Turn, Turn, Turn

The 1965 Byrds’ hit song “Turn, Turn, Turn” pops into my mind this time of year as I ponder the significance of the changing seasons. I was a wee lad, mind you, when that song was on the radio! But unless you live someplace like Florida which has basically two seasons (beautiful for seven or eight months and oppressive humidity the rest of the year), you get to enjoy the four seasons. I use the term ‘enjoy’ loosely, since I do not enjoy winter all that much. A little snow around Christmas is nice. A blizzard creating whiteouts on a 10-degree Valentine’s Day is not my cup of tea, though that is exactly what we had here this past February. I completely understand why the “snow birds” flee Ohio for warmer climes as winter approaches!

I enjoy the promise of new life, better weather and warmer days and sunshine that spring brings. The grass turns green, and I get to begin my mowing year. I like mowing the lawn. I’m funny like that.

Summer has already been covered in a previous blog entry, so I’ll let you go look that one up on your own. It is here somewhere.

That brings us to our current season, fall. OK, autumn for those of you that insist on the correct vernacular. You probably call the first day of fall the autumnal solstice, don’t you?

I enjoy fall. First off, college football is in full swing. I do not watch pro football except for the Super Bowl. However, I LOVE college football. I always have. I try to attend at least one college game each year. This year the wife and I saw the Ohio Northern University Polar Bears come from behind to defeat the Heidelberg University Whatchamacallits.by a 34-20 score. ONU’s marching band was very good, and we even went to the field house afterwards to see the band perform a concert (it was homecoming weekend). Usually we go to Bowling Green State University to see an NCAA D-IA game, but that didn’t fit into our Saturday schedules for this fall... er, autumn.

My wife and I enjoy taking walks and viewing the colorful foliage this time of year. The air is turning just a little more crisp, with temperatures 10 or so degrees lower than they were just a month prior.  Each day, the colors become more noticeable as the trees change into their party clothes before they do their slow striptease. Once in a great while, the weather conditions all year conspire to produce extraordinarily gorgeous colors. The jury is still out for this year, though the weirdly wet summer followed by a warm, dry fall do not bode well. Still, every year we get to enjoy some great fall colors in the yards of folks who were wise enough to select their particular trees based on how they change as summer fades away.

Halloween is another big draw for fall lovers. I hate to tell you this, kids – Halloween ain’t what it used to be. We took our costumes to school and changed into them for a Halloween party in the afternoon. Yeah, yeah – now you have parades! Big deal! We might make a jack-o’-lantern a couple of days before Halloween, and it was always lit with a candle, fire safety be damned. Now pumpkins are illuminated with LED lights for Pete’s sake, whoever Pete is. When I was your age, most people gave us nickel candy bars, homemade popcorn balls and other goodies. Now you get a tiny bite-sized candy bar, because most folks cannot afford to pass out 85-cent candy bars that are the modern day equivalent of those nickel bars of olden days. Sorry about your luck, kid!

What makes me feel a bit melancholy this time of year is that the days are gradually, but noticeably, growing shorter. It is as if nature heaves a sigh and declares that all of this spring and summer stuff has just kind of worn thin. It is dark as I get up each morning, and darkness falls around 7:30 PM nowadays.  Winter is coming, the days will continue to grow shorter, and there is nothing we can do to prevent it. Turn, turn, turn. 

Looking for Graves

As I may have mentioned, I wish I had a nickel for each time someone asked me what my plans were for retirement. The last month or so that I was a working man my stock reply was, "My wife and I will be looking for graves." At the very least, this resulted in a shocked, wide eyed look from the inquisitor. Most needed to pick their jaw up from the floor and dust off their chins.

To ease their obvious concern about my health, both physical and mental, I explain about Find-a-Grave.  My wife and I discovered Find-a-Grave a few years ago when a long-retired choir director from a neighboring town came to our Lions Club meeting as the guest speaker. Apparently it is also a good way for long-retired widowers to meet women, since our guest speaker had two female companions, both widowed!

