thebuckblogimo

[thebuckblogimo]

After 30 years of "family vacay" it's the hidden moments I've enjoyed most.

August 12, 2025

The "Buck" clan just came off our tenth--as near as anyone can figure--extended family vacation at the time of Grand Haven's annual Coast Guard Festival. During porch time someone also figured out that we started doing family sabbaticals--in one form or another when my Mom and Dad were still alive--about 30 years ago at a sprawling Frank-Lloyd-Wright-type house on Drummond Island in the Upper Peninsula.

Over the years we've vacationed in a group of small cottages on Lake Huron in Harrisville, a massive home in walking distance of Lake Michigan near South Haven, and a rustic retreat in the woods of Wolverine, Michigan. It's always been great fun doing such things as skeet shooting, pontooning, salmon fishing, kayaking, etc. One time, during "Coast Guard," we rented a dunk tank. Another time we had a competitive dead-fish toss that was videotaped by a Kalamazoo TV station for broadcast on the 11 o'clock news.

There have also been some wonderful late night campfires. Amazing meals, such as the smoked brisket recently prepared by millennial members of the family. And along with the Coast Guard Festival's annual parade, drone show and fireworks, our clan has had its own festival tradition: a night of hip-shaking to raucous music for passers-by--cheered on by family members--under a "dance tunnel" formed by two colorfully lit canopies erected over the sidewalk in front of our house.

Neighbors up and down the street have been known to kick back in camp chairs on their front lawns to take in the entertainment provided by our shenanigans.

Of course, there have been pranks galore during our family vacations, such as the time my brothers and sisters spiked my box of raisin bran with tiny plastic ants. Being up to their tricks, however, I purposefully chomped down on the damn things--and rid them from my mouth with the deft swipe of a napkin--as though I never noticed a problem, while my siblings watched astonishingly through the crack of a slightly ajar kitchen door.

But the thing I've always enjoyed most about family vacation are the heartfelt little conversations I've had during quiet time, mostly with my nieces and nephews.

I recall sitting on the back porch a few years ago with a college-aged nephew when he said, "You know, Uncle Len, every time I come here I learn things I never knew, get insights I never had, and feel like I come away better for it."

That puffed me up, to be sure.

During family vacay earlier this month I had an introspective conversation with a nephew who told me he had just completed his 588th straight day of "bodyweight exercises." Talk about self discipline. It's clear to me that this once-hell-raising young man has been able to apply the same intense focus to the development of the business he's currently building.

A day or two earlier I found myself in a deep conversation on the side porch with his wife regarding her views on child rearing (of which she and her husband are doing a marvelous job), as well as about the many significant novels she has read. I was impressed by the depth of her thinking.

And during a walk to the food trucks at the Elks Club down the street I had a fascinating discussion with another nephew and his wife about the pros and cons of a classical college education in the effort to develop critical thinking skills compared to one that endeavors to prepare you for a career.

After dinner on the last night of vacation that same nephew asked the "elders" if there might be a reason for how our family has been able to consistently pull off decades of family vacations, Thanksgiving Day celebrations, large Christmas Eve gatherings, etc., with a minimum amount of rancor, drama or hurt feelings.

He and others then heard us tell the story of how my sisters and I, when we were just children during the '50s, while sitting on the living room floor of my grandparents house and within earshot of yet another extended family shouting match in the dining room, made a pact never to be like my Dad and his four brothers who argued incessantly at family gatherings, creating such anger and lasting enmity that attending family functions eventually became something to be avoided, thereby robbing my sisters and I of the ability to get to really know our cousins.

I would eat an entire box of plastic ants 'n' bran if I could absolutely ensure that such a thing never happens in the extended family of Bucks after I'm dead and gone.

[thebuckblogimo]

Feeling "blissed" after my first legitimate music festival.

July 21, 2025

I've been to music festivals before: Polish music festivals, Irish music festivals, even one in Ontario with an amazingly eclectic mix of genres, including Canadian rock, acappella and cosmic jazz. But they were day-long events. Blissfest, the one I attended a couple of weeks ago in northern Michigan, was a three-day affair attracting over 5,000 people of all ages who spent the weekend in tents, campers and motor homes.

Although this year's Blissfest--focused on bluegrass, folk and roots music--was the 43rd annual, I'd never heard of it until our across-the-street neighbors began singing its praises a few years ago. So my wife, two sisters and I decided to rent a pop-up trailer and join them for a long weekend of music, camping and carrying-on near Harbor Springs.

I'm glad we did.

Yes, the music was wonderful. And to my surprise there were a couple groups doing a thing that was more in my wheelhouse: a Los Angeles band called Ozomatli, playing a mashup of jazz, funk and salsa; and a group out of Venice Beach, California, called Dustbowl Revival, a soulful  collective with eight or nine members who meld funk, bluegrass, roots and blues into a genre-defying sound featuring a couple of trumpets, sax, trombone and a Janis Joplin sound-alike on lead vocals.

But here's what was exceptionally cool...

Although I saw countless people walking around with cans of beer, cocktails in plastic cups, or pre-rolls in their hands for three days, I did not encounter a single stupid person. Not one idiot. No one got mean and threw hands. No one threw up. Refreshingly, I saw no political signs, t-shirts or hats. And nowhere on the grounds did I encounter even a hint of the rancor so prevalent in our society today.

What's more, even the young children displayed exemplary behavior. No whining. No crying. No acting out. The entire weekend was, indeed, blissful.

At first I was surprised by how many concertgoers wished us "Happy Bliss." (Are these people that nice, that happy, I wondered?) It took me a while to comprehend that Blissfest was more than just about the music of 50 or 60 groups and individual artists. It was also about a unique "vibe" throughout the festival grounds--at the various stages where music was performed; in the woods where mostly young people camped in tents so colorfully lit that at night the forest looked like a gargantuan psychedelic poster under black light; and among everyone else hanging out at their recreational vehicles parked in rustic areas on the periphery of the festival property.

I can't say for sure whether or not we'll return to Blissfest next year. After all, seventy-somethings such as ourselves find it more difficult than ever to hang with younger folks late into the night, especially after crisscrossing acres of property in the hot sun, quaffing CFOs (cool frosty ones) most of the day and occasionally taking a hit on a doobie. On the other hand, there is this, causing me to want to return next year:

It was an absolute delight to be in the presence of so many strangers who, for us, became something beyond that, who just seemed to "get it" in terms of how to co-exist and treat one another. For me, the trickle-down effect of gratuitous anger, me-first-ism and to-hell-with-the-next-guy attitudes that seem to emanate from the very top of our culture these days has gotten really old. Blissfest was a tonic, a rejuvenating elixir for that.

To be able to escape it was worth the price of admission, if even for just a few blissful days.

[thebuckblogimo]

Twenty things we take for granted that I would never have predicted as a teenager.

July 7, 2025

It's been 60 years since I graduated from high school (1965). Back then, all that I could think about were girls, sports and rock 'n' roll. It was a time when my pals and I thought we were so cool, with many of us combing our hair in a style that resembled the fins of a swept-wing Dodge. Speaking of cars, it was the era of Detroit "muscle"--Ford Mustangs, Pontiac GTOs and Chryslers with "hemi engines." Musically, we were mostly into Motown as the "British invasion" had only just begun. With an early '60s mindset, here are 20 things considered ordinary today that I did not have on my radar as future possibilities. If you were on the leading edge of the baby boom, how many more can you think of?

Ball caps with company names or logos. (Back then it was strictly caps with the first initials of the cities of professional sports teams or that of your high school or recreation baseball team.)

T-shirts with company logos on the front. (There were neither shirts with Nike, Addidas, Rebok or Under Armour on the chest, nor shirts with the logos of car companies, outfitters, lumber yards or bars. I do, however, remember t-shirts with the names of one's favorite college or university.)

Paying for water that comes in plastic bottles. (Who would ever pay for water?)

Computers smaller than a transistor radio. (At the time, "main-frame" computers were so big that a few of them clustered together took up space equivalent to a two-car garage.)

Being able to watch a movie on an electronic device (iPhone) that fits into your pocket.

Hands-free steering in a car.

6'9" basketball players who play point guard.

Offensive lines--even at schools we now call mid-majors--that average over 300 pounds per man.

A time when jeans are made by dozens of companies beyond just Levi Strauss or Lee.

The number one automaker in the world being anyone but General Motors.

The number one selling vehicle in America being a pickup truck (Ford F-150).

Men wearing anything but a suit or sports coat to the office every day.

Alcoholic cocktails that come in a can.

A world where people on the street know your dog's name before they know yours.

Having to spend much, much more than five dollars for a "box seat" at a major league baseball stadium.

Blackwall tires on black rims being more popular than whitewall tires on chrome rims.

Seeing a coyote, hawk or wild turkey in an urban area.

Paying someone other than a taxi cab driver or chauffeur to take you from point A to point B.

Millions of people across the country earning extra income by regularly renting out their homes for periods as short as a weekend.

Receiving an email--an email?--about tickets to a minor league baseball game indicating that the stadium is a cashless one for the purchase of hot dogs, beer, souvenirs, etc.

0 notes

[thebuckblogimo]

Mumbo jumbo out of my mind on a "Monday Moanin'."

