Remeber the Titans- The Sham-Na-Pum edition

It’s so funny about time - you get into these nice little grooves with people you love, and you think it’ll go on forever. But time goes so fast, and nothing goes on forever.”

Henry Winkler

At the beginning of the movie Remember the TItans, a legendary High School football team gets together to remember a teammate who has tragically passed away. It's a nice scene and there is singing and all the rest of it. But it also captures a different kind of feeling when you see someone you haven't seen in a while that used to be a huge part of your life. That simultaneous feeling of being a brother and a stranger at the same time. I recently thought about this when I read my old pal Nate Lee had died. He was one of the kindest, sweetest guys you could ever meet.

You see, once upon a time, I inhabited a time and a place still frozen in time in my memory called Sham-Na-Pum golf course. It really wasn't much of a course. Just a flat patch of land off the side of a busy road.

But I can tell you with my hand placed firmly on my heart, that the Shenanigans that went on here would make Caddyshack look like a movie about choir boys. One way or another, we would have to GET ourselves to the course. Most of us rode our bikes, some relied on parents, and a couple of older kids had cars. Much like any hierarchy, it was tough to break in with the older guys. One of the initiation rituals involved pushing the outhouse adjacent to the 6th hole over. But more on that later. In the summer, the logistics of our day meant getting to the course sometime in the morning, and we would remain there until well after dark most days. And of course SOME of what we did was play golf. After all, we were there for like 16 hours. And we even got pretty good at it. There was a state championship in there, several guys who went on to be golf pros, and plenty of individual accolades. And we were extremely competitive, but that was certainly not the only vibe going on. Like any good 80's movie will tell you, the gang of misfits always needs an enemy. And boy did we find plenty. These enemies primarily consisted of the people trying to keep the golf course running smoothly, namely the greenskeepers and the golf pros. They would give us serious speeches about character and golf being a "gentleman's game." And we would arrive at their homes in the middle of the night with toilet paper and eggs. I remember once reading an article by one of the world's great golf writers called "The Glory Game at Goat Hills." He recounted stories of playing the course backwards and 16 guys teeing off in the same group, etc. Again, it seemed pretty tame compared to the things we would get up to. My friend Nate was the youngest and newest member of the group, somewhat affectionally named "thin" Lee. He had not yet "made his bones" by tipping the outhouse over, but he seemed to be one of us, and the time was coming. Now you might ask yourself, what would possess a group of young men to continually knock down an outhouse that was there for other's convenience? As a mostly continent middle-aged man, I can certainly see the utility of this feature on a golf course. But as a 16-year old who regularly played with 50-something year-old men known for discussing the intricacies of their digestive issues? That shit wasn't on. Literally or figuratively. The large group we played with was called the "Gangsome," and consisted mainly of these older cranky guys discussing said bowel movements. The whole group was full of characters. There was Bill Norton, who always had a bottle of Schnapps in his bag and was happy to share despite our poverty of age. He always got more cross-eyed as the round went on. There was Bob Ibatuan, who golf cart was equipped like Al Czervik, the rich millionaire from Caddyshack (there was liquor in there as well). There was "Rod" who would become enraged if the group in front of him was playing too slowly and explode, which we did everything in our power to encourage. And at the top of the enemies list was Les, who was an extremely slow player who was in the habit of sitting on his putter. And I don't mean leaning on it. That thing went in deeper than a doctor giving a proctology exam. He was at the top of a (long) nemesis list. Anyway this ragtag group of 30 or so would gather on Saturday and Sunday mornings and split into teams. One day Nate and I were in a group with the aforementioned Les, when we saw him walk over to the miraculously standing outhouse (it was almost never standing). I knew this would slow down our already tedious pace, and I looked over at Nate and gave him the nod. "You know what you have to do now Cowboy," I said. And Nate's eyes lit up, and I swear he would have knocked that outhouse over with Les in it if I hadn't stopped him. So we came back later and finished the job. Hearing Les and another old Pepto guy talking about how those damn kids "knocked it over" again brought us some satisfaction. No more dumps on the 6th hole when we are trying to play quickly. it was like a Sicilian message. After that, something in Nate changed. He went from being that little kid always looking up to the older kids, to a very good golfer, to someone who eventually competed in the state championships two years in a row. Now I'm not suggesting knocking over the outhouse gave him some kind of magical powers. But I'm also not, not suggesting that either. Looking back on those days, I think now about all of us at the same age as those old men we used to torture. Probably with the same leaky bowels and enlarged prostates. Life has a way of reminding you of the shit you've done. But beyond all of the endless pranks, what I will really remember from those years is what it feels like to have that level of friendship with someone. I am reminded of a quote from the movie Stand by Me, where the narrator poses the question, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”

And so of course I feel sadness for the loss of my friend. We lost touch, like we promised not to do. As Joni Mitchell once so eloquently said, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot. 

