catfish 39

 That was 1959.  Both of us were eighth graders in Sawyer School and in Tonti. I was a Cub fan but out of loyalty to my city I outwardly showed nothing but support for the Sox, but deep in my heart I felt schadenfreude when they lost it two games to four.

The sirens went on late at night (I checked), well late for an eighth grader.  I seem to remember waking and turning on my little red transistor radio, as I always did when there were sirens and I wanted to know if the bomb had been dropped.  It had not.  I may be wrong here, but I seem to remember people coming to their porches in their bathrobes and murmuring to each other what is going on and finally somebody said that it must be because the Sox won the pennant and everybody went back into their houses and to bed.

West Side Story came out a couple years later and when they sang that Officer Krupke song I think there was some line about the bomb, kind of as an excuse for their being juvenile delinquents.  I think I may have weaved that into my adolescent story, how I grew up in the shadow of the bomb, but I don't recall being all that afraid of it at the time.

Well in retrospect the cold war was not all that bad.  There was no actual war, and the sides were clear, anymore who knows who is on what side.  

When I was subbing about 2000 to 2007, the girls were always better behaved than the boys.  Before the kids arrived I would go down the aisles and read the names and if girls outnumbered boys I was happy, but if it was the other way around I was unhappy.  I remember this one class, third grade I think, where I handed out protractors to the classroom, the girls ran all over the room measuring every angle they could find, and the boys pretended that they were pistols and ran all over the room shooting each other.  How,  I wondered had we ever established the patriarchy? 

And those Champaign Bar Association assholes, they were cagey fuckers.  Tiger you know, nobody could hit him hard, but if you held back, took a short stroke, you could bounce one into the infield, which was no problem with Tinkers and Evers slapping them up in that casual way they had, but with the second stringers it was a clown circus.  They scored one here, one there, by the time we got to the seventh they had scored five runs to our three.  Bottom of the seventh, after two outs Ron had a double and Itch scratched out a single, first and third and two outs and I was at bat. 

Shit, I didn’t need that drama, but there in the stands George, drunk as a skunk, is yelling and Gina is shrieking, Gina.  Shit fuck.

Okay, I’m keeping my eyes open like Dan taught me, watching the ball, and the first, second and third pitches come in and they’re nowhere close.  “Pitcher’s getting nervous,” I hear George and Gina and the other girlfriends chanting, and I’m thinking this is great, I can coax a walk, nothing wrong with a walk, puts the winning run on base.  And then taking a little time at the plate, adjusting my hat, making sure my shoelaces are tied, just killing time to make the pitcher more nervous, I glanced back at the on deck circle,  It was one of those second string infielders.  These guys never played when Tinkers and Evers were there, they just drank beer till game time and sat in the dugout waiting for the game to be over so they could drink some more, and this guy had clearly had plenty, could barely stand straight doing his warmup swings.

So I swung at the next pitch, missed it by a mile, almost fell over in the batter’s box.  The clapping from the stands stopped rightaway, and there was kind of an almost a gasp, thought I heard it, like the air going out of something.  It started up again, but not so strong, and I don’t know why, I was kind of swept up in the moment, but I held up my hand, time out, and turned back to the stands and zeroed in on Gina who had her hand in her mouth and blew her a kiss.

It was grandstanding, I knew that, It was okay, I wanted to piss off the pitcher, rattle him so he wouldn’t want to walk me after all that, smirked at him, kicked a little dirt off my cleats, waggled my bat over my head as I stepped in.

 He pitched fast, wanting to catch me while I was still waggling the bat, but I was expecting that and I was expecting that it would be hittable, and one thing I did wrong was that I closed my eyes.  Knew I shouldn’t, did it anyway.

 And that smack.  I’ll be able to feel that the rest of my life.  So pure, so clean, a white slice into the night.  Time was frozen.  I could see the whites of the centerfielder’s eyes, uncertain at first, then stepping back, then just turning tail and running into the darkness past the lights.  I almost wanted to laugh, but then I heard Dan yelling, “Run asshole run.”

