I know it's your busy day. The Marriage discussion of matrimony was gone.
I'm think of Father B. Was he in touch base mode with you? No, that was when I'd left the Church. I was way over the top in my rejection of going to and attending Mass.
I just couldn't make myself do it.
XXXX
We were by now stepping out on the iron. Joe Reed, Jim Hartnett, Roland and Gene. I still remember that crew from more than 40 years ago.
Well, Ironwork has seen a revitalization. Finally, they have seen the light. A few of them dawning on them that that's how you get insurance, pension, retirement, the whole nine yards. And some, having gone over the hill, and down the retirement lane, you can see them showing up and doing some work George Mattice was one. I remember him just sitting up against the wall and eating his lunch while the rest of his went into the cafeteria at Lucent and chowed down.
And here, he was the Big Dog.
I remember how the hall used to be. That door into the room would be shut. Then they voted Mattice out and Beadie came on board and it was open up that door come into this room.
Of course, i asked Rojo other questions about my book. But now I know I'm going to have to come with prepared questions.
Because there's certain things I think of I should've asked 'em as I drive away from the hall maybe a day or two later.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
sat Jan 26
The marriage conference.
The reason I had to go there, you and I, when the evening was spread out against the sky....
I thought of the dream I had. I was walking through the wood fence line, the one I put up after my accident and there was a grill going and I said to somebody next to me, this is what I get with two MAs--grilling chicken.
And then, I thought, friends of the kids, how are they all going to eat? But then as we moved into the house, the Green House on the corner, I saw that it was a whole chicken and the exterior of it was brown...then I thought, well, all we have to do is cut it up.
Our Biblical bling:
Daily Bible Verse
For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."Galatians 5:14 (NKJV)
Well, last night was the marriage shin dig.
There's no talk concerning yet. But it was two hours of intense discussion.
The reason I had to go there, you and I, when the evening was spread out against the sky....
I thought of the dream I had. I was walking through the wood fence line, the one I put up after my accident and there was a grill going and I said to somebody next to me, this is what I get with two MAs--grilling chicken.
And then, I thought, friends of the kids, how are they all going to eat? But then as we moved into the house, the Green House on the corner, I saw that it was a whole chicken and the exterior of it was brown...then I thought, well, all we have to do is cut it up.
Our Biblical bling:
Daily Bible Verse
For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."Galatians 5:14 (NKJV)
Well, last night was the marriage shin dig.
There's no talk concerning yet. But it was two hours of intense discussion.
Friday, January 25, 2008
ja 25 funereal arrangements
Of course I didn't want to wait until 1 p.m. So busy you know. But it was a good time to idle my beat up old truck into the parking lot that was mostly empty.
"Begley?" the man questioned as he saw my searching eyes.
"Yes," I told him.
He pointed in the southern direction.
But what I was most impressed by was that there was a school nearby. And than recess must have been out because, as the most pleasant sound in the world, young voices cascading up down the snow covered .
this made up for yesterday's post of the funeral with the name that was below Father's--LeRoy Brown.
No, this was made up for--and Tuesday was the day he went under, his brother said, so he didn't die alone.
stories--
hop in the car and take 'em for ice cream sodas and root beer. You certainly can't do that nowadays, the brother said, his eyes twinkling.
and of course, i thought, initially, it was because of the restrictions of seatbelts, all strapped in necessity, no stuffing anyone in no flatbead pickup truck for a ride down busy streets to celebrate not really a victory or loss but time together.
and then a pall of doom for the Catholic Church that bells might be wringing in sorrow for evermore, the sexual innuendo--how could anyone ever reclaim any takes for modesty? every priest you look at you think, no, that's not a vocation, that's a license to prevaricate...
and that was sad, as an aging monsignor came trooping down the funeral hall--walking slow and broken down, to see his Father brother priest--interned.
The laughter of the children in the playgrounds--the sound of the day.
vvvv
Vroom, Vroom, went Father.
it was the age of Vatican II.
and I tried to explain my presence....the second priest. Father Gately, who didn't drive, retired and went off to Ireland.
And there was Father, trucking off to watch the racers, Indianpollis Speed way...
Was it the olds 88. No, I don't think it was.
I didn't say it but now I'm thinking it--I think it was a Camaro.
He was driving unitl 6 months ago. the same disease Ann Landers had. And then he had heart failure, they couldn't take care of that...and so, slowly, he withered away 'til now, he's looking up at heaven.
The diamond stories.
When they'd all get together...a sports buff, a sports nut.
"Begley?" the man questioned as he saw my searching eyes.
"Yes," I told him.
He pointed in the southern direction.
But what I was most impressed by was that there was a school nearby. And than recess must have been out because, as the most pleasant sound in the world, young voices cascading up down the snow covered .
this made up for yesterday's post of the funeral with the name that was below Father's--LeRoy Brown.
No, this was made up for--and Tuesday was the day he went under, his brother said, so he didn't die alone.
stories--
hop in the car and take 'em for ice cream sodas and root beer. You certainly can't do that nowadays, the brother said, his eyes twinkling.
and of course, i thought, initially, it was because of the restrictions of seatbelts, all strapped in necessity, no stuffing anyone in no flatbead pickup truck for a ride down busy streets to celebrate not really a victory or loss but time together.
and then a pall of doom for the Catholic Church that bells might be wringing in sorrow for evermore, the sexual innuendo--how could anyone ever reclaim any takes for modesty? every priest you look at you think, no, that's not a vocation, that's a license to prevaricate...
and that was sad, as an aging monsignor came trooping down the funeral hall--walking slow and broken down, to see his Father brother priest--interned.
The laughter of the children in the playgrounds--the sound of the day.
vvvv
Vroom, Vroom, went Father.
it was the age of Vatican II.
and I tried to explain my presence....the second priest. Father Gately, who didn't drive, retired and went off to Ireland.
And there was Father, trucking off to watch the racers, Indianpollis Speed way...
Was it the olds 88. No, I don't think it was.
I didn't say it but now I'm thinking it--I think it was a Camaro.
He was driving unitl 6 months ago. the same disease Ann Landers had. And then he had heart failure, they couldn't take care of that...and so, slowly, he withered away 'til now, he's looking up at heaven.
The diamond stories.
When they'd all get together...a sports buff, a sports nut.
fri Union Hall @ Election
fri
well first i thought I'd try to put my money where my mouth was: I'd try to capture the same demo spirit that I caught last night. I got there early and suddenly the hall filled up.
It was rather nondescript, mostly old folks, but there was a smattering of good tidings and youth, one could scan the room for the good news and note the excitement in the air.
There was but a no greeting from our area coordinator Paul. I bid him hello but he just greeted me back without too much overture friendliness, I felt.
But that was the least of my worries: I was there early and had my recorder. So I could provide my first post.
No, the answer came later, nothing has been decided. And then a young man showed up a little later and announced he was going to vie for Lee Terry's seat. He didn't have the height or the bearing. He'd get pummeled into defeat even worse than was Jim Esch.
But the Mike from Des Moines, who was spiriting the John Edwards campaign, came up and shook my hand. I was a little out of place: I had my Impeach Cheney cap on. I know I didn't cut the most dashing swath but Cathy Leo gave me a smile because, after all, she's read a few of my tomes.
No, I just trundled on down to get my plates renewed and then discovered, this taking not a whit of time, that I had more than ample time before making it to the wake.
Well, let's hope Father has a short funeral--because that's how his masses generally were and many of us were encouraged by that.
As fast as his race car he spirited about the small town and tripped over to the small Catholic church in Homer and now I think, how he traveled those gravel roads my Grandpa had carried mail over years before,
And how Grandpa was also in attendance at the church, each and every Sunday.
xxxx
Going back to my quest and my guilty feeling that I'd not done v. much, I went to Baker's. My urgings said I want to go home. But I remembered I hadn't done hardly a lick of work on the campaign trail. And this was supposed to be my fear and loathing call.
But Baker's were amenable to having me post the public notice. The manager had to approve of it. And then a nice conversation with one of the check out ladies who said her 12 year old daughter at an early age re bushie we don't want that."
I told her how I had my kids out there on the campaign trail. And that's how Mike from Des Moines remembered that I had a couple kids involved. I told her to "Bring her."
There won't be t-shirts. We just couldn't' get these ordered.
And then the hall which I stepped up on the thick metal chairs and moved it over and put it in a spot.
And then to the gym. The Iowa Gal, whom I think was a manager, but couldn't cut her teeth any longer on the low wage, I haven't seen around for awhile but the gal that was always there when I got there at 5:45 in the morning or so said No, she didn't think so.
Well, why not try HyVee? There should be a public posting place.
"What is it?" I am asked and then I'm able to truck on over to the far wall and insert the poster.
So, that means at least I let the word be out that there was an important notice. Because the HyVee wall was empty, the modicum of the public square might have completely fallen out of favor--so unlike the printed word and the press for public display has gone by the wayside, folks at their computers or their tubes or are too busy and thus don't have time to traffic in these various bits and pieces of info.
well first i thought I'd try to put my money where my mouth was: I'd try to capture the same demo spirit that I caught last night. I got there early and suddenly the hall filled up.
It was rather nondescript, mostly old folks, but there was a smattering of good tidings and youth, one could scan the room for the good news and note the excitement in the air.
There was but a no greeting from our area coordinator Paul. I bid him hello but he just greeted me back without too much overture friendliness, I felt.
But that was the least of my worries: I was there early and had my recorder. So I could provide my first post.
No, the answer came later, nothing has been decided. And then a young man showed up a little later and announced he was going to vie for Lee Terry's seat. He didn't have the height or the bearing. He'd get pummeled into defeat even worse than was Jim Esch.
But the Mike from Des Moines, who was spiriting the John Edwards campaign, came up and shook my hand. I was a little out of place: I had my Impeach Cheney cap on. I know I didn't cut the most dashing swath but Cathy Leo gave me a smile because, after all, she's read a few of my tomes.
No, I just trundled on down to get my plates renewed and then discovered, this taking not a whit of time, that I had more than ample time before making it to the wake.
Well, let's hope Father has a short funeral--because that's how his masses generally were and many of us were encouraged by that.
As fast as his race car he spirited about the small town and tripped over to the small Catholic church in Homer and now I think, how he traveled those gravel roads my Grandpa had carried mail over years before,
And how Grandpa was also in attendance at the church, each and every Sunday.
xxxx
Going back to my quest and my guilty feeling that I'd not done v. much, I went to Baker's. My urgings said I want to go home. But I remembered I hadn't done hardly a lick of work on the campaign trail. And this was supposed to be my fear and loathing call.
But Baker's were amenable to having me post the public notice. The manager had to approve of it. And then a nice conversation with one of the check out ladies who said her 12 year old daughter at an early age re bushie we don't want that."
I told her how I had my kids out there on the campaign trail. And that's how Mike from Des Moines remembered that I had a couple kids involved. I told her to "Bring her."
There won't be t-shirts. We just couldn't' get these ordered.
And then the hall which I stepped up on the thick metal chairs and moved it over and put it in a spot.
And then to the gym. The Iowa Gal, whom I think was a manager, but couldn't cut her teeth any longer on the low wage, I haven't seen around for awhile but the gal that was always there when I got there at 5:45 in the morning or so said No, she didn't think so.
Well, why not try HyVee? There should be a public posting place.
"What is it?" I am asked and then I'm able to truck on over to the far wall and insert the poster.
So, that means at least I let the word be out that there was an important notice. Because the HyVee wall was empty, the modicum of the public square might have completely fallen out of favor--so unlike the printed word and the press for public display has gone by the wayside, folks at their computers or their tubes or are too busy and thus don't have time to traffic in these various bits and pieces of info.
ja 25 stately plump
Well, part of the Joyce bling was the funeral process. And now, after thinking of all the times that I'd spent with Father my early days in the Parish Primeval, I thought we would offer the corporal works of Mercy: visit the sick, bury the dead.
But Joyce's elaborate construct was the listening to the conversation on the way to the funeral and recording same.
But Joyce's elaborate construct was the listening to the conversation on the way to the funeral and recording same.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
wed building down
I saw the shot in today's paper of the Old UP in its last throws. And then, looking past the roof, I could see the upper floors--maybe down to 12 or 13.
I thought, and I hope I wrote it somewhere, how there was an eerie feeling. Like what it must've been like at the WTC when the buildings went down.
What I could think about was the fact that Bullet Bob had had his car parked in front of the W-H building--where I worked for a v. brief stint as cub reporter--and then, I think he was prone on the floor--I told him his car was gone, he ran wildly to retrieve his Mustang. Telling Paul Lueke foreman that he had to go get his car. I think he walked all the way to 60th and F to get it back. Or maybe ever further than that.
Paul wondered, "Why didn't he just wait til he got off work.
&&&&&'
We are in the throws of the marriage dilemma. All I can say, while you plot and pander to think of ways to inspire, I picked up the shovel.
It was right about this time, I started going back to mule instincts. A broom in the hand.
I thought, and I hope I wrote it somewhere, how there was an eerie feeling. Like what it must've been like at the WTC when the buildings went down.
What I could think about was the fact that Bullet Bob had had his car parked in front of the W-H building--where I worked for a v. brief stint as cub reporter--and then, I think he was prone on the floor--I told him his car was gone, he ran wildly to retrieve his Mustang. Telling Paul Lueke foreman that he had to go get his car. I think he walked all the way to 60th and F to get it back. Or maybe ever further than that.
Paul wondered, "Why didn't he just wait til he got off work.
&&&&&'
We are in the throws of the marriage dilemma. All I can say, while you plot and pander to think of ways to inspire, I picked up the shovel.
It was right about this time, I started going back to mule instincts. A broom in the hand.
Monday, January 21, 2008
mon Jan 21
I know this is your day off. So I just have posted a brief note about 2nd daughter's aca travail...
Does it all start with a boyfriend? He works, but things seem to be going downhill.
The classic slippery slope.
And I said I'd start helping out with the blogging getting on the bus. I also said something about being head injured and how that was a unique feature, how I thought of a new "Song of Myself" i.e. brain injured and pround of it.
And then I note it was Mailer who'd posted, Advertisements for Myself. And I've got to get my hands on Armies of the Night and the seige of Chicago.
And then my own little latest critique dig: 1-20-09. When Bush will be gone. This has moved me to a Christmas last. Not the most recent one, but the Christmas 2006. When there were a few Bush calendars. And I got on the website and saw, much to sheer ant other amazement, that it clicks the exact seconds.
But that was replaced by a sense of doom: it was like the number of days left were 760 or even 800. I thought, How will we ever survive?
And so I searched and explored and it came right up: the numbers, the seconds just tick ticking away was so thrilling. And then the first number, not near so daunting:
365. 11 hours. and 25 min. It was probaly closer to 30 when I started this post and how deliciously the 30 on day 365 the hours were less than 12...so a little more than half of half of the last day of first day of the year.
It's time to celebrate. I also elongated my bumper sticker but I can't find the black felt tip pen. My own mobile rant: History's worst president. By Bush, By Smirk.
I love bandying about these West O establishments to toot my own political horn!
Does it all start with a boyfriend? He works, but things seem to be going downhill.
The classic slippery slope.
And I said I'd start helping out with the blogging getting on the bus. I also said something about being head injured and how that was a unique feature, how I thought of a new "Song of Myself" i.e. brain injured and pround of it.
And then I note it was Mailer who'd posted, Advertisements for Myself. And I've got to get my hands on Armies of the Night and the seige of Chicago.
And then my own little latest critique dig: 1-20-09. When Bush will be gone. This has moved me to a Christmas last. Not the most recent one, but the Christmas 2006. When there were a few Bush calendars. And I got on the website and saw, much to sheer ant other amazement, that it clicks the exact seconds.
But that was replaced by a sense of doom: it was like the number of days left were 760 or even 800. I thought, How will we ever survive?
And so I searched and explored and it came right up: the numbers, the seconds just tick ticking away was so thrilling. And then the first number, not near so daunting:
365. 11 hours. and 25 min. It was probaly closer to 30 when I started this post and how deliciously the 30 on day 365 the hours were less than 12...so a little more than half of half of the last day of first day of the year.
It's time to celebrate. I also elongated my bumper sticker but I can't find the black felt tip pen. My own mobile rant: History's worst president. By Bush, By Smirk.
I love bandying about these West O establishments to toot my own political horn!
Saturday, January 19, 2008
sat Ja 19 the plays the thing, Act II
Well, I tried to describe the script of the SS to Connie and her teacher friend who were there for Mrs. Jan Fischer who was directing. Her hub is the one with the book, "When the Mob Ran Las Vegas."
I haven't heard much from these folks lately.
I also mentioned why I was stepping out of the writer's group, i.e. the frowning pressure not to have anything sexual, how Dan had blocked his out with a tool and that if someone wanted to read it, why, they could open up that tool.
This is direct ref to Mirna, I know, her library frown her mean scating screed....you can see there's alot of anger in the writing and not a little loneliness and sorrow.
I can't seem to stay on subject--how I ran into teacher Connie Mills and her buddy. And how I subbed for them. Each one of them. Sometimes I'd drop off a published essay to Connie. And she had intro to me to her son via e in Chicago, that he worked for Barnes & Noble and thus an avenue for any publishing venues.
Ventures?
Adventures?
I pitched an e and of course I never got a response.
Connie was looking on a little wrinkled side. The other teacher was lamenting that she has 28 kids in her speech class and that it was taking forever.
At any rate, Connie was turned away from me. I didn't think she was listening. But then, when I started talking about my latest ss, she turned her head and began to address me and describe something she'd just read. Train Spotters. This can't be the title because I asked her the name again when she was leaving for the intermission. Train spotters, she said. No, that's not the title. It didn't show up. But seemed to be similar to what I'd written.
