My son is 4 years old. He was born the same day Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. He collects things to build with in hopes that one day I’ll take the time to do that with him. Right now he’s asleep, right outside my door, on the floor, next to his red bucket of things to build with me.
One day I took him out to a junkyard I used to drive by when my wife and I each ran a paper route. We were trying to keep from losing the house and were behind on our mortgage. The bank made us a deal. They said we could stop paying for a while, and then make a big balloon payment at the end. I didn’t see how that was much better, but I signed the papers anyway.
Kevin wanted to build a rocket. (That is my son’s name.) But what he really wanted was to fly in a rocket. We’d go in the closet and I’d simulate a launch sequence. He never bought into it. I kept saying, “You just want to fly up in the air, but how are you going to get down?” (Safely, I meant.) He wasn’t concerned with that. He just wanted to fly. And I was going to help him build a rocket.
When we got to the junkyard, there was no longer any rocket parts laying around. We saw a train. I stopped. We raced to get out of the car. He pointed at the train. It was exciting. When we got home I found some parts in my shop and we built a small rocket model, about three feet high. It wasn’t much and he didn’t care for it. He wanted something he could climb in, something he could fly.
One day I came home and he had built an airplane out of scraps of wood he had found and some tape. I thought it was pretty cool so I gave him some more wood to see what he could do. We even made a video of it. He seemed to be more creative with less. There isn’t much in his bucket – just some wood, a marble, a miniature cardboard cutout of Superman, and some string. He wants to fly, but most of all he wants time with his dad.
We were able to make that balloon payment and keep the house. Shortly thereafter I went full-time in my own IT/web consulting business. I helped a lot of people, but somewhere along the line I forgot what I was doing, and who I was doing it for. I stopped asking how I could help other people and was only focused on myself and what I could do. I had to get back to my core values, but i didn’t know what they were. I seemed lost. My son doesn’t know what he’s going to build, but he knows that if he collects enough of the parts he wants to see in the finished product, the end result will be something he can be proud of. That’s what I started to do, too.
My first value was more of a mantra: help people. If I wasn’t helping someone, I didn’t want to do it. While this seems simple at first, there are a lot of things you can do that are not helpful to people. Some are annoying, some are exploitative, and others are just downright harmful. I wanted to help make the world a better place by helping people. My second value was: add value. In every transaction, interaction, and blog post I wanted to be adding value. I don’t want to be noise, I want to be a part of a community where my clients and I look forward to seeing each other.
One of my favorite scenes in any movie is in Apollo 13 when the engineer at NASA dumps all the parts on a table and says they have to make ‘this air filter fit in this air system’. That is like a dream come true for me. I would love to have that challenge. I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have made two different air filter systems for the same ship, but there’s something about the puzzle element that fascinates me. I wonder if that’s what my son feels when he’s building. I hope I’ll soon find out when he wakes up and I make time to build.
A few years ago, I discovered a positive correlation between having places in my life where people know me and my happiness. I call those places “stations”. I noticed that the more stations I have in life, the happier I am.
What is a station?
A station is going into your local coffee shop and having the barista know your name. It’s going to a restaurant and having the waiter know your name. It’s having friends that you can stop at by their house or running into someone you know at the grocery store or going to church and having people recognize you and want to shake your hand. In order for those things to happen, you have to have positive interactions over time (which is one of the definitions of friendship).
A few years ago I started intentionally trying to build up my community. When i would go to a place that I knew I was going to probably visit a lot in the future, I would say, “Hi, my name’s Erich. What’s your name?” It seems simple enough, but you do it and then you try to remember it and say it eventually they they learn your name too. And the next time you’re there, you can start to ask deeper questions like, “How are you doing? How was your weekend?”, and then as time goes on you can get deeper and go as deep as you want to go. You get to the point where you can say, “Hey, that’s rough. If you want to talk about it, maybe we can go talk about it somewhere else,” and then you take that relationship from that place and you move it some other place.
So maybe you start off by talking to someone at church but then after talking to them at church, one day you say, “Hey, maybe sometime we should go get coffee together,” and then you go get the coffee together. And then you can even start to combine these things when you have someone that you know that you’re bringing to a place where you know someone else, you can introduce to people and say, “Hey, this is my friend. I’d like you to meet this person.” Being a connector helps other people be happy as well. Because it’s not just your happiness, it’s their happiness too. It’s “community happiness”.
You are knowing them, they are knowing you. It’s reciprocal.
