A Muncie Boyhood-Random Memories of Muncie South

As I write this, I’m anticipating the 2013 Muncie Southside High School All-Years Reunion planned for this upcoming Saturday night, August 10th.  Since this is a multi-year gig, and since it’s been better than thirty years since I was a senior, I’m not altogether sure just how many folks I’ll know.  I’m sure it will be fun regardless, but I can just imagine myself sitting there in a room full of complete strangers and not remembering anyone.  I’m pretty sure it won’t happen that way, but….it could.

In light of the reunion, I thought I’d try to put together some random memories from each of my years, and see if they make any cohesive sense.  There probably won’t be a moral in this story…and maybe nothing useful, but I hope it’s as interesting for you to read as I’m sure it’s going to be for me to write.

Here goes:

1976/1977—My Freshman Year

I can’t remember my first day.  I was probably so nervous that I blocked it out.  I do remember an anxiety dream I had just before the beginning of school:  I walked into school and headed to class only to realize that I had forgotten to put on pants.  I spent the balance of the dream trying to find a way to get back home to get my trousers.

Here are some other random memories from that year…

A.      Teachers that I recall:  Mrs. Moses for Freshman Science, Miss Seibold for Freshman English.  I enjoyed the English class quite a bit.  I used to regularly write technically accurate sentences that were also completely off the wall.  Miss Seibold would often get so tickled with them that she’d use them as the examples on the board.  I also had Algebra, and I must have had some sort of Social Studies, but I don’t remember who the teachers were.  My home room teacher was Mr. Gorin.  He was a cool guy, but you could never tell if he was looking at you or not.  If you had him, you understand.  If not, well, I’m not going to elaborate.

B.      I had a shop class.  Architectural Drawing.  Why they let me in there I’ll never know.  Even the teacher was mystified.  I had not yet taken Geometry, so I had no clue regarding many of the methods needed to easily do my project.  The project, by the way, was to design and draw the layout of a house.  We had to draw the basic floor plan, but we also had to do electrical and plumbing drawings, and do a street view.  To make matters worse, I couldn’t be just like everyone else and draw a simple rectangular ranch home.  Nope.  I had to draw a diamond-shaped house.  There was not one square room in the entire design…very few square corners.  That was pretty ambitious for a kid with no geometry knowledge.  If you’re wondering, I did pass.  Got an A.  Probably a sympathy grade.

C.      I think I also took another shop class that year.  Electricity.  I built a cool little photo-sensitive switch from a kit I got at Radio Shack, and the teacher taught me how to build the circuit board.  On a painful note, I also learned the hard way that if you grab the soldering iron by the wrong end, the pain will be beyond intense!  It was a true iron…a hot rod on one end and a handle on the other.  I was soldering a wire splice.  I had twisted the wires together and then reached over to grab the tool without looking.  I got the wrong end and let out a scream!  Ouch!  It hurts even to think about it.

D.      I had grown four or five inches over the summer before my freshman year.  One of my friends saw me on the first day and was amazed, but I hadn’t noticed any change.  I went from being a pudgy 8^th grader to being a tall, slender 9^th grader.  Really…I had not noticed.  I still felt pudgy.

E.       I was ahead of my time.  I had so many books and notebooks to tote back and forth to school and home that it made my one-mile walk pretty tough.  So, I had a bright idea.  I had an orange backpack, and I thought it would be awesome to load it up and carry my books to school on my back.  Of course, no one was doing that in the mid-1970s, so I was harassed mercilessly.  “Nice purse, Mike!  Hahahaha!”  The backpack went back in my closet beneath my Farrah Fawcett t-shirt.  Now, here we are years later and all of the kids carry one.  Call me a visionary. 

F.       The last few weeks were all about the squirt gun.  I wrote about that in a different story: The Year of the Squirt Gun

1977/1978—Sophomore Year

Ahhhh.  Sophomore year.  I no longer had to worry about suffering a freshman initiation by being stuffed in a locker or having my head flushed in a toilet by a senior!  None of those things ever actually happened to me as a freshman, but I had been constantly wary…especially when using the rest room.

A.      This was the year of the song that just would not go away!  “You Light Up My Life” by Debbie Boone.  Oh, how I hated that song!  It still sets me on edge all these many years later!

B.      I finally took Geometry.  I had two different teachers.  I don’t recall the name of the first teacher for the first half of the year, but I earned B’s in her class.  In the second half, I got switched to Mrs. Denton…and my grades crashed!  I had NEVER earned less than a C in any class I had ever taken,…EVER!… and I barely got a D in the third nine-weeks…my first grading period with her.  In the final nine-weeks, I really buckled down, worked harder than I had ever done for any other class, and barely scraped up a C.  I’m afraid that I did not leave her class with warm feelings toward her. 

C.      I had Driver’s Ed with Mr. Jay.  He was a tough teacher, but I got along okay in his class.  He liked to take you driving and give you trick instructions.  For example, we might be driving through Indian Village (A residential neighborhood near the school) and he would tell one of us to pull over and parallel park in some random spot.  Of course, being really nervous to begin with, we’d miss the fact that the “spot” was either in front of a driveway or a fire hydrant.  His response was not pleasant.

 

I remember two Driver’s Ed class projects:  1)  Planning an over-the-road trip.  You had to calculate the EXACT mileage from Muncie to wherever you decided to go by counting up the tiny little numbers between markings on a road atlas.  (Google Maps makes things so much easier these days!)  We also had to calculate fuel costs and trip times.  I planned my trip to Birmingham, Alabama.  I don’t know why…I just did.  2)  I had to draw a complete and detailed map of the entire downtown area of Muncie.  I remember spending hours crisscrossing the various streets and scribbling down the various lanes and other details.  Let’s just say I was probably a bit obsessive about getting it right because I was determined to get a “Waiver.”  A waiver meant that you didn’t have to take the driver’s test at the license branch.  I wanted to avoid the branch test at all costs because my dad’s 1968 Chevy Nova had a manual transmission, and the school had trained us on automatics.  Ultimately, I got the waiver, but not before promising Mr. Jay that I would practice like crazy before I got my real license.

