Creativity

I recently read a book by Sir Kenneth Robinson about creativity and education reform.  Sir Ken posits that the education system currently in place in the U.S. was developed to handle the needs of an industrial age and it is ill suited to the demands of the information age.  He feels that the creativity needed to succeed in a changing world is not being nurtured in the current education system and is actually accomplishing just the opposite of what is needed.

Robinson points out that research shows that kids entering the school system score very high on tests that measure creativity.  In fact almost all kids entering school score high on the creativity scale.  However, studies show a constant decline in scores for the kids as they progress through the system.  By the time kids get to the end of their high school education about 1% score high on creativity tests.

As I read this stuff I thought back on my own high school experience and concluded that creativity was not a part of the picture.  The elements needed for an industrial society were there.  We learned to be on time, who the boss was and how to work with groups of people.  These were valuable lessons. However, inspiring a desire to learn, finding one’s passion or developing one’s creativity was not part of the equation.

Thinking back on those days, I have come to the conclusion that creativity is a very difficult thing to completely crush.  When it isn’t formally encouraged or nourished, it finds ways, like the weeds in the cracks of your driveway, to force it’s way to the surface.  When you leave it in the hands of a bunch of budding juvenile delinquents, the results won’t be predictable and not as desirable as the shepherds of our education might have hoped for if they thought about it at all.  I will leave it to you, the reader, to determine what you think of the following examples but I think you will have to admit that creativity was playing its part.

I spent my freshman year in an all boys’ Catholic high school.  Teaching boys at this age must be a challenge for any teacher.  We were a collection of smart-ass, know-it-alls.  This being a Catholic high school, religion class was mandatory.  Unfortunately, our teacher for the 9^th grade class was perhaps the least suited and most incompetent teacher I would encounter in any phase of my education.  Added to his laundry list of inadequacies was the fact that he was rather effeminate and that was like throwing chum to the sharks. The result was total chaos.

We called the priest “The Black Adam” because his first name was Adam and there was already a priest there named Adam who liked to, occasionally give lectures while standing on a prone student and had a sawed off pool cue he named “the Holy Spirit” in his class room to encourage discipline.  The “Black” part of the name came from the fact that he chose to wear a black cassock every day.

The “Black Adam” was totally incapable of controlling the class.  Just about every day a near riot would break out.  One day a fellow scholar stashed about a half dozen Playboy magazine foldouts between the pages of another student’s religion book.   When the “Black Adam” entered the classroom, a couple of students accused the victim of looking at dirty pictures before class began.  Of course, the allegation was denied and the priest tried to regain control.  Then a cry went up around the room of “ Father, Timothy has a boner”.  This of course horrified the priest and Timothy equally and they both began turning a deep shade of crimson.  Then, on queue, someone grabbed Timothy’s religion book, discovered the playmates and began distributing the pictures around the room.  Timothy being a red head with a million freckles turned a shade of red unseen before by the human eye and the “Black Adam,” now absolutely in a panic, went scurrying around the classroom trying to collect the artwork.  The huge uproar drew the attention of other classrooms and a dour old priest from down the hall chose to enter our classroom just as the “Black Adam” was collecting the foldouts.  These type of disruptions happened on a near daily basis.

My example of creativity coming out of this class happened when the class was scheduled to spend two weeks studying human sexuality.  The “Black Adam” began this section of our religious training, and it was very clear he was terrified of both the subject and how his students might react.  The priest, following his outline, would at some point ask the class if they had any questions and here is where extraordinary creativity went on display.

For example, a student might rise (and I use this merely as a cleaned up example of what would happen) and ask:  “Father, if a woman had sex with a horse and her brother and became pregnant would she be morally required to tell the horse about the pregnancy and would this be a mortal sin?”  The priest would start turning red about a third of the way through the question and try to give an answer, usually unsuccessfully, that would discourage follow up questions.  Then another student would stand up and ask a question that made the one before seem like a third grade catechism question.

I have to admit, I was only an observer to this process but I do remember marveling at how my classmates could out do each other as they spun their extremely complex, obscene and depraved questions.  I think the “Black Adam” let it go on because at least while this weird question and answer period was happening, there was quiet as the class learned about the type of debauchery even their own twisted little minds hadn’t dreamt of yet.  I do challenge anyone to dispute the creativity.

The next year I ended my Catholic education and entered a public high school as a sophomore.  My next example of creativity was in my history class, although, as you might imagine, it had nothing to do with history.  I can honestly say that I never had a decent history class during my four years of high school.  It was a steady diet of events, dates and names without any attempt to show what was really happening and why it might have some relevancy to our lives.   The funny thing is that I liked history and had read history since I was a little kid.  

I actually had a history teacher pull me into his class room and show me a piece of paper that he said had been left behind after a secret meeting of the top communists in the country.  I guess the janitor must have found it.  Anyway it was the usual claptrap about undermining American youth by encouraging them to wear tight pants, let their hair get long and listen to rock and roll.  I laughed and told the teacher that any movement, so inept as to leave behind their secret plan to corrupt the youth of America, were the type of buffoons we needn’t worry about.

My history teacher for my sophomore year gave the “Black Adam” a run for his money when it came to incompetence.  I don’t know if he even found history interesting let alone knew anything about it.  He was truly a strange little man.  He would stop talking, as if a thought had just hit him, and walk back to his desk and pull a bunch of onions out of the bottom drawer and ask if anyone would like to buy onions.  His class often devolved into madness and this time we had girls who could participate.  One day he got in a fight with a young woman who, knowing how crazy possessive he was of everything in his class room, grabbed his waste basket and ran into the woman’s bathroom where he was powerless to enter.  He ran back down the hall to our classroom and began begging all of the girls to go in the bathroom and retrieve his wastebasket.  After getting no takers he spent about 20 minutes pleading and begging the young woman cooling her heels in the bathroom to return his wastebasket.  The rest of the class took a break or chose to call it a day and left class for good.  He finally negotiated the return of his wastebasket and returned to class where he spent the last ten minutes telling everyone that there was something wrong with the girl who had taken his wastebasket hostage.

This class was a complete and total waste of everyone’s time.  Nothing of value was being communicated and the only way to stay awake was to participate in the madness.  Many a student raised his hand and asked to be excused to relieve himself.  After a few days when half the class was spending considerable time in the restroom, “Old Porcupine,” a nickname given to him by the hero of this story, cracked down and refused to let anyone leave his class for nature calls.  One student came up with a brilliant plan to get around this prohibition.

At lunchtime Mark bought a bag of M&Ms and separated out the red ones and placed them in a small container.  Prior to class he consulted with a group of his co-conspirators and when the class became unbearable he put his plan in action.  Just as “Old Porcupine” went off on one of his boring tangents having nothing remotely to do with history, Mark threw himself on the floor and began thrashing around like he was in the throws of a grand mal seizure.  Desks flew as people scrambled to get out of the way.  “Old Porcupine” completely lost it and was shouting nonsense at the top of his lungs.  Then the co-conspirators went into action and jumped on the thrashing victim. Shouting we had his medicine, we proceeded to force a red M&M down his throat.  Mark immediately became calm and asked “Old Porcupine” if he could go to the restroom to regain his composure.  “Old Porcupine” who was really anxious to get Mark out of his classroom where he might break something, granted the request in a heartbeat.  For the rest of the year all Mark had to do was raise his hand and ask to be excused and his request was granted.  We didn’t see a lot of Mark in the class the rest of the year.  He didn’t miss anything of value.  Another creative solution to a problem conceived and executed successfully.

Then there was the Reed Street Gang.  A group of about 10 sophomores and juniors would get together behind the school for lunch weather permitting.  Reed Street ran right behind the school and we started calling the gathering the Reed Street Gang.  I was a quasi member of this group as I walked home for lunch every day.  I would gobble my lunch and hurry back just about the time that everyone else was finishing their lunch.  That left us about 25 minutes to be creative.

