I recently decided to turn my life upside down, chase a dream (or a calling) and head west. My destination was Arizona to research and write about the death of my cousin, Kirby Brown. Because things in life aren’t tidy and neat and rarely happen on schedule, that trip was delayed and complicated (of course about two weeks before I was to leave and with most of my possessions packed in boxes or in storage) and will happen in a short time, but not now.
So I came home. I decided to make a life with my beautiful wonderful girlfriend, Rachel (and her two kids…12 year old Mason and 9 year old McClaryn). When I arrived, I knew this is where I belonged despite missing so many friends and family back east.
However, the journey was filled with a lot of eye opening surprises, and as you might imagine, life in Indiana for a lifelong East Coaster is quite an adjustment. Among the lessons along the way:
• Driving through Pennsylvania is only slightly better than waterboarding. Unless you like “Radio Jesus,” 300 miles of nothing, and a distinct lack of cities, this is a 300 miles stretch you can skip. Drive around it, have someone else drive while you sleep, or suck it up and tune into Who’s Your Savior radio. Let’s be honest: If it weren’t for Pennsylvania, nobody would ever want to be in Ohio.
• Not every small town is small enough. So I arrive here (“here,” by the way, is Northwest Indiana, about 45 minutes outside of Chicago) and I ask Rachel “So is John Mellancamp like the mayor around here?” She immediately informs 
me, with nose turned up. “Oh he’s southern Indiana.” This intrigues me. Are the small towns in southern Indiana somehow even smaller than here? Does Indiana keep all its pink houses south of Indianapolis? Where the hell is club Cherry Bomb?
• There is corn everywhere, you just can’t eat it. Now I love corn. I love talking about corn. I’m fascinated by the digestive nature of corn. So I don’t mind that there are cornfields everywhere. My house is actually built on a former corn field. I was fascinated by the irony of a poor couple holding a sign at a street corner informing us that they would work for food. They were on the edge of giant corn field!! What I did not know is the corn grown in these giant fields are for: A. Cattle and B. to prepare to plant “edible” corn next summer. (Where that corn is grown, I 
don’t yet know. Supposedly at smaller farms they keep hidden). When I heard this news that ALL THIS CORN is not for me, I asked if we could plow it under and build a baseball field. I’ve always wanted to meet James Earl Jones.
• Don’t get a blind haircut. No, I didn’t get a haircut from a blind barder. I went to the barber shop “in town” and chatted with the nice man cutting my hair (he’s been married for 46 happy years, can’t figure out what happened to the White Sox, and thinks having a colonoscopy every year is the secret to his good health. I kid you not. This haircut took 10 minutes). But I was facing the opposite way from the mirror and when he was done (no gel, never asked if I wanted the same hair style) he spun me around and lo and behold I was an Indianan. A Hoosier. I looked like a high school basketball point guard. My blond hair cut short on the sides and combed short over my forehead. A little gel and a few days solved that issue, but sometimes you have to remember we’re not in Kansas anymore! Or the East Coast
• I better like snow. Within three minutes of meeting me, virtually everybody has said something like “Survive one winter and see if you want to stay” or “I hope you got a garage” (I did, most houses here smartly have garages) or, 
my favorite: “Welcome to the Midwest. Winter starts in two weeks.” So, if you want to shop early for Chirstmas gifts for me, think sweaters, sweatshirts, slippers, blankets, and booze. (Okay, booze is always a good gift idea)
• I don’t drive a truck. I own a Nissan Pathfinder, which while I was a Connecticut resident I referred to as “the truck.” I’ve been informed (by a 12 year old always willing to share his opinion) “This is not a truck. It’s just an SUV.” Trucks, I was further informed, have beds. Like pickup trucks. Now that’s a truck. He was not impressed that my “non-truck” hauled all his boxes of stuff or that my truck without a bed actually took his bed to his new home. If it carries more stuff than an ordinary car, drags shit, or hauls things, it’s a truck. Period.
I’m sure there will be more learnings. My eyes are wide open and my ears eager to hear things that are not country music and Radio Jesus. In the meantime, send good wishes and don’t touch that corn! It’s not for you!
I stopped at the grocery store on the way home the other night to pick up a few things. Well, three things to be exact. I did the self check-out because, well I hate people and avoid them whenever possible. (People in the grocery store, in particular, should be avoided. Because if they are not retarded –and there’s a good chance in the market that they are – they sure act that way.)
So I swipe my card, answer the 17 questions asked of me by the credit-card-swiper-thingy-that-laid-off-a-perfectly-shiftless-cashier, and take my half-mile long receipt and six coupons. Wait a minute….Three items, 30 bucks.
