Circling Back

As a kid, you don't need much of a reason to be friends.  You're friends with whoever sits next to you in class, or because some kid's mom invites you to his birthday party, or because you live in the same neighborhood.

But even though there were other kids in our neighborhood, it was the three of us -- me and Chris and Chuck -- that stuck the closest.

Chris and I were only a year apart, occasional rivals but always friends.  We were Tom and Huck.  Our neighborhood surrounded by woods on three sides, the creek that ran by the sewage treatment plant our Mississippi.  (In fact, if you followed the creek long enough, it would eventually lead to the Tennessee, just on the west side of the Wheeler Dam.  We never followed it nearly that far, but we did try making a raft once.  Didn't float.)

And little Chuck, with his old man name and his shock of orange hair, a few years younger but always determined to keep up.  He was the little brother Chris and I never had, much to his chagrin I'm sure.  We picked on him mercilessly, but let anyone else try and they'd better be ready to fight.

We raced tricked out bikes around that sleepy circle, pretending they were motorcycles, Indy Cars, or the General Lee.  Played football in the empty lot, baseball with ghost men, and golf with tennis balls and utility poles for holes.  We were Joe Montana and Roger Staubach, Jack Nicklaus and Calvin Peete, Mario Andretti and Danny Sullivan.  (I was Roger, Jack, and Mario.)

We had Ataris, but almost always preferred to be outside with our imaginations.  "Red Dawn" and "The Day After" weren't just movies, but very real possibilities.  We practiced for war with pop guns, canteens, and pine cones for hand grenades.  The woods, creek, and the old rock crusher a Soviet battlefield.

We were gymnasts in the '84 Olympics, taking the swings off an old swing set, using the frame as a high bar and practicing our dismounts.  When we were thirsty, we drank water from a hose.  When we were hungry, we asked one of our moms or scrounged around someone's kitchen for cookies or a popsicle or, in especially desperate times, loaf bread.

Chris's boom box played Run DMC, New Edition, Midnight Star, and Prince & The Revolution.  And of course there was the time Chris's older sister (kinda cute, but bossy) said we should start a band and she would be our manager.  New Addition.  That was the name she came up with.  And with that, her career in talent management was over as quickly as it had begun.

Scarce was the tree we couldn't and didn't climb.  We made a thousand mudballs out of the red Alabama clay and threw them at each other, built forts out of pine straw, and used an old chicken coop as a clubhouse.  We got skinned up knees and stung by bees.  And sometimes we fought, but were always friends again by the end of the day or the next afternoon.

We heard (and repeated) cautionary tales about Mr. Sampson, the neighborhood peeping Tom who none of us had ever seen.  He was our Boo Radley.  And we steered clear of Crazy Alice. One day an ambulance was in her driveway and my parents said she had taken too many pills and then nobody lived in her house again for a long time.

Still, those never seemed like legitimate threats.  They were more like urban legends.  Stories that grew tall in the movies of a 12-year-old boy's imagination.

We picked apples from the tree in Doctor Thames backyard (without permission), and played in the playhouse that had belonged to his kids (with permission), by then all grown and moved away.  We traded baseball cards and turns riding Chris's go-kart around the circle.  Once I accidentally ran it off the road and into Mr. Sampson's yard.  I had never been so scared and never told a soul.

The world felt so much safer then.  Or maybe we were just naive.  We'd leave home and be gone for hours, our only instructions to be back in time for supper.   We rode our bikes to the sewage treatment plant, past where the paved road turned to gravel, far beyond the last house in the neighborhood.  I think about today and my nephews and how I'm afraid to even let them out of my sight.

We moved away from that neighborhood when I was 13 or 14.  Mom and Dad didn't have health insurance.  So when we had our car wreck, the bills from the resulting hospitalization and various surgeries made it so they couldn't afford the house anymore.

I remember being a little upset when we left, but of course I wasn't nearly able to grasp the gravity of it then.  We moved into a trailer across town.  Chris and Chuck came to visit a time or two, but it was never the same.

One day not too awfully long ago, I made a familiar turn beneath a blinking yellow caution light and drove back through the old neighborhood. I figured most of the people that once lived there had moved or passed on during the past almost thirty years, but I was fairly sure Chris's parents were still there.   As I passed, I noticed some kids toys in their yard.  Grandkids.  I smiled.  Next door, a house had replaced the empty lot and it made me a little sad.

That third of a mile seemed so much shorter than I had remembered, the yards smaller, the hill we coasted down on our bicycles not nearly so steep.

I came to the stop sign at the end of the loop.  Years ago, a gangly kid with sandy blonde hair and a chipped front tooth would have turned right, beginning the descent down the hill, quickly gaining speed and always a tad nervous he wouldn't make the curve at the bottom.  Not looking back.  And never really noticing any time passing at all.

But on this day, he turned left to head back to the two-lane state road, stealing one last glance in the side-view.

"Objects in mirror are closer than they appear."

If only it were so.

Summer: A Retrospective

Why does every year feel like the hottest summer ever?  Maybe it's just that I'm older.  Or maybe they are getting hotter, but this isn't a post on global warming.  I think we all know that's a farce perpetrated by Al Gore, the liberal media, most scientists, and the melting polar ice caps.

We're working on our 7th day of 96-degrees-plus.  Haven't hit triple digits yet, though we're hopeful for the weekend.  It gives us something to watch for, and helps break up the monotony of treating ourselves for signs of heat stroke.

I imagine it was like being on the Ark on day 39 of rain, and Noah's wife was probably like, "Dude, I'm so over rain."  But Noah was probably like, "Eh, the house is already a total loss, I'm gonna have to go to the Apple merchant to get a new abacus, may as well go for an even forty at this point."

A midsummer night's storm passed through Tuesday evening, providing a brief respite from the heat and bringing a few small tornadoes to neighboring counties.  The worst we got was having someone's trampoline blown into the road in front of my house.

It wasn't always like this.  Was it?  Summer used to seem cooler.  Plenty warm, for sure, but not my-internal-organs-are-going-to-fry-if-I-stay-outside-more-than-ten-minutes hot.  Anyway, it all got me to thinking about all the things summer used to be.  If you'll indulge me whilst I wax nostalgic for a moment...  ("As opposed to every other post you've ever written, Bone?")

----------------------

Summer was a ballpark.  Lit up six nights a week.  Never on Sunday.  (You were in church then if your momma had raised you right.)  It was something to do in a town that didn't have anything else to do but go to the Hardee's or get up to no good.  I met a few girls there and played a little ball.  I was better at the latter but the former became a lifelong pursuit.

Summer was freedom.  Being out of school.  Every night felt like Friday night.  And that sultry evening air seemed to feed the restlessness.  Windows down, radio up.  Night driving and singing loud to some old summer song.

Summer was morning trips to Mamaw's with Mom.  Taking her into town and having breakfast at the Burger Chef.  Days lived with no real concept of time.  Mom was young, Mamaw was old, and it seemed that they would always be.

Summer was the city pool.  Learning to swim at the ripe old age of... well, is that really relevant here?  The cute lifeguard who unfortunately was too old for you.  (Which, personally, I've come to find I much prefer to them being too young.)

Summer was vacations.  Mostly just to Nashville.  They were small but they were ours.  Mom and Dad were still together.  I'd sit in the back seat and add up the miles between dots in the Rand McNally.  First I got too cool to go, then too old, and then Mom and Dad weren't together anymore.

