A Quarter-Century Without a Father

Thursday, October 31, 1985. 1:20 p.m. A farmhouse in rural Janesville Township. A hospital bed set up in the middle of the living room.
Lying in the bed, gasping for breath, is my 61-year-old father, and he has just spoken the last words that will ever pass from his toothless mouth: “Last day.”
He is surrounded by his wife of 37 years, his four children, a pastor and a nurse. The pastor reads the twenty-third Psalm. The nurse checks vital signs and announces them like she’s in a televised medical drama. The family begs God to end the man’s suffering, some silently and some aloud.
Finally, in an undramatic, non-Hollywood fashion, his body stills. His chest doesn’t heave, his eyes and mouth do not close, his head doesn’t fall limply. He just gets still, eerily still. His six weeks in Hell have concluded. He is free.

When there was nothing more that medical science could do for him, he insisted on coming home to die. But he didn’t submit easily. He fought it to the end, refusing to sleep for three days, fearing that he would never wake. He fought so hard that even when death finally came, his eyes wouldn’t close.
My siblings and I kept a 24-hour watch with him. While the others slept, at least one of us sat with him, holding his hand, all day, all night, at all hours. He was never alone. We would not let him die alone.

We leave the living room and gather in the kitchen, not quite sure what to do now. My aunt and uncle show up to weep with us. The undertakers arrive. I try not to watch, and I wish later that I hadn’t. I have never been able to erase the image of my father’s naked body, emaciated, jaundiced, and covered with bedsores, being zipped into a bag.
I cannot sit in the house any longer. I go outside, call the dog – Dad’s dog, the beloved part-huskie he named Mush – and the two of us go for a walk out to the woods at the far end of our 141 acres.
Mush chases birds and enthusiastically runs around with the energy of a child who has just been released from the classroom for recess. I sit on a rock and watch the joyful canine, oblivious to the fate of her master, and wish I was that happily ignorant. Instead, I wonder, what now? I worry about my mother, the loyal, dependent farm wife who has never lived alone. What will she do? Who will she live with?

Twenty-five years later, I reflect on all that has happened since. I need not have worried about Mom. Instead of shriveling up, she dipped into a reserve of strength that we never knew she possessed. Independent, sure and assertive, she laughs in the face of fate, a quality that has gotten her through cancer surgery, a new hip, and a new knee.
She never remarried, never even dated, although she's had opportunities over the years. Dad was her one and only.
My niece, only ten at the time of Dad’s death, wrote a school paper about her deceased grandfather, referring to him as the brightest star in the sky. The rest of us embraced that thought and even now, I still think of him immediately when the first star shows up at dusk.
It's strange to think that I'm now to the point where I have spent more years on the planet without a living father than with one. Too often when I think of him, I selfishly feel sorry for myself. I regret that he didn’t see me evolve past the stage where I was an unfocused young man pondering what to do with his life. I regret that he didn’t see his grandchildren, that he didn't see me get involved in my community, that he wasn’t there to help me fix the plumbing, that we couldn’t continue our annual trek to see the Brewers play.
I am relieved, however, that he met his future daughter-in-law. Mom always says that Dad heartily approved of my spousal choice and declared that she was "good for me." At a time when I wasn’t always making great decisions, at least he knew I had gotten that one right.
Mom comes to almost everything the kids are involved in – band concerts, plays, school ceremonies. She loves being there and I think in some way, she feels that by being there, Dad is, too.
A few years after his death, “Field of Dreams” showed up at movie theaters. At the end of the film, Ray Kinsella, the builder of the baseball diamond carved from a cornfield, is reunited with his long-deceased father, and they play a game of catch. I’ve seen the film dozens of times, and I always cry when this final scene unfolds.
Twenty-five years ago. I miss you, Dad.

Small Town Boy in the Big City

For someone like me who lives in a city of 5,000 and works in an office surrounded by woods and fields, a rare business trip into downtown Chicago is a big deal.

Since my meeting is walking distance from the downtown Metra commuter train station, I opt to relax and ride the train from suburban Crystal Lake, rather than navigate the insane city traffic and overpay for parking.

As the train fills, strangers end up sitting next to each other. The natural inclination would be to acknowledge and greet the person who just planted their posterior two inches away. But no one does. And so I don't, either, when a middle-aged woman ends up beside me. She's not in business attire; she might be an office worker, a store clerk, or possibly just going to visit someone. It feels unnatural to me not to speak to her. I see everyone else in their seats, staring straight ahead, oblivious to their neighbors. I am reminded of the scene from “Metropolis” where the shifts of workers change, a mass of humans silently plodding along. The woman next to me yawns, and I see my opening. “I know how you feel,” I offer. She smiles and starts a conversation; small talk about not getting enough sleep and relying on caffeine to get through the day. Before too long, we run out of things to say and return to our silence. But at least the ice was broken, the chill is gone, and I relax. When we reach our destination, she smiles and wishes me a good day and encourages me to stay awake.

It's been about five years since I last took the Metra into downtown Chicago on business. The experience is so different than what I am used to that in a strange way, it excites me. I laugh when I think that what to me is a tourist attraction is to everyone else another day of mindless tedium. The last time I commuted in on the train, my final destination was too long to walk to from the station, so I doubled my public transportation pleasure and hailed a cab. The cabbie, who I guessed to be Jamaican from his accent, was an affable fellow wearing a White Sox cap. We chatted about the South Siders' then-recent World Series triumph as we maneuvered through the stop-and-go traffic. A train, a cab, a downtown destination – I felt like one of those guys you see portrayed in the movies. Jim Lyke, big city business guy.

Or at least, I'd like to think I am that guy. In reality, there is something about downtown Chicago that brings out the bumpkin in me. I gawk at the tall buildings. I marvel at the technology that hoists a bridge into the air in order for a ship to pass through.