(For the record, I bought cat food, peanut butter and coffee. I realize I can make a joke about this trifecta, but I’ll leave it to my loyal readership to do in the comments section.)
So I thought to myself…”Self, when did shit get so expensive?”
I first thought about this when I noticed that I pay way more for a gallon of milk than a gallon of gas, when a bag of cherries felt like it cost me my bag of nuts, and when eight razor blades cost me $26. Yes, $3.50 cents per cartridge of razor blades, which I could buy at the hardware store for pennies.
(The problem is I’ve become accustomed to the five-blade razor. After using the Fusion, shaving with a one- or two-blade razor feels like, well shaving with sandpaper.)
So I started to break this down.
Coffee. Okay, I bought nearly two pounds of coffee. It was Folgers, granted, but it was a good amount. The $10 canister said Columbian, which I hope means they are Columbian coffee beans, rather than beans that were handled by Columbian workers. I realize coffee costs a lot because of the Starbucks explosion and now coffee is so complicated. I’d complain about that, but frankly I like Starbucks and….oh my God, am I getting soft? I’ll have to ask my girlfriend…
Cat Food. Okay I get my cat the best cat food. Well at least the best I can get in the grocery store. And I buy the biggest bag for $15 because, frankly, I’m lazy and if I didn’t she might go four or five days with an empty bowl. In the long run it’s cheaper, in the short run, it feels like a kick in the nuts.
Peanut Butter. Big jar of Jiff (creamy not crunchy, thank you very much) for 5 bucks. It’s the cheapest item, but I think “What the fluff?” Five bucks for peanut butter? It should be cheaper, since so many kids are “allergic” to it now. (And what the hell is up with that? When I was in elementary school not a single kid was “allergic” to peanut butter; one generation later and it’s a virtual pandemic? I think it’s a smart ploy hatched by the tuna industry. Sorry, Charlie, Jiff survived. )
And what’s with the milk being so expensive? That’s just one of the items I buy when I need, regardless of price. But we bitch about gas being so expensive, but we let cow by-product cost nearly double that. And the cheese? Really is there a dairy shortage? (By the way, speaking of dairy, am I the only adult who thought eggs were dairy too. I mean they are in the dairy section….)
So here comes the part of the blog where we review what we’ve learned.
- You can ‘t really pay for groceries in cash anymore. Unless you’re Daddy Warbucks and carry around stacks of Benjamins, you gotta do the debit card.
- The creamy peanut butter people are subsidizing the chunky peanut butter crowd. Why have peanuts in your peanut butter when it’s already peanut butter? It’s like having mini marshmallows embedded in the puffy marshmallows. Hmmm, that sounds kind of good…Maybe those Lucky Charms “marshmallows”….
- They charge more for pet food because, well, they know you’ll pay it.
- If Folgers is ten bucks, I should start drinking tea.
- Pretty soon, old people won’t even be able to afford cat food. Lord knows they can’t wash it down with milk. They’ll be using gasoline instead.
There are a lot of things about the grocery store that make me crazy, but the people who read my blog are easily distracted by moving objects, so half of them are already gone, and I’ll write more grocery woes another time. I’m gonna go feed the cat, make coffee and look for loose change in the couch cushions for my next trip to the store.
This weekend is the July 4 holiday and for so many it is filled with family, fireworks, and fun. The pinnacle of summer, with barbecues, parties and an extra day off.
For me it brings bittersweet memories from a year ago. But those memories also bring me one of my favorite stories of my late cousin Kirby Brown, who left this world entirely too early, but who gave us 38 years of life and love and energy that will forever be unmatched.
So the story. It goes something like this:
Kirby’s baby sister Jean was getting married on July 4 and the grand reception would be in her parents’ backyard. Months of preparation went into the event from landscaping to logistics, it was a wonderfully complicated event. What nobody planned on was a rainy June – a month in which rain was recorded more than 20 of the 30 days.
The yard was a swamp.
As I was helping my cousin’s fiancée string lights between two trees, Kirby was in full Kirby mode. She was assessing the swampyness under the dinner tent, literally scratching her head. “If we had some hay and wood chips,” the tent guy philosophized, “We would probably be okay.”
“Well did we try to get some,” she asked. Upon hearing a negative answer, she said “Well fuckin’ A, let’s get this done.”
That’s when I heard “Tommy – get in the truck. We’re taking a ride.”
Now you have to understand, when Kirby said “We’re doing ____” you had no choice. You were gonna do whatever she said you were gonna do. And, chances are, you’d never forget it.