I sometimes missed some of the planning sessions but usually was there for the execution of whatever action that might have been decided upon.  As you might imagine, the Reed Street Gang was not the faculty or administration’s favorite student organization.  In fact things got a little testy after a group activity left dozens of live fish flopping on the rather busy street in front of the school.

My favorite Reed Street project was the time we decided to provide free safety checks for motorists who happened to be driving down Reed Street during the lunch hour. 

It was explained to the driver that we were participating in a school sponsored automobile safety check program in order to promote safe driving.  Most drivers were willing to take a few minutes to help civic-minded students conduct their socially beneficial safety checks and would pull over.

In accordance with the planning that had occurred the day before we were equipped with a clipboard, tire gauge, a spray bottle and a red rag like you used to see gas station attendants carry.  One student would man the clipboard and call out the different elements of the safety check.  First we would have the person turn their left blinker on and if it worked we would shout “left blinker check” and the person with the clipboard would check it off.  We would go through the blinkers, headlights, brake lights and taillights shouting out the results of our various checks.  Then someone would spray the windshield with water and clean it off with the red rag.

After all the preliminary checks were completed we would inform the driver that there was one more check that needed to be conducted to determine if their shock absorbers were functioning properly.  At that point we would position ourselves at the four corners and the middle of the trunk and hood and proceed to test the shock absorbers.  The object of this test was to bounce the car wildly up and down.  This was an age when no one wore seatbelts and the occupants of the cars would bounce around like exploding popcorn.  We would stop the shock absorber test after about ten seconds, walk over to the discombobulated driver and announce they had passed the test, place a sticker on their windshield and wish them a good day and safe travels.  Only when they got home and took a look at the sticker did they see it said “three legged fryer” or “boneless skinless breast.”

We never received a single complaint about the safety checks.  I don’t know if people were embarrassed that they had been had or if they figured that we really hadn’t done anything malicious, so they were going to let it ride.

And so ends my ode to creativity.   Our contributions to sexual perversity and animal husbandry, epilepsy awareness and motor vehicle safety reflect what students can do when given the opportunity.  If you wish to hear Sir Kenneth Robison’s somewhat more thoughtful approach to the issues of creativity and education reform check out this video.  It is informative and darn funny.

Uncle Don

I was talking with my niece on the telephone the other day and she told me she had read my latest post and enjoyed reading something about her uncle Don.  She told me that she really didn’t know much of anything about him as the family tended to say only he was a great guy and that he had died young.  As I thought about what she was saying, I could understand why she had heard so little about Don. 

Don died of cancer at age 22.  My wife’s family is not one that sits around and does a lot of reminiscing.  Losing a child has to be unimaginably hard and I doubt I would want to stir up all the feelings, emotions and pain that accompany such a loss.

So I told my niece I would try to recount some of my memories of her uncle and hopefully provide a glimpse of his personality and character for her and the other nieces and nephews who never had the chance to know him.

I first became aware of Don when I was in eighth grade playing quarterback for the Annunciation Bulldogs and he was playing defensive end for Saint Agnes.  Every time I was setting up to pass, this big, very fast, blond kid was in my face.  All day long I asked my linemen to try to get in this guy’s way and all day long they couldn’t do it.  We ended up tying that game but even though I didn’t know his name I would remember him.

The next time I ran into him was that summer when we both were running full tilt through a cemetery at about 1:00am.  How we got there takes a little back-story.

One of the summer activities some of the youth of Green Bay participated in was to pitch a tent in someone’s backyard and sleep out.  The sleeping out part quickly lost its thrill but the part where we waited for the lights to go out and then snuck out for a night of wandering the town never got dull.

On this particular night, a couple of friends and I waited for the house to go dark and then headed out to the Valley Outdoor Theatre to take in a movie.  We sat out by the back fence, turned up a few of the speakers in open parking spots and sat back to watch a movie or two.  We noticed another group of three or four kids sitting about 30 yards away apparently enjoying a similar night out.

Once in a while, the Green Bay Police got bored and would come swooping along the back fence and flush us out like a flock of quail.  That night they surprised us with their spot lights and we took off running at a speed you can achieve only with a cop on your tail.

We ran across Military Avenue and into Fort Howard Cemetery.  As we entered the cemetery we headed in different directions and I found myself trailing behind a big kid.  The two of us distanced ourselves from the pack and when we thought the cops had given up we stopped and caught our breath.  We started to walk back to find our friends and realized we recognized each other from the football game we had played a few months before.  We hit it off right away and by the time Don headed back to his neighborhood, I felt I had made a new friend.

The following year I went off to the Catholic high school and Don went to the public school.  We hung out together some during that year and discovered a mutual love for soul music.  He had come to soul through his older brothers and I had spent many an hour searching the cutout bins of H.G. Prange and Shopko to find Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Irma Thomas and Sam and Dave records.  We bonded over this music as most of our friends were listening to music that was being played on the radio and we were listening to music coming out of Muscle Shoals, Alabama and Detroit.  I would go to his house and listen to music up in his room until his father would come home and quietly, but authoritatively tell us to turn it down.

The next year my Catholic education finally came to an end and I started my sophomore year at Green Bay West.  Don was a popular kid without being the type that turns your stomach.  In other words, he was popular with the kids first and the faculty and coaches second.  He was intelligent, good looking, charming and possessed a good sense of humor.  He also had a bit of the devil in him that made it fun to hang with him.  The first time I drove a car was when he pulled up next to me on a Green Bay street and asked me if I wanted to drive.  We were both 15 at the time and I jumped at the chance.  Don had decided to take one of the family cars we called the “swamp wagon” (his older brother had reputedly driven it into a swamp and it had retained a bit of the smell) for a ride and had come looking for me for company.

Don loved to climb things.  I watched him climb railroad bridges, flagpoles, building exteriors and numerous trees.  One time I walked outside into the front yard of Fidler’s, a famous Green Bay beer bar, looking for Don.  After a period of time, I spotted him about 70 yards away sitting like the Buddha in the very top branches of a tall tree.  I could see the grin on his face as he, apparently, was enjoying the view.

That brings us to his smile.  He had the best shit-eating grin I have ever seen.  It would light up his face.  To his friends it radiated amusement and seemed to ask “what crazy thing is going to happen next.” It was a nice mix of bemusement and expectation.  Authority figures sometimes saw it differently.  I know of at least two incidents when he was detained because of his smile.  I witnessed it happen at a goofy gathering of teenagers that thoroughly spooked the Green Bay police.  Don was just standing there taking in the scene when a cop asked him what he was grinning at.  He was then ushered into the paddy wagon and given a free ride downtown.

The smile in early development

Don had, what I like to call, a great sense of silliness.  I think that is one of the things he appreciated in me as a friend.  Our junior year we had a German class together.  Our teacher was a mild mannered nebbish who never was able to get across to his students the value of learning another language and the ancillary benefits that go with learning about another culture.  Maybe, given his students, that was an impossible task, but nonetheless we were in the class to fill a college entrance requirement and were bored beyond tears.

Don had whiled away a couple of class periods dividing the class into two competing countries.  The back third of the class was the country of Verkiam and the rest of the class were residents of Weinerville.  He drew detailed, funny maps of Verkiam and Weinerville.  At lunch one day he informed the residents of Verkiam that we were going to invade Weinerville later that day and that we were to prepare by making as many paper airplanes as we possibly could before class.

In class upon Don’s signal, the residents of Verkiam all leapt to their feet and began an aerial bombardment of Weinerville.  Our teacher stumbled out into the hallway to swallow a nitro glycerin pill and the onslaught continued until we had fired all of our paper airplanes.  For those of us who knew any German history, the irony of the invasion was sweet.  The leader of this invasion was the guy we elected our student class president.

In our sophomore year Don made the varsity football team.  He was the only sophomore on the team and by the end of the season he was getting playing time.  This was a team that went undefeated and sent four starters to Nebraska where they played key roles in winning a national championship in the early seventies.