D.      At the beginning of the year, I still had a HUGE crush on Tena.  I lived for the passing glimpses I got of her in the halls between classes.  I remember that if I happened to be lucky enough to see her, I’d get a giant smile that I couldn’t control…so much so that my face would honestly ache afterwards.  By the end of the year, the crush was gone: The Summer of 1978

1978/1979—Junior Year

This year, for me, was all about basketball and a girl!  South’s huge rivalry with Muncie Central was at a fever pitch, and we had a good team.  On top of that, my class year’s normally lackluster enthusiasm morphed into a really hot spirit of true school pride!  Further, I had started dating in the summer before, so this was my best year in high school.  Toni and I were a steady thing in my Junior year.  She was a Delta Eagle, but that didn’t matter because the one thing that is more important to a teen boy than school pride is the affection of a girl.

A.      I had a Zoology class with Mr. Phillips.  We dissected a shark and a fetal pig.  The shark was cool, and it was very interesting when I pulled a smaller fish out of its belly.  However, the craziest thing that happened was when one of the boys decided it would be funny to cut off a chunk of fetal pig and toss it out from our classroom window and into the open window of an English class.  It did not end well….but, I have to admit it was funny.

B.      Even though I had grown substantially and was a little taller than many of my classmates, I was still prone to being occasionally bullied, and there was some of that in my gym class that year.  I had taken a class on basketball, a sport that I loved to watch, but at which I had few personal skills, and my ineptness led to a good deal of ridicule.  The teacher didn’t actually teach us anything about basketball.  He just let us play for about an hour while he did whatever he did.  Anyway, somehow I had become friendly with a couple of the varsity basketball stars that year, Clint Conklin and John Benford.  Really John more than Clint, but Clint was in the basketball class with me, and I remember him stepping in when some bullies were up to no good one day in the locker room.  It wasn’t anything too serious, but he stopped them anyway, and I’ve always appreciated it.

C.      We used to have school pep rallies before big games where the whole school would gather in the gym to get all fired up.  We sat in different sections by class year.  There was one particular rally that stands out in my mind from that year.  Everything seemed quite normal.  There were cheers from the cheerleaders…the band was playing…the players were firing us all up…then…  Well, then someone in our junior class area broke open some sort of STINK capsule.  Oh, man!  The smell would make you wretch and gag!  Putrid!  As an entire class we suddenly rushed down from the bleachers to the gym floor, which obviously freaked out the teachers.  Since they were surprised and confused, they thought we were pulling some sort of prank and ordered us all back to our spots.  Obviously, we didn’t want to obey, but in the end, we had no choice.  Holding our collective noses, we returned to our section with many groans and complaints.

D.      Muncie South had a very competitive basketball team that year.  I remember going to so many games either at our gym, the Muncie Fieldhouse, or even traveling to away games.  Clint Conklin, John Benford, Smoky Vance, Eddie Childress, and some others.  We had hopes of knocking off the usual favorite Bearcats in the Sectional, and I think we had a shot at it too.  But, unfortunately, Smoky Vance got booted from the team right before the tournament started.  I never knew the real details, but the story I was told was that It was frigid cold outside and he refused to get off of a Muncie Career Center bus to go work on a jobsite.  Part of his punishment was to be expelled from the basketball team.  It was just wrong!  Some might say that knocking off Central that year was a pipe dream since they went on to win the State Championship, but I still think we had a shot.

79/80—Senior Year

All high school kids live for their senior year.  Even the nerdiest senior commands the respect of the incoming freshmen.  One more year!  One more year of forced servitude to the whims of various instructors.  All kinds of special senior events…some sanctioned…some not so much.  I was too much of a nerd and too straight-laced to participate in the non-sanctioned stuff.  I could say that I regret that, but the truth is that I’m so far removed that I really don’t care much either way.

A.       I had Botany class with Mr. Shannon.  I learned about photosynthesis and marijuana propagation.  Mr. Shannon taught the photosynthesis part, and some of the other boys in class taught the weed-growing part.  Botany was right after lunch, and a few of the guys would go out to their cars and get a little high during the break.  You could tell when they did by their red eyes and the stink on their clothes.  Just for fun, they took some seeds and planted them in the planter boxes in the Botany greenhouse.  Before you could say “DEA,” there were little pot plants springing up.  I don’t know if Mr. Shannon recognized what they were or not, but if he did, he never said a word.

B.      One of my guys in my class year got busted breaking into cars in the parking lot.  Several of us were watching him through the second-story windows before one of our classes started.  One the girls said to him through the glass and across the distance that was too great for him to hear:  “You’re busted!”  The next day, we watched the police come cart him away.  He was a good kid who got on the wrong track and made some bad choices.

C.      I had signed up to take Chemistry, and herein exists one high school choice that I do regret to this day.  I signed up for it, but I didn’t really need it to graduate.  I had enough credits, and I didn’t need another HARD science class.  So, I attended one day, and then dropped it.  Instead, I spent that hour as a student assistant to Mr. Phillips in his Freshman science class.  That difficult job consisted of distributing and retrieving papers from the kids in the class, and losing at least one game of chess to Mr. Phillips per day.  Basically, I wasted that hour.  In retrospect, I wish I’d taken the Chemistry class.

Finally, the end of my Senior year arrived in May of 1980.  I had skipped my prom because I didn’t have a date (I had broken up with Toni, and she had graduated the year before and gone away to school in Tennessee.), and I was working a lot of hours at K-Mart anyway.  But, proudly, I was excited for graduation.  I was the first in my whole family to graduate from high school.  It was a huge deal!  Looking back, that momentous night at Emens Auditorium seems sort of anti-climactic.  I had my red cap and gown.  I walked down those aisles with my classmates.  I listened to those speeches.  And, all the while I never considered that I’d never see many of those kids again.  I’d spent thirteen years with some of them.  I just walked across that stage, took my diploma, and wandered off into life without looking back.  Some of them I didn’t care to ever see again…I’m sure we all have some kids we’d just as soon not remember,… but there were also a lot of those classmates that I genuinely liked, and I was just oblivious to the fact that without school to force us together, we might rarely, if ever, cross paths again.  I suppose you just don’t think about those kinds of things when you're eighteen years old.

I don’t know who I’ll see on Saturday night.  Familiar faces to which I cannot put a name?  People who remember me, but I cannot remember them?  Lots of folks that don’t even ring a tiny little bell?  And just maybe a bunch of those kids that I genuinely liked and left behind oh so many years ago.

I hope so.