Summer was time well wasted.  Countless hours spent on video games, hanging out at the mall, riding bikes, trading baseball cards, building forts, playing basketball, or long afternoons simply being bored.  Staying up late and sleeping later.  Some might disagree, but I say remain a kid for as long as possible.  Once the real world takes hold, it doesn't easily let go.

Summer was a song.  A thousand of them, really.  Sometimes sweet and wistful, sometimes upbeat and carefree.  But always, ended too soon.


(One of my thousand favorite summer songs...)

Act the Second

(This is the conclusion to a story I began a couple weeks ago.  If you missed part one, you can check it out here.  Unless you're a member of law enforcement, in which case, there's really nothing to see.  I consider this a motivational story.  As in, it motivates me to post something else soon so this won't be the first thing people see when they come here.)

Punishment was swift.

The following Monday, most of the student body was in the gym for the intramural finals.  The principal walked in and pointed at the three of us -- Axl, Neil, and myself --and called us to his office.  We unceremoniously made our way down the bleachers and out of the gym in front of all our peers and every girl I'd ever made out with or wanted to.

Actually, if I hadn't had the worst game of my life in the intramural semifinals the week before, we probably would've been playing and they'd have had to stop the game to pull me out.  So, it could have been worse.

When we got to the office, I saw LJ first.  He had graduated the prior year.  They had contacted him and made him come back to the school!  This had to be bad.

Then we were led into another room -- the actual principal's office -- where sat the middle school principal, Mister Mims.

He was Ferris Bueller's Rooney, The Breakfast Club's Vernon, and every other self-important school administrator starving to wield what little power they'd been afforded rolled into one.  I was certain he had waited for this day his whole life.

The basic gist of the meeting was that we would perform 100 hours of "community service" which would largely be made up of painting the middle school.  In exchange, he wouldn't press charges, nothing would go on our record, and we would all be able to graduate as planned.

It seemed like a power play then, and still does.  Intimidation and scare tactics at their best.  I'm sure they needed someone to paint the school.  Here was a chance to get someone to do it for free.  But what choice did we have?  Felt like none.

They had also contacted our parents.  Axl and I would miss our senior trip, to the beach.

And so that became the summer we learned to paint, and bonded, with each other and with the middle school custodian, Ms. Bullard.

Ms. Bullard was sort of a manly woman.  Not all that fetching.  It wasn't hard to imagine her in younger days plowing ten acres nine months pregnant, stopping to squeeze out triplets with no medicinal assistance, then going right back to plowing.

She was no nonsense, but good as gold.  I got the feeling she didn't agree with the principal's punishment, and she made that summer as bearable as possible while still ensuring we got some painting done.

One thing I remember most about that summer are the days when every single thing she said seemed to be a euphemism for something sexual.  OK, so most days are probably like that when you're seventeen.  But this one day, she was having a problem with the tractor (seriously, like a lawn tractor, she was mowing) and had Axl and I on the ground looking underneath it.

"Do you see anything sticking out?"

"Just feel around under there until you find it."

"Don't make me have to get down on my hands and knees."

On and on it went, for like ten minutes.  I swear she was doing it on purpose.  If ever I was going to pee my pants from laughter, that would've been the day.

Another thing I remember about the summer is that somehow LJ had managed to keep the whole ordeal hidden from his parents.  When we found this out, we began "accidentally" splattering paint on him so they'd figure out something was going on.

To counter this, he started bringing extra clothes every day and changing in the car before he went home.  That's when one of us got the wise idea to call his parents, and when they said he wasn't home, we'd say "Oh, is he not back from painting the school yet?"

It seems like a crappy thing to do now, but guys are like that sometimes.  We rag each other incessantly, make up fun games where we punch each other in the upper arm to the point of bruising, and sometimes... tattle on each other like whiny babies.  Evidently.

Mostly I just remember the hours.  The painting.  The long days.  The camaraderie.  Talking about anything and everything to pass the time.  Listening to the radio.  You haven't lived until you've sung "Daytime Friends" by Kenny Rogers out loud with three of your best male friends while sweating profusely in the June Alabama humidity at what amounts to little more than a glorified work release camp.

When it was finally over, I can remember a feeling of "what do I do with all this free time now?"  I might've even had a touch of Stockholm syndrome.  It's easy to understand how people who are in prison for a long time can no longer function on the outside. 

I suppose the worst part of it all was disappointing my parents.  And Neil's mom.  Neil was two years my junior.  She had always trusted me to look out for him, and I had let her down.  One day when I knew he wasn't home, I went over and apologized to her face to face.  She forgave me absolutely and completely, I know.  Still, few times have I ever felt lower.

And of course, missing my senior trip seemed like the worst thing in the world.  It would be another five years before I saw the ocean for the first time.

Despite all that, most of the negative feelings have simply faded away with time.

Someday when I recount this tale for my great-grandchildren -- running a paint roller up and down LJ's shirt, Ms. Bullard and the tractor, getting to see the inside of an actual teacher's lounge -- one of them (while marveling at how sharp my memory is for a 104-year-old) will ask, "Sir Bone (I get knighted in my swingin' sixties), why are you smiling?"

And I'll reply with a hint of a gleam in my eye...

"Not now, what's-yer-name.  Go play in the yard or something.  It's time for my bi-hourly nap."

A Tale Not Proudly Told

I suppose I can write about it now.  Enough time has passed.  Although you can never be too careful with stuff like this.  But I think it's safe now, what with the statute of limitations and all.

It was the spring of my senior year of high school.  Must have been well into April, perhaps even early May.  I only say that because it was warm that night.

Six of us -- Archie, Ben, Neil, LJ, Axl, and I -- had gone to town.  Well, the next town over.  I don't remember for sure what we did, maybe went bowling or something.  I would say we went to the mall, we were always doing that, but that wasn't Archie's sort of thing.

On the way over, we were joking Axl that one of the teachers was gonna have the middle school gym open that night for basketball.  He did that sometimes, just not tonight.  But that really got Axl going.  He believed us.  And he wouldn't let it go, even on the way home from bowling.

First I should say, we were in two cars.  Archie had borrowed his brother's Corvette.  Who lets their 17-year-old brother borrow their Corvette?  But he had.  I don't remember who drove the other car, it's not really important, other than to say it wasn't me or Ben.  And it dang sure wasn't a Corvette.

At that time, Neil would've had a black Hyundai hatchback, before anybody even knew they made Hyundais.  We used to con him into letting one of us drive it, because he didn't know where he was going half the time.  We'd have to stop a few blocks before we got home and switch back so his parents wouldn't know.  Axl captained about a 1974 Oldsmobile houseboat-on-wheels, from back in the good old days when they still made cars that seated eight comfortably, and wouldn't fit in one lane.  I would've been in the gold, four-door '85 Cavalier I'd "inherited" from my parents, but like I said I didn't drive that night.

I know I didn't drive because I remember Ben and I fought over who had to ride back with Archie.  I don't even know why, other than it would have been more fun to ride in a car with four than just you and Archie.

Archie wasn't a bad guy.  He wasn't.  He was just... Archie.  He would get all mature on you sometimes.  But just sometimes.  His family was well-to-do.  His dad had started some industrial supply company and they were the first ones to sell those big arctic cooling fans that NFL teams used on the sidelines.  I mean, surely they weren't the first, but that's what Archie told us anyway.  I don't know, maybe they were the first.  But he really wasn't a bad guy.  Not in the least.