Don was a big, fast, running back who combined power and speed.  He quickly became the top back in the conference and was recruited by most of the football powers in the country.  He once showed me a box he kept in the bottom of his locker at school that was filled with letters from universities asking him if he would like to join their football team.  He ultimately chose to play for Murray Warmath and the University of Minnesota.

Don was a great athlete, but he also was an intelligent young man who was not immune to the upheaval and turmoil of those times.  He was very much aware of the civil rights movement and the anti war movement that was growing into a youth movement.  He told me that on his visit to Notre Dame the football coach who was showing him around campus pointed to a hill and told Don he wouldn’t have to worry about “hippies” as there was only a handful that gathered at the top of the hill.  Don’s reaction was that he wished he could escape the football coach and go talk to the people on the hill.

As a freshman at Minnesota, when peace had become a universal desire of the nation’s young people, he was disturbed by the violence of big time football and the behavior of some of his teammates.  He told me of going to parties with other football players where loaded guns were being passed around and about certain teammates he considered dangerous, and not just on the football field.   Both he and his roommate, a quarterback from Colorado, began to sour on the experience.  After his freshman year he left Minnesota.

The next semester he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay and it wasn’t long thereafter he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.  I remember the night he told me of the diagnosis.  It just didn’t seem possible.  Here was a guy that radiated health and strength.  When you are 21 years old, you feel pretty indestructible.  You can understand someone dying in an accident but good health is taken for granted at that age.  It was very hard for me, and I think most of his friends, to grasp what he was experiencing.  Over the next few years, I would wonder if that twitch or ache I was feeling, was something more serious than I might have thought before Don got sick.  Other friends told me they experienced the same thing.

Don had some surgery, radiation and chemotherapy and his cancer went into remission.  It was during this time that he bought a Volkswagen bug and he, I and a friend decided to go to Mexico.  Gary and I looked at the trip as the beginning of an adventure.  We packed up our meager possessions and planned to move to San Francisco at the end of our trip.  Don’s perspective was naturally different.  He was fully aware that this could be his only opportunity to hit the road and he was determined to get everything he could out of the trip.  Our different perspectives sometimes lead to minor conflicts but by and large we all got along well on the trip.

I have often thought that something dark was following us on that trip.  Don’t get me wrong, we had a great time and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.   But something always seemed to be out there as we almost slid off a mountain in Arkansas, lost our steering in the mountains of Big Bend National Park, and finally when we were smashed into by a bus on a Mexican highway out side of the city of Irapuato. 

Don hiking in Big Bend National Park

We roamed around Mexico until our money was nearly gone and then headed up the coast of California.  Gary and I started to look for an apartment and after about a week Don left to go back to Wisconsin to see his doctor and have further tests.  A couple of weeks after he had returned to Green Bay we received a letter from Don telling us that the cancer had spread throughout his body and he was going to have to endure another round of treatment.  I knew then that the chances of my friend dying were much greater than his survival.  I still remember reading his letter and trying to come to grips with the reality.  He died several months later.

As I think of your uncle, I think of an infectious personality, a keen intelligence and so much potential lost.  He really had a combination of qualities that makes me wonder how he would have put his talents to work in this world.  It was a stark lesson that life is not often fair and we need to cherish it while we can. It’s too bad you never got to meet him.  You would have liked him a lot.

My First Gay Experience

When I grew up in Green Bay in the 50’s and 60’s there were no gay people in town.  Now, anyone with half a brain knows that is an absurd statement.  But is it?

Depending on whose statistics you choose to believe, a city with the population of 60 thousand souls will contain anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand gay people.  Yet, I can honestly say I never met an openly gay person during my first 19 years in Green Bay.  There were no parades, no gay characters on television or the movies, or any gay gathering places in town known to the general populace.

As a result, there were anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand people in town walking around with a secret, that if revealed, would have exposed them to possible physical violence, prosecution, loss of their livelihoods, ridicule, and the destruction of family relationships.  So it isn’t surprising that all of these citizens were forced to conceal their true selves and remain invisible in the communities they helped to build.

In 1971, I along with two friends decided to abandon the northern winter and head south to Mexico.  Our plan was to travel to Mexico in a 1963 Volkswagen bug, spend as much time in Mexico as our money allowed and then drive up the coast of California where Gary and I would relocate to San Francisco.  Don, who had been recently diagnosed with cancer and was in remission, obtained his doctor’s blessing to make the trip.

We took off on a cold Wisconsin morning and drove to Des Moines where we stopped because of dire weather predictions of an impending ice storm.  In order to save money for Mexico we sought out the cheapest accommodations we could find and that lead us to the Iowa Inn.  It was an old hotel that had seen better days and all I really remember about it was that someone kept playing a song called “Popcorn” over and over for a few hours and a resident who knocked on our door and asked if we would like to see his light bulb collection.  Never one to turn down an intriguing invitation, I went with him to a closet down the hall and sure enough, he had a room full of light bulbs.

The next day was cold and sunny.  We went out to the car and found it encased in about a quarter inch of ice.  We used a small cook stove I was packing to melt the ice in the door locks and then spent a considerable amount of time de-icing the windows before hitting the road again.

Before long we crossed over into Arkansas and entered the foothills of the Ozark Mountains.  Around 3:00pm it began to rain and as our elevation increased, the temperature began to drop.  Within an hour, the rain turned to a combination of sleet and ice.

As road conditions got worse, we were reluctant to stop because our first day on the road had been cut short and we wanted to get to the Mexican border and warm weather as soon as possible.  At one point we came to a steep incline and the old Volkswagen couldn’t make it to the top.  Displaying a combination of determination and stupidity, we decided to back down the hill and get a running start to see if we could get over the hill and keep going.  Down the hill we backed, and then when we had backed up far enough to get up a good head of steam, we attacked the hill again.  We all started to celebrate as we crested the hill when our celebration was cut short by what lie in front of us.

As we came over the hill we saw that the road took a fairly sharp turn to the left with a sheer rock mountainside on the left side of the road.  On the right side was a drop where the treetops were about 30 feet below the road.  To make matter worse the road was very icy and the Volkswagen’s breaks were bad.  There was no going back as we began to spin in a series of 360’s.  If I had been given the opportunity to pick a friend to be behind the wheel in this situation, it would have been Don.  He was a great athlete and one of those people who could remain calm in the middle of a shit storm.  After we had made two 360’s we banged into the mountainside and came to rest about 4 feet from the drop off.

We piled out and examined the damage to the car.  Don was uneasy about leaving his car that close to the cliff.  I was ready to walk six miles to the next town in an ice storm.  As we were debating our options two good old boys pulled up in a pickup truck with four wheel drive and chains on its tires.  Don went to talk with them and it was decided that they would attach a chain to the Volkswagen’s front axel and tow it away from the cliff and back on the road.  Gary and I wanted no part of this plan and stood off to the side while Don attached a long chain to the front of his car and jumped into the driver’s seat. To make a long story short, the boys in the truck took off and the Volkswagen, with Don behind the wheel, began to slide sideways.  It slammed into the mountainside and careened back toward the cliff coming to rest about two feet from the cliff.  This experience convinced, even Don, the car was best left where it was until the ice storm stopped.

The good old boys left and we reexamined our options.  We were six miles from Eureka Springs and it was raining ice.  As we looked around we saw a small house down in the valley and decided to seek help there.

 

When we got there we found a woman in her twenties with a couple of kids.  In a remarkable display of trust she invited us into her home and told us her husband was on his way home and when he arrived he would give us a lift back to town.  Before too long, her husband, who turned out to be the editor of the local newspaper, arrived and agreed to take us back to town.  We piled into his four-wheel drive jeep and drove the six miles to town.