And in our case this was literally true. It turned out our little paradise sat on valuable real estate, and what was once our eternal summer playground was turned into a series of high-end restaurants and hotels. Sure there's still a golf course there, but it's nothing like it used to be.

Nothing ever is.

But anyway, goodbye Nate. Know that you occupy a place in my heart and imagination that is eternal. 

Those were the days my friend. 

Sledding on Carmichael Hill and "Life in a Northern Town."

 It's funny how when you're a kid, a day can last forever. Now, all these years seem just like a blink.

Bobby Garfield- Hearts in Atlantis

This is my ninth year in hot weather Christmas land. Instead of snow and sledding they do beaches and BBQ. They say you eventually get used to it, but I never have. If I close my eyes I can still remember winter in my hometown like it was yesterday. There was a lovely song once upon a time called, “Life in a Northern Town” that described it well. Snow, ice and cold for three months that the adults complained about and the kids dreamed about.


Fresh snow brought a world of possibilities for a kid in my town.


Pictured above is Carmichael Hill. It might not look like much, but for kids in my town it was the hotspot of winter activities. Even the least religious kids prayed for a snow day back then. It meant school was cancelled and you could grab your saucer or sled or even Black garbage back and make your way to Carmichael Hill.

That’s not to say you didn’t have to tread carefully. Much like the arcade or the 7/11 parking lot, there was a hierarchy here and you had to know your place. A wrong step out of line could still mean being pegged with an icy snowball or having your face rubbed in the snow.


There were “jumps” that were constructed that were a measure of both your skill level as a sledder as well as your tolerance for fear. You started with the little jumps, and for some people that was as far as they ever progressed. Those kids probably grew up to be insurance agents, carefully tolerating risk and reward.


But for the rest of us, the big jump was where the action was.




 Now that’s not to say you could just point your saucer at the big jump and go. Remember I talked about the hierarchy? Well that applied to the jumps as well. The bullies got to eat first, and if you were lucky enough to get your shot at the big jump, you better grab for the brass ring.


I remember one winter when I was about 11, I decided my time was come. I had already run afoul of some of the aforementioned bullies (I had a big mouth even back then), and I can remember this particular scene like it was yesterday.

it was the first snowfall of the season. Early that year. Around Thanksgiving. There was at least 6 inches of powder on the hill that day and every kid within three towns was at Carmichael Hill that day.


“Look you little shits,” the head bully announced. (Bullies made announcements back then.) “We built the big jump and it’s not for you little kids to be playing on. You’d probably just go home crying to your mommies anyway.”


“Anyone who goes down the big jump before we’re done, is fucking dead!”


Well that certainly sounded ominous.


 And yet…


Whenever I’ve heard such things in my life, it just makes me want to do that thing more. This was no exception.


So when I took off down that hill it was from nowhere near the actual jump site. No, I was like a second tier marathon runner pushed to a different starting area than the big boys.


But I was undeterred.


My friends gave me one last, “are you sure you want to do this?” speech, and then wound me up for a push. Knowing they too may be in line for a beating for aiding and abetting.


To quote the movie “Stand by Me,”


 “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”


And down the hill I went. I could see one of the teenagers with blackened teeth had launched at approximately the same moment, and I needed to make up some time. I began turning my sled at an extreme angle, nearly falling off any number of times. And then the moment arrived.


And this jump WAS big. Much bigger than I even imagined. I saw Black teeth was going to arrive at the jump at about the same time, and made a mental note that was going to be trouble.


But I was committed now.


I saw my nemesis mouthing the words “fuckkkk youuuuu” as he hit the jump sideways and immediately crashed. But me? I I hit that jump perfectly flush and flew.




 I was flying, actually flying!




 Terrifying, exhilarating, soon to be crashing, flying….

And as much as I would like this to be a perfect “stick the landing” story like one of those Russian girls from the winter Olympics, I cannot.

I went crashing, and rolling, gathering snow as I went like a giant iceball.


There was snow in every crevice of my body.


But it turns out that was the least of my problems. Everyone had seen how much more “air” (that was how success was measured in this world), than the bully, and was pointing and laughing.

And again, I’d like to tell you this story ended with me delivering a beating to the much bigger bully like Ralphie in “A Christmas  Story.”


But alas, I cannot.


My face and a patch of “yellow” snow soon became intimately acquainted with the help of Black teeth.


Totally worth it though.