If you’re old enough to remember this show, Cheers, you know that when Norm walks into the bar, everyone yells, “Norm!” There’s been a couple of times in my life that that’s happened in real life. And it is an awesome feeling. You walk into a room and everybody goes, “Erich! Yeah!” They’re genuinely excited to see you. Everyone in the room is flipping out. It’s only happened like twice in my life, but I remember it vividly. And if you’ve ever gotten married, you know you’re walking down the line or you’ve gone to a wedding and there’s this receding line. and you’re walking out and everybody’s shaking your hand. After intentionally building up the community for years, one time I was just walking out of church (I needed to go to the bathroom or something) and I’m like, ‘just let me sneak out here’ and then left after right, people kept sticking out their hand and saying, “Hey, Erich,” “Hey, Erich,” “Hey, Erich”. It was like a freaking receiving line.
I was like, ‘Wow, I did it. I created community. This is amazing. I’m so happy right now.’
There’s lots of ways to become happy or have moments of happiness or be fulfilled in life. But community is one of them. It’s beyond happiness too. It’s about your life. Like literally. Like you’ll live longer if you have better relationships with people. If you have people that care whether or not you’re alive or dead. And they genuinely like recognize you. care about whether you exist you walk into a place and you’re just nobody and you go home and you’re alone and you never interact with anyone something happens on the physiological level and you just don’t live as long as someone who’s an active part of the community where people actually care that you are there or not.
When i was young, my dad told me one time, “If you want to have friends, be a friend.” And so I’ve tried to be friends with people. And because of that, I have friends as an adult. I even make new friends. It takes effort. It takes being the one to reach out and ask. And I have asked people and they don’t always do stuff, but they have told me, “I appreciate you asking because not everybody asks.” And if you want to go into the world of dating, there are girls that just don’t even get asked out. In sales, people don’t get the sale because they’re not asking for the sale.
Asking is such a huge thing.
I know it’s not really what we’re talking about but it’s a human thing. Even God says to ask Him for things.
Humans want to help other people. They want to be with each other. We are community-oriented people.
If you take a bee out of the out of its hive and just leave it alone, it’s going to die. The bees need the other bees to survive. Humans are the same way. Humans need other humans to survive. If you leave the population, you won’t die on day one, but like eventually you will. Everybody needs each other. So it’s not just the physiological, it’s also the emotional.
In summary, I have found that the more of them you have, the happier you are. And the way to cultivate stations is to reach out to people and build up your community over time.
Third Place
Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, made the term “The third place,” popular in his book, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, but the “third place” is actually a phrase coined by contemporary sociologist Ray Oldenburg. Oldenburg postulated in 1990 that the third place is, “a public place where people gather for the social satisfaction that they can’t get from the first two domains of the home and the workplace.” Oldenburg argued that the availability of such gathering places in America was lacking. Schultz turned America’s ‘lack of place’ into a business opportunity encouraging loitering and turning Starbucks into that third place. In this post I will argue that their is a direct relationship between the number of third places and happiness (in life and work).
Social Structure
In Malcom Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell recounts the story of a town whose inhabitants rarely got sick. After a doctor named Wolf began looking into why, he “slowly realized was that the secret of Roseto wasn’t diet or exercise or genes or the region where Roseto was situated. It had to be the Roseto itself.” The town’s social structure had multiple generations living under one roof, the townspeople talked to one another on the street, they cooked together in each other’s backyards, they went to the same church, and had “twenty-two separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2000 people”. In short, the towns people were a community and they had places they could go to congregate and interact. It’s these ‘third’ places that I call Community Stations.
Community Stations
If you went to a public school your teacher may have setup your classroom into stations. If you were in first grade there may have been a station for reading books, a station for building blocks or puzzles, and another station to watch an aquarium or greenhouse. These were all places you could go, sub-sections within the larger classroom to hang out with people like you doing things like you. When you grew up you may have been assigned a “work” station at your job and bought a “play” station for your home. In the 1800’s whole towns were built up around “train” stations and now every corner has a “gas” station for our cars. Third places like Starbucks are a “coffee” station – and like the stations set up around the classroom, is one where like-minded people gather to talk and share what’s going on in their work and their community.
Personal Community
Your community is more than the 2 square miles around your home. It’s made up of the various types of community stations, the most important ones being your home, your work, the stores you visit, and your friend’s homes. Each station in your personal community is like a node on a network and like Facebook, the more friends you have, the better the experience. This network value is called the Network Effect. But unless you live in a college dorm or in a close-knit community like Roseto, you have to travel greater distances to these different stations. But the more stations you have, the greater the chance you will be able to interact with these stations and the greater the value of the community. This is why density matters and it’s why more communities are choosing to infill instead of building sprawl.
Walkable Neighborhoods
Alex Steffen talks about infill in communities being used to build denser communities, but there are already places like that: cities. I recently wrote about how people under 30 are moving into the cities and driving less, what Nathan Norris calls The Great Migration of the 21st Century. More and more people want to live in walkable neighborhoods, places where shopping, fun, and friends are all within walking distance. There is even a website dedicated to judging the walkability of a neighborhood. But you don’t have to live in a city to have a walkable neighborhood. Suburburban “sub-divisions” like these in the Indianapolis area can be specifically built to be walkable.