Our first stop in town was the editor’s office, where he placed a phone call in an attempt to find someone who could help us out so he could head back home to his family.  After he made contact with a local artist named Larry, we piled back in his jeep and he took us to a coffee house and introduced us to Larry.  The coffee house was full of longhaired young folks and seemed completely out of place in the Ozark Mountains in 1971.  Larry greeted us and assured us he would find a place for us to stay.  He had some errands to run and some people to talk with about our lodging and told us to meet him back at the coffee house at 8:00pm.

Feeling glum after a shortened first day and the uncertainty of our current situation, we sought out a bar to drown our sorrows and plot our next moves.  The bar we found was a classic old time bar that had been designed for drinking and shooting the bull and very little else.

As we walked in the bar, we couldn’t help but notice the clientele.  There were the seed cap guys, hippies, and real back woods types spread out along the bar.  It was such an odd combination of people that we couldn’t help but wonder what planet we had landed on.  After a couple of beers our spirits lifted slightly and we began to see we were lucky to be alive and whatever came next was better than having plunged off a cliff in a Volkswagen bug.

We were definitely feeling better after our third beer when we heard a commotion down at the other end of the bar.  A guy in bib overalls with a magnificent head of curly hair down to the middle of his back and a beard that covered a good portion of his upper chest, had come into the bar, and engaged most of the various denizens in a lively conversation.  The most striking thing about the guy was his incredibly high falsetto voice.  He only stayed a few minutes and when he left we asked the bar tender “who is that?”  He told us his name was Glen Wallace but everyone around Eureka Springs called him the Hairy Fairy.  He apparently had a weekly column in the newspaper entitled “The Hairy Fairy” and from what we could tell, he appeared to be on speaking and joking terms with all sectors of the population of this weird place.

As 8:30 approached we walked back to the coffee house and met up with Larry.  Larry told us he had secured lodging for us but first he wanted to take us on a walking tour of the town.  He grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels and we headed out.  By now the ice had turned to big, beautiful flakes of snow.  The town itself was incredible.  It was on three levels with all kinds of Victorian buildings.  It was like something out of fairy tale, especially with the snow falling and the intermittent slugs off the Jack Daniels bottle.  Larry explained that Eureka Springs had once been famous for its hot springs and had been a place that had, at one time, attracted the rich and famous.  The population of the town had wildly fluctuated over time until the hot springs had dried up.  Now it was a small town with all of these incredible structures nestled into the Ozarks.  Larry said the place’s natural beauty had attracted artists and hippies and that they had somehow come to live in peace and respect with the locals and the hill people who lived in the surrounding countryside.

Larry led us up an incline toward a huge three story Victorian house.  The house sat on a hill and we learned later it was known as “Yeller House” and all you had to do to get a letter there was address it “Yeller House, Eureka Springs, Arkansas.  As we made our way up the incline a second story window opened and an extremely high pitched falsetto voice called our “Larry, is that you?”  Yeller House was where we were going to spend the night.

We entered the house and the Hairy Fairy directed us to a room on the second floor.  We sat there while Larry and our host talked in another room.  While we were waiting we looked around the room and noticed that everything in it looked old but in very good condition.  I can’t speak for Gary or Don but I have to admit I was feeling a bit uneasy.  Gary, who had taken an interest in ballet at the University of Wisconsin, opened up a coffee table book about the career of the famous ballerina Margot Fonteyn.  When Glen joined us he saw that Gary was looking at the book and he was instantly delighted that Gary knew who she was and that he had recently taken a ballet class.

We were pretty exhausted with everything that had happened that day and Glen took us to a big second floor bedroom and left us for the night.

The next day Glen was busy and we sought out the local mechanic because we had decided we needed brakes on a several thousand-mile journey and wanted to replace the master brake cylinder on the Volkswagen.  We also wanted to see about pulling out a couple of the dents the car had suffered as it pin-balled off the mountainside.  We tracked down the town mechanic and he told us he would do the job but it might take him some time to get to it.  We had already observed the pace of this place and really weren’t too anxious to find out what “some time” meant in Eureka Springs time.   The garage owner asked if we could fix the car ourselves.  Don knew how to do most things and he felt he could fix the brakes if he had the right tools.  With that, the mechanic threw us the keys to his business, and told us to lock up when we were done.  The rest of the day, Gary and I handed tools to Don as he fixed the brakes.

That night we sat around Yeller House with Glen.  I have to admit I was still not completely at ease with this very different individual.  But then we began to talk and he turned out to have a great sense of humor, was a great storyteller and such an obviously interesting person that all the unease vanished.  It was like sitting and talking with a guy who looked like Grizzly Adams but sounded like Julia Childs.

He told us he was from Little Rock and had been a student in the high school where the famous integration battles had taken place.  His skill at making the narrative come alive really gave me a sense of what those times were like as opposed to reading a dry account in a newspaper.  He told us about his time as a hairdresser in Memphis and how he had once been summoned to cut Elvis’s hair.  He also told us that he had been a chef at one of Memphis’s first upscale vegetarian restaurants.  As the night went on he asked us about life in Wisconsin and fully endorsed our trip to see what else was out there.  We ended up spending a very nice and very interesting evening getting to know each other.  As we were getting ready to call it night, he told us that he wanted to cook a vegetarian meal for us before we left because he wanted to prove to us that vegetarian meals were not all boring.

The next morning, he asked us if we would like to take a guided hike through the surrounding countryside.  We agreed and shortly thereafter we headed out into the forest.  The temperature had risen into the mid to high thirties and it was a bright sunny day.  The snow remained from a couple of nights before and it was a beautiful place.  We saw a lot of cardinals that day and their red feathers set off against the white snow added a dash of bright color.

As we walked Glen told us about the land we were walking through.  He pointed out the “homes” of the hill people.  These were shelters that had been built with any and everything they had found lying around.  Tar paper, corrugated tin, logs, all tacked together to make a shelter.  Glen explained that “hillbillies” still lived in these hills and that family feuds were not a thing entirely of the past.  A couple of weeks before we had made our appearance in Eureka Springs, a shoot out had occurred in town reminiscent of the Hatfields and McCoys.

I must admit I have struggled with the “hillbillies” label.  I’m not sure, but my guess is it is considered derogatory.   I considered “hillwilliams” but that conjured up images of San Francisco butlers, so I settled on hill people.

Glen led us up a mountain to the base of the Christ of the Ozarks statue.  This is a famous landmark that you used to see on post cards back when people sent postcards.  The story behind the statue was an interesting one.  The statue was much more impressive from a distance.  Once you got up close it looked like someone had placed Christ’s head on a giant milk carton and the spread-out arms looked unnatural.  There was a small wrought iron fence around the statue and hymns were playing on a continuous loop.  There was a gravesite for the man who had erected the statue and his wife.   The wife was buried there and the plan was for her husband to join her when he kicked the bucket.

The man behind the Christ of the Ozarks was Gerald L. K. Smith.  Smith had purchased a mansion on the hillside outside of Eureka Springs and lived there.  He was the owner of the annual Passion Play of the Ozarks that was a very popular stop for tourists in the Bible Belt.  He hired the locals to play roles in the passion play at minimum wage and made a lot of money.  The woman you bought a candy bar from at a corner store might have spent last summer as the Virgin Mary.

Gerald L. K. Smith was an interesting fellow.  He was an early right-wing radio personality who mixed extreme racism and Christianity.  In the thirties he became a mover and shaker in a group called the Silver Shirts which were modeled after the Brown Shirts that were terrorizing Germany at the time.  Apparently his racism was so virulent that he made even run-of-the-mill racists uneasy and he became isolated politically.  He then turned back to religion and made a nice living helping white people find Christ.

Gerald is now buried with his wife at the base of the Christ of the Ozarks statue.  I have a fantasy that his plot is really a barbeque pit and he turns on a spit over an eternal flame reserved for racist Nazi sympathizers.  But that’s just me.

