Henry Wadsworth Longfellow changed my show

People that know me are aware I suffer from low self-esteem, which is a hard throw for someone expected to pitch 600 words over home plate every week about the state of our union and those “aha!” moments we all share in life. I do it in the hopes you’ll be moved to take out your BIC lighter and wave it as a light against the darkness or help someone save a stitch in time or join a village and raise a child--- all of which I can’t do because I lack the confidence.

It is February, the month in which the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born. He wrote “Evangeline” which contains a beautiful line that describes Evangeline as she walks by-- “When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.” Recently I gave a speech in a nearby city and a man came up to me and said “Thanks for coming. It’s just hard to get a good speaker on a week night”. Which made me wince, as though the music didn’t cease so much as maybe I killed it.

Perhaps they’d tried to get Newt Gingrich to come and throw down a handful of bones and tell the future of America but they failed and got me. I like to think that even if Longfellow showed up to speak they’d have said, “Thanks, Henry. We tried to get Tom Brokaw but he wanted a boatload of money and a hotel suite. Can you believe that—a hotel suite for God’s sake!? ”

My speech was entitled “ The Greatest Tree House There Ever Was” which has baseball, sex, cigarettes and a little piano playing in it but at 45 minutes it’s a bit long. However the people were real troopers and no one threw anything at me but could you blame them if they did? The economy is sagging like my jowls and you see men in white shirts and ties throwing dice in back alleys and front yards have FOR SALE signs in them and you feel so much pain for these people. You want to stop and hug them but no one wants a short guy with self-esteem problems putting his arms around you in the driveway unless he’s a buyer with approved credit carrying a check book.

I almost spoke on “A Problem---Low Self-Esteem” but I know people with high self-esteem and they’re like a biblical plague. They swarm in malls, airports and government buildings screaming into their cell phones, they have less self-doubt than a male moose during a rut, all stomping around and rattling their antlers for show.

I wish I’d written that line “When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.” That is such a beautiful thought and what has Joe Biden ever said in twelve words that moved you so deeply you heard soothing music, remembered beautiful women and imagined yourself a wonderful lover though you actually had the moves of a woodchuck.

Out of suffering comes beauty and Longfellow had his share with losing two wives unexpectedly and dying a painful death from severe inflammation of his stomach. Nevertheless he was brilliant and wrote “Hiawatha” the first poem I ever read.

So you can sit around in sorrow and worry about the economy or you can ponder the idea of lovely women, wonderful music and the future of Newt Gingrich. As for me, I’m thinking about changing my show with a new speech “Find Fulfillment in Chinchilla Farming”. I’m open right now to bookings in March through June. Fees are negotiable and I can sleep in the car.

Procrastinate your way to health

Recently I had the privilege of spending a couple of hours with our newest city councilman, Mr. Roy West, who is known for his quick humor, business savvy and who has a passion for cycling which is why his stomach is flat. My stomach is round, like a planet…with it’s own gravity field…and I think last night I attracted a moon. You can understand my concern.

I have been feeling out of shape lately probably due to cutting back on my exercise regime about 40 years ago. Back in olden times I rode a bicycle to do my errands and I averaged about five miles a day. But that was in 1970 miles which today would be like 30 miles. I was flat bellied and my prostate was the size of an almond, not a grapefruit.

I even had running shoes back then, Nike’s but we didn’t know how to pronounce it because there was no Google or internet. In my day being a cyclist or a cross country runner was great birth control. You may as well have been sprayed with girl repellent.

Some time ago I approached fifty with the enthusiasm you reserve for a colonoscopy and felt the first call of getting older—the urge to spend money on exercise equipment.

My first purchase was a quality bicycle since running was now out for me. In college the only joints I burned and smoked were my ankles.

The nice bike salesman, Fernando offered to help me further. We started with the basics and I got a helmet that was gluten free and firmly cradles your head to prevent the reoccurrence of childhood memories involving an emotionally distant father. He said it was all the rage in California.

Then I got self-adhesive tire patches, tire levers, a spare inner tube and an easy carry air pump. The rest of the staff in the store gathered to watch Fernando assist me.