June 16, 2025

With all due respect to Bob Talbert, the late Detroit Free Press daily newspaper columnist who occasionally wrote a column called "Out of My Mind on a Monday Moanin'," here's another one of my attempts at a similar effort:

As a child in grade school, I can remember hearing the word "UNICEF" on the radio and thinking it sounded cool. Then one day it appeared as one of the multiple choice options on some sort of standardized test we had to take. So that's what I marked. I've always wondered whether I got that one right.

I'd rather eat liver (smothered in onions) than venison or turkey.

I never had a non-alcoholic beer I liked until I sampled Free Wave, a hazy IPA by Athletic Brewing Company.

Try as I might, "modern country" is not a type of music I much care for. Bluegrass, on the other hand, is one I rather enjoy. I dig the pickin', pluckin' and strummin'. I also like the sound of a stand-up bass.

Let's be honest, we'd all be better off if we spent less time on our electronic devices.

During my youth, as many times as I drove down Ford Road in Dearborn (through open property that was once part of the Ford family farm), it rarely caused me to think of Ford Motor Company.

I like searching kitchen cupboards for a coffee mug at the homes of friends and relatives because I enjoy seeing where their collections come from--sports teams, places of work, promotions, commemorative events, festivals, etc. I'm weird.

I saw a young couple at the store, pushing a toddler in their cart while they shopped. The man was wearing a t-shirt that said, "Fuck Off." Really? C'mon, man...

I have been 5' 10" since I was a sophomore in high school. Now, at the doctor's office I measure 5' 8.5". But I don't seem to require shorter pants. Why is that?

It kills me when people call PBS biased. Name a news organization that plays it more down-the-middle. MSNBC? CNN? FOX? I don't think so.

More words that I understand but don't think I've ever used in a declarative sentence: fraught, vis-a-vis, proffer, agency (as in having the power to influence an outcome), evince, paean, withering, feckless, mercurial, shibboleth, rubric and bifurcate.

Most of my friends from back in the day rank the voice of William "Smokey" Robinson as the best ever in the history of Motown. I would agree. I put the underrated voice of Levi Stubbs (lead singer of the Four Tops) at number two.

As a child, I heard the term "writ of habeas corpus" several times on '50s TV crime shows. I had no idea what it meant, but I thought it was a very cool sounding phrase. Still do.

I like coffee. And I appreciate really good coffee. Black. But I don't understand coffee mixed with syrups, whipped cream, fizzy milk, etc.

I notice that a lot of old white guys wear old white running shoes with shoelaces that are WAY too long.

In the eighth grade I had a young lay teacher (I attended a Catholic school) who taught us how to properly write a check; touted the benefits of whole wheat over white bread; introduced us to weight lifting; brought chocolate covered ants and grasshoppers to class for us to sample; and introduced us to instrumental rock 'n' roll based on classical music, such as Asia Minor by Kokomo, an adaptation of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor. Thankfully, in addition to algebra and history, he taught us many practical things I've used my whole life.

Fifty-five percent of the population in Dearborn is Arab-American. I got used to and came to appreciate many aspects of the Arab culture long ago. One thing I have a difficult time understanding is Arab women who wear a hijab (headscarf) while doing vigorous exercise at the Planet Fitness. Sure seems as though it would feel uncomfortable while doing bench presses, military presses, etc. And hot.

More miscellaneous tidbits to come as they occur to me.

[thebuckblogimo]

Not many in the stands were thinking The Vibrations when Ohio State's marching band played "Hang On Sloopy."

June 4, 2025

My best guess is that it was the fall of 1967, when the Buckeyes came to East Lansing to play the Spartans, that I first heard the Ohio State marching band play their interpretation of "Hang On Sloopy" by The McCoys. When they did so, two things came to mind for me: 1) They did a heckuva job with the tune. 2) Only a handful of fans in the stands likely knew that The McCoys had ripped off the Cleveland R&B group, The Vibrations, covering the group's original 1964 recording, "My Girl Sloopy."

But I knew.

The Vibrations' tune was the sort of music that most white people rarely heard back in the day because it was largely relegated to black radio stations. The very best of it was often covered by white artists and played for the masses on rock 'n' roll or pop stations. Think "Little Darlin'," as a prime example, a song originally recorded by an obscure doo woo group called the Gladiolas and covered by the Diamonds in 1957. Its success catapulted the white Canadian singing group to early rock 'n' roll fame.

That sort of thing--black music covered by white artists for fat profits--has always been a prime beef of mine. I'd like to take you back in time for some sense of how I came to think that way.

One night after a basketball game during my junior year in high school, I and two of my teammates, Garry and Dennis, were cruising Detroit's Woodward Avenue in seek of urban adventure.

I was at the wheel of my Dad's Pontiac Bonneville, heading south in front of the not-yet-restored Fox Theater, when I turned right onto Columbia with the intent of driving by the Lester Hotel, notorious for its reputation as a brothel, just to satisfy our curiosity to see what the place looked like. (Honestly, it was not our intent to patronize it.)

We did, however, park the car nearby and walked down steps into a funky little restaurant we noticed below street level, a crowded diner with huge windows that revealed an eclectic clientele inside. My adventure that evening took the form of ordering scrambled eggs and "pork brains."

I recall the scene so vividly because I associate it with singing along to "My Girl Sloopy" which had been playing on the radio as I turned onto the side street. The Vibrations' tune was a discovery made while listening to deejay "Frantic" Ernie Durham on Detroit soul station WJLB. It knocked us off our feet.

As not-always-conforming teens, we did stuff like that--cruise the city's streets while listening to soul music on one of the Motor City's black radio stations, or CKLW, a "white station" out of Windsor, Ontario, that regularly dipped into the black discography for its playlist.

The exploration of urban areas and the hunger to discover music from the black culture was a way of asserting our independence, I suppose. I think we thought we were "so cool" because we knew and did stuff that other people didn't know and do.

Vestiges of that sort of thinking have never totally abandoned me. It was sparked in me recently when I read the New York Times obituary for Rick Derringer, lead singer of The McCoys. Derringer, a guitar player and producer, went on to have what sounds like a wonderful career that included work with Edgar Winter, Johnny Winter, Steely Dan, Peter Frampton and many more.

Meanwhile, after all these years, the Ohio State band is still playing "Hang On Sloopy" between the third and fourth quarters of home football games in Columbus. A great tradition. The song is also played at Cleveland Guardians, Browns and Cavaliers games. In 1985, the Ohio Legislature adopted "Hang On Sloopy" as the state's official rock song.

Based on the long list of notables that Derringer worked with during his career after his success with "Sloopy," I suspect he did quite well for himself and lived a comfortable life. On the other hand, I'm betting that the guys in The Vibrations made diddly-squat off their original recording of the song.

That sort of thing has ticked me off ever since the night I sampled scrambled eggs and brains.

[thebuckblogimo]

Some thoughts about cell phones and generative A.I. in schools, and an even bigger education issue.

May 27, 2025

I don't spend as much time thinking about secondary education as I used to because it's been a while since my wife and I had kids in school. However, I had three recent experiences that rekindled my interest:

No screens from bell to bell? I was at the local community center to vote on a school millage proposal, ironically, when I started up a conversation with a couple of high school kids who happened to be standing next to me at a student art exhibition I stopped to view in the hallway. Aware that there is a nascent movement to ban or curtail cell phone use in schools across America, I decided to ask them about Grand Haven Public Schools' position on the matter.

I was surprised to learn that local high school students are required to deposit their phones in a bag upon entry to each class, can retrieve them at the end of the period--while being permitted to use them briefly between classes--then deposit them again before the start of the next period. When I asked questions about how being without their phones at school was going for them I was surprised at their answers. Here's a summation:

They said they had little trouble giving up their devices. They said they weren't suffering withdrawals as a result, and admitted, in fact, that their attention levels had probably improved some. When I expressed surprise at their answers they both said that they take their studies pretty seriously, while adding that some kids who are not as engaged with their school work and have trouble concentrating seem to feel anxious without their phones.

I wanted to press them further but a woman who turned out to be a retired school teacher, and now a volunteer proctor, ushered them along, explaining that it was time for the students to get back to their assembly. After the students walked away, I commented to her how impressed I was by the two young men and how surprised I was by their answers to my questions about cell phone use at school.

"Oh, you were talking to the cream of the crop," she said. "These are all AP students here today." So I put some of my questions to her, and she confirmed my assumptions: that cell phones at school are indeed a huge distraction, that the desire of kids to read books for fun is diminishing because they "want it now" on their phones, that kids are often bullied on their devices and that social media has devolved into a thing that causes many kids to feel inferior because they're seduced by the technology into comparing themselves to others who seem to live in a perfect world.

"Frankly, I think that phones should be banned at school from the first bell to the last one at the end of the day," she said. "And I mean during recess, too, because that's when kids should be playing and interacting. In fact, I also think that laptops and computers should probably be banned in schools, because I don't see where kids sitting in front of screens for the last ten years has done them much good."

Back to longhand? There's this high school kid I've come to know at the gym who was born in Ireland. He recently mentioned to me in his Irish brogue that he'd just finished a ten-page paper and that he was feeling pretty good about it. That got me to thinking...

"Do you and your friends use generative A.I. in school?" I asked. "Because it can write your paper for you, can't it?" He laughed and said that he had indeed used A.I. But not to write his paper, only to do research and produce facts to support his point of view.