Glen explained that Gerald had plans to cut down much of the forest we had been walking, in order to build replicas of Bethlehem and Jerusalem.  I am happy to report that those plans never came to fruition and that beautiful piece of land survived.

The next evening Glen prepared his vegetarian meal for us.  Now, I know this will come as a shock to many of you, but I am not a foodie.  There are few, if any, meals that I remember unless they were so bizarre or awful as to be unforgettable.  I was a meat and potatoes guy and, in my opinion, a meal with out meat was definitely missing the best part.  When we got back to Yeller House the next evening, the table was set and the house smelled of freshly baked bread.  The table settings were all antique (it turned out that everything in the house was antique) and we sat down not knowing what to expect.  Everyone got their own, individually baked loaf of bread fresh out of the oven and everything was really good.  I don’t have a clue as to what went into the sauces Glen had prepared but I ate all I could stuff myself with and ended up with a new appreciation for the possibilities of vegetables.

That night we told Glen we were going to turn in early because we were going to get up early and hit the road to try and make up for lost time.  He told us he hated good byes and said he would not get up to see us off.  The next day, bright and early, we packed up our stuff and quietly headed down the stairs to leave.  Just as we started down the stairs we heard that falsetto voice call out “I love you”.  We paused on the stairs and we, three straight boys from Green Bay, in unison croaked back, “We love you too.”

They say first impressions are important and I have come to conclude, who ever ‘they’ is, they are right.  The first openly gay man I ever spent any time with turned out to be an interesting, funny, kind man.  As we spent those days together the fact that he was gay and his flamboyant style faded away so completely and we were able to see him as an individual worth knowing and respecting.

As I think of him now, I think of how brave he was to insist on living his life in his own way.  Maybe he was so flamboyant that it would have been impossible for him to live it any other way.  Regardless, I will always remember the first gay individual I actually got to know and be thankful that we got to spend some time with the Hairy Fairy.

Thank God for MEA Weekend

Hello Again Blog Readers,

As it turns out, I'm sort of busy.  And by sort of, I mean of course, that even as I write this I am thinking about the fact that I have 2 packs of baseline subject-verb agreement assessment to grade and also, what am I going to do with 6th hour tomorrow?  But seriously, what am I going to do with my 6th hour tomorrow?  Shoot.  Maybe a short spelling bee with vocabulary words (we're working on the letters of the alphabet and desert vocabulary).  I'll be right back...

Ok, you can't tell, but 15 minutes have passed and I have not decided what to do with 6th hour.  I've got some ideas; they'll probably firm up as I go.  Tomorrow I have an hour and a half before school and two prep hours before then, so I'll be ready, don't you worry.  If you're thinking, jeez, don't you plan farther in advance than a day?  Well, yes, mostly I do.  But like I said before, I'm kinda busy.  Also, I've got 3 of my four classes totally prepared for this 2 day week, so there!

Yes, it's a 2 day week.  Hallelujah!  You know it's a big deal if I'm driven to religious outbursts that come from who-knows-where, but hallelujah sure does feel appropriate right now!  In fact, hallelujah again!  Last weekend Pako and I flew to Kansas City, Missouri for the wedding of a good friend of mine from undergrad, Alison.  It was super fun to be there for her big day (beautiful wedding) and to see all of my other friends from Madison, but dang, I'm STILL tired!  I wouldn't change it, but I shall not be complaining when Wednesday rolls along and I can get up later than usual and won't have to be on at every moment.  I'll be at school grading and planning (to get farther ahead than just one day) on Wednesday, but there's a big bump in my productivity level when there aren't 550 middle-schoolers milling around.  Then Thursday and Friday are mine to do with what I like!  YAY!

What else can I tell you?  'Where to start?' is probably a better question to ask.  I have good kids, again!  I got lucky 2 years a row at Montessori (ok, I know I complained a lot about certain classes, but they were all good kids, even if they became somewhat hellish when all together) and I got lucky again this year.  Yes, some of my kids are what I would deem 'mild stinkers,' but no one that has me in tears by the end of the day.  Let's all take a minute to knock on wood and hope that my luck continues.  Most of my students are Latino, but I also have Somali, Hmong and Oromo students.  Throughout the day, I do get the itch to speak Spanish because I'm hearing it all day, but luckily I have Pako at home to help me with that! 

Tomorrow I have my first round of conferences with parents after school.  I'm not sure what to expect as I only got to sit in on one set during student teaching and it was for high school Spanish class, not middle school ESL.  My class averages are hovering at a C+/B-, which I think is pretty ok, but we'll see what the parents think.  I've heard horror stories (which probably are more due to the fact that we have to stay after school an extra 2.5 hours and then be early by 2 hours the next day than to cranky parents), but I don't really expect anything too bad.  I'll let you know how things go the next time my dad reminds me that this blog sort of belongs to me, too.

For now, that has to be all because I need to think about 6th hour tomorrow.  Also, the Brewers are down 9-5 and I'm going to need to really concentrate on sending them rally vibes! 

Take care all, stay tuned, the grouch will be back at it again some time this week!

xoxo - The Teacher

Why I Hate Pickles

Once upon a time, I was driven mad by pickles.  You scoff and ask “how can a man be driven insane by pickles?”  In my defense, it wasn’t just pickles, but hundreds of thousands of pickles.

The summer after I graduated from high school, I was confronted with a harsh reality.  It had always been assumed that I would go to college and that time was approaching and in order to pay my tuition I needed to get a job.  The plan, such as it existed, was that I would go to the local branch of the University of Wisconsin for my first year and then transfer to Madison the following year.

Fortunately, this was a time when the country valued education and had policies in place to help everyone who wanted to pursue an education to be able to do so without having to incur a huge debt.  The tuition at that time was $365 a semester and books were probably another $100.  With my parents allowing me to live and eat at home I needed roughly $1000 for my first year.

Unfortunately, that summer the country was in a deep recession and summer jobs had dried up.  My father had been able to get my older brother a job in the office he worked at but one job was all he could help provide and my brother had college costs to cover for two years before I graduated from high school. 

 I had no marketable skills to offer, and without any connections to people that could provide a job, my search was proving to be difficult.  After exploring all other avenues, I submitted my application to the ‘pickle factory.’ The pickle factory was probably a notch higher than the local “packing house” and had the advantage of being relatively close to my parent’s home.  Complicating matters was the full employment plan Uncle Sam was running for those of us that didn’t go to school.  So, reluctantly, I went to work at the pickle factory.

My fun new job was packed full of perks.  Just to give you a feel for the place, here are a few of the most outstanding features:

• Pay:  I was paid the minimum wage of $1.70 an hour.  Just to put that into perspective, that totaled $68 for a forty-hour week before taxes and deductions.
• Hours:  Fortunately I didn’t have to rely on just forty hours a week, because we started work at 4:30 pm and worked till 4:30 in the morning 6 days a week.
• Safety:  The factory itself was old and the various pieces of machinery had long ago been stripped of anything that had been designed to prevent the loss of fingers and limbs. Many of the regular employees (we called them “lifers”) had contributed digits to the production of pickles.  An alarming number of them were able to give the famous University of Texas “hook ‘em horns” hand sign without really trying.
• The corporate attitude toward safety was interesting.  When you entered the factory there was a sign announcing the number of consecutive days with out a reportable injury.  The sign boasted that it had been over 250 days since the last injury.  On my first day I remember walking past that sign and just a few steps further seeing a fellow sitting on a stool with a fresh plaster cast on his leg.  Later I found out he had broken his leg at work, but had been required to come every day and sit on the stool and do nothing to prevent the company from having to “report” an injury.
• Noise:  The machinery produced, in certain areas of the factory, a constant roar.  I discovered you don’t miss quiet until it disappears.
• Smell:  Every day, free of charge, the factory provided each employee with a free spritz  of “Eau de Gherkin.”  I remember going with a couple of co-workers to an all night greasy spoon for breakfast at 5:00am, and having the entire, mostly drunk, clientele look up and sniff disapprovingly.   I remember the waitress being not exactly rude, but leaving little doubt she didn’t want to see (or for that matter smell) us again.  As a result, our breakfast get-togethers ended.

