Mickey Hadick

The Trap

2009-10-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

The Trap is a story about men on a fishing trip to the northern woods, who wind up on a hunting trip instead. This was the first in a short series I wrote based on stories heard from other people. Aspects of this story are true then. It's not like it's a particularly shocking story, and maybe that's its flaw.

This story was written at the end of my golden age of short stories. Shortly after this was completed, I made some life changing decisions, and my writing, reflecting the effects those decisions had on my brain, became different; I am dealing with the other consequences of those decisions in many ways.

My father was one to take an annual fishing trip to a remote location, but I have never done so. This story is the closest I've ever come to such a trip.

'Tis Fall

2009-10-21T19:25:00.000-07:00

Fall is an iffy season for me. I enjoy the apples, and the smell of leaves, and the skies can be far more beautiful than at any other season. But it means that winter is around the bend, and it's going to get darker, and so there's a chance that days will pass without my seeing daylight. But I think it's important to be explicit about what I enjoy and why, lest it passes me by.

I really enjoy the fall colors, especially on a bright, breezy day. That's a bit much to ask here in Michigan, but I can dream. I especially like the very breezy days when the leaves start to fall. It reminds me of Hemingway's story, "Three Day Blow," which is not a particularly cheery story (it's about the sadness and confusion after a breakup) but I enjoy reading Hemingway, and that story is set in Michigan (well, the U.P.) and so the whole big mess is jumbled up in my head and it's all part of why I enjoy the fall colors.

I enjoy the rituals of football. The high school games on Friday nights, college games on Saturday, and so on. I actually don't watch that much football, but I enjoy it when I do, and I would enjoy it more under the right circumstances. I find it comforting to know it's there and happening.

I also enjoy the smell of leaves. On a dry day, when they're being raked into piles, the smell is concentrated, and it's conjures memories of jumping into leaf piles as a kid, having leaf fights with my brothers, and being ordered by our father to pick up the damn leaves. My father was a task master when it came to fallen leaves, and he instructed us in particular and preferred methods for stuffing the maximum possible leaves into a plastic bag. I have to believe that our city landfill is stuffed to the gills with bags of leaves, now dry and preserved by their plastic wrappings, and waiting to be discovered by scientists in the far future who will wonder with amazement what primitive people spent so much effort shoving leaves into plastic bags and burying them en masse. Well I was one of those primitive people.

My secret pleasure is in burning leaves. It's messy and unnecessary, but I've done it a few times, and I would do it again, at least once, if I thought I could get away with it. I learned the hard way that I wasn't supposed to burn leaves in this town.

The first year we moved here, we had a severe leaf problem. I attached a lawn sweeper to the tractor, and began gathering the leaves together in piles. I thought burning would be a great solution, and a coworker, Doug, joined me for the afternoon. As I carted load after load to the pile, he raked them into the fire, and we had a really smooth operation going. Then the fire department showed up to put out the fire, and explained to me in no uncertain terms that one simply could not burn leaves. Spoil sports.

A final side note is that Doug, who was a very good friend to us, passed away that winter at the untimely age of 48. I do enjoy the pleasures of fall, but it also reminds me that winter is not far away. I don't dread either one because of Doug's passing. If you live long enough, you bury enough friends and family that every season, every month, and every holiday becomes associated with the loss of a loved one. I don't condemn the season with the loss; only the moment. The moment passes by to make room for the next moment.

If your heart is strong enough, there is love and pleasure available to you in those coming moments. You just have to be ready to accept it, and keeping aware of what I love, I hope, makes me ready.

Oh So Good

2009-10-17T05:08:00.000-07:00

Soda pop, or just "pop", as we called it in Ohio, was not always like it is today. Drinking a pop was a special occasion, and closely regulated by our parents. The only soft drinks we kept around on a regular basis were ginger ale and tonic water, and those were left over from the rare evening party my parents held for other adults. My mother would often serve us ginger ale when we were nauseated or suffering from influenza. I'm not sure how ginger ale became a tonic, especially when there was tonic water already in the refrigerator, but I think it was a case of a mother feeling the need to do something for her sick child, and ginger ale tasted better than tonic water, so ginger ale it was. She served crackers too, so it was a one-two punch of soda pop and soda crackers.