He went on to explain that he could have had A.I. not only write his paper, he could have had A.I. "humanize" it. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"You know, dumb in down with a few spelling and grammatical errors," he said. I was dumbfounded. I had never thought of the possibility of that.

"So how are your teachers handling all this in your classes?" I inquired. "Are they doing anything to discourage the use of A.I. by the kids in their school work?" Here was his overview:

Grand Haven teachers are trying to figure out how to best use A.I as a teaching tool, and they are giving consideration to conducting oral exams in class, as well as assigning essays to be written in the classroom--in cursive--as a guard against its use by the kids to write their essays.

And here I thought that handwriting had gone the way of encyclopedias and floppy disks.

Leaving disadvantaged kids behind. It was during Easter week that my wife and I were sipping cocktails with family members one sunny afternoon on the porch at my mother-in-law's house, when the conversation got around to how our millennial children, and others like them, generally prefer to live in or close to urban areas these days. I pointed out, however, that the last time I was in Chicago I overheard my daughter and son-in-law, who live in a diverse, densely populated city neighborhood and who have a toddler and an infant, talk about the possibility of their next move being to a suburb in the upcoming years for reasons of more space, a bigger yard and, yes, better schools.

My sister-in-law, whose millennial daughter and husband live in Nashville and have three kids slightly older than my grandchildren, opined that she didn't think that their family would likely move until the kids approach high school age, in consideration of the quality of the schools.

Who knows when or if any of those things will happen? But the conversation we were having struck me as a real life example of how, when middle-class families leave cities for the 'burbs, they leave behind ethnic communities, the working class, the disadvantaged, the urban poor, etc., with schools that often lack the best teachers, enough counselors, skilled tutors, mental health resources, enrichment materials, good technology, etc.

For me, it calls to mind an issue that I often think about: the yawning gap between the haves and the have nots. I don't possess any big ideas for fixing such a big problem, but when it comes to the education part of it I wish we could increase the pay of teachers who have an impossible job-- the combination of knowledge transmission, management of classroom dynamics, social worker duties, dealing with mental health problems, etc. And I wish there could be greater equity among all schools when it comes to funding, whether they're in urban, suburban or rural areas. Also, I wish there could magically be more two-parent families involved with their kids' schools.

Unfortunately, banning cell phones at school and putting up guardrails for A.I. isn't going to help with any of that stuff.

[thebuckblogimo]

How do we become who we are?

May 5, 2025

There are scholarly works devoted to answering this simple but complex question. I'm going to save you the time of having to consult them by giving you my take in a couple dozen paragraphs. So here goes...

I was probably 17 when one glorious summer evening, while tidying up the basement at our family's home in advance of a meeting of the Order of Alhambra, a Catholic charitable organization in which my Dad was active, I got into a conversation with an early arriving member who had taken an interest in me. As we talked, he stopped me in my tracks when he stated the following: 

"You're more like your mother than your father, aren't you?"

I didn't quite know what to say? Was that a compliment, a criticism or something else? I knew that the men in the club really liked my Dad. He was someone who enjoyed the spotlight. He was opinionated. He was considered to be tough in many ways. He was a big drinker. He liked to needle his fellow "sultans" in the "caravan." He was a character. At the same time I knew they really loved my Mom. She shunned the spotlight. She never stepped forward with her opinions. She was a genuinely kind woman. She hardly drank a drop. She was humble. She was anything but a character.

The next thing I knew the guy gave me the keys to his powder blue, 1964 Mercury convertible in which to "bomb the hood" until the meeting was over. I was in heaven. But as I drove away from the house to pick up a buddy, I left wondering what that Alhambran meant by his observation of me.

I have long thought that we are all born with certain personality traits and a collection of God-given talents. But, of course, we are also molded in a variety of ways by our parents, our siblings, our friends, our work colleagues, our spouses, our experiences in life, etc.

Sounds simple, except it's not.

When I was five or six years old I was always running around, cutting past the stove in the kitchen, darting around the living room like my TV idol, Flash Gordon; I was on the shy side but the boss of my two younger sisters (often punching them in the arm for no apparent reason); I was a risk-taking little guy; and although I sometimes did things I shouldn't do (play with a hot iron when my mother stepped away to answer the phone or ditch a partially eaten ham sandwich under the cushions of my grandmother's couch), down deep inside I knew right from wrong.

As I was entering into grade school, I often played with the two older boys who lived next door, as well as some older ones around the corner. Practically everyone in my neighborhood played sports. Because I was coordinated and fleet afoot, I fit right in with them.

The neighbor boys were also tinkerers. They'd turn their bikes over, disassemble the parts inside the hubs of the rear wheels, adjust the brakes or grease the bearings, and put everything back together. But when I tried to do the same I could never figure out how to reassemble it all. I was forever bugging them to bail me out of trouble.

After college, both brothers bought hot new cars--one a Comet Caliente the other a Chevy Corvette--and they always seemed to be under the hood, trying to coax more performance out of their vehicles. A few years later as I was finishing college, I bought my first car, a ten-year-old Corvette, but the only mechanical things I ever did to it was replace worn brushes in the generator and change the oil.

The point is this: I picked up sports from the kids I played with because I already had a natural propensity to be able to do that. But no matter how much I tried I was piss-poor at fixing things. It just seemed to be the way I was made.

As I got a little older and started hanging out regularly with kids my age, I learned about girls from the boy I walked to school with every day. He knew how to approach them. How to talk to them. He was a natural at it. Me? Not so much. But because I was a three-sport athlete, pretty good in school, and picked up on everything he did, I had girlfriends, too.

Other boys I met introduced me to other things--some good, some not so good--that contributed to who I was as a kid: a spewer of locker room humor, a devotee of rock 'n' roll, a hotshot who could breathe fire from his mouth by spitting lighter fluid at a lit match, an avid reader of short stories, a young author who made up stuff, ad infinitum.

All the while, without even realizing it, I was formulating a personal code of ethics. Fortunately for me, in high school, I ran with a crowd of good dudes. Good in the sense that most of them had goals for the future, were generally serious about their studies, and although occasionally capable of commiting petty crime (shoplifting 45 rpm records), they all, in my estimation, had a good basic sense of morals.

In fact, my mother would say, "I don't worry about Lenny. He has good friends; they're such good kids." (At least one of the pals had her fooled with his over-the-top politeness while actually being a wise-cracking prankster).

All the while it was a goal of mine to attend college. At home it was just assumed that I would do so some day. I think it was pretty much the same for the teenage friends who most influenced me. As I look back on my high school years they were largely spent with fellas who always pressed forward, had a sense of direction, endeavored to do well in most things, and were "leaders" in school as the nuns at St. Al's used to put it.

Oh, there were differences among them, to be sure. My friend who was senior class president and went on to become a hospital CEO encouraged me to run for class office, something I would never have done otherwise. My buddy who had paper routes, worked his butt off at Rouge Steel and later became a successful purchasing agent there, reinforced my work ethic. My pal, who as a 13-year-old figured out how to pirate broadcast space over the AM dial from his makeshift basement studio, became an inventor of sound equipment. I picked up creative ways and a broadened sensibility about music, thanks to him.

I'm just skimming the surface of the ocean here, of course, but all those kids--who they were and what they were made of--contributed in incalcuable ways to who I would become as a person.

And yet, before all that, before grade school, before high school--and without even mentioning the profound influence that some of my college buds in the mid '60s, work colleagues from my first big boy job, and my wife had on me as a young adult--there was the undeniable influence of my Mom and Dad and the countless lessons I learned from them.

For about a dozen years after World War II, my father made good money as a small business owner. He could outwork anyone I have ever known. But I wasn't even in kindergarten when I noticed how he would flash a wad of cash at the bar he often patronized, how he often bought the house a drink, how he seemed to savor the role of "big shot."

I'd sit at his side, with my Coke and chips, and observe him arguing politics, boxing, fishing, horse racing and more with the joint's cast of characters. He was always right. Or so he thought. Also, one night, during a Christmas party at the home of his best Army buddy, I cringed when I heard him embarrass his old friend in front of everyone in the room for being a small gas station owner because "You'll never make any money that way, Frank."

Despite being a heavy drinker, I never saw my Dad miss a day of work. Not ever. "It's a great life if you don't weaken," he would say. Countless times I saw him wrestle slabs of marble the day after a hard night of shots and beers. The man was tough like that and in other ways too numerous to mention.

By the end of the '50s, my Dad's business started to nosedive. Many times I would hear him shout over the phone at my two uncles, his business partners, who he derided for their timidity, their unwillingness to take a chance on relocating and expanding the business. On the other hand, I never heard my mother utter an unkind word about them. Or anyone else. Even when I could tell my Dad expected her to have his back. Which she did, minus the vitriol.

Meanwhile as a kid, I was always watching.

I could see the unquestioned value of my Dad's strong will, his incessant drive. But I could also see how his anger and the way he sometimes shot off his mouth got him into trouble. At the same time I could see how inherently kind and humble my mother was, and how she sacrificed so much for my father, brothers, and sisters.

All of the people I've mentioned, all of the experiences I've described above went into the making of who I would become. Just as I am sure that that the people and experiences of, say, a ghetto kid coming from a broken home, living on a street where gangstas are the biggest heros, goes into who he or she eventually becomes.