Find-a-Grave is an online community of folks seeking photographs of family members' headstones, and volunteers willing to search cemeteries and take those photos. Most of the requests come from people doing genealogical research, live far from the area where a family member is buried, and want a photo of that family member's final resting place. It is like going to visit a family member's grave without leaving home. Most of those requesting photos are also volunteer photographers for cemeteries near him or her. What is unique about Find-a-Grave is that the researchers create virtual memorial pages on the website. This memorial serves as a tribute to their loved ones, and provides information for those researching a shared family tree. The website for Find-a-Grave is http://www.findagrave.com

If you wish to volunteer to take photos, there are two ways to do so. First, you can make yourself available for requests. I went that route first, but soon changed my status on Find-a-Grave because I was receiving at least five photo requests per day. Since I was still working when I joined Find-a-Grave, this was impractical. For me, it is still impractical now that I'm retired. I do have other things I enjoy!

The other route to go is to pick specific cemeteries you wish to visit, check what monuments members have requested photos of, and then go looking for graves!

My picture taking is much different than our Lions Club speaker's method. My wife and I take our lists of  graves we are seeking and divide up rows of markers. When either of us find one of our targets, I whip out my camera du jour and snap the photo. Which camera I use depends on what I feel like carrying around that day. I usually use a nicer compact Canon, though I often use my little Nikon Coolpix that fits in my pocket. The wife brings her big ol' Canon DSLR on rare occasions. Anyway, we might pull a weed or two before we snap the headstone. I usually take pictures of both the front and back of the monument.

Our Lions Club speaker goes a little further than we do. Actually, he goes a lot farther! Since he spends a great deal of his grave hunting time in the largest cemetery in our county (it has about 15,500 interments), he bought a book listing the names, dates and locations of those buried there. That runs around $70. Once he locates his target headstone, he clips the grass around the marker. Then, he takes a bucket, soft bristle brush and a sponge and washes the headstone. After drying it with a towel, he takes his photographs with a high-end DSLR camera. He then imports that picture into Photoshop and adds beautiful green grass all around the headstone. While this isn't an accurate depiction of the grave, he says the requester loves the thought that their relative is resting eternally in such a wonderful place. I guess I am either a crass realist or just plain lazy. It is probably more of the latter than the former.

Why did we decide to do Find-a-Grave? Well, it gets us outside and walking. We do a lot of walking on our Find-a-Grave sessions. There is much local history laid to rest in cemeteries, and a wide variety of interesting grave markers. I have seen stones shaped like guitars (more common than you might guess), keys, cars, benches, hearts, trees, music notes, etc. The variety and creativity displayed by monument carvers is impressive and never ceases to amaze.

Some older sandstone markers are illegible after 120 years in the elements. Others are remarkably well preserved for being from the mid to late 1800s.

Some families chose giant monuments, and some a simple horizontal marker. Since burial vaults weren't always used in days gone by, some headstones have sunk into the graves as the casket decayed or the ground settled.

In our travels we have found that some cemeteries just aren't cared for like they should be. This is a growing problem nationwide.

I have found that the folks requesting a photo are very grateful when someone takes the time to help them out. I cannot remember anyone who failed to thank us for fulfilling their photo request. The wife and I get a good feeling when we do a favor for a perfect stranger. That is greatest benefit of Find-a-Grave, and I imagine the main reason so many people participate.

The Not First Day of School

Yesterday was the first time in 30 years that I did not go to school excited about what the new year might hold for my students and myself. In fact, I did not go at all. That is because yesterday was the first day of school that I missed due to my retirement from education. In fact, I am unemployed for the first time in 40 years.

I thought yesterday morning would be a melancholy experience. It wasn't what it could have been, or maybe what it should have been. I didn't wake up until the time I would usually be going to work. After starting the morning coffee, I turned on the computer to check email and look at news headlines, the weather, Facebook, radio message boards, etc. This is the same thing I have been doing every morning since May 27, so the new routine may have softened the blow of missing my first day of school just a little. The next time I looked at the clock and remembered school again, it was 8:10. School, and a new year, was in session.

I thought it might be nice to wish everyone well with their new school year, and I did so on Facebook. Most of my Facebook friends enjoyed my bit of well-wishing, and a couple even mentioned that they missed me. For me, that was a good thing because it reminded me of what happens in the course of 30 years. You build a lot of connections and friendships when you work at the same place for a long time. You are certainly richer for those experiences.