So Ben rode with Archie, and the rest of us rode back together, and we went to the drive-in restaurant, the six of us in two cars.  Then, because Axl just wouldn't let it go, even though we told him they weren't shooting basketball at the gym that night, we decided to take him over there so he would drop it.

At some point, we must have gone and gotten our own vehicles -- Axl, LJ, Neil and myself -- because I remember all our cars were parked outside the gym.  Somehow we beat Archie and Ben over there.  And being sophisticated as we were, we decided we'd run down to the old football field and hide on the bleachers so they couldn't find us.

The middle school used to be the high school, and the old football field was just an empty lot they used for a playground at recess.  But on one side, there were these concrete bleachers built into the side of a hill.  So we all laid down where they wouldn't be able to see us.  They looked and looked and hollered for us, then finally gave up and decided to leave.  We all thought it was the most hilarious doggone thing ever.

That's one thing about being seventeen.  The stupidest things are funny.  Maybe that's why seventeen is such a magnificent age.  Actually, I think most of us were eighteen.  But saying we were seventeen sounds better.  It makes it all seem a little more excusable.

In hindsight, Archie and Ben leaving turned out to be... what's the opposite of fortuitous?  Because Archie would have been our moral compass.  There's no doubt in my mind about that.  I think Neil would have objected, too, had he not been two years younger than us.  But as such, he didn't speak up much.  I didn't think his mother would ever forgive me for what we were about to do, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and all.

The recently-departed Ben oft regaled us with stories of guys -- older guys -- who were always sneaking into the gym on Saturdays to shoot ball.  Ben grew up in a house across from the school.  And not even across a road, just a dead-end alley.  I spent the night at his house when my sister was born.  Well, that was after I threw up in the waiting room at the hospital.  God forbid I miss a day of second grade.

Apparently, the back door to the gym used to be broken or something and you could get right in.  But that was Saturday -- "day" being the key syllable there.  I think you see where this is going.

We tried the door.  It was locked.  Had Ben lied?  Surely not.  Probably they had fixed the lock sometime in the past ten years was all.  

This is another thing about being seventeen, at least for me.  We were always looking for a place to play basketball.  It could be an old goal in the dirt in somebody's backyard, an outdoor court with no net at a local church, or, in this case, a locked gymnasium.

So there we were on a warm spring night 'neath the Alabama stars, a few weeks yet until graduation, the real world seemingly still far away.  An entire gymnasium with its two beautiful basketball goals, just sitting there, beckoning to us from the other side of a brick wall, a locked door, and some windows.

Ah yes, the windows.  Those big tilt-out windows that gyms always have.  Did I mention several of them were open?

I'm not sure how long we debated it.  I do remember having qualms.  Not many qualms, but a couple of qualms.  I think poor Neil may have even objected at first.  But peer pressure's idiocy knows no bounds.  So after ten or fifteen or thirty minutes, the four of us, a real crack group of world-class decision-makers mind you, settled upon a plan.

We would hoist Neil up to the ledge by one of the open windows.  He was probably about 5'10" and fairly slight of frame.  He would be able to climb through the window, make his way over to turn on the lights, then let us in the back door.  I don't recall why, but we seemed fairly confident the back door would open from the inside. 

It did.

And there we were -- in basketball xanadu!

We started out playing some "21," then two-on-two, and eventually broke off into two games of one-on-one.  I was taking on Axl, while LJ and Neil went at it on the other end.  I don't remember much about the basketball portion of the evening, which is a bit strange, as it is the whole reason for the story.  I just remember Neal kept killing LJ.

He would yell things like, "Bone, I beat him 21 to 4."  "Bone, I beat him again." "Bone."

"Bone!"

I had stopped even listening.  Then both their voices -- LJ and Neil -- were yelling my name.

"Bone!!!"

To this day, I never knew why they yelled at me.  I mean, why not Axl?  We were the same age.  Heck, he was four months older even.  Why did I have to be the ringleader?  But I was.

Axl and I stopped our game.  We turned to see what they wanted.  And there, at the far end of the court, stood two women.

I recognized one as a teacher.  Turns out they both were.

Suddenly the real world had gotten awfully close.

Evidently one of the teachers had been driving by the school and saw every light in the gym was on, you know, because it was night time and all!

Drat!  The only flaw in our plan, and it had come back to bite us in the hindquarters.

They had an intriguing question for us: "What are ya'll doing in here?"

Neil, bless his heart, replied with the innocence of a child (which legally, he still was).

"Playing basketball?"

We would laugh about that part later, but I swear I could not have mustered even a whimper in that moment.  I'd have been less terrified if there had been Soviet paratroopers landing outside the gym.  I'd seen "Red Dawn" so I knew how to handle that.

Then Axl began trying to talk his/our way out of it, saying we thought the other teacher, the one we kidded him about, was going to be up there that night.  That old boy, I swear.  Once in 9th grade English class, he made up this whole book report about a book that didn't even exist.  If that wasn't enough, when Archie told the teacher the book didn't exist, she said pensively, "No.  I think I may have heard of that book." 

Axl could always, and still can, talk his way out of almost anything.  But he wasn't talking his way out of this.

The teachers told us to get out and that this better never happen again.  I'm not sure if they were yelling, but it sure felt like they were.  We scampered to our cars.

I bet it took me about twelve hours to fall asleep that night.  I hoped that would be the end of it.

It wasn't.


"Seventeen, only comes once in a lifetime / Don't it just fly by wild and free / Goin' anyway the wind blew, baby..."

Death, taxes, and Santa Claus

I love Christmas music.

Silent Night.  Last Christmas.  Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  Walkin' 'Round in Women's Underwear.  You name it, I'm all about it.  (Wait, what?)

But there is one Christmas song that absolutely terrified me as a child, one yuletide tale of doom that kept me up nights, and to be honest, still makes me a little uncomfortable today.

The creepy carol I'm speaking of: Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

Maybe it's because when I was a kid, getting a bag of switches underneath the tree always seemed like a very real possibility to me.  That was the supposed consequence if you were deemed to have been naughty during the year.  And I was always quite confident I had NOT been nice.

(Yes, I'm aware many children were threatened with a lump of coal.  I would have given anything for a lump of coal instead!)

Today, let's examine just a few of the lyrics from this longtime holiday standard.  I think you'll see it's not all rooty-toot-toots and rummy-tum-tums.

You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout 

What?!?!  I'm EIGHT.  I'm probably never gonna be a Congressman.  When else am I supposed to pout?

I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town

It's so definite.  So final.  There's no chance he won't come.  All you can do is hope you survive it.

He's making a list
Checking it twice

See, if he only checked it once, maybe I could slide by.  This was the reasoning of my eight-year-old brain.  But he's checking it twice???  There's no way I make it.

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake

Um, in our neighborhood, we called that a Peeping Tom.  And he lived across the street and two houses down and all us kids were forbidden to go in his yard.  But seriously, a little stalkerish, Santa.

He knows if you've been bad or good 

Who is this guy?  God?!?!  What chance did I have?

So basically,  Santa Claus coming to town was like having judgment day every single year.  At a time in my life when I should have been dreaming of Larry Bird, the Dukes of Hazzard, and Smurfette, I was instead having cold sweats about a brown paper bag full of switches.  (I'm not sure why, but when I pictured them they were always in a brown paper bag, never anything nice like a book satchel or burlap sack.)

I would try to sleep, I would!  Close my eyes and pretend to sleep, but the words kept haunting me... He knows when you're awake.  Eventually, it all just got to be too much and I would get out of bed and run into the den in my Dallas Cowboy pajamas and tearfully confess all my sins to mom and dad.