I started out here by suggesting that there is a huge copendium of knowledge available to answer the question posed by the title of this piece. I have only scratched the surface in my attempt to answer it. But I know this: If I was given a do-over to reply to the observation of that "exalted sultan" before my Dad's Alhambra meeting, I'd say something like this:

Actually, I'm somewhere on the spectrum between my mother and father. I inherited some toughness from my Dad (whether you judge it by being able to endure double football practices when I was 14 or dealing with the fallout from the fire that destroyed our home when I was 63); I even came to enjoy the spotlight as an adult, without needing to have it constantly shining on me. And although I'm not nearly as humble as my mother was, and capable of occasional criticism of others, I'd like to think that she would be proud of me for being inclusive of most of the people I have ever met.

Oh, and where my Dad was a character and my Mom was anything but, I stand accused of being a jive 'n' cruise kind of one at my core.

[thebuckblogimo]

What if the Fairlane mall, Hyatt Hotel, "salt and pepper shakers," etc. had been built on a main street back in the '70s?

April 7, 2025

First, a caveat about this third and final what-might-have-been essay I've written during the last two or three months: It's based on what I recall from the days when I was a young copywriter for AAA after the company moved its headquarters from downtown Detroit to the Fairlane area of Dearborn. I point this out because many people who follow this space grew up with me in Dearborn and may remember the following events a little differently.

As best as I can recall, it was April of 1974 when the Auto Club of Michigan, where I was working at the time, moved its headquarters from Bagley Avenue in downtown Detroit to a new building (with architecture dissed as a monument to the cement industry), across from the new Fairlane Town Center mall in Dearborn (completed in 1976).

Despite the fact that I was renting a house just two miles from my new office, I wasn't particularly thrilled about the company's move. I had really enjoyed working downtown and being able to walk to restaurants, delicatessens, bars, Hudson's department store, etc. on my lunch hour or after work.

And yet, there was something exciting about the prospect of moving to Fairlane with it's brand new, ultra-modern, tri-level shopping mall; exquisite, 880-room Hyatt Regency Hotel; a couple of new, 15-story office buildings (the Fairlane Towers, dubbed the salt and pepper shakers) and even a Disney-like monorail that connected the hotel to the mall.

When it opened, Failane had over 150 shopping options for retail, dining and entertainment, as well as movie theaters and an ice skating rink. It was a 90-second ride via the monorail to the Hyatt, with its revolving restaurant atop the building.

As one exited the main lobby through the front door of the AAA building, you could see the north end of the mall on the other side of Hubbard Drive, not even a quater-mile away. It always struck me as weird that despite working across the street, my fellow employees and I couldn't take a lunchtime walk to get there.

There were no sidewalks.

You had to get into your car in the employee parking lot, turn right onto Hubbard Drive, drive a short distance, make a u-turn, drive back to the entrance into Fairlane, park your car in the massive parking lot and, finally, walk through doors into the mall.

It was "planning" typical of the "automotive mind," consistent with the way that much of the metropolitan area of Detroit is designed to be a sprawling, car friendly urban area. Not a pedestrian friendly one.

If it were possible to go back in time, here's what I think A. Alfred Taubman who, with the blessing of Henry Ford II and friends developed the area, should have done:

It would have been better to design the Fairlane area on a grid system of roads with a "city center"--including sidewalks, bike paths, gardens, sculptures, parks and independent retailers, in addition to all the other buildings and predictable restaurant and retail franchises at the mall.

There could have been a main street to accommodate slow moving traffic, and sidewalks on either side for strolling and human interaction, along with entrances to the mall (still enclosed and with individual glass store fronts), hotel, salt and pepper shakers, the AAA building, etc. Perhaps condos and apartments could have been integrated into the plan (as oppossed to being hidden, as they were, in nearby woods). And perhaps Dearborn's city hall and other municipal buildings could have been located there, too, helping to create a "Fairlane neighborhood."

I think it would have made for a more aesthetically pleasing look to the area, contributed to a feeling of community, and perhaps been better able to stand the test of time than the approach that was taken to erect a building here, a building there and others way over there.

What about parking?

Once part of Henry Ford's 1,300-acre Fair Lane estate, there was so much open land that all the parking required for the development could have been situated behind the buildings on either side of a main street.

But what about the presence of the below-grade Southfield Freeway, as well as Ford Road, which has long functioned like a street-level freeway? Might their presence have precluded the ability to construct a main street and city center?

I don't think so. It seems to me that Hubbard Drive, which has a bridge that crosses Southfield, could have been constructed as an east-west main street.

Or, perhaps, there could have been two or three main thoroughfares built in the area with the mall, hotel, office towers, and other buildings clustered relatively close to each other on the neighborhood's streets.

Perhaps the lightly used monorail, demolished in 1989 due to lack of sufficient ridership, could have been built over a north-south main street to connect all the buildings, giving visitors, shoppers, office workers, etc. the options of walking, driving or taking mass transit to area destinations.

The Fairlane development had a good run for almost 50 years. During that time several other buildings went up in the area: Ford's Regent Court (recently demolished), the Ritz-Carlton Hotel (now a Marriott property), the Big Fish restaurant (now a space for artists and designers) a Ford Land Company building that houses an ad agency, as well as a smattering of smaller, mostly forgetable strip-type shopping plazas.

Today, the Fairlane mall and nearby commercial properties are struggling. (I've lost track of how many times the Hyatt has changed hands.) Population shifts, demographic changes, online shopping, the decline of casual-dining chains, etc. have all conspired to cause the area to look and feel tired.

In my estimation, had it been developed to be more like a downtown neighborhood, with public spaces for gathering, small concerts, festivals, and other reasons for people to come together beyond just shopping at the mall, perhaps Fairlane would have been more able to adapt to changing times and still be a vibrant place in the heart of Dearborn today.

[thebuckblogimo]

What kind of city might Detroit have become had these things not happened?

February 9, 2025

I have long followed developments in the Motor City in the way that some people follow their favorite sports teams. Most of what I know comes from reading the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News for the last 60 years, as well as having lived in the city from 1974 to 1989. So I have many opinions about what might have been had certain events not occurred or had certain decisions been made differently:

Smokestacks on the river. When my wife and I lived in Detroit we often crossed the border to Windsor, Ontario, to shop or visit restaurants on the other side of the Detroit River. When we did so we felt envious of the Canadian waterfront where, other than a Holiday Inn, there were strictly parks and gardens, all the way from the Ambassador Bridge to the Hiram Walker Distillery (a distance of about four miles), enabling picnicking, jogging, strolling, dog walking, sun bathing, etc., on the river's shore. Similarly, in Chicago, from downtown to a point about 20 miles north, there is little else but parkland, public spaces and recreational options along the Lake Michigan shore. In Detroit, however, going all the way back to the middle of the 19th Century, the city built factories, warehouses, power plants, silos, storage areas for raw materials, etc., right up to the river's edge. Now, after 20 years--and an expense of over $300 million for land acquisition, remediation and recreational attractions--the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy is nearing completion of five-and-a-half miles of the Detroit River Walk, from the Ambassador Bridge to the MacArthur Bridge. True, industrialization transformed Detroit into one of the great American cities during the 1920s. And its industrial power made it the Arsenal of Democracy during World War II. However, in addition to its many other problems, the city never really had a "place to go" on its river. Until now.

Thumbs down on subways. I was working at the Auto Club of Michigan during the '70s when I was assigned to do research pertaining to the 60th anniversary of the company. While thumbing through old issues of Motor News, AAA's monthly magazine, I came across a story about three different plans in the 1920s for a Detroit subway system and how they were killed due to political squabbling, the parochial interests of the automotive industry and unreconcilable differences over funding. After doing some digging, I learned that there had been other plans for a subway in Detroit before and after the '20s. The city, however, was never able to come up with the money or muster the political will to get it done. It's difficult for me to imagine what a subway would have meant for Detroit, because even when it was a city of almost 2 million people, Detroit never had the kind of "density" that cities such as New York and Chicago always had due to their preponderance of apartment buildings. Still, if the early plans for a subway system in Detroit would have come to fruition, perhaps there would have been a de-emphasis on the bulldozing of Detroit neighborhoods to make way for the freeways that were eventually built.

Canyons in the city. When I was a kid during the '50s, my Dad usually took surface streets on Sunday drives for family visits to my grandparents' house in Detroit. Sometimes, however, he took the Edsel Ford Freeway. During those drives I recall looking out the back window of the car and noticing homes on both sides of the "ditch," about 25 to 30 feet above the freeway's pavement. It was obvious to me, even then, that heavy equipment had plowed through neighborhoods to build the roadway. I recently did some reading about Detroit roads and freeways and discovered these facts: When Detroit built the Davidson Freeway in 1942, it was the first urban freeway in the country. Then came the aforementioned Ford Freeway, with part of it finished during World War II and the rest completed in the mid '50s. Its construction eliminated 2,800 homes and businesses. Next came the Lodge, with segments built during both the '50s and '60s. Its construction displaced 2,200 homes and businesses. Then came the Southfield Freeway, completed during the early-to-mid '60s. (I was unable to find how many homes and businesses it displaced.) Next came the Chrysler Freeway in the summer of '64. It eliminated 300 black businesses along Hastings Street alone. (I couldn't find how many homes were demolished.) And, finally, the Jeffries Freeway was completed during the early '70s. Its construction consumed 3,600 homes and businesses. Imagine all the Detroit neighborhoods disconnected by freeway construction. Imagine all the stores, tool and die shops, manufacturing facilities, etc. that must have been shuttered. Imagine the lost income for the city from properties being taken off the tax rolls. How about all the grocery stores, bakeries, butcher shops, doctors offices and jazz bars--where many musicians you've heard on Motown records first cut their chops--were lost when Hastings was obliterated? If only Detroit would have built a ring road around the city instead of so many freeways cutting through it. Ultimately, the expressways facilitated the beginning of the outbound migration of Detroit's middle-class and led to urban sprawl throughout metropolitan Detroit.

