There's a Word For That

“There's never enough of the stuff you can't get enough of.” Patrick H. T. Doyle.

Things. Stuff.

We are reorganizing, yet again. "Front spare bedroom" into study. More appropriate - Man Cave. Sleeper sofa, drop-leaf desk, book shelf. Vacation photos (I especially love the one of a young couple floating along on the underground river in Xcaret, Mexico). A comfortable place to read, to write... To contemplate our next adventure.

To accomplish the task required removal of a queen bed. Standard type, mattress and box springs, very nice metal scroll headboard. For its age, it's in great shape

We purchased it in the early 2000s. All of the kids were "out of the house," adults. Only one, our youngest, might use it more than occasionally during breaks from college. As it turned out, she quickly embraced independence and set her own course. The bed went virtually unused, save for the occasional visit from out of town relatives.

We moved it to our present house, mostly because...we did. December 2010 was tumultuous, frantic and fraught with emotion. We set up shop in a manner requiring the fewest decisions. And, left it that way.

Making room for the new furniture, I disassembled the frame and walked the pieces out to my truck, to donate. There are years of use left. And, in the darkening solitude unkempt emotion washed over me with the chill evening wind.

I wandered back into the house struggling with what I was feeling. It was metal. It was fabric. I asked friends for the word I was missing, one to describe why this inanimate object evoked such a strong reaction. I received a number of great responses, spot on point. Animistic. Sentient. Anthropomorphism. All excellent suggestions from great writers.

Touchstone. 

I looked up touchstone. It's a standard, or a test. Not exactly what I was looking for, until I read the third definition, in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

"A black siliceous stone related to flint and formerly used to test the purity of gold and silver by the streak left on the stone when rubbed by the metal."

Everything pure and wonderful about this piece of metal I was shouldering had rubbed off on me as I loaded it up. There were the guests who had slept on it, and the wonderful times we'd had with them. There was the night our master bed collapsed, and we took refuge. And there were the wonderful mornings...

Many years ago, I'd woken up my daughters for school. Their mother and I were separating, and would soon divorce. One of them - I honestly don't remember who, was describing a distance. She spread out her arms as wide as they would go and exclaimed "It was at least two kids wide!" It was the most profound example of what I would soon be missing, the random and irreplaceable moments encountered as a new day unfolded.

They all grew up. First our son, who was 16 when I married his mom. Then the girls in succession. The house was quiet, breakfasts far less raucous. No requests for eggs or toast. A full coffee pot not drained like it once was.

But, sometimes, our home was a base. They would bring their new lives with them from Baltimore, or Ft. Myers or Maine, and sleep in the bed in the spare room. In the mornings, tousle-haired and bleary-eyed, they would emerge and say good morning. A new day was dawning, and one of our children was ready for us to make them breakfast.

A touchstone. Everything that was good and pure about those moments had rubbed off on the inexpensive frame and headboard that would soon find a new home. And now, one more time, it was rubbing off on me.

Well...Bye

Were it not for the creepy cultishness of the bloody, senseless murders and the notoriety of some of his victims, the piece of self-ambulatory trash whose pointless existence ended yesterday in a California prison would have been just another nobody creep. Nearly fifty years after the crime spree that left nine totally innocent people dead, it is easy to mourn the victims whose lives were snatched from them to make some obscure, daft point.

Who am I talking about?

If his name is mentioned once more in public, that would be a damn shame.

A Special Breed

"We talked about some old times, and we drank ourselves some beers. Still crazy after all these years." Still Crazy After All These Years, Paul Simon (1975).

Mourning the passing of Tim Meyer, bon vivant.

Bill Clement, hockey great, tells the story of riding in a car with the owner of the Washington Capitals, a team to which he'd been traded. Clement was an all star with Philadelphia's Flyers - now, he was part of an effort to get the Caps to the next level. "We need to find some guys who love to win," the owner commented.

"Everybody loves to win," Clement observed. "We need to find guys who hate to lose."

TC Meyer hated to lose.

There is no louder sound on a hockey rink than that made by the puck hitting the netting behind your team’s goalie. For the goaltender, it is deafening. I never met anyone who hated that sound more than TC.

My first memory of him is as a small figure in seemingly oversized equipment, skating slow turns around the ice. Tryouts for Pittsford-Mendon High’s varsity team in Western New York.

I’d tended goal for Pittsford High when there was one building, one high school. Population growth soon required two schools – my alma mater became Pittsford-Sutherland. My brother was trying to earn a place on “Mendon’s” inaugural team (he did, and would play three years as a mainstay defenseman). I was taking time off from college working as a security guard at Xerox, preparing for a summer cycling adventure. Time on my hands, so I drove my brother to the rink and settled in with a book. The head coach, who would become a life-long friend, approached me one afternoon and asked if I’d like to “help out.”