Last year I made a list of the things I would miss, and a list of things I would be thankful to leave behind. The "Good List" was considerably shorter than its negative counterpart. At first glance, it seems like I made a great decision to pull the plug on my teaching career. After all, it looked like the bad far outweighed the good. On further examination though, my "Bad List" was mostly petty annoyances, along with the myriad of requirements that politicians place as obstacles to effective and joyful teaching, allegedly done in the name of school/teacher accountability.

The positive list, while shorter, had the depth and breadth of what it really means to teach. It contained things like students who loved learning, who understood, who really "got it" and made the connections and loved what they were doing. On the list was the class I looked forward to everyday - high school band. I could not have asked for a better group of young musicians. More importantly, I had the honor of working with such a fine group of young people, a fine group of just plain wonderful human beings. I miss them, and I wish them all the best life that life has to offer.

Then there are the colleagues I worked with for years and years. I watched their kids grow up, go to college, become successful adults and parents. We have been through good times together and through some rough times together. They are friends of the first division.

School started without me yesterday. The school year will go on like it always does and be a great school year. It will be one that everyone will remember for one reason or another. Likewise, it will be a memorable one for me. New experiences are in store, and likely some exciting new opportunities. Still, I miss the "Good List."

Aliens are Invading My Television!

The wife and I enjoy summer TV shows. America's Got Talent is a favorite, as is Penn & Teller's Fool Us on the CW. Both feature amazing acts that you won't see anywhere else, and some have even overlapped. Bizarre British comedic magician Piff the Magic Dragon was on Fool Us last season, and is now a finalist on the current season of America's Got Talent.  Who would have guessed?

Besides watching talented people plying their trade on a national stage, we are left the rest of the time with aliens. Yes, those invaders from outer space are alive and well, quite plentiful, and seeking to conquer the world as space aliens are wont to do. Some you can see, and some you can't. Some only children can see. A few of these series are TV programs the wife and I have endured for multiple summers. We pray those shows end soon, even if it means the inhalation of our planet to achieve that end. If you are a fan of these shows, please enjoy my take on them. If you are fortunate enough to have never seen them, you will find out what you are not missing. Here goes....


The Whispers

This is my favorite show of this ilk. An electrically-based alien life form is visiting Earth in hopes of making it a new home world. Why? Their planet is dying, of course. Why bother asking? The alien life form (singular if his buddies don't get his phone call home) goes by the name Drill and only talks to kids. Drill talks to kids that have parents with national security clearance, and manipulates the kids to do terrible things to achieve his goal of conquering the world. As a former teacher, I like the premise of an alien that only children can communicate with, and travels through electrical and electronic devices (turn off that cell phone - now)! There is also a little bit of hanky-panky background between some of the adult characters - who all have national security clearance, naturally. Not the only invisible critters in the 2015 summer sci-fi pack, but a fresher take than most of summer's other space invaders.



Under the Dome

When I hear the term "jumping the shark," Under the Dome instantly comes to mind. What was originally intended to be a one-summer miniseries is now in its third mind-numbing season. It is like that family member who comes to visit, and you love to see them for the first few days, but they just won't leave. Under the Dome has definitely overstayed its welcome. This show has a bit of literary clout, with Stephen King penning the novel that this show is based on. While King's other short stories have been made in to movies lasting much longer than it would take to read through several times, making three seasons of hour-long episodes out of one novel is just plain immoral. In the show, the fine and not-so-fine folks of Chester's Mill are trapped beneath an invisible dome that cannot be penetrated. We don't find out why until season three. Season one developed the characters. In season two, a few of the principal characters found ways out of the dome, and then different ways back in again. In season three, we have new formerly-human characters who take over the town, put the citizens in pods inside caves beneath the town, and that experience transforms the townsfolk into mindless members of "the kinship." Actually, it seems most likely that the writers painted themselves into a corner last year, and shark jumping was required to created the ludicrous fiasco that is season three. The good news here is that ratings are at an all-time low, so there is hope that this abomination will end soon. The wife and I have to see it through to the bitter end since we have invested so much time in the show to get to this ridiculous point. I could kiss the feet of the person who invented DVRs for making commercial skipping possible, which makes this hour show into 43 minutes of agony. Oh - I forgot to mention: season three revealed that the dome and the glowing egg that created it were the result of aliens looking for another planet. Again, who would have guessed?