It seems like each individual block of every downtown street has a second “honorary” name and street sign. Near the Tribune Tower, Michigan Avenue is also Jack Brickhouse Way, a memorial to the legendary Cubs broadcaster. Some of those so honored have familiar names (Ben Gurion), some not so much (Newton Minow, Christ Demos). I look up Minow later and discover that he was the FCC chairman who described television as a “vast wasteland.” For that quote alone, he should have an entire country named in his honor, not just a street.

After my meeting is over, I walk over to the local office of the outdoor advertising company I work for. I'll be meeting people that to this point I've known only by their phone voice or e-mail address. Our Chicago office is located on the 22nd floor of a building on Michigan Avenue, the heart of downtown. It's great to put faces to the voices. I play the part of the small town boy to the hilt, telling my big city cohorts that you could stack the four tallest buildings in Janesville and it still wouldn't add up to 22 floors. I'm not sure whether this is true or not, but it amuses them. What is true is that when you look out their windows, you see the John Hancock Center and behind it, Lake Michigan. When you look out mine, you often see wild turkeys. One tom even attacked his own reflection in our front door until he bloodied himself. We all sell the same thing for the same company but our experiences are as alike as Cher and Chas Bono.

After lunch with my counterparts, I head back toward the station, guessing that I have more than enough time to catch the next train back to the suburbs. I get stopped on Michigan Avenue by a young woman named Maddie who is selling memberships in Greenpeace. She somehow spots me as someone who cares about the environment, either by intuition or pure luck. Maddie admits that most guys dressed like me don't give a rat's ass about her cause. She is passionate about her organization and she's good – very good. We talk, she goes for the close. I stop short of commitment. She tries again. I tell her that I'm not the kind of buyer who makes a decision emotionally on the spur of the moment; I need to check out the facts. Maddie gives me the Greenpeace web site address. I promise her I'll visit the site and that if I make a donation, I'll make sure she gets the credit. I tell her I manage salespeople and compliment her on her skills. She tells me it's her second day on the job. I would love to hire her. But she could never sell what I sell. She could never care as much about 20 x 60 signs on I-90 as she does about saving palm trees in Indonesia. What I do goes against everything she believes in.

The conversation with Maddie delays me enough that I pick up the pace a bit. Up and down the downtown streets, you hear the rhythmic jangle of the downtrodden, shaking paper cups full of change that sound like broken tambourines – a wordless plea for assistance. As I approach one of the beggars, he smiles politely and asks me for help, rather than just rattling his cup as the others do. I can't help but feel horrible when I rush by, depositing nothing. What makes me - hurrying to catch a train in my suit and tie - a better, more worthy, more fortunate human being than this poor soul reduced to begging for change on a city street? Why has God smiled upon me, and not on this polite young man? Is he a panhandling snake oil salesman, hiding his evil intentions behind a convincing smile? Or is he so down on his luck and desperate that this is the only thing he can think to do to feed himself and his loved ones, yet his circumstances haven't broken his spirit?

With mere minutes to spare, I make it to my train and start the trip back to my real life. But the images of the desperate and destitute stay with me. Can I save the poor? Or for that matter, the whales?

The Sing-A-Long "Sound Off" Musical!

(First published on GazetteXtra, 3-31-2010)

"The Sing-A-Long Sound of Music" was a big hit at JPAC a couple of months ago, but now, in the spirit of "Local Matters," we have something just as good - The Sing-A-Long "Sound Off" Musical!

Just fire up the karaoke version of Petula Clark's 1960's hit "Downtown" (link to it by clicking here) and substitute the lyrics below. And voila! You have your very own tribute to those lovable anonymous phone callers whose insightful comments we get to read twice a week in the Gazette.

“Sound Off”
(to the tune of “Downtown” by Petula Clark)

If you’ve got gripes
And want to take a few swipes
Well, you can always call
Sound Off

It’s totally free
You have no identity
When you reach out and call
Sound Off

If you’ve got an opinion but don’t want to take the credit
You’d like to make a comment but afraid you will regret it
How can you lose?

The Gazette will print it for you
Despite the fact that you may be an ignorant fool
Calling Sound Off, no one will know it’s you
Sound Off – it don’t matter if it’s true
Sound Off – it’s Coward’s Corner for you

If you’re at home
And need to bitch and to moan
Well, you can always call
Sound Off

If you’re a taxpayer
Who wants to have a mayor
Just pick up the phone
Sound Off

There’s no accountability for anything you tell us
You’ll think that you’re so smart and cool, the rest of us are jealous
How can you lose?

You want your voice to be heard
You’ll stay completely unknown while you’re flipping the bird
If you Sound Off – it’s there in black and white
Sound Off – Sunday and Wednesday night
Sound Off – doesn’t care if you are right

[Instrumental break]

And you’ll find other people there that share all your opinions
Maybe they’ll be so impressed, they’ll want to be your minions
Maybe I’m one...

So maybe I'll join you there
We can let out our frustrations, spew out all our cares
When we Sound Off - Things'll be great when we
Sound Off – It’s off our chest when we
Sound Off - Readers are waiting for you
Sound Off, Sound Off, Sound Off, Sound Off.....

Goodbye, Consolidated?

(First published on GazetteXtra, 4-9-2010)

And I’m never going back
To my old school
- Steely Dan

As a resident of the Milton School District, I have been watching the current budget-balancing discussions with great interest. One item that strikes a particular chord with me is the potential closing of Consolidated Elementary School.

Growing up on a farm in Janesville Township, Consolidated is where I spent the first six years of my school life. At the time I attended, the majority of the student population was “farm kids,” and the appearance of subdivisions was a fairly recent development. If you’ve been in that area of the county lately, you know that the farm kids are a small minority now. The fields where I once spent summers baling hay are now paved over with streets and dotted with homes, and the house where I grew up is no longer surrounded by a barn, silos, corn cribs and sheds.