Business Networking
In my post about working in Indianapolis, I wrote about how on Thursdays I would start out at the local BNI meeting, then go to Subway where the local Sandwich artist would remember me and ask me about my business. After breakfast I’d head to Starbucks where I’d normally run into someone I know and begin working. At night I’d attend a meetup or go to a friends house before heading home. After going full-time on my own business one of the first things I noticed was how lonely I was working from home (like right now?). I wrote:
When I worked for other companies I was around other people all day long. We had meetings. I sometimes got to go places on the company’s dime. Some of these times were good. Most of them were not noteworthy. However, once they were gone, I started to miss that in my life. Sure, I met with clients occasionally, but for the most part I stayed in my office at home. While my family is a joy to me, there is a certain need to go beyond that and meetups can help with that.
Work Communities
My ex-wife used to work at a hospital with a man named Melvin whose job was to keep rooms stocked each day. He had worked at the hospital for many years and had developed a routine that involved starting out in the stock room and making rounds around the hospital, stopping to talk to various people in each location. These were his stations within the hospital and without them he would not have been as happy at his job. He needed the community that the stations provided him. As an IT and web consultant, my clients were scattered around the city of Indianapolis and it created many places I could go throughout the day. My clients became part of my community and added to my work enjoyment. It didn’t feel like work – it felt more like visiting a friend.
Seeking Stations
I lived in small, rural town where there wasn’t a whole lot to do. There was no coffee shop and none of my friends live around there. There was a bowling alley, a movie theater, and several gas stations. My kids liked walking to the gas station to get candy and occasionally I’d walk to watch a movie, but the only place for me to go to ‘work’ is McDonald’s or a local diner. One is depressing and the other won’t leave you alone. There is no place to ‘hang out’. It’s a walkable neighborhood, but where would I be walking to? I decided that there must be something to do there, it’s just that I didn’t have the information as to what that is. That’s when I got the idea for Seektivity – an app that lets you share activities and events going on around you – kind of like a Foursquare for activities instead of places. A lot of my friends thought it was a good idea. Shoutt has since come out with something similar, but it adds a ‘borrowing/lending’ feature. I shoutted in that town, but there was been no one listening (give me a shout out on Twitter).
I take a drink of my coffee and get a text from a customer. The room seems brighter now. I feel like I’m a part of a community – and for a second I am happy.
I didn’t ever want to write about my children in order to protect their privacy, but thought that if I were ever to die, which I will, they might be interested in how I thought about them in this time of their lives.
I’ve written about them before in The Apple Tree and how I lost them in The Candy Aisle, but that was more about my interaction with them and less about what I thought of them as people.
Magdalena is very scared to break the rules and doesn’t like it when other people do. This is in part due to us being so strict on her as a baby. She wasn’t allowed to do anything wrong. She doesn’t have a very good sense of humor, but she does read a lot and is starting to make connections between things, which tells me she’s really smart. She scares easily.
Carmina is very funny and caring. She says she can’t decide whether she wants to be a nurse to poke people or a doctor to cut babies out. She cares for baby dolls all day long and is very good at doing her chores. I think she’s better at math than Magdalena even though she’s two years younger. She loves watching cartoons and is excellent at memorizing Bible verses.
Kevin is very energetic and loud. He loves to run, jump, and play. He has recently started making up songs to sing and learning how to play baseball. Like Carmina, Kevin loves to watch cartoons. He learns a lot from them and often gets up in the middle of the night to watch them. He is very funny and fun to be around. He loves dinosaurs and playing outside.
Samuel is very good at sports and loves to play with balls and trucks. He seems to be smart too and has started saying more words now such as “Why?”, “Mine”, and “No.” He loves going on walks and on stroller rides. He loves being outside and doing anything his older brother does. He’s very funny, possibly more funny than Carmina and already catches better than Kevin.
Before Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, I posted pictures like this to my blog, but now posts like that just don’t make sense so I combined them all into this one post. In case you’re reading this after I’m dead, please know that I’m sorry I yelled at you when you were interrupting me and I’m sorry I didn’t come right away like I said I would. I liked hearing you play even though sometimes made it hard to work. I tried to play with you as much as I could. I love you all.