"I'M the one who broke the window!  I'M the one who took the clothes off all the Barbie dolls!  And I'M the one who put the neighbor girl in the washing machine!"  (What?  I'm sure all of us have locked a child inside a large household appliance at some point in our lives.)

There was just so much pressure.  It's a wonder I didn't take up smoking.

Of course, there were toys under the tree again that year instead of switches.  And I would think to myself, "Wow, Santa must have made some mistake."

But somehow, I managed to squeak by every year.

And somehow, I still do.

"In the office there's a guy named Melvin / He'll pretend that I am Murphy Brown..."

Thoughts of home

It's not the town where I was born.  Nor is it the town where I live now.  But it's where I've spent the most of my days.

None of my family live there anymore.  But it's still the one place I'm more likely to recognized than anywhere else.

I still think of it as home.

There, I'll always be my parents' son, or my sister's older brother.  The kid in the brown smock and pink knit, square-end tie who bagged groceries at the Piggly Wiggly.  The underachiever who frustrated more than one teacher because he cruised through high school finishing sixth in his class rather than daring to stand out by, oh I don't know, actually trying.

There's something reassuring in the knowledge that whether you go off and make it big or whether you never amount to much of anything, in your hometown you're still just you.

I had occasion to visit my hometown a few weeks ago.  The only accountant I've ever used has her office there.

A lot sure has changed in that little town.

To someone only passing through that would probably seem strange to hear.  For it's nothing you would notice at first glance.  Just a lot of little things that only someone who spent a number of years there --  who grew up there -- would see.

The four-way stop has been replaced by a traffic light.  The shopping center once home to the Winn Dixie, a Bargain Town, and the Elmore's five-and-dime now houses a different grocery store, a gym, and an H&R Block.

They've built a new courthouse out on the four-lane.  The old courthouse is just a building now.  It's three stories serving as an unintentional monument of the town square which has changed so much around it.  Thirty years ago, it was still the center of commerce.  And every Friday and Saturday night, there would be a solid line of cars -- teenagers in Trans-Ams and old pickup trucks and Novas -- cruising the square.

I remember when the "new" four-lane was first coming through.  Before it opened, you could go around the orange roadblock signs and drive on the fresh, jet-black pavement.  It's where Dad would take me to practice driving, since you didn't have to worry about traffic.  And I realized he was younger then than I am now...

They finally tore down the old Star Theatre.  It was an old-style art deco theatre with half-moon doors.  And even though it was never open as long as I can remember, seeing its ticket window and big marquee, I always liked to imagine how alive it must have been on some long ago day.  Every so often, there would be talk that somebody was going to open it back up again, but nobody ever did.  

I drove past the spot where the old lumber company used to be.  A few years ago, it burned to the ground.  I knew a fireman who died there.  The obvious void in the landscape seemed fitting for the gaping hole I know he left in the lives of his wife, and children, and grandchildren.

Somewhere around this time, it began to dawn on me how virtually every street in this town held a memory for me.  Almost every building, some significance.

The old Texaco, which is now a used car lot, is where I used to stop every evening on my way to work (under the guise of buying a snack) to see a girl who worked the counter.  She even stopped in to see me at work a couple of times, but I was too naive or unskilled to ever go any further.

That's just a few blocks from the intersection where I killed my Jeep umpteen times one night when I was learning to drive a stick.  We must have sat through at least 5 green lights, me panicking while my baby sister sat in the passenger seat telling me it was going to be OK. She loves recounting that story at family gatherings for some reason.

Just off the square, there's the Western Auto where I once bought a 10-speed.  It was all covered with dust and the tires were flat and I remember thinking they must not sell too many bikes.

Out on the four-lane, now next to the new Walmart, is the church of Christ where I had my sins washed away.  I can still remember the feeling of freedom and purity I felt that day, and the guilt I've felt so many times since.

If you head south, on the outskirts of town, there's the Baptist church which none of us attended, but we sure made good use of their outdoor basketball court.  The goals are no longer there, the church having installed an indoor gym many years ago.  The old court now serves as a parking lot for the church buses.  As I'm writing this, I just now remembered there would sometimes be an older gentleman, probably in his 70's, who would occasionally come and bring a lawn chair and watch our pickup games.  I hadn't thought of that memory in probably twenty years!

A part of me will always be bound to that little town, held fast by so many memories, people and places, a lot of them no longer there anymore.  But I can still see them, in my mind, frozen in time exactly as they were ten, fifteen, twenty-five years ago..

I smiled when I thought about the barber shop where old Mister Albert used to cut my hair.  I never saw him when he wasn't wearing dress pants and a button-down shirt.  Dad and I would both get our haircuts the same day.  I'll always remember the story about Mister Albert having a mild heart attack while cutting someone's hair.  He sat down in a chair for a couple of minutes to rest, then got up and finished the haircut before he would go to the hospital.

It feels like I could go on forever.

Not surprisingly, the accountant asked about my mom.   There, I'll always be my parents' son...  I just had to sign some papers.  We exchanged a bit of small talk and I was on my way.

A lot of times I would have taken a couple minutes to drive by our old house: an unassuming three-bedroom brick on a sleepy little street with a carport, gravel driveway, and a maple tree in the front yard.  It's the last place my parents lived together.

But on this day, I did not.

Maybe I was afraid it had changed and wouldn't be as I remembered it. Maybe I'd seen enough change for one day.

Besides, I can go back there most anytime.

All I have to do is close my eyes.

"Southbound breezes blowin' / This town ain't my home / You can slow me down / But I'm goin' / If I can turn this road I'm on / Southbound..."

These are the great snows of my life

Another week, another blizzard.

Sunday night brought eight inches of snow to our sleepy town. I feel like I'm getting used to the snow -- like this is the new norm. Monday morning, I drove into work for half a day. There were literally only two other cars on the road. I thought I did fairly well considering my limited previous experience (which includes both a 270-degree spin as well as the mailbox incident). I suppose I have to credit my new-found snowy-road driving skills to the DK Summit Course on Mario Kart.

I've made snow creme, a snowman (aka "got my Frosty on), and a snow angel, thrown snow balls, had hot chocolate, and attempted to go sledding on a knee board (didn't work). I'm not sure what more I can do, aside from building a cozy fire. And the last time I tried that the landlord seemed a little perturbed.

Do you have any idea how rare it is for us to have two snowman-able snows in one winter? It hasn't happened in over four thousand years. OK, maybe not that long, but I can't recall it ever happening. Of course, I also can't recall what I had for supper last night, so take that as you will.

It has gotten me to thinking about significant snows of the past that I've experienced. The first one that came to mind was the ice storm of '85.

I'm pretty sure it was a Thursday or Friday morning in late January or early February. I was eleven and still living with my parents at the time. The power went out very early. I remember lying in bed and hearing these thunderous, window-rattling booms and seeing what looked like green lightning through the windows. I thought it must literally be thunder, but Dad said that the transformers were exploding.

Dad had to go to work regardless. They had a generator where he worked, and since we had no power or heat, he loaded us all in the car -- Mom, my sister and me -- and off we went. We didn't get far.

What looked like six or seven inches of peaceful, unblemished snow turned out to be several inches of snow covered with a thick, solid sheet of ice. Dad must not have known that because as soon as he backed out of the carport, the old Monte Carlo hit the ice and skidded straight into the ditch. A cop with tire chains pulled us out, I think, and carried Dad on into work. Fortunately, that's the only time I ever saw Dad carried away in a patrol car.