A Muncie Boyhood-Cub Scouts and a Home Invasion

My Niece Krista and myself in my Cub Scout stuff.  That's my dad on the right edge.

“I promise to do my best to do my duty to God and my country.”  That was my Cub Scout pledge…or at least that’s a pretty close rendition.  I can still remember standing in the gym at Roosevelt Elementary, holding up my right hand with some now unknown number of fingers held together and pointing upward (Was it two or three?), and reciting that pledge as a member of the Cub Scouts in Muncie, Indiana.  I suppose I was somewhere around ten years old, and I was excited to be a Scout.

I can’t remember how I got in, and I only did it for a couple of years before I got out.  But, I had some fun and created a few interesting memories.  I learned to play miniature golf.  I walked down Walnut Street in a parade.  I visited Camp Munsee and Camp Redwing.  And, I raced a car in the Pinewood Derby.

The memories aren’t very deep and many of them are just fleeting images, but there are a few that stand out.

Mrs. Buck was my Den Mother.  She lived down on 24^th Street between Hackley and Grant streets.  I can’t remember what she looked like, but I have three memories of being at her house.  1.  She taught me how to make a candle.  We took string and continually dipped it in hot wax, adding layer upon layer, until we had one long candle.  I’ve never done it since, but it was kind of fun to do at the time.  2.  Her dog bit me during one of our Scout meetings.  He was chained up between the house and the garage.  We usually walked around him, but I’d gotten too comfortable and just trotted through his chain radius.  The puncture marks in my calf were there to remind me to go around for several weeks after that particular visit.  3.  Her husband helped me build my Pinewood Derby car.  My dad was working too many hours at the Chevrolet plant and was either on 2^nd or 3^rd shift, but Mrs. Buck recruited her husband to work with some of us boys who needed a hand.  I guess I shouldn’t say that he helped me…it was more like he built it and I just made a few decisions like what shape it should be and…and…well, I decided what shape it should be.  I guess I also attached the wheels.  That’s something…right?

Mr. Amonett was my Scout leader.  He lived just a block south of me at 22^nd & Hackley streets.  His daughter, Patty was in my classes at school.  For some reason that escapes me, that fact seemed to make it cooler that he was the leader.  Anyway, there are only two memories of him that I recall.  One is just a fleeting image of him walking to my door to sign me up. 

The other is a little embarrassing.

Well, it’s embarrassing, and he wasn’t actually involved.  I guess the memory is really only about his house.  See, I walked down to his house to see him.  I can’t remember why anymore.  Maybe I needed to check on some detail or maybe I thought there was a meeting.  Anyway, I trotted down there and knocked on his front door.  No answer.  So, I walked around back and knocked on the back door.  Of course, when I go back to the area now and look at the houses in that neighborhood, I realize that it was really silly to think that it would matter which door you knocked on to be heard.  Those houses are really quite small.  Anyway, I knocked on the back door, but again there was no answer.

So, did I just turn around and go home?  Maybe look up his phone number and call him later? 

Nope!

Again, for some reason that escapes me, I opened their back door and walked right in.  I guess I thought they might be in some part of that tiny house where they couldn’t hear me knocking on both of their doors.

“Hello?” I said.  “Hello???”

No answer.  Well, maybe they were in some other part of the house….maybe upstairs and out of hearing range.  So, I looked around…found the stairs…climbed right up.  I don’t know whose room I was standing in when I finally came to my senses, but it suddenly occurred to me that I shouldn’t be walking around in somebody’s house when they weren’t there.  I didn’t steal anything and I didn’t go nibbing around in their cabinets or anything, but I was abruptly overcome with an odd sense of guilt.  “What am I doing?” I thought, “I need to get out of here!”  So, I rushed down the stairs, out the back door, and ran home…never to mention it to anyone…especially Patty!  (Well, I think I did tell her a couple of years ago, but it was a huge secret for at least three decades, and now the world knows…or, at least those who read this blog.)

There’s one other rather weird memory I associate with Cub Scouts.  For some reason, I associate the old “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog” song with being a Scout.  It’s all wrapped around the day that I walked in that parade.  I was in my uniform…I had walked at the front of our troop holding our banner,…and I remember:  “Jeremiah was a bullfrog.  He was a good friend of mine.”  It’s like it was the theme song for that day.  Weird is the right word.  That…my friends…is a weird memory.

Well, to sum up my days in the Cub Scouts, I did learn a few important things that I will now pass along to you:

1.       I learned the value of “doing my duty.”

2.       I learned that the highest score does NOT win in miniature golf.

3.       I learned that putting that bandana through the little Cub Scout ring thingy correctly is a lot harder than you can ever imagine.

4.       And…most importantly…you should always lock your back door because you never know when some goofy, eleven-year old Cub Scout is going to invade your home while you are away.  Really,....you never know.

Post Trial Reflections of Racism

As I sit here tonight, the George Zimmerman verdict has just been recently announced in the death of Trayvon Martin.  Just in case you’re living in a hole in the ground, Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges.  I’m not going to comment directly on that verdict, as to whether he should or should not have been convicted.  The jury has spoken and my opinion regarding the outcome is moot.  What is bothering me is all of the racial animosity and hatred that is being generated.

I am a white dude.  I can’t change that…it is what it is.  As such, I cannot fully comprehend the experiences that my friends that are black have lived through.  There are some folks in this country today that seem to think that racism is a thing of the past.  I have no illusions in that regard.  Racism against black folks does still exist and as a white dude, I cannot really understand the impact that it has on those of my friends who are black.  I just can’t.

On the other hand, I can understand it a little in the sense that it seems that this event has sparked feelings of animosity against the white community regardless of who they are…regardless of their innocence or guilt with regard to racism…regardless of their opinion on the case.  I saw a post on Facebook earlier today where there was a push to get all black folks to call in sick out of protest and boycott all across the country…unless the employer happened to be a company that was owned by a black person.  I’ve seen other posts that were much more angry and militant against white folks in general...not white folks connected to the case...just folks that happened to be white.

So, tell me, why would the owner of a flower shop in Laramie, Wyoming for instance need to be boycotted because of a trial verdict in Sanford, Florida?  What possible connection is there?  It is only the color of his/her skin.