Fortress with a 73-story hotel. In the early '70s, I saved a copy of the Sunday magazine section of the Detroit Free Press, featuring a nice rendering of the yet-to-be-built Renaissance Center. Surely, I thought at the time, its 73-story hotel and four 39-story office towers, would help to turn the city around. The RenCen was officially dedicated in the spring of 1977. I left Ross Roy for a year in 1984 and went to work in the RenCen at Young & Rubicam. As a result, I can tell you the following: Parking at the RenCen was an enormous challenge and its buildings were difficult to access. It was confusing to navigate once inside. It felt too big and impersonal throughout the complex. Outside, it blocked the public's view of the Detroit River. In fact, the whole thing felt like a fortress, with massive concrete berms to house heating and cooling equipment, that walled off the RenCen from the rest of downtown. And when exiting the tower I worked in, it took at least 15 minutes just to get out of the building, onto the street, and cross eight lanes of Jefferson Avenue traffic to get into the downtown area at lunch time. Props to GM for moving its headquarters into the RenCen in 1996 and attempting to improve it by taking down the berms, building a pedestrian-friendly front entrance and creating a massive glass atrium that looks out to the Detroit River. Now, however, GM is moving its headquarters out of the RenCen into a brand new building on Woodward Avenue. There's speculation that two of the RenCen's towers will be demolished. It remains possible that the whole underused facility could come down. If only the Renaissance Center had been designed to be smaller and built in a different location, allowing it to be fully integrated into the downtown footprint, perhaps then it would have had the effect on the city that it was intended to have.

The work of the God of Hellfire. It was the summer of 1967, after my sophomore year in college, and the second of five days of rioting in the streets of Detroit. I was working the afternoon shift in the bull gang at Rinshed-Mason, a supplier of paints to the automobile industry on the west side of the city. During a coffee break I climbed to the top of Building 42 with a couple of co-workers, and looked out over a ledge all the way to the river. I counted over 50 fires. The two daily newspapers were filled with graphic photos of the mayhem. The three local TV stations delivered continuous coverage. A daily 9:00 p.m. curfew was imposed, and except for where the craziness was going on, the streets were mostly deserted. It was an eerie feeling, to say the least. The initial disturbance had taken place on a sweltering July night at a blind pig on 12th Street where a party for two black GIs who had just returned home from Vietnam was in progress. As Detroit police began making arrests on the street, there was trash talk and insults from black folks who felt embittered about everything from a lack of affordable housing to strained relations with the cops. As I recall, someone threw a brick. And things soon got out of control. So much so that the Michigan National Guard, the U.S. Army's 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were soon called in to quell the disturbance that grew throughout the inner city. When it ended, 43 people had been killed and more than 2,000 buildings had been destroyed. The riot caused many people in the white middle-class to leave Detroit for the suburbs. In 1967, 30 percent of the city's population was black. Ten years later, 60 percent of the city was black and largely poor.

The fuss over bussing. I was probably 12 when I first learned about bussing to achieve racial integration in America's schools. At the time, the idea of creating classrooms with a mix of black and white kids who maybe didn't have the same prejudices as their parents seemed like a good one to me. In 1971, four years after the Detroit riots, bussing came to the city despite law suits, organized protests and school bus bombings (in Pontiac, Michigan, where bussing was being instituted at the same time). As it turned out, however, many parents (mostly white, some black) begrudged the idea of their kids' sudden inability to walk to school in Detroit, a place long thought of as a "small big city" of tree-lined neighborhoods. Also, they vehemently disagreed with what they saw as a significant hit to parent-teacher relationships in the loss of "neighborhood schools." (I eventually came to agree with those arguments.) And so the white middle-class began to leave the city en masse. Some families from the black middle class left, too. By 1980, Detroit was 63 percent black. By 1990 it was 76 percent black and largely low-income. Maybe, just maybe, Detroit could have gotten up off the mat after the riots of '67 and returned to some form of normalcy. But then came bussing, and it proved to be, in my estimation, the knockout blow for the city.

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There are so many what ifs that come to mind when discussing what might have been had certain other things turned out differently in the Motor City. For example, what if Detroit had been awarded the 1968 Summer Olympic Games? (It finished second to Mexico City in voting by the International Olympic Committee, followed by Lyons, France and Buenos Aries.) Would an Olympic Stadium proposed for the Michigan State Fair Grounds and an Olympic Village planned for the Wayne State University have created a "can do" sense of optimism and kickstarted a rebuilding effort from the inside out? Or, what if the Big Three had not gotten complacent about quality issues like "fit and finish" in the early '70s, allowing Japanese automakers to eat its lunch? How many of the area's plants and automotive suppliers might have remained open, providing good-paying jobs and impetus to the local economy? How much more of a player would Detroit have become in the global automotive market?

Ah, but as is often said, hindsight is 20/20.

Detroit is certainly in a much better place today than it was when I was a young adult. The riverfront, the downtown area, Midtown (formerly known as the Case Corridor), Corktown and other areas of the city are all on the upswing. In fact, the improvements have been such that those areas are almost unrecognizable compared to the blight of, say, 20 years ago. But there's still a long way to go in the neighborhoods of the city and especially in the all-important areas of public safety and quality of the public schools. And so I just keep on rooting for Detroit in the way I have always rooted for the Tigers and Lions, especially, as well as for the Red Wings and Pistons.

[thebuckblogimo]

What kind of soldier might I have been?

January 8, 2025

During the last couple of years I've watched what seems like endless news coverage of bombed out schools and hospitals; bodies being tossed into mass graves; dead children being pulled from rubble; families living in tents; and emaciated babies covered with debris in the arms of distraught mothers--all due to the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. It takes me back to the time of the Vietnam War, during the late '60s and early '70s, when similar things were happening in Southeast Asia. That was when literally half the guys I grew up with were either drafted or volunteered for military duty.

Back then there were many nights when I lay in bed wondering whether I, too, would eventually be drafted to do battle with "those Viet Congs," as Muhammed Ali once labled North Vietnamese guerrilla forces. As it turned out, Selective Service called me for a physical right after I graduated from college, but I was declared 4-F (unfit for military duty) due to a couple of surgeries I'd had on my knee in high school.

Sometimes I wonder how different my life would have been had I indeed been drafted into the service, gone to boot camp and sent to fight the enemy in the jungles of Vietnam. What kind of soldier would I have made? What would have been my MOS (Military Occupational Specialty)? Who would my Army buddies have been? How frightened would I have been had I been sent into combat? And if sent, would I have even survived to write the words you see in this space?

Before I try to speculate answers to those questions, I want to give you a glimpse into my 19-year-old mind, circa 1966:

In those days I was a naive, less-than-worldly kid, whose eyes were being opened to many new things--politics, economics, social injustice, psychological behavior, etc. I was amazed by how smart so many people in my dorm and college classes seemed to be. I harbored a goal of making my way through life as a writer of some kind. Also, I put an extraordinarily high premium on the value of my time. I don't think anyone would call me self-centered back then, but I was always asking myself, "How do I benefit from this?" as I navigated through my young years.

I was that way even as a kid.

Whereas many of my neighborhood friends had either Detroit Free Press or Detroit News paper routes, I chose to be the "neighborhood substitute," the kid who pedaled friends' papers when they went on vacation or had family obligations. That way I could make a few extra bucks and still be assured of maximum free time to do pretty much as I wanted to do, which meant playing sports, listening to music on the radio, day dreaming about girls, taking part in juvenile hijinks and watching television.

Even as a college kid I avoided joining clubs, taking part in extra-curricular activities and working part-time jobs so I could have maximum time to do what I wanted to do--study, play intramural sports, and act the fool on the weekends. (If I had to do it all over again I would have tried to write for the student newspaper and worked a part-time job.)

As a 19-year-old college kid, I couldn't imagine taking orders from anyone, 24 hours a day. Mostly because when working summers at my Dad's marble shop, he would scream at me like Bobby Knight for the mistakes I made--like breaking a slab or leaving scratches on sills I had polished. I hated it, absolutely abhorred it when he ran me down in front of workers or my friends who he sometimes paid to haul scrap marble out of old buildings. But I always kept my mouth shut.

With those experiences as a backdrop, I recall wanting no part of a military system that I envisioned depriving me of my personal freedom and being run by people who would be in my face for 24 hours a day.

On the other hand...

I understood that my Dad was in his 20s when he walked into the marble shop (a few years before purchasing it from the owner) and heard President Roosevelt on the radio announce that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. He knew instantly that he would be drafted for military duty. And he was all in. As were virtually all of his beer-drinking buddies. After all, the United States of America had been attacked. From a very young age I knew that my Dad had sacrificed to serve his county. As the war in Vietnam entered the American consciousness, I began to think it may be my responsibility to do the same.