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, not just with Coach M, but with TC. Tim was a rare individual. I think he was more demanding of me (a volunteer coach, as it were) than I of him. If the drills we did uncovered a weakness, we worked to overcome it. If it didn't, if it appeared he'd mastered it, it was my fault - I hadn't designed a drill that was useful. When the puck entered the net, even in practice, we tried to figure out why. He drove himself to be better at the end of practice than the beginning. He was never discouraged, he was determined. Every time the puck entered the net, that was going to be the last time. Ever.

He wasn’t a one man show, of course. The Vikings of the 1975-77 era, when I was part of the team, were a group of high quality, high spirited, hugely talented individuals. They fed off one another in a way great groups of people do. They had an exceptional leader as their coach, one of the best X and O guys I ever saw.

The day of reckoning came, as they always do. The championship game against, of course, Pittsford-Sutherland. Our team was shorthanded – three of the four regular defensemen, guys who had given everything to get the team to that day, were kept off the ice due to the German Measles. That’s right.

Others have told the story better – suffice to say, TC’s performance in net was epic. A win in overtime, the MVP trophy to the little goalie with the big heart.

It would be my last game as goalie coach. Life took me to Colorado, and I lost track of Tim. Brother Mike, who played out his senior year at Mendon, attended The University of Colorado at Boulder, and lived there for several years after graduating. Our own lives, our own destinies, the years passing.

And then, glorious, maddening Facebook intervened. A friend request from TC, now living in California. Prosperous, with a great family and a bright future. We traded stories, and he reminded me how much he loved my mom, who ran the elementary school cafeteria up the street and would pile his plate high with extra food all through grade school. Ever the charmer. TC had grown into a strapping six footer, but had never lost the smile with a bit of the devil in it.

Over the following years we shared moments, recipes and playful kidding. I would post my latest rib dinner, him his famous meatballs. Always beautifully plated, always tempting. It wasn’t one up, it was one for a brother.

I was in New York for a visit the last time I saw him. He had come back to Pittsford for something. We really hadn’t seen much of each other since the day at the rink, and to be honest I’d probably not seen him in 35 years. But, as I entered the pub our eyes locked and, true to the man he was, he bounded across the room to give me a huge bear hug. He and I, Coach M (now a retired school superintendent) talked about some old times, and drank ourselves some beers.

This isn’t fair.

The Sun Also Rises

I can't wait for tomorrow, because I get better looking every day. Football great Joe Namath.



The internet. Facebook (oh, glorious Facebook). All of the freakin' TVs in front of the spin bikes at the gym... Political doom and gloom, something about the Democrats sweeping, a sort of virtual Sherman's march to the sea. Panic on the right, gloating on the left. Et cetera.

Huh.

My PhD wife was as beautiful this morning as always, dressed to start yet another day in academia.

The dogs' eyes were just as hopeful, just as expectant, as I dished out their breakfast. When I sat on the sofa to write, Jed snuggled up beside me, as usual.

The first day of vacation felt like it always does - free at last! I checked - the tickets are still first class, the weather at our destination warm, the margs awaiting our arrival.

The workout felt great.

Maybe I'm crazy, but it's a great day to be alive. 

Walking the Walk

"Ever served in a forward area?" Marine Colonel Nathan Jessep (Jack Nicholson).
"No, sir." JAG officer Lt.(jg) Daniel Kaffee.
A Few Good Men, (1992)

The verdict is in. The deserter "sergeant" gets credit, in essence, for time served (albeit primarily as a guest of the Taliban). He gets demoted from a position he didn't earn, and receives a dishonorable discharge. This for abandoning his squad in a combat zone. He did this, he says, to draw attention to things happening in his unit with which he disagreed. Compelled to search for him, six soldiers lost their lives, three horribly wounded, in the vain attempt to locate him.

The judge, during sentencing arguments, gave credit to the defense position that Candidate Trump's stump speeches critical of the Obama Administration's ransoming of this fellow made a fair trial difficult. Asked recently for a comment, President Trump merely said "You know how I feel." The judge gave this his own nefarious spin, rejecting prosecution rebuttal to the contrary. As of now, there is no evidence the President had dinner in Hawaii with him just before he passed sentence. Oh, wait...

The judge's remarks, that he entered this nothing sentence to uphold the legitimacy of military justice, could only come from a lawyer. Not a very imaginative one at that. "President Trump said..." has become the favorite go-to excuse for all kinds of judicial mischief. Here, there was no evidence offered - none - that the President tried to influence, inappropriately or otherwise, the proceedings. His position as Commander in Chief gives him a unique position regarding the disciplinary philosophy followed in the military. While the military is regulated by acts of Congress, some modification takes place by executive order. Nowhere but in the courts of fanciful pleadings (either military or civilian) are the comments of a candidate for president admissible evidence to offer either in mitigation or aggravation.

God rest the souls of the men who died trying to rescue him, and the men maimed in the attempt. May their sacrifice be the sole source of honor in this dishonorable incident.