When my parents hosted a day-time party, it was a cause dé celebration for us kids. This was typically in the summer, and was a thinly veiled excuse to have family members over to eat grilled hamburgers and drink cheap beer. As kids, we didn't care what the reason, and we endured the forced labor of cleaning the garage because the payoff, the reward, was unfettered access to pop during the party.

The pop was bought from a beverage store (at least that's how they were known in our part of Ohio). The store would be stacked and crowded with cases of bottled beer and and soda pop. There was a walk-in cooler in back for beer ready to serve. Placards and banners promoted various brands or specials, but in the era of supermarket coupons, it was cheaper to buy in quantity from these small, dark, family owned beverage stores, so advertising and merchandising was not really the point.

Going to the beverage store was an exciting precursor to the party. If brought along for the ride, we had an opportunity to influence some of the decisions. I was not that enamored of Coke or Pepsi back then, but absolutely loved root beer. My mother had a thing for cream soda, which I thought was weird, and would question the sanity of such a purchase. But the reality was that we were there to save money. A few name brand mixers were bought for drinks (the aforementioned ginger ale and tonic water) but for the kids and really old people, the cheapest soda pop available was selected.

That's where O-So came in. They were packaged in ten ounce bottles, and arranged in wooden boxes, in a mixed array of flavors: purple, red, orange, brown, and white. They were supposed to be grape, cherry, orange, root beer, and cream soda, but they tasted nothing like that, and it was just easier to refer to their colors, orange notwithstanding. Because the case of small bottles was relatively light, I could, as a kid, help load them in the trunk, which I did with great care. Fear of my father's retribution for wasting money and making a mess focused my attention.

The pop was loaded in a steel cooler and packed with ice. We were forbidden from drinking anything before the guests arrived, but there was usually so much barking about sweeping, arranging, and setting chairs that there was little time for worrying about it. Besides, as long as both of my brothers were suffering as equally as I suffered, it was okay to wait.

I believe purple was O-So's flagship flavor, but those went so quickly in the mad grab by kids that it was hardly even a factor in the decision. I remember ending up with "red" a lot. It may have been intended to taste like cherry, but it was always strong and spicy, and was nothing like the cherries from our tree out back. "Red," in fact, became my favorite because I was much more fearful of ending up with O-So's version of cream soda.

The cooler had a bottle opener on the side. That was the other neat thing: we opened the bottles just like the adults opened their beer. If we wandered away from the cooler too quickly after our grab, we might have to venture into the garage where a church key could be found among the tools. For me, as a kid, I was much more into holding onto a long neck bottle of something to drink, even though "red" didn't taste that good. It's kind of like getting married because everyone else is getting married, and then realizing the orange soda may have been more to your liking.

During one of the parties, we had lost a tree some time during the previous year, and so a stump remained. One of my brothers, or cousins, or an uncle, had the idea of pounding the bottle caps into the stump, and so the fun for that day was gathering the bottle caps, either beer or pop, and pounding them into the wood. Considering the amount of sugar we were consuming, we really needed to get busy.

As the party wound down, the bottles had to be returned to the wooden case, beer and pop alike. These were stacked in the garage to be returned the next weekend. In that sense, life itself is like a party: you build up and prepare to have fun; before you realize, the party is over, and you have to start cleaning up the mess. In the end, you're left with dirty dishes, trash, and maybe, just maybe, a few good memories.

The Penny Box

2009-10-08T03:52:00.000-07:00

Another of the short stories I wrote two decades ago, a time I am nostalgically referring to as my golden age of writing (golden because, at the time, I believed I would figure out how to do it), was "The Penny Box". It was inspired by the neighborhood in which I lived at the time, and the older generation I saw around me in those small homes. The house itself was inspirational: it was cute and cozy, but it could also feel dated and cramped; so much depends upon attitude.

