rustypants speaks

lise asked me this afternoon at lunch what the coolest thing my mom ever did for me when i was younger.

it surely wasn’t the coolest thing of all time, but the very first thing that popped into my mind was this:

when i was growing up and going to school K-4th grade, we lived under the 1 mile mark from school. this meant that we walked to school most days. not a big deal. i remember getting rides when weather was crummy and getting picked up, etc. but i remember walking to and from more often than not.

the one day that stands out took place back in 3rd grade - 1977. i remember leaving school and being surprised to see my mom’s car out front! she told me that she had a surprise and we had to get going… i smelled popcorn in the car and this was definitely strange.

we arrived at kenwood theater and mom bought tickets to see Oh, God! with george burns and john denver. she hid the paper bags of popcorn in her coat and in we went! i remember a couple of funny scenes from the movie but what i remember most was mom surprising me by picking me up from school and taking me to a movie in the middle of the day. it was exciting and fun - a real adventure and so out of the ordinary that it’s stuck with me ever since.

my mom is cool, what can i say?

it was almost 20 years ago when lise first invited me to her apartment and cooked me dinner.

i asked where the bathroom was. she told me it was down the hall.

she informed me that i was to put the seat down when finished or else.

and that has been the rule ever since.

i only broke it once. it only took once.

a year or so after we were married.

i was in the other room when i heard a short series of noises from the bathroom:

1. splash!
2. “arrrrgh!!”
3. *toilet lid slamming down*

as if the audio wasn’t convincing enough, the look on her face assured me that i’d not survive a second mistake.

driving was what we did. every weekend, sometimes both friday and saturday nights. pink floyd in the tape deck, a bag of chips, a couple cokes and the open road. we would intentionally go off and try to get lost on the backroads of clermont and adams counties in ohio. funny thing about that: when you do it for a couple years, it gets harder and harder to get truly lost.

but this post is about the day we got really stupid.

we were bored. it was summer. a saturday afternoon. the sun was out, it was warm, there was nothing to do. we hooked up early that day because we weren’t going to be able to go out that evening.

scott was driving that trusty old granada that had taken us so many miles down so many roads. we drove around for a while trying to think of something to do when he finally turned to me and said, “do you want to jump myrtle’s tit?”

well, this was a new one on me.

“myrtle’s tit? you get a girlfriend or something?”
“no, you dumbass,” he replied, using his hands to give a visual. “myrtle’s tit is a stretch of downhill road in anderson township that has a big bump halfway down it. you can jump it and go airborne!”
“woo-hoo! let’s do it!” was my response.

we arrive at the hill and sit at the top, making sure there’s no oncoming traffic before making the big run. coast is clear, we’re buckled in, tunes cranked, scott guns the engine, and we speed off.

now, i’ve heard of instances where people talk about life suddenly going in slow motion but it always sounded a bit fishy to me. this was the first time i ever experienced it myself and it was stunning.

we hit myrtle’s tit at a high rate of speed and the world slowed to a crawl. you feel the crunch of the road, see your knuckles white on the dashboard, feel the car going airborne as the back tires finally follow the front, severing contact with the pavement. time stretched and it felt like we must’ve been free falling for ten seconds or more. the adrenaline hits around this point, and you think you can do anything.

then the film speeds back up, the thud of 3156lbs of steel reestablishing ties to terra firma brings you back to your senses, and you let out a loud cry of victory and surprise - you left the full ashtray open, both of your cokes are uncapped, and your bag of doritos unsecured - all of these items now occupy space throughout the interior of the car.

we pulled off at the bottom to collect our wits, relive the excitement, and clean up our mess.

we drove a couple more hours that day, but we kept hearing this metallic ka-thunk-ing sound coming from the rear. we stopped to look several times but found nothing. it wasn’t until we got to east fork lake that scott finally realized what it was. we pulled over, walked to the back of the car, and took the hubcap off the passenger side rear tire.

the rattling ka-thunking? two of the lug bolts snapped off, the third one was stripped almost to the end, and the fourth one was quite loose. we’d been driving on essentially one lug bolt all day.

that was the beginning of the end of that sweet car. it didn’t last too much longer after that. but the memories of myrtle’s tit? they’ll last forever.

scott went into the air force right out of high school. that we kept in touch was pretty amazing, given both of our personalities and lack of letter-writing skills, but hey - we were best friends! (still are!)

