten us to this point. Science is our savior and also the destroyer of faith. Genetics, the human genome, and a myriad of other scientific breakthroughs have taken us to a place where we know almost everything about the origin and history of our species. When I compare this knowledge to Biblical myths, my rational mind cannot accept the theocratic dogma as anything but an interesting story.

But I’m also a moral coward, and cannot let go of the faint possibility that something exists beyond the death of our physical bodies. While I have absolutely no faith in the Bible or the Koran- I’m not ready to declare myself an atheist. Call it hedging my bets, but I just cannot make that leap with some of the weird things that have been recorded regarding near-death experiences and that haunting sense of déjà vu I sometimes get that I’ve been somewhere else in another place and time.

Without an afterlife, what is the value of our lives? Why should we go through the motions of being our brother’s keeper if we aren’t accumulating tickets to Heaven? If there isn’t some tangible reward for good behavior, why bother? This is a question that haunts me as I vacillate between god versus nothingness. Do the horror and atrocities of two thousand years of religious hypocrisy outweigh the threat of damnation that has kept most of us walking the straight and narrow path for centuries? If we all woke up tomorrow and declared that God and Heaven are myths, would we become a civilization of murderers and thieves?

I can’t answer that question, but I’m relatively certain that we would not, as a species, degenerate into a horde of barbaric misanthropes, ala Attila the Hun. While it is true that the Bible (at least the New Testament) has a code of ethics that we would all be wise to follow, there is something beyond the Ten Commandments that is instilled in most of us, some innate understanding that human decency is part of our genetic code, and without it, we have no future and no chance of sustaining the human race.

Several months before my dad died from cancer, he told me in a moment of candid honesty on the golf course, that he didn’t believe in God, Heaven or Hell. His revelation didn’t surprise me. He had never been very religious, despite a strict Catholic upbringing, and he was always one of the most pragmatic people I had ever known. His statement also didn’t make me feel any better or worse about his impending death. It did make me realize that we are all lost when it comes to the question of faith and the possibilities of life just coming to an end.

So, my long search for spiritual truth has led me to the brink of intellectual freedom and the fear of a life that will end abruptly, without conscious transition to another dimension. I am paralyzed. Secular humanism is the factual light at the end of the tunnel, yet I find myself trapped in a self-imposed purgatory, caught between the truth of science debunking the religious fantasy and the fear that there is something beyond the light.

I’m very uncomfortable in this place, but I’m stuck here for now.