I tried to describe it to them: an old farm hand coming back from the dead from the Cotton Mill or something like that and then about Jeremy and then about the ministry and then sitting down for a Father's Day meal because...well actually, I tried to frame the discussion with "You know how you almost have a near death experience and you try to recapture that last day before?" And so this ss was a description of the day before, it was bigger than both of us. How I was working iron and then helping my dad on the farm and how I went out and drove the tractor.
They thought it sounded like it was a novel, rather than a short story. And I said yes, it is 60 pages long but I put it in two parts.
And then a little bit about the writing group and they pooed pooed the silly notion. And then I tried to describe the continuum...some just starting out, some having been at it awhile. But I couldn't interject that the man who runs it has no college degree or knows the slightest thing about literature and writing (ask him what books he's read, go ahead ask him. No Kerouac, Vonnegut, Mailer; not a word of Thompson or Burroughs or Ginsberg. But his own surfeit of books, I guess, Clancy and the pop fiction market. Wrote computer manuals and then, one day, he shrugged his shoulders and decided he was going to be a writer)
Gee, the guy can't write. The one gal that calls herself the plains writer, not too bad. And Walt, the teacher from Bago. A new member posted.
I'm still not getting to the fact that there was that moment of driving the tractor, how that's what I wanted to do with James Jeremy but instead it was the guy that fell down the stairs, Harald, and who didn't have a chance.
Have you ever heard of Pat Robertson? This would be some explanation to Harald Bredensen. Who was the Our Father.
No, Joanie, heading for Nicaragua, to teach English, had only read a couple pages.
"Really," she said, when I told her it had gotten positive notice. And then Kath interjected about e from Dan Ross. "Really," she said.
Connie said, imagining me coming to school with a ss, "I'm not going to edit it for you." As if I asked. As if she didn't know right off the bat that I was a great writer. And know, Connie, you haven't read my 911 piece from the paper.
But I didn't want to sound any more overbearing than I already was so didn't tell the number I'd published this year but did tell Joanie how I thought I'd have another one but it didn't go through.
So it goes, as Billy Pilgrim would say.
I haven't heard much from these folks lately.
I also mentioned why I was stepping out of the writer's group, i.e. the frowning pressure not to have anything sexual, how Dan had blocked his out with a tool and that if someone wanted to read it, why, they could open up that tool.
This is direct ref to Mirna, I know, her library frown her mean scating screed....you can see there's alot of anger in the writing and not a little loneliness and sorrow.
I can't seem to stay on subject--how I ran into teacher Connie Mills and her buddy. And how I subbed for them. Each one of them. Sometimes I'd drop off a published essay to Connie. And she had intro to me to her son via e in Chicago, that he worked for Barnes & Noble and thus an avenue for any publishing venues.
Ventures?
Adventures?
I pitched an e and of course I never got a response.
Connie was looking on a little wrinkled side. The other teacher was lamenting that she has 28 kids in her speech class and that it was taking forever.
At any rate, Connie was turned away from me. I didn't think she was listening. But then, when I started talking about my latest ss, she turned her head and began to address me and describe something she'd just read. Train Spotters. This can't be the title because I asked her the name again when she was leaving for the intermission. Train spotters, she said. No, that's not the title. It didn't show up. But seemed to be similar to what I'd written.
I tried to describe it to them: an old farm hand coming back from the dead from the Cotton Mill or something like that and then about Jeremy and then about the ministry and then sitting down for a Father's Day meal because...well actually, I tried to frame the discussion with "You know how you almost have a near death experience and you try to recapture that last day before?" And so this ss was a description of the day before, it was bigger than both of us. How I was working iron and then helping my dad on the farm and how I went out and drove the tractor.
They thought it sounded like it was a novel, rather than a short story. And I said yes, it is 60 pages long but I put it in two parts.
And then a little bit about the writing group and they pooed pooed the silly notion. And then I tried to describe the continuum...some just starting out, some having been at it awhile. But I couldn't interject that the man who runs it has no college degree or knows the slightest thing about literature and writing (ask him what books he's read, go ahead ask him. No Kerouac, Vonnegut, Mailer; not a word of Thompson or Burroughs or Ginsberg. But his own surfeit of books, I guess, Clancy and the pop fiction market. Wrote computer manuals and then, one day, he shrugged his shoulders and decided he was going to be a writer)
Gee, the guy can't write. The one gal that calls herself the plains writer, not too bad. And Walt, the teacher from Bago. A new member posted.
I'm still not getting to the fact that there was that moment of driving the tractor, how that's what I wanted to do with James Jeremy but instead it was the guy that fell down the stairs, Harald, and who didn't have a chance.
Have you ever heard of Pat Robertson? This would be some explanation to Harald Bredensen. Who was the Our Father.
No, Joanie, heading for Nicaragua, to teach English, had only read a couple pages.
"Really," she said, when I told her it had gotten positive notice. And then Kath interjected about e from Dan Ross. "Really," she said.
Connie said, imagining me coming to school with a ss, "I'm not going to edit it for you." As if I asked. As if she didn't know right off the bat that I was a great writer. And know, Connie, you haven't read my 911 piece from the paper.
But I didn't want to sound any more overbearing than I already was so didn't tell the number I'd published this year but did tell Joanie how I thought I'd have another one but it didn't go through.
So it goes, as Billy Pilgrim would say.
sat Ja 19 the plays the thing
well, I'm glad JJ is trying to stir his flock into action.
To wit:
I've got to throw out my own political soundbite.
Mailer is the answer. He has the direction from his keen intelligence and his devotion to the craft of writing...and then he wanted to throw in the fisticuffs for good measure...you know, the ole head butting routine.
My take is where and what was America in '68....a world much difference than today but ever so much the same.
To wit:
1...2...3 Ever wanted to know what God really wants from you? I mean, does He just sit up there in heaven completely irritated about the things you actually spend your time and money on? Does He keep a list and is looking forward to reminding you how far off you really are?
This next series promises to take a hardcore look at the truth of what God desires from each of us and His overall plan for you, the church, and the world. Three simple truths. Three core values. Three things God really, and I mean, really, wants for you!
Okay, it makes a guy wonder. How in the heck does he know?
He should be recruiting folks to get to the demo caucuses and depose the dictator and any future dictator.
But you can't blame him for trying.I've got to throw out my own political soundbite.
Mailer is the answer. He has the direction from his keen intelligence and his devotion to the craft of writing...and then he wanted to throw in the fisticuffs for good measure...you know, the ole head butting routine.
My take is where and what was America in '68....a world much difference than today but ever so much the same.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
ja 16 Long Talk
It was a long talk from the site.
Meanwhile, I threw the baseball folks a tease of what I was up to.
But, after reviewing an umpire site last night, I can see that there is so much in lacking in the how to.
I'm just trying to turn the corner on this.
I'm tryin' to take them out to the ball game.
Overview
Describe your book in two or three paragraphs (500 words or less). What is the title and subtitle? Who is the target audience and what makes your book unique and worthwhile for them? Think of this as the copy that would go on the back cover of your book or in the publisher's catalog, or as the brief review that you hope to see in Publishers Weekly or the NY Times Book Review.
This 22 chapter book, The Complete Guide for Successful Umpiring: How to Survive Little League Baseball and the Soccer Mom, solves a problem and answers a big question: why can't we find any good umpires? While there's literally millions of youth baseball and softball games worldwide, but of not enough skilled umpires to meet the growing demand of youth baseball and softball worldwide. As more and more youth ball games—ramped up by the phemon of travel teams—fill diamonds around the country, the problem of finding good umpires is huge.
I've umpired well over a 1000 Huggyville (ages 7 to 12, approx.) baseball games off and on for more than ten summers. The way I umpire now as to how I did then is huge. I feel confident, as well as protected. By going to umpire meetings through the winter, watching other umpires, and looking after the game's end how I could have made the call differently, or "sold" it better, both my skill and comfort level steadily increased. However, while there might be well over 400 umpires who do Huggyville ball through the season here in the Omaha Metro area, only 50 or so, due to other commitments, attend the meetings.
That means that there's at least 350 umpires who had little exposure to the training. Of course, after a few games, they no doubt got themselves comfortable behind the plate, where Blue spends most of his/her time—working alone, that is—and so, by hook or by crook, by trial and error, New Blue becomes Vet Blue. Only, one has to ask, it is always a clear line from point A to point B?
And, quite frankly, I also was an infrequent attendee, maybe making but one or two appearance out of 12 or so—not nearly enough, as I found out—and my umpiring skills suffered accordingly. This winter, getting an idea to put a How-to book together for Huggyville Blue (coda for amateur umpire), I thought I would attend each and every meeting, study the rules book religiously, talk to veteran umps. Now, going out on the diamond, I feel comfortable with the job I'll do behind the plate or on the bases.
I've also found that if you break it down to two main sections, the Zen Strike Zone and the Right Right Angle, you can go along ways to mastering the intricaties of America's favorite pastime after it is broken down in both logical and sequentional fashion.
Target Audience
Given the national scope, it is my feeling that major publishers such as Wiley (Dummies series) and Penguin Group (The Complete Idiot's Guide series) would like to take a look. Moreover, university presses would be interested in a never-before-written book on a How-to book for young umpires, adding to their collection of books that cover the usual bases of all-time greats, quirky managers, players and owners..
Overall, the market for this How-to umpiring book could be huge. Of course, the logical readers would be those umpires who are just starting out, who maybe want to hone their skills. While the fact that there are well over a million ball youth baseball and softball games being played from early spring to late summer in the country, as well as gaining popularity around the world, especially Japan, means that many games and that many umpires would be a reach, if this book becomes part of the umpire primer, thousands of the book would have a ready audience.
Secondary are the tournament organizers, athletic directors, and affiliates who promote and sustain the drive for getting youth to step out on the ball diamond, whether the rec leauge, the YMCA, Little League Baseball or USSSA. For the most part, the last question that seems to be asked, if a 10-field, 45acre complex is in the works, “Where will we get the umpires?”
Third, coaches and fans will have a delight in reading the travail the umpire goes through. Like me, they will come across not a few surprises. Quickly, they will see that the task of umpring a routine six-inning game—the usual number for virtually all Huggyville games—can quickly fill itself full of more complexities than herding cats. Then, there will be a nedw appreciation of the umpire, the challenges he/she faces as they step out onto the Field of Dreams.
The best ways to reach prospective readers would be to link the book with the Little League Baseball and Softball organization, as well as other youth baseball leagues. While I've not pitched the idea for said book to Little League Baseball's Umpire-in-Chief Andy Konyar, the NSAA's (Nebraska State Athletic Association) Jim Angeles, or the Metro Umpire-in-Chief Denny Jones, I'm confident they'd be more than happy to take a look at how to recruit and retain umpires—the key problem facing so many organizations—allowing them to build a solid group of umpires, the groundwork of which is laid through the reading this book.
Currently, Little League, through ESPN, is laying the groundwork for orgainzing Little League teams around the country. Combined with the travel team phenom and other leagues, the chances of selling a How-to umpire book to address the growing problem of more games but fewer umpires, is greatly enhanced.
Meet the author
As mentioned, I have umpired well over a 1000 Huggyville baseball games these past ten years. Until I started writing this book, until I started going to meetings and talking to veteran umpires, until I started reading the rules book, I always felt uneasy stepping onto the ball diamond. Something would happen that I wasn't ready for. However, it all came together last year when it finally dawned on me, I think after a foul ball hit behind the catcher. I threw my hands in the air, giving the foul ball signal. This is also the signal for time out and dead ball. I then also thought, after the pitcher had the ball and the batter stepped up to the plate, and I signaled the pitcher that he could pitch, I thought how the ball is either live or it's dead. There is nothing in between.
In addition, I've published an essay in the local paper, describing the USSSA that comes to Omaha in time with the College World Series. Not only do college coaches do their best to get their teams ready for big show, there's also the younger brethren who also embark on the Road to Omaha. Like the LLWS (Little Leauge World Series), the ten days packed with excitement, running 700 games a weekend. Moreover, since “breaking in” to writing essays for the paper three years ago, I've had 12 published. Thus, my writing ability, my hand-on experience behind the plate or doing the bases, as well as training New Blue, gives me a solid foundation on which to write this book.
Other books
As mentioned, the only two books available, the Umpire Manual (NFHS, 2006) and Officiating Baseball (Human Kinetics, 2004), explain the mechanics of umpiring but do not cover those games where base paths at 70 feet, pitcher's mound at 50 feet—the baseball player 12 years old and young.
They spend no time whatsoever in addressing what many Blue face on the typical Huggyville ball diamond—flying solo. The Guide gives a a clear template New Blue can follow when he/she is flying solo—knowing where to be and how best to get there, achieving the goal of a job well done.
Again, these two books that explain umpiring for high school and college players, from a two-man, three-man system, do a good job but the style is written in manual foremant that takes not a few readings to get the gist of what is most important. The Guide, on the other hand, jumps off the premise of a Zen Strike Zone (the explanation of which is worth the price of the book itself!) and the Right Right Right angle. This broad stroke approach to umpiring allows for quick and easy grasp on the basic fundamentals that allow Blue to easily “Fake it 'til you make it.”
Promotion
As mentioned, Little League will be using the contract extension with ESPN and ABC. This provides an outlet for book representation on an international scale. For instance, along with a blurb from ABC commentator Dusty Baker, there would be a mention of a book the prospective umpire can buy to improve his/her game.
Thus, the tv outlet would be huge. Along with articels in such sports magazines like sports Illustrated,
Approach
This book rests on two tenets--the Zen Strike Zone for the plate umpire, the Right Right angle for the base umpire. Step by step is the approach, detailing how these two mechanics are mastered. There are photos, sidebars, tables, checklists, and illustrations throughout the text that make the overall format easy for quick reference.
Below is Contents at a Glance with chapter titles.
Contents at a Glance
Introduction
Despite the youth baseball surge worldwide the past few years—particularly competitive, All-Star baseball, i.e. “travel teams,” a fairly new phenomenon that has athletic children of Baby boomer's vie for national recognition—a big time missing link in America’s favorite pastime prevails—the umpire. Largely unheralded, blissfully ignored—until his or her split-second decision to call ball or strike, safe or out has fans cheering or crying—the umpire’s place on the baseball hierarchy is near the bottom of the ball diamond pecking order.
Part I: An Umpire’s Primer
This book is designed to help the young, the not-so-young umpire (more and more Baby Boomers want direct involvement with youth sports but haven’t the slightest idea on how on how they get started) get off to a good start umpiring youth baseball games. New Blue meets the growing demand for skilled and trained umpires as a favorite American pastime begins to wear international colors.
As mentioned above, Umpiring for Dummies is carefully written to be useful for Novice Umpires as well as those who’ve been at it for a while and might see some new ways to cover the bases, how to get to the exact and correct place on the infield to make the right call. Moreover, the new and the not- so-new umpire, once they read this book, can be assured that 9 times out of 10, they know what mechanics they need to make right call--behind the plate or on the bases.
Chapter 1: Baseball Is Now Worldwide
In this chapter
Japan rocks
Baseball everywhere
Little League World Series Huge Following
The showcase, of course, is the Little League World Series--37 games televised in 2005 (ABC or ESPN) with an average of 5 million viewers (from Little League, Big Dreams by Charles Euchner, Sourcebooks, 2006).
Recent posts on the Little League Online website: "Little League Signs 8-year Television Contract Extension with ESPN."
Chapter 2: Umpire Prep—Fake it ‘Til You Make It
In this chapter
Getting Started
Chronic ump shortage
Fans’ High Expectations
Reading the Official Baseball Rules book
Getting Started: Hey, Chief Blue, should I read the rules book?
Oh sure. Definitely. You really need to read the rules book—except not right now. No, right now you should focus on two things: Getting solid Plate Mechanics as explained in Part II as well as getting solid Base Mechanics as explained in Part III.
Chapter 3: Game Prelims--an intro Major League Baseball's Official Rules Book
In this Chapter
Prelims--what you need to know
Planning for the first game
Getting ready to umpire
Covering all the bases
The Major League Baseball’s ORB (Official Rules Book)
First, let’s get the heavy lifting out of the way: a few chapters begin with abridged versions of the ORB. When it applies directly to the recommended steps for success, putting the Dummies’ steps in context, they will be copied verbatim, outlining both what they do say, and what they don’t say when it comes to making calls behind the plate or in the bases.
The few rules that directly apply the lion’s share of plays on the typical Little League, Kid Ball, Huggyville (ages 7 to 12), Youth Ball Diamond are listed, explained, clarified and matched up to what New Blue encounters on the ball diamond. While the MLB Rules Book is pocket size (where it has to be, first year as Rookie Minor League Umpire, in your back pocket!) and not more than a 100 pages, it rivals, according to authors Jaska and Smith who broke down the ORB into a 400 page workbook, the U.S. tax code for the level of complexity and ambiguity. Indeed, as noted on the official Little League Website, rules change, interpretations change and, as an offshoot, umpire mechanics change.
Chapter 4: Ready or Not, Hear I Come—Gear Needed
In This Chapter
Getting the right gear
Preparing for cold weather
Preparing for hot weather
Keeping yourself comfortable
Packing ump survival kit
Like a good plate meeting, you’ve made a good first-impression; already you’re selling the call. The same is true with the gear you wear, the sporting apparel you wear: in a close game and a close call, that confidence level you’ve instilled pays off: the coaches and fans are more than likely to accept the close call. Looking the part has a lot to do with it.