Back to my high school years...

I can recall only one friend who seemed to really understand what was going down in Vietnam on that beautiful June day we graduated in 1965. A year later, however, everybody was aware of what was happening in Southeast Asia as the conflict exploded into a war that would call for hundreds of thousands of young GIs to fight it. Suddenly, many of my closest friends who were working at the Ford Rouge plant; or becoming carpenters, brick layers and electricians; or just trying to figure out what to do with their lives, began being called for military duty. As for me and other of my pals who were attending college, we were classified 2-S by Selective Service (deferred from military service due to studies). Also, we were in "information gathering mode" to determine whether or not the Vietnam War was being fought for legitimate reasons.

It didn't take long for me and most others to determine that the war was a colossal mistake.

My feelings were confirmed during my second year in college when I walked to the MSU Auditorium to hear a talk by Don Riegel, a young Republican U.S. Representative from the Flint area of Michigan. He explained to a packed house that he could not articulate a single reason to justify the loss of 40,000 American soldiers (up to that time) in Vietnam.

Back to my Dad...

He used to tell a story about being aboard a "flying boxcar" over the Bermuda Triangle and how he and his fellow GIs received orders to tie everything down as the plane began to pitch violently in a storm over the North Atlantic. He would later learn that several U.S. planes went down into the ocean that day. My Dad's story was another one of those things I had in the back of my mind, causing me to feel conflicted about whether I should be following in his footsteps.

As I've written before, by the time I graduated from college in December of 1969, my Dad had concluded that the Vietnam War was "bullshit." We were both opposed to it. Yet, did I ever seriously consider dodging the draft by moving to nearby Canada which did not officially participate in the Vietnam War?

No, I did not.

As opposed as I was to the war, I was not about to leave my family, my friends and my dream of starting a career for another country. I decided I would take my chances and remain at home. Then, I promptly received a notice in the mail to report to Fort Wayne in Detroit to take my military physical.

As I mentioned, I flunked it due to a history of surgeries on my knee.

But what if...? What if I had not flunked that physical? What if I had not drawn 298 as my Selective Service lottery number, meaning I would not have been drafted anyway because the government reached its quota of draftees for the year by the time it got to guys with lottery numbers in the 190s.

Had I indeed been drafted, however, I can picture having my head buzzed and shorn of hair on the first day of boot camp. I can envision meeting the physical requirements of a recruit, such as running in combat boots and loaded with gear, or climbing a rope and propelling myself over a barrier. I can also imagine myself flat on my back in my bunk at night, lonely and homesick, fighting back tears over what I was likely to endure for the next couple of years.

But being stationed in a place like Phu Bai, or Quang Tai, or any one of dozens of other South Vietnamese outposts I used to hear my buddies talk about? I mean being hunkered down in a mosquito-infested bunker with an M-16 across one's chest--sweaty, muddy and with rats as big as cats crawling all over the place--well, that's an entirely different story. I mean actually trading fire with the enemy? I have a very, very difficult time envisioning myself actually doing that

And yet, as I have read in books about war and have been told by friends who are veterans, you get through it by doing what you have to do to--while maintaining a burning desire to make it back home--to stay alive.

This past fall I attended the wedding of a friend's son and ran into a pal I hadn't seen for several years. He's a Vietnam vet who was awarded a Purple Heart after taking shrapnel to his leg from a bomb blast during combat. In the states he'd been a boot camp drill instructor. (Interestingly, Heisman Trophy winner Steve Owens had been one of his recruits.)

We got to talking at the wedding and I expressed my doubts to him whether I might have measured up as a soldier had I been drafted into the military. He assured me that I would have done well, that, like everyone else, I would have adapted over time. He contended that as an athletic, competitive and goal-oriented person, I likely would have been a good soldier.

Maybe, maybe not. But I'm certain of this: Other than shooting hoops with buddies during free time at the base, or listening to tunes by Otis Redding with some of the brothers in a tent, I would have hated practically every minute of military duty. And I'm not too proud to admit that I probably would have fought back tears of loneliness more times than just at the end of my first day in boot camp.

[thebuckblogimo]

Upon emptying my notes, some observations--and drivel--to share.

December 30, 2024

Sometimes, when thoughts pop into my head, I pull out my phone and record them in my Notes app. Today, I'm emptying it out with the intent of starting from scratch and doing a better job of organizing stuff in the future. Before I trash it all I'd like to share some things that I noted in the past several months. My apologies for any duplicates from previous posts that might have slipped in:

I have become something of a glass snob during the twilight of my beer drinking years. I love my genuine Guinness glasses from Ireland (used for Guinness only); nonic pint glasses for my IPAs, wheat beers and stouts; and pilsner glasses for such European favorites as Pilsner Urquell and Stella Artois. I also have six genuine Stroh's glasses from the long-gone Stroh Brewery Company in Detroit. (I think a Wisconsin brewery makes a fake version of the old "fire brewed" lager).

I love both Rolling Rock and Yuengling, a couple of my favorite mass produced beers, but neither one tastes as good out of a can as it does out of a bottle.

I wonder what percentage of my essays over the last dozen years have mentioned beer, liquor or wine. I would guess a pretty high number. What does this mean?

I don't approve of restaurants (usually diners or greasy spoons) that automatically put down a 16-oz glass of water in front of me. I don't care to drink that much water at one time. Many people don't drink any of it at all. What a waste.

I cannott remember the last time I changed a tire on the side of the road.

I love reading wine labels with their descriptions of reds and whites: "round in the mouth" ... "elegant intensity" ... "hints of blackberry and toasted notes of fresh spice." My favorite example of "winespeak" came from a somlier when he stated that the cab we were about to sample had a "buttery bottom end."

During my high school years, I didn't read many books other than the ones that were required reading in school. The handful I can recall reading by choice included Birdman of Alcatraz by Thomas E. Gaddis, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, and To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee. Novels that I recall starting but not being able to sustain were Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, and--no surprise--War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

I recently saw the most arresting, most startling sign held by a homeless person at a busy intersection that I have ever seen. It said, "Fucking Starving."

I'd like to have had the level of intelligence and strategic thinking ability to be the CEO of a major corporation just to prove that you don't have to be a dick to run a major corporation. (This presupposes that I would not become one with the acquisition of power and wealth. Or, of course, that I am not one now.)

Practically every newspaper and magazine I read, I read online. But I really miss the ability to underline stuff on a page. (Sometimes I print hard copies of stories that I think are excellent so I can go back and reread the underlined parts.)

I recently purchased a bag of potato chips at Westborn Market in Dearborn, the size of bag that used to cost 25 cents when I was young. The price was $2.29. Just sayin'...

Since childhood, I have been absolutely loyal to certain brands--Morton Salt, Heinz Ketchup, Campbell Soup, etc. I don't eat fruit cocktail anymore, but if I did I would buy Del Monte, as my mother always did.

I recently approached the parking lot outside of my local YMCA after a workout and mistakenly walked up to two different black SUVs--a Toyota Highlander and then a Honda Pilot--before correctly identifying my black Subara Outback. Hmmmm...

I find that squeegeeing the shower glass, putting my cereal bowl in the dishwasher and turning off the front porch light are small irritants when I'm trying to get out of the house in the morning to seize the day.

Whether sitting on the porch in the evening, or grilling burgers in the backyard, or having friends over to our house, I almost always have a playlist of tunes going on my sound system. Oh, I enjoy my quiet time--listening to the singing of birds in the morning or the sound of Lake Michigan's waves in the distance--but for the most part, "I gotta have tunes."

Speaking of tunes, sometimes I wear earbuds and play up tempo music while doing cardio on a Precor machine at the gym. The other day I played some polkas by the late, great Lil' Wally. Oh, good golly, what a workout that turned out to be.

For several years my wife and I shared a trailer with her parents at an RV park in Fort Myers, Florida. I used to marvel at the fact that they never seemed to know what the date was. Now I'm the same way. I can tell you the month and year, but I'm rarely correct when asked for "today's date."

Just as it annoys me when waitresses call me honey, it irks me when men at liquor stores call me "boss." I don't know why. It just does.

I recorded the words "halfback, running back, fullback, I-back, scatback, flanker back, defensive back, corner back" in my Notes app...and finished there. I have no idea where I was going with that one.

IU basketball coach Bobby Knight once said, "Mental is to physical as four is to one." Seems to me that applies to more than just sports in the game of life.

I don't think I've ever watched a single movie sequel, unless you include the "Raiders" and "Batman" franchises.

I wonder when "I appreciate that" or "I appreciate it" evolved into "Appreciate you." Interesting how use of the language evolves over time.

Margie's, a store that serves ice cream and sells their own brand of candies in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago where one of my daughter's lives, has been in existence at the same location on Western Avenue for over 100 years. They serve milkshakes in two sizes--one that costs $6.50 and one that costs $7.95. During the mid '50s, Truan's, a similar type of store, opened about five blocks away from where I grew up. In those days they charged 30 cents for a shake. And 45 cents for a banana split. I can just hear my son-in-law now: "Okay, boomer."

I don't know how they come up with the names for all the drugs I see advertised on TV, but Sotyktu for plaque psoriasis takes the cake. Honorable mentions go to Vambysmo, Skyrizi, Litfo, Mounjaro, Opzelura and Abrysvo. Meanwhile, to my ear, Ozempic sounds like the last name of one of my long-lost relatives, and Wegovy sounds like the name of a duck-type, wild bird I used to see in Florida.