Like my other stories, I spent months on this fine tuning the words and rhythm. I fretted over the plot and the situation. I dutifully sent it out to magazines and journals. I then added to my collection of rejection letters.

I have written dozens of stories that I never quite figured out, and which, upon reflection, I simply don't like. This is one of the stories I've always enjoyed. Now I wish I'd written more like this, if only for myself. If you don't like "The Penny Box", I understand completely. It may seem simple and deep, but it may also seem insipid and pointless; so much depends on attitude.

Coffee Horror Story

2009-10-04T13:47:00.000-07:00

My first job out of college was interesting, but like so many things in life, there were good things and bad.

I was on a small team colloquially known as "fly and fix". If there was a problem with one of our computer systems that could not be handled by the local technicians and experts, my boss was expected to show up and fix it. I was being trained, along with another young man, to do the same sort of thing. When he flew in, he didn't leave until it as fixed, and worked around the clock to solve the problem. He had a long history with the company's mainframe computers, and was an expert troubleshooter. When I joined him, he was transitioning to being expert in the company's new line of powerful desktop computers.

Because of this odd and demanding constraints, he worked out of his home at a time where that was very rare. His basement was stocked with several of the new computers, every manual created on the system, and every possible peripheral. These computers generated so much heat that he had an air conditioning unit installed just for the basement. So for the first eighteen months of the job, I reported to this guy's house for work, and sat in his basement studying manuals.

I was able to dress casually, kind of rare for the day, and I brought a suit in case we had to visit a client. Three times I had to rush home to pack for a week. So the good part was dressing casually, not being in an office, and the excitement of rushing out to solve a problem. I also enjoyed learning the computer systems. That was the good.

The bad was being in a basement with two geeky men talking computers. Another bad part was traveling at odd times, long car trips, flights to weird places, and eating in lousy fast food restaurants on a daily basis. I would spend 18 to 20 hours with the same guys, talking about very little except the problem at hand. For my boss, this was the pinnacle of his career, and he loved every minute, especially the fast food; not so much for me.

But the absolute worst was the coffee situation. When we were in his basement, the coffee was in the kitchen, courtesy of Mr. Coffee. He had an odd policy about coffee, and would brew only weak coffee. He would then immediately turn off the burner. If you wanted hot coffee before that pot was empty, you had to warm it in the microwave. I hated that coffee.

Eventually, I hated that job. I hated that basement, and I kind of hated those computers. They led me down a technological dead end. All the things I learned from that of value were entirely tangential from the systems.

So what did I learn? That coffee is meant to be fresh. Oxidation begins soon after brewing, and no microwave can reverse that tragedy. For some people, their job is their life, and these people can be difficult coworkers. And that no matter how bad the coffee at a greasy spoon in Jackson, Missouri, reheated coffee, at least for me, will always be worse.

Why I Watch Movies

2009-10-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

I went for a jog with my daughter today and it was chilly. I thought we should wear long sleeve shirts, but she wore a plain, short-sleeved shirt so I felt to do the same. I couldn't be shown up by my daughter.

It was cold. The wind was blowing stiffly, and there was the threat of rain. By the time we were at the football field, we were both freezing, and our fingers were hurting. We both had to swing our arms to get the blood flowing.

Near the midway point, she began rubbing her arms and I said, "Rub your trunk; your arms will take care of themselves."

It was a quote from "Batman Begins". Henri Ducard is coaching the vulnerable and misguided Bruce Wayne after having fallen through the ice during battle. And what would I do, who would I be, without modern culture?

I'd be vulnerable and misguided, that's what. And susceptible to crazy ideas.

On Trees, Chain Saws, and Axes

2009-09-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

My house is on a wooded lot. It was a mess of cherry, ash, maple, and thick underbrush. The only way to get through it was to crawl through the poison ivy. The neighbors from the adjoining subdivision had taken to dumping trash and dog poop in the low area at the back. It was so thick I would not have been surprised to find the remains of a Union soldier from the Civil War.