I don't remember how long we were without power, but I don't think more than a day. Of course, living in town we were among the first to get power back. Others went without it for days. I do distinctly remember the power coming back on before the cable did and playing Combat on the Atari 2600 for hours. The rest of that extended weekend was spent playing in the snow and ice. It was so slick you could have about sledded uphill.

I fully expected to be out of school for a couple of days -- by the end of the weekend, most everything had melted -- but then we wound up being out of school for at least two more days the next week, too. Counting Saturday and Sunday, we were out of school for five or six days straight. Talk about hitting the snow-day lottery.

It is true that the South completely shuts down with even an inch or two of snow. But never in my life were things shut down for as long as they were during the ice storm of '85. I've never seen anything like it before or since.

"I wonder if she thinks about Jackson Hole. Nights beside the fire and angels in the snow..."

Reminiscing at the speed of life

Over the years, my earthly father has passed along to me morsels of wisdom and knowledge that only come with life experiences. Things such as the best place to be in a tornado warning is driving around in a car, never take a shower if it's thundering outside, and of course, if you're fishing from the bank and a snake swims by, the fishing trip is over five minutes ago. You can't put a price on that.

A few weeks ago, he who reared me passed along something a bit more tangible but just as priceless. He had come across some old home videos of yours truly and decided to have them put onto DVD.

Now when I say home videos, I'm not talking videocassette. Oh no, it was a bit more primitive than that. As in, when we watched them back, we watched them on this film-projector-like thing. It had a bulb. I clearly remember there was a bulb involved somewhere in the process. Also, I don't think there was any volume. It was kinda like starring in my own Zapruder video.

We hadn't watched these back since I was little. I guess the bulb went out twenty-five or thirty years ago and we just never replaced it, or more likely, they stopped manufacturing it. So I was anxious to see what was on there.

The opening scene has a young Bone, circa six months, in a swing eating some unrecognizable food. Later, there is footage of me rolling over and then what I assume to be some of my first steps, both of which I still consider to be among my top ten accomplishments. I mean, really, what else?

Then a few scenes in, there is my mom. So slender and so strikingly young. And at once, my whole demeanor changed. Inundated by waves of thoughts and emotions coming so fast I can't begin to sort through them. Her hair, long and straight, she's holding me up to pick mulberry leaves. I teared up and I'm not even sure why. Just... she was so young. And where did all those years go?

A couple of scenes later, my dad makes his only appearance. With his seventies hair and butterfly collar shirt, he's lying in the floor beside me mouthing "look at the camera." His mannerisms too much like mine.

The videos basically document my first four years -- birthday parties, a couple of Christmases. There are at least four guitars, both real and toy, placed in front of me on different occasions. Dad has apparently been trying to get me to play the guitar from day one on, until and including the present, as evidenced by the guitar permanently on loan from him mostly collecting dust in my bedroom. The most I ever do is pluck a few times at one, then or now.

Naturally, I had to show the DVD to Mom. She watched with near disbelief as she let two-year-old me hold and lick icing off a big butcher knife, my hand grasping the blade of the knife instead of the handle. And again as I was learning to walk along a sidewalk, mere feet from a street with cars passing by. Later, there's footage of me at probably 3 or 4 playing in the snow, a coat on but no gloves. All that, and I turned out OK!

It is an odd thing to be watching oneself, and you know it is you, but it seems like you're watching somebody else. But that is how it felt.

Still, the DVD is priceless, because if I had ever thought of those home videos, I would have been quite certain that I would never have seen them again.

No further footage exists to prove that I ever walked this Earth. After the Zapruder camera, I'm fairly certain no one in my immediate family owned a video camera until my sister bought one when Nephew Bone came along. So no first swimming lesson, when I cried and never went back. And absolutely no proof I was ever terrified of grasshoppers, as my family alleges.

Along with the feeling that I was watching somebody else, there was a constant and overwhelming sense of the incredible speed at which time and life pass. There was today and thirty-six years ago separated by just a few feet. And yet, such an untraversable distance.

Where did all those years go? And not just the years, but the months and the weeks, the mornings and the evenings, the doctor's appointments and little league games, the school days and the workdays, the summers and the autumns. Is there nothing left to keep, to hold on to, to show to someone that "This was me. This was my life. This was what I did?"

I suppose there are but scattered pictures. And memories, like invisible pages pressed tightly together in some book that looks surely too small to hold all of our days, all that we were and all that we've done. And maybe if we are lucky some day some wind blows open the book to a memory we thought we had long since forgotten.

Though I was supposed to be the centerpiece of these home videos, as I watched them back I found myself focusing more on my parents. They both turn sixty this year -- Mom in October and Dad just last week. I tried to imagine how they must have been back then, not having a whole lot. I thought about how they must have struggled sometimes to get by, and how in the world they knew how to start raising a child when they were fourteen years younger than I am now.

I wonder if they ever look at me today and think back to a little boy with blonde hair and a cheesy grin playing in the snow with no gloves on and ask themselves the same question: Where did all those years go?

"Though it's clear as day in my mind, the picture of a simpler time. Wish change would just leave well enough alone. Those days are gone now, when daddy was a strong man, and momma was a blonde..."

Growing up here

Growing up here wasn't all that exciting. Town closed down on Sunday, except for one of the four drug stores. If you needed to do any other business, you either drove to the city or it just didn't get done until Monday. To this day it's still a dry town and county (meaning you can't buy alcohol there, at least not legally).

There was no mall, no bowling alley, and no movie theater. Well there was, but it had been closed down for years. But we found things to do, we made our own trouble and our own fun. When I was little, the teenagers all cruised the town square on Saturday nights. By the time I was old enough to drive, the Winn-Dixie parking lot was the place to be.

There were five stop lights that I can remember. If you timed it just right, you could miss every one. But the four-way stop sign out at the main highway could get backed up four or five cars deep some Friday nights.

There was a little store where they would pump your gas. You could get a fresh-sliced bologna sandwich, an old bottled Coke and a Sunbeam honey bun. But if you were going, you better get there by sundown, because they closed early just like everything else. Growing up here was inconvenient at times.

Everybody I knew went to church on Sunday morning. We prayed before the high school football games and before we sat down to eat. To a lot of folks today that might seem a little backward. But I didn't think so then, and I don't think so now.

It seemed like the whole town was at the county fair. If you brought your ticket stub from the high school football game on Friday night, you got in free. They had bingo every night of the fair starting at 8. I remember for the first few years, Mom wouldn't let me play. It was too close to gambling, I guess.

Growing up here, you knew all your neighbors. They knew your business and you knew theirs. You knew the cops in town and more importantly, they knew your parents. And if you got in trouble at school, somehow your momma found out about it before you even got home.

I can't remember the first time I had a glass of sweet tea, but I sure remember my first taste of unsweet. I recall countless evenings playing out in the yard or at someone else's house in the neighborhood, and our parents calling us home when it was time eat.

We shot off fireworks in the backyard on the 4th of July, and usually the 2nd and 3rd and 5th, too. Not once did the neighbors ever complain. A lot of times they'd even come out to watch. Everybody handed out candy on Halloween, except for one lady who always handed out fruit.

Growing up here, we never locked our car doors. It's just something you never thought about. I remember my parents did neighborhood watch one summer when I was little. About the most exciting thing that ever happened was somebody's cow getting out, inside the city limits of course.