Sugar cookies and lemonade for breakfast at Barnes and Nobles – 2007/02/27
New McDonalds have free game kiosks instead of playgrounds – 2007/01/29
Missing you at mile 100,750 – 2006/10/15
Down by the riverside in Noblesville – 2006/05/19
My Baby – She really likes Daddy to pick her up! – 2/18/2006
October Beach – 10/10/2005
I like the beach on Lake Michigan. My baby and me walked on the sand in Michigan City, IN last month. You can see Mt. Baldy and the Chicago skyline from there. When we were leaving, two surfers got into the water. They must have been cold. The wind was blowing hard and sand would sting us as it hit. The birds were flying forward, but remained stationary in the wind. Magdalena loved watching them and so did I.
Daisies – 11/9/2005
This is my baby and me, hanging out in the dining room. She is almost two and may be two and a half when she becomes a big sister. We asked her if she wanted a little brother and she said, “uhn uh”. So then we asked if she wanted a little sister and again she said, “uhn uh.” We thought she might have just been on a roll so we began asking her more yes and no questions which all resulted in the same answer so it is hard to say how she really feels about a sibling or if she even understands. I like her innocence.
Having gotten accustomed to being able to get online at a pretty regular basis, it was hard to adapt to an environment where access was extremely limited. I had dial-up access at home and in my dorm room at school, but mostly we would go down to the computer lab in Lusby when classes were not in session. Sometimes we would accidentally walk in when classes were in session and would not know it sans the dirty looks from the majority of the class. My boss at camp, Blaine, had dial-up and he said I could check my email whenever I wanted there so I jumped at the opportunity to check my Hotmail that night.
The second night I knocked on Blaine’s door, his wife obliged, but I could tell they were wondering how often I would be coming over and for how long would I be online. I took them at good faith that I could get online whenever I wanted, but already I could tell that it was not true. By the third night, I was told, “You can get online at the library I think,” which I took as, “You can’t get online here anymore.”
I began my search for internet access on Saturday. I drove out to the nearest library and saw that you could get online, for a half-hour at a time, but you must sign in.
“I’d like to use the Internet, please.” I asked the librarian on duty.
“May I see your library card, please?”
“I don’t have one,” but I was quick to add, “How can I get one?”
“You can sign up for one, but where do you live?”
“Niles.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t give you a card. That’s not our township.”
“So I can’t use the Internet, then.”
“No, you’ll have to go to the library in your township.”
“Do you know which one that is?”
“No, I don’t sir, but you can look it up on the Internet.”
“How am I supposed to do that when I can’t get online?”
“That’s not my problem, sir, now if you’ll excuse me, the people who DO live in this township need my help. Good day.”
I had to call every library in the phone book before figuring out which library I could go to. It was up north in the town Denise lived in. I would go there tomorrow.
To Build a Fire
Every night there was a fire in the camp. It was at the bottom of the hill on the south side, just north of the road, but behind some trees on one side. There were logs set up around it in a circle where the kids would sing songs and talk about God. It was called Campfire and we were in charge of setting it up.
It was the last thing we did each night before cutting out to the movies or Jessie’s lakehouse, or whatever it was we did that night. We drove up to the old white maintenance shed by the house and picked up the diesel. Then it was down the hill to the wood pile where we loaded up the cart with wood.
“I’m so freaking tired, dude.” said Jessie.
“I know. If you hadn’t broke the freaking John Deere, I wouldn’t have had to stand up day long on the freaking Toro!”
“Jeff broke it with the air compressor and his fat grandpa seized it up in the middle of the night! Just cause I was the one driving it when it failed, doesn’t mean I broke it.”
“Who doesn’t know what the temperature gauge looks like?!”
“I thought it was just telling me it was hot that day!”
“I just hope we get it back soon. My legs are killing me from all the standing and shaking. Do you think it even needs mowed as much anymore?”
“No. I’m going to talk to Jeff about it tomorrow.”
I let Jessie drive once we get enough firewood loaded. He stomps the peddle on the gas/electric hybrid utility cart. Its like a golf cart, but with a trailer built into the back. A lever between the drivers legs indicates forward, backward, or neutral. There is a gas pedal, a brake pedal, and a key. That is pretty much it. No seat belts. We arrive at the campfire just around the corner and begin to stack the wood.
“Did you grab the newspaper?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Jessie had started stacking the wood in a square. This meant he was building the ‘Log Cabin’. We varied between building that and the ever popular ‘Tee Pee’. After careful placement of the newspaper and logs, we doused the fire with diesel and drove off. Finally we were done for the day. It was getting dark and I was getting excited. Denise was spending the night tonight.
Trash Men
The camp sat on 66 acres (corresponding with the number of books in the Bible) and contained four cabins, two tree houses, two maintenance buildings, two houses, one pool, one playground, one office and staff living quarters, and one multi-function building that housed the kitchen and a large indoor area which was used for eating and gathering for worship. There were three meals served a day in that mess hall. There were seven barrels of trash filled at every meal. This accounted for over a hundred bags of trash a week from meals alone. The trash truck came twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. Trash trucks are very important to maintenance men. They empty the dumpster. When the dumpster is full, sometimes the bags have to be shoved up on top of other bags and on Friday night it was the worst. One Friday night sticks out more than others.