Pickles:  An often overlooked cause of mental illness

My first night on the job I was required to load over 6 thousand cases of pickles on pallets that were picked up by forklift and stacked in piles to the ceiling in the storage area of the factory.  By about the three thousandth case my arms felt like spaghetti and my shoulders and back ached.  Little did I know that this was one of the best jobs I would be asked to do and I had been assigned there in the hope I wouldn’t quit my first night, as many did.

The next couple of nights I was assigned various dirty, dangerous, noisy and backbreaking tasks.  They must have concluded I wasn’t going anywhere (I needed the income) so I was given the opportunity to savor all of the variety the factory had to offer.

The morale of the seasonal workers was comparable to what I imagine a fairly well run prison experiences.  There was a sense of inevitability and, while no one was happy to be there, the crew was mostly cooperative and the work was getting done.

Then an incident involving an American Nazi changed everything almost over night.  BOOM, you didn’t see that one coming, did you?  What a story – pickles and Nazis – oh my.

One night during our lunch break, that would come about four and a half hours after we had started the shift, one of our co-workers told us he was a card-carrying member of the American Nazi Party.  We were stunned because every one liked this guy.  He was a good guy to be teamed with because he pulled his weight and could carry on a conversation, which helped to while away the long hours.  He had never spouted any Nazi party bullshit and had never denigrated minority people or ever given any indication of his horrible political leanings.  I remember being stunned by his announcement and telling him he was full of shit, but there wasn’t much we could do and he remained the same guy we had liked before we knew he was a Nazi.

One of the jobs we did involved packing cases of pickles as they game through the oven, up to the factory floor, through the labeling machine and then to a row of four employees who hand packed the cases and sent them down through the machine that sealed the cases.  The four packers, stood with a conveyor between them and where the pickles would arrive and would grab boxes and put them on the conveyor and then reach across and hand pack the cases.  Try this for 10 to 12 hours and you will find out what a real backache feels like.

Another delightful feature of this job, was that at least once a night, and often times more, you would grab the still hot jars and go to lift them, to put them in the case, and all you would get was a jagged shard of glass.  Apparently the cooking process weakened a certain percentage of the jars and hair line cracks developed and when the worker grabbed them by the top, expecting the full weight of the jar, all he got was the top half of the jar.

One night our Nazi was working this job and he must have been leaning a certain way when he grabbed a jar that came apart and he dragged the jagged edge across his wrist.  The foreman was called and he took the Nazi to the office where they punched him out on the time clock and drove him to the emergency room to be sewn up.  I was pulled off the job I was doing and replaced my injured co-worker on the packing line.

About two hours later, the newly sewn up Nazi was brought back to the factory, punched in on the time clock and sent back to the packing line.  When he showed up on the floor he was whiter than even a Nazi should ever be and told us the doctor told him if the cut had been a millimeter to one side of the other he would have slit a major artery and he probably wouldn’t have made it to the ER.

Word spread like wild fire among the crew that the company had punched him out to go to the ER and had punched him back in so he could finish his shift so no injury report would need to be filed with the insurance company.  It’s kind of funny that no one objected to the dangerous conditions of the job.  That was a given.  What really set people off was that they had in effect docked him for the time he spent being sewn up. 

The Nazi had also overheard a conversation while he was waiting in the office for some one to take him to the ER.   Apparently, in the middle of a deep recession, the pickle factory had no job applications on file.  You have to understand how tenuous a position that put the factory in because when the cucumbers arrive you have to make pickles.  You can’t slow down or things literally rot.

This incident coupled with the bit of job application intelligence radically changed the morale in the factory almost overnight.  What happened next is the subject for another blog post but I wanted to mention the shift in attitude here in order to help put into context my own experience.

One night our foreman came and got me at the beginning of the shift.  He told me he had a job for me and I followed him to a part of the factory I had never been in before.  He brought me to a small space in front of a very large oven where they baked the pickles.  The mouth of the oven was about 20 feet wide and the temperature, according to a nearby thermometer, was well above 100 degrees.  The job was to make sure that the pickle jars were guided to a single conveyor at one end of the oven, so the jars would proceed single file up to the factory floor where they would go through the labeler. The foreman showed me a red button that would shut down the track that brought the pickles through the oven and told me that I could shut down the oven track for a total of two minutes a night.  So, if I shut it down to clear a log jam at the conveyor leading upstairs I was to keep track and make sure it was not shut down for more than two minutes during the shift.  He told me that shutting it down for more than two minutes could lead to an explosion.  He also told me that due to the nature of this job he would come and get me after four hours and reassign me to some other job for the remainder of the shift.  Then he left and before long I could see the pickle jars making their way through the oven toward me.

As I watched I saw thousands of quart jars of pickles heading my way slowly but surely.  When they started to arrive the job required you to run back and forth in front of the oven mouth making sure they lined up in single file so they could proceed upstairs. 

The pickles came relentlessly and after a couple of hours I was really looking forward to the passing of the next couple hours when the foreman would reassign me to another job.  Around my third hour in front of the oven, the pickles were changed to 12 oz. jars.  At first I thought this was a good thing because the jars were smaller and lighter.  What I didn’t take into consideration was that because they were smaller there was a hell of a lot more of them.  The job actually got harder as the greater number of jars caused greater numbers of jam-ups to clear.  The relentless march of pickles would go on and on and breaking up the jams required pushing jars back so you could sort them back into single file.  Meanwhile they were jamming up at the other end of the oven mouth.

At about the three and half hour mark I was really glad I only had thirty minutes to go.  I was drenched in sweat, tired, hot and beginning to hate pickles.  As the four-hour mark came, the foreman was nowhere to be seen.  As my normal lunch break came and went I started to get angry.  Now on top of the general misery, I was getting hungry.  

I would classify my mood as foul at this time.

Around the sixth hour in front of the oven, much to my horror, the pickles switched to 8 oz. jars.  It was like staring at a Chinese army of pickles bearing down on me.  At this point I had a real healthy amount of self-pity and rage that only the teenage mind can generate.  The 8 oz. jars caused so many jam-ups that I was running full speed in front of the oven from end to end trying to keep them in single file.

At about the seventh hour I completely lost it.  I had shut down the oven a total of one minute and fifty seconds.  I had believed the foreman about possible explosions and had visions of a giant fireball and millions of pieces of pickle shrapnel slamming into me if I exceeded the two-minute mark.  I could see my mother explaining to my father at the funeral home that it would have to be a closed casket affair because all that was left of their second born was a green glob emitting a horrible briny stench.

I looked around and my eyes fell on an ax handle propped up in one corner.  I grabbed the ax handle, now completely out of my mind, and started wailing away at the conveyor and the jamming up pickle jars.  My training as a baseball player came in handy as I was used to swinging a bat and was driving pickle jars to all fields.  And the pickles kept coming.

At the seven and half hour mark I spotted the foreman strolling toward the oven.  I dropped the ax handle and charged him.  This was the first time I had experience what a pure, massive dose of adrenalin does to you.  When I got to the foreman I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and literally picked him up off the floor and pinned him against the wall.  I told him if he didn’t relieve me I was going to kill him.  He apparently believed me because he squealed he had forgot I was down here and if I let him go he would go get someone to take my place.  I let him go and he left at a run.

In a couple of minutes he was back with my replacement.  He then gave me the easiest job on the floor for the last couple of hours of the shift.  The job consisted of sitting on a stool and watching the pickle jars go through the labeling machine to make sure they all got a label. I sat there as the sea of pickles passed me by.  While I was there I saw a miracle of biblical proportions.  At one point the line was stopped and a worker put new labels in the machine and the line was turned back on.  But now, the pickles had become kosher.