There were rocking chairs on porches, clothes out on the line, and miles and miles of cotton fields. Every so often you were bound to get behind a tractor going down the road. But not to worry, he'd eventually wave you around when it was clear.

There was a hardware store, a furniture store and two drug stores on the town square, and a barber shop with a barber shop pole. Everybody would throw up a hand when they passed you driving down the street, even when you had no idea who they were. People would bring over fresh vegetables they'd picked from their garden. And the women would cook and take food when someone got bad sick.

I don't live in that town anymore, but I never strayed very far away, either in body or soul. And when I drive by that sleepy little brick house with the blue shutters, gravel driveway, and the back screen door which seemed to squeak louder the later it was, I find myself missing so many things.

I guess growing up here wasn't all that bad.

"Erwin Nichols there with Judge Lee playin' checkers at the gin. When I dream about the Southland this is where it all begins..."

Four cardboard boxes

This weekend I embarked on a project I had been putting off for... let's see, I've lived here nearly four years, so... nearly four years: Cleaning out the office.

Wait, it gets even more exciting.

The office--AKA my spare bedroom--houses my workstation, two bookshelves containing among other things my Cheers trivia game, my old computer desk which has been turned into more shelf space, my old computer, some mostly unpacked luggage, an ironing board which is half covered with articles of clothing which I would estimate number around twenty mostly consisting of long-sleeved shirts still unironed from last winter, and last and most obstructively, four boxes that had been sitting along the north wall of the room since I moved in.

Trust me, it was messier than it sounds.

The centerpiece of this undertaking were the four boxes. Like a cardboard Stonehenge, they served as a constant reminder to all who entered--which was mostly just me--of my procrastination. This was not a task that I fancied (as evidenced by said procrastination).

And so with a modicum of determination, I opened the first box. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a regular-sized sled and five well-kempt New Kids--on the cover of my New Kids On The Block Christmas cassette!


(Counter-clockwise from bottom: Joey, Danny, Donnie, Jordan, and Jon--he's a Sagittarius.)

I had been looking for this for years! And now the search for a working cassette player begins.

Well, things were really looking up. So after opening the case, browsing through some of the lyrics and singing a few bars of "This One's For The Children," I proceeded.

The first box contained the usual things you would expect to find in storage: books, TV Guides, an unopened envelope which when opened revealed a thank you card for a graduation gift I had given... in 1993.

Also included were several of my folders and notebooks from college. Inside those were literally hundreds of lyrics that I had scribbled down, notes that I had passed back and forth with a girl in Music Theory freshman year, and lists. Lots and lots of lists.

There was a list of the 42 most fun days in high school, a list of 29 apartment rules that I'm pretty sure I made well before I ever had an apartment, and a list of a thousand songs that I had made out when Little Joe bet me that I couldn't name a thousand songs. Won myself ten bucks. Not bad for nineteen pages, handwritten, front and back.

There was also a list of 75 qualities to look for in a girl. It began with the line, "The perfect girl to marry would be a girl who..." These ideal qualities included:

#3. likes the Naked Gun movies.
#8. has a good, nice plump but not too big butt.
#14. likes Married...With Children. (Clearly, a few of these are still applicable.)
#16. has heard of Tom T. Hall. (That always knocked a lot of girls out as I recall.)
#19. doesn't eat a lot.
#35. would rather watch an Alabama football game than have sex. (Well, that goes without saying.)
#44. doesn't call your car a grocery carrier. (A definite deal breaker.)
#46. always cuts the grass. (It's possible that I was watching too much Married... With Children at the time.)
#72. knows how to play rock, paper, scissors. (The foundation of any solid relationship.)
And #'s 10, 17, 25, 32, 42, 51, and 57: looks like Brandy. (I may have had a crush.)

You know, compared to this, I actually seem mature now. Me! I know, scary.

And then there was the top secret Top Fifty list, typed out and dated, 3/17/94. This was a list of the fifty hottest girls we knew, compiled by LJ, Ben, me and my ex-roommate late one night at a Motel 6. The rules were that at least two of the four of us had to have seen the girl, and at least one of us had to be able to talk to her. We stayed up until at least 2 or 3 AM finishing the list. I still remember us tossing a Nerf basketball and hitting Ben as he kept trying to fall asleep before the list was done. Afterward we swore each other to secrecy. So, I'm not even really supposed to be telling you any of this.

Wow, I feel like I just betrayed the divine secret of the ya-ya brotherhood, whatever that is.

There weren't too many noteworthy items in the rest of the boxes: three bicycle inner tubes for the bike I no longer have, at least five shirts and two pairs of pants I had received as gifts that still had the tags on them, and a Tupperware container of chocolate candy. Let me reiterate here. Four. Years.

Still, I pressed on, sifting through the pieces of my past, cringing at some items, laughing at others. And then it happened, I found the proverbial crown jewel of my excursion. Behold, the jam shorts I sewed in 8th grade in Home Ec:



I still remember going with Mom to pick out the fabric, which to this day is the only time I've ever been inside a fabric store. I remember realizing too late that I had sewn in the elastic waistband all twisted--which is probably a good thing because as a guy, you don't wanna be too good at Home Ec. And from the looks of the nearly worn-through seat area, I must have worn them a lot. Which could help explain my girlfriend drought which extended into 9th grade.

My office is much cleaner now, the four cardboard boxes having been condensed down to a single plastic tub. I threw a lot of stuff away this weekend, and will be taking some more to Goodwill. But on the bottom shelf of one of the bookshelves is a shoebox with a couple of folders in it.

"Remember when we said, girl, please don't go, and how I'd be loving you forever? Taught you 'bout hangin' tough, as long as you got the right stuff..."

"Some of it's magic, some of it's tragic"

"A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile..."

I had the Thriller LP growing up. Vinyl. 33 1/3 RPM. Played it so much that it skipped terribly. Still I continued to listen so often that I knew all the places it skipped and could still sing right along without missing a beat. Well, without missing any additional beats.

By the time Bad was released, I had progressed to cassettes, and bought it the first day it came out. I transcribed the lyrics to every song onto loose leaf notebook paper and I'm sure I had them all memorized within a week.

I know I've mentioned this before, but as a kid, I would imitate Michael Jackson at holidays and family gatherings. Mom would put on the Thriller album. I would leave the room, wait for the music to start, and emerge with a dizzying array of movements and yelps.

I had a Michael Jackson poster hanging in my room. Specifically, this one. In sixth grade, I begged for and got a zippered pleather jacket. I also may or may not have tried to go to school multiple mornings wearing just one glove. One black glove, as Mom wouldn't buy me a white sequined glove.

When I was 12 or 13, I won tickets from a radio station to The Jacksons Victory Tour in Knoxville. Mom and I rode a chartered bus six hours one way with all the other winners. I don't remember a lot about that concert, but I remember that I was there. I got to see him.

In later years, I remained a fan of his music. I vividly remember when I was a Freshman in college, seemingly every morning for weeks, the same car would drive down the road in front of the student center blaring "Remember The Time." I bought the History double album. And several years later, I got the Number Ones CD for Christmas.

I never thought about how I would feel if Michael Jackson died. Even when I first turned on the TV Thursday afternoon, after I'd awoken from a nap to a voice mail from Mom telling me the news, I still wasn't sure how I would or should feel.

Then after a few minutes and with no warning whatsoever, tears came. And I knew. I felt sadness. Nothing but deep sadness.

For the rest of Thursday night and part of Friday, at random times I would find myself on the verge of tears, having to gather myself for a couple of seconds before I could speak. I wondered why this was affecting me so much.