High school week was over and we were all itching to get done so we could relax on the weekend. Saturdays were really the only day we had off since campers arrived at camp Sunday nights. We send the campers home before supper on Friday night partly to save on food costs and partly to allow us, the staff and faculty, time to clean up after them. As a maintenance worker I was responsible for providing the cleaning tools to each cabin and transporting the trash placed outside into the dumpster. We were the only ones that were supposed to drive the gas-powered carts and so we were the ones doing the hauling. I say “we” because it was my partner, Jessie and I. With Jessie everything was a question of being “kosher” or not, but he wasn’t Jewish. He was hardly even Christian. When he first asked me if I smoked, I said, “No.” It turns out I answered his question correctly, but he wasn’t asking about tobacco use. Only a few trash bags remained, the ones from the female cabins at the top of the hill, nearest the pool.
“I’ll get the rest,” I said to Jessie while still sitting in the cart in between the mess hall and the dumpster, which sat just outside the forest by the lake. By lake I mean large body of water, never more than three feet deep, and covered most of the summer by lily pads and the corresponding leap frog. It was just deep enough to canoe through and some people did, but you weren’t supposed to go alone and it was really hard to find someone else with the same enthusiasm for the trip. If ever there was such interest, it was a one-time event. At least that was how it was for most people, including me.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’ll meet you in the mess hall to finish up.” Though the faculty were responsible for cabin clean-up, we were responsible for pretty much everything else, including the mess hall which had to be swept after every meal. It was a horrifyingly awful job to have to stop what you are doing throughout the day to come back and sweep the entire mess hall. The process involved sweeping between the rows of tables of chairs, then pulling out all the chairs and sweeping again, under the tables. It was brutal as there were often more than a hundred chairs to move back and forth. Friday’s were more extensive. We had to fold up all the chairs and tables, sweep the entire floor, and then mop. The camp manager would then come by for a final inspection before we could go off on our merry ways. I headed up the hill.
The last of the trash bags were sitting outside the cabin along with the cleaning supplies used to clean it. The cabin mom was no where to be seen as she had left as soon as possible. I went to school with most of the people who worked here. That’s how I found out about the job. I was working with Kelly in the cafeteria of Kentucky Christian College as a kitchen closer. She worked on the line serving students as they came through. We both washed dishes sometimes and sometimes we washed dishes together. There was no dishwasher at camp, which is why there was so much trash. The camp used styrofoam plates and cups, and plastic utensils. Pots and pans were washed in a large sink after every meal. I headed down the hill to the dumpster.
The dumpster was full. That was an overstatement. The last three bags could not be thrown on top or they would just roll off the mountain of white sacks. I had to shove the bags into spots on the side to get them to stay. I saved the biggest I had to use two hands to shove the last bag in. As I did I saw a small opening develop in the plastic, but I kept on shoving. I was determined to get this bag in. Before I could do anything, the small tear grew into a large rip and soon trash began caressing over my face. My hands, caught up in pushing the plastic, could not move fast enough to stop the fall. It was all over the ground around me. I bent over to pick it all up and angrily threw it into the dumpster, loose. It was disgusting. Later, people would always ask me why I didn’t go get gloves that day.
“Why didn’t you use gloves?” they’d ask. All I could say was that it was the most disgusting thing to ever happen to me. I was glad the week was over.
Downtown Dowagiac
“…in downtown Dowagiac!” blared the radio anouncer. His voice got really deep when he got to the word Dowagiac, pronounced doh-wah-jac, like the “Lets get ready to rumble!” guy. It was fun to say once you got the hang of it. The town elders must have named it after the last Indian tribe they ran out of town. It sported a drive-in movie theater, which people would drive from all around to see since there weren’t very many of them left. Ashley agreed to meet me up there one Saturday night for a movie and so I drove up there on good faith. She had given me a phone number of the house she was going to be at. I was bored so I drove up early and stopped to eat at Dowagiac’s local Pizza Hut, alone.
“How many?” the waitress asked.
“Just me.” It was at that moment that I realized it might be weird to dine in at Pizza Hut all by yourself, but by now it was too late. I was committed. I decided to ask God to join me. I prayed, “God, will you eat with me?” Just then a man entered the Pizza Hut, alone. “That was fast,” I thought. I asked him to join me and he did.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Its alright.” I hated that question, but in this case, I could be forgiving. “What did you want to order?”
“I’m just going to get a some beer. I’m waiting on my girlfriend. She doesn’t get off work for another hour.”