I recently caught up with a friend overseas and we were talking about our childhoods. Sledding, “hooky-bobbing,” which involved grabbing the back of a moving car and then “riding” down the ice until you inevitably fell.


It’s hard to even imagine in today’s world. I googled “Carmichael Hill” recently and read about a bunch of people filing lawsuits because their kids had been injured.

THAT'S a world I can easily imagine.


But with the right kind of eyes, I can still remember that day. That time. That place.


Life in a Northern Town.


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Catholic Kids and Meatless Fridays.

Mickey Fitzpatrick: Why are you getting so upset Dad? You don't even believe in God.”

-Mr. Fitzpatrick: That doesn't mean I'm going to stop being a good Catholic!!!”

~From the movie, “She’s the one.”

Things are a little more lax today when it comes to church. Especially for Catholics. When I was a VERY young child, the original masses were in Latin. And that wasn’t even the end of it. You had to put on this monkey suit on Sundays and it was hot and unpleasant and stiff.

A couple of years ago, I went to mass for the first time in a very long while. The kids were wearing tank tops and hoodies.



They will never know the pain of those monkey suits.

One other pain was going without meat on Fridays during Lent. 40 days of meatless Fridays. Yes, that was a thing. And for the Catholics before my time, going without meat on ALL Fridays was a thing.

Seriously, you had to pick FRIDAY (Vatican) guys?

Now many people today might not think this is a big deal. Half the people I know don’t eat meat these days. But it’s important to put this in its historical context. There weren’t exactly vegan restaurant options back in those days. EVERYTHING had meat in it. And, as if the red meat wasn’t enough, there were smoking sections right in the restaurant where you could have your food with the added bonus of some old sea-hag blowing the smoke from her Virginia Slims right in your face.

But overall, we did alright. Kids were a lot thinner than they are now. Most of the water we drank came straight from the hose. You used to have to let it run for a second or you were mostly just drinking straight rust.



But like I say, we managed.

At first, I liked Fridays, because it meant we could go to one of my favorite places in town called “Skippers.” Everything there was fried. Even if it had no business being anywhere near a deep fryer, they threw it in there anyway. As an added bonus, they had all you can eat fish and chips on Fridays, which, as a growing boy, was right up my alley.

 

Until that fateful day.

I should have mentioned, you could also get clam chowder with your fish and chips as an ad-on, which I always did. That stuff was like liquid gold. Miraculously, there are still a few Skipper’s locations scattered around the Pacific Northwest, and when I visit I will often go hundreds of miles out of my way to procure some.

But I digress, back to the story.



On this day, a woman I considered my personal nemesis was working the clam chowder kettle. She was in her fifties and LOOKED like she came straight from the sea. She had large jowls and a permanent scowl on her face that never changed. She frowned upon young scalawags like myself who took advantage of the all you can eat process, and she let out a long sigh every time I came back for more.



But really it was her arms that were her most distinguishing feature. They hung loose and low beneath her uniform sleeves, and there was at least a foot of skin that hung beneath the bone.

Do you see where this is going?


Anyway, on this fateful day, I looked up as she was ladling my clam chowder and saw that this loose skin on her arm was now resting directly in my bowl. I’ll never really know if she did it on purpose. Could she be that crazy? To scald herself with piping hot soup just to win a war with a 10-year-old kid over all you can eat refills?

I certainly thought so.

I’ve never been able to get that image out of my mind. I certainly could never eat at that particular Skippers again.



So we took the show on the road to McDonalds. But not “happy” McDonalds with Big Macs and cheeseburgers. Sad McDonalds. Filet-o-Fish McDonalds.

I really came to dread Lent after that. One time my mother (she still denies this) let the dog eat a cheeseburger in front of me while I suffered with the Filet-O-Fish in the back seat. Sometimes she would even cook frozen fish sticks, which were even worse. And, going to Catholic school, it’s not like you got a respite at lunch either. Nope. The lunch ladies were in on it too. Nothing but bad fried fish and bad attitudes from them as well.

It had been 30 years since I had a Filet-O-Fish, and, of all people, Donald Trump made me reconsider. He kept calling it the “fish delight” on TV and talking about how great it was. I figured if a guy that rich with that many personal chefs liked it, that maybe I missed something as a kid. Maybe I was just being spiteful. Defiant. A little shit.

So I went through the drive-thru and ordered one.

Nope. Still hot garbage.

May God have mercy on me for denigrating meatless Fridays.

You can’t see me, but I’m making the sign of the cross.

SPECTACLES, TESTICLES, WALLET, AND WATCH.

The Catholic kids will know what that means.