The landscaper during the building process recommended that we pay someone to clear the entire lot and choose trees that we wanted, and add the necessary twenty grand to our mortgage. "Trust me," he said. "You'll be happier." I laughed at the prospect, and thought that I could do the job myself in my spare time. Two young children pretty much take care of themselves, so I would have ample time. For the next ten years, I peeled away at the mess, and twice I paid an arborist to chop down dead and dangerous trees. The remaining trees were mostly cherry and ash. Cherry, it turns out, are more trouble than they are worth as they leave a mess of inedible fruit, and, once they grow tall, they are weak in the trunk and a threat to fall. After all my efforts, it is still an unsightly mess.

The emerald ash borer wreaked havoc on the ash. I called back the arborist to cut down 40 ash trees a couple of years ago. We piled the wood in three main "stacks" in the backyard. Now those unsightly piles are far worse: the wood is rotting, there is poison ivy flourishing at the edges, and it now seems like more wood than I can ever cut, split, and burn in my life. Somehow, I had convinced myself that we would have a fun campfire each and every weekend, and the family would sit and talk and share stories. We have had two, maybe three such campfires.

Our yard still has a couple of dozen trees. One in particular annoyed me. It was an apple tree that had grown up with its trunk wrapped around the other. Part of that apple tree also grew down to the ground. It wasn't a bad tree--not in my yard, where everything is a mess--but it simply annoyed me. So I cut it down.

A twenty-inch chain saw can be a frightening thing. I haven't cut down any significant trees, so the wedge and cut method meant nothing to me. Besides, this apple tree was wrapped around an ash, so it wasn't going to fall no matter how many times I yelled "timber."

I basically scared myself pretty thoroughly trying to fell it. It stood on a slight rise on soft ground, and I had to raise the chain saw up to eye level where I needed to cut it. It's a great shoulder workout that way, in the same sense that being chased by a mugger can be aerobic.

I needed an ax to finish the job, and as I swung, I kept thinking that it was even money that the trunk was going to crash down on me. I once played Babe the blue ox in Mrs. Perkins' fifth grade production of "Paul Bunyan". Working with Nick, our performance was well regarded. That's about as much woodsman training as I've had in my life. Handling the chainsaw and swinging an ax has been self taught since that time.

One final, mighty swing cut through the apple tree, and the weight of the tree drove the severed trunk several inches into the ground. It happened in the blink of an eye, before I could move a muscle. Now I know why lumberjacks have trouble securing workers compensation insurance. If gravity and the friction of the ash tree had so deigned, that apple tree could have broken my foot, shattered my leg, or crushed my chest. And it's the last of those options, crushing my chest, that would have hurt the least, because my heart would likely have stopped in just a few seconds.

I chopped up what remained of the apple tree, and added the wood to my unsightly wood piles. I split a few logs with the hope that I might, someday, have a campfire in the back yard.

Parenting Story

2009-09-22T03:55:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I spent the better part of Sunday at a soccer field. Not just a soccer field, but a soccer complex with eight large fields. As part of a tournament, my son was sideline judge for six games. I drove him there before eight A.M.; instead of going home to just wait to come and get him again, I decided to stay.

The weather was beautiful. That was one of the attractions. I could either spend an extra hour in the car going back and forth, or sit in the sun and read magazines and books while drinking coffee in a comfortable chair as the cool breeze wafted over me. It had every opportunity to be a wonderful day except for one small thing I overlooked: Soccer Parents.

The tournament was for younger kids. I had forgotten the insanity that takes over the minds of parents as they cheer on their children. Their voices rise and fall with the bounce of the ball. When a goal is scored, half of the parents scream in delirium; the other half groan in agony.

Heaven forbid a boy is not paying attention. The parents exhort and cajole, encourage and chastise. In one game in particular, the parents of the team from Fowlerville were berserk. By my estimation, every single one of them was crazy. They screamed for the coach to bench their own children. They coached from the sidelines, moving players back and forth. They threatened their own children while on the field, during the play of the game, for not paying attention to the game.