Extant

This program features another invisible alien, though this one is a viral life form that can impregnate women. Gestation time is remarkably short, and the fast-growing hybrid children have the power to manipulate humans. They supposedly need a new home world since theirs was destroyed (where have I heard that one before)?  Unfortunately for those hybrids, the corrupt government has taken benign synthetic people called humanics and turned them into soldiers. Halle Berry makes this show watchable, and the government double-dealings make it interesting. Now in its second season, I'm hoping they wrap this one up before it all goes south.



Falling Skies

Evil aliens invade and kill lots of people. Actually, they kill the majority of Earth's population. Those that are left fight back as loosely organized militias. Other aliens come to help, but not too much. This show is in its fifth and fortunately, its final season. Bad guy aliens include tall, thin critters called overlords. They are soft and easily killed, but rule their armies telepathically. The soldiers are things called skitters. Skitters were once other life forms that were enslaved and transformed into six-legged hard-shell soldiers by the Espheni overlords. The protagonists in Falling Skies have been infected by alien eye worms, harnessed by spinal implants, kidnapped by overlords, converted to alien hybrids... well, you get the picture. This show jumped the shark a couple of season ago, but we still watch because it is hard to look away. You know, you drive past an accident scene and look even though you know no good will come of it, and you feel bad for the people involved after you do look. I like Noah Wyle as an actor, but he is clearly just showing up for a paycheck, because this thing is going nowhere. What else can he so? At times I find myself cheering for the aliens!  Dicey writing makes each episode plod along for the most part, and this thing would be unwatchable if we couldn't shorten the misery by zipping through the commercials with the DVR. I don't care who wins the final battle - I'm just thankful it is ending!

The State of the Fair Address

Our state fair is a great state fair,

Don’t miss it, don’t even be late!

It’s dollars to doughnuts that our state fair

Is the best state fair in our state!

- Oscar Hammerstein II from the musical “State Fair”

For the first time in at least 20 years, the wife and I ventured to the capital of Buckeye Nation to take in the sights and sounds of the Ohio State Fair. I have a student – er, former student – in the All Ohio State Fair Youth Choir. It’s hard to get used to this retirement thing. These students are no longer MY students: they are my former students. Our motivation to go to the state fair was to hear the AOSFYC perform, but since we couldn’t remember much about the last time we went to the fair, making wonderful new memories this year seemed like a great idea.

Getting to the fair was pretty easy, despite the usual road construction projects. This year’s orange barrel season in the Greater Columbus area held more than its usual batch of obstacles, since many were in our path of travel. Coming home from the fair was much more of a challenge, with traffic on I-270 coming to a complete stop numerous times. We decided this was caused by morons going as far as possible before suddenly forcing their way into the next lane when their lane was nearing an end. This moronic maneuver causes everyone behind the moron to slam on brakes to avoid an accident. That eventually leads to brief but complete stoppages for those far behind the actual moronic incident. Sorry if I offend any morons reading this, especially since numerous signs miles prior to the end of a lane clearly indicates what is going to happen. But I digress….

What a magical place the Ohio State Fair is! After being guided to a parking spot waaaay out in Timbuktu, we decided to wait for one of the free shuttles to take us to the gates of the fair. Perhaps the word shuttle brings up images of a small bus, or maybe a space ship. At the Ohio State Fair, a shuttle is a train of two wooden “people wagons” pulled by a John Deere tractor. I think they were aiming for a hayride feel here to fit in with the general ag vibe of a fair, but they missed the mark. There is no hay. Instead, there are narrow benches facing each other in rows. You had best not be claustrophobic, because you are going to be rubbing knees with strangers across from you if you are older than seven. They also make sure the wagons are full before departing for the gate. The folks running these shuttles communicate using police whistles, reminding me of band directors. The wagons lurch forward with a jerk, throwing you into the person next to you. But, hey - the ladies in charge of passenger loading/unloading were very nice, and that goes a long way in making one overlook any shortcomings. Plus, it sure beat walking. There is plenty of that once you enter the gate.

