Long Way Home

“There are so many wars that just can’t be won
Even before the battle’s begun.”
Wilco

Most of our troops deployed in Iraq have concluded their long way home for Christmas. Bombs exploded throughout Baghdad yesterday, killing scores. The Shiite Iraqi government wanted us out (thankfully), so they’ll have to deal with disgruntled Sunnis without our help. The next domino in the Mideast cauldron appears to be Syria, whose president, Bashar-al-Assad, is responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of protestors. If a Republican wins in 2012, chances are we’ll be pulled into another war, perhaps with Iran. Admiral William H. McRaven, the SEAL team commander who organized the raid that took out Osama bin Laden and a runner-up as Time magazine person of the Year, praised Barack Obama as a steady, brave, knowledgeable commander in chief. I shudder to think what might happen if someone like Gingrich replaces him.

Because I work in IUN’s library as CRA co-director, I got invited (first time) to their holiday lunch. A highlight was chatting with Lois, former director Bob Moran’s secretary whom I hadn’t seen in years, and Jackie Cheairs, whose brother-in-law just returned from Iraq, hopefully for good, after multiple deployments. Because the vice chancellor wanted the library open even though the semester is over, Tim Sutherland ordered food from Strack and Van Til’s. The chicken and ham were good and the ribs tough, and the mashed potatoes a pleasant surprise. I ate so much I skipped my normal yogurt before bowling. At Cressmoor Lanes my Engineers won five of seven and would have swept the Dingbats had Bobby McCann not doubled in the tenth of the third game.

Upon arriving home, I was greeted by Phil and Diamond, out for his final pee of the evening. When the others retired for bed, I watched Letterman, who had John Huntsman on (he’d make a great Obama cabinet member). Dave worked two viral YouTube excerpts into his monologue, one of monkeys riding dogs and the other of a FedEx employee tossing a package containing a TV over a fence.

Thursday my nuclear family (Toni, Phil, Dave, and I) spent the day together. It was great. Normally Dave does not like music on while playing games, but he had no objection to The Decembrists, Arcade Fire, and Wilco. After Amun Re and Acquire, we played seven pinochle games. The guys were all smiles after winning the first two, but the old folks took the next four out of five. We finished with an abbreviated Texas hold ’em match.

Vandals have desecrated the Marquette Park Pavilion, which is undergoing a multi-million dollar facelift. Not only did they steal copper pipes, they started a fire inside and smeared graffiti on the walls. Dave and Angie got married there. Poor Gary. How many black eyes can the city survive?

Yesterday I paid $2.99 a gallon filling up the Corolla. Today the price had jumped to $3.39.

The Congressional fight over extending tax cuts and unemployment benefits appears over, with Republican House members apparently caving in the face of almost universal criticism, even from Senate Republicans. Judge Louis Rosenberg decertified Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White for fraudulently stating his residence. State Rep Charlie Brown, meanwhile, is stepping up his drive to ban smoking in public places in time for the Superbowl, taking place in Indy in six weeks.

Driving to the library on its last day open until January 3, 2012, I heard Supertramp’s “Take the Long Way Home,” which contains these lines: “When the day comes to settle down, who’s to blame if you’re not around?” I worked on the Maggie Comer chapter of “On Their Shoulders.” Like Marie Arredondo, she sacrificed so that her children might have an opportunity to fully develop their talents.

At Gaard Logan’s suggestion I Googled artist Bo Bartlett, who gave to the Tacoma Art Museum a painting entitled “Brooklyn Crucifixion.” A comely woman in a pink bathrobe is hanging by ropes that have caused her wrists to bleed. Flanking her are an artist and a bearded man who resembles Chain Potok whose novel about rebellious Hasidic Jew, “My Name Is Asher Lev,” inspired Bartlett. Gaard’s book club is currently reading the novel, which I had never heard of. Here’s a quote from Asher’s teacher: “As an artist you are responsible to no one and nothing, except to yourself and the truth as you see it. Do you understand? An artist is responsible to his art. Anything else is propaganda.”

On Facebook Pat Zollo mentioned getting together with Tom Curry, and we exchanged messages about Paul Curry, whose C130 was shot down in Vietnam. It caused me to shed a tear thinking about finding Paul Curry’s name on The Wall in Washington. It took a little time because I hadn’t realized Paul was his middle name. Terry Jenkins, whom I’m still close to, was probably Paul’s best friend and a pallbearer, I believe, at the funeral. When we were kids, the three of us were out with our sleds trying to catch rides on the back fenders of cars that stopped at a Summit Avenue intersection near Kirk’s Store. A police car came by, and Paul muttered, “Dirty copper.” The car screeched to a halt and the officer said, “What did you say?” Without batting an eye Paul replied, “Dirty rubber.” It made no sense, but the policeman said something like, “Well, watch what you say” and drove off. From then on saying “Dirty rubber” is an inside joke with us that evokes memories of Paul.