A trip to the arcade (a tale of the most pressure-packed moment of my life

Over the years, a narrative has developed that kids from this generation only want to stay at home and play their video games. I’m sure there is some truth to that. I remember when my mom scrimped and saved and we were finally able to buy an Atari. The first game was “Pong.” It was literally just one guy with a stick playing another guy with a stick batting a virtual ball back and forth.

But God help you if you tried to jump on the Atari when it wasn’t your turn. And since I was the oldest brother, God help you if you tried to jump on the Atari when it WAS your turn. It’s hard to describe the excitement we felt back then. This commercial highlights the idea. Sure this was a Nintendo 64 and a ways after MY time, but this kid captures the emotion perfectly of the thrill of getting your first game console as a child. 





 But even bigger than the Atari, was the arcade. If playing against your brothers in your room was AAA ball, the arcade was the show. The major leagues. Where the older boys in the neighborhood ruled the roost and presided over the rest of us little fish with their greasy hair, Member’s Only jackets and often short tempers and mean dispositions.






Much like adults jockey for social position in the world though their cars, boys from my generation were judged for their bikes. And the Ferrari at that time was the Mongoose. I remember Kurt Sedlacek (our neighborhood warden) riding up on his for the first time. He had a baseball card in the spokes and a “don’t touch my bike” sticker attached to the forks that you knew was an actual warning to us “kids.”

I had a Huffy. Certainly not the Cadillac of the bike world. More like the Ford Escort. But it got me around just fine, and I would always attempt the “jumps” the older kids would do so as not to appear chicken. This almost always resulted in a bloody crash and some kind of painful injury to the testicles.





But hey, it was better than being chicken.

After we had our Atari for a while, I finally got pretty good at Space Invaders, which was the biggest game in town at the time. I practiced all the time, day and night, trying to beat that game and I got pretty good from all that practice




But there was still a big difference between being good at home and competing underneath the big lights at the arcade. Lots of guys were good in Triple A, only to collapse under the pressure of playing with the bullies, teenagers, and Mongoose crowd at the arcade. And even if you DID somehow manage to get on the machines, there was still the problem of money. Games cost a quarter each to play, and it was an expensive lesson if you weren’t very good, as the games ended pretty quickly.



This problem was solved that August when I got a ten dollar bill in the mail from my grandparents down in Arizona. It was like a godsend. Up to that point it had just been socks and cards and school clothes for my birthday, and I was beginning to think I would never have the financial backing to make it to the show.



I remember that fateful Saturday like it was yesterday. I rode my bike up the street and saw the arcade. It was in the same complex where I got my hair cut by an old hatchet man named Wayne who simply chopped off all your hair. His only saving grace was that he also had Playboy magazines lying around the store, and I would always pray there would be a little waiting list when I arrived so I could catch up on my “reading” a little.


There was also Densow’s drugs, which was my family’s local pharmacy and where we also had a charge account where I could buy an occasional candy bar and charge it to my mom’s account. I always suspected she must have known and turned a blind eye. My mom knew how to pick her battles. 


On the day I pulled up, I saw the line of Mongoose bikes lined up on the rack and knew there would be some heavy competition around the day. There was always just the vaguest hint of violence in the air when you saw all these bikes in one place, and I felt my stomach drop a little as I locked up my bike and went inside.


There at the Space Invaders machine was Randy, the meanest, greasiest bully in the neighborhood. If Kurt Sedlacek was the warden, Randy was the crooked sheriff who was the real power in the town. He was at least five year’s older than I was, and always seemed to have an unlimited supply of quarters to play the games. I suspect he simply took them off the younger kids who he disliked (all of them), as he never seemed to run out of ammunition.


Courage man. You’ve prepared for this.



I walked up to the game and put my quarter on the top of the machine. That’s how you called “next” back in those days, and simply putting your quarter on the machine could be taken as a sign of aggression in many cases.

Randy looked me up and down with disdain, whipped out his can of Copenhagen and took a “dip” (Jesus, how old WAS he?) and told me,



“It might be a while.”


But finally the moment arrived, and Randy dropped his quarter in the machine and I took mine of the top off the game and dropped it in. Doubles. Me against Randy. Now normally when your quarter is up there, you are entitled to play by yourself when the other person’s game was over.



But this was not a conversation I was prepared to have with Randy. Doubles it was.



I could feel my heart racing as I took my turn at the console, somehow almost dying on level one although this was virtually impossible. Randy smirked and spit his tobacco into a cup. I had survived level one.



But Randy wasn’t smirking anymore when I finished the next nine levels.