This animosity has made me feel indirectly hated simply because I am white.  My sense of fairness, which runs pretty deep in me, cried out inside me when I saw the above mentioned post that this was WRONG!  This is the same sense of fairness that has always told me things like excluding black kids from certain schools was WRONG, or excluding black families from certain neighborhoods was WRONG! 

Folks, racism...regardless of who the racist is…is WRONG!

As for the tragic death of Trayvon, let’s consider a couple of questions:

Assuming we reverse the races of the two key players…let’s make Trayvon a teenage white kid….let’s make George Zimmerman a black man who is the neighborhood watch captain.  Let’s say the same event occurred just as it was described.  Ask yourself, would this change your view of the situation?  Try to be honest with yourself.

1.       If you are a white person, would you have suddenly been calling for the full conviction?

2.       If you are a black person, would you have jumped to the defense’s side?

Hmmm.  Are you being honest with yourself?  I think if people were willing to be honest, there would be people jumping ship on both sides.  White folks would be up in arms because an innocent white kid was killed just walking home from a market!  Some black folks would be crying foul because a black man was "unfairly" arrested for defending himself when he was just doing something to help the neighborhood.  Regardless of how right or wrong those positions may or may not be, there would be people jumping to those spots simply because of skin color. 

Racism itself is not racist.  Racism is an evil that itself doesn’t show a preference for race…it will inject itself equally and without bias into the heart of any willing party.  It clouds the mind, hardens the heart, and pays no attention to the outward appearance of the person in whom it inhabits.

I’ve got my opinions on the case…just like everyone else.  However, I will keep them to myself.  Please do not assume to know where I stand on this. 

I do want to say that I cherish my friendships with ALL of my friends regardless of their skin color, I am absolutely appalled at racism in ALL FORMS, and I’m just sitting here hoping that suddenly some of my friends are not going to be hating on me because I happen to be white.

I Peter 4:8  Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Love to all.

Mike

The Paula Deen Syndrome

Here’s a test for you.  I want you to think back to sometime in 1984 to 1986…to a time when you were speaking flippantly or angrily.  You didn’t hold back.  You let the ugly words fly.  Got it?  Remember that time?  It's a little embarrassing, isn't it? 

Now, I want you to remember what words you used?  Got ‘em?

Good.  Now, don’t ever tell anyone what you said because it could just maybe ruin your life!

Consider the case of Paula Deen.  She admitted in a deposition…something that forces you to be truthful to avoid perjury…that she used the “N-Word” some three decades in the past.  As a result, her corporate sponsors are dropping her like a hot potato and the news media is eating it up.  The Food Network started the feeding frenzy and now everyone from Walmart to Sears has piled onto the carcass that was her business dynasty.

Don’t get me wrong.  I detest the use of the “N-Word.”  I have ALWAYS felt it was a terrible word to use to describe another person.  It is a hateful, ugly word.  But, we have gotten so incredibly paranoid about the use of this word that we cannot even use the word when describing the USE of the word!  Good grief.  Even the “F-Word” doesn’t get that level of reaction!

Someday, some random person from the future is going to be doing research on news reports and articles from our time period, and they are going to scratch their head and wonder….Why were they so weird about this one word?  Or, maybe:  What in the world was this N-Word that they kept talking about?

And now, folks are ostracizing a 66 year old woman because she admitted she used it nearly 30 years ago….almost 3 decades in the past!  Folks, that’s simply ridiculous.  If she had used it last week…or last month…or even a couple of years ago, well then you’ve got a case.  But, come on!  30 years ago?

One of my Facebook friends posed the question:  “How many of those corporate executives that are dropping her could pass the same test?”

Excellent question.  I wonder.  Maybe some brave news reporter could ask them for us?

We are so good at throwing stones, aren’t we?  We put up with so many things in our world today, but we just can’t stomach a woman who used that especially notorious word some three decades ago.  Really?  Are you serious?

You may think she’s too sappy of a southern lady.  You may think she promotes unhealthy eating habits.  You may think she’s terrible for having a struggle with a smoking habit.  She’s been a bit heavy.  Maybe she’s even difficult to work for.  Fine.  Take her to task for those CURRENT issues, but folks let’s not be so stupid as to judge someone in 2013 for something they said….words….in 1985.

In the meantime, I think I’ll go out this weekend and get me some fine southern cooking.

So says The Caaamper.

As an addendum, you may want to check out the article thru this link that has more CURRENT accusations:
http://www.blacklegalissues.com/Article_Details.aspx?artclid=7dfdbe0461

And, here is another article giving yet another perspective.  The one above is more anti-Paula and with apparent merit, but the one below is grace-filled.  Both come from prominent African Americans.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/mariadixonhall/2013/06/saying-grace-paula-deen-progressives-and-race/

A Muncie Boyhood-The Dream of Baseball

The glove I bought at Retz Sporting Goods to try out for Muncie Southside's baseball team in 1977.  I still have it and it hangs on a wall in our home.

I fell in love with baseball during the World Series of 1972.  Before then, I knew about the game.  My dad taught me how to throw and catch at a young age, but for some reason it didn’t catch on with me until I was ten years old and was watching the Series at my Uncle Clint’s house.  It was a sort of turning point in my childhood.  Funny the random things you can remember. 

Not only did I fall in love with baseball, but I also fell in love with the Cincinnati Reds.

By the following June, I had practically memorized the entire roster, their batting averages or ERAs, number of homeruns, and even the stolen bases.  Johnny Bench became my hero with Pete Rose, Tony Perez, and Joe Morgan close behind.  Not only did I love to listen to them on WLBC on those warm summer evenings in the backyard, or catch them on TV once in a while on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, but I became determined to become one of them.

I became determined to become a Cincinnati Red.

I just knew that one day Marty Brennaman would be calling my name and ole Joe Nuxall would be interviewing me after the game….before “the old left-hander rounded third and headed for home.”

So, I began to work on my skills every chance I got.

First was playing catch with dad.  That was sometimes problematic because he worked nights or afternoons and often wasn’t around to work with me…and, when he was, he wasn’t always the most patient.  One time, we were on the back walk tossing the ball back and forth.  His back was to the back gate and the garage.  My back was to the house…the house with my mom’s bedroom window above my left shoulder and our basement window behind my left leg.

Dad said:  “You better make sure you catch this ball because if you miss and it breaks a window, I’m gonna beat your butt.”  (He didn’t say “butt.”)