Personal protection--guaranteed
Hey Chief Blue, do I need a jock strap?
Oh yes, by all means. Allow me to be a little indiscreet to keep you out of real harm's way: check out the Nutty Buddie. It is the jock strap to end all jock straps. On the website, it will show the umpire get hit with a 90 mph fastball right to the groin--and all it does make a huge "thock." Believe me, you'll cringe at the first video demonstration but then jot down the website so that you can own your own personal protection.
Believe you me, I just have to look at a bruise on my upper thigh to see how close I was to real pain: the Nuttie Buddy and I will never part.
Or, as the most recent bulletin (5/21/07) at Metro Umpires.com has it:
This afternoon my Nutty Buddy won another victory. First off, I was in the correct slot position with the catcher setup in the outside slot and the batter connected with a letters-high inside pitch, and glanced straight back and down. The catcher never even came close to getting a glove on it, it got me "rock solid" on the Nutty Buddy. Yes, I felt it, but it was no big deal and play went without even a slow down. Had I worn a "normal" cup, I probably would have been on the ground for some time. Some of you probably thinking he's just saying that. Think about this... when I went to remove my Nutty Buddy I couldn't. The force of the impact fused the material of my UnderArmour jock cup pouch to the Nutty Buddy. Weeee... the boys are alive and very well! Thank you to Roy and the rest of the MiLB guys for tipping us off to these. posted by: James, Mike on 5/20/2007 10:24:12 PM
I may need to look into a nutty buddy. How much do they run? posted by: Marcoe, David on 5/20/2007 10:54:13 PM
Check nuttybuddy.com. They're about $20 each. posted by: Bierd, DJ on 5/21/2007 11:40:57 AM
My Nuts Always win.
posted by: Kelly, Mike on 5/21/2007 11:26:19 AM
Chapter 5: Safety: Staying Cool, Calm, and Collected
In This Chapter
Chapter Five Safety: Staying Cool, Calm, and Collected
In this chapter
Drink plenty of water before the games
Bring a banana or two
Frito’s to restore your salt
Head gear that fits
Chest protector that protects
Start out by doing a single game. Then a double header. Get used to doing more than two games. If you have a partner, switch at the end of every game.
To do list before the diamond
Drink water--start drinking water early in the day, even if you're not thirsty
Keep hydrated--don't over do it but makes sure you are keeping your fluids going
Part II: Plate Mechanics—Getting Set in the "Slot"
Chapter 6: The Zen Strike Zone—Strike Calls Made Easy
In this chapter
Defining the strike zone
The chunk of cheese
The check or half swing
The dropped third strike
Taking A Look At the Strike Zone
What is meant by the Strike Zone, anyhow? Is there an exact formula that says what is, what isn’t a strike? Of the 80 or so definitions of baseball terminology in Section 2 of the Rules Book, let’s look at Rule #72, the Strike Zone:
2.00—Definitions of Terms
The STRIKE ZONE is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined form the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.
Chapter 7: Getting Set to Call the First and Last Pitch
In this chapter
Choose your mechanics—box or scissors
Pause, read, react
Wait as long as you can before the pitcher winds to get set
Set your “camera”: stop before you make the call
Chapter 8: How to Sell the Call—Ball/strike; Fair/Foul; Foul Tip; Infield Fly Rule
In this chapter
Get the Zen Strike Zone and stick with it
Error to the strike
See the entire plate
Set your camera
Another baseball umpire truism: you have to sell the call
The first thing you need to do, believe it or not, holding for know what was discussed above about the “Slot” and the “Zen Strike Zone,” we have to first think of our appearance. How do we look when we step out on the ball diamond.
Chapter 9: How to Sell the Call—Catcher Interference; Dead Ball; Balk
In this chapter
Foul/fair—avoid ambiguous calls
Foul tip—always a strike, ball is live
Dead ball, the delayed dead ball
Saying “Time, time.”
The Balk Rule
Trouble balls
Down the line
Interference/obstruction
The best way you can sell these calls is by knowing what they are. And, like this book is designed to do, we will start with the order of frequency, moving in descending order.
Frequent: These top two below happen all the time in every game. A foul ball happens at almost every at bat.
Foul ball very frequent; almost every time at bat. The ball is considered dead.
Foul tip fairly frequent; every 1 out of 5 bats. The ball is considered live.
Part III: Base Mechanics—Getting the Right Right Angle
Chapter 10: The Right Right Angle--Plan and Anticipate
Chapter 11: Pause, Read, React—Timing and Fundamental Base Mechanics
Chapter 12: Infield Position A, B, or C—Where to Go and When
Chapter 13: Trouble calls: Interference, Obstruction, and Balk
Part IV: Working Alone, Working with a Partner
In this part…
Part IV continues with fine-tuning your umpire skills. The easiest approach to one man umpiring is discussed and you will familiarize yourself with some of the problems you will have to contend with, what unexpected pleasures there might be conducting the Symphony Orchestra on the field of dreams with a single baton.
Wielding the baton for a single orchestra
Of course, there’ll be a repeat to an extent of plate and base mechanics. However, the extension will be to the fact you and you alone are the man or woman in charge of what goes down. The next chapter will describe how to work with your partner. This is when your chances of missing a call or not being in a position to make the play are greatly reduced. In fact, working with a knowledgeable partner increases you’ll make the call and make the call right.
Chapter 14: One-man crew: Mechanics When Working Alone—Home Plate; Bases
In This Chapter
General duties and responsibilities
Call balls and strikes
Hustle! You have the “dish” + bases
Rule on fair/foul from both left field, right field foul pole
All ground balls in the infield
All fly balls to the outfield
And now you’re going to umpire a game by yourself? Welcome to conducting the symphony orchestra in the Field of Dreams all by your lonesome. At first you might think, like I did, that this is impossible task: the coaches will come out and hand you the baseballs and you go over the ground rules. Out of the corner of your eye you see players taller than you, firing the ball back and forth over 90 foot bases: you think, How in the heck will I…. But, believe it or not, after a few games, you’ll find that you don’t need any help. Moreover, you don’t want any help. You can do just fine by yourself.
Chapter 15: Two-man crew: Mechanics When Working with a Partner
Chapter 16: Coverage’s Working Alone; Working with a Partner
Part V: Umpire Challenges
Chapter 17 Plate Umpire Challenges--Safe/Out at the Plate; Tag Plays
Chapter 18 Base Umpire Challenges--Safe/Out at the Base; Catch/No Catch; Tag Plays
Chapter 19 Trouble Balls, Trouble Calls--Infield Fly Rule, Check Swing
Chapter 20 Sportsmanship and Game Control—Firm But Fair
Part VI: The Least You Should Know
Chapter 21 Ten Things Every Umpire Should Know
Chapter 22 Ten Things Every Coach and Parent Should Know About the Umpire
Chapter 23 Ten (Actually, 20) Brief Tips for Becoming a Great Umpire
Appendix A: Umpire Organizations
Appendix B: Youth Sports Organizations
Appendix C: The Umpire’s Resource Kit
Index
* Market Overview.
With the popularity of youth baseball, particularly "travel," "select," and "All-Star" teams that have grown more and more popular, the shortage of trained umpires is a big problem. For example, I touched base in January with Umpire-In-Chief of Little League Baseball & Softball, Andy Konyar, Williamsport, PA, who gives me current Little League take:
more games nationally and internationally than ever before
basically, finding umpires is a pressing problem: each of the 7,000 Leagues deals with the issue individually. From Little League Online website: Every year local leagues have elections, organizational meetings, registrations, drafts, etc.. Then, a week before the season starts someone asks, “What about umpires?”
on-going discussions on how to recruit and retrain umpires
Biggest problem? Arguments from coaches and fans. Andy said it's hard to retain umpires who, for example, have "blown" a call and is then subject to spectator hassles.
Andy said he thought there were "millions" of Little League Baseball games each spring and summer worldwide
7,000 Leagues--almost 1,000 international--with four divisions per league, 20 games per division
Seven regions--International Headquarters; Central Region; Eastern Region; South Region, West Region; Southwest Region; Canada.
Now, in the midst of more youth baseball, there exists a shortage of umpires. Overall, there is no real way to alert various members of the league, for instance, that trained umpires must be part of league "must-dos" if they are to have a successful season.
Hence, because there is no formal training, this Idiot's Guide will be a good substitute to teach, to referesh. Moreover, fans and coaches will have a better picture of the game when they see the ballgame through the mask.
Describe who will buy this book and why. Try to quantify the size of the market and the extent to which it is growing. Include any available demographic information on your target reader. Keep in mind that it is a rare book indeed whose audience is "every American."
As mentioned above, would-be umpires will need this book to round out their umpire job. Notes taken and conversations recorded from workshops conducted by veteran umpires as well as two young umpires who are currently doing Double A and A ball respectively, are important features. Their input is broken down into manageable chunks that can be easily grasped by the umpire.
While Andy said that there must be "millions" of Little League baseball games around the world, this of course does not translate to that many umpires. However, this book will be useful for the coach and player as well as the fan. I'll be the first to admit that I had to be literally drug through the rules book kicking and screaming but once using it in the context of the plays I was watching and the calls I was making, there came a deep appreciation and admiration to those folks way back when who put such a beautiful document together that has withstood the test of time. Thus, when they see the game, when they watch an umpire making a call, it will be in context with official baseball rules, the umpires interpretation and explanation therein.
* Competition for Your Book. List other available books that the reader for your book might purchase as an alternative. Describe how your book will offer the more appealing alternative. Do not include competitive books that are widely different in scope or format from your proposed book.
This is a unique, never-been-written book that examines umpire responsibilities while taking a sharp look at the Official Rules Book. This is different than other books that cover baseball generally, youth baseball specifically (a few include Coaching Baseball for Dummies, Wiley 2007; Baseball for Dummies, Wiley 2005 and The Complete Book of Baseball Signs and Plays, Coaches Choice 1999) that mention "rules" a great deal but shy away from actually listing them or explaining them. This Idiot’s Guide, on the other hand, notes those rules that most often impact the typical baseball game. While it won't be an extensive list (some of the plays that happen are so unusual as to appear but once in a great while) and explanation, the choice of rules to discuss are adequate to give the general overall picture. These rules abound with examples, broken down into a user-friendly format for a quick and easy read.
* Your Author Credentials. Provide a brief bio or CV, including education or experience in the subject, writing experience, and previous publications. Let us know of your availability and/or willingness to participate in promotion and publicity efforts, and any special media contacts or promotion opportunities you bring to the project. Be sure to include your contact information.
My background has seen over 15 years of teaching and writing. Part-time, I've involved myself in youth sports, both in coaching and officiating--basically following my children in their various activities--basketball, softball, baseball and track--and coming away with appreciation and respect for coaches and officials. I also feel that a How-to book would be useful for the would-be umpire. It can keep him or her safe from incurring the coach's or fan's wrath. At the same time, as indicated above, I haven't come across any books that discuss how the Huggyville umpire can succeed nor any book that shows the baseball rules give us a whole new way of looking at the game.
Credentials:
Degrees
New York University, BA (English, Journalism), 1978
Teacher College*Columbia University, MA (Language, Lit., Communication), 1981
University of South Dakota, MA (Secondary Administration), 1988
Writing experience/addendum:
New York City (1974-1982)
Writing
1975 New School for Social Research—published short story
1978 Washington Square News, reporter
1982—87 South Sioux City Star (feature stories)
Acting
1976 National TV Commercial, Metropolitan Life Insurance
1977—82 Extra: movies, Welcome Back Kotter episodes
1976 Industrial film, NAPA Auto Parts
Nebraska (1982—Present)
Feature Writing/Reporting
1993 Forward for Community Cookbook
1991—97 Sports, Feature Stories, Hard News at South Sioux City Star, Sioux City Journal
1993—95 Correspondent for the Omaha World-Herald, Papillion Times.
1997—98 Three essays read on Nebraska Public Radio
1998 Featured speaker at St. Mary’s Parish dedication.1999—2001 Health awareness newsletter, writer + editor
2002—03 Epiphany, on-line magazine, Calling All Subs, 73,000-word novella sub teaching at Millard Public Schools 1999—2003.
June 2003 Midlands Voices, "Some survive falls but face tough climb," Omaha World-Herald
March 2004 Midlands Voices, "A rain gauge allows measure of tradition," Omaha World-Herald
May 2004 Midlands Voices, "Small kindnesses can produce much good," Omaha World-Herald
Oct. 2004 Midlands Voices, "Reeve, in wheelchair, lived best known-role," Omaha World-Herald
Jan. 2006 Midlands Voices, "Escaping ‘coma land’ proves to be arduous," Omaha World-Herald
April 2006 Midlands Voices, "Downfall of drug use takes toll on Joby," Omaha World-Herald
May 2006 Midlands Voices, "Brain-injury patients deal with uncertainty," Omaha World-Herald
June 2006 Midlands Voices, "Sights and sounds fill fields of dreams," Omaha World-Herald
Sept. 2006 Midlands Voices, "Venerable classroom magazine caught up in 9/11 political spin," Omaha World-Herald
Dec. 2006 Midlands Voices, "A time for reflection on holiday pride, war," Omaha World-Herald
April 2007 Midlands Voices, "Brain-injured need open doors in hiring," Omaha World-Herald
* Outline of Content. At a minimum, include chapter titles and a brief description of each chapter. Include major subheads if you have them. Make sure the subheads are clearly descriptive of the content, and not merely clever.
* Sample Material. Include a sample chapter or chapter segment from the proposed book. The sample should be at least five pages long, but no more than 20 pages. If you will be supplying photos or illustrations with your manuscript, include a sample of such. If you do not have any sample material available for the proposed book, include another sample of your writing that has not been heavily edited by a publisher.
Send your proposal to:
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Please understand that Alpha Books does not assume responsibility for any unsolicited proposal or manuscript that we may receive, and specifically we are not responsible for returning your proposal, nor do we guarantee a response. If you mail a proposal and want to be sure we have received it, please enclose a stamped, self-addressed postcard, which we will return when your proposal is received.
A proposa
However, a big wrench can be easily tossed into the works. While the umpire job is lucrative ($37/game that run 1 hour, 50 minutes, four games/day on the weekends), the biggest challenge facing the New Blue—or Any Blue, for that matter—stems from the fact that there’s no sure-fire way to train for yard (baseball diamond) work. Too many times, learning the Blue Trade is through trial and error. Too many times, good umpires quit after an over-zealous coach or pumped fan (filled with high expectations; it doesn’t matter the level of play before them) berates their performance. Plus, without guidelines to follow or any formal training, the novice umpire winds up flying solo—by the seat of his/her Heather gray pants!
This How-to Blue guide sets out to change all that. Blue, following a carefully laid-out plan, sees how this complex job is broken down into two main parts—the Zen Strike Zone and the Right Right Angle. Following the plan, practicing the drills, Blue comes to the yard fully loaded. He/she gets over the speed bumps, dodges bad fan bullets and conducts the symphony orchestra of 18 ball players—in the Field of Dreams.Fortunately, I’ve been able to ride the crest of this Kid Ball tsunami these past ten years, umpiring more than 100 Huggyville games a season, lucky to call games for championship teams coming to town (Omaha, home of the College World Series) from Florida and California, from Texas and Minnesota. Always I strive to meet ball diamond demands—and sometimes I do. Fans will say, when leaving, “Good job, Blue.” For a moment, you feel like you were King of the Diamond for the day!
While I’m now in the comfort zone doing the “Dish” (home plate) or the bases, there were not a few seasons of teeth-cutting and tool-sharpening on the diamond. This book is designed to go in the opposite direction: get New Blue game-ready in as short a time as possible. Having been to over 200 clinics and training sessions, worked over a 1,000 games and seen at least half as many, last year I began recording umpire meetings at the local and state level. I talked to and watched veteran Blue in action; meanwhile, I checked out New Blue walking those first careful steps in the ball yard.One of the New Blue I saw break into the umpire ranks this summer was 11-year-old son Brendan. Just a few meetings and a couple suggestions Brendan, as well as 40 other teen umps, became quite diamond polished in a fairly short time.
On the other hand, when Brendan’s team traveled to a four-day USSA11 tournament near Kansas City, MO., I got a chance to check out the KC Sports Tournament’s “Road to Omaha” Blue Crew—700 Games over three dozen fields for the 2007 Memorial Day weekend. Hopefully, help is on the way! While the officiating was tolerable, I saw too many games where there were glaring mistakes—plate umpire removing the mask with the right hand, not getting out of the box to see the play, not signaling fair/foul ball, etc. Would they not have had a handy-dandy Blue Book stuffed in their pack pocket to thumb through!
To date, I’ve put together this Blue Print (nine chapters completed, 202 pages double-spaced, 53,000 words, halfway done) for the young umpire, for the not so young umpire, for the veteran umpire—useful tips to call the ball/strike, to make the right (sell!) call. Vets and rookies, fans and coaches, players and trainers can delight in thumbing through an informative but fun read on America’s favorite pastime—seen through the mask.
Meanwhile, I threw the baseball folks a tease of what I was up to.
But, after reviewing an umpire site last night, I can see that there is so much in lacking in the how to.
I'm just trying to turn the corner on this.
I'm tryin' to take them out to the ball game.
Overview
Describe your book in two or three paragraphs (500 words or less). What is the title and subtitle? Who is the target audience and what makes your book unique and worthwhile for them? Think of this as the copy that would go on the back cover of your book or in the publisher's catalog, or as the brief review that you hope to see in Publishers Weekly or the NY Times Book Review.