 Oh shit.  Got a late start, but it looked pretty good going past first and rounding second the centerfielder was still running after the ball.  My back was to the action as I came into third, and I almost slowed but then I remembered the drunk in the on deck circle and just came in.  Saw the white flash of the ball over my head halfway to home.  It landed splat in the catcher’s mitt and he stepped back to cover the plate and there was no way to it except through him. 

 White Sox baseball.  Bounced my butt just in front of the plate and went in spikes high, caught him in the mitt, tore into it, knocked it out, saw it dribble onto the ground as I slid in safe.

 I was a fucking hero.  I was laying there, the poor catcher yelping and swinging his bloody mitt, the ump swinging his arms in that safe sign, and there was Dan reaching out a hand to lift me up, and almost pulled me off my feet so that I fell heavily against him, and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me, but then the whole team was there and I was like actually lifted on their shoulders, hauled around on top of them like you see in the movies. 

 They weren’t really athletes, like I’ve said, the second stringers, and I was let down pretty quickly and there was Gina and a big wet one.

White Sox Summer

 That was the year the Sox won the Pennant, it must have been in the '50s because I was still in elementary school.  It was Jimmy Next Door who got me interested in baseball, not that either one of us played it, we just watched most of the games on TV at either his house or my house.  I never saw much of Jimmy during the school year because he went to the Catholic school, but there was a summer or two when we hung out together like that.  One time his mother took us to see a live game in person at Comiskey Park.  I guess it was fun if you had nothing better to do, which neither Jimmy nor I did at the time.   I must have lost interest at some point because I forgot to watch the last game of the season when the Sox clinched the Pennant.  I was walking past a local bar on 51st Street when I heard a lot of hollering inside.  Then the air raid sirens went off.  Since it was not the normal time for their weekly test, I figured it meant that either the Sox had won the Pennant or we were all going to die in a nuclear attack.  Nothing I could do about it either way, so I just kept walking.  Although they won the Pennant, I don't think the Sox won the World Series that year, seems I would remember something like that.

I do remember that guys behaved better when there were girls around, but that was a long time ago and I don't think it holds true anymore.  When I was driving school busses the girls gave me just as much trouble as the boys.  It used to be that boys settled their differences by fighting and girls settled their differences by tattling.  Last I knew, girls and boys were both fighting and tattling equally.  Big improvement!

catfish 38

 When I was writing that thing about large groups of people of the same sex not being a good thing, I got to thinking about my experience with women.  Not the kind of experience which would make for a short post indeed, but of being in groups where I am the only man.  When I went to edukashon skol I was the only male in a group of seventeen, and not that watercoloring isn't very manly, but in classes and various doings I am often the only man.  

In such groups it is common for there to be a conversational black hole, a topic of such consuming interest that once it is brought up the conversation can never return to other subjects.  With women I would have thought it would be clothes, but actually it was food, cooking it, eating it, contemplating it, it is the universal language of the fairer sex.

Sports of course is the universal language of men.  Two guys shipwrecked on a desert island with nothing in common will perk up when one of them mentions the 84 Bears say.  Even if the other guy knows nothing about that team, he will not say so, lest he be thought less of a man, but will spill some platitudes, which are legion in the field of sports, and try to steer the conversation to the Cleveland Indians of 1987.

As I said with the Hoosier hurricanes we went to Wrigley to walk around and the kids to clean out the sports stores and at Comiskey we want to a game.  And I was sitting there with my beer in my hand and my Cub hat on my head, but being pleasant to the Sox fans as they were to me, and you know there is something about being out to the old ball park.  The fans mostly, some yelling and screaming, some staring at their phones, but all under god's blue sky watching the players go through the arcane motions.  Because you know, football and basketball are pretty simple, this team wants to go this way, the other that way, this team wants to put it in this basket, the other in the other.  