It’s hard to believe that this four-classroom, K-3 school once housed students through eighth grade. But it did until the current Milton High School was built in 1964 and the old high school building became a junior high. Because of the timing of that, my family has the odd coincidence that each of my siblings and I finished Consolidated in a different grade. My sister Nancy attended through eighth, my brother Tom through seventh, and my sister Jan through sixth. While I was attending, the district decided to end sixth grade there and ship those students to Milton West, so my Consolidated education concluded after Grade 5. That created another odd situation where I ended up going to three schools in three years and four schools in five years (Consolidated, West, Milton Jr. High, Milton High) without any kind of change in my residence.

As my first school, Consolidated was the site of many of my first “a-ha” learning moments. I can clearly remember the way our teacher demonstrated the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound. He sent one lucky kid to the far end of the playground to pound on a metal pole with a baseball bat. Witnessing the delay between seeing the bat strike and hearing the noise made quite an impression on me.

As bad as my memory can be these days, I can easily recall the name of every teacher I had at Consolidated four decades ago – Mrs. Bottomley, Mrs. Huschka, Mrs. Wentzel, Mrs. Erdman, Mrs. Arndt and Mr. Socwell – along with many of the lessons I learned there.

So one would guess, with all of these fond memories, that I would be sad or upset that Consolidated sits on the chopping block. Well…yes and no. I can see both sides of the issue.

If there will really be the equivalent of four empty elementary classrooms in Milton while Consolidated’s four classrooms remain open, well, that’s something the school board needs to seriously look at while trying to close the budget gap. I understand the financial reality that may make it necessary to shutter the place, at least for now. The district’s other outlying elementary school, Harmony, was closed for a while but ended up reopening after massive growth by the city of Janesville into that area of the school district. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a similar situation down the road with Consolidated.

I know parents are concerned about losing their neighborhood school and subjecting their kids to long bus rides. I can relate. When my schooling shifted from Consolidated to Milton, I ended up spending two hours a day on the bus instead of five minutes. For a while, I was the first one picked up by the bus in the morning and the last one to be dropped off at night. I saw nearly every inch of the school district’s western half. I can tell you from experience that North River Road near the Four Mile Bridge is a long way from Milton.

In the end, I hope it’s possible to keep Consolidated open, but I would understand if the school board doesn’t feel that they can for 2010-11. Seeing it empty would be strange and somewhat sad, but no stranger than the major changes that have already occurred in the neighborhood.

Raw Milk and Pink Slime

(First published on GazetteXtra, 4-23-2010)

“Pink slime” doesn't sound very appetizing, does it?

Yet many of you reading this eat it every day when you have a hamburger.

I first heard about pink slime while listening to National Public Radio. “Pink slime” is the industry nickname for fatty slaughterhouse trimmings that at one time were not considered fit for human consumption. They were instead relegated to pet food and cooking oil.

For one thing, these trimmings were susceptible to contamination. But a few years ago, the beef industry came up with a wonderful idea. They could kill E.coli and salmonella by injecting the pink slime with ammonia. And gee, they could also make a few more pennies by salvaging this undesirable stuff. So over the last few years, more and more of the ground beef we eat – whether it's from a fast food restaurant, a grocery store or a school lunch service – has contained this ammonia-cleansed beef-like substance. Mmm, mmm, good!

I actually saw this ammonia treatment in action in a frightening documentary called “Food, Inc.” that aired on public television this week. The film is a must-see for anyone interested in knowing what really is going on with the food that we place on our table every night. Watching it gave me a new appreciation for my wife's insistence that we eat organic or locally grown as often as possible.

It also reminded me of how different things were at the dinner table when I was growing up on our farm. Much of what we ate was grown or raised.

We had no lack of red meat in the house. It was the result of a magical transformation. Whichever cow kicked Dad the most was sent away in the back of a truck, only to return to our chest freezer as a pile of white packages.

I've been asked, “Didn't you name your cows?” Trust me, my dad had a lot of names for the cows. If I printed any of them here, this blog would be gone faster than cheese puffs at Oprah's house.

At least I didn't get to see what actually happened to the cows when they went away to become dinner. Chickens were another matter.

I got to witness the entire process. First, Dad would hold the chicken down on a cement block and – boom – off went its head with a hatchet. It was a Midwestern farm version of the French Revolution. As a kid growing up with this reality, I didn't find that part of it gross. What I did find gross was when our dog Tippy would chew the severed heads.

I also learned at an early age about the saying,“running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” They really do. And it was a bizarre and comical sight to behold, especially when you're six years old.

It wasn't just meat that found its way from our farm to our table. We had a decent-sized garden, too. Mom grew everything from peas, beans and carrots to potatoes, tomatoes and sweet corn.

And of course, being dairy farmers, we drank the product we sold. It's funny that just this week the state legislature approved a bill to allow the sale of raw milk. Raw milk was what I grew up on. I even have a memory of when I was very little, my dad squeezing a cow's teat and shooting the milk directly into my mouth from a few feet away.

I'm sure the thought of drinking raw milk straight from the cow is turning a few stomachs out there. Eventually, we stopped drinking it raw and bought a home pasteurizer, a metal contraption that basically boiled the milk to a high temperature for a certain length of time. When the thing eventually broke, however, we didn't rush to replace it.

It's been a long time since I've drank whole milk – these days, I'm strictly a skim or 2% guy – and I imagine if I had the real stuff now, it would make skim taste like water by comparison. Growing up, I regularly added Hershey's Syrup and drank chocolate milk. Our milk had cream in it, and when you made chocolate milk, the cream wouldn't take on the chocolate color. So you had white stuff floating in your brown milk, which gave your drink the appearance of having dandruff. Being a finicky kid, I decided I didn't like that, so my solution was to drink the milk through a handkerchief that would filter out the cream. When that succeeded in doing little more than making a mess, I opted for a straw.

Some may argue that drinking raw milk was more dangerous than eating ammonia-cleansed near-beef. Given the choice today, I'd go with raw milk every time.

And soon, in Wisconsin, I may be able to legally buy it.

Rockin' With The Kids

(First published on GazetteXtra, 5-13-2010)

I went to a rock concert with my 18-year-old daughter last weekend.