I struck up a conversation with another dad who was waiting for the next game. We shared a glance as the shouting became frenzied amongst the parents when a goal was surrendered for no reason other than a child's lack of drive and initiative. He blurted out, "I'm an older Dad, so I cherish all these moments. But I try not to get too wrapped up in it."

I admitted that I had cheered mightily in the past, but I didn't remember ever cheering like this, yelling at the kids for not performing, or berating the referee. In fact, just a couple of days before, I stumbled on a team photo from one of my sons early teams. It was at least eight years old, and I had been the coach. At that time, urging six and seven year olds to play took quite a bit of effort from the parents. I was fairly certain that out of those twelve children on that team, only my son still played the game.

There's nothing wrong with kids trying out various activities until they find something they really, really like. To find passion in life is what gives life meaning. For so many parents, their children, and whatever the child happens to be doing, is the passion for the parents, and it's very easy to lose sight of an appropriate perspective to the situation. The child is competing against other children; if they are better than the others, there's hope that this might be a thing in which the child is gifted. Or the talent pool may be so shallow that, in fact, everybody stinks at it. You don't know that as a parent; you only see your child struggling, and your blood begins to boil.

I played hockey in my youth. I really, really loved it, and even dreamed of playing professionally. I got fairly good at it, but at the age of nineteen I quit and never played again. It has crossed my mind occasionally, and mostly out of curiosity, to play again; but what once seemed like everything in the world to me I lost.

Before that happened, however, my mother sat through numerous games, and I saw a side of her I had never, ever seen before. Hockey brings out the very worst in parents. They scream at the players, they scream at the referees, and they scream at each other. I would not be surprised to hear one day that the fans watching a hockey match became so enraged at each other that a hockey match broke out in the stands. My mother understood little of the game, but she understood that her son loved playing, and that other boys were trying to smash his skull out on the ice. I received stitches to the face (scary) and stitches to my inner thigh (very scary). I had the wind knocked out of me several times, and even had a stick broken over my helmet in anger. It seemed I might be severely hurt at any moment, but the most surprising thing was that my mother survived without having a nervous breakdown.

I'm not happy or proud that I lost hockey. It's a great game, and I would have done well to have made the effort to keep at it. Maybe it's not the game itself, but the exercise and the comradery I miss. I hope that my son, if he takes nothing else away from soccer, takes the feeling of team play with him, and continues that yearning desire throughout his life. We are mostly a social animal, and my life has not been social enough.

Back at the soccer field, the older dad took up a position on the sideline to watch his son play. I was still enjoying the sunshine and the cool breeze. I was also enjoying the sound of children at play, and their parents cheering the game. At one point, the older dad's son misplayed a ball, and the dad did not yell, but he did complain to the person sitting beside him.

The boy misplayed another, and the dad could not contain himself. He shouted to him without anger. A few minutes later, though, the older dad seemed on the verge of losing that control, and he walked away to watch the game from farther away, lying on a grassy hill, away from the chatter of the other parents. His son's team was out matched, and would suffer a 10-1 loss.

I am not holier than thou or thee. When my son was that age, I shouted, cajoled, and cheered. I struggled to contain my anger when his teams played poorly, and was giddy with delight when they won. I offered the older dad a knowing smile in the hopes that he and his son would both find the correct perspective for that game. It was, after all, only a game; and it was a beautiful day, regardless of the score.

The Cardboard Box

2009-09-21T03:56:00.000-07:00

I splurged on myself once, and spent a week in Iowa City at the Iowa Writers Program Summer Workshop. Very different from the famous one, but it was very good, and the class was led by Robley Wilson, then editor of the North American Review.

The workshop was about a dozen people, and it was fairly diverse. Working people, a doctor, therapists, and a guy from Ireland. The common factor was that we all had a screw loose, and were trying to doing something about that with our writing.