So I enthusiastically excused myself from the light-stringing chore, and jumped in the pick up truck with Kirby. “We’re gonna save this wedding,” she said. “If these dumbasses can’t fucking do it, we gotta.”
Keep in mind, it’s about 5 p.m. on Friday evening. The rehearsal for the wedding, complete with “dress-up” clothes, was at 7 p.m. None of that mattered – Kirby had a plan. One of my cousins once described Kirby as our “action figure cousin” and any chance you got to see Kirby in action, you took it.
So we’re driving around rural Orange County NY. Kirby was looking for stables who had extra bales of hay and/or wood chips that we could lay down under the carpeting in the tent to make the ground more like solid ground and less like quicksand.
“I used to manage this stable and train all their horses” she said on her first stop. But they only had loose hay and we needed bales. So we went to another stable where she once knew the owners. Struck out again. Finally we pull up to a random barn where Kirby didn’t know the owners.
She knocks on the door, explains the situation and convinces the owner that they would save her little sister’s wedding if they could just help us out.
Minutes later we are loading more than a dozen bales on the truck, and the owner says we can come back later if it’s not enough. Don’t worry about the money, she said, I’ve been in a similar situation. Have a wonderful wedding. Turns out they knew some mutual friends and Kirby’s world had just expanded again. She made friends with the ease that other people made excuses. If you met Kirby just once, you would do anything for her. Because you knew she would do anything for you. In a heartbeat.
So long story short, she saved the wedding and the dinner tent went from a complete clusterfuck to a mere minor disaster. Enough to get by and save the day. But I’m teasing. That wasn’t the story.
With the hay in the truck and the clock ticking, Kirby took a short detour to drive me to one of her favorite spots near another stable where she once worked as a teen. “The view, Tommy, reminds you why we’re here in the first place.”
So as we drive by the stable, she slows down and says, “No fuckin’ way, Tommy. “
There was an old tired horse standing there, not doing much of anything but waiting to die, it seemed.
“I trained that horse maybe 15, 18 years ago when it was a pony. It was a rough one and it was one of the hardest horses I dealt with. But so, so sweet.”
As the truck inched closer in silence, the horse turned, saw Kirby and came back to life. Its eyes were full of recognition and love. It looked 10 years younger, instantly. It was full of energy and life and vigor all over again.
Through the years, we all marveled at Kirby’s ability to forge human relationships with anyone. From millionaires to homeless people, she viewed all people the same – with respect and humanity – and pulled out only the very best in people in return.
But to see the relationship she had built in another species was incredible. The look in that horse’s eyes was the same look Kirby would get from a cousin who didn’t expect to see her at the latest family gathering. Kirby was our nomad. You could never predict when you’d see her again. It might be weeks, it might be years. But you knew instantly you would pick up right where you left off. And she’d fill your heart with love. In and instant. With a hug.
Turns out she had the same effect on horses.
She didn’t stop the truck that day. We had to get back and frankly, I don’t think she wanted the horse to get too excited and possibly attached again.
But, from the passenger seat, I made sure I remembered that story. I marveled in watching my cousin just be who she was. In an hour she managed to formulate and execute a plan to save her sister’s wedding, show me an amazing, breathtaking view that gave me goosebumps, and give an old horse a last happy moment – just by being Kirby.
I spent a lot of good time with Kirby last summer and over the previous couple of years. She had re-entered my life when I needed the kind of help only Kirby could give. Effortless love that reminded you “It’s gonna be okay.” No matter where Kirby was, she was with you. And that made me feel okay when nothing else did.
Riding around in that old truck last July 3, I remember being thankful that I got to experience my action figure cousin, and selfishly enjoying that nobody else was there. Just the two of us, a loving stranger, and an old horse. It was perfect. It was life.
I have a love-hate relationship with alcohol. And by love-hate I mean I hate that I love it so much. Without it I could be in shape, wouldn’t be nearly as confused by the Grateful Dead, and I would have avoided what is simply known as “The Parking Meter Affair.” (But that’s another blog)
I lot of people ask me about the first time I got drunk. Surprisingly, to them at least, I never drank in high school choosing instead to wait until college. But the first time I got drunk? Hmmm, that would be when I was 3.
Oh stop acting all indignant. Shit happens. This is how this particular “shit” happened:
My sister had a party for her first communion because nothing says congratulations for being able to receive your lord’s body and blood on a weekly basis like a good kegger. We had a family party/barbecue in the back yard. I think it was 1975, but the details were fuzzy to me because I was 3 and DID YOU FORGET, I GOT DRUNK!!!???