I love the fact that she and I like a lot of the same music, but for her to actually ask me if I wanted to go to a show with her was, I thought, pretty darned cool.

It would have never happened when I was 18. I loved my parents dearly, but there was no way Mom or Dad was going to go see Styx or Kansas or Frank Zappa with me. Or any way on earth I would have ever asked them to.

But there we were, my daughter and I, at Turner Hall in downtown Milwaukee, enjoying the punk-pop of The Smoking Popes. And this wasn't my first invitation from her. We were originally planning to see OK Go in Chicago, but when I found out their appearance was part of an all-day music event, I backed out. I haven't done an all-day concert since 1983, when I went to old Comiskey Park in Chicago to see a lineup that included The Police, Joan Jett, A Flock of Seagulls, The Fixx, and Ministry.

I'm really not that much into current popular music. I look at the top 10 songs in the Kicks section and often don't recognize a single song title. Some folks at work were talking about going to see Daughtry perform, and I thought they meant Roger Daltrey, the retirement-aged lead singer for The Who. Friends of mine are surprised that I have never watched “American Idol,” the launchpad for today's music stars. So pop culture is flying past me faster than a Lamborghini with Illinois plates.

A significant bridge was built across the generation gap by, of all things, Guitar Hero III. That particular game introduced me to newer music that I was unfamiliar with, while exposing my kids, particularly my 16-year-old son, to everything from ZZ Top to the Sex Pistols. We both liked a lot of our discoveries.

It's interesting that rock staples from 30-35 years ago are still popular. It's not unusual to hear my son playing what sounds like a “best rock licks of the '70s” medley on his electric guitar. I am amazed that “Don't Stop Believin'” by Journey – a song first released when I was in college 29 years ago - is a huge hit with teens. To put that in perspective, 29 years before “Don't Stop Believin'” was released, rock and roll music did not yet exist. This fact might explain why my parents and I had no musical common ground, while my kids and I do. My parents' musical points of reference were Nat King Cole or Les Paul and Mary Ford.

I love all sorts of music, but I can't play a note. I tried to learn piano once, but when we got to the part where I had to use both hands at the same time, I was toast. I would look at the notes and know what my hands were supposed to do, but there was a definite disconnect between my brain and my hands. I feel incredibly blessed that my kids not only share my love of music, but can play it and play it well. Even though I can't play along with them, at least we can enjoy listening together.

And that's why I felt very proud while I was getting my ears blasted in a concert hall in Milwaukee last week.

---

P.S.:

The band we went to see, The Smoking Popes, is from Chicago, but they do a song called “Welcome to Janesville.” It's a terrific song, but if you're from Janesville, you might find the lyrics none too flattering: “No matter how many ways you try/To kiss this place goodbye/It lives in you till the day you die/Say the words with a tear in your eye/Welcome to Janesville.” Hear the song here.

I wondered why they would do a song about Janesville. Had they read about the city's recent struggles or did one of the band members have a connection to the city?

As it turned out, right after the show was over, I spotted Popes lead singer/songwriter Josh Caterer headed toward the merchandise table. I intercepted him to ask about the origins of “Welcome to Janesville.”

Because my ears were still ringing, the room was loud, and he had a mouth full of cookie, I admittedly didn't hear all of his answer. But what I did understand was that the song wasn't about Janesville specifically. One of the factors they considered was that they liked the name of the city because “it has a girl's name in it.” I didn't have the heart to tell him it was named for Henry Janes.

So how did they even know Janesville existed? “One of our very first gigs was in Janesville, at the Pizza Pit.”

Must have made quite an impression.

Dreams For Sale

(First published on GazetteXtra, 5-16-2010)

How much does it cost to buy a dream?

The answer is $5.4 million.

That's how much the Lansings, the owners of the farm where “Field of Dreams” was filmed in Dyersville, Iowa, are asking for their property.

I have to admit that the potential sale of the field bums me out a little. “Field of Dreams” is my favorite movie. I love everything about this film – from the wonderfully cast actors (Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, Amy Madigan, Ray Liotta) to the dialogue to the soundtrack to how blue the sky looks in the shots. Burt Lancaster in particular, as Doc Graham, is the kind of gentle, grandfatherly figure that you wish was a real person that you knew. And dammit, I always cry at the end when Costner, as Ray Kinsella, asks his father's ghost if he'd like to “have a catch.”

I know it's not a perfect film. For one thing, Shoeless Joe Jackson wasn't right-handed, as portrayed by Liotta. For another, the script gets criticized for being corny (no pun intended) and in spots, it probably is. I don't care.

This movie strikes a chord with a lot of folks, myself included. As James Earl Jones' character tells us, it reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.

And it has always seemed right to me that a rural Iowa family owned the farm and continued to live there, even after a huge chunk of their cornfield was turned into a baseball field. A family whose name is on the rural road where the farm and the field sits. A family who never bothered to charge admission to visit.

Not long after the film came out, my wife and I were spending a weekend in Galena, Illinois, about 45 minutes east of Dyersville. While she spent a morning shopping, I hopped in the car and drove west.

The field wasn't a huge tourist attraction yet. At the time, there was only one tiny souvenir stand behind home plate. Down the left field line was a homemade wooden sign on which plastic-covered snapshots of the film shoot were mounted. There were also little plastic vials with hand-typed labels containing dirt dug up from left field, where Shoeless Joe roamed. The dirt was free, but donations were encouraged. I grabbed a vial and threw some cash in the box. That vial has resided in my office for 20 years.

I was the only one there that first time I visited. So there was no playing catch, no swinging the bat. I simply roamed around, looking at this place I had only seen before on a movie screen. I wandered the field, kicked at the dirt, stood at home plate imagining.

I sat in the bleachers and saw where Costner had carved “Ray Loves Annie” in the wood. And I stared out at the cornfield, dreaming. Wondering whether, if I dreamed hard enough, the ghost of my own deceased father would wander out of the corn and want to play catch.