His next throw was low and to my left.  It slipped under my glove and made quick work of the basement window.

I think he knew it was his fault with an errant throw because despite his cussing and yelling, he didn’t beat my….uh….butt.  He just fixed the window.

Second, there was playing ball with all the neighbor kids in Cecil’s field.  I’ve mentioned this field before in a previous story, but it was an open field that took up the center of the space between Cecil French’s house on 21^st Street and Odie Belle’s house on 22^nd Street.  It was about three normal lots wide and seemed huge to me at the time.  I go back now and wonder how we ever played any kind of baseball in that small space.  Most of my buddies preferred football, but fairly often I could talk them into baseball.

When sixth grade came to a close, I got my first real taste of organized baseball.  It was the Buddy Closed League...or was that Buddy Open?..., and Roosevelt Elementary had a team.  Real baseball at last.  Real fast pitch.  Actually nine players on the field and a whole field too.  I couldn’t wait.  My pal Tony and I signed up.

For practice, we went to the ball diamond behind Roosevelt.  I can’t remember my coach's name, only that he was huge…way overweight...rotund.  He would stand at home plate and hit balls to us, but didn't move around too much.  He had a couple of guys helping him, and one of them was a real player.  We were so impressed with that guy because he could pick up the ball in deep center field and throw a strike at home plate.  Wow!  Of course, to us it was “deep center.”  To him, it was probably more like just behind second base.

For games, we met our opponents at TV field.  The baseball diamond behind the WLBC radio station, sort of between 26^th and 29^th streets.  I would ride my red Schwinn Stingray bike to the games, and I can still remember the first one very well.  I wasn’t chosen to be a starter…I just knew that was a mistake….and one day my coach would regret it…because I was going to be a Red someday.  Instead, I warmed the bench.

We were terrible.  We were getting blown out.  It got down to the last inning they were going to let us play and we had zero runs…

Coach:  “Okay, Mike.  Go in and pitch hit.”

The adrenaline shot through me!  I was going to bat…in a real game…against somebody throwing fast pitches…and with an umpire calling balls and strikes!  I wasn’t worried though because I knew I could hit…I always hit the ball really well in Cecil’s field.

I don’t know what the ball/strike count was when I took my cut.  I just remember that the ball kind of dropped and I whacked it!  My friend Robert Bertram told me later:  “Mike, that ball dropped like it fell off a table, but you hit it!”  Yes, I did!  I hit it hard into left center, high and deep.  It wasn’t a homerun, but it ended up being a good double.  And it was the first real hit we had gotten.  Two batters later, I sprinted for home from third base and slid in on my backside to score our first run.

We didn’t win that game, but I had sparked a little rally where we scored three or four runs.  After that, I was the primary pinch hitter.  I don’t think I ever out did that first at bat, but it was cool to realize that my coach had some confidence in me.

Unfortunately, that season was the highlight of my baseball career.

In seventh grade, I moved up to Wilson Middle School.  This school was much larger and pulled kids from several elementary schools.  I had a lot more competition, but I was still determined…and I still knew I was going to be playing in Cincinnati someday…so, I tried out.  I wasn’t without some skill and I did pretty well in tryouts, so when the first exhibition scrimmage game was arranged, I was asked to participate. 

Disaster!

Two terrible things happened in that scrimmage game.  First, I went up to bat and got a walk.  Not too bad, right?  Well, it was all good until I got caught looking the wrong way and got picked off first base.  Second, I was playing third base…my position of choice at the time…and some kid hit a little pop up between third and home.  It was my ball to catch.  An easy one.  A no-brainer.  I had one problem:  Nerves!  It seemed that someone had nailed my feet to the third base line.  I froze!  It was like someone had taken liquid nitrogen and sprayed me with it just as the kid swung the bat.  I watched the ball go up.  I saw it sail in my direction.  I watched it fall easily to the ground.

I was cut from the team the next day.

Oh well.  That was disappointing, but I was an optimist.  There’s always next year, I thought.

That was positive thinking, but the seventh grade coach was the assistant eight grade coach, and apparently he had a pretty good memory.  Despite the fact that I did pretty well in the 8^th grade tryouts, and made very few mistakes, I got cut again the next year.

Now, all along, I still kept working on my skills any way I could.  My dad even got me one of those Pitch-Backs.  It was a taunt net inside a metal frame.  You’d throw the ball at it and the net would throw it right back.  I spent many hours in the back yard throwing at that thing and fielding its return tosses.  I was still determined.  I may have been cut at Wilson, but what did they know?  I’d make the team at Southside!

Spring of my freshman year rolled around and I tried out again.  This time, the workouts were a lot harder.  Lots of running.  Weight-lifting.  Batting cages.  Overall, I didn’t do too bad.  I don’t recall any glaring mistakes.  But, I had even more competition…from even more schools that fed into the high school.  Ultimately, I think they looked at me and saw a kid who didn’t really excel, and who didn’t play in middle school, and decided to use someone else.  I was cut for the third year in a row.

One other detail to share was that I had been a “manager” for the Wilson 8^th grade football team and the 8^th grade track team the year before.  A manager is a glorified servant.  I carried equipment.  I carried water.  I cleaned up after the players.  One year of that was enough.

So, when I got cut in 9^th grade at Southside, Coach Lewis came up to me after the roster was posted and my name wasn’t on it and said:  “Mike, we need a team manager.  If you’ll be the manager, you can hang with the team and do some practicing, and maybe you can become a player next year.”

I’d had enough with being the flunky waterboy.  I asked my mom to tell me that I couldn’t do it so I could tell the coach that my parents said no.  She complied and I told the coach that “Mom said no.”  (I’m pretty sure that Coach Lewis was sharp enough to see through such a lame excuse.)

Anybody else would have thrown in the towel already, but not me.  I decided to try out again in 10^th grade.  After all, Johnny Bench was once cut from his high school team.  Surely, I thought, the coach will see my abilities and add me to the team the next year.

Surely.

I wish this story had a happy ending.  I tried out four years in a row and I got cut four years in a row.  After being cut in the spring of 1978, I finally gave up baseball as a career and took up girls as a hobby, and here’s another way that my life turned in the summer of 1978.