And that’s how I was driven mad by pickles.  Nothing was ever said to me about the carnage I had wrought with the ax handle and the fact that I had threatened the life of the foreman.  I think it might have had something to do with the lack of job applications on file in the office.

If I'm the teacher, why do I have all this dang homework?

Hello Readers!

I have a lot of homework.  It's for that reason that I have been neglecting my blogging responsibilities and not because I don't like it.  In fact, I quite wanted to write a blog last weekend, but I was rather busy picking up my husband at the airport and introducing him to the United States.  You'll forgive me, I hope.

Things have been HECTIC since I arrived in the good ol' US of A in July.  I spent a week in Wisconsin, visiting family and friends (and friend's baby bumps!!) and then arrived in Minneapolis, just in time to visit some other, frisbee-throwing friends.  So, it was about 2 weeks before I even thought about unpacking my suitcase.  By that time, it was time to head over to interview with my former 6th and 7th grade teacher and future principal.  3 short weeks later and I was neck deep in district orientations and benefits paperwork.  Not complaining, benefits are actually pretty awesome!

School started on August 29th and I can tell you that I felt semi-prepared.  The first day went well, but then I realized that that week of 10-hour days prior to the first day, really only prepared me for one day.  The 10-hour days have continued and are not showing signs of going away.  Sheesh, way to over stay your welcome long working-hours!  I have a great group of coworkers and excellent kiddies, who I will repeatedly refer to as my babies, kids, children, etc.  Rest assured, there are no biological babies and won't be for quite some time (sorry mom)! 

I teach 5 ESL classes, levels 1 - 5 (5 being the highest proficiency level and closest to graduating from ESL services and 1 being fresh into the country and limited to no English), and work primarily with 7th graders.  I share a room and co-teach two classes with a woman who was in my post-bac masters program at the U of M (Minnesota, none of this Michigan garbage), Jo.  She is amazing and the reason that I have any energy to write this blog.  Thank goodness for her.  She is also the department leader and therefore has to handle all the administrative and paperwork duties for ESL which are quite extensive.  Jo and I co-teach a level 4/5 class and also a level 1/2 (which are new-comers and students who have been in the country for a couple of years).  I teach a level 3 Language Arts and also co-teach another level 3 Language Arts class (half ESL students, half mainstream students).  Finally, I teach another 1/2 class that is comprised of all of the kids that Jo and I have in our other level 1/2 class except for 2.  That totals 5 50-minute classes a day, with 2 50-minute prep hours and 28 minutes for lunch.  Oh, plus I usually go in an hour and a half early and stay an hour or two late. 

The biggest challenges for me thus far are the level 1/2 classes because the range of language proficiencies in that class is enormous!  I have 3 kids who are completely new to the US and 2 of which who have had limited formal schooling.  Then I have 2 kids who have about 7 months in the country, who have some vocabulary, but aren't producing much English yet.  Then there are some kids who have been here 2 or 3 years and are pretty good at speaking and listening, but not so great at reading and writing.  Finally, I have some kids who were born in the states and are totally orally proficient, but can't test out of level 1/2 (or ESL in general, for that matter) because of learning disabilities.  Trying to find something to teach that hits each kid's level is quite difficult and time consuming.  Luckily, the kids are great and get along well with each other.  Also, thank goodness that Jo is co-teaching one of the classes with me because she lends her energy and brain power in the planning stages and in the classroom.

School is going pretty well, considering it's my first year back in the States and the system that I worked in last year is about as different as possible from the one I'm in now.  Like, the only commonality is the fact that I speak English in my classes... well, that and I got lucky with my group of kids again... but apart from that... totally different.

On a personal note, on September 1st I found out that Jim Nelson, a very important person in my life, passed away.  I met him in Zihua, at Las Urracas and while I lived there, he was my go-to guy for any kind of question or concern I might have had.  He had been going to Las Urracas for at least a month for the last 30 years.  He was like a grandpa for Pako and Lorena and a great friend to Petra and Eliseo and many other members of the Las Urracas family.  Pako and I can't believe that he is gone and that we'll never get to see him again.  I could write a list of all of the reasons he was so great, but I'd spend the next 3 hours and this would be a really, really long blog.  Suffice it to say we loved Jim very, very much and miss him so much already.  He was an amazing person, we were incredibly lucky to call him our friend.  We're planning a sunset toast in his honor in front of his palapa at Las Urracas in January and I'll post more info when I know it.

Jim with Keila, one of the 15 or so young Zihuatanejenses that he put through school, at our wedding, Feb 26, 2011

Lastly, also on a personal, but much happier note, Pako made it!  He's been here now a week and hasn't even tried to sneak out to the airport!  His impressions of the States thus far are these:
- All of the houses have pointy roofs
- The street and traffic signs are weird
- Our house has too many doors
- The Minnesota sky is pretty
- Chipotle makes a really large, but delicious burrito

His social security card will show up in about a week and then he'll start looking for jobs.  We're hoping to get him a job in a school so that our vacations will mash up. 

I'll write more when I can, but you can all look forward to an enticing piece about pickles by the grouch, coming soon to a computer screen near you!

Naked Came The Gringo

Nearly 40 years ago I decided to travel to Mexico with two women.  One became the love of my life and the other is a dear friend to this day.

When I made the decision to undertake this trip it never occurred to me that the trip would be significantly different from the one I had taken to Mexico the year before with two male friends. It is a tribute to how naïve I was that it never crossed my mind that a trip down the mid section of the U.S. and into Mexico with two women would ever require me to take on the traditional male role of protector of women.  I’m sure it occurred to Mary and Pat’s fathers but I was blissfully unconcerned.  I know that years later when it was my daughter who moved to Mexico to teach school and live with her fiancé I had a very definite expectation that Pako would protect her.

As I think of my qualifications for the role I was subconsciously undertaking I marvel at how naïve Pat and Mary must have been back then.  I was nearly 5 foot eleven and all of 135 pounds of fighting fury.  My self-defense experience consisted of watching the Friday Night Fights on TV as I was growing up and three techniques that allowed me to survive to the ripe old age of 20.

The first technique was the possession of a quick tongue and a strong survival instinct that helped me anticipate danger and try to defuse it before I got hurt.  A second survival method I employed was to have a tough friend.  People tend to leave you alone if they think messing with you will bring a visit from someone who can hurt them.  Finally, the technique I employed the most was my ability to run fast.  Making the decision to bolt at the right time and not ever being the slowest of the group that was fleeing saved me from more than a few beatings.

These techniques were all fine and good when applied in Green Bay and limited to my own personal safety.  Given that we were going to travel thousands of miles by car, bus, train, truck, and thumb, my tried and true methods of self-defense didn’t stack up too well.  First, when we got to Mexico, my Spanish allowed me to communicate on the level of a seriously brain damaged individual, so it was unlikely I would be able to talk my way out of anything.  I didn’t have a tough friend with me and running might have saved my ass (I think I can still out run Mary and Pat), but probably wouldn’t have fulfilled my obligation on the protection front.

Our travel plan was to get to the U.S./Mexico border as quickly and cheaply as possible and then roam around Mexico for as long as our money lasted.  The first thing we did was to arrange to pick up a “drive a way” car in Chicago and drive it to the owner’s home in Houston. 

After we dropped off the car in Houston I experienced a small inkling of what was to come.  The three of us had gone to a diner in Houston and I went up to the cashier after we were done to pay our tab.  Sitting at the counter was a large African American fellow with a gold tooth who smiled at me and asked if Mary and Pat were with me.  I told him they were, he gave me a knowing grin, and asked what I wanted to sell them to him.  Suddenly the conversation had taken a direction I had not anticipated.  Recovering from the surprise I tried to knowingly grin back at him and told him I was keeping them.  He nodded and seemed to be indicating, one business man to another, he understood my decision and would not pursue the matter further.  At the time, I thought it was a pretty weird encounter but really didn’t connect it to the thought that traveling with two women the way we were would draw any undue or unwanted attention.

