I am not the brightest knife in the shed. That’s putting it mildly. Adventure and mishap have filled my life to the point where I wonder if I have truly experienced those things or if some other person has filled my shoes. A rumor that true life is stranger than fiction persists in today’s vernacular. Some of those misfortunate incidents follow. Warning: do not try these at home. In fact, don’t try these anywhere.
Thin wires do not hold horses in
My family visited relatives on my father’s side of the family tree one summer when I was twelve years old. Born in southern California and living there and in North Chicago and in Iceland, I knew at the intellectual level what a farm was. Never had I seen one in application. Here we were in the hills of Kentucky, catching lightning bugs for the very first time and putting them in canning jars.
Across the road from my aunt and uncle’s place stood a horse. It seemed placid enough, content to just mill about inside a small area bound by a single thin wire. I decided to wander down the hill, cross the rural highway, and visit this regal animal. Not a problem Down the hill I ran and across the road.
I do remember not barreling through the fence and running up to the horse. I at least stopped and tried to understand how such a little wire could prevent such a big animal from going where it wanted to. No reason came to mind. Training? It must have been.
Myriad thoughts ran through my mind. What magic existed in this wire to keep the horse corralled? Can you really train a horse that well? Was there a force field I couldn’t see?
Only one way to find out. Yes. I touched the wire. Next thing I know, someone is beating me on every square inch of my body with a baseball bat. At that point in my life never had I received a beating like I did when I touched the wire.
I looked around. What was that? Was there someone hiding in the bushes shooting me with a pain ray if something touched the wire?
Only one way to find out. Yes. I grabbed the wire again. Here came the baseball bat. It drove me to my knees. Every bone and each muscle in my body ached like it never had before. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run into the comforting arms of my mother. But I couldn’t let my tougher farm cousins see me so weak.
I wandered back across the road and up the hillside, giving myself a chance to gather my wits and try to work the aches and pains out. Halfway up the hill, I saw my father and his brother-in-law standing on the porch wearing broad grins across their faces.
My father nodded down across the road. “So how’d that feel?”
Through the fire
I grew up in a strict, religious home, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. As a rebellious teenager, I tended to push against those boundaries as hard as I could. One length of rope my parents gave me was that if I went out with friends on Saturday nights, my butt better be in that pew come Sunday morning. I never missed a Sunday.
Nor did I miss a chance to go camping with my best friend. We always took the essentials: tent, sleeping bags, bug spray, canned beans, wood for a fire, a watermelon filled with pure grain alcohol, and kerosene. What could go wrong? We always had a bucket, and we always camped by a body of water—we bore the mosquito bites to prove it.
We always got the fire going first thing. Then set up the tent. We talked about books, movies, music, girls, and role-playing games. Typical stuff teenagers the world over have always talked about. We’d set the beans in the coals at the edge of the fire. Dinner predictably disappeared quickly.
Dessert was always the spiked watermelon. At the beginning of the week, we would cut the top off and scoop out some of the inside. The whole pint of PGA filled the hole, and the top replaced. Next, we wrapped it in plastic wrap, hiding it in the dark corner of the garage a couple days before the trip. Not once did we taste the alcohol. But it sure erased any common sense we might have possessed at one point.
Out came the kerosene. And we always quoted a scene from the 1985 movie Legend: “Fire, fire, burning higher, making music like a choir.” We always got bored with that and then decided to see who could jump through the tallest blaze.
Many Sundays, I would look down at my arms to see the hairs either completely gone or curled up in little white and blond twists. One afternoon after Sunday dinner, my grandmother looked at me and asked, “What happened to your eyebrows?” I imagine it looked odd trying to raise them in fraudulent surprise.
I always wanted to be a knight
One of my favorite movies growing up was the 1981 film Excalibur with Liam Neeson, Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart, Ciarán Hinds, and Gabriel Byrne. I’ve mentioned the impact it has had on my life in another blog. At one point, I could speak every line every character muttered during the entire 141-minute run time. In high school, I played role-playing games like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, adventures and stories filled with knights and monsters. At one point, I wondered if I had been born in the wrong era.
During high school, I tended to live in my own world when it came to academics. That means I put my textbooks in my locker and promptly forgot my combination. I read constantly—just not the material I was assigned. What I read contained stories about knights defeating dragons and destroying evil. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams.
Also, during my high school years, not many thought of me as a rule-follower. I drove a Toyota Celica with a moonroof. A friend of mine had a Volkswagen bug with a moonroof. That gave me an idea. No one had horses. Animals needed to be trained to be used in jousts. We lived in the modern world. Why not use cars as mounts? What could go wrong?
Apparently, a lot. No one was hospitalized as a result of because of our tournament. When a knight riding a charger is struck by a lance, he can be knocked off his steed and rolled off the back with a few bumps and bruises. We learned pretty quickly that when a modern-day knight is struck in the chest with a dust mop, he doesn’t roll off the back very easily. When jousting from cars through a moonroof, you are not riding on top of the car. Your legs are inside the vehicle, and this prevents you from being knocked to the ground.