“Cool. I’m getting a pizza. You can have some if you want.” We order with the waitress and though I’m in a potentially awkward situation, I’m calm. It was hot outside, but cold in here and the Mountain Dew she brought me tasted delicious. The red leather seats were sticking to my legs as the sweat dried. The air conditioner in my car was all but not working now. I would have to look into that later. For now, I decided to see what God had to say about Jessica.
“I’m thinking about getting married,” I said. Jessica was one of my most favorite subjects to talk about.
“It aint nothin’ to rush.”
“What do you mean?”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“I got married to my first wife when I was your age. Had two kids, got a divorce. Got remarried, had another kid, got divorced, had my fourth kid with my current girlfriend, but decided not to marry her. It aint nothin’ to rush.”
This is definitely not God, I thought, but I continued to listen. He had ordered a pitcher all for himself. He offered me some, but I didn’t drink then. I finished eating and thanked the man for eating with me. I paid the waitress with cash. I didn’t have any credit cards then. I needed to find a pay phone so I got in the car and drove to ‘downtown Dowagiac’. The Pizza Hut was on the outskirts of town, in the sprawl. Downtown, there was a small hub of old brick buildings and streets next to the water. I saw a pay phone so I parked and got out to call Ashley. The phone rang until the answering machine picked up, “You have reached the Gellars residence. Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you.”
I didn’t know who the Gellars were, but I left a message anyway. “Hey, this is Erich, just calling to see what’s up. I’m in Dowagiac now. I guess I’ll see you at the movies. Bye.” I hate leaving answering machine messages. They always make you seem desparate and pathetic. I was determined to see the movie whether or not she showed up so I got back in the car and drove towards the drive in. “The engine temperature seems high,” I thought to myself, “I’ll check the anti-freeze level when I get there.”
I paid to get into the lot and parked the car. The engine was still running a little hot and got even hotter when I turned the car off. The analog gauges in my 1984 Caprice Classic stayed on, unlike todays digital guages. I popped open the hood and took a look. The anti-freeze was on the left side and had lines marking the level it should be when its hot and when its cold. The anti-freeze was where it should be, but I decided to add some water to it anyway. I had heard that was what you were supposed to do, but I didn’t really know. There was a bathroom behind the concession stand so I took a used bottle out of my car and filled it up. I did this several times, which aroused interest from the other cars parked near me.
“Car troubles?,” one man asked. You can’t escape nosy neighbors wherever you go. Bill Engeval would have handed this man a sign. It was one of those obvious questions, but I decided to answer him anyway.
“Yeah, it’s overheating a little bit.”
“I haven’t seen a carburetor in an engine in a while. Ever cause any trouble for you?”
“No, not really. I’ve had to replace the alternator and the radiator once, but that’s about it.” My dad helped me replace the alternator. We layed out in the driveway in the middle of the winter changing that thing. It was hell. The radiator we left to the pros down at Chumbley’s Auto.
“Well good luck to you.” I wish he could have actually helped me or given me insight into the situation. He could have saved me from a lot if only he had known. If only I had known. The sun was going down. The movie would be starting soon, but the wind was picking up and the pressure was dropping. There was a storm rolling in.
It was still hot after the sun went down. Everyone had their windows down and the speakers attached to their cars. About half way through the movie, the downpour began. I rolled up the window, but had to leave the speaker outside. It was thundering and lighting all around us and the windows were fogging up. It was hard to concentrate on the movie and I could barely hear what was going on. I don’t even remember what movie I saw there, but I remember being very scared.
Ashley never showed up and I made it back to camp alright that night.
The temperature dropped so fast my ears popped. I first felt the cold in my groin as my gonads retreated up into my body. I too would have to find shelter and fast. I looked around, but all I could see were sticks and trees. There was no cover, no bushes, no overpass, no cave. I would have settled for a cleft in the rock to give me some reprieve from the rising wind and the stifling cold.
My fingers began to stiffen as I walked even as I clenched them inside my pant pockets. I remembered the Jack London story, To Build a Fire, which was a perfect example of a Man vs. Nature story. It was one that I did not wish to be a part of particularly due to the ending. I remember the biscuits and the bacon grease he kept tucked against his chest and how his dog had abandoned him. “Maybe I should light a fire,” I thought.
There was still no shade from the wind and all the wood was slightly damp. I remembered a story they told in Boy Scout camp about a challenge set forth to all the boys one night on a camping trip. Snow had befallen their camp and each boy was given the task of building their own fire. No one could do it because all of the wood they found was too wet – all but one boy.