I have often wondered how my life would have been different if I hadn’t been picked off of first base and if I’d caught that pop fly between third and home in that scrimmage game in 7^th grade.  I really think that I would have made that team.  If I'd played in 7^th, I would have played in 8^th grade too.  If I had the extra experience in middle school and all the extra practice, I could very well have made the high school team.  Who knows where it would have gone from there?  Cooperstown?  Well, a guy can dream, can’t he?

Anyway, I went on to have a pretty doggone good life without baseball.  I continued to follow the Reds until the strike of 1994, and then I gave up on baseball altogether.  The little boy who could name the whole roster has grown into a man who can’t even name a single player today.  That’s sort of sad, I think.

However, I replaced my idol of baseball with more important things.  I focused on growing in my faith in God as a teenager, and ultimately that led me to meet the woman who would become my wife and the mother of my children.  While things have not been always perfect and I’ve made some mistakes along the way, I’ve really lived a pretty wonderful life over all.

All’s well that ends well.

Still, there are days when I have fleeting thoughts of how nice it would have been if I could have experienced that dream of having a baseball card with my face on it.

A Muncie Boyhood-The Trudging Turtle

When I was a tiny little guy, I had a pet turtle.  Its whole world consisted of a little island of aquarium rocks in the bottom of a fishbowl.  I can’t remember his name…I don’t even know if “he” was a boy or girl.  I just remember that my sister killed him.

About once a week, one of my supervising adults would clean my turtle’s bowl, and that entailed filling it with water and scooping the rocks out for cleaning.  Meanwhile the turtle would swim…swim…and swim.  As it turned out, my sister was the responsible supervising adult to whom the bowl cleaning fell on one fateful day.  So, she filled the bowl with water, scooped out the rocks, and left my little reptilian friend to swim.  Then promptly forgot him.  He swam…he swam…he swam,…and he swam.

He eventually wore himself out with all that swimming around that glass bowl and drowned.

I buried him in my little animal graveyard out behind my dad’s garage.  If an archaeologist dug up and sifted through the soil behind that garage, he or she would find any number of animal bones:  the turtle, Peppy my parakeet, Fonzie my hamster, Sugar my dog, and any number of dead birds I found around the yard.  I even sometimes erected little markers, all of which are long gone now, of course.

I think I always sort of resented my sister for killing my turtle, but that didn’t stop me as a teenager from being excited when her son came home from a few days at some guys house in the country with a large wild box turtle.  It was about six inches long and very docile.  He found it near the White River while he and his mom were staying with this guy for a few days, so he picked it up and took it home as a pet.

My sister had met a man after her house burned…a man she ended up marrying…and a man who turned out to be abusive.  Despite that, she married him more than once and allowed him to live with her even when they weren’t married.  Theirs was a troublesome relationship and he was often just plain mean, both to my sister and to my nephew.  It was during one of their break-ups that my sister took up with this other guy who had the house in the country.  It didn’t last long, but it gave me the following turtle story.

David brought it home and for some reason painted it white, probably my sister’s idea.  Regardless of who thought of it, the poor thing got painted.

I think this little guy had a cat’s set of lives.  First, to even get to be six inches long meant he had already lived for several years, maybe decades despite the perils of the White River.  Eastern box turtles in the wild can live to be up to 100 years old and be only about six inches long.  I don’t know for sure what kind of turtle my nephew’s painted turtle was, but I think he had the potential to be quite old.  Secondly, he survived being painted and the return of my bad-attitude brother-in-law.

After the little guy got painted white, he also fell into tooth range of my nephew’s dog, Smokey.  Smokey was a great dog, but he didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to try to eat a box turtle.  So, when he got the chance, he snagged the reptile up and chewed around on him, leaving multiple scratches in the white paint on his shell.  Even so, the turtle was rescued before he could suffer death by dog.

Eventually, as I’ve said, my sister reconciled with “Sicko.”  (That’s the name she ultimately gave her sometimes husband.  When they finally broke up for good, the bitterness he left behind hung around for many years.)  Anyway, when he returned to the house and found the turtle there with the crazy painted and scratched up shell, and when he learned where it came from, he was having none of it.  He took the kidnapped fella out the back door of my sister’s house on south Monroe Street and tossed it all the way across the backyard and into the alley.

Gone.  David’s turtle was gone.  Thrown by a grown man hard enough to fly thirty or forty feet in the air and land hard in the gravel alley.  My nephew was not allowed to retrieve it.  And, it was nowhere near any body of water.  We assumed that he didn’t survive the hard landing.

Okay, so let’s recount the abuse this turtle faced:

1.        Kidnapped by a twelve year old boy from its home

2.       Removed from its normal food sources

3.       Had its shell painted white

4.       Chewed on by a large dog

5.       Thrown forty feet out a back door

6.       Abandoned miles from any natural habitat

When I heard about all this, I was upset.  I had always had a hyperactive sense of empathy even toward animals, and I was especially sensitive toward cruelty.  I couldn’t believe what had happened to this poor helpless turtle.

In thinking back on this series of events, this must have been the spring or early summer of 1978.  It was quite an eventful year for me, and this just adds to the character of that special year.

The reason I say spring or summer was because about a week later, my dad was out mowing the lawn.  We lived about four or five blocks east of my sister.  She lived at about 20^th and Monroe; while we lived at 21^st and Hackley.  Anyway, it was a nice sunny day and my dad was cutting the grass in the side yard near the road.  As he was mowing along, he happened to glance over at the pavement on 21^st Street and he spied our little turtle friend just trudging along, headed east…like he knew where he was going.

My dad must have heard the story of the plight of this little guy because he stopped his chore long enough to pick the turtle up out of the road and put him in our yard.  When I got home, he asked me about David’s turtle. 

“Did you say they painted it?” he asked. 

“Yeah, they painted it white,” I answered.

"Well, you won't believe this," he continued, "but..." 

Then, he told me the story…I went out and looked…and sure enough…it was David’s painted turtle all right.  Safe and sound.  In my backyard.  He was right.  I couldn’t believe it!

But, what to do with it?

I kept it around for a couple of days.  I needed to think about what to do.  Could I keep it?  Maybe.  I considered it.  It couldn't go back to David.  What else could I do?  That’s when my empathy kicked in.  If I were the turtle, what would I want me to do? 

I figured he’d want to go home.  I figured that was where he was headed as he meandered down 21^st Street.  So, I decided to fulfill that desire.  I would return him to the White River.