So during the party I heard a couple of uncles talking about how the keg “is not good anymore” the next day and that beer was “pretty much just old stale water” anyways.
Fast forward to the next morning, around 6:30. My brother and I get up, as we normally did, to watch cartoons. As was 
our routine, I poured us both cereal (Life cereal if you must know) and brought it down to the family room. On the way downstairs I notice the day-old keg in the rec room.
So we start eating the cereal and I say to my brother Sean, who was refreshingly gullible and easy to influence, hey little brother (he was 2, but a really mature 2) I heard that beer is just water the next day. The cups are still over there, want me to pour us some?
You might wonder how I knew how to pour it, complete with the pumping action? Well it’s a cool thing to watch for a 3 year old. And, you need to understand, I think my parents had children for the express purpose of doing chores and things such as tending the keg. (And let’s face it, if I had a 4 year old son, you can bet your bottom dollar I’d teach him that too, to impress all my friends)
So I pour us two cups of beer from the (allegedly) safe keg. Surely it was all foam, if there was even foam left, I bring the cups into the family room and to the glowing light of Woody Woodpecker we clink our glasses “cheers” because we had already been taught that. (My parents made me teach myself how to tie my own shoes, but were more than happy to teach us “cheers”).
What happened next? I don’t remember because Sean and I passed out.
Soggy Life cereal. Two cups of warm beer. Two children, combined age of 5, drunk in the family room.
In reality, we probably had a couple of sips and just gently fell back to sleep. The cups were mostly full and I’m pretty sure I didn’t refill our glasses. Though I might have blacked out, you never know.
So don’t think my parents were feeding us liquor at that age, though I suppose they could have taken the tap off the keg. I don’t remember if I even liked it. But I do remember my head spinning later in the day when the radio played the Grateful Dead…….
It’s My Party and I’ll Throw An Absolute (Unnecessary) Hissyfit if I Want To….
9 Jun, 2010 in Humor BlogOne word that has been used to describe me …. (I’ll pause while you think of your own insulting adjective….)…. Is competitive.
Anyone who knows me knows I like to play to win. I compete ferociously and I look for any advantage I can find.
This, of course, is rooted in the fact that I completely suck at most types of competition, particularly physical endeavors. I have all the athleticism of a jellyfish. (I’m actually jealous of the grace jellyfish have while being so annoying/deadly/obtrusive).
I remember my 5th birthday party. How do I know it was my fifth? Well because I only ever had ONE STINKING BIRTHDAY party as a kid. But don’t get me started on the December birthday thing
So two things my parents never were: all that wealthy. Or all that creative.
So the big event at my 5th birthday party was a simple game. An empty one gallon milk jug (the plastic kind with the narrow mouth) and ten clothes pins. The object was to hold the pins, one at a time, over the jug and land as many as possible inside the jug.
Simple game, right? (And maybe my mom was being a little bit creative. She was at least thinking of ways to try to make my party fun. I don’t remember my dad having anything to do with the party.)
So being the good host to the other children, I went last. Most kids landed five, six, or even eight wooden clothes pins in the jug. Can’t be so hard, I figured.
I step up to the jug. Last licks. Home jug. I figure I’ll wipe the floor with all the other kids.
First pin dropped. Right off the lip. Coulda gone either way. No problem. I can still miss one more and at least tie.
Second pin? Not even close. I rushed the third pin and whiffed again. I immediately announced we would have a second round of pin dropping and count the cumulative score. I doubt I used the word cumulative at age 5, but I was a different kind of kid, so I might have. Shit, I knew how to spell Cincinnati, so anything’s possible.
I ended up missing all ten pins. To this day, the one thing that frustrates me is the sheer inability to do something. It’s why, unfortunately, I’m not too adventurous. I don’t like to fail and I don’t like to feel humiliated, even though nobody cared that I couldn’t drop a freakin’ clothes pin into an empty milk jug.
How did I react? I was overcome by embarrassment and humiliation. And I cried. And went to my room. I ran, hysterical to my bedroom crying. At my own party.
Yeah, I was a big high strung.
(Maybe that has more to do with why I never had another party. Who would ever throw a party for a kid who cried over empty milk.)
The party went on without me, probably involving a game in which you trapped the cat under a laundry basket. 
Everyone has a great time. Nobody came after me, followed me, or even came to tell me I was being a jerk. I just cried til I was done crying and sheepishly returned to my party.
I went over to the kid who got 8 pins in the jug, tried to shake his hand and say good job. He was confused and asked what I was doing.
“Congratulating you,” I said. “You won the clothes pin game.”
“Um, Tom, you were the only one keeping score.”
Did I mention I was a bit competitive?