He was older than the other boys in his troop and also more experienced. You learn a lot of things in Boy Scouts such as how to tie knots or build fires, but what you’re really learning is troubleshooting skills and self-reliance all while leaning how to interact with others and respect your environment. The boy’s solution was simple. While other boys we’re frantically burning through matches and adjusting their “tee-pee”, “log cabins”, and other fire-building designs. He was patiently chipping away at the side of a large log with his hand ax. By the time he was done he had cut through the wet, outer wood into the dry center. While they were out looking for dry tinder, he had created a pile of dry kindling by which he was easily able to start a fire – which he did – right there atop that log.
I had no axe. I had no cover. And I had no time. The thing about troubleshooting is that you’re not always looking for the solution. It’s just as valuable to figure out what doesn’t work. If one way doesn’t work, the opposite must be right. I like to think there are two types of problem solvers. There are those who when faced with a problem take flight, climb up stairs, or jump. And there are those who stick their head in the sand, hide in the cellar, or bury their head in their pillows. I brought a shovel.
I began to dig. It was a small, fold-able shovel, meant for digging small fire pits or latrines, but it was all I had. I immediately ran into roots and rock. This was not going to work. I was going to die. I prayed to God to rescue me! “Why had I not done this before?” I thought. What made me think I didn’t need him everyday of my life?
Just then the sun came out and just as soon as the cold came, the heat returned. It was a freak storm, but one that reminded me of just how out of control we really are. We need Jesus in our lives because he is our rock and our only path to eternal life. The God who made us sent his Son to die for us because that’s ho much he loves us. We are commanded to love and obey Him. This is a choice we all make.
The phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, but because it was from my father’s area code I decided to answer. It was the hospital. He had had a heart attack.
I drove up north to see him. I was afraid of what I’d find. That town, it grinds you down. My father, he runs a liquor store there. They sell mostly beer and cheap whiskey.
When I saw my father he didn’t even bother to turn and look at me. His stubbled face sat staring at the ceiling as he spoke. He blamed me for my mothers death.
I asked how he was feeling. He said he wanted me to take over the store. I told him I have a life back in the city. He said I have a dog. I told him I wasn’t doing it.
I’ve been running the store now for five weeks. The worst part about it is not the ugly drunks that come in and spend their son’s lunch money on boos. The worse part is that there’s nothing better than that in this town. Nothing better except Charlotte.
She grew up three houses down from me and every once in a while, from behind the counter I can see her curly black hair driving that red pickup truck through our dull gray town. My waive turns into a reach as I begin to lean into the counter and then she is gone.
My dad loves his new dog. He named my dog Frank and feeds him hot dogs and ketchup. By the time I get back from the store its all I can do to make microwave-able macaroni and cheese.
I sit down to watch the game and just then I hear a knock on the door. Before I could look up from the handle, Charlotte pries her way into my door frame. She’s going on about being chased by some drunk boyfriend. I knew who it was but I played dumb. I told her she could take my car to stay at a hotel. She thanked me and that’s how I lost my dog and my car.
Friends of Farley’s flocked around his feathered bed and gazed upon his shaven head. The boy had went to sleep with hair, but when he woke, no hair was there.
Farley looked around the room for suspects, but before he could find one prospect, his ears began to burn embarrassed – unjustly as he had been the one harassed.
Despite his new contrived condition, he roused himself a healthy suspicion. “It had to be The Ichman!” he said, while standing on his feathered bed.
The boys all gathered closer now, the only hair, his furrowed brow – they shrieked with fear as his face grew dark, the hiss of fate turned to a cowl.
The morning sun now dark as night, the once bright sky now full of fright. The one they thought they knew so well, the one they’d spent each morning bell, had turned into a fiendish friend, whenever will this morning end?
One thought remained so deep engrained that every breath brought closer death, they looked to run, they looked for grace, but all they saw was The Ichman’s face.
Whenever anyone asked Jonathan Davis what he’d like to do or what he’d like to be, the answer was always the same, “Nothing.” But instead Jonathan would make up something just to satisfy the inquirer like, “watch TV,” “eat”, or “work in the air conditioning somewhere they have a dress code policy.”
It’s been said that a man will hit whatever he aims for, but so far Jonathan had never achieved his dream of doing nothing. So he quit.
All of a sudden there was nothing to do so Jonathan began going on walks. On one particular walk he saw a man unloading wood from his truck. The man seemed like he could use some help, but Jonathan did not dare to ask. He was afraid the man might hire him.
At home Jonathan would watch movies. He studied them with fervor the way a producer looks for inspiration on his next film. He used to make films, but it did not fit into his goal of doing nothing, so he quit.
One day while walking to the Mexican restaurant he saw a poster for an upcoming concert. He remembered when he used to be in a band and how they decided to break up, each member going five completely separate ways as if they had to get as far away from each other as possible.
The guitar sat unplaced in it’s case against the wall. One day Jonathan picked it up to play and noticed how much it hurt his fingers. “No matter,” he said to himself. “Playing guitar is not doing nothing.”