I've only been back to the Field of Dreams once. A larger, newly built souvenir store had replaced the quaint displays that were there on my first visit. Other than that, not much else had changed. This time, however, I didn't visit alone. My son, about 10 at the time, was with me. As we got out of the car on a windy, unseasonably chilly Sunday morning, he delivered his line perfectly without prodding.

“Dad...you wanna have a catch?”

Did I ever. And we braved those cold winds on that field to do just that.

In a move that was either incredibly coincidental or brilliantly planned, the real estate agent chosen to list the Field of Dreams property is former Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Ken Sanders, who led the AL in saves in 1971. If the field has to be sold, it seems right that a former major leaguer is the guy to do it.

I just hope that whoever ends up with the field continues to keep everyone's dreams alive.

Senior Skip Day

(First published on GazetteXtra, 5/25/10)

I know when Milton's Senior Skip Day is.

I would like to say that I found this out through my brilliant investigative skills and fatherly intuition.

But actually, I simply asked my daughter. And she also told me that all that was needed for her to participate was a signed absence note.

Say what? Senior Skip Day is no big secret anymore? And it's parent-approved?

Where is the fun in that? A parent-approved Senior Skip Day is like getting permission from a cop to break the speed limit. It takes away the thrill of getting away with something, where you planned and executed this covert action and your enjoyment could not be complete because of the worry about being caught.

They took Senior Skip Day seriously when I was in school. The planning was all very hush-hush. When the administration caught wind of the day it was supposed to happen, stern warnings went out over the high school PA system. There were even threats about holding back diplomas.

Now, the word is out, and no one seems to care. Yawn.

It must be a generational thing. Once, rock and roll was the music of youthful rebellion; now we go to rock concerts with our kids. Once, we pulled a fast one on teachers and parents; now the parents are in on the deal.

I didn't participate in the big Senior Skip Day at Milton High School in 1980 – in fact, I'm not even sure now that there was one - but my friends and I made one of our own that spring.

It was totally spontaneous. A group of us were talking in the cafeteria before school, and the main topic of conversation was how much we didn't want to be there. That's not much different than what I'm hearing from my daughter right now. Her AP tests are over and she really wants school to be done.

As my friends and I were comparing notes about our class schedules that particular day, we came to the conclusion that there was nothing transpiring that we couldn't miss. So in an incredibly bold and amazingly stupid move, we walked back out to the parking lot, jumped in a car and listened to the bell ring as we left the school grounds.

We ended up spending the day in Madison, a bunch of 18-year-olds enjoying the wonders of State Street. Our big plan was to time our return so that we got back to the high school right when the school day was ending.

And you know what? It worked. We actually got away with it. My group made it to the parking lot right as the final bell rang, and we each went home “from school” at our normal time.

In those days, an absence did not need to be reported with a phone call from home, and as 18-year-olds, we could sign our own excuse notes. We all did that the following day, and our parents were none the wiser about The Day We Skipped School.

Not that anybody ever read the excuse notes anyway. On another occasion when I missed school due to Actual Illness, I decided to pocket my authentic absence note signed by Mom and instead turn in a note I wrote myself, explaining that I had been in Vatican City to visit Pope Paul. The secretary never looked at the note; she just stamped it and threw it in a box with the rest while issuing my “Excused Absence” pass.

Speaking of my mother, she has never heard about any of this, and she doesn't own a computer, so please don't tell her. She could still kick my butt, even with a fake hip and knee.

And that sense of danger and the threat of a good butt-kicking was all part of the excitement. An openly-revealed, mom-and-dad-sanctioned Senior Skip Day?

How boring.

Vanity Does Not Pay

Ever have one of those days when you look in the mirror and say to yourself, “Man, I’m a dork”?

Actually, with me, it’s pretty much a daily occurrence, but today, it was in all caps.

I. AM. A. DORK.

I was already kicking myself for ordering my son’s customized (and non-returnable) Brewers T-shirt in a youth medium size instead of an adult medium. But I took the utter stupidity to an entirely new level this morning.

In October, I will have a role in the Theatre Unlimited musical, “Camelot.” For the part, a beard is required, and a vacation up north last week seemed to be the perfect time to get it started.

Unfortunately, said beard gets whiter by the day. While I have very little grey in my hair, my beard is so white it adds about 10-15 years to my appearance. The dark/light combination makes me look like Pepe Le Pew. Steve Knox (no stranger to hair coloring issues) suggested that I might have a future as a Mall Santa.

After about 10 days of seeing this old man staring back at me in the mirror, I decided to take action. The play isn’t for two months, so a little Just for Men would make it tolerable until I really needed the beard to be grey for the performances. After all, if manly men like Walt “Clyde” Frazier and Keith Hernandez use it, it’s OK, right?

The instructions in the box tell you that the longer the junk sits on your beard before you shampoo it, the darker it makes your hair. They’re not kidding. I obviously took too much time because the color went from its supposed dark brown straight to black. The change wasn’t subtle, as I intended. It was ridiculous, like going from Gandalf to Bluto in minutes. I couldn’t go to work (or anywhere in public) looking like that, so off went the beard.

That’s when the true panic occurred. Once the beard was removed, I saw that the hair dye had stained my face. It looked like I was sporting a greasepaint beard. I looked like a clown, for Pete’s sake!

The initial washing with soap yielded no results. The panic ratcheted up to near-hyperventilation levels. What am I going to do??!!

My wife calmly suggested that a little scrubbing would probably remove the stain. As is usual, she was right, but it took a rough washcloth and about 10 minutes of scouring. Several hours later, my face is still sore from the massacre.

My only consolation is that I’m not alone in the area of home dying fiascos. One of my female friends accidentally made her hair a shade of bright orange once, prompting a frantic late-night call to the company’s toll-free help line.

I’ll have to start regrowing the facial hair soon. And it’s time I just accept the fact that it’s more salt than pepper.

So much salt, I could own stock in Morton.

You Have 48 Hours To Make A Film....Go!

Two years ago, I wrote in the Janesville Messenger about the Madison 48 Hour Film Project, a crazy weekend in which local filmmakers compete to create the best short film from scratch, start to finish, in two days. It is an exercise in caffeine-fueled creativity gone wild.