Most county fairs and similar events use volunteers or hire some folks at minimum wage to guide visitors into parking spots. Not the Ohio State Fair. A team of genuine Ohio State Highway Patrol officers guides your vehicle to its designated parking spot. Since the Highway Patrol Academy is right next door and OSP Headquarters is in Columbus, lots of troopers are available to patrol the grounds. It does make the fairgrounds seem safer.

The fairground itself is pretty large, and you do a lot of walking. I brought my pedometer and logged nearly 16,000 steps at the fair. This equaled over five miles of walking. This was a good test for the wife’s new knees, with both having been replaced over the past few years. She survived the ordeal intact. The morning after our fair excursion, her calf muscles ached, but the knees still functioned. This is a testament to joint replacement and modern medical science!

I was surprised at how commercial the fair was. I fully expected a lot of food vendors. While you had to look for most of the animal events, the commercial interests smacked you right in the kisser! Besides more “fair food” vendors than you could shake the proverbial stick at, there were merchants everywhere. Folks were selling mattresses and hot tubs on the midway. Personally, I doubt many new mattresses or hot tubs are sold from a midway tent, but I could be wrong. It also appeared that there was a DirecTV booth located every 15 feet. The commercial building had multiple DirecTV information stations. None had any TVs actually demonstrating a DirecTV channel that we noticed, and I didn’t see any functioning DirecTV dishes used. It might have been a nice touch.

The commercial building – known as the Bricker MarketPlace -  was like an infomercial on steroids. A live cooking show demonstrated the finest pots and pans money could buy. If you act now, you’ll receive a free juicer with your purchase. Plus, this cookware has a lifetime guarantee – if you can track us down and figure out how to get warranty service. Most of the folks viewing this show just wanted to sit down for a while in an air conditioned environment, and would have been just as comfortable watching a demonstration on how to make garage sale bed sheets into a hang glider. 

I could have had my ring cleaned free multiple times, but I settled for one miracle shine. If you needed it cleaned, you could have found the perfect cleaner for it in the Bricker MarketPlace building. Picture in your mind the stereotypical carnival game barkers. Now, imagine sales people doing the exact same thing. “Step right up and buy the little lady a set of gen-u-ine gutter screens. Consumer Reports says ours are better than the other seven imitators peddling their wares here in this building!” “Come right in and try our NEW and IMPROVED super-d-duper reclining massage chair!” “What’s your cell bill? C’mon, WHAT’S your CELL BILL!?” As a sort of ironic twist, many of Ohio’s official departments had information booths in the same building. Their personnel were very quietly minding their own business, but were more than happy to talk to fairgoers when approached. Being a radio aficionado, I was disappointed to find that the data terminals and MARCS radios were removed from every Highway Patrol vehicle displayed on the fairgrounds. Must be top secret stuff, huh?

The Ohio State Fair had a couple of bulk food vendors, with both featuring nostalgic candies from baby-boomers’ childhoods. People in motorized wheelchairs grabbing handfuls of Pixie Stix, tiny wax bottles filled with colored syrup, and chocolate Necco wafers made it difficult for the rest of us boomers to get around in there. In the end, we exited victorious with our $21 worth of palatable nostalgia held high like the cherished memory-trophy that it was. Victory really IS sweet!

Fair food is magic in and of itself. If it can be deep fried, it is available there – for a cost. As expected, most of the prices for fair food from the various vendors were pretty salty. Some weren’t so bad, like five deep-fried buckeyes for five dollars. I’ll admit that I was tempted – until the wife reminded us that we would be dining at one of our favorite restaurants on the return trip, and if I wanted a hot fudge ice cream cake for dessert then I had just better not get those buckeyes! Thanks for bringing me back to my senses, dear.