I put him in a box, loaded him up in my dad’s ’68 Chevy Nova, and he and I took a drive.  We went out Burlington Drive to Inlow Springs Road.  I found a pull off along the river and parked the car.  I then carried my little friend to the water’s edge and let him go.

It was an odd parting really.  You’d think that the turtle would simply swim off into the water and be gone, but that’s not exactly how it happened.  He did scuttle right into the water, but instead of simply diving into the depths, never to be seen again, he came back up and looked at me.

He surfaced and looked right at me.  Then, he went down again for a few seconds before returning once more to the surface to look at me.  He did that three or four times before he finally swam away.  It was almost as if he appreciated what I had done for him and he was saying “thank you.”

I want to believe that anyway.

Now, here’s a thought for you:  Box turtles can live to be 100 years old.  This story occurred in 1978.  That was, as of this writing, only 35 years ago.  There is a reasonable chance that my little friend may still be swimming around the White River out east of Muncie.  So, if you happen to come across an old box turtle with what seems to be the residue of old white paint on his shell…first, leave him be…second, tell him hello for me.

The Journey Back

"Oh, how far I have fallen!"

That's what I told my wife a few minutes ago when I returned from a one-mile bike ride.  Yes.  That is not a typo.  I meant to say:  "One-Mile."

You see, as I sit here, my legs feel a little like limp spaghetti.  I got a bit winded.  I even got a touch sweaty in the 60-degree air.  I just rode to the end of the road and back!  All I can think now is WOW!

Let's scroll back four years.  It was mid-September 2009.  I'd been training all summer, and I'd successfully completed a 108-mile single day ride.  I was in one of the best conditions of my life.  I was feeling great!

Then, I tore my right achilles tendon.

Folks, that injury takes a long time to heal...period.  After surgery, and weeks in a cast and on crutches, I had lost ALL strength in that leg.  It took months and months to gain any semblance of it back.  Then, the left achilles tendon started acting up.  It never tore, but it got very sore and tight which made me very afraid to put much pressure on it.  Weakness and fear led to inactivity.  Inactivity led to gained weight.  Gained weight and inactivity has led to additional weakness.  I've gotten to the point that I just don't feel good physically in almost any respect. 

It is a terrible spiral.

Finally, this last fall, I decided to break the cycle.  I saw a surgeon (Dr. Wendy Winkelbach) at the Southside Foot Clinic in Greenwood, Indiana, and I asked her if there was something we could do BEFORE my left achilles tore to fix the problem.  After some discussions and an MRI, she said that she could in fact take some preemptive measures to loosen up the tendon by lengthening it.  I had that procedure at the end of December, and now I'm ready to begin the journey back to fitness and health.  I am ready to once again become a cyclist.

Today, I picked a new bike at BGI-Indy.  A new Trek flatbar bike that I plan to use in my climb back to health.  It is my short-ride bike, and will be my primary bike until I can get my distance back up to ten miles or more.  And, my goal is to build myself back up to the point that I could attempt a 50-miler by September of this coming fall.

Each journey begins with a single step.  Or, in my case a one-mile bike ride.  I've got to start slow and cautiously; being careful and thoughtful in the process.  I'm the tortoise, but I plan to use this summer to morph back into the hare. 

And the journey begins.

A Muncie Boyhood-Procrastination and the Term Paper

I’ve grown to the point in my life where I take the process of writing something sort of for granted.  Further, the actual act of typing is now second nature.  That wasn’t always the case…especially during my senior year at Muncie Southside High School.

As a senior in the graduating class of 1980 who was taking some college-prep classes, I signed up for a Term Paper Writing class.  Ruth Hillman’s class was designed to teach us how to properly research, prepare, and write a term paper once we were actually in college.  Instead, it just scared the living…uh…stuff out of me.

Overall, the process wasn’t all that bad except for two significant problems that became very apparent over the course of time.  The first is a problem I’ve struggled with all my life:  procrastination.  In high school, I would always put off homework assignments to the last possible moment, and then I’d cram it like crazy and get it done in time to turn it in.  Overall, it worked for me.  I was a solid “B” student.  But, sometimes it was a really tight situation and I barely got things done.  That was never more true than the deadline for the turning in of my final draft of my term paper.

It was only ten pages.  These days, I could knock out ten pages without too much sweat.  The problem back then was that those ten pages needed to be typed; a concept that I had not yet even remotely learned how to do.

My family didn’t even own a typewriter.  (Some of you are wondering what that even is…aren’t you?)

So, in light of the fact that I didn’t know how to type and we didn’t own a typewriter, I obviously planned way ahead, asked around for someone who could type, and gave them plenty of time to do the job for me…for pay. 

Right?

Wrong.

Instead, my two issues converged.  I couldn’t type…and I procrastinated.  So, the DAY BEFORE the paper was due, I went in search of a typewriter to borrow.  I figured I could “hunt and peck” my way through.  I had no idea how complicated it could be to add footnotes and bibliographies on top of the normal writing/typing process.  My ignorance was nearly my undoing, and I had to do well on that final draft to end up with a good grade.  A good grade in this class was pretty important.  Way too much was riding on this thing.  I had to find a way!

Enter the hero of my senior year term paper class project:  Delores Huffman.

She was the secretary at the Fairlawn Church of Christ, which at the time was located at the corner of 13^th and Monroe streets in Muncie.  I was a member there and an active part of their youth group.  After school at about 3pm, I made my way to the church office.  My hope was that she would let me use the office typewriter to do my project.  Keep in mind, I had no idea how to use a typewriter or any of the tools (carbon paper, correction fluid, etc.) that went along with it.

She said, “No, but I’ll type it for you.”

“Are you sure,” I asked.  “Really?”

“Sure,” she answered.  “I’ll help you out.”

So, she typed…and typed…and typed...and typed.  I had to explain the detailed formatting along the way…and that was coming from someone who didn’t really understand formatting yet.  Spacing.  Footnotes. Indentations.  I think we got done (she was typing, I was keeping her company) sometime between 10pm and 11pm that night.  I could not believe what an ordeal it was, and I was soooooo happy she had agreed to help me out, because if it took her that long, and she knew how to type, then it would have taken me all night…literally...and I still would have failed.