We made our way to the Mexican border and took a train to Mexico City.  The Mexico we were entering in the early 1970’s was different from Mexico today. Machismo was a stronger force back then.  Women were chaperoned by a husband, brother or father when they ventured out in public.  It is remarkable that now days you see Mexican women playing basketball and volley ball two nights a week at the municipal courts in the heart of the central part of the city.  Back in the day, you could get arrested for wearing shorts on Sunday.  It was a different time with different rules.

Naturally, our travelling arrangement brought us a lot of attention.  Some of it was a lot of fun like the time a Mexican man who had been introduced to Mary told us he had five daughters and he had named them all Maria.  Other times people opened up their homes and let us spend the night in a spare room.  Mary received a marriage proposal from a cowboy on a train.  The cowboy attempted to win her over by offering to buy her all the cigarettes she wanted.  Somehow she was able to resist and we travelled on.  The three of us brought a pool hall to a complete halt as everyone in the building decided to stop their games and watch the phenomenon of two women playing pool.  As all this was going on, it dawned on me that this trip was going to be different from the one I took the year before.

We also had some not-so-sweet encounters, including one where the denial of an offer to purchase Pat and Mary resulted in our being driven out and dumped in the desert in Baja California.  Another time we had a weird experience with a cracked poet in a three cornered hat who believed he deserved an American woman and was upset when we didn’t agree.

By far, the craziest experience we had was on a beach just out side the town of San Tomas on the southern end of the Baja Peninsula.  San Tomas was on the Pacific side of the peninsula and featured an under ground water source that made it a bit of a garden spot on the extremely dry Baja. We were traveling with two pup tents and headed to a beautiful beach just north of the town proper.  The beach was an undeveloped stretch of white sand for as far as the eye could see and we were the only people setting up camp.  It was a truly beautiful location.  The surf would break late and crash against the rocks and throw it’s foam high in the air.  Not exactly a place to swim, but for sheer beauty it was hard to beat.

The first day we went into town in the late afternoon to find a place to eat.  After we ate we walked back to our camp and begin to prepare for a quiet night.  Sometime around 8:00pm a group of about eight fisherman started to collect driftwood and proceeded to build a large bonfire about 30 yards from the front of our tents.  As it became evident that the fisherman intended that we enjoy their bonfire with them we walked over and joined them.  Soon they had a roaring fire going, the sun set and a million stars appeared in the night sky.  The fisherman had brought tequila and beer and we sat around drinking and trying to communicate.  There was a lot of laughter and good-natured fooling around.  Communication seemed somehow easier as the beer and tequila flowed.  At some point someone kept lighting up these funny little cigarettes and passing them around.  Every time they would get to Mary, she would put them out on a rock near where she was sitting and drop the butt in her pocket.  By then, no one seemed to notice and the party continued.

Feliciano was sitting next to me and taking very long and impressive pulls from the tequila bottle as it was passed around.  Feliciano was about five foot ten and 195 pounds.  When he would finish a beer he would take his fist and with about three crashing blows drive the can under the sand.  Having seen him do this a couple of times and feeling the effects of our camp fire activities I tried to duplicate his feat.  I brought my hand down on the top of the can and drove it about a sixteenth of an inch into the sand.  The pain from my attempt was running from my fist to my elbow and I gained a new appreciation of Feliciano’s strength.  Then just as the pain subsided I looked over and saw Feliciano reach into the campfire, pick up a red-hot coal and light his cigar with it.  It would have taken a heck of a lot more beer and tequila to get me to try that trick.

About 1:00am the beer and tequila ran out and the boys decided to go to town to get more.  By then we thought it was highly unlikely we would see them again and the three of us retired to our pup tents.  Pat and I slept in one tent and Mary slept in the other with our backpacks.

About an hour and a half later as we had drifted off the sleep we heard soft calls of “Daveed, Patricia and Maria.”  Pat and I unzipped our tent and stuck our heads out and found eight fisherman laying on their stomachs fanned out around the door of our tent.  Apparently their late night search for alcohol had been successful and they had graciously come back to share it with their new friends.

Pat and I knew we were stuck with hosting this affair but we told our new friends that Mary wanted to sleep and they should leave her alone. Everyone but a guy named Roberto respected our wishes.  Every now and then we would see him start to get up and sneak over toward Mary’s tent.  We would bring this to the attention of the others and they would force Roberto to come back to our tent.

I do want to say that while the fisherman thought my tequila consumption was pretty wussy, they were impressed with how much beer I could put away.  After all, I was from Wisconsin and I had to uphold the honor of our home state.  At one point I couldn’t hold my head up any more and as I laid with my head and shoulder stuck out of the tent door, I face planted myself in the sand.  When I was able to raise my head everyone was laughing and had apparently greatly appreciated my act.

Finally, around 3:00am the beer ran out and six of the fisherman wandered off.  Feliciano and Roberto went down to the embers of the campfire and were engaged in conversation.  This disturbed Pat and I as Roberto had been the one who had been trying to sneak off to Mary’s tent and Feliciano had demonstrated the kind of strength and toughness that confirmed we wouldn’t be able to prevent him from doing any thing he wanted to do.

After we had watched them for a while they seemed to be ending the conversation and going to sleep so Pat and I decided we could do the same.  Here I have to note that I sleep in the buff.

AUTHOR’S NOTE #1: I can already hear most of the people who are reading this post saying “way, way too much information”.  I here by pledge that I will not gratuitously use the following words and phrases in this blog:  naked, buck naked, nekkid, buck nekkid, birthday suit, bare, stripped, nude, unclad, unappareled, or skin leotard.  These terms will only be used if they are intrinsic to the story.  After all I am a serious artist.

Back to the story.  Just as Pat and I were drifting off to sleep we heard a blood-curdling scream coming from Mary’s tent.  Apparently Roberto had waited until everyone had gone to sleep and then crept up to Mary’s tent and was whispering indecent proposals.  Getting no response the drunken fisherman got up, got his feet tangled in the tent ropes and came crashing down collapsing Mary’s tent.

I bolted awake and rushed, buck naked out of our tent to find Roberto laying on top of the collapsed tent with Mary trapped inside continuing to whisper his enticing proposals.  I grabbed Roberto’s ankle and pulled him off Mary.  I then sprung into my Friday Night Fights’ boxer stance and began bobbing and weaving and flapping in the wind.

AUTHOR’S NOTE #2:  Please add “flapping in the wind” to the list previously compiled in AUTHOR’S NOTE #1.

Roberto struggled to his feet and with a bewildered look, took in the sight of a skinny, wild haired, gringo jumping around like the cowardly lion in the Wizard of OZ.  While it took a moment for Roberto to realize what was happening I was praying that I didn’t actually have to fight.  In a totally sober encounter I have little doubt I would have been toast.  But Roberto was as plastered as I was but my fear had pushed my intoxication to the back of my brain, at least temporarily, and I thought I might have a chance if it came to blows.

Then the real hero of the story sprang into action.  Pat ran from our tent down to the campfire and was screaming at Feliciano that his friend was molesting our friend.  She was tugging on Feliciano as he struggled to come awake from his stupor.

Finally, Pat succeeded in rousing the big fisherman and he walked over, picked up Roberto, and walked back to the camp fire where he unceremoniously dumped him in the sand and proceeded to give him a couple of good swift kicks for good measure.  Feliciano and Roberto argued for a short while and then finally as the sun was beginning to come up walked off, presumably to go fishing.  Mary moved into our tent and we kept watch.

The next day, Mary understandably wanted to leave Mexico as quickly as we could manage.  But after thinking about it for a day she decided to stay with our original plan to stay until our money ran out.  Today we have many fond memories of that trip and we can laugh at some things that didn’t seem so funny at the time.