At fairs in our neck of the woods, french fry booths are quite popular. The state fair had dozens of these potato vendors, and since they were among the most cost-effective snacks around, we bought two small cups of fries and a bottle of water to share for the remarkably low price of just nine dollars. The fries were not as good as our local fairs, mainly due to lack of crispness and absence of any salt. No salt? Really? Since when did fried potatoes at a fair become health food? Spraying on vinegar helped, but we always did that with fair fries and these fries just weren’t as good as what we get at hometown fairs. The vendor did fill up the cups to overflowing with fries, so it was one of the food bargains on the midway.

I experienced a first at the Ohio State Fair this year. The wife and I saw an equestrian event. This was the first time I had witnessed something like this live, and it appeared to be a dressage event. The horses were beautiful, and the riders were confident and dressed to the nines. While most were in awe of horse and rider, I was often focused on the gentlemen playing a constant organ and synthesizer accompaniment to the festivities. Each perfect note perfectly fit with what was going on in the show ring. I was playing “Name That Tune” in my mind, without being able to actually answer, or win prizes for that matter. Plus, the guy was winging it, playing each song by ear! He played whatever pop song from 1965-1990 that seemed appropriate at the moment. It was beautiful!

The All-Ohio State Fair Youth Choir and the All-Ohio State Fair Band were excellent. In fact, all of the entertainment we ran into was very good. One of my favorites was a group called Matt’s Family Jam. They were a family rock band with dad on bass, mom on sax, little brother on drums, sis on mandolin and keys, and big brother on guitar. Each was very proficient on his or her instrument(s) of choice, and they played that brand of rock and roll and everyone loves. It was the first time I heard a rock band with a mandolin player. You can find out more about them at http://mattsfamilyjam.com/

 I could go on, but most of you are thinking, “Please – stop already!” So my final thought is that you should visit the Ohio State Fair if you have the opportunity. It will be memorable!

Ghosts of Summers Past

Being musically inclined, I associate many times in my life with specific songs. Summer is resplendent with such notable songs (pun intended.) Here are but a few examples:
Mungo Jerry: "In the summertime, when the weather is hot...."
George Gershwin: "Summertime, and the livin' is easy...."
Nat King Cole: "Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer...."
The Jamies: "It's summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime...."
The Lovin' Spoonful: "Hot town, summer in the city...."
Seals & Crofts: "Summer breeze, makes me feel fine...."

I could go on, but usually when I go on like this I totally forget what I was talking about in the first place. I just chalk it up to a flare-up of CRS. The music of summer is second only to the music of Christmastime in my mind. Since Christmas happens in the winter, and I increasingly dislike winter, summer songs rule! I spent many, many hours as a kid listening to Top 40 AM radio, faithfully reproduced in low fidelity by the tiny speaker in my very own transistor radio. It ran on a 9-volt battery and had five transistors! Since the computer you are using to read this has a processor with the equivalent of at least one million transistors, my 1960s-era radio was like a stone ax to a caveman - simple, but it got the job done.

Think back to when you were a kid - say, 11 or 12 years old. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Oops, wait a second - I should have told you read all of the directions first, and then think back, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Do that now, please. The memory of summer when you are young offers a feeling that you just don't forget. It is sight and sound and smell and taste of summers long gone. They are the ghosts of summers past.

Most kids of my generation probably have memories of summer similar to mine. The days were new unstructured, unscheduled adventures unfolding each morning. I remember the smell of summer mornings, the sound of birds singing, that feeling of freedom from school, homework, and just about any of the responsibilities that plague us now as adults. We might have had chores, but other than that - just sweet, sweet freedom. We found things to do everyday, and seldom whined that we were bored.

Some years I went to Boy Scout camp for a week in June. That was the only structured activity I encountered most summers. The Boy Scout summer camp of 1972 will forever live in infamy. That was the year Hurricane Agnes brought torrential rains to my part of the world. It rained most of the week, and by Thursday water was flowing though our tents like miniature rivers. Friday night, the five remaining campers from our troop, along with the scoutmaster, spent the night in the scoutmaster's Volkswagen Beetle. As you can imagine, it was not an enjoyable experience, and our Boy Scout training to that point had not fully prepared us for such circumstances. When my dad took me home the next day, I helped him put our downstairs furniture on makeshift sawhorses and concrete blocks in preparation for the impending river flood. The water came up two feet into the first floor of our home in June of 1972. While it was memorable, it was really not enjoyable.