A crowd had gathered around now, which was the ultimate sign of respect in an arcade. More Mongoose guys started to crowd into our space, with the younger kids my age (who Randy had no doubt terrorized) filling up the space behind them. I could feel them silently cheering for me (none of them would dare do it out loud) while Randy’s flying monkeys yelled things like “kick this little punk’s ass Randy” when it was his turn to play.



Back and forth we went like that for what seemed liked hours (it was probably like 20 minutes, but time is relative when you are a kid in an arcade). When we were both down to our last guy, Randy shot me a death stare that said it all. The angry sneer and exposed yellow teeth said, “If you beat me in front of all these people, you will never have another moment’s peace in the neighborhood ever again kid.”


This was a tough one.



To this day I’m not totally sure if I took a dive or not. Maybe it was the implied threat of violence, or maybe I had just cracked under the pressure. Randy won that game by the narrowest of margins. With his extra five years and unlimited quarters and greasy hair and yellow teeth. By the narrowest of margins, I had faced down the neighborhood bully and held my own.


It was a victory for the little Huffy guys everywhere. A moral victory, sure. But a victory nonetheless.



Randy was never quite the same with me after that, and mostly left me alone. I had earned his respect and maybe deep down he knew that match could have gone the other way. He left the neighborhood a couple of years after that and soon enough WE were the big kids in the hood. There were always predators on the periphery though. And if you went a block or two off your street there was always the chance you would be circled by guys on Mongooses. Probably seems like a small thing nowadays.



But it was pretty damn terrifying in the 80’s.



The arcade closed down as well. The 7/11 became the new spot for all the local greaseballs, and I turned my interest to other things. I went home a couple of years ago and everything looked totally different. Desnow’s Drugs was now “Densow's Medical Supplies” and Wayne the barber and his Playboys were long gone.



But with the right kind of eyes, I can still look back and see that arcade in all its glory. I can smell the musk of the dirty carpet floor. See those “spit cups” all around where the big boys spit there tobacco. A kid from this generation will never know the fear of walking up to an arcade game and putting your quarter on the machine. Nowadays you login, throw on a pair of headphones and insult each other’s mothers online instead. As Mike Tyson once said, “Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”


That would not have flown in the Randy era. And make no mistake, every neighborhood had a Randy. 



But I guess you can’t stop progress.

A thing about nostalgia

“It's funny how when you're a kid, a day can last forever. Now, all these years seem just like a blink.”
Hearts in Atlantis

"When you finally go back to your old hometown...you find it wasn't the old home you missed, but your childhood." 

--Sam Ewing.



I have a confession to make.



Sometimes, I'll wake up at 3 in the morning and jolt out of bed, wide awake.

I know what you're thinking. So what? You're old.



It's more than that though. This isn't about work or anxiety or worrying I forgot to take the garbage out or something. No, it's about something else. Something much more powerful.


My childhood. Vivid dreams, memories, and recollections of my youth.



And, despite the fact these memories are usually good ones, they are also kind of sad. Often times, I'll wake up and touch my face and check the mirror and make sure where I am. And there is always a tinge of sadness when I look up and see my middle-aged self looking back.


I've got a phrase for these moments.


Nostalgia attacks.


At first I saw these as negative experiences, but over the years I've begin to think about these memories in a different way. As Stephen King said so eloquently in Hearts in Atlantis, “Whenever it wants, the past can come kicking the door down. And you never know where it's going to take you. All you can do is hope it's a place you want to go.”

I've learned now to welcome these memories, as jarring as they may be. Sometimes it feels like a time machine has just taken me for a ride and then just violently dropped me back into my bed at 3 in the morning. But I've learned over the years to just take the ride.


In this blog, I'll be talking about some of these experiences in greater detail. The smell of the arcade. The excitement of a McDonald's birthday party. Sitting by the stereo waiting for your favorite song to come on so you could tape it. Little moments.


In the end, all of us are a sum of these little moments. I've come to understand it's a wonderful thing to share these memories with others and remember. I worked in nursing homes for years and "reminiscence" was a huge part of how we spent our time. I still remember learning about the "Dance Hall", where many of my residents would get dressed up in their best clothes and go to these giant halls to dance the night away. Many of them met their husbands and wives in this very way. And boy did their faces light up when they remembered these days!!

Wang Chung made a wonderful song about this called "Dance Hall Days." A song about the nostalgia of these Dance Halls that has somehow now become it's own kind of nostalgia. 

As a final reflection around nostalgia, I include this clip from "Mad Men" which many people are probably familiar with. It captures that longing for childhood memories and the corresponding sadness so beautifully. Many of the ideas in this clip were taken from a 1950's episode of the Twilight Zone called "Walking Distance" pictured here. 

TV writer's have their own nostalgia attacks. I'm sure of that. 


Looking forward to talking to you some more soon.