I think almost as much as his death, I mourn because of sad and troubled his life so often seemed. And maybe selfishly, I also mourn the loss of a part of my youth.

Michael Jackson was my generation. His star burned as bright and white hot as any ever did. He was our Elvis. When a star like that burns out, there is darkness--an empty space that is never filled. And also the reminder of our own mortality.

But before that, there was music. And moonwalking.

And it was magic.

"I spread my wings for greener pastures. I still ain't found what I was after. I got the blues and that is why I sing. I just want to do my thing. I'm goin' back to Indiana. Indiana, here I come..."

Great moments in Bone sports history

I believe it was William Shakespeare who wrote: "Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." (Actually, I thought it was Kennedy. But evidently not, according to Google.) But I am here to tell you that deep down, most men measure their own greatness by athletic achievement.

Why else would aging athletes keep hanging on or coming out of retirement for one more year? What else could drive men to bowl in a league every Wednesday morning until they're 80? And why else would Huey Lewis & The News have released an album entitled Sports, when none of the songs on the album have anything to do with sports? (Seriously, I really would like to know this. Wikipedia doesn't say.)

With all that in mind, today I will attempt to countdown the top four moments of Bone's athletic career. I was gonna do a top five or ten, but I didn't want the post to be too long. Plus, I could only really think of four. So come along on a magical journey through some of the greatest sports moments you've never heard of. I have a feeling this post will help explain so much.

4. Scoring 26 points in a basketball game - It was my senior year of high school. And what a way to go out. A career-high 26 points. I was en fuego! OK, so it was a church league basketball game. Actually, a preseason church league game. But still, everyone was trying their best! Also I should get bonus points since I did it in those frighteningly short Larry Bird shorts, which were still somewhat prominent in 1991.

3. The race - As some of you know, I am a bit of a runner. How one determines what classifies "a bit" of a runner, I do not know. But nevertheless. How successful has my running career been? Suffice it to say that I've gotten my name in the paper a few times.... along with everybody else who finished the race.

But it all started in middle school. It was the Presidential Fitness Run. The distance was one mile, which was four laps around the orange cones that Mister Stanley, the PE teacher, had set up on the playground. I was running a solid third the entire race--not showing off, not lagging behind--and was pretty much resigned to finishing there. But as I approached the start/finish line to complete my third lap, I saw the two guys ahead of me inexplicably slow to a walk and then a complete stop.

As I zoomed by, I glanced back at them, wondering if they were tired or if maybe I had miscounted the laps. I could see Mister Stanley say something to them, then they started to run after me. I hadn't miscounted, they had! Buoyed by my unbelievable luck, I could not be caught. I won! And from that day on, a myth began to grow about my speed. OK, not really, but it's a great line.

2. The big mud volleyball tournament - In olden times, my friend Ben would attend church from roughly March through July so that he would be eligible to play on the church softball team. Well, one of those months in one of those years, some people from his church decided to get up a team and enter a local mud volleyball tournament. Needing one more player, he gave me a call and as fate would have it, not only was I home, but I didn't have any plans.

The other teams were about equally made up of guys and girls. But our team was composed of five guys--none of whom had ever played organized volleyball--and one girl, who happened to be the volleyball coach at the local high school. It was kinda like a bad volleyball reality show, but with the attractive scantily clad female aspect of Dog Eat Dog.

We came. We played. We got mud on our face and on our clothes. In our hair and in between our toes. And our team finished second. That was out of four. But finishing second alone would not have made this one of the four greatest moments in Bone sports history. Oh who am I kidding, sure it would have. But what elevates it all the way to number two status is what happened next.

A girl on the team we lost to in the finals was standing there talking smack about their victory. So I crossed under the net and proceeded to tackle her gently in the mud. Then some of the girls led us into the woods to a creek where we all hopped in. I had never played mud volleyball before, and never did again, but to this day that still might be the most fun I have ever had.

1. Bone on ice It was my very first time ice skating. I was in high school. What, I was a late bloomer, OK? Anyway, I wasn't doing so well. The first trip around the rink, I must have fallen at least twenty times. Every time I'd let go of the rail, down I went. About a quarter of the way through my second lap, I had just fallen again. Before I could get up, I heard this angelic voice ask, "Need some help?"

I looked up and saw two girls standing there smiling at me. Or giggling at me, whichever. They helped me up and with one girl taking each arm, proceeded to skate me around for the rest of the night.

Can there be any doubt that was the greatest moment of my athletic career?

I would like to be able to tell you that I got their numbers. But it was not to be, for I did not ask. (This was pre-What Would Brian Boitano Do, so I was lost.) That's what makes this such an inspirational, yet tragic tale. It's kinda like in The Natural when Robert Redford hits the homerun, then dies at home plate. Or am I remembering that wrong?

This concludes our countdown of the greatest moments in Bone sports history. I hope these memories have helped to entertain and inspire each of you. Until next time, keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.

Unless you're like in a planetarium. That would just look stupid.

"Glory days, well they'll pass you by. Glory days, in the wink of a young girl's eye..."

Growing up cousins

Now that I think about it, it only makes sense that fave aunt would beget fave cousin. Though I had other cousins closer in age, he was the one I spent the most time around growing up.

It probably didn't hurt that fave aunt always lived in the coolest houses. There was a ranch house with a huge backyard that sloped away like it was specifically designed for a Slip 'n Slide. There was a two-story house with a glassed-in kitchen that overlooked a bluff.

But my favorite of all was another two-story house with a staircase on each end, so that you could run in a complete circle--up the stairs on one end, down the hall and through two rooms on the second floor, then down the stairs on the other end--without stopping. Although I'm sure that's not why it was designed like that.

Upstairs was fave cousin's room, where we spent countless hours playing RBI Baseball, Commando, Rush'n Attack, and other Nintendo games until our thumbs blistered, and then we played some more. There was also the exercise room, which contained the pinball machine.

There was an open field adjacent to the house where we'd take turns riding his 50cc motorcycle. There was a trampoline in the front yard and a pool out back. I remember so many summer mornings fave aunt cooking eggs, bacon, gravy, and fried bologna for breakfast. And putting Karo Syrup on my biscuits, as we ate in the dining room looking out the windows at the pool, sparkling and ever so enticing. That's where I learned to swim.

Fave cousin and I always seemed to be into most of the same things. Nintendo, baseball cards, WWF (back when it was real), and wiffle ball, to name a few. He was five years my junior, and I guess he looked up to me, though I didn't know it at the time. I remember years later, he told me that when we'd play basketball, he thought I was as good as Michael Jordan. In his defense, I did imitate His Airness by sticking my tongue out when I played. Also, I had some game.

As it invariably does, time began to change things it has no business messing with. I vividly remember sometime after I turned sixteen, fave cousin wanting to come over and spend the night one weekend when I had a date. He came over anyway and stayed with Mom and Dad until I got home. I don't think he understood. Or maybe it was me who didn't understand. But that was the beginning of the end of something.

A tornado came through and ripped part of the roof off that two-story house and destroyed the trampoline. A fire a few years later took care of the rest. I don't get out that way much, but when I do, I always glance over where that house once stood and miss that part of my life.

Fave cousin and I grew older and both kinda did our own thing. We still managed to hang out occasionally. We've golfed together a few times and even gone to a Bama game or two over the years. And though I'm sure I've fallen a few notches from the Jordan-esque image he once had of me, I've always been proud of him. Even if I've never told him.