I first became aware of this film festival when I was recruited at the last minute (actually, everything in these films is at the last minute) to play a role in Janesville filmmaker Stephen Pickering’s entry, "Kingdom of Ends." The entire experience was so rewarding that the following year, I expanded my involvement from just acting to forming my own creative team with good friend and filmmaker Robert Jarzen.

Our story begins on a recent Friday evening at the Electric Earth Café on West Washington Street. The ZenLyke Productions duo (Jarzen and Lyke...get it?) sits at a table, inspirational malted beverages in hand, waiting patiently to draw out of a hat (literally) to find out what type of film we are assigned to make. The festival has a pretty decent Milton/Janesville presence this year, with at least four teams (out of 23) coming from our area. In fact, Stephen Pickering’s team is the defending champion, having won the event last year with a sci-fi film called “Unknown Spectre.”

When it is our turn to draw, we get “Film Noir.” I am excited but Robert is not thrilled; that film style isn't his cup of tea. I immediately text-message my 18-year-old daughter Corinne, who is preparing to compose our soundtrack music, and ask if she knows what “film noir” is. She has no clue. Thanks to Wikipedia and my suggestion of listening to the Tom Waits song “Small Change,” she is able to get the idea.

After every team has their assigned film genre, the required elements are announced. Every film has to include a certain prop, a certain line, and a character with a specific name and occupation. This year, we have to have a tie, a courier named Patrick or Patricia Raynal, and the line, “I can’t hear you.” With that information in hand, the clock starts ticking and we all scatter to go out and create.

The next five hours are a whirlwind. Ideas fly around the interior of the car driving back to Milton. Lines of dialogue are scribbled down at McDonald's in Newville. A quick stop at home to grab a fedora and an old Royal typewriter to use as props. A run to the Janesville Little Theatre warehouse to pick up more 1940's-era props. A shopping trip to buy cigarettes and a shot glass. A call to our lead actor, Michael Chase, to tell him what to wear, where and when to show up Saturday, and when he'll see a script. For the story we're doing, we only need three other actors – Robert's wife Tracy, me, and my nephew William.

By 12:30 in the morning, we have a completed script to send to Michael. Corinne has a good start on the soundtrack music and is trying to get friends together to record the tune later in the day.

After a few hours of sleep, Robert sets up his basement for the shoot while I work at home to create an old-fashioned five-dollar bill and an authentic-looking Western Union telegram. I find exactly what I need online (including a font used on actual telegrams). We try to pay attention to the details to make sure the props we use look authentic to the 1940's – from the typewriter to the telephone to the money to the desk (purchased in 1948 by my parents) to the brand of cigarettes. Proving the indispensability of Google, I look up a glossary of film noir terms as well as tips on how to hold a cigarette properly.

By 9 a.m. Saturday, we're back at Robert's, shooting in his nice cool basement on what becomes a brutally hot day. We have to shoot the scene with my nephew William first, because he has to leave for the airport at 11 to fly to Poland with a group of college students. Tracy is only available until about 1, so the scenes with her are next.

Shooting goes very well, as we knew it would with two professional actors, Tracy and Michael, on board. We also luck out by having Robert's brother-in-law, a still photographer, help with lighting and his contributions are priceless. Principal photography is finished by about 2:30 in the afternoon – which gives us more than a full day to edit and do post-production.

I return home for a little rest and to see how Corinne is doing on the music. She hasn't had any success recruiting musicians so she resorts to recording all the parts herself. After I take a nap, Corinne presents me with four separate digital files – her playing bass, piano, trombone and finger-snaps. One problem – I don't have audio mixing software. I find a free program online and put the pieces together.

When I run the music over to Robert's to add it to the film, he already has completed most of the editing, but he is not a happy camper; much of the footage contains a loud hum from the lights we were using on the set. We were aware of it during shooting, but over the headphones it didn't sound like it was being picked up by the microphone. We were wrong.

We had a similar issue last year, but it was minor and the soundtrack music covered the problem. This year, the hum is far too loud to mask. Until 1 in the morning, we surf the Internet searching for solutions to the problem.

At around 9 a.m. Sunday, Robert reads through the help manual for his editing software while I scan more tutorial pages online. After an hour or so of trial and error, we finally seem to have found a way to eliminate most of the noise while preserving the dialogue. Six hours and one computer crash later, we are satisfied that our effort was worth it – the hum is almost entirely removed.

At about 6:15 p.m., we arrive at the Jade Monkey Lounge in Madison. We take pride in being the first ones to deliver our completed film for the second year in a row. When the producer of the competition sees us arrive, she exclaims, “You have got to be kidding me!”

Alas, three teams miss the 7:30 deadline – one by a mere three minutes. One of the late teams had their car break down on the Beltline on the way to deliver their entry; I can't imagine the frustration.

Four days later, all of the films are shown at a special screening at the Orpheum Theatre on State Street in Madison. I see several people there I know from Janesville – Stephen and his team, filmmaker Dave Haldiman, local actor Dave Bitter, former Charter Media employee Brian Alberth. When Stephen's film is shown, the cast is like a “Who's Who” of the local theater community: Dave Bitter, Pat Hall, Tom Hall, Mike Casey, Elsie Van Tassell.

Robert and I worry about how our film will look and sound in the Orpheum. Darker, black and white films like ours don't always fare the best on the screen there, and the sound system can be iffy at times. Our film is shown second, and we breathe a sigh of relief as neither problem surfaces.

We're amazed as we see the credits on the other films. Our credits are definitely among the shortest; our entire cast and crew totaled 7 people. Some films had more folks than that just involved in the writing.

When we turned in our film Sunday night, the producer asked how we are able to finish without pulling all-nighters or coming right down to the wire. I think the key for us, which we discovered by accident and not by design, is to keep things simple. Almost all of the creative stuff was done by two people. We had a small cast. We shot in one location. All those factors added up to time savings. There are a lot of teams that probably think we're nuts to have so much responsibility resting on the shoulders of a few people. If you see the credits for the teams that win the national competitions, they generally have a list as long as a Hollywood studio release. But for us, our system works. We aren't going to win any huge awards, but we have fun and enjoy the process.