We realized this could be dangerous. As a result, we made the next run while surfing on the roof of the car. This, of course, changed the whole event. We moved from jousting with dust mops tucked under our arms as lances to surfing on top of the cars. Even though I was born in southern California, I never learned how to surf. That knowledge came my senior year of high school in the middle of a field. I don’t remember many of us lasting too long. When the stars started popping out in the night sky, we sat around congratulating ourselves for another successful adventure where no one went to the hospital. Looking back at that, I cannot stop shaking my head.
How long can I hang on?
On my 17th birthday, my parents took me from the hospital—where I had just had my tonsils ripped out of my throat—to the US Navy recruiting office. With their permission (insistence), I enlisted that day, signing my life to the military. They told me this was for my own good. I needed discipline if I wanted to survive adulthood. They weren’t wrong. I felt a little betrayed back then, but I appreciate what they did every morning I wake up.
I went to basic training in Great Lakes, Illinois—a quick train ride north of Chicago—and attended Naval Hospital Corps A School at the Naval Training Center. The simple act of enlisting did not make me any more disciplined in and of itself. I learned that some sailors drank copious amounts of alcohol. I was no different.
During my free time, I had three interests: reading, drinking, and music. One evening, a group of my shipmates and I decided to travel down to Chi-town. We hit the bars. We hit the liquor stores. We hit the sand at Lake Michigan’s Oak Street Beach. One of the things I remember about having shipmates is that we looked after each other. At one point, we decided to head over to Medusa’s at the corner of Sheffield and West—a dance club where many industrial, punk, and alternative bands played. I remember watching Thrill Kill Kult but missed the Smashing Pumpkins, Ministry, and the Violent Femmes shows.
By the time we arrived, the line stretched down the block, and I possessed nothing resembling a sober mind. I felt the rhythm of the crowd and the street. The air snapped with a late autumn cold and snow flurries tumbled from the sky we couldn’t see above the orange glow of streetlamps. The line slugged along slower than time passed between birthdays as a child. To speed things up, I decided to put on a little strip show in the middle of West School Street. I don’t remember much after that until I found myself being ushered into the club.
Later in the night, I found myself stepping out onto the fourth-floor fire escape for a breather. Several clubbers had the same idea. I don’t recall how it happened, but someone started a challenge of strength and bravado. We determined to learn who could hang by their hands from the steel landing above the adjacent building far below. My turn came—remember, I’m not too bright—and I slipped over the edge. I hadn’t even come close to beating the previous record when one of my shipmates stepped outside and pulled me back up to safety.
It bothered me. I have always been competitive. Why did this sailor feel he possessed the right to pull me back from the lip of oblivion? No trophy, that I can remember, stood at a judges’ table as the ultimate prize for the contest. But it never was about the hardware for me—it was about the attitude it gave me. As an adult, I see the wisdom; however, the competitive spirit lurking deep down inside me bemoans the fact that I never had the chance to see how long I would have lasted.
The music of fiber bars
Father and son bonding is an important thing, both for the father as well as the son. I remember several times when my father took me camping. He took me to the ghost town Calico in the California desert. We spent two nights in tents during a snowstorm in Iceland. Once we camped along the Buffalo River where the temperature when I woke up was 14 degrees. That is the last time I ever drank coffee.
My son and I have also spent time at Lost Valley in the Buffalo National River area. We traveled to the mountains of Colorado where we went white water rafting on the Arkansas River. But the one trip that stands out is the adventure we had at Black Mesa State Park in the panhandle of Oklahoma. Considering the title of this blog, I do not want to give the impression camping with my son is one of those things I probably should not have done. Not at all. I would gladly take this trip all over again. The single thing that stands out about this experience is the box of Fiber One Chocolate Fudge Brownies we decided to take.
Everyone knows fiber is good for you. The Mayo Clinic has an article on their website titled “Dietary fiber: Essential for a healthy diet.” [https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/fiber/art-20043983] According to this article, insoluble fiber “promotes the movement of material through your digestive system.” Let me tell you it sure does.
Instead of stopping for candy bars and other snacks along the eight-hour route, we drank waters and 8-oz orange soda and ate the fiber bars. By the time we set up the tent and air mattresses, the movements had started. Not only was it material that moved, but it was also air. He let lose with the first one. Of course, it horrified me. Lucky for me, the typical stench did not accompany it. Maybe it was lucky for him because I would have made him sleep in the van.
Soon after we turned in—we had a long day of hiking to the tallest point in Oklahoma—the movements began with me. Lucky for him, they were just loud. Really loud. Like thunder rolling in across the plains. At this point, it turned into a competition between the two of us. I found myself back in junior high, seeing who had the biggest belch or raunchiest fart. Because we slept on air mattresses, each bout of flatulence sounded like booming bass drums in a football halftime show.
Spending the time with my son is something I would never change. Looking back at it though, I should have selected a different kind of snack.