This past Sunday, we had a going away gathering for fave cousin. He's decided to join the Army. He leaves next Monday.

As I have been remembering these things--things that still seem so vivid and so close--I am simply blown away by the passing of time.

Sometimes it felt as if life was a ride in the back of a pickup truck going sixty miles an hour down the highway. And time was the wind, whizzing by, taking your breath away. And once in awhile, you'd stick out your hand to try and catch it.

But you can never catch it.

"It almost seems like yesterday. Where do the good times go? Life was so much easier twenty years ago..."

"I have waited for tomorrow from December 'til today..."

Sleep never came easy for me on Christmas Eve. The excitement and anticipation of Christmas morning was just too much. Every creak, every thud, every noise sounded exactly like sleigh bells or reindeer hooves or someone on the roof. One year, I know I must have gotten out of bed five times, walked into the living room in my baby blue Dallas Cowboys pajamas and told Mom I couldn't sleep.

I was always the kid who woke everyone else up on Christmas morning. Well most years. One particular Christmas, I remember I got out of bed at 1:30 in the morning. I'm still not sure I fell asleep at all that night.

My "big" gift that year was a little mini Casio keyboard. It had four settings: piano, flute, violin, and something called fantasy. I turned the volume on the lowest setting and sat on the couch and played with it until everyone else woke up. I think Dad was the first to venture into the living room that morning, around 5:30.

I was afraid my parents might be upset. Normally they liked to watch as we found what Santa had left us scattered around the living room. But Dad didn't seem to mind. Then again, I was fourteen.

For awhile, my sister would tell me to wake her up on Christmas morning. But that only lasted a few years. Then she got too old. But I never did.

I still find it hard to go to sleep on Christmas Eve. Back then, it was the anticipation. Now it's because I don't want it to end. That magical feeling of Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.

When you're a kid, those first twenty-four days of December seem to take forever. And when it's over, the next Christmas seems a hundred years away. The years pass a lot faster these days. Still, for just a little while tonight, I wish that I could stop time. It all goes by so fast.

Or maybe I'm still just a kid.

Merry Christmas, from my home to yours...


(Bone's Christmas tree and presents, circa 2008.)

"I'm as slow as christmas. I'll be up before the dawn. I'm not gonna miss this. I know that old saying's wrong. Every Christmas day makes every other day seem long. And what seemed would never get here has so quickly come and gone..."

The Great Sibling Experiment Of 1980

Today is my sister's birthday. I should know. Twenty-eight years ago today, I spent the wee morning hours in the ER waiting room, puking my guts out. (At this point, it strikes me that if I truly desire to someday be a writer I should probably come up with a better phrase than "puking my guts out.")

Anyway, in honor of Sister Bone--as she is known in blogging circles--I proudly present this edition of Sibling Memories. It's sorta like home videos for the blog. Enjoy, and thanks again for having internet.

One of the first memories that comes to mind is the Telecommunications Treaty of 1987. This was where my Dad, in a sudden burst of King-Solomon-esque cut-the-baby-in-half wisdom, ruled that on odd numbered days my sister would get to watch what she wanted on TV. And on even numbered days, I could watch what I wanted.

In time, I realized that in months having thirty-one days, Sister Bone would get control over the TV on back-to-back days (I never watched so much Full House in my life), making this treaty completely unfair. Still, it remained binding under the reign of Dad The First and was quite inconvenient, at least until I starting driving and working and wasn't home as much.

Zoom forward to the Fourth of July, 1989. I was going to pick up my uncle and aunt who didn't have a car and bring them back to our house for the holiday festivities. Sister Bone and two of my younger cousins were in the car with me so that I could show off my new driving abilities.

Soon after I put the car in reverse, we felt a jolt and heard the sound of crunching metal. I had backed into Mom's car. Terrified, I cautioned everyone in the car not to say anything until I figured out what to do. You know, because as long as no one told her, Mom surely wouldn't notice the huge dent in her driver's side door for weeks. Before I even got the words out of my mouth, Sister Bone was out of the car and running inside to tell on me.

Needless to say, no one was happier than me when Sister Bone's tattling phase finally ended, also known as the day she turned twenty-two. I really did enjoy having a sibling, though. So much so that I distinctly remember several times after Sister Bone was born begging Mom and Dad to have me a baby brother.

All along the way, we engaged in high-level psychological warfare. One of my favorites was when Dad would tell us we were not to touch each other. I would put my hands ever so close to Sister Bone's face and taunt her repeatedly with the words, "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you." (You may have heard other kids using this, but I assure you I invented it.)

In turn, she would whine to Dad, "He's looking at me." And then I would be told that I was not to look at her. Thinking back sometimes, I'm amazed Dad The First didn't abdicate the throne.

Of course, times weren't always so good. There was the day I was playing a pickup football game and ran head first into the goalpost. I had a slight concussion and had to stay overnight in the hospital. A few weeks later, I found a letter Sister Bone--probably fourteen at the time--had written to me in a spiral notebook. All about how she missed me and was worried about me. I know, how mushy, right?

Sometimes I don't think a brother realizes what he means to his sister. And probably vice versa.

Happy birthday, sis. This concludes year twenty-eight of the Great Sibling Experiment of 1980. If Sister Bone read that line, she would probably say something like, "You're so weird." To which I would promptly reply, "I know you are but what am I."

"Or maybe head up north, to Knoxville, Tennessee. I know my baby sister has got a couch where I can sleep..."

A bachelor looks at thread count

"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?" ~ Ernest Hemingway

I think I may have made a big mistake.

I purchased some new sheets this past weekend. They were of the higher thread count, extra soft variety. And now all I want to do is lie in bed. Granted, that's mostly all I wanted to do before, but now it's even worse.

Have I ever shared with you my deep affection for sleep? I love sleep. Literally love it. I think I could marry sleep. Really. I'd have no problems with the vows. In sickness and in health? Till death do us part? Please. I sleep when I'm sick. I sleep when I'm well. I'll sleep till I'm dead. I'll sleep dressed in red, said Fred.

Sleep and I have had a long relationship. At times we've been almost inseparable. When I was little--and by little I mean between the ages of seven and eighteen--it was so difficult to wake me that my mother resorted to dripping icy cold water on my face. In thirty-five years, n'er a day has passed that sleep and I haven't spent time together. I thought I knew love, er, sleep. But I didn't know anything until I met these extra soft high thread count sheets.

To me, sheets were always kinda like underwear. Just something to help keep you from getting itchy. Often, my parents would get me some for Christmas. And when I did buy my own, I went for the lowest price. After all they were just sheets, right? Oh, how naive I was.

Now, it's like sleeping on a happy, fluffy, velvety cloud in a Bob Ross painting. No, make that a velvety fog. Yes, that's it. It's like sleeping on Mel Torme's voice. Sometimes I just lie in bed and run my hands all over her, I mean, them. Throw in a new foam mattress pad and it's a horizontal Xanadu!

I may never get out of bed again, save to golf and work and go to Bama games. And work would totally be negotiable except that's the only way I can afford to do the other two. And by can, I mean, can't really but do anyway. The only thing that bothers me is that I'm just now discovering this. I've basically deprived myself of thirty-five years of velvet fog sleep that I can never get back.

Well, here's to making up for lost time. As if it wasn't hard enough for me to get out of bed in the morning already.

"I've been a-waiting for you most of my life. Now that we're together and we're where we belong, I can't help but wonder why, why did it take so long?"