This 22 chapter book, The Complete Guide for Successful Umpiring: How to Survive Little League Baseball and the Soccer Mom, solves a problem and answers a big question: why can't we find any good umpires? While there's literally millions of youth baseball and softball games worldwide, but of not enough skilled umpires to meet the growing demand of youth baseball and softball worldwide. As more and more youth ball games—ramped up by the phemon of travel teams—fill diamonds around the country, the problem of finding good umpires is huge.
I've umpired well over a 1000 Huggyville (ages 7 to 12, approx.) baseball games off and on for more than ten summers. The way I umpire now as to how I did then is huge. I feel confident, as well as protected. By going to umpire meetings through the winter, watching other umpires, and looking after the game's end how I could have made the call differently, or "sold" it better, both my skill and comfort level steadily increased. However, while there might be well over 400 umpires who do Huggyville ball through the season here in the Omaha Metro area, only 50 or so, due to other commitments, attend the meetings.
That means that there's at least 350 umpires who had little exposure to the training. Of course, after a few games, they no doubt got themselves comfortable behind the plate, where Blue spends most of his/her time—working alone, that is—and so, by hook or by crook, by trial and error, New Blue becomes Vet Blue. Only, one has to ask, it is always a clear line from point A to point B?
And, quite frankly, I also was an infrequent attendee, maybe making but one or two appearance out of 12 or so—not nearly enough, as I found out—and my umpiring skills suffered accordingly. This winter, getting an idea to put a How-to book together for Huggyville Blue (coda for amateur umpire), I thought I would attend each and every meeting, study the rules book religiously, talk to veteran umps. Now, going out on the diamond, I feel comfortable with the job I'll do behind the plate or on the bases.
I've also found that if you break it down to two main sections, the Zen Strike Zone and the Right Right Angle, you can go along ways to mastering the intricaties of America's favorite pastime after it is broken down in both logical and sequentional fashion.
Target Audience
Given the national scope, it is my feeling that major publishers such as Wiley (Dummies series) and Penguin Group (The Complete Idiot's Guide series) would like to take a look. Moreover, university presses would be interested in a never-before-written book on a How-to book for young umpires, adding to their collection of books that cover the usual bases of all-time greats, quirky managers, players and owners..
Overall, the market for this How-to umpiring book could be huge. Of course, the logical readers would be those umpires who are just starting out, who maybe want to hone their skills. While the fact that there are well over a million ball youth baseball and softball games being played from early spring to late summer in the country, as well as gaining popularity around the world, especially Japan, means that many games and that many umpires would be a reach, if this book becomes part of the umpire primer, thousands of the book would have a ready audience.
Secondary are the tournament organizers, athletic directors, and affiliates who promote and sustain the drive for getting youth to step out on the ball diamond, whether the rec leauge, the YMCA, Little League Baseball or USSSA. For the most part, the last question that seems to be asked, if a 10-field, 45acre complex is in the works, “Where will we get the umpires?”
Third, coaches and fans will have a delight in reading the travail the umpire goes through. Like me, they will come across not a few surprises. Quickly, they will see that the task of umpring a routine six-inning game—the usual number for virtually all Huggyville games—can quickly fill itself full of more complexities than herding cats. Then, there will be a nedw appreciation of the umpire, the challenges he/she faces as they step out onto the Field of Dreams.
The best ways to reach prospective readers would be to link the book with the Little League Baseball and Softball organization, as well as other youth baseball leagues. While I've not pitched the idea for said book to Little League Baseball's Umpire-in-Chief Andy Konyar, the NSAA's (Nebraska State Athletic Association) Jim Angeles, or the Metro Umpire-in-Chief Denny Jones, I'm confident they'd be more than happy to take a look at how to recruit and retain umpires—the key problem facing so many organizations—allowing them to build a solid group of umpires, the groundwork of which is laid through the reading this book.
Currently, Little League, through ESPN, is laying the groundwork for orgainzing Little League teams around the country. Combined with the travel team phenom and other leagues, the chances of selling a How-to umpire book to address the growing problem of more games but fewer umpires, is greatly enhanced.
Meet the author
As mentioned, I have umpired well over a 1000 Huggyville baseball games these past ten years. Until I started writing this book, until I started going to meetings and talking to veteran umpires, until I started reading the rules book, I always felt uneasy stepping onto the ball diamond. Something would happen that I wasn't ready for. However, it all came together last year when it finally dawned on me, I think after a foul ball hit behind the catcher. I threw my hands in the air, giving the foul ball signal. This is also the signal for time out and dead ball. I then also thought, after the pitcher had the ball and the batter stepped up to the plate, and I signaled the pitcher that he could pitch, I thought how the ball is either live or it's dead. There is nothing in between.
In addition, I've published an essay in the local paper, describing the USSSA that comes to Omaha in time with the College World Series. Not only do college coaches do their best to get their teams ready for big show, there's also the younger brethren who also embark on the Road to Omaha. Like the LLWS (Little Leauge World Series), the ten days packed with excitement, running 700 games a weekend. Moreover, since “breaking in” to writing essays for the paper three years ago, I've had 12 published. Thus, my writing ability, my hand-on experience behind the plate or doing the bases, as well as training New Blue, gives me a solid foundation on which to write this book.
Other books
As mentioned, the only two books available, the Umpire Manual (NFHS, 2006) and Officiating Baseball (Human Kinetics, 2004), explain the mechanics of umpiring but do not cover those games where base paths at 70 feet, pitcher's mound at 50 feet—the baseball player 12 years old and young.
They spend no time whatsoever in addressing what many Blue face on the typical Huggyville ball diamond—flying solo. The Guide gives a a clear template New Blue can follow when he/she is flying solo—knowing where to be and how best to get there, achieving the goal of a job well done.
Again, these two books that explain umpiring for high school and college players, from a two-man, three-man system, do a good job but the style is written in manual foremant that takes not a few readings to get the gist of what is most important. The Guide, on the other hand, jumps off the premise of a Zen Strike Zone (the explanation of which is worth the price of the book itself!) and the Right Right Right angle. This broad stroke approach to umpiring allows for quick and easy grasp on the basic fundamentals that allow Blue to easily “Fake it 'til you make it.”
Promotion
As mentioned, Little League will be using the contract extension with ESPN and ABC. This provides an outlet for book representation on an international scale. For instance, along with a blurb from ABC commentator Dusty Baker, there would be a mention of a book the prospective umpire can buy to improve his/her game.
Thus, the tv outlet would be huge. Along with articels in such sports magazines like sports Illustrated,
Approach
This book rests on two tenets--the Zen Strike Zone for the plate umpire, the Right Right angle for the base umpire. Step by step is the approach, detailing how these two mechanics are mastered. There are photos, sidebars, tables, checklists, and illustrations throughout the text that make the overall format easy for quick reference.
Below is Contents at a Glance with chapter titles.
Contents at a Glance
Introduction
Despite the youth baseball surge worldwide the past few years—particularly competitive, All-Star baseball, i.e. “travel teams,” a fairly new phenomenon that has athletic children of Baby boomer's vie for national recognition—a big time missing link in America’s favorite pastime prevails—the umpire. Largely unheralded, blissfully ignored—until his or her split-second decision to call ball or strike, safe or out has fans cheering or crying—the umpire’s place on the baseball hierarchy is near the bottom of the ball diamond pecking order.
Part I: An Umpire’s Primer
This book is designed to help the young, the not-so-young umpire (more and more Baby Boomers want direct involvement with youth sports but haven’t the slightest idea on how on how they get started) get off to a good start umpiring youth baseball games. New Blue meets the growing demand for skilled and trained umpires as a favorite American pastime begins to wear international colors.
As mentioned above, Umpiring for Dummies is carefully written to be useful for Novice Umpires as well as those who’ve been at it for a while and might see some new ways to cover the bases, how to get to the exact and correct place on the infield to make the right call. Moreover, the new and the not- so-new umpire, once they read this book, can be assured that 9 times out of 10, they know what mechanics they need to make right call--behind the plate or on the bases.
Chapter 1: Baseball Is Now Worldwide
In this chapter
Japan rocks
Baseball everywhere
Little League World Series Huge Following
The showcase, of course, is the Little League World Series--37 games televised in 2005 (ABC or ESPN) with an average of 5 million viewers (from Little League, Big Dreams by Charles Euchner, Sourcebooks, 2006).
Recent posts on the Little League Online website: "Little League Signs 8-year Television Contract Extension with ESPN."
Chapter 2: Umpire Prep—Fake it ‘Til You Make It
In this chapter
Getting Started
Chronic ump shortage
Fans’ High Expectations
Reading the Official Baseball Rules book
Getting Started: Hey, Chief Blue, should I read the rules book?
Oh sure. Definitely. You really need to read the rules book—except not right now. No, right now you should focus on two things: Getting solid Plate Mechanics as explained in Part II as well as getting solid Base Mechanics as explained in Part III.
Chapter 3: Game Prelims--an intro Major League Baseball's Official Rules Book
In this Chapter
Prelims--what you need to know
Planning for the first game
Getting ready to umpire
Covering all the bases
The Major League Baseball’s ORB (Official Rules Book)
First, let’s get the heavy lifting out of the way: a few chapters begin with abridged versions of the ORB. When it applies directly to the recommended steps for success, putting the Dummies’ steps in context, they will be copied verbatim, outlining both what they do say, and what they don’t say when it comes to making calls behind the plate or in the bases.
The few rules that directly apply the lion’s share of plays on the typical Little League, Kid Ball, Huggyville (ages 7 to 12), Youth Ball Diamond are listed, explained, clarified and matched up to what New Blue encounters on the ball diamond. While the MLB Rules Book is pocket size (where it has to be, first year as Rookie Minor League Umpire, in your back pocket!) and not more than a 100 pages, it rivals, according to authors Jaska and Smith who broke down the ORB into a 400 page workbook, the U.S. tax code for the level of complexity and ambiguity. Indeed, as noted on the official Little League Website, rules change, interpretations change and, as an offshoot, umpire mechanics change.
Chapter 4: Ready or Not, Hear I Come—Gear Needed
In This Chapter
Getting the right gear
Preparing for cold weather
Preparing for hot weather
Keeping yourself comfortable
Packing ump survival kit
Like a good plate meeting, you’ve made a good first-impression; already you’re selling the call. The same is true with the gear you wear, the sporting apparel you wear: in a close game and a close call, that confidence level you’ve instilled pays off: the coaches and fans are more than likely to accept the close call. Looking the part has a lot to do with it.
Personal protection--guaranteed
Hey Chief Blue, do I need a jock strap?
Oh yes, by all means. Allow me to be a little indiscreet to keep you out of real harm's way: check out the Nutty Buddie. It is the jock strap to end all jock straps. On the website, it will show the umpire get hit with a 90 mph fastball right to the groin--and all it does make a huge "thock." Believe me, you'll cringe at the first video demonstration but then jot down the website so that you can own your own personal protection.
Believe you me, I just have to look at a bruise on my upper thigh to see how close I was to real pain: the Nuttie Buddy and I will never part.
Or, as the most recent bulletin (5/21/07) at Metro Umpires.com has it:
This afternoon my Nutty Buddy won another victory. First off, I was in the correct slot position with the catcher setup in the outside slot and the batter connected with a letters-high inside pitch, and glanced straight back and down. The catcher never even came close to getting a glove on it, it got me "rock solid" on the Nutty Buddy. Yes, I felt it, but it was no big deal and play went without even a slow down. Had I worn a "normal" cup, I probably would have been on the ground for some time. Some of you probably thinking he's just saying that. Think about this... when I went to remove my Nutty Buddy I couldn't. The force of the impact fused the material of my UnderArmour jock cup pouch to the Nutty Buddy. Weeee... the boys are alive and very well! Thank you to Roy and the rest of the MiLB guys for tipping us off to these. posted by: James, Mike on 5/20/2007 10:24:12 PM
I may need to look into a nutty buddy. How much do they run? posted by: Marcoe, David on 5/20/2007 10:54:13 PM
Check nuttybuddy.com. They're about $20 each. posted by: Bierd, DJ on 5/21/2007 11:40:57 AM
My Nuts Always win.
posted by: Kelly, Mike on 5/21/2007 11:26:19 AM
Chapter 5: Safety: Staying Cool, Calm, and Collected
In This Chapter
Chapter Five Safety: Staying Cool, Calm, and Collected
In this chapter
Drink plenty of water before the games
Bring a banana or two
Frito’s to restore your salt
Head gear that fits
Chest protector that protects
Start out by doing a single game. Then a double header. Get used to doing more than two games. If you have a partner, switch at the end of every game.
To do list before the diamond
Drink water--start drinking water early in the day, even if you're not thirsty
Keep hydrated--don't over do it but makes sure you are keeping your fluids going
Part II: Plate Mechanics—Getting Set in the "Slot"
Chapter 6: The Zen Strike Zone—Strike Calls Made Easy
In this chapter
Defining the strike zone
The chunk of cheese
The check or half swing
The dropped third strike
Taking A Look At the Strike Zone
What is meant by the Strike Zone, anyhow? Is there an exact formula that says what is, what isn’t a strike? Of the 80 or so definitions of baseball terminology in Section 2 of the Rules Book, let’s look at Rule #72, the Strike Zone:
2.00—Definitions of Terms
The STRIKE ZONE is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined form the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.
Chapter 7: Getting Set to Call the First and Last Pitch
In this chapter
Choose your mechanics—box or scissors
Pause, read, react
Wait as long as you can before the pitcher winds to get set
Set your “camera”: stop before you make the call
Chapter 8: How to Sell the Call—Ball/strike; Fair/Foul; Foul Tip; Infield Fly Rule
In this chapter
Get the Zen Strike Zone and stick with it
Error to the strike
See the entire plate
Set your camera
Another baseball umpire truism: you have to sell the call
The first thing you need to do, believe it or not, holding for know what was discussed above about the “Slot” and the “Zen Strike Zone,” we have to first think of our appearance. How do we look when we step out on the ball diamond.
Chapter 9: How to Sell the Call—Catcher Interference; Dead Ball; Balk
In this chapter
Foul/fair—avoid ambiguous calls
Foul tip—always a strike, ball is live
Dead ball, the delayed dead ball
Saying “Time, time.”
The Balk Rule
Trouble balls
Down the line
Interference/obstruction
The best way you can sell these calls is by knowing what they are. And, like this book is designed to do, we will start with the order of frequency, moving in descending order.
Frequent: These top two below happen all the time in every game. A foul ball happens at almost every at bat.
Foul ball very frequent; almost every time at bat. The ball is considered dead.
Foul tip fairly frequent; every 1 out of 5 bats. The ball is considered live.
Part III: Base Mechanics—Getting the Right Right Angle
Chapter 10: The Right Right Angle--Plan and Anticipate
Chapter 11: Pause, Read, React—Timing and Fundamental Base Mechanics
Chapter 12: Infield Position A, B, or C—Where to Go and When
Chapter 13: Trouble calls: Interference, Obstruction, and Balk
Part IV: Working Alone, Working with a Partner
In this part…
Part IV continues with fine-tuning your umpire skills. The easiest approach to one man umpiring is discussed and you will familiarize yourself with some of the problems you will have to contend with, what unexpected pleasures there might be conducting the Symphony Orchestra on the field of dreams with a single baton.
Wielding the baton for a single orchestra
Of course, there’ll be a repeat to an extent of plate and base mechanics. However, the extension will be to the fact you and you alone are the man or woman in charge of what goes down. The next chapter will describe how to work with your partner. This is when your chances of missing a call or not being in a position to make the play are greatly reduced. In fact, working with a knowledgeable partner increases you’ll make the call and make the call right.
Chapter 14: One-man crew: Mechanics When Working Alone—Home Plate; Bases
In This Chapter
General duties and responsibilities
Call balls and strikes
Hustle! You have the “dish” + bases
Rule on fair/foul from both left field, right field foul pole
All ground balls in the infield
All fly balls to the outfield
And now you’re going to umpire a game by yourself? Welcome to conducting the symphony orchestra in the Field of Dreams all by your lonesome. At first you might think, like I did, that this is impossible task: the coaches will come out and hand you the baseballs and you go over the ground rules. Out of the corner of your eye you see players taller than you, firing the ball back and forth over 90 foot bases: you think, How in the heck will I…. But, believe it or not, after a few games, you’ll find that you don’t need any help. Moreover, you don’t want any help. You can do just fine by yourself.
Chapter 15: Two-man crew: Mechanics When Working with a Partner
Chapter 16: Coverage’s Working Alone; Working with a Partner
Part V: Umpire Challenges
Chapter 17 Plate Umpire Challenges--Safe/Out at the Plate; Tag Plays
Chapter 18 Base Umpire Challenges--Safe/Out at the Base; Catch/No Catch; Tag Plays
Chapter 19 Trouble Balls, Trouble Calls--Infield Fly Rule, Check Swing
Chapter 20 Sportsmanship and Game Control—Firm But Fair
Part VI: The Least You Should Know
Chapter 21 Ten Things Every Umpire Should Know
Chapter 22 Ten Things Every Coach and Parent Should Know About the Umpire
Chapter 23 Ten (Actually, 20) Brief Tips for Becoming a Great Umpire
Appendix A: Umpire Organizations
Appendix B: Youth Sports Organizations
Appendix C: The Umpire’s Resource Kit
Index
* Market Overview.