It frustrates me when I stand in front of an automatic paper towel machine in a bathroom, restaurant, gas station or gym--the kind that says "Place hand below"--and it winds up taking six or eight tries to get just one sheet to come out.

An old friend dating back to my kindergarten days shot me a note that said, "I always felt that the past tense of "read" should be "red." I have always felt the same.

It took reading two reviews and watching several TV promos about Martin Scorsese's film "Killers of the Flower Moon" for me to internalize the title. Things like that cause me to wonder how my brain works...or doesn't.

I have always loved this line from Gary U.S. Bonds' 1962 hit record "Twist Twist Senora": "I want her to jump up in the air, come down in slow motion."

I have never in my life encountered a dog by the name of Fido, Rover or Spot. I did once see a sign over the door of a dog house that read Phi Deaux.

For as long as I can recall, I have always called running shoes tennis shoes.

I have a feeling that I'm getting into too much stuff I've already posted. So, that's all, folks.

[thebuckblogimo]

Some changes in education, as well as the news media, I'd encourage if I were calling the shots.

December 16, 2024

To the handful of followers of what I put down in this space: "I'm back," as James Brown shouted in his mid '70s tune "Get Up Offa That Thing." This is the first essay I've written since late September. That's because, as is often said, life happened. But as it did I continued to try to "figure it all out." As a result, here are some recent thoughts...

I think it would be a good idea to take a page from the Japanese and teach elementary school students such things as thinking of others, doing your best, not giving up, respecting your elders, working in a group, ethical decision making, etc. I'm probably drifting close to the areas of religion and politics, which I normally try to avoid doing, but when I propose these things it must be said that I am an ardent believer in the separation of church and state. The Ten Commandments are a wonderful thing, but I don't think they should be the purview of public education. To those who think they should be mounted and framed in public school classrooms, I think not. They should be taught at home and in our parochial schools. As they always have been.

I would like to see civics courses taught in all our junior highs and high schools. I'm talking about education pertaining to our rights and responsibilities as citizens, the voting process, the Constitution, how the three branches of government work (or should work), etc. Three things about me that have influenced my strong feelings about this not-very-new idea: 1) I follow political news pretty closely, but realize that most people don't engage with it until it's time for a major election. 2) I visited Poland when it was a Communist country and experienced life under authoritatian rule where inefficiency abounded, you could be severely punished for publicly saying what you believe about politics, and an underground, black-market economy thrived. 3) I think it's our responsibility to participate in the democratic process, meaning that everyone should, at the very least, vote.

I have long thought that no high school should have an enrollment larger than about 450 kids. I went to a school of such size. The education I received had its pluses and minuses, but I don't think many of my schoolmates felt anonymous. Then, while attending a university with almost 40,000 students, I lived in a dorm with about 600 young men. That 450-to-600 range seemed manageable to me--large enough for kids to explore and discover, small enough for one to be noticed.

This isn't an original thought, but I tend to think that all kids should do a year of public service after graduation from high school (something akin to AmeriCorps). They could teach inner city kids and the rural poor how to read; help clean up our urban areas; assist in the maintainence of our national parks; and much, much more. While doing so, they could be exposed to the building trades, to major fields of university study, and to opportunities afforded by the military. I doubt that most 18- and 19-year-olds really know what they want to do with their lives. Public service could open up their eyes to the possibilites while serving the greater good.

Although I received my degree in advertising, I started college as a journalism major; I remain a newspaper person at heart. According to Politico, more than two-thirds of reporting jobs have vanished since 2005. And daily newspapers are dying at a rate of two per day. Moreover, it continues to pain me that most people get their information from sources that tell them what they want to hear. That's why I think it would be a good idea for some network to launch news programmming (with attendant website, podcasts and blogs) that incluedes a show featuring 45 minutes of hard journalism--the facts, with objective details about complex issues--followed by 45 minutes of debate between pundits on all sides.

That's all for now. More hairbrained ideas to come as they happen.

[thebuckblogimo]

A natural born mother who still has what it takes.

September 24, 2024

When I met Debbie, a young nurse from Cleveland, the person who would become my wife, I recall sitting near the ocean with her one night under a starry sky, talking into the wee hours about the things we deeply believed. I also recall one of my strongest impressions of her at the time: This woman is destined to be a great mother.

As things turned out I was absolutely right.

We wound up having four children together. And when the kids were toddlers, and despite working midnight shifts at Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital, she was always there for them. Hugging them. Coaxing them. Encouraging them. Loving them. Sometimes all at the same time as they sprawled out atop our bed.

Often she did those things while feeling thoroughly exhausted due to the demands of her job.

Now, over four decades later, our oldest son is 40, battling depression and sometimes, when he gets into a funk, she'll listen to him for hours as he unloads what he needs to unpack over the phone. She is always there for him--listening, counseling, comforting, loving--while never seeming to tire.

She's a natural born mom that way.

Over the recent Labor Day weekend, one of our daughters gave birth to her second child, a healthy girl. So we camped out at the home of the young family for about three weeks, helping them as best we could. It was my job to shop for groceries, play chef and walk the young family's rambunctious German Shepherd. Debbie's primary responsibility was to care for the young parents' two-year-old while they attended to the needs of their new baby and our daughter healed from her C-section.

During our stay I was able to take breaks from my duties. Ocassionally I'd get up early to go to a greasy spoon for breakfast. Or watch a little TV. Or read the newspaper on my laptop on the back porch. But Debbie was at it practically all day. Every time I glanced over at her she would be in the living room or dining room, comforting the two-year-old in her arms, or maneuvering stuffed animals with her on the floor, or stroking the back of her head before putting her down for a nap.

Albeit in her 70s, being a mom seems like riding a bike for my wife.

I'd like to think that I did my part as a young father back in the day: changing diapers, watching the Little Rascals with the kids on morning TV, or getting them out of the house and buckling them into the car seats of our van so Deb could get some sleep after working all night at the hospital.

As the years went by and they got older, I was usually the one our kids went to for advice about getting shit done in college, or persuing their careers, or how to navigate office politics.

Today, when they're hurting, whether physically, mentally or emotionally, Debbie is the one they usually go to. And now, with our having three grandchildren, two in Detroit and one in Chicago (where there's another on the way), she plays a starring role as "grandma."

But, really, she's a mom, a care giver at heart. It's what she was born to do. I was certain of that from the start.

[thebuckblogimo]

The passing of the torch is a process. I'm seeing it play out before my eyes.

August 13, 2024

I can't pinpoint the exact year, but I remember how strange it felt when the time came that my Mom, Auntie Julie, and my Dad, who absolutely loved robust conversation over Manhattans at large family gatherings, had finally had enough.

"It gets too loud, too tiring," they would complain.

During the later years of their lives my folks and my aunt made increasingly shorter appearences at family gatherings such as Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas Eve celebration. Eventually, dementia got the best of them. First Julie stopped coming. For a couple years my Dad would come but not be fully engaged. Finally, none of them ventured out as my Mom stayed home to take care of my Dad who became incapacitated due to complications from Alzheimer's.

I'm starting to realize how my parents must have felt in the twilight of their years.

Debbie and I recently hosted our annual family vacation in conjunction with Grand Haven's 100th Coast Guard Festival, and although my sister Betty (two years younger than me) still brings weird games for everyone to play and awards "fabulous prizes" to the winners, there's no question that it was our kids and their cousins who were the driving forces behind most of the dinners and family activities everyone took part in.

They were the ones who brought fresh vegetables from a garden for our dinners. They were the ones who made the reservations when we went out to eat. They were the ones who were in charge of the tunes--not me--for the craziness under our annual dance tunnel, formed by a couple of canopies decorated with Christmas lights over the sidewalk, a popular attraction for those who walk in front of our house on the way to the fireworks each year.

While kids, young lovers and some oldsters shook their booties in the tunnel, my wife, two sisters and I kicked back and watched from camp chairs on the lawn--similar to how my Mom, Dad and aunt sat back on the couch and observed our antics in the living room as we would sing Smokey's version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" before the site of our family's annual Christmas Eve party moved from my parents' home to my sister's.

Also, during family vacation we excused ourselves each night and let the young ones--at least those without small children--party hardy as we slipped off to bed by ten o'clock.

Now it's us boomers beginning to complain that "It gets too loud, too tiring."

As I write these words, I sit on the couch at the home of Debbie's Mom in Woodsfield, Ohio. Bert (short for Alberta) turned 95 last week. She fell in her bedroom earlier this summer and broke a vertebra. Now she wears a brace for her back and stoops over a walker to get around the house. Meanwhile, her cognitive abilities are in sharp decline.

I don't know how much time she has left, but when she passes neither Debbie nor I will have a living parent. We will have moved to the top rung--or the bottom, depending how you look at it--on the ladder of life.

Our kids and the cousins refer to us as the "elders."

I do not obsess over aging. I like my white hair. I laugh about the potholder pattern of wrinkled skin on my arms. And I do not linger over the prospect of death, although I do indeed think about it. Life is but a finite moment in ancient time, and I'm beyond appreciative for the one I have lived.

I rarely boogie through the dance tunnel any more, but I savor thoughts of the way I could once boogaloo with the best of them. It's all part of the process, I guess.