so at some point, he’s stationed in okinawa, japan for the long haul. i was living in some crap apartment in mt. washington that had an annual fly problem that resulted in literally dozens and dozens of drunk flies that appear in the apartment, sit on the patio door for 2 days, and promptly die.

in a fit of brilliance, i scoop up a dozen or so dead flies, put them in a little tiny plastic baggie, stick it in an envelope with a note inside the baggie saying, “genuine ohio shitflies,” and send it off.

months later, i get a letter from scott telling me the reason it’s taken him so long to write was that he was imprisoned for introducing a foreign organic substance onto japanese soil, how this is illegal in that part of the world, and the consequences could have been worse.

and me - i stopped breathing for a minute and my heart skipped a couple beats. i was floored that i had gotten him into that much trouble sending him a baggie of joke shitflies.

at the end of the letter, knowing i’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, he tells me he’s “shitting” me and ha-ha-ha.

i’ve never been so relieved and so wanting to kill someone as at that exact moment.

we were seventeen years old. it was labor day weekend & scott’s parents were out of town. i “spent the night at scott’s house” and we, in turn, spent the night driving all over tarnation.

this was our usual routine on friday and saturday nights: scott comes and picks me up. we pick up a couple cokes, a bag of doritos, make sure one of us brought the pink floyd tapes, and hit the road, driving scott’s ‘77 ford granada through the backroads of clermont county, ohio and beyond until i had to be home.

but this night? it was the longest we’d been out driving ever. we took off around 7pm and drove all over clermont county, out to adams county, probably into brown county, and then decided to hit hamilton county. it’s probably 4 a.m. and we’re driving through delhi, where the hills are crazy big. we’re running on adrenaline and talking all kinds of silly crap.

we crest the hill and head down the steep ravine-like road when i spot a huge pile of trash sitting on the curb at the very bottom of this hill. the following conversation takes place:

me: …and you better watch out because if you hit that garbage at the bottom of the hill, it’ll be like, ‘BOOM!’ shit flies everywhere!!
him: shitflies? what are shitflies?
me: no, no - you hit that pile of garbage and shit… flies everywhere.
him: yeah, i heard you the first time, but what are shitflies? i’ve never heard of those.
me: no, dude - look… you’re driving down this hill and you run into that pile of trash. if you do that, shit will fly all over the place! shit - flies, not shitflies.

we give each other “the look” like the other is crazy, and bust out laughing. there are few times i can remember laughing so hard and re-telling it live is one of my favorite stories to share.

and the code word, to this day, is shit flies. or is it shitflies?

the wind was blowing like crazy that morning. the beach was deserted. the surf flag was red which means DANGER and DO NOT SWIM IN THE GULF. the sand was whipping around and stung my legs and most of the beach had been washed away by the storm the previous night. storm clouds were brewing still. it’s a rare sight to see pensacola beach emptied in early august.

i drove down to the dead-end just to watch the swirling & crashing waves for a while. on the way there, i passed a single vehicle. an SUV with Kansas plates was parked on the side of the road and an umbrella was in the middle of the beach, propped on it’s side against the onslaught of wind. driving slowly past, i see two folks huddled under the meager protection from the elements, a cooler between them and looking like they were having the time of their lives.

i smiled once as i crawled past because i realized that lise and i would have done the same crazy kind of thing.

i smiled twice because i could hear them saying to themselves, “dagnabbit, we drove all the way from kansas to sit on the beach, and come hell or high water, that’s what we’re doing!!”

we weren’t allowed to watch popeye…

 …but we had rock-em-sock-em robots.

when you’re the youth pastor at a predominantly african-american church, you come to appreciate the after-church lunches and potlucks more than you do in your traditional white churches.

white church potlucks are predictable affairs - lasagna, waldorf salad, baked beans, some kind of spaghetti cassarole, sandwich rollups bought at sam’s club, desserts bought at the local grocery store. it’s always good, but it’s rarely about the food and more about the company.

but when you hear that your local black baptist church is having a meal after morning service? oh, honey, you better be there! home-made fried chicken, hog maws, butter beans, cornbread, homemade macaroni and cheese, some kind of barbeque, home-cooked pies, cookies - oh, well, this is what i remember.

but my personal favorite dish at these meals was collard greens. the mouth waters at the thought.

my pastor, chris, thought he was The Man when it came to greens. and his greens were good, no doubt, but they just… well, they didn’t hit it. he’d make a bushel of greens each time, but i always hoped that one of the ladies would make theirs and bring it, too - there was something… missing from chris’ greens. he and i argued about this mystery ingredient, but having never made greens myself, i couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

about a year after being at New Creation, chris and i went to our semi-regular lunch at Millie’s over in madisonville. now look: if you want to have soul food done right, and you can’t make it to the church lunch? Millie’s is THE place.

so there we are, sitting in millie’s and i’m begging millie’s sister for a double helping of her greens (my FAVORITE greens of all time), when The Discussion about what’s lacking in chris’ greens comes up.