You can see the resulting film, “Written Off,” here on YouTube. Hope you enjoy it...

Fireworks, The Fourth, and Flying Tires

With apologies to Garrison Keillor, it's been a quiet week in Milton, my hometown.

I always have high expectations for the Independence Day parade. With past parades featuring runaway tractors and the euthanizing of a horse, the bar is set high for something strange to happen. (Thankfully, we didn't have runaway horses, like what tragically happened in Iowa.)

Every year, the blankets, tarps and chairs appear earlier on the terrace along the parade route. This year, the streets were lined by 3 pm the day before the parade. I liked the new creative touch some folks used, utilizing yellow caution tape to make sure their spot wasn't pilfered.

The parade itself, as Steve Knox noted in his blog earlier this week, was a typical feel-good parade but it didn't live up to its predecessors in some ways. There were no Shriner cars, no guy on a high unicycle juggling, no woman being massaged on a float. The horses are now at the end of the parade so the stepping-in-poop factor was missing. There was, however, an antique hearse with glass sides – all the better to see the creepy skull and candles display inside. What that float was advertising, I have no idea.

With a metric ton of elections coming up this fall, I expected the parade to be crawling with candidates. But I counted only a lucky 13 working the parade route. I ended up with a Scott Walker brown bag, and dueling Russ Feingold and Brett Davis sports schedules. I found it interesting that the Brett Davis handout included NASCAR and hunting schedules, while Feingold's included an NPR schedule. (OK, I made that up about NPR.)

The celebration at Schilberg Park featured a surprise carnival. It had been announced earlier that due to a booking conflict, there would be no carnival this year. But when everyone showed up Sunday night for the fireworks, suddenly, there was a carnival. Apparently, the group from Rhythm and Booms in Madison saw an opportunity to earn an extra day's worth of revenue and made their way down in the middle of the night. It was an unexpected treat.

The carnival wasn't the only surprise at Schilberg. This year's fireworks were surprisingly brief, ten minutes at best. Milton has always prided itself as having one of the best fireworks displays in the area, but this one left people wondering, “Was that it?” It wasn't until the lights for the softball diamond started to reilluminate that folks knew for sure that it was really done. Despite the short show at Schilberg, there was no lack of fireworks around the city, particularly in our neighborhood. They continued on into Monday night, when a remnant from a rocket fell back to earth about ten feet from my kids as they walked down College Street.

Rockets weren't the only things airborne around the neighborhood this week. They were joined in flight by, of all things, tires.

My wife and I were walking down High Street, which was adorned this week with “Road Closed” barricades in preparation for a major reconstruction. Thus far, those signs have been mostly ignored by motorists. One such case was some yahoo in a beat-up old Jeep with writing all over his windows. This guy flew between the barricades at about 40 mph, then hit a dip which sent his rusty beater bouncing. This dislodged a spare tire (I assume it had been stored underneath the car) which went flying, took a gigantic bounce of its own and took out a mailbox not far behind where we were walking. The driver saw what happened, but never stopped.

Meanwhile, a block over on College Street, I witnessed two gigantic tires pressing down the white picket fence in front of a home. The day before, I had seen these same tires sitting across the street, on the lawn in front of Whitford Hall. I presume these tires are used for strength training at the new extreme fitness center located in Whitford. Since Whitford Hall sits on a hill overlooking the home (and the fence), I have to believe these tires went out for a roll.

Yes, one never tires of living in Milton....

Weird Western Wisconsin

(From GazetteXtra.com, 6-23-2010)

Hoover: This is ridiculous. What are we going to do?

Otter & Boon: Road trip.

-“National Lampoon’s Animal House”

Earlier this week, I found myself in the car for seven hours, making a trip to Independence, Iowa and back. My GPS insisted that the quickest way to my destination began by taking I-90 up to Madison, and then US 151 southwest to Dubuque. But I opted to shorten the route by 21 miles and take Highway 11 west from Janesville instead. Am I glad I did; I expected a more scenic and interesting trip but was not prepared for the treasure trove of weirdness that I found between Monroe and the Iowa state line.

(By the way, when I don’t follow the path my GPS has mapped out for me, it gets very annoyed. It repeatedly implores me to turn around and go back to its preferred route. There’s something very satisfying about mentally telling a machine to stuff it, like Garry Kasparov defeating Big Blue in chess.)

The trip west was, at times, a pretty trip. Orange tiger lilies lined the highway through several areas. But the beautiful was often mixed with the odd.

First, we had Animal Odd – the real and the unreal, and sometimes both.

The real: a Holstein, lying dead at the end of a driveway, being picked apart by birds.

The unreal: a group of metal dinosaurs, set up in a random field.

The both: a dead deer lying on the shoulder of the road, while on a small hill overlooking the scene, a statue of a content lion sat proudly, giving one the impression that the lion killed the deer. I initially thought this might make for a humorous photo, but the deer carcass was just too grotesque.

There was Vehicle Odd. A standard farm tractor sat in a front yard, souped up with massive dual exhaust pipes protruding from the sides. On another front lawn, what looked like an older model blue Camaro Z28 sat with police lights affixed to the top. (Both times past, I reflexively hit the brakes.)

There was Sign Odd.

Like the new municipal hall in Hazel Green that has its name hyphenated in stone on the front (“Municipal-Hall”). Or the sign in Leadmine pointing the way to the “Primitive Methodist Church.” (I assumed it meant a historic chapel, but a Google search revealed that it’s actually a small denomination.) But the best by far was the sign in Benton advertising lawn mower races, to be held at the “Death Bowl.”