[thebuckblogimo]

Hey, young people, sending thank you cards conveys more than just appreciation.

July 22, 2024

Twice this summer I've heard from old friends who complained that they did not receive a thank you card after giving substantial amounts of cash as a graduation or wedding gift.

My wife and I have had the same sort of experience: writing a generous check to a newly married couple but never receiving so much as a text acknowledging it.

Now some might argue that giving a gift of any kind does not require a "thank you" in return because it was something you wanted to do for the person.

That may be true in some cultures, but not the one we live in.

During the '90s and '00s when my wife and I were raising four children, many of their friends hung out in our basement, kicked back in our hot tub, explored the woods behind our house. We got to know some of them really well. So I felt disappointment after not receiving a thank you card--nor any other form of appreciative communiction--for a wedding gift given to one who did a lot of growing up in our house.

I certainly understand that there are ways other than paper greeting cards or notes to say thank you--texts, e-mails, e-cards with exploding fireworks, Facebook posts, etc. I have sent such greetings myself at the time of a friend's or sibling's birthday.

But for money given at graduations, weddings, showers, etc.? Not acceptable.

Just this past weekend I heard a story from Debbie's cousin who supervises 50 people where she works. She gave a bridal shower for one of her 30-something co-workers, as well as a nice wedding gift. Other than expressing a group thank you in a short speech at the shower, the woman sent no other form of thank you communication for either gesture

That's rude, in my estimation.

On the other hand, a few weeks ago my sister hosted a bridal shower at a restaurant for her soon-to-be dauther-in-law. Shortly after attending the shower Debbie received a heartfelt message from the woman in a real thank you card that arrived in the mail box on our porch. It currently stands on a cabinet in our living room. Receiving that card with it's touching sentiments meant a lot to my wife.

In a world that, regretably, is becoming less civilized every day, it was a personal, very civil thing for the young mellennial to do.

Call me a Neanderthal, but it's my contention that anyone who sends a card to say thank you for a graduation, wedding, or shower gift sets himself or herself apart from the rest of the pack.

It says that you're a cut above.

[thebuckblogimo]

A life's story in the tracks of my scars.

June 30, 2024

I was sitting on a bench at the gym the other day, resting between sets of an exercise, when I began to stare at my right knee. It has three long scars: two as the result of surgeries during high school; one the result of joint replacement surgery almost ten years ago.

That's when it occurred to me that the collection of scars on my person tells a peculiar story about my life, from infancy to my present status as a septuagenarian. Bare with me as I relate this self-indulgent tale.

Hit by a bus. For as long as I can recall, there has been a three-inch zigzag scar on my upper thigh to the left of my genitals. When as a young child I thought to ask about it, my mother explained that I was being held in her arms, wrapped in a blanket in the back seat of my Uncle Walter's car, when we were hit by a bus on the streets of Detroit. She explained that I'd been cut by a piece of flying glass from the windshield. I remember her telling me how she cried as she sat on the curb at the side of the road, picking bits of glass off my face. That's all that I can recall from being told about the incident. I wish I knew more about the circumstances and whoever else might have been in the car.

Hemlock hill. Most people from my childhood days fondly remember Dearborn's Hemlock Park. As kids, we climbed its monkey bars. Played baseball on its diamonds. Shot hoops on its cement court. Played zell ball near its johns. Swam daily at its chlorine-filled pool. And in high school, we "parked" with our girlfriends in its parking lot where we explored the art of "heavy petting." Many of us attended kindergarten at Lowrey, the public school near the park. I remember how I stood amazed at the site of Hemlock's giant hill (at least to the eyes of a kid) when our teacher walked us to the park one afternoon. Thereafter we often climbed to the top of the hill on our hands and knees. Then we'd run back down with the wind flying through our hair. Being a risk taker, one day I decided to run down the opposite side of the hill, without taking into account the chain link fence that stood near its base, separating the hill from the nearby railroad tracks...and crashed into the barrier at high speed. I have a three-quarter-inch scar on my cursed right knee as a result of that brainless maneuver.

The Phillips fence. Most of the homes in my neighborhood were small bungalows, with the backyards separated by a chain link fence. After my family moved into our newly built home, my folks and the Phillips next door determined that there would be no need to put up a fence between our homes. There was, however, a fence between the Phillips' home and their neighbor's home to the west. There was a backboard and rim attached to the Phillips garage where kids were always playing basketball. So whenever the ball bounced into the neighbor's yard, someone would have to hop the fence to retrieve it. I did so hundreds of times. However, one summer day--I was perhaps 13 or 14--I caught my left index finger on a jagged end of one of the countless twisted aluminum triangles on the crossbar. It ripped my finger open to the core. I should have gotten stitches but never did. To this day I have a one-and-a-quarter-inch scar that looks like an inverted fishing hook on the inside of my finger.

Osteochondritis dissecans. During the early '60s I was an up-and-coming freshman hurdler on my high school track team. By the time I was a sophomore, the other hurdlers and I were regularly sweeping the top three places in most of our dual meets. During that second season I began three-stepping (as opposed to five-stepping) the 120-yard high hurdles, and my times began to drop precipitously. I'll never forget the afternoon, while walking back to the starting line after a race at Cooley High, that my right knee locked in place. Strange, I thought. It was even stranger when I sat down and noticed a bump on my knee about the size of a lima bean. I poked it with my finger. It moved under my kneecap and reappeared on the other side. The problem turned out to be osteochondritis dissecans--cracks in my cartilage, as well as underlying bone. My doctor described the floating piece of cartilage as beling like "sand in the gears." Two operations were required over the next couple years to get it right, putting an end to my track career. A few years later, my history with OD was the reason I was declared 4-F (physically unfit for duty) by the military when the U.S. Selective Service called me to Fort Wayne for my physical after graduating from college in 1969.

The big toe. I was living in room 271 at Abbot Hall on the MSU campus, roughhousing with a short, stocky Italian kid from Hazel Park. Our horseplay was bordering on serious confrontation as I imagined professional wrestler Killer Kowalski and squeezed down hard on the guy's melon with a headlock. As he somehow broke away from me on the floor between the beds in my room, one of his legs swept violently across my left thigh in a huge arc. That's when the nail of one of his big toes slashed open a bloody wound on my upper left thigh. I could not believe how I'd been cut. Yet again I probably should have gotten stitches but didn't. To this day I have a nice inch-and-a-half long scar on my upper left leg.

Bum shoulder. My left shoulder starting going bad a few years before Covid. It got so painful that I couldn't even reach for the handle after getting into my car to close the door. A shoulder replacement was deemed necessary, but couldn't be scheduled due to the overflow of patients at the local hospital during the Covid era. So I endured for a full year. Finally, after my surgery, I was again able to reach for the shower head or pull on a jacket with my left arm. Now I have a nifty, five-inch scar on my shoulder.

I have perhaps a half-dozen other small scars on my body: at the base of my left thumb the result of trying to build what we called a "Soap Box Derby" racer when I was a kid; one on my other index finger when a beer glass broke in my hand while washing dishes during my bachelor years on Rosemont in Detroit; on my foot when I stubbed my toe one morning getting ready for work when I was working at AAA; and others on my legs that I can only attribute to my youthfully wreckless ways. However, thinking back to that fateful day when my uncles's car was hit by a Detroit bus, I remain eternally grateful that the flying shard of jagged glass didn't land a few inches to the right.

[thebuckblogimo]

The questions after my first role on stage.

June 2, 2024

Auditions took place before Easter. The first of six performaces was on Mother's Day Weekend. And the curtain closed for the last time on "Spelling Bee" at a Sunday matinee, a week before Memorial Day.

It was a helluva time commitment. Once we got rolling, it was four nights a week, three to four hours a night, for this fledgling actor.

Now that it's over I feel an inner calm, a sense of satisfaction. And I have a new appreciation for community theater. And yet I'm left with several questions...

I wonder why it took so long for some of the young people in the cast to get comfortable with me. Was it the difference in age? (I was almost 60 years older than a couple cast members.) I endeavored to learn their names as quickly as I could. I said "Hi" or "How ya doin'?" at practically every rehearsal. And yet, early on, upon entrance to the theater or at the beginning of a rehearsal, they pretty much avoided eye contact with me.

By the time of the cast dinner after the last show, I felt accepted by them, but it took several weeks to get to that point. It's been a while since it took me that long to connect with a group of people.

Also, did I offend the "guest speller" during a rehearsal when in my role as the word pronouncer I called Mr. So-And-So to the mic and was quickly corrected that it was Ms. So-And-So?

I'll be honest: I have a lot to learn about the trans community. I suspect a lot of people my age do.

The question I get asked most often is: "Do you think you'll do it again?"

The honest answer is: I don't know.

Auditioning for a play was something I long wanted to do--a bucket list sort of thing. Well, I did it. However, as I said, it was a big time commitment. And I really value my time. I keep saying that I'm going to let the experience percolate inside of me and make a decision down the road.

I know a retired Ohio State University literature professor, a former Shakesperian actor, who lives in the neighborhood and who has intimated to me that he'd like to cast me for a role in a play he's considering directing for a theater group at his church.

I don't know about taking him up on that. But I do know this: It's an exhilirating feeling to deliver a line on stage and feel the audience react, to hear it respond with genuine emotion when you deliver it in a slightly different way than the night before.

So will I do it again? We'll see.