I recall that I read a lot of Hardy Boys books one summer, though I don't remember how old I was. My friend's father had a huge collection of Hardy Boy books that he collected as a kid, and he would let me borrow them, a few at a time. One summer, I got through them all. Each was a fun, quick read with familiar characters that I got to know as friends.  It was the literary equivalent of binge-watching shows on Netflix today.

Some days were spent riding bicycles, leisurely exploring the island I grew up on. Before you ask, it wasn't an exotic tropical island. It was, and still is, an island in the Ohio River. For a kid on a bike though, it was full of cool places that many adults didn't know about and certainly couldn't access by car. It was magical!

There is one summertime experience that will live forever in my fondest memories. It was the Thomas Joyland Shows. Thomas Joyland Shows was a traveling carnival that made summertime stops all over West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and I'm sure other states, too. It had rides, sideshows, carnival food and carnival games. I would save up pocket change for months to spend at the carnival, and my mom or dad might give me a few bucks to sweeten the pot. You could do a lot at Thomas Joyland with just a little bit of cash when you were 11 years old.

Besides the great carnival foods (I had my first corn dog there,) Thomas Joyland had sideshows. Real live sideshows! Some were not geared towards kids my age. Some, however, had universal appeal. I remember how exciting the barker made the rats from the sewers of Paris sound. "Step right up and see the largest RATS in the world, LIVE from the sewers of Paris, France!"  Each time I heard it, the word 'rat'  just jumped from the barker's mouth like the staccato crack of a gun report! How could I not see the world's largest RATS?

My buddy and I each paid 25 cents to go into the tent housing France's finest vermin. That would be like spending $1.50 today, so it was a handsome sum to see Parisian rodents. Oh, the anticipation! Since I lived on an island in the Ohio River, we sometimes saw what we referred to as river rats. They seemed pretty big to us, but RATS from the City of Lights would surely dwarf them all and live in our nightmares forever!

We paid our money at the booth and got our tickets. The worker at the entrance to the tent silently and solemnly took the ticket from our hands. We walked inside the tent. The air was heavy, with an almost supernatural vibe you could almost see.  There in front of us was a large wooden pen with walls over four feet high! It had to be that high to contain the vicious, snarling, hideous creatures imprisoned within. We walked up to the wall and peered inside. There they were, in all their glory, on a bed of wood shavings. As advertised, they were HUGE! They were as big as a lot of the dogs my friends owned. Heck, they were as big as my dachshund! Wow!

Well, maybe they weren't the size of a German shepherd. What really surprised me was the fact that the world's largest rats from the sewers of Paris were so colorful. They resembled enormous guinea pigs, with some black and white ones and some orange-brown ones. They just sort of lied around, not moving. We knew they were alive because we could see them breathing. I don't think we would run screaming from the tent if one managed to escape. We could easily outrun one. Heck, we would have out crawled one! What a disappointment - no nightmarish vermin here. I have since discovered that these were likely cuy guinea pigs or something similar. Here is a link to some information on cuy guinea pigs: http://www.laguineapigrescue.com/cuy-reports-and-sightings.html

One year I did win a treasured prize by defeating one of those vile, rigged carnival games at Thomas Joyland. I don't remember in which game my victory was won, but I do recall the glorious prize my skillful hand secured. It was a sword! Well, it was a little sword, maybe about four inches long. It had a glossy enameled cobalt blue handle, and came with a genuine vinyl scabbard, or more accurately, a paper-thin vinyl sheath. It was beautiful to my pre-adolescent male eyes. It was actually a letter opener, but since I didn't get much mail back then, to me it was a tiny sword!

My mom was never an 11-year-old boy, and could not comprehend the significance of a fine quality weapon of this caliber to a young male entering adolescence. So, like many things that my mother deemed unsavory or dangerous, it mysteriously disappeared one day, never to be seen again. However, it will live forever as another ghost of summers past.

A Month of Saturdays

During my final year as a public school educator, a fellow teacher asked if I looked forward to retirement. Of course I was! He then mentioned, "Yup! You'll have six Saturdays and a Sunday every week!"