Then as I was driving through a rural area in Lafayette County, I saw this scene and immediately thought of Janesville:

These observations made the long trip much more interesting and often amusing, but it also made me wonder what travelers think when they pass through Milton or Rock County. What do visitors find amusing or odd about our area? I’m sure Bessie the Cow turns some heads, and Heaven knows I’ve heard enough comments about the three roundabouts in Milton.

I’m sure it’s all perspective. What is commonplace to us probably strikes others as weird, just as people in Lafayette County don’t find the “Primitive Methodist Church” sign the least bit interesting. But being on the lookout for the unusual made seven hours in the car go much faster for us.

Laughter (And Graduation) In The Rain

(From GazetteXtra, 6-13-10)

As I sat in the bleachers at the Milton High School football field, awaiting my daughter's graduation ceremony, my brother-in-law asked me what I remembered about my own graduation at that same location 30 years before.

Not much, I told him. It was outdoors and it was windy. Other than that, it wasn't memorable.

The same cannot be said about my daughter's.
As I mentioned in a previous blog, a questionable weather forecast was the last bit of drama we had to deal with as Graduation Party Saturday and Commencement Sunday approached.

As it turned out, we had nothing to worry about Saturday. Instead of 90 and muggy, the day was comfortable and even cool at times. But if the weather forecasters had egg on their face about Saturday's predictions, they must be hiding in shame about Sunday's.

Throughout the morning, I switched back-and-forth between the weather service web site and GazetteXtra, alternately checking the weather radar and forecast while watching for a possible announcement that the event was being moved indoors. The only reason it mattered that much to me is that it made the difference between having ten family members attend or only four, due to the limited seating indoors. (All seniors received three tickets to the event if it was held indoors. I scored a fourth ticket thanks to a neighbor.)

As noon approached, the forecast still called for showers around 6 p.m., in plenty of time to have the 2 p.m. graduation outdoors. By the time we were leaving to get our seats at about 1 p.m., the forecast had changed. Showers were now expected around 3:30 or 4:00. The “future” radar on weather.com confirmed the timing of the rain's arrival. That was cutting it closer, but still not a problem.

My sister-in-law brought her umbrella to the ceremony as “insurance,” reasoning that if she brought it, some sort of karmic law would assure that she didn't need it. It turned out yesterday's karma was today's good planning.

There was a full program scheduled, with speeches from three students (including my daughter Corinne), two choir numbers, a band performance, the presentation of the class gift, and of course, the distribution of 230 or so diplomas.

As soon as the ceremony began, what seemed like it would be a routine overcast afternoon began to turn more ominous. During valedictorian Elizabeth Camenga's speech, the sky darkened and the wind began to whip around the MHS banner behind the podium. Nervous administrators on the stage consulted with each other.

When Elizabeth finished, Principal Jeremy Bilhorn took the microphone and spoke directly to Corinne in the front row. “I'm sorry, Corinne,” he said, “but we need to skip down the agenda and distribute the diplomas now. We'll get to your speech later if we can.”

And with that, what is in all likelihood the fastest distribution of diplomas in Milton High School history commenced. Corinne was fifth in line to receive hers, and as she made her way back to her seat, the sprinkles began. At first, it was just a light rain. Then the heavens absolutely opened and we had ourselves a gullywasher.

When the downpour began, chaos ensued. Spectators hurried from the metal bleachers, some mistaking the flash of cameras for lightning. The band grabbed their instruments and scrambled to find shelter. The public address system shorted out, turning the distribution of diplomas into a quick, anonymous receiving line. Water bottles distributed to the graduates ended up being used not for quenching of thirsts, but dousing of heads. Parents took photographs using abandoned music stands as umbrellas.

As for me, all I could do was watch this scene...and laugh. Within minutes I was soaked to my skin, but I was like Mary Tyler Moore at Chuckles The Clown's funeral, unable to stop inappropriately laughing. My wife was equally soaked, with white streaks all over her face and neck from the sunscreen she had optimistically applied earlier. Meanwhile, my sisters and Corinne's grandmothers were huddling under umbrellas, my mom sporting a clear plastic rain bonnet that only ladies from a certain generation still wear.

Bleachers that were once full now resembled the attendance at a Florida Marlins game. Among the diehards that were still in the stands was the mother of one of Corinne's friends who declared, “This is the best graduation ever!” Down below on the track, barefoot girls pranced in the puddles.

When the last drenched student received their diploma, the students filed out in a relatively orderly fashion. Corinne and her friends shed their shoes and ran toward the front of the school, intent on fulfilling their plan of taking pictures in front of the newly-painted, grammatically incorrect MHS rock.

Reactions to the situation varied. Facebook updates by Corinne's friends ranged from “What a CRAPPY graduation!!” to “This is officially THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!!!!” For the most part, though, the students seemed to find the same humor in the situation that I did. Just witnessing their sheer joy dancing in the wet grass around the rock was worth the price of admission.

The biggest shame was that we didn't get to witness the final performance of Bill Schrank, who would have been directing the choir for the last time before retiring to his fishing boat after 32 distinguished years as Milton's choral director.

I felt horrible for Principal Jeremy Bilhorn, who looked like he had just endured the longest day of his life. I hope people upset by Mother Nature's fury don't take it out on Mr. Bilhorn. An outdoor ceremony is always preferred, and with the forecast being inaccurate and ever-changing, he was in a no-win situation. If he had moved the ceremony indoors and it didn't rain, he would have been pummeled as well. I was watching the weather all morning, too, and he made the same call I would have made.

Mr. Bilhorn apologized profusely to Corinne for not being able to give her salutatorian speech, though she was not upset in the least. In fact, she was relieved. Nevertheless, he offered to have her give her speech on camera inside the school so that it could be added to the graduation DVD.

So our graduation day ended inside the Red Hawk Media room, where a small group of friends heard Corinne read her speech from a saturated page. Since her cap (and just about everyone else's) was destroyed in the rain, she wore one used by a friend's boyfriend at his commencement from Edgerton High. Her gown, the same one I wore 30 years ago, had regained its musty basement smell thanks to the sudden soaking.

It was a comical end to a wonderful four years.