With the popularity of youth baseball, particularly "travel," "select," and "All-Star" teams that have grown more and more popular, the shortage of trained umpires is a big problem. For example, I touched base in January with Umpire-In-Chief of Little League Baseball & Softball, Andy Konyar, Williamsport, PA, who gives me current Little League take:
more games nationally and internationally than ever before
basically, finding umpires is a pressing problem: each of the 7,000 Leagues deals with the issue individually. From Little League Online website: Every year local leagues have elections, organizational meetings, registrations, drafts, etc.. Then, a week before the season starts someone asks, “What about umpires?”
on-going discussions on how to recruit and retrain umpires
Biggest problem? Arguments from coaches and fans. Andy said it's hard to retain umpires who, for example, have "blown" a call and is then subject to spectator hassles.
Andy said he thought there were "millions" of Little League Baseball games each spring and summer worldwide
7,000 Leagues--almost 1,000 international--with four divisions per league, 20 games per division
Seven regions--International Headquarters; Central Region; Eastern Region; South Region, West Region; Southwest Region; Canada.
Now, in the midst of more youth baseball, there exists a shortage of umpires. Overall, there is no real way to alert various members of the league, for instance, that trained umpires must be part of league "must-dos" if they are to have a successful season.
Hence, because there is no formal training, this Idiot's Guide will be a good substitute to teach, to referesh. Moreover, fans and coaches will have a better picture of the game when they see the ballgame through the mask.
Describe who will buy this book and why. Try to quantify the size of the market and the extent to which it is growing. Include any available demographic information on your target reader. Keep in mind that it is a rare book indeed whose audience is "every American."
As mentioned above, would-be umpires will need this book to round out their umpire job. Notes taken and conversations recorded from workshops conducted by veteran umpires as well as two young umpires who are currently doing Double A and A ball respectively, are important features. Their input is broken down into manageable chunks that can be easily grasped by the umpire.
While Andy said that there must be "millions" of Little League baseball games around the world, this of course does not translate to that many umpires. However, this book will be useful for the coach and player as well as the fan. I'll be the first to admit that I had to be literally drug through the rules book kicking and screaming but once using it in the context of the plays I was watching and the calls I was making, there came a deep appreciation and admiration to those folks way back when who put such a beautiful document together that has withstood the test of time. Thus, when they see the game, when they watch an umpire making a call, it will be in context with official baseball rules, the umpires interpretation and explanation therein.
* Competition for Your Book. List other available books that the reader for your book might purchase as an alternative. Describe how your book will offer the more appealing alternative. Do not include competitive books that are widely different in scope or format from your proposed book.
This is a unique, never-been-written book that examines umpire responsibilities while taking a sharp look at the Official Rules Book. This is different than other books that cover baseball generally, youth baseball specifically (a few include Coaching Baseball for Dummies, Wiley 2007; Baseball for Dummies, Wiley 2005 and The Complete Book of Baseball Signs and Plays, Coaches Choice 1999) that mention "rules" a great deal but shy away from actually listing them or explaining them. This Idiot’s Guide, on the other hand, notes those rules that most often impact the typical baseball game. While it won't be an extensive list (some of the plays that happen are so unusual as to appear but once in a great while) and explanation, the choice of rules to discuss are adequate to give the general overall picture. These rules abound with examples, broken down into a user-friendly format for a quick and easy read.
* Your Author Credentials. Provide a brief bio or CV, including education or experience in the subject, writing experience, and previous publications. Let us know of your availability and/or willingness to participate in promotion and publicity efforts, and any special media contacts or promotion opportunities you bring to the project. Be sure to include your contact information.
My background has seen over 15 years of teaching and writing. Part-time, I've involved myself in youth sports, both in coaching and officiating--basically following my children in their various activities--basketball, softball, baseball and track--and coming away with appreciation and respect for coaches and officials. I also feel that a How-to book would be useful for the would-be umpire. It can keep him or her safe from incurring the coach's or fan's wrath. At the same time, as indicated above, I haven't come across any books that discuss how the Huggyville umpire can succeed nor any book that shows the baseball rules give us a whole new way of looking at the game.
Credentials:
Degrees
New York University, BA (English, Journalism), 1978
Teacher College*Columbia University, MA (Language, Lit., Communication), 1981
University of South Dakota, MA (Secondary Administration), 1988
Writing experience/addendum:
New York City (1974-1982)
Writing
1975 New School for Social Research—published short story
1978 Washington Square News, reporter
1982—87 South Sioux City Star (feature stories)
Acting
1976 National TV Commercial, Metropolitan Life Insurance
1977—82 Extra: movies, Welcome Back Kotter episodes
1976 Industrial film, NAPA Auto Parts
Nebraska (1982—Present)
Feature Writing/Reporting
1993 Forward for Community Cookbook
1991—97 Sports, Feature Stories, Hard News at South Sioux City Star, Sioux City Journal
1993—95 Correspondent for the Omaha World-Herald, Papillion Times.
1997—98 Three essays read on Nebraska Public Radio
1998 Featured speaker at St. Mary’s Parish dedication.1999—2001 Health awareness newsletter, writer + editor
2002—03 Epiphany, on-line magazine, Calling All Subs, 73,000-word novella sub teaching at Millard Public Schools 1999—2003.
June 2003 Midlands Voices, "Some survive falls but face tough climb," Omaha World-Herald
March 2004 Midlands Voices, "A rain gauge allows measure of tradition," Omaha World-Herald
May 2004 Midlands Voices, "Small kindnesses can produce much good," Omaha World-Herald
Oct. 2004 Midlands Voices, "Reeve, in wheelchair, lived best known-role," Omaha World-Herald
Jan. 2006 Midlands Voices, "Escaping ‘coma land’ proves to be arduous," Omaha World-Herald
April 2006 Midlands Voices, "Downfall of drug use takes toll on Joby," Omaha World-Herald
May 2006 Midlands Voices, "Brain-injury patients deal with uncertainty," Omaha World-Herald
June 2006 Midlands Voices, "Sights and sounds fill fields of dreams," Omaha World-Herald
Sept. 2006 Midlands Voices, "Venerable classroom magazine caught up in 9/11 political spin," Omaha World-Herald
Dec. 2006 Midlands Voices, "A time for reflection on holiday pride, war," Omaha World-Herald
April 2007 Midlands Voices, "Brain-injured need open doors in hiring," Omaha World-Herald
* Outline of Content. At a minimum, include chapter titles and a brief description of each chapter. Include major subheads if you have them. Make sure the subheads are clearly descriptive of the content, and not merely clever.
* Sample Material. Include a sample chapter or chapter segment from the proposed book. The sample should be at least five pages long, but no more than 20 pages. If you will be supplying photos or illustrations with your manuscript, include a sample of such. If you do not have any sample material available for the proposed book, include another sample of your writing that has not been heavily edited by a publisher.
Send your proposal to:
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A proposa
However, a big wrench can be easily tossed into the works. While the umpire job is lucrative ($37/game that run 1 hour, 50 minutes, four games/day on the weekends), the biggest challenge facing the New Blue—or Any Blue, for that matter—stems from the fact that there’s no sure-fire way to train for yard (baseball diamond) work. Too many times, learning the Blue Trade is through trial and error. Too many times, good umpires quit after an over-zealous coach or pumped fan (filled with high expectations; it doesn’t matter the level of play before them) berates their performance. Plus, without guidelines to follow or any formal training, the novice umpire winds up flying solo—by the seat of his/her Heather gray pants!
This How-to Blue guide sets out to change all that. Blue, following a carefully laid-out plan, sees how this complex job is broken down into two main parts—the Zen Strike Zone and the Right Right Angle. Following the plan, practicing the drills, Blue comes to the yard fully loaded. He/she gets over the speed bumps, dodges bad fan bullets and conducts the symphony orchestra of 18 ball players—in the Field of Dreams.Fortunately, I’ve been able to ride the crest of this Kid Ball tsunami these past ten years, umpiring more than 100 Huggyville games a season, lucky to call games for championship teams coming to town (Omaha, home of the College World Series) from Florida and California, from Texas and Minnesota. Always I strive to meet ball diamond demands—and sometimes I do. Fans will say, when leaving, “Good job, Blue.” For a moment, you feel like you were King of the Diamond for the day!
While I’m now in the comfort zone doing the “Dish” (home plate) or the bases, there were not a few seasons of teeth-cutting and tool-sharpening on the diamond. This book is designed to go in the opposite direction: get New Blue game-ready in as short a time as possible. Having been to over 200 clinics and training sessions, worked over a 1,000 games and seen at least half as many, last year I began recording umpire meetings at the local and state level. I talked to and watched veteran Blue in action; meanwhile, I checked out New Blue walking those first careful steps in the ball yard.One of the New Blue I saw break into the umpire ranks this summer was 11-year-old son Brendan. Just a few meetings and a couple suggestions Brendan, as well as 40 other teen umps, became quite diamond polished in a fairly short time.
On the other hand, when Brendan’s team traveled to a four-day USSA11 tournament near Kansas City, MO., I got a chance to check out the KC Sports Tournament’s “Road to Omaha” Blue Crew—700 Games over three dozen fields for the 2007 Memorial Day weekend. Hopefully, help is on the way! While the officiating was tolerable, I saw too many games where there were glaring mistakes—plate umpire removing the mask with the right hand, not getting out of the box to see the play, not signaling fair/foul ball, etc. Would they not have had a handy-dandy Blue Book stuffed in their pack pocket to thumb through!
To date, I’ve put together this Blue Print (nine chapters completed, 202 pages double-spaced, 53,000 words, halfway done) for the young umpire, for the not so young umpire, for the veteran umpire—useful tips to call the ball/strike, to make the right (sell!) call. Vets and rookies, fans and coaches, players and trainers can delight in thumbing through an informative but fun read on America’s favorite pastime—seen through the mask.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
jan 15 Tues
And now you're read to hit the high posts.
What was that.
Oh, now I see. It was the announcement that they are back in action.
You know, when the going gets tough.
The tough get awesome.
She'd show them who was rt. down to the wire all the way down the line.
wouldn't they like to know more about that pretty gals character?
I can def. see some repeat of words on Big SS.
What was that.
Oh, now I see. It was the announcement that they are back in action.
You know, when the going gets tough.
The tough get awesome.
She'd show them who was rt. down to the wire all the way down the line.
wouldn't they like to know more about that pretty gals character?
I can def. see some repeat of words on Big SS.
Monday, January 14, 2008
jan 14 Mon Plus The Tired Lion
I said like a hair salon. And now I'm thinkin' Tired Lion.
Oh my God, a flash. I was cleaning out the garage...a bat here, a discarded shovel there and there's Bren's gun on it's side, laying down.
and then i thought he never plays with that anymore. and then I thought of BB guns. and i went into a swoon in the past, that gun i bought James Jeremy.
i haven't heard beans from him voice wise since his oldest son was born...but i thought of the first conversaz he had with me when he called my Seward phone number and I talked with him at length and i remember saying "Remember that BB gun you bought me?" and i said yes, of course i did. and then he went on to say that it was right there in front of him.
i still have those early letters. he was looking for some remuneration--aren't we all? and they were well written and moving and an overture of friendliness but once he found out that hit will take a few hog sheds to clean and not a little time to prove your worth and merit insofar as you don't mind one bit grinding feed and cleaning out a shed or two that maybe then...but, understand, son, you've got to get with the blood..
and how his dad and he went out into the mountains and shot it.
i do remember having to go out of my way to get it packaged. it was that toy store not too far from the Chelsea hotel where Mark and I hooked up with some fairly good quality mary jane though today it probably wouldn't meet the standard or excellence.
and then i thought, lookin' at J's dad, how maybe he might've thought, "Well, what have i done for my daughter?" but blackstone was much more interesting, outgoing. it wasn't the hard cold hatred.
and they went out in the mountains and shot the bb gun and that was a good gift...maybe it was the only one I got that was of any note sent out there--far and few between, one doesn't know what avenues to explore (Legal Aid and trying to get that going then Dakota County and Judge Frank Kniefl, like the stuff of high sentence and nonsense wouldn't hold or hear the case my own overtures and then sandy inkster finally bringing it to bear but it was a court date and I should've let the judge hear it...when i was back in Ne from the NY Timex.
what that idiot inkster done was not once talking about my head injury that i was, when all was said and done, disabled. and, less than a year away from my accident, a divorce staring me in the face--what the fuck. oh no, she was like "You gotta pay up." and so that I was dutifully bound and swore to do. However, as a college student, living in NYC, the spirit is willing but the flesh, she be weak. That ding bat inkster, i always thought. Never thought to bring the medical records to court. Which was probably the biggest and largest mountain us head injured folk has got to climb.
Gee, it's hard to tell.
but then i thought last night, and i meant to rise from my slumber and put in that sudden flash of superiority.
She said, "When the going gets tough, the tough get awesome." it was in encouragement to her brother David who daughter was undergoing chemo for cancer. That's when I got the Dakota County Star, Uncle Pete from Pigeon Creek and all of us in our baleful innocence, the smoke coming out the chimneys, a farm every other hill or so, and no, that's when i never thought of myself being a writer but could see myself penning that easy prose and talking about some of the wiles of the country.
No, we don't get the star no more. but i see Aunt Margaret..Rod McKuen fame--we would delve in these horrific debates, me calling McKuen a chameleon a fake a phone, nobody ever figure out what was with her marrying this ignorant Pollock that was Hank the paper's editor who still has his hair parted like he always did, still a believer strong in replica politics....no, that's not what you'd call anything but your typical weekly....but, at any rate, the star in those days, when was it.
Dear Joby gives us all the post of when he moved back to Nebraska in 1994 and then, completed h.s., did the catholic school sojourn, headed on back. he gives me those dates and deadlines and what all.
But, at any rate, that's when the Ginties came back to these parts and built a house on the Dunes. I think there was some high favor. Blackstone said that he was at a party with M & K and he said "hi M" and M just ignored him. Blackstone, bein' an ole ironworker, and now married to Barb, M's former main squeeze before the parting of the seas between me and the missus why we just couldn't you know...did not get the greeting in return.
But, what I'm tryin' to say is they built the house on the hill or on the river in the Dunes very up and coming some very hot flashes of brilliance but part of that went away and, with the easing of time and the turning of the pages we see
"When the going gets tough/
The tough get awesome."
I know she was offering true inspirational message to her niece. But beyond that cloud, beyond what everybody knew, reading between the lines,
we have an RD interjection--is there a wait lifter around here" later "I can't wait to tell who I ran into." who would he tell. maybe nobody. but he was that part of So Sooo that after awhile, was pulling for the New York Times.
and back to that...Not a few of her peers read it. M's fellow classmates, the entourage that followed his success saw the way it shook out and then, thinking okay, victory here, that's for sure..
but then down the path a little, the pix of my two daughters in the Star, both running for the Cornhusker Flyers, both in their track outfits going to run for the national championships or high caliber stuff and then they thought again, Hey Hey Hey, check out this...and then they had to think who is the going and who is the tough.
oh my gosh. and now i'm thinkin. Did she sign it Aunt Kerry? No, she loved her name. She always thought a great deal about it, that core strength and I'm sure she just wrote Kerry. and this pissed people off all the more.
The tired lion.
Oh my God, a flash. I was cleaning out the garage...a bat here, a discarded shovel there and there's Bren's gun on it's side, laying down.
and then i thought he never plays with that anymore. and then I thought of BB guns. and i went into a swoon in the past, that gun i bought James Jeremy.
i haven't heard beans from him voice wise since his oldest son was born...but i thought of the first conversaz he had with me when he called my Seward phone number and I talked with him at length and i remember saying "Remember that BB gun you bought me?" and i said yes, of course i did. and then he went on to say that it was right there in front of him.
i still have those early letters. he was looking for some remuneration--aren't we all? and they were well written and moving and an overture of friendliness but once he found out that hit will take a few hog sheds to clean and not a little time to prove your worth and merit insofar as you don't mind one bit grinding feed and cleaning out a shed or two that maybe then...but, understand, son, you've got to get with the blood..
and how his dad and he went out into the mountains and shot it.
i do remember having to go out of my way to get it packaged. it was that toy store not too far from the Chelsea hotel where Mark and I hooked up with some fairly good quality mary jane though today it probably wouldn't meet the standard or excellence.
and then i thought, lookin' at J's dad, how maybe he might've thought, "Well, what have i done for my daughter?" but blackstone was much more interesting, outgoing. it wasn't the hard cold hatred.
and they went out in the mountains and shot the bb gun and that was a good gift...maybe it was the only one I got that was of any note sent out there--far and few between, one doesn't know what avenues to explore (Legal Aid and trying to get that going then Dakota County and Judge Frank Kniefl, like the stuff of high sentence and nonsense wouldn't hold or hear the case my own overtures and then sandy inkster finally bringing it to bear but it was a court date and I should've let the judge hear it...when i was back in Ne from the NY Timex.
what that idiot inkster done was not once talking about my head injury that i was, when all was said and done, disabled. and, less than a year away from my accident, a divorce staring me in the face--what the fuck. oh no, she was like "You gotta pay up." and so that I was dutifully bound and swore to do. However, as a college student, living in NYC, the spirit is willing but the flesh, she be weak. That ding bat inkster, i always thought. Never thought to bring the medical records to court. Which was probably the biggest and largest mountain us head injured folk has got to climb.
Gee, it's hard to tell.
but then i thought last night, and i meant to rise from my slumber and put in that sudden flash of superiority.
She said, "When the going gets tough, the tough get awesome." it was in encouragement to her brother David who daughter was undergoing chemo for cancer. That's when I got the Dakota County Star, Uncle Pete from Pigeon Creek and all of us in our baleful innocence, the smoke coming out the chimneys, a farm every other hill or so, and no, that's when i never thought of myself being a writer but could see myself penning that easy prose and talking about some of the wiles of the country.