One of my co-workshoppers made it kind of big. Abraham Verghese went all in the following year. He didn't just return to the workshop, he got a job nearby and applied for The Writers' Workshop program at the University of Iowa; he was accepted, and, frankly, he's been notably successful ever since. You know that saying: it's not enough to succeed, but your friends must also fail? Well, he should have kept me close, because I'd be making him really happy about now.

The first time I stumbled upon his name while reading The New Yorker, I was like, "Wow, cool; I know him!" The most recent time, when his new novel was briefly noted and mostly raved, I was more like, "Come on already; this sucks being me."

While at the summer workshop, I really liked him. I really liked everything about the workshop, especially the chance to write within a community of like-minded people that cared about literary art forms. That week, I wrote this story. I was never able to do anything with it, but there's a certain something about this story that I love above all the others.

I hope you enjoy The Cardboard Box, which is inspired by aspects of my own childhood.

The Black Dog Shall Have His Day

2009-09-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

I have just added an article that was a speech I delivered for Toastmasters. The speech is called: "The Black Dog Shall Have His Day," and is memoir-ish and the kind of thing I like to blog about. It's about an aspect of my emotional intelligence that was, heretofore, only privy to my classmates from Mrs. Dale's afternoon kindergarten class. That was a long time ago, and maybe I just remember too many things; nevertheless, give it a read.

A Short, Sad Tale

2009-09-14T04:07:00.000-07:00

The estate sale started at eight a.m. on a Saturday morning. Things had been pulled out of the house and arranged on tables. People from all over the neighborhood came to see what was there, the things from the house that no one visited. There were other people, too, just for the sale. But those of us that lived near the old couple were curious what might have been inside. I was probably the only child in the neighborhood who had visited their home.

Mrs. V. was confined to a wheelchair. If the adults in the neighborhood knew why, the kids most certainly did not. The most that we knew is that she was sometimes on her porch sitting with her husband, but even that was a mystery because they had an awning, shrubs, and shades arranged to keep the sun off of the porch. At most we would catch a glimpse of them sitting there late in the afternoon, or early in the evening.

The most interaction we had was when Mr. V. had their dog, a chihuahua that barked incessantly at any movement, outside, walking in circles around the yard until he did his business. Occasionally, Mrs. V. would call out a greeting to me as I went past. What I saw of her was an older woman with white hair sitting in a wheelchair. She wore glasses and a dress. She smiled as she waved.

We lived in a suburb of Cleveland. Our neighborhood was older and had been built up shortly after World War II. The homes were small and packed in fairly close. The lawns were neat and tidy. Some yards were strictly off limits because of the angry people that lived there. Mr. V. was not angry, as far as we knew. He and his wife were just old and quiet.

I was invited into their home once, by Mr. V., who told me that Mrs. V. wanted to give me something. She was in her wheelchair in their front room. The room itself was impeccably neat and clean. The furniture was nice. That was a thing in all of those small homes: there was a room full of nice things. Mrs. V. smiled at me, and beckoned me to come closer. Their little dog sat in her lap, and, for the first time, I was able to pet that annoying little dog.

She handed me a small toy. It was a windup seal that clapped it's fins together and made a noise. It was made of metal of some kind, and was painted. The seal sat upon a round platform, like at the circus. It was very nice, but was not my sort of thing to play with in 1972. I thanked her and left. Unfortunately, I lost that toy at some point. It's possible my older brothers messed with it, and it's possible I was a typical stupid kid that couldn't keep track of things; regardless, it was lost, and I wish I had it now.

Mrs. V. died. I don't know when, exactly. I did not understand, at that point, what death was. No family members had ever died during my short life. She was just gone, and no one said hello or waved to us from their porch when we walked past.

For the next year, Mr. V. kept up the yard, and walked the dog around in circles to do his business. Even I recognized it was a quiet existence. One morning, there was an ambulance and a police cruiser in the driveway. The rumor spread through the neighborhood that Mr. V. had shot himself. His dog had died a few weeks earlier, and he couldn't go on alone.