But baseball, three strikes and you're out. Unless it's a foul ball, and then you can foul off balls for eternity, unless you are bunting than a foul after two strikes is an out, unless the catcher drops the ball, then you can run for first.  If you get four balls, you can walk to first base, or if you hit the ball in fair territory than you can run to the base and if you get there before the ball the ball gets into the first baseman's hand you can stay there, unless the ball is caught on the fly.

I remember as a young kid, I was a rabid fan but when Dad took me to my first game I really didn't know how it worked.  I decided that I would watch just one guy and see what he did, and I picked a guy in the outfield and he didn't do anything at all for an hour, but still I was all excited.  It was baseball after all.

So that's what I was thinking sitting in the stands watching these two little kids so excited about the game even if half the time they were hitting each other or running off to get a hot dog or some pennant or whatever, they were loving baseball.

And as long as the kids of America are watching this stupid arcane game with that excitement in their eyes, the indomitable spirit of America will live on.  

Or maybe not, who knows?

But speaking of baseball

So everything was running pretty smoothly on the Catfish line.  And I wasn’t that much into that whole softball thing but it looked like we were going to win the Tuesday night championship, and that would be cool enough.

 But then the Tuesday night game got rained out, no big deal, we would just beat them on the rescheduled game, but then it turned out that the game would be on Sunday night which didn’t seem like a big deal either, except when we got out to the ballfield, Dan was looking glum.  What was that all about, and I asked him.

 “You see Tinkers and Evers?” he asked, and now that he mentioned it they weren’t there which was a little peculiar since they were usually the first guys to show up on game day.

 “I guess not, where are they?”

 “They’re not here, that’s where they are.”

 “How come?”

 “Because it’s Sunday.”

 “So?”

 “So they’re Mormons, you idiot.”

 “Morons?”

 “Not morons, you moron, Mormons.  They can’t play on the fucking Sabbath.”

 “Sabbath?”

 “The Sabbath, Sunday, the day God rested, the day we should all be resting, and not racing in for those slow rollers, or jumping up for those line drives just a leap away, or smacking the beJesus out of the ball, the day we should be huddled in our stupid churches giving praise to the almighty for Chrissake, and that’s where they are, and that’s why they’re not here.”

 “Jesus.”

 He’s not here either, it’s just our pansy ass hitters, and our lead gloved second string infield, and God help us.”

 “You think He might?”

 “No, because He’s sitting in that church, listening to those sweet fucking Mormon songs.”

 

should i get married

 Those army guys I don't know, they all seem to think that women are deviously using their sex to hoodwink guys into something.  Well they are mostly young guys who like to toss off those flippant cynical tropes like they are all street savvy and men of the world and been to a dozen county fairs and a couple buzzard fucks as well.  It's not really the army it's the fact that they are all men, and in my opinion guys don't behave as well as they should unless there are some women in the crowd.  

When I was tending bar I would sometimes get these groups of guys drunk and bored, who thought it would be an amusing sport to give the bartender a hard time.  But if there was even one woman in the group they were much better behaved.  And sometimes you'd get a group of drunk women and they would be just as bad.  They weren't so intent on giving the bartender a hard time, but those shrieks would break your ears.  

And this is not relevant to the above but those groups of tourists who went to the capital to hug and kiss the police, there were an awful lot of women among them,  I don't know what to make of it

Well three days of the Hoosier hurricanes has snapped my patience.  Oh it was mostly a good time but there was my friend, his wife, their daughter, and her two kids.  We saw Billy Goats, my balcony, the river walk, Wrigley Field, the Clark Street Ale House and Comiskey Park.  In between the daughter took the kids shopping on Michigan Avenue and State Street.  And now I am alone in my apartment and just getting set to take the paper out to my balcony and read it all by my lonesome self and that will be very sweet.

Reminds me of a beatnik poem that I liked way back.  I'll give you a Catfish tomorrow.

'Marriage' by Gregory Corso

Should I get married? Should I be good?

Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-

When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap-
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?

Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
but we're gaining a son-
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just wait to get at the drinks and food-
And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-
Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd almost be inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climactic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner
devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy
a saint of divorce-

But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-

Yes if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soup-
O what would that be like!
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
Not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly tight New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-
No! I should not get married! I should never get married!
But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other
and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-

O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
It's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and-
But there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible-
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so i wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

A Fair Trade

The Catfish story has taken an unexpected turn.  I thought he would never hit a home run with that woman.  I figured she would lead him around in circles until his money was gone and then dump him.  Well, she still might do that eventually but, for now, he's getting what he wanted and she's getting what she wanted.  Sounds like a fair trade to me.  I am reminded of an old army proverb: "There is no such thing as free pussy, it's all paid for one way or another, and the one you think you're getting for free ends up costing you the most."

************************************************************************

 I seemed to remember that there was some stuff you could put in the water to encourage plant cuttings to root.  I tracked it down on Wiki and here's what I found:

A rooting hormone may be administered to "encourage" growth and can increase the success rate of plant growth.^[20] Though not essential, several compounds may be used to promote the formation of roots through the signaling activity of plant hormone auxins. Among the commonly used chemicals is indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) used as a powder, liquid solution, or gel. This compound is applied either to the cut tip of the cutting or as a foliar spray. Rooting hormone can be manufactured naturally, such as soaking the yellow-tipped shoots of a weeping willow tree in water, or by preparing a tea from the bark of a willow tree. Shoots or bark do better when soaked for 24 hours prior to using.^[21] The extract obtained from the crushing of leaves and bulbs of coco-grass (Cyperus rotundus) is used as an excellent rooting of cuttings and seedlings of various plant species.^[22][23] Honey, though it does not contain any plant hormones, can also aid in rooting success through its natural antiseptic and antifungal properties.^[24][25] Cinnamon^{[citation needed]} or an Aspirin tablet in water^[26] can also aid the rooting process.^[27

Cutting (plant) - Wikipedia

You should be able to find a commercial product at your local garden shop, or you try making your own as the article describes.

I seem to remember reading something about that archeological find under Lake Huron in our local paper, or maybe it was on TV.  I was surprised, however, when the video mentioned that the water level was low as late as 500 years ago.  I thought it was at its highest right after the glaciers receded and has gone down in stages ever since. 

Here's one for the "every time you think you've seen in all" department:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/indonesian-officials-give-away-live-chickens-to-residents-willing-to-get-vaccinatehttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/indonesian-officials-give-away-live-chickens-to-residents-willing-to-get-vaccinated/ar-AAL87Ee?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShared/ar-AAL87Ee?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare  

Mid month minimal muttering

"...I have acute angina."

Haw, Haw, Haw!  I didn't see the punchline coming but it brought a smile to my face.  Good job, Mr. Beagles.

-----

There is no Wednesday Only rule, Uncle Ken; it's a figment of your imagination, a coincidence.  I'm being patient with the care of Groot but nothing has changed.  As near as I can tell it's just a little stick in a small flask of water.  I've added a couple of other cuttings to see if any of them will develop roots but at this point my expectations are low.  If there is nothing to report I will report nothing, so you can quit asking.

-----

I never considered the possibility of human settlements at the bottom of the Great Lakes, but you learn something new every day.  Artifacts have been found at the bottom of Lake Huron, dating back thousands of years when the water level was much lower.  Very interesting reading, and I wonder what else can be found down there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2eGkCIErFY

 

 

 

catfish 37

 That reminds me of the older but still hot woman slipping her ticket stub to the good-looking car valet and whispering in his ear, "I have an itchy pussy,"  and the guy replies "Those Japanese cars all look alike to me, but I'll find it."

I think a week has passed and nothing has popped up about those three girls twerking on that cop car, so I don't know what that means.

I had hoped that Old Dog would have given us an update on Groot.  Perhaps he only reads the blogs on Wednesday, or maybe he has seen it, but feels that his Wednesday Only rule is more important than the distress of his fellows at The Institute.