“my greens are better than this!”
“no, they ain’t - this is The Greens, man! you need to ask her how she does this so you can finally make a GOOD mess of greens some sunday morning!”
“psh, i soak those things 24 hours and add all these spices and cook them to a loving perfection…”
“dude, your greens are good but…”
“you need to stop talkin’ trash about my greens!”
“if you knew how to make ‘em right, i’d have less to talk about and more to eat!”

millie’s sister comes back out and i drag her into the argument. chris relents and they begin to share recipes. chris lists his ingredients and his methods for cleaning and soaking and preparing. she nods with approval every step of the way, until…

“how much lard do you put in them?”
“LARD? i don’t put ANY lard in my greens!” he replied.
“oh, honey, i see what the problem is now. i put two pounds of lard in for each bushel of greens.”

chris and i share a “look” - his look is one of astonishment. my look is one of epiphany.

chris never did make a great mess of greens even after hearing this. but i know now that the trick to good collard greens?

rendered hog fat. lots of it. and save some room for the collards!

after a year here in pensacola, we finally got rid of our ohio license plates and went full floridian. i’ve never seen a state with so many license plate choices, though, and lise had to spend some time figuring out which one she wanted.

i knew what i was after the first time i saw this plate a year ago. the colors! the sunset! the water! dolphins don’t hurt, either. (yes, i had to include my fish n chips logo, too. sorry. it goes with the motif, no?)

lise spent some time checking out the myriad of plate choices and finally went with this one:

what, exactly, is the message she is trying to send? on the surface, “save our seas” she would tell you. deep down? i think she wants to swim with sharks and take a bite outta something, just for fun. maybe it’s “tailgate me and you’ll sleep with fishes!”

florida definitely has the rockingest plates we’ve seen thus far - i will say that the john lennon plate is taking it a bit far, however… (it HAS raised almost $700,000 to combat hunger in the state - maybe i ought to back off, eh?). thank goodness we didn’t become the most embarrassing state in the union with the “I Believe” plate that was threatened earlier this year. whew! crisis averted!

how can i help??

www.worldbreastfeedingweek.org

if i can’t contribute can i…

oy vey. inappropriate.

we were young. 23 years old. we had been married a year and were moving from cincinnati to washington d.c. we lived in a third floor apartment in an old house (damn, that place was hot!) and had packed for days.

when i rented the u-haul and the tow-hitch for the car, i was wiped out. lise was famished.

but our friends - oh, they were the best friends in the world.

they showed up on moving day and as a collective, single-minded unit informed us that they, not us - THEY were going to pack the truck for us. we were so grateful and we stood by in the apartment while they climbed all those twisting, winding, creaky old stairs, grabbed another load, and took it down to the truck. they were the awesomest friends ever for packing the truck for us.

we went down, closed up the truck, put the lock on, hitched our hideous ‘81 datsun 310gx to the back, and had a tearful goodbye. our friends hugged us hard, cried, & promised to keep in touch. we thanked them profusely for making our day so much easier before we began the 550 mile trek to d.c. and swore we’d never forget what they meant to us.

our friends left. we got in the truck. we looked at each other with the kind of love that only newlyweds have for one another. we held hands, wiped away the last of the tears, and fired up the truck.

i lightly depressed the gas pedal to pull out when the most horrendous sound i’ve ever heard crunched into my ears from behind.

me: wtf?
lise: sounded like the truck.
me: i barely touched the gas!
lise: sounded like a wall fell somewhere.
me: we better check this out before we go.

we unlocked the padlock, flipped the handle, and pushed up on the door.

it was stuck. wedged. jammed. superglue of the gods held that door shut tight.

our friends, whom we loved, had truly packed the truck. and no one gave a second thought to placement of any items. they were just… chucked and tossed wherever they could find.

it was elementary physics. sadly, none of my friends were physicists.