The items in the estate sale were a snapshot of the century up to that point. He had served in World War I, and had a German Wermacht helmet with the spike on top. He had washboards and kitchen implements from the early 1900s. He had signs, posters, and calendars from the 1950s.

What interested me most was the collection of military surplus from World War II. He had diffused grenades, 80 mm shells, and ammo clips for an M-1 rifle. Nothing would still explode, but I thought it was the coolest stuff in the world regardless. He had belts, canteens, ammunition boxes, bayonets, and swords. It was a true warriors collection, but he was old enough to have been in the Great War; was he also in the Second World War?

I begged my father to buy me some of those mementos, which he did. We were outbid on the helmet, but we got several lots of diffused munitions. My mother focused on kitchen utensils, most of which were older but in like-new condition.

Unfortunately, so much of our lives come down to a collection of things. There were things that belonged to Mr. V., and things that belonged to Mrs. V. If you knew all the details surrounding the things, or at least how the person related to them, you might be able to piece together their life story. Lacking that detail, the things almost immediately begin telling their own stories.

The one thing that had an emotional attachment was the mechanical seal Mrs. V. gave me as a gift. I squandered that connection when I lost the toy, and I'm only clinging to the memory. I don't have the thing to cement those feelings. I still have some of the ammo clips in my collection of things from childhood. I played with the cartridges and shells, marveling at them, and wondering about their secrets. How many men had Mr. V. killed in his wars? What was he thinking when at last he was free, and how lonely was he that he had to end his own life?

At some point in the future, perhaps someone will purchase some of my things at an auction. Will they know the history, and how it came to be in my possession, or will they immediately invent their own story, and begin a new history as they add the silly item from the previous century to their own collection?

When It Rains

2009-09-13T15:45:00.000-07:00

The first short story I ever got all the way through and kind of liked was "When It Rains". I had written a few others before then, and even entered one of them in the Hopwood Awards annual contest at the University of Michigan, but I didn't win. At the time, I was very hopeful: Arthur Miller had won that contest many decades before I tried, and I thought that it would be a great way to break into the business, by bursting onto the scene from the College of Engineering. Now they limit the contestants to those taking a course in writing.

I had to settle for the engineering degree. My final semester at Michigan, I took a course in creative writing at Washtenaw Community College. It was cheaper than taking a similar course at the U of M, and I could not take such a thing as an Engineering student. I was allowed to transfer the credit in, however.

I spent the better part of that summer writing this story, along with the other exercises. It appeared in Passages North, the journal of Washtenaw Community College, but was not officially published. I submitted this story to many other journals, and it was rejected, with prejudice, by all of them. You may now be the judge.

What I got out of that course was a great friendship with Brian, and this story. I still love them both.

Pig Roast

2009-09-09T04:08:00.000-07:00

When I was but a boy, the West Side Market in Cleveland was a place of great mystery. My mother spoke of it in hushed awe as if it were sacred, or at least nearly sacred. The vendors there carried the run of the mill produce and meats of any market, but also some of the more exotic combinations that reflected the Eastern European heritage of many of Cleveland's neighborhoods. Kielbasa, Blood Sausage, and Head Cheese, to name a few items, were the things that made my mother's eyes sparkle just a bit.

She did not go to the West Side Market very often when we were young, and so its status grew in my mind as my mother schlepped herself to the A & P, and had to make do with the butcher there. She told stories of how her father, during the Depression, would take the cable car from their neighborhood of Tremont to the the market, and bring home a live chicken. Then her mother would pluck it in their tiny cellar so that she could cook it. There would be feathers, and blood, and filth all over the cellar and the kitchen, and her father would sit proudly in his chair smoking and reading the paper because he had done his part in bringing it home.

I remember going to the West Side Market once and seeing a whole pig in the glass display of the butcher. It looked far bigger than me, and probably was, given that I was only eight or nine. I had never seen such a thing. Eyeballs, snout, ears, and curly tail—it was all there.