One day Jonathan met a girl who said she could help him achieve his goal of doing nothing. She said she’d make his meals, do his laundry, and drive him to the Mexican restaurant. Jonathan loved chips and salsa so he married her.
But Jonathan’s new wife also had a dream of doing nothing and wanted instead for Jonathan to do something about it. So Jonathan went to the man with the wood and he asked him for a job. “You didn’t help me when I needed you the most, why would I hire you now?”, he replied.
So Jonathan went to his band mates (who all had been working) to ask if they had any openings. They all said, “Man, I don’t know you,” and closed the door in his face. “Strange how the door only opened from one side,” he thought.
So he went home to his wife who was watching TV with dirty laundry spread around her feet. She asked what was for dinner and Jonathan replied, “Nothing.” He picked up his guitar and began to write a song, but nothing came to him. His belly was empty and his brain was blank. He looked at his wife and his heart, it did sank. He realized he’d achieved his life’s goal of nothing, but he didn’t realize how this goal would be such a rough thing.
He stood up determined that this day was different. He made up his mind to live his life more fervent. He’d set up a goal and he’d stick his mind to it. He’d focus and overcome hurdles to do it. Nothing could stop him as long as he stayed strong. He would write a pop hit, it would be the most played song.
“On my own, I see the world behind me,” he sang, “Now I know the path that is before me. I love her, I’ll stand up straight beside her, and when I see my fate I’ll never leave her.”
They say the best time to escape prison is before you get into it. As the the fireworks light up the sky outside, I scan the room for a way out. I know it doesn’t exist, but I still look anyway. I’m always looking for a way out.
Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! The guard’s night stick raps across the bars. He knows it’s late, but he does it anyway. In the morning he gets to walk out of the front door, but tonight he’s in here with us. Like Indians on a reservation, we’re locked up in the land of the free.
I could blame my father – or lack of one. I could blane my mother for not having an abortion. I could blame the cop who arrested me or the judge who sentenced me, but none of them are in this cell with me. It’s all my fault and there’s only one thing I can do about it now – escape.
I start in my mind and move through the bars, down the hall to the first door. There the hallway leads past the commons area, a security station, and the cafeteria. Past the eats is the gym, library, and infirmary. There’s one more set of doors before the police station followed by the doors to the entrance. It would be quicker to go straight through the wall.
Let’s say someone out there cared enough to back a dump truck straight into the wall outside my window. And let’s say that I were able to then hop in the back of that truck and ride off. What’s to stop every cop with a rifle from shooting me dead right there on the spot?
No, if I am to escape, it must be by there doing, not by me. They must want me to leave. They must be the ones to expunge me from their cells like the garbage of society I’ve become. It will be as if physics itself has chosen to turn its back on law and grant clemency to the gravity that up until this point has held me to this earth for so long. I look up at my new home in the sky, the birds, my kin, the clouds, my friends.
When we got to the junkyard, there was no longer any rocket parts laying around. We saw a train. I stopped. We raced to get out of the car. He pointed at the train. It was exciting. When we got home I found some parts in my shop and we built a small rocket model, about three feet high. It wasn’t much and he didn’t care for it. He wanted something he could climb in, something he could fly. 
One of my favorite scenes in any movie is in Apollo 13 when the engineer at NASA dumps all the parts on a table and says they have to make ‘this air filter fit in this air system’. That is like a dream come true for me. I would love to have that challenge. I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have made two different air filter systems for the same ship, but there’s something about the puzzle element that fascinates me. I wonder if that’s what my son feels when he’s building. I hope I’ll soon find out when he wakes up and I make time to build.
I’ve written about them before in 
This is my baby and me, hanging out in the dining room. She is almost two and may be two and a half when she becomes a big sister. We asked her if she wanted a little brother and she said, “uhn uh”. So then we asked if she wanted a little sister and again she said, “uhn uh.” We thought she might have just been on a roll so we began asking her more yes and no questions which all resulted in the same answer so it is hard to say how she really feels about a sibling or if she even understands. I like her innocence.
There was still no shade from the wind and all the wood was slightly damp. I remembered a story they told in Boy Scout camp about a challenge set forth to all the boys one night on a camping trip. Snow had befallen their camp and each boy was given the task of building their own fire. No one could do it because all of the wood they found was too wet – all but one boy.
I’ve been running the store now for five weeks. The worst part about it is not the ugly drunks that come in and spend their son’s lunch money on boos. The worse part is that there’s nothing better than that in this town. Nothing better except Charlotte. 
Farley looked around the room for suspects, but before he could find one prospect, his ears began to burn embarrassed – unjustly as he had been the one harassed. 
It’s been said that a man will hit whatever he aims for, but so far Jonathan had never achieved his dream of doing nothing. So he quit.