No, we don't get the star no more. but i see Aunt Margaret..Rod McKuen fame--we would delve in these horrific debates, me calling McKuen a chameleon a fake a phone, nobody ever figure out what was with her marrying this ignorant Pollock that was Hank the paper's editor who still has his hair parted like he always did, still a believer strong in replica politics....no, that's not what you'd call anything but your typical weekly....but, at any rate, the star in those days, when was it.
Dear Joby gives us all the post of when he moved back to Nebraska in 1994 and then, completed h.s., did the catholic school sojourn, headed on back. he gives me those dates and deadlines and what all.
But, at any rate, that's when the Ginties came back to these parts and built a house on the Dunes. I think there was some high favor. Blackstone said that he was at a party with M & K and he said "hi M" and M just ignored him. Blackstone, bein' an ole ironworker, and now married to Barb, M's former main squeeze before the parting of the seas between me and the missus why we just couldn't you know...did not get the greeting in return.
But, what I'm tryin' to say is they built the house on the hill or on the river in the Dunes very up and coming some very hot flashes of brilliance but part of that went away and, with the easing of time and the turning of the pages we see
"When the going gets tough/
The tough get awesome."
I know she was offering true inspirational message to her niece. But beyond that cloud, beyond what everybody knew, reading between the lines,
we have an RD interjection--is there a wait lifter around here" later "I can't wait to tell who I ran into." who would he tell. maybe nobody. but he was that part of So Sooo that after awhile, was pulling for the New York Times.
and back to that...Not a few of her peers read it. M's fellow classmates, the entourage that followed his success saw the way it shook out and then, thinking okay, victory here, that's for sure..
but then down the path a little, the pix of my two daughters in the Star, both running for the Cornhusker Flyers, both in their track outfits going to run for the national championships or high caliber stuff and then they thought again, Hey Hey Hey, check out this...and then they had to think who is the going and who is the tough.
oh my gosh. and now i'm thinkin. Did she sign it Aunt Kerry? No, she loved her name. She always thought a great deal about it, that core strength and I'm sure she just wrote Kerry. and this pissed people off all the more.
The tired lion.
jan 14 Mon
This is when you rest. Like a hair salon. Well actually, a barber shop. Always, so curious, they seemed to be closed on Monday.
But I now after a Sunday of preaching that today you take a rest.
Which I seemed to do with this blog this weekend.
Bren, limping, was nonetheless inserted in the game. The O'Neal kids are fast. But it was good to have him play. I mean, mine was a total camp out in the basement and write. The project of baseball. Skip the meeting. But, as 11:30 rolled around, we found out where to go. I e'd a coach--which turned out to be the wrong one--to find out when the game was. No reply, I thought the heck with it. But, he did limp down the court and fired up a three. They called it a two but it was nuthin' but net...and so then I went to the umpire meeting. Not a complete waste and wash.
Today's post is education:
Phil Koch to retire…why does this matter, why does this mean anything? Except there was a pile of papers on the floor. Where son Brendan has thrown his materials that have been graded with red ink and purple ink and a few hand-drawn stars and I happen to see the flier that is the news of the Millard District. Let’s call it what it exactly is: MILLARD in huge font then below that it has BULLETIN BOARD: newsletter is published twice monthly during the school year scrolled below the masthead. So, an old educator myself—I mean, come on, it’s almost ridiculous—I find myself, cleaning clearing my basement area, piles of paper and notes and old magazines, getting ready for bench arrival the food arrival and what do I come across but the last school board notice from Lynch Public Schools. I could handle reading it. However, even after almost 15 years, I still can’t look at the phone number or the address at the top of the page. This, thinking back (and I’ve thought this before, and congratulate myself every time I think of it), was a number I never called. I never ever once called the school.
I remember, the last day there, when my duties were done, when Larry Eilers had finished sweeping down the floor and adding a mixture of linseed oil or something to make the wood floors of the creaky old building shine, and then, always coming to school just at the end of the Paul Harvey broadcast that finished at 7:25 a.m., a personage that I loathed, a voice I cringed at such that I would shut my door making sure I didn’t have to hear a breath of it and sometimes Eilers would see me walking by, hands in my ears, look up from his broom and nod his head and greet me. “Heard you had some high-octane stuff last night” he commented one time stepping into my long but somewhat narrow little office and then, another time, another one of the quite personal questions, the spokesperson for the town, near school year’s end, leaning on his huge push broom, “Where are you gonna have that baby?” Kath so preg, so huge I had to pull her off the couch. Now jovial end of school year because I was so close to a job offer miles and miles south I said, “Oh,” smiling I was, off hand, “maybe somewhere on the interstate.” Did Larry smile in return and shake his head? The only thing I remember doing in outright and utter defiance was grabbing the school bell that was outside the double front door of the school and ringing it a couple times and walking on over to my formerly pink house—the town having some sort of predilection for pink painted houses in garish shades—and never looking back.
It was a May meeting, I was pleased to see, the last one for the school year. It was the only one I ever remember keeping the notes about or ever bothering to read. I read over such silly things as salaries and awards and lunch money prices and all sorts of other budget items and the school board members and suddenly some of their faces appeared, sitting at the table, munching on the thick sweet rolls the cooks had prepared for us, administrators and board members, in the kitchen of the school cafeteria that was a long hallway and a few doors down, earlier in the day. The gym and cafeteria, an edition to the old brick 3-story school house boasting prominence as the town’s biggest building (unless of course you didn’t included a grain elevator south of town), was where quiet cooks dressed in white had prepared meals for young mouths for years. Even though I was still the building principal, and still sat at one end of the table, the Sup Ben on the other, I noted how I was written down merely as one of the guests in attendance. And that Brent Riddle, who flew in mid-year as music teacher, deign lived in a long trailer down the road apiece from the school, was listed, along with the other teachers—90% or so, 50% of the administrators—who would stay in town, as principal and secondary teacher in the next year’s assignments. I also remember the banquet or something they were having at year’s end, a big end of year gala how I deign sit at the far end table, so far from the middle and the podium as to be as insignificant as possible.
(And you can’t believe how delighted I was to find that Principal Riddle had kicked a kid in the head, his mystery solved, at some point in the following year and, as the saying goes, “Didn’t get on reg’lar.” And Sup Ben, later admitting to me in one of our two conversations, how things “didn’t work out.”)
Well, given my erudite loquacious nature, you’d think that I’d at least call Ben, if just to say howdy. Well, maybe I did call once. But I called the Butte school, where he was school sup halftime and, that year at least, had filled in half-time at both schools, Lynch and Butte, the school board thinking they’d made a great grand deal, a bargain all around. (How, to this day, something that could really never be fully explained or fathomed: Spencer, the nearest town to the west, held a grudge, of sorts, I guess, against Lynch and so Ben, sup at a town not that much further west, Butte, site of the proposed nuclear waste facility, always was faced with the prospects of driving through the gently growing town of Spencer and then onto Lynch, shaking his head no doubt along the way, this strange leap frog, reading over and over the handmade signs that warned against any kind of nuclear nonsense to leak into the Sandhill’s aquifers, the huge underground lake, and kill off the inhabitants in the slowly dying towns. Spencer, of course, not to be outdone, leapfrogged Butte and picked up a town west of Butte, the dying town of Naper, as far from Spencer as Lynch was to Butte. Yet everyone was indeed happy at this intense hatred and animosity that flourished and prospered and thus the arrangement worked very well.) That school board members of the four schools had displayed so much financial acumen in their mostly dead and decaying towns it really was two for the price of one.
You just can’t beat that now can you?
No, I think I called Ben for an address or was it to get his permission to use him as a reference? I’m not sure. All I know is, I never ever called the Lynch school where I’d been hung out to dry, dear wife eight and one-half months pregnant. I just rang the school bell and walked on, over to my small gray house, that used to be a bright Pepto pink, never looking back.
Oh, I would’ve called the school, I’m sure. I’m sure I would’ve called and one of the secretaries, Tammy or Deb, would’ve answered, shooing students in and out of the office, with a chirpy “Oh hello Mr. Hart how are you doing? Let me see if he’s in. Oh no, I’m so sorry, he’s tied up in a meeting right now, is there a number where you can be reached?”
No, I definitely would’ve called except one afternoon I came into Ben’s office. I was collegial and congenial; after all, we were both administrators, you see. Except one day skirting by the secretaries’ office (never put them to work, did I; I had no idea what I should tell them to do) I heard Ben say, consolingly, ‘Oh, you’ll find something. Something’ll turn up.” Then he’d give out this harsh German laugh that was more like a bark. Did he say the other man’s name? I’m not sure, but I somehow discerned that it was the former Lynch Eagle superintendent, calling, searching, hung out to dry by the ole town; looking for answers, for help, for a job.
I remember, looking at the school yearbook, how the previous year, for some celebration—Homecoming was it? Some parade they were always fashioning, some celebration or Halloween Prankstership they had him in a clown outfit or a jailbird outfit or something. He was just standing there, looking silly, looking on with big ears. Yes, now I remember, he was dressed as a rabbit. And he was the school superintendent. (Please don’t tell me he had his doctorate; I will slit my wrists.) So basically, that’s what they thought of their educators: as clowns, as rabbits, as jailbirds.
I remember at one of the early school year festivities they asked if I wanted to sit on the plank so they could throw and dump me in the tank of water in a full cold cattle tank. Sure, I said, caught up in the very spirit of the thing, why not. Promptly, I saw grown men grab a baseball, wind up, and promptly dunk me in the water tank. I remember how it’d been a cold cloudy day; I immediately got a severe cold and coughed my way to school for a couple days.
No, by school year’s end, I’d wised up to their tricks. And right then and there I said, you’ll never ever catch me calling that Lynch school, no way.
Even today, I can’t even look at the number. The phone number. I never called. Not once.
And thereby hangs a tale.
BUT LET’S TURN OUR DISCUSSION TO that very quite middling time of when I was long-term sped sub at Kiewitty a decade later. Another era, more or less and I noted from the BULLETON BOARD that below the lead paragraph of Employees of the Month Named there is…no, that section is Kudos: Don Feree, math teacher at Millard West High School, has been named a Star of Education. It’s on the backside. The info I just happened to come across. The title is Board Briefs: A look of what happened at the board of education meeting.
THE LAST COLUMN, and see, like I inferred above, am an old educator, scribing through some worthless old assignments, forgotten grades, baleful urgings for attention.
Beneath PERSONNEL ACTION
A resignation was accepted for Ann Huxtable-Scates, media specialist at Hitchcock Elementary School.
A leave of absence was rescinded for Amanda Hegge, resource teacher at Reeder Elementary School.
And then finally, FINALLY, without further ado about nothing:
Voluntary (drum roll) early separations were approved for Jeanne Backlund, family and consumer science teacher at Central Middle school…Phil Koch, principal at Kiewit Middle School….There were nine total, in bold face, in alphabetical order.
There you have it. The big guy is going to the retirement pie, the end of career sky. Never once suspecting that a scathing critique (please see above) has been prepared for him.
Ironic, because this was just before I stumbled across the Lynch school board notes. And double triple ironic because the front part of the Millard Bulletin has, at the lower right corner, a fact that this is “Nebraska School Board Recognition Week, January 22-28. A little icon says, “Citizen Leaders.”
This fanfare announced and recorded: January 17, 2006 No. 9
And now we have to take the D-train to the Bronx.
South Bronx
I stepped out and thru the window of the science classroom and looked at the New & Blue & suddenly there was the South Bronx starring at me—the concreted up windows, the empty quart beer bottle in front of the door of Wade JHS that was brown and empty & maybe it could be pushed over by the wind.
Out of the corner of my left eye was the table of periodic elements.
Leaving, see a car jacked up, hood up, a few people crawling underneath.
Now it’s a new blue track then a soft grade of a hill and two-story split-level round houses with dark teak wood surrounding the grass running up the short hill.
I looked at the soft landing. Mrs. Jespers steps out and sets down a full flower basket. I hear the science teacher and turn and look. “Take out your notebooks,” the tall science teacher says to the class. I return to the window, I return to the Bronx.
“They’re always workin’ on their cars,” Steve Wasserman said, a mixture of resentment, scorn & reporting in his voice, driving out of the South Bronx neighborhood, away from Wade JHS where they’d commenced a day of instruction, no concern of theirs any longer.
The small chain that was attached to the grill.
“Why’d they do that?”
“Keep them from stealin’ the battery. After I got my battery stolen I had to get a chain,” Wass said. “It’s prob’ly in one of the cars there.”
A shout came from a window. There was a quart of beer next to a joint next to a pack of cigarettes.
It was both tantalizing and tempting.
It won when he stepped off W11th St. and onto the red brick that was the upper level of the park. A few men were sitting on benches. One of them looked over at him. He waved.
“Hey, Tex, get up a pound for a six-pack.”
It was camaraderie. He moved closer to the park benches.
“Hey, Nebraska, what’s up?”
“Not much.”
“You teachin’ ‘em anything or they just clowin’ around?”
The teacher, Tex, remembering how he’d talked with the uncles of a PR student after school that day and it had come out okay, was feeling slightly mo’ confident than usual. The kid had had the back of his head banged against the doorknob from the teacher’s push—a half-defense, a half-offense maneuver—and it had bled profusely. That Friday, the principal came into his classroom and suggested he leave the building early that day, accurately predicting the clan would become enraged, possible mayhem in the South Bronx classroom.
“Oh yeah,” he said, setting his brown satchel on the bench and looking at a few of Jerry Mudd’s companions sittin’ on the concrete table marked out in a chess or checkers grid that was never used but now upon which a few brown bags of wrapped around quart bottles which the teacher knew contained cold beer now sat stoically. Somebody earlier in the day had hustled over to the nearby Deli to make the purchase.
It could have been him.
“Hey Dom.”
Dom, a swarthy Italian, always a dull white apron girded about a protruding belly, looked up. His thick black wavy hair, one could imagine his forefathers stepping off the boat just last week with a young son who would learn English but in each and everyone there was a sound of the shore lapping up, breaking over the piers, voices over the waves.
“Hey, how’s it goin’?” Dom asked, not smiling, his eyes surveying the three narrow lanes of the small convenience store that was not naturally lit insofar as the afternoon sun that shone through the windows was drowned out by the neon stuck squarely into a false ceiling.
Afternoon sun, retreating to the west, shone brilliantly through the windows that looked out on what they called the bum’s park that resolutely hugged the intersection of Bleecker and Hudson streets.
“I gotta twelve pack.”
“Oh, okay.”
Tex didn’t know when he started getting credit at the Deli.
“You don’t have to hang me like that.”
“Your mama.”
“Your ma.”
He saw ruff n tuff neighborhood kids kiss each other, leaning their body against the concrete bank, near the coffin-shaped concrete flowerbed where nothing ever grew as nothing was ever planted.
“Is that dirt Nebraska?” John Short had asked.
Short had overheard Tex discuss his marijuana growing operation outside his apt. window.
“I got my apt. fire escape,” he’d reported at the Horse. “I just planted some seeds and some tomatoes.”
Was that dirt brought from Nebraska? Short wanted to know.
“I’m gonna annex my apt. to Cuba,” John always said. Tex had sat down on the high stool and put his $10 bill on the bar at the White Horse Tavern.
“Nah,” Tex thought, feeling the cold against his throat, the hops ‘n barley risin’ to his lips and suddenly he was transformed to shellin’ corn outside the double-tiered corncrib & watchin’ the extra set of hired men his dad had requisitioned for extra duty that day, borrowin’ the help from a nearby farmer or a guy or two workin’ in the machine shop in town.
Tex, small for his age, and therefore had always to make amends, shoveled right along with the best of ‘em. After kickin’ down a wave of corn, the ears not having moved since harvest, now were lodged free from where the tall yellow Kelly Ryan elevator had transported them on a late October night and then left ‘em, a coyote howling in the hills, the stars brilliant in the sky.
He shoveled right next to the grown men, furiously shoveling, showing that he, too, was a man & should be regarded as such. He caught his breath a little in the shade as the cattle truck pulled away & saw a pile of split red corncobs; next to it was a pile of cornshucks they’d loader over the fence for the hogs—who come running and squealing—to stomp on and chew.
Dad had come back from town during the intermission with a six-pack of Hams beer in short stub bottles & the sight of the beer on the farm gave the young boy a start and he greedily drank his pop while the men drowned their beer.
Now he was a man at the White Horse Tavern; he’d known women & he’d known kid & he thought ruefully that that indeed was a good id Short had had.
But now a year or so later, he didn’t go to the bar anymore but drank with the bums and the boys in the park & surprised when they kissed each other on the lips.
It was his wont before the park stop was the stop at a small white Opera Deli that sat with its arms folded defiantly on the corner of Bleecker & Hudson.
He walked all tiered up having got off the subway of 7th Ave.; the smell & stall & clutter & wrap: that he could smell the floor where the vendors were & the sweet sickening smell of always makin’ popcorn they ate & and ran over & squealed for room to stomp on & chew; small sacks dropped & stepped on & left the pop corn bags and walked upon rolled up & through a lil gimmie grime a lil oily he wanted to bathe and feel like throwin’ up thinkin’ now about son Jeremy a bit of the ole salt washin’ up on the westernshore was an ocean Away.
Was he watchin' it as dark brown water on the Bank Street pier, the rectangular convection of drifting wood, held forth a ray of hope?
Tex looked west a lot of times those years, the sun setting behind the huge Maxwell coffee house sign. The abandoned pier to his left he could see gay boys dressed in black leather walkin’ in & out of an old metal building silently, in unison.