I have a pal from Indiana who is coming to town this afternoon and he is not leaving until Wednesday afternoon so you may not hear from me until the end of the week.  Perhaps you fellows can discuss something among yourselves.  

We were the terror of the league.  Nobody could hit Tiger.  Nobody could keep Evers or Chance from hitting. Ron hit some too, Itch a little,  myself I was keeping my eyes open, keeping my eye on the ball as it twirled up over the plate, getting a walk every now and then, but mostly those half hearted slow rollers, but every now and then I would hit a good one.  That whole thing between me and Ron over centerfield faded out because the other team hardly ever hit one to the outfield.

 It was well boring, standing way out there in the outfield, looking in to home where the other team was mostly striking out, and trotting in to mostly wait for Tinkers and Evers to come to bat and score the three or four runs that was all we needed to win the game.

 So you’d think we’d be leading the league, but we weren’t, the Champaign Bar Association was.  The Champaign Bar Association, that was the name of the team.  You’d think they’d have a better name than that, they all hung out in this bar in Urbana, The Office, maybe they could have called themselves The Officers or something, I don’t know, they were mostly a bunch of assholes.  They took that lawyering thing right into the game.  They had a book of the softball rules right in their dugout, and they had three or four guys who did nothing but look through it after every play, maybe some guy had an illegal bat.  A bat’s a bat for Chrissake, but there were rules in the book about how long it could it be and how heavy and how much pine tar it could have on it.  And if they thought the other team was using a bat that might be illegal, if the guy made an out they wouldn’t say anything, but if the guy got a hit, especially if it was an important hit, out they would march with the book and the arguments.  All the other teams hated them, but even without all that lawyering they were still a pretty good team, and they’d only lost one game.

 We’d lost those first two games before we got Tiger and Tinkers and Evers, one of those was to The Champaign Bar Association who had lost a couple too, so if we could beat them that would give us the league championship and we were looking forward to stomping them,  but with Tiger and Tinkers and Evers that didn’t look like it would be too hard to do.  This would be great winning the league championship in the final game, it would be like a movie. 

 Not like I cared that much about it.  I had all these other things going on, like my new apartment and Gina, and her buying all this crap for it, fancy stuff, and I’m thinking why do I need all this crap, and not only that but it cost all this money, not that I cared that much about money, but maybe I did, because I used to have this whole sockfull of bills, and then they just became these numbers in a book, and then all those numbers kept getting smaller and all I had to show for it was like tablecloths and more sheets and comforters which are just fancy blankets, but that was okay because they would cover that black water mattress and that would make Gina happy and I looked forward to whispering those sweet nothings into her pink ear as she modestly covered her breasts up with that soft pricey bedspread with all those pale flowers all over it, but giggled a little naughty.

 And that all happened, the giggle the naughty.  And it was great, just great, the whole little drama, acted out in my very own bedroom, Catfish finally getting what he had worked at for so long, and all those darlings between us.  It was, maybe it was love. 

 Because after the fireworks, wrapped up in each other, when normally I was into slipping alone into dreamland, she would be talking, whispering really although who could hear us.  Strange stuff really odd bits and pieces of like when she was a little girl, the candy store she used to go into after school was out, and stuff that happened yesterday like some dumb conversation in the hallway as she was waiting to go into her next class.

 I never could figure out how to take my part in this conversation, I just didn’t think that way, that kind of, I don’t know, dreamy talk, to me it was more like this happened and then that happened, and that was like the whole story.

 And the thing was I kept thinking about that Denise thing.  It didn’t mean anything, it was just something that happened.  Could’ve happened to anybody really.  It would be a good thing to get out of the way, if for no other reason than it was eating at me, well Catfish you know he gets drunk, sometimes he does stupid stuff.  Damn that wouldn’t work.  No. Let it go.

 And anyway the whole thing would probably never come up unless I brought it up.  Itch knew, and that was a little worry because even though Gina and me were tight, she still mentioned him every now and then, but not very much lately, and anyway he wasn’t much into her.  And there was Ron, he knew about it too, but we were pretty tight lately.