With his arm around my shoulders he walked me through the aisles pointing out the “must haves” and so I bought a small bottle of chain lube, a light weight solar tent for sudden blizzards, an outdoor bicycle cover (water proof), a locking upright roof rack for hauling the bike to places I can’t afford to go, sweat proof sunscreen designed for cyclists by a NASA sun specialist, an oak wood floor to ceiling storage rack, arch support cycling shoes ( though a riding sport, cycling can be brutal on your feet--- according to Fernando), a wireless odometer that remembers your birthday, a spandex cycling jersey (one can dream), half-finger gloves with cushions made of Persian cat fur and my favorite, padded shorts that protect what Forest Gump calls your “But-tocks”.

And that was just for daylight riding.

We worked through the afternoon and I bought taillight reflectors, ankle reflectors and the cutest little windbreaker you ever saw with zippered vented flaps all in coordinating colors.

At check out Fernando totaled my bill and gave a moving speech about my impending fitness—there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. As I went out the door I think I heard the opening of champagne and what sounded like “He’s a jolly good fellow” being sung to Fernando.

I drove home that day taking note that other cyclists looked so unprepared. Shmucks.

It took me weeks to cut off all the price tags and months to unbox everything. In the meantime I’d found this awesome herbal tea from South Africa that slims you down and buffs you up. It takes years to kick in but when it does, I’ll be all set to ride.

Hard work teaches you to live and give

( This is an excerpt from a book I am currently writing )

I grew up on a tobacco farm in eastern North Carolina and before we became middles class (those people that used a piece of aluminum foil only one time) I realized we were poor. It was my mother’s Sunbeam mixer that gave me my first clue.

You’d go through the kitchen while she was mixing batter for a cake and hear the old mixer groan and slow down when she put the metal beaters into the bowl. You’d find yourself quietly willing it to keep going while mother wished out loud for a new one. She would lift the mixer out of the batter and it would whir like crazy then back into the batter and it would sound like something drowning.

I also knew we were poor because Ronnie Scales told me so. His father owned, according to my dad ---“the entire free world”-- and Ronnie asked me one day how much money my dad earned. The largest sounding number I could think of right then was five hundred so I told him 500 dollars. “HA!” he said,” You’re dirt poor!” and he rode off on his bicycle.

Well, that explained the mixer.

When you’re poor you try to compensate by being smart—read books, write stories—but that amounted to zilch if you worked for Mel, the supervisor of a local logging outfit, as I did one summer. I was sixteen.

Mel looked to be just under six feet tall and though retired from the military he still maintained a look of fitness, there was just more of him. His middle had begun to bulge from beer and he kept a cigar in his mouth that seemed to offset his slightly pugged nose. Mel hated smart and said so-- “Don’t get smart with me, boy” he’d say and puff on his fat green cigar and glare at you, his huge bushy black eyebrows coming together for emphasis.

Mel said you could get my kind for a dime a dozen---that I should be glad to have a job and live in a land that was saved years ago on the beaches of Normandy by men like himself who fought so trash like me could cut down trees and not worry about German soldiers shooting my hiney off (Mel never used the word “hiney”). Then he’d spit.

Work is serious business and everybody should do hard work said Mel-- unless you thought you were too good for it in which case you could take your “hiney” straight to Where-They’ll-Never-Have-Ice-Water ( Mel only used one word for that phrase). Mel’s wife, according to Mel, wanted him to retire but everybody he knew that retired turned stiff and waxy within six months while their friends stood around and remarked how natural the person looked. Mel believed when you stopped moving on the beach of life you died---that Normandy thing again.

One day he told me to come with him and I found myself grabbing one end of a twenty foot steel crane pole while Mel grabbed the other. He said “Lift!”
Right then I went from a 32 to a 34 inch sleeve.

“Too much?” sneered Mel. Oh, Noooo.

We set the pole down where he wanted it and I realized my angle of vision had changed, I saw more ground—no skyline. I wondered if I would ever be able to straighten up again. Joe Quasimodo. I never grew an inch taller after that day and now all my bones are slightly out of plumb and they squeak when I walk. “Lift with your legs, kid.” Mel muttered, spit and walked away.

I’m glad I knew people like Mel. Now I’m not afraid of hard work or think it is something that only people from another country are suppose to do. Hard work taught me how to tackle things in life—you learn how to lift.

You also learn the fruits of hard work are better shared. I remember the year I saved up and gave my mother a brand new Sunbeam mixer. She loved it and told me that I was a good and very smart boy. I’d liked to have seen Mel’s face.