It all made him drink. He didn’t much care if he drank himself into oblivion.
The clang and grind of the subway train, the immutability of the city.
Why was he so cowardly? Why didn’t he or wouldn’t he go back out there and reclaim his son? But, what would be the point?
He had had to wear the Joe College suit, had made several promises. Still he hadn’t found a steady job.
“Hey, Tex, wake up. You look like you’re in a fog.”
“Wha huh. Oh yeah. I guess I was just thinking.
“Yeah, well quit ‘cher thinkin’ and gitme a beer.”
And another.
VVVVVV
He was workin’ on Rita, the gal from Ecuador, the Galapagos. She was just this checkout girl at the local D’Agastino’s. Because he was sans family, it was embarrassing almost to go in and check out his usual fare: tuna fish white and dark so he could mix the two and make himself a sandwich. He’d done this so often he could hardly look at it.
“Hi, how are you,” she would say, smiling.
“Fine,” he would return.
It must’ve been her after-school job because he suddenly began to see her more than once. She was always friendly to him.
The chatting continued and, believe it or not, he invited her to his apartment. He was surprised, when this off-hand comment was able to secure her visit.
She came up and she was not the rather diminutive girl in a D’Ag outfit but a shapely schoolgirl with breasts protruding. She was wearing a mini-skirt. He thought it was just a chat session, come up and visit and say hello, drink some soda or something.
It was that day but a little later when he began to help her with homework; the last part of the year, they began to kiss. It was just soft and harmless but he did get beneath the bra and saw like all senior girl’s in h.s. the uprightness of her breasts. They were brown, almost like it was a round brownie his mom used to make with just the touch of the hand or whiff of the finger, the towel draped around her shoulder, speeding about the kitchen with a stiff broom that punched the dirt he should’ve taken to NYC and remains of the farm her husband Jim and boy Ronnie had tracked in from the chores. (Mom said she could always tell what season it was by what was tracked in from the farm.)
Save Rita’s brownies had a little pink nipple in the middle that, while certainly not the sugar that was somewhere in the recess of the somewhat heavy timber but had, for its merit, a touch of the liveliness that, combined with the perfume the girl wore, quickly excited his loins and he felt sensation.
No, it was not the checkout girl from D’Agastino’s before him but a young woman smiling and beaming up at him.
“Hi, how are you?”
It was like she had a funny way of saying “are.” Like it was a word she’d just learned and liked to say it.
“Fine, come on in.”
Rita stepped into his third floor dark apt. with tall windows that faced the north. Tex was always trying to devise and discern ways to bring in more light. The two tall windows in the outside room looked out across the courtyard to the back of an old square brick building he learned was a printing factory long since closed.
Sometimes, and he never counted the times the large metal doors opened and slammed shut because it didn’t seem to be of any importance to him; he’d never hear the large metal door creak open yet was always mildly startled when it banged shut when moved by an unknown cause: a wind would come up from the Atlantic and work itself to New York Harbor and slowly, like a light vessel, move north. At that time, before he became convinced that the drunken state was best ship to be in, he’d hear the steady bang and clash of the large unfastened metal doors, spinning on their hinges, almost like a message he could not discern.
Like the lack of sun, it represented a condition in the apartment confines he could do nothing about.
When Rita was there, when other guests would come by, there was no need to worry about the noise on the other side of the courtyard. He betrayed the light problem by turning on many lights. They would glow furtively, almost in defiance.
It mattered little to Rita. It mattered even less to other visitors to his apartment that, Tex ruefully admitted, were far and few between.
Maybe it had something to do with the light.
“Have a seat.”
Nor was there much in the way of seating arrangements. It was another thing, like the absence of light; he didn’t like but could do little about. The small bench that his Uncle Frank’s friend Donald had given him his first months in NYC —along with a double-loaf toaster he need always watch—proved to be uncomfortable to sit on for very long. However, because it was of the right dimension to fit in the small corner of the apartment’s front room, medium-brown, diminutive, looking almost like it should be there, it possibly had the longest life of any of the furniture.
“Here?”
“Well, you can sit over there.” Tex gestured to the single bed. He secretly congratulated himself for making it. “It might be more comfortable.”
After Rita sat down, they chatted briefly before she had to get back to her 7th Ave. IRT subway to her home in Queens with her large family and strict parents.
Later, his last months in NYC, in the village, in the apt. with northern light: he thought of a day when, walking with Rita from D’Ag, he met up with a park regular who, while he was still in school, was able to hang on the outside fringes without getting too mixed up in any of the darker proceedings.
“Hey, Tex, how’re ya doin’?”
Later, he was again accosted.
“Hey, Tex, who was that pretty girl you were walkin’ with?”
“Oh,” Tex responded, putting a beer to his lips, trying to hide his pleasure, “just a friend I know.”
However, he thought how, walking with Rita past the bum’s park, the young Jewish student had had to take a second look and change his delivery.
“Hey, Tex, how’re you doin’?” replaced “Tex, the alcoholic teacher.”
It was one of the small advances in the increasingly hard tide of reality.
VVVVVV
“I need a place to crash.”
It was when the alcoholic teacher was trying to make to the most of it, traveling purposely everyday to the South Bronx. His intro to the park to a one Dennis Hanley months before had grown ponderous and threatening.
Later, “How come you’re not comin’ around no more.”
Later, “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna take nothin’.”
He dreaded to hear the heavy steps coming up to his third floor apt., coming most foul to the back of the old building.
“Mudd’s dad said I can’t be crashin’ at their place ‘til the end of the month.”
Tex was sober. He didn’t like to drink during the school days and, for the most part, held hard to this pledge.
He woke up and saw that there was a large object on the floor by the small park bench no one had sat on for years for more than two minutes. He had thought, Please tell me last night’s sudden arrival was a strange dream: no, there was somebody there, curled in a fetal position. It was Hanley. All this time he’d implored Rita to spend the night; he winds up with a drunken Hanley.
He turned on the radio. WINS NEWS blared loudly; he showered and shaved and ate a quick breakfast banging and slamming but the large object on the floor remained inert. A good trek down Bleecker to 7th Ave. onto W4th St. to the 6th Ave. IND line awaited. He could almost hear the conductor’s voice announce, “D-train to the Bronx;” he could see the subway doors of the fairly new cars closing on riders reading their newspapers.
“You gotta go now.” He tapped the prone man firmly on the shoulder.
He was dressed in his South Bronx ammunition. A brief case. A pen in his pocket.
“Hey, what’s up, I ain’t gonna take nothin’.”
Hanley proceeded to get up and move straight to the kitchen and squeeze his way between the stove and the middle window that was the airway through which you could look down at the floors below and the one floor above. It was an airspace or air duct or airshaft that crowded the entryway between a gas burning stove and window that Hanley proceeded to lumber through.
For as drunk as he was the night before, Hanley remembered where his beer was. He stooped down to the small refrigerator upon which a dish container sat, opened the small door, moved his hand past a tuna fish sandwich and pulled out a beer from the bag he’d tossed there the night before.
Tex watched Hanley stand with a cold beer in his hands then lumber back though the narrow confines between the stove and the window and, having clearance, popped the top.
The fizz was light as the beer was cold.
Hanley strode past Tex the teacher without comment.
Tex could see the eastern light begin to lighten the brick of the dark factory across the courtyard, light indirectly the mechanical clock on the fireplace mantel. It told him it was time. He stood over a strange visitor, grasping tightly his satchel.
“I’ve got to go. You need to leave now.”
“Don’t worry,” Hanley said, hunching his shoulders, putting a beer to his lips. “I ain’t gonna take nothin’.”
Tex opened the door and moved down the stars; unsettled feelings of fear and regret rumbled in his gut. He couldn’t get it out of his mind through the teaching day, standing over his recalcitrant South Bronx learners, watching the clock.
It was near June. The days were getting lighter and longer, the cobbled Bank Street before him began to dance with morning light.
He knew Dennis the Menace would be around again.
VVVVV
In large part, he saw how he’d brought much of it upon himself. He thought he could handle the drinking but other trips to the fog pond hadn’t helped.
In fact, he was beginning to feel proud of himself.
At last the neighborhood—insofar as the small circle of friends—was his.
“Hey, Tex, what’s up?”
“Not much, how’re ya doin’?”
“Still drivin’ that limousine?”
“Oh yeah,” the young man replied, “Still doin’ it.”
In fact, while it was beginning to get easier for him to traverse the general confines of NYC and shoot his snout of the black Caddy to the airport, it was beginning to lose part of the thrill of newness. It was a job to do. He had to do it. It was to supplant his income from the teaching stage. However, when he should’ve been honorable and obey the law and send the money to the court of Dakota County and help pay for his child support, he deigned hold an infantile grudge, sending money in only sporadic bursts.
He thought of Mudd tellin’ him how Dennis had hurled a TV through the window.
They were all in the end room of the apartment. It’s where Tex had moved his bed, moving from the middle room where now sat his electric typewriter and his old sound system and some college textbooks.
Hanley shook his head.
“I told ’er if she didn’t shut up I was gonna do it,” Hanley said.
Mudd turned and looked at him. “Brand new color TV. Fifth Avenue apartment. Threw it right out the fucking window.” He shook his head, laughing—the sheer insanity.
“So, Nebraska, ya better be careful, otherwise Dennis ‘ll throw your TV out the window.”
Tex was gettin’ a buzz on. He looked at his small black and white TV on the floor. He rarely watched it. He wouldn’t really care that much. But just the violence of heaving it through one of the tall windows that faced out onto the courtyard was hard to picture. “I sure hope the hell not.”
He didn’t know if Hanley had squired any kids or not. He didn’t think so. While the teacher/limo driver was guilty on the support payments, wife abuse, he couldn’t see himself throwing a color TV out an apartment window on Fifth Avenue.
“That Dennis,” Mudd said, “he can get pretty crazy. That’s why he’s Dennis the Menace.
No, the young man thought. He’d never do that. That was insane. Those NYC people are just too crazy. It's high time to head back home.
But I now after a Sunday of preaching that today you take a rest.
Which I seemed to do with this blog this weekend.
Bren, limping, was nonetheless inserted in the game. The O'Neal kids are fast. But it was good to have him play. I mean, mine was a total camp out in the basement and write. The project of baseball. Skip the meeting. But, as 11:30 rolled around, we found out where to go. I e'd a coach--which turned out to be the wrong one--to find out when the game was. No reply, I thought the heck with it. But, he did limp down the court and fired up a three. They called it a two but it was nuthin' but net...and so then I went to the umpire meeting. Not a complete waste and wash.
Today's post is education:
Phil Koch to retire…why does this matter, why does this mean anything? Except there was a pile of papers on the floor. Where son Brendan has thrown his materials that have been graded with red ink and purple ink and a few hand-drawn stars and I happen to see the flier that is the news of the Millard District. Let’s call it what it exactly is: MILLARD in huge font then below that it has BULLETIN BOARD: newsletter is published twice monthly during the school year scrolled below the masthead. So, an old educator myself—I mean, come on, it’s almost ridiculous—I find myself, cleaning clearing my basement area, piles of paper and notes and old magazines, getting ready for bench arrival the food arrival and what do I come across but the last school board notice from Lynch Public Schools. I could handle reading it. However, even after almost 15 years, I still can’t look at the phone number or the address at the top of the page. This, thinking back (and I’ve thought this before, and congratulate myself every time I think of it), was a number I never called. I never ever once called the school.
I remember, the last day there, when my duties were done, when Larry Eilers had finished sweeping down the floor and adding a mixture of linseed oil or something to make the wood floors of the creaky old building shine, and then, always coming to school just at the end of the Paul Harvey broadcast that finished at 7:25 a.m., a personage that I loathed, a voice I cringed at such that I would shut my door making sure I didn’t have to hear a breath of it and sometimes Eilers would see me walking by, hands in my ears, look up from his broom and nod his head and greet me. “Heard you had some high-octane stuff last night” he commented one time stepping into my long but somewhat narrow little office and then, another time, another one of the quite personal questions, the spokesperson for the town, near school year’s end, leaning on his huge push broom, “Where are you gonna have that baby?” Kath so preg, so huge I had to pull her off the couch. Now jovial end of school year because I was so close to a job offer miles and miles south I said, “Oh,” smiling I was, off hand, “maybe somewhere on the interstate.” Did Larry smile in return and shake his head? The only thing I remember doing in outright and utter defiance was grabbing the school bell that was outside the double front door of the school and ringing it a couple times and walking on over to my formerly pink house—the town having some sort of predilection for pink painted houses in garish shades—and never looking back.
It was a May meeting, I was pleased to see, the last one for the school year. It was the only one I ever remember keeping the notes about or ever bothering to read. I read over such silly things as salaries and awards and lunch money prices and all sorts of other budget items and the school board members and suddenly some of their faces appeared, sitting at the table, munching on the thick sweet rolls the cooks had prepared for us, administrators and board members, in the kitchen of the school cafeteria that was a long hallway and a few doors down, earlier in the day. The gym and cafeteria, an edition to the old brick 3-story school house boasting prominence as the town’s biggest building (unless of course you didn’t included a grain elevator south of town), was where quiet cooks dressed in white had prepared meals for young mouths for years. Even though I was still the building principal, and still sat at one end of the table, the Sup Ben on the other, I noted how I was written down merely as one of the guests in attendance. And that Brent Riddle, who flew in mid-year as music teacher, deign lived in a long trailer down the road apiece from the school, was listed, along with the other teachers—90% or so, 50% of the administrators—who would stay in town, as principal and secondary teacher in the next year’s assignments. I also remember the banquet or something they were having at year’s end, a big end of year gala how I deign sit at the far end table, so far from the middle and the podium as to be as insignificant as possible.
(And you can’t believe how delighted I was to find that Principal Riddle had kicked a kid in the head, his mystery solved, at some point in the following year and, as the saying goes, “Didn’t get on reg’lar.” And Sup Ben, later admitting to me in one of our two conversations, how things “didn’t work out.”)
Well, given my erudite loquacious nature, you’d think that I’d at least call Ben, if just to say howdy. Well, maybe I did call once. But I called the Butte school, where he was school sup halftime and, that year at least, had filled in half-time at both schools, Lynch and Butte, the school board thinking they’d made a great grand deal, a bargain all around. (How, to this day, something that could really never be fully explained or fathomed: Spencer, the nearest town to the west, held a grudge, of sorts, I guess, against Lynch and so Ben, sup at a town not that much further west, Butte, site of the proposed nuclear waste facility, always was faced with the prospects of driving through the gently growing town of Spencer and then onto Lynch, shaking his head no doubt along the way, this strange leap frog, reading over and over the handmade signs that warned against any kind of nuclear nonsense to leak into the Sandhill’s aquifers, the huge underground lake, and kill off the inhabitants in the slowly dying towns. Spencer, of course, not to be outdone, leapfrogged Butte and picked up a town west of Butte, the dying town of Naper, as far from Spencer as Lynch was to Butte. Yet everyone was indeed happy at this intense hatred and animosity that flourished and prospered and thus the arrangement worked very well.) That school board members of the four schools had displayed so much financial acumen in their mostly dead and decaying towns it really was two for the price of one.
You just can’t beat that now can you?
No, I think I called Ben for an address or was it to get his permission to use him as a reference? I’m not sure. All I know is, I never ever called the Lynch school where I’d been hung out to dry, dear wife eight and one-half months pregnant. I just rang the school bell and walked on, over to my small gray house, that used to be a bright Pepto pink, never looking back.
Oh, I would’ve called the school, I’m sure. I’m sure I would’ve called and one of the secretaries, Tammy or Deb, would’ve answered, shooing students in and out of the office, with a chirpy “Oh hello Mr. Hart how are you doing? Let me see if he’s in. Oh no, I’m so sorry, he’s tied up in a meeting right now, is there a number where you can be reached?”
No, I definitely would’ve called except one afternoon I came into Ben’s office. I was collegial and congenial; after all, we were both administrators, you see. Except one day skirting by the secretaries’ office (never put them to work, did I; I had no idea what I should tell them to do) I heard Ben say, consolingly, ‘Oh, you’ll find something. Something’ll turn up.” Then he’d give out this harsh German laugh that was more like a bark. Did he say the other man’s name? I’m not sure, but I somehow discerned that it was the former Lynch Eagle superintendent, calling, searching, hung out to dry by the ole town; looking for answers, for help, for a job.
I remember, looking at the school yearbook, how the previous year, for some celebration—Homecoming was it? Some parade they were always fashioning, some celebration or Halloween Prankstership they had him in a clown outfit or a jailbird outfit or something. He was just standing there, looking silly, looking on with big ears. Yes, now I remember, he was dressed as a rabbit. And he was the school superintendent. (Please don’t tell me he had his doctorate; I will slit my wrists.) So basically, that’s what they thought of their educators: as clowns, as rabbits, as jailbirds.
I remember at one of the early school year festivities they asked if I wanted to sit on the plank so they could throw and dump me in the tank of water in a full cold cattle tank. Sure, I said, caught up in the very spirit of the thing, why not. Promptly, I saw grown men grab a baseball, wind up, and promptly dunk me in the water tank. I remember how it’d been a cold cloudy day; I immediately got a severe cold and coughed my way to school for a couple days.
No, by school year’s end, I’d wised up to their tricks. And right then and there I said, you’ll never ever catch me calling that Lynch school, no way.
Even today, I can’t even look at the number. The phone number. I never called. Not once.
And thereby hangs a tale.