The next day, I walked proudly into Mrs. Hillman’s Term Paper class and handed in my 10-page paper on “The Life of Jesus and the Way His Disciples Should Live.” -- an odd title and subject for an 18 year old boy in a public high school.  And, thanks to Delores' help, I got an "A."  At least that's how I remember it.  (I should dig that thing out again and read it.  I’m pretty sure I found it in some of my mom’s stuff and still have it around somewhere.)

The interesting thing that I missed at the time, and just in the writing of this story have realized was that I may have written a lame paper on how a disciple of Jesus should live, but Delores actually showed me.  I came to her with a desperate situation and no real hope of successfully completing that project, and she cheerfully sacrificed whatever else she was planning to do in order to stay in her office way past her time to go home so she could save my skin.  She could have just said no and went home.  Or, she could have given me the chair and left me to my own devices with that crazy contraption of mechanical letters.  But, she didn’t.  Instead, she stayed, and she typed.  That was a better testament to how a disciple of Jesus should live than any silly paper I could have written.

Anyway, you might think that after that experience I would have entered college confident of my ability to write a term paper, and committed to never procrastinate again.  You would be wrong.

In the fall of 1980, I entered Williamstown Bible College.  I spent two years there and exited with an Associate Degree.  And….I never wrote one single term paper.  Oh, they were assigned.  Nearly every class had one due.  I just never completed, nor attempted to complete one single paper.  That high school experience actually caused me to be so intimidated by the process that I skirted the whole issue.  Rather, I figured out that I could still pass all of those classes without writing the paper if I aced everything else.  So, that’s what I did.  I got top marks in every assignment leading up to the final paper, then skipped it.  I ended up a “C” student, but I passed every class without the paper.

Oh, and I promise you that I’m going to deal with that procrastination problem.  Tomorrow.

A Muncie Boyhood-Curiosity, the Candle and the Curtains

One of my favorite things to do in my formative years in Muncie was to burn the trash.  “What?”  You may ask.  “You didn’t wrap everything up in fancy Glad Bags and put them in fancy plastic garbage bins so that the high tech dump trucks can just pick them up and dump them?”

Nope.

My dad had an elaborate garbage and trash system.  There were three containers in our kitchen: 

1.        A fully-opened paper ½ gallon milk carton for slimy, greasy, wet garbage.  This sat on the counter to the left of the kitchen sink, and you just scraped stuff into it as you cleaned off your plate.  We didn’t have a garbage disposal, so anything that today would go into that contraption would in those days go into the carton.  The thing caught everything from egg shells to bacon grease.  When the carton was full, the flaps would be folded back to a closed position and it was placed in the second container.

2.       A paper grocery sack that sat on the floor of the kitchen under the window in front of the refrigerator was the second level of the system.  This container caught all of the non-slimy, non-greasy trash that could not be burned, things like metal cans or glass containers that couldn’t be redeemed for money.  When the sack was near full, it got rolled closed and carried out to the steel garbage cans in the garage.  They were eventually put out on trash day beside the alley and a big truck with a couple of guys hanging off the rear would come by and empty them out.  Glad style bags existed back then, but my dad was too frugal to let mom buy them.  She would come home with multiple paper sacks from Ross Grocery or Wise Supermarket anyway, so she would just save them for this secondary duty.

3.     We had a kitchen trash basket that was positioned just beside the grocery sack.  Into this bin was placed anything that could burn, but primarily paper.

In my neighborhood, most folks had a place where they burned trashed.  It was common practice.  City ordinances forbid such things today, but back then….well,….it’s just what was done.  Cecil French had the best one in the neighborhood.  It was built up with concrete blocks, had a system for air intake, and the ash could be shoveled out when need be.  My dad, on the other hand, had the simplest.  It was an old oil drum with the top removed and some holes cut in the sides.

Our trash-burner drum was located on a tiny little strip of ground between our driveway and the alley that ran behind our house.  I would drag the kitchen container out there about once a week with a few matches or maybe someone’s cigarette lighter and burn the trash.  No big deal and not all that dangerous….unless….

Unless I decided to give the fire a little boost with the gasoline that my dad kept for the mower just inside the garage.  I’ve got to tell you, sometimes I think it is a wonder I survived my childhood.

I don’t think you could call me a pyromaniac.  I’ve never burned down a building or anything more substantial than trash or some brush.  My cousin Greg used to build these elaborate “houses” out of boxes and cardboard just so he could burn them.  I never got into that.  But, fire did sort of intrigue me.  Call it science.  Call it curiosity.  Call it stupidity.

I enjoyed small experiments.

I liked to augment the trash fire with different materials….rubber (makes noxious black smoke) or plastic (makes noxious, but colorful smoke).  I liked to see if I could get the fire going again when it was almost out.  Stuff like that.

The experiment that scared me the most though, didn’t involve the trash barrel.  Nope.  In this case, it was a simple candle.

My mom had some little candles in glass bowls.  The openings at the top curled in so that the bowl was wider than the opening.  The wick was about halfway down the bowl.  You know what I’m talking about, right?  Anyway, I had one of those in my bedroom, and I used to “mess” with it.  Light it.  Blow it out.  Light it.  Suffocate it.  Relight it.  See if I could suffocate it until it was almost out, but then give it the air back again just in time to revive it.  The trouble wasn’t this game.  The trouble was the tool I was using to suffocate the candle.

I was using my bedroom curtains.

You are saying something else right now.  You are saying:  “Was he nuts?”

You are right to ask that question.  I ask myself that every time I think about this story.  I think I'll plead temporary insanity.

Anyway, what I would do was light the candle, and then lay the curtain over the top of the candle bowl and watch the flame die down inside until it was just about gone, and then pull the curtain back to see the flame jump back to life.  I did this several times with no incidents….until one time I noticed that as the curtain lay over the bowl, its white color was turning black and a little tiny bit of smoke was rising from the material.

“Crap!” I said in a hushed scream!  And, I pulled the curtain free!

I was lucky.  It didn’t actually catch fire.  But, I think I was VERY close to catching my folks’ house on fire.   Another couple of seconds and this story would have had a very different ending.  That close call put an end to my fire games and experiments.  As I’ve said before in this series, it was one more thing that I never did again.

Curiosity almost burned down my parents' house.  I don't play with fire anymore, but if there is anything that causes me more grief in my life than anything else, it is my curiosity.  I have an intense amount of it, and it is a blessing in some ways, and a definite curse in others.