Uncle John's Band

“What I Want to Know
Where does the time go?”

Got home from bowling last night and heard Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead’s “Uncle John’s Band.” Years ago, when Ivan Jasper moved to Florida, he gave me some of his old albums, including the 1970 classic “Workingman’s Dead” in mint condition (wonder what that would bring on ebay?). Since it was only 8:30 in the Seattle, I was able to ring up Gaard and Chuck Logan, who are still huge Dead fans (it’s the reason Chuck pays for Sirius radio). The Dead were trendsetters in so many ways but totally unique, with a music historian’s sense of their roots.

My bowling team, the Electrical Engineers, won 5 of 7 points, winning the third game by a mere 7 pins. I stunk the first half of the evening, going into the fifth frame of the second game, for instance with a 34, but I got hot and finished that game with a 162 and then rolled 190 in game three. Our 81 year-old captain, Bill Batalis, goes home after the first game if not needed as a sub, and I call him if we win any points thereafter. He was pleasantly surprised to get my call since we bowled a tough team of over-200 average bowlers. Their leadoff man, Jorge Lopez, is daughter-in-law Delia’s uncle. In game three he started with five strikes. A deliberate bowler, he was ready to start the sixth frame when someone a lane down suddenly went in front of him. He threw a gutter ball, which cost him about 30 pins, and then got all ten on the second ball. He continued striking until the tenth frame, when the same bowler so annoyed him that he left one pin. He could easily bowled a perfect game instead of a 249.

Bowler John Gilbert came over, sat beside me, and told me he had had a rough day. We have a standing joke that I call him Johnny and he calls my “paw” – being that only his dad ever called him Johnny. I figured he was talking about work, but the reason was because his old girlfriend Jamie’s father died. He still loves Jamie and was close to both of her parents, so he went to the wake to pay his respects but couldn’t bring himself to go inside. He thought it might have made people, himself included, uncomfortable, so he’s planning to send Jamie’s mother a sympathy card and note instead.

“The old man had his high point every Wednesday at George’s Bowling Alley, where he once bowled a historic game in which he got three consecutive strikes.” Jean Shepherd

After I started game three with three strikes (a turkey) I immediately thought of the Jean Shepherd quote from “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash.” I used that witticism in the intro to my Nineties issue “Shards and Midden Heaps” (another Shepherd line). My league, Sheet and Tin, is a vestige of an era when industrial leagues flourished. Now steelworkers are a vanishing breed, with more old-timers moving south every year or scaling back their league play as the recession has taken on an air of permanence. It was once common for guys to bowl in three or four leagues. When in my fifties I bowled in a league with son Dave and still have a championship jacket from 1994 to prove it. There was an IUN intramural league in the early nineties that sadly lasted only one season. One night teammate Jackie Cheairs, a leftie with a slow hooking ball who often struggled to break one hundred, bagged a half-dozen strikes in a row and after each one gave a hearty chuckle. Afterwards, she couldn’t believe she broke 200.

During the Nineties my league took up eight alleys at Cressmoor Lanes in Hobart and a women’s league bowled on the other eight. The women, for the most part, were better bowlers than the men in our league. I loved to watch the best of them, Lisa Anserello, who had the sweetest delivery I’ve ever seen. In today’s paper was mention that Linda Olszewski recently rolled an 843. Unbelievable. When I bowled my historic 615 series during the mid-Nineties, I stayed around to brag and have another nightcap. A couple blocks from Cressmoor a cop stopped me because a taillight on our ’84 Toyota hatchback had popped out. Noting that my breath smelled suspicious, he asked if I had been drinking. My classic reply, “Only a couple beers, officer.” Well, he had me blow into a Breathalyzer as a second cop car pulled up. Then a third cop car arrived. I had been sharing pitchers with some other guys and didn’t really know if I gone over the .8 limit. I thought to my horror, “They’re going to take me off in handcuffs the night of my big triumph.” The officer came back and begrudgingly (I thought) said I could go. Whew! Now my limit is two Leinie drafts (I once toured the Leinenkugal Brewery in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, but that’s another story).