BUT LET’S TURN OUR DISCUSSION TO that very quite middling time of when I was long-term sped sub at Kiewitty a decade later. Another era, more or less and I noted from the BULLETON BOARD that below the lead paragraph of Employees of the Month Named there is…no, that section is Kudos: Don Feree, math teacher at Millard West High School, has been named a Star of Education. It’s on the backside. The info I just happened to come across. The title is Board Briefs: A look of what happened at the board of education meeting.
THE LAST COLUMN, and see, like I inferred above, am an old educator, scribing through some worthless old assignments, forgotten grades, baleful urgings for attention.
Beneath PERSONNEL ACTION
A resignation was accepted for Ann Huxtable-Scates, media specialist at Hitchcock Elementary School.
A leave of absence was rescinded for Amanda Hegge, resource teacher at Reeder Elementary School.
And then finally, FINALLY, without further ado about nothing:
Voluntary (drum roll) early separations were approved for Jeanne Backlund, family and consumer science teacher at Central Middle school…Phil Koch, principal at Kiewit Middle School….There were nine total, in bold face, in alphabetical order.
There you have it. The big guy is going to the retirement pie, the end of career sky. Never once suspecting that a scathing critique (please see above) has been prepared for him.
Ironic, because this was just before I stumbled across the Lynch school board notes. And double triple ironic because the front part of the Millard Bulletin has, at the lower right corner, a fact that this is “Nebraska School Board Recognition Week, January 22-28. A little icon says, “Citizen Leaders.”
This fanfare announced and recorded: January 17, 2006 No. 9
And now we have to take the D-train to the Bronx.
South Bronx
I stepped out and thru the window of the science classroom and looked at the New & Blue & suddenly there was the South Bronx starring at me—the concreted up windows, the empty quart beer bottle in front of the door of Wade JHS that was brown and empty & maybe it could be pushed over by the wind.
Out of the corner of my left eye was the table of periodic elements.
Leaving, see a car jacked up, hood up, a few people crawling underneath.
Now it’s a new blue track then a soft grade of a hill and two-story split-level round houses with dark teak wood surrounding the grass running up the short hill.
I looked at the soft landing. Mrs. Jespers steps out and sets down a full flower basket. I hear the science teacher and turn and look. “Take out your notebooks,” the tall science teacher says to the class. I return to the window, I return to the Bronx.
“They’re always workin’ on their cars,” Steve Wasserman said, a mixture of resentment, scorn & reporting in his voice, driving out of the South Bronx neighborhood, away from Wade JHS where they’d commenced a day of instruction, no concern of theirs any longer.
The small chain that was attached to the grill.
“Why’d they do that?”
“Keep them from stealin’ the battery. After I got my battery stolen I had to get a chain,” Wass said. “It’s prob’ly in one of the cars there.”
A shout came from a window. There was a quart of beer next to a joint next to a pack of cigarettes.
It was both tantalizing and tempting.
It won when he stepped off W11th St. and onto the red brick that was the upper level of the park. A few men were sitting on benches. One of them looked over at him. He waved.
“Hey, Tex, get up a pound for a six-pack.”
It was camaraderie. He moved closer to the park benches.
“Hey, Nebraska, what’s up?”
“Not much.”
“You teachin’ ‘em anything or they just clowin’ around?”
The teacher, Tex, remembering how he’d talked with the uncles of a PR student after school that day and it had come out okay, was feeling slightly mo’ confident than usual. The kid had had the back of his head banged against the doorknob from the teacher’s push—a half-defense, a half-offense maneuver—and it had bled profusely. That Friday, the principal came into his classroom and suggested he leave the building early that day, accurately predicting the clan would become enraged, possible mayhem in the South Bronx classroom.
“Oh yeah,” he said, setting his brown satchel on the bench and looking at a few of Jerry Mudd’s companions sittin’ on the concrete table marked out in a chess or checkers grid that was never used but now upon which a few brown bags of wrapped around quart bottles which the teacher knew contained cold beer now sat stoically. Somebody earlier in the day had hustled over to the nearby Deli to make the purchase.
It could have been him.
“Hey Dom.”
Dom, a swarthy Italian, always a dull white apron girded about a protruding belly, looked up. His thick black wavy hair, one could imagine his forefathers stepping off the boat just last week with a young son who would learn English but in each and everyone there was a sound of the shore lapping up, breaking over the piers, voices over the waves.
“Hey, how’s it goin’?” Dom asked, not smiling, his eyes surveying the three narrow lanes of the small convenience store that was not naturally lit insofar as the afternoon sun that shone through the windows was drowned out by the neon stuck squarely into a false ceiling.
Afternoon sun, retreating to the west, shone brilliantly through the windows that looked out on what they called the bum’s park that resolutely hugged the intersection of Bleecker and Hudson streets.
“I gotta twelve pack.”
“Oh, okay.”
Tex didn’t know when he started getting credit at the Deli.
“You don’t have to hang me like that.”
“Your mama.”
“Your ma.”
He saw ruff n tuff neighborhood kids kiss each other, leaning their body against the concrete bank, near the coffin-shaped concrete flowerbed where nothing ever grew as nothing was ever planted.
“Is that dirt Nebraska?” John Short had asked.
Short had overheard Tex discuss his marijuana growing operation outside his apt. window.
“I got my apt. fire escape,” he’d reported at the Horse. “I just planted some seeds and some tomatoes.”
Was that dirt brought from Nebraska? Short wanted to know.
“I’m gonna annex my apt. to Cuba,” John always said. Tex had sat down on the high stool and put his $10 bill on the bar at the White Horse Tavern.
“Nah,” Tex thought, feeling the cold against his throat, the hops ‘n barley risin’ to his lips and suddenly he was transformed to shellin’ corn outside the double-tiered corncrib & watchin’ the extra set of hired men his dad had requisitioned for extra duty that day, borrowin’ the help from a nearby farmer or a guy or two workin’ in the machine shop in town.
Tex, small for his age, and therefore had always to make amends, shoveled right along with the best of ‘em. After kickin’ down a wave of corn, the ears not having moved since harvest, now were lodged free from where the tall yellow Kelly Ryan elevator had transported them on a late October night and then left ‘em, a coyote howling in the hills, the stars brilliant in the sky.
He shoveled right next to the grown men, furiously shoveling, showing that he, too, was a man & should be regarded as such. He caught his breath a little in the shade as the cattle truck pulled away & saw a pile of split red corncobs; next to it was a pile of cornshucks they’d loader over the fence for the hogs—who come running and squealing—to stomp on and chew.
Dad had come back from town during the intermission with a six-pack of Hams beer in short stub bottles & the sight of the beer on the farm gave the young boy a start and he greedily drank his pop while the men drowned their beer.
Now he was a man at the White Horse Tavern; he’d known women & he’d known kid & he thought ruefully that that indeed was a good id Short had had.
But now a year or so later, he didn’t go to the bar anymore but drank with the bums and the boys in the park & surprised when they kissed each other on the lips.
It was his wont before the park stop was the stop at a small white Opera Deli that sat with its arms folded defiantly on the corner of Bleecker & Hudson.
He walked all tiered up having got off the subway of 7th Ave.; the smell & stall & clutter & wrap: that he could smell the floor where the vendors were & the sweet sickening smell of always makin’ popcorn they ate & and ran over & squealed for room to stomp on & chew; small sacks dropped & stepped on & left the pop corn bags and walked upon rolled up & through a lil gimmie grime a lil oily he wanted to bathe and feel like throwin’ up thinkin’ now about son Jeremy a bit of the ole salt washin’ up on the westernshore was an ocean Away.
Was he watchin' it as dark brown water on the Bank Street pier, the rectangular convection of drifting wood, held forth a ray of hope?
Tex looked west a lot of times those years, the sun setting behind the huge Maxwell coffee house sign. The abandoned pier to his left he could see gay boys dressed in black leather walkin’ in & out of an old metal building silently, in unison.
It all made him drink. He didn’t much care if he drank himself into oblivion.
The clang and grind of the subway train, the immutability of the city.
Why was he so cowardly? Why didn’t he or wouldn’t he go back out there and reclaim his son? But, what would be the point?
He had had to wear the Joe College suit, had made several promises. Still he hadn’t found a steady job.
“Hey, Tex, wake up. You look like you’re in a fog.”
“Wha huh. Oh yeah. I guess I was just thinking.
“Yeah, well quit ‘cher thinkin’ and gitme a beer.”
And another.
VVVVVV
He was workin’ on Rita, the gal from Ecuador, the Galapagos. She was just this checkout girl at the local D’Agastino’s. Because he was sans family, it was embarrassing almost to go in and check out his usual fare: tuna fish white and dark so he could mix the two and make himself a sandwich. He’d done this so often he could hardly look at it.
“Hi, how are you,” she would say, smiling.
“Fine,” he would return.
It must’ve been her after-school job because he suddenly began to see her more than once. She was always friendly to him.
The chatting continued and, believe it or not, he invited her to his apartment. He was surprised, when this off-hand comment was able to secure her visit.
She came up and she was not the rather diminutive girl in a D’Ag outfit but a shapely schoolgirl with breasts protruding. She was wearing a mini-skirt. He thought it was just a chat session, come up and visit and say hello, drink some soda or something.
It was that day but a little later when he began to help her with homework; the last part of the year, they began to kiss. It was just soft and harmless but he did get beneath the bra and saw like all senior girl’s in h.s. the uprightness of her breasts. They were brown, almost like it was a round brownie his mom used to make with just the touch of the hand or whiff of the finger, the towel draped around her shoulder, speeding about the kitchen with a stiff broom that punched the dirt he should’ve taken to NYC and remains of the farm her husband Jim and boy Ronnie had tracked in from the chores. (Mom said she could always tell what season it was by what was tracked in from the farm.)
Save Rita’s brownies had a little pink nipple in the middle that, while certainly not the sugar that was somewhere in the recess of the somewhat heavy timber but had, for its merit, a touch of the liveliness that, combined with the perfume the girl wore, quickly excited his loins and he felt sensation.
No, it was not the checkout girl from D’Agastino’s before him but a young woman smiling and beaming up at him.
“Hi, how are you?”
It was like she had a funny way of saying “are.” Like it was a word she’d just learned and liked to say it.
“Fine, come on in.”
Rita stepped into his third floor dark apt. with tall windows that faced the north. Tex was always trying to devise and discern ways to bring in more light. The two tall windows in the outside room looked out across the courtyard to the back of an old square brick building he learned was a printing factory long since closed.
Sometimes, and he never counted the times the large metal doors opened and slammed shut because it didn’t seem to be of any importance to him; he’d never hear the large metal door creak open yet was always mildly startled when it banged shut when moved by an unknown cause: a wind would come up from the Atlantic and work itself to New York Harbor and slowly, like a light vessel, move north. At that time, before he became convinced that the drunken state was best ship to be in, he’d hear the steady bang and clash of the large unfastened metal doors, spinning on their hinges, almost like a message he could not discern.
Like the lack of sun, it represented a condition in the apartment confines he could do nothing about.
When Rita was there, when other guests would come by, there was no need to worry about the noise on the other side of the courtyard. He betrayed the light problem by turning on many lights. They would glow furtively, almost in defiance.
It mattered little to Rita. It mattered even less to other visitors to his apartment that, Tex ruefully admitted, were far and few between.
Maybe it had something to do with the light.
“Have a seat.”
Nor was there much in the way of seating arrangements. It was another thing, like the absence of light; he didn’t like but could do little about. The small bench that his Uncle Frank’s friend Donald had given him his first months in NYC —along with a double-loaf toaster he need always watch—proved to be uncomfortable to sit on for very long. However, because it was of the right dimension to fit in the small corner of the apartment’s front room, medium-brown, diminutive, looking almost like it should be there, it possibly had the longest life of any of the furniture.
“Here?”
“Well, you can sit over there.” Tex gestured to the single bed. He secretly congratulated himself for making it. “It might be more comfortable.”
After Rita sat down, they chatted briefly before she had to get back to her 7th Ave. IRT subway to her home in Queens with her large family and strict parents.
Later, his last months in NYC, in the village, in the apt. with northern light: he thought of a day when, walking with Rita from D’Ag, he met up with a park regular who, while he was still in school, was able to hang on the outside fringes without getting too mixed up in any of the darker proceedings.
“Hey, Tex, how’re ya doin’?”
Later, he was again accosted.
“Hey, Tex, who was that pretty girl you were walkin’ with?”
“Oh,” Tex responded, putting a beer to his lips, trying to hide his pleasure, “just a friend I know.”
However, he thought how, walking with Rita past the bum’s park, the young Jewish student had had to take a second look and change his delivery.
“Hey, Tex, how’re you doin’?” replaced “Tex, the alcoholic teacher.”
It was one of the small advances in the increasingly hard tide of reality.
VVVVVV
“I need a place to crash.”
It was when the alcoholic teacher was trying to make to the most of it, traveling purposely everyday to the South Bronx. His intro to the park to a one Dennis Hanley months before had grown ponderous and threatening.
Later, “How come you’re not comin’ around no more.”
Later, “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna take nothin’.”
He dreaded to hear the heavy steps coming up to his third floor apt., coming most foul to the back of the old building.
“Mudd’s dad said I can’t be crashin’ at their place ‘til the end of the month.”
Tex was sober. He didn’t like to drink during the school days and, for the most part, held hard to this pledge.
He woke up and saw that there was a large object on the floor by the small park bench no one had sat on for years for more than two minutes. He had thought, Please tell me last night’s sudden arrival was a strange dream: no, there was somebody there, curled in a fetal position. It was Hanley. All this time he’d implored Rita to spend the night; he winds up with a drunken Hanley.
He turned on the radio. WINS NEWS blared loudly; he showered and shaved and ate a quick breakfast banging and slamming but the large object on the floor remained inert. A good trek down Bleecker to 7th Ave. onto W4th St. to the 6th Ave. IND line awaited. He could almost hear the conductor’s voice announce, “D-train to the Bronx;” he could see the subway doors of the fairly new cars closing on riders reading their newspapers.
“You gotta go now.” He tapped the prone man firmly on the shoulder.
He was dressed in his South Bronx ammunition. A brief case. A pen in his pocket.
“Hey, what’s up, I ain’t gonna take nothin’.”
Hanley proceeded to get up and move straight to the kitchen and squeeze his way between the stove and the middle window that was the airway through which you could look down at the floors below and the one floor above. It was an airspace or air duct or airshaft that crowded the entryway between a gas burning stove and window that Hanley proceeded to lumber through.
For as drunk as he was the night before, Hanley remembered where his beer was. He stooped down to the small refrigerator upon which a dish container sat, opened the small door, moved his hand past a tuna fish sandwich and pulled out a beer from the bag he’d tossed there the night before.
Tex watched Hanley stand with a cold beer in his hands then lumber back though the narrow confines between the stove and the window and, having clearance, popped the top.
The fizz was light as the beer was cold.
Hanley strode past Tex the teacher without comment.
Tex could see the eastern light begin to lighten the brick of the dark factory across the courtyard, light indirectly the mechanical clock on the fireplace mantel. It told him it was time. He stood over a strange visitor, grasping tightly his satchel.
“I’ve got to go. You need to leave now.”
“Don’t worry,” Hanley said, hunching his shoulders, putting a beer to his lips. “I ain’t gonna take nothin’.”
Tex opened the door and moved down the stars; unsettled feelings of fear and regret rumbled in his gut. He couldn’t get it out of his mind through the teaching day, standing over his recalcitrant South Bronx learners, watching the clock.
It was near June. The days were getting lighter and longer, the cobbled Bank Street before him began to dance with morning light.
He knew Dennis the Menace would be around again.
VVVVV
In large part, he saw how he’d brought much of it upon himself. He thought he could handle the drinking but other trips to the fog pond hadn’t helped.
In fact, he was beginning to feel proud of himself.
At last the neighborhood—insofar as the small circle of friends—was his.
“Hey, Tex, what’s up?”
“Not much, how’re ya doin’?”
“Still drivin’ that limousine?”
“Oh yeah,” the young man replied, “Still doin’ it.”
In fact, while it was beginning to get easier for him to traverse the general confines of NYC and shoot his snout of the black Caddy to the airport, it was beginning to lose part of the thrill of newness. It was a job to do. He had to do it. It was to supplant his income from the teaching stage. However, when he should’ve been honorable and obey the law and send the money to the court of Dakota County and help pay for his child support, he deigned hold an infantile grudge, sending money in only sporadic bursts.
He thought of Mudd tellin’ him how Dennis had hurled a TV through the window.
They were all in the end room of the apartment. It’s where Tex had moved his bed, moving from the middle room where now sat his electric typewriter and his old sound system and some college textbooks.
Hanley shook his head.
“I told ’er if she didn’t shut up I was gonna do it,” Hanley said.
Mudd turned and looked at him. “Brand new color TV. Fifth Avenue apartment. Threw it right out the fucking window.” He shook his head, laughing—the sheer insanity.
“So, Nebraska, ya better be careful, otherwise Dennis ‘ll throw your TV out the window.”
Tex was gettin’ a buzz on. He looked at his small black and white TV on the floor. He rarely watched it. He wouldn’t really care that much. But just the violence of heaving it through one of the tall windows that faced out onto the courtyard was hard to picture. “I sure hope the hell not.”
He didn’t know if Hanley had squired any kids or not. He didn’t think so. While the teacher/limo driver was guilty on the support payments, wife abuse, he couldn’t see himself throwing a color TV out an apartment window on Fifth Avenue.
“That Dennis,” Mudd said, “he can get pretty crazy. That’s why he’s Dennis the Menace.
No, the young man thought. He’d never do that. That was insane. Those NYC people are just too crazy. It's high time to head back home.
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