For some reason, this logic did not immediately register in my work-programmed mind. For 30 years I was busy with parades and concerts on Sundays, and pep band on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday evenings during basketball season. I had musical rehearsals from January until the middle of April four evenings per week. We had band shows on Saturdays in the fall. To me, Saturday was often just another workday.

To most people, Saturday is a day to pursue enjoyable pastimes, or maybe catch up on duties around the homestead. Having a week of Saturdays is not as easy as one thinks. It is perfectly fine from my viewpoint to do absolutely nothing on a Saturday every now and then. With a week full of Saturdays, it becomes a problem choosing which Saturday to do nothing on.

If you live in Ohio, or just about any state in the neighborhood, you have had more than enough rain this summer. Most of the time, our big backyard has had areas of water standing in it for days at a time. One particular spot has had water standing in it so much that typical yard vegetation no longer grows. What looks mysteriously like seaweed is beginning to flourish in that spot. I am considering building a dock.

When the rest of the puddles disappear, the ground is still spongy. This makes mowing the lawn challenging. Between developing a mower/boat hybrid and building an ark in my pole barn on some of my many Saturdays, I mow. Mowing the entire lawn at one time has been not occurred for several weeks. Mowing around the temporary ponds leaves tall grass surrounding them and tire tracks in the saturated lawn around them. It ain't pretty, folks.

Last week, due to weather forecasts calling for another inch or three of rain, I actually mowed on a calendar Saturday. This is unacceptable! I mowed on calendar Saturdays for years - at least those Saturdays when I didn't have a school obligation. Now that I have a week FULL of Saturdays, I should not be forced to do yard work on an actual Saturday!! This is an outrage!

 

Confessions of a Retired Music Teacher - Part I

I have always wanted to write something. Apparently this is it.

Introductions are in order. Reader - retired music teacher. Retired music teacher - reader. Now with that out of the way, I can begin my confessions.

I am a retired music teacher. There, I said it. I am retired. Since I have only had two jobs in my entire life, the fact that I am now unemployed is difficult to comprehend. As July would normally be my downtime even when I was teaching band, choir and elementary music, I don't miss teaching...yet.

Not too many teachers stay in their first job unless they have some connection to that community. I must be an exception. Though I had no connection to my school community (in fact, my wife and I moved 250 miles for this teaching gig), I stayed put for 30 years.

Why does one pull the proverbial plug after what most people say was 30 years of successfully and musically educating America's youth? The answer is hoops.

Being a public school teacher is not the noble profession it was when my career began. I remember an undergrad college professor telling us that teachers were on the same plane of regard as priest/minister/rabbi. Public school teachers are now the whipping posts of politicians. All of society's ills, most of which are linked to economic disadvantage, are instead placed on the heads of America's public school teachers.

In that we are deemed lazy and derelict merely by our choice of vocation, we are therefore required to jump through the many, ever-changing hoops set before us by law makers. Most of these law makers answer to wealthy political contributors, so in order to continue reaping those benefits they must legislate hoops for educators to jump through. When teachers are successful in jumping through the hoops set before them, the law makers and their sponsors decide that the hoops must be too low and therefore must be raised. The ultimate goal of this ongoing exercise is for the law maker to rub his or her hands together and gleefully shout, "Ah-HA! I knew you were all lazy incompetents! We MUST privatize education and treat it as any other business!"

Just between us, Big Business is outraged that public school education is a multi-billion dollar industry that actually pays the folks doing the work rather than CEOs, CFOs. board members, etc. That flies in the face of what is holy to the uber-rich. If you get the impression that I do not fancy politicians or billionaires, you would be correct.

The younger kids have changed over the years as well. When I began teaching, young kids were full of wonder. They were like sponges absorbing all teachers could offer. Due to media and internet bombardment, along with a digital pacifier stuck in their tiny faces from birth, young children have an attention span similar to a house fly. I still enjoyed working with high school kids when I retired. The younger kids... eh - not so much.

Well, that is introduction part one. Don't worry - this isn't going to be a political diatribe with each blog entry. I may even entertain you now and then!