The next time I saw such a thing was thirty years later when my neighborhood wanted to have a block party. We wanted to "do a pig roast", and I was naive and foolish enough to retrieve the roaster because my van had a hitch on it. I was immediately promoted to chief cook considering that I lived on the cul-de-sac and we wanted to have the neighborhood party there, as well.

We started the charcoal briquettes at 6:30 in the morning, and the pig arrived at seven. I didn't take time to marvel at the poor beast, but I should have, because I doubt that I'll ever be foolish enough to roast another pig. By 7:10 A.M., the pig was settled in the roaster, and I sat in a chair on the lawn with two of my neighbors and we began to drink beer.

Less than an hour later, disaster came to visit. I had put too much charcoal in the roaster (our crime scene investigation revealed), and the pig caught fire. When a pig catches fire, it's like something out of a movie. Flames fly out of the roaster like napalm, and the heat forces you to cringe and back away. Near panic, we tried to lift the pig out of the roaster, but no one could maintain their grip long enough to carry it to safety. We considered hosing the damn thing down, but instead one neighbor pulled the charcoal tray out of the back. We snapped the lid down, and hoped the flame would extinguish itself.

It turned out to be only a minor blemish. Part of the flank was charred. There was worry that more of the pig may, in fact, be ruined, but not having a lot of options, we decided to tone down the heat and see what happens.

Eight hours later, the pig was fully roasted. Having been snacking and drinking all day, I was fully toasted. I don't think I even tried the pork. I wasn't hungry.

Practical Jokes Not to Play

2009-09-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

I have never had good luck playing practical jokes. They generally backfire, and I feel awful. I feel awful right now.

When I was four years old, my mother took me along shopping. I thought it was great sport to hide from her while she shopped. I would duck in and out of the clothes racks, crawling along as she moved through the ladies department. One day, I stayed out of contact too long, and I frightened myself. I burst out from under a rack and directly into the path of a middle-aged woman. She tripped and fell on me, and we both were banged up a little.

This particular day, my paternal grandmother was along. She was quite a feisty woman, in her mid-fifties, and she gave that poor woman a great deal of grief for having tripped over me. I felt quite bad, though, because it was totally my fault. I didn't tell that to grandma, but let her tear into this innocent woman instead.

Not long after that incident, I decided to hide from my mother. This was before I had started school, and so she was a stay-at-home-mom at that point. I hid in the living room underneath one of the end tables next to the sofa. I thought it was rather obvious, and that I'd be discovered shortly. I also thought it was funny that she enlisted my brothers and the ten or so other boys in the neighborhood to find me.

I had no idea how frightened she was for my sake, and that somehow she imagined me drowning in the creek that flowed through the park behind our house. When the search party didn't find me, she started to cry. I became scared. Now I was worried that she'd be mad at me for causing such a stir, and now I didn't want to reveal myself.

However, when my mother phoned the police, I could no longer contain my emotions, and I began to cry. I still did not crawl out from where I was, but instead sobbed and cried out for help like the pathetic, naughty boy that I was.

When I was twenty-five, I went to a restaurant with my father and mother. We had to wait for a table. While we waited, I noticed that someone got into a car exactly like my father's. It was parked just three spots from his car—same make, same model, same year, same color. I thought this was funny, but what I said to my father was: "Hey look, someone is stealing your car."

My father, being a former jet pilot, feared little. Even at the age of fifty, he was going to stop this crime. It took all my strength to restrain him, and I had to shout to get past his rage and make him understand that it was just a joke. He never laughed at that one.

Today I noticed that my next door neighbor had a new television in the back of his pickup truck. He had pulled up close to his house, but had not unloaded. I went in for a closer look and saw that he also had a new sound system to accompany the nice, fancy television. The door of his truck was open, so I knew he had just stepped inside before unloading. I thought it would be funny to hide the box with the sound system.

I placed the box on the side of his garage out of sight. I then sneaked back to my house and waited near the door for him to discover that it was missing, planning on sharing in a great laugh. However, my daughter needed me at that precise moment, and called me away. I then forgot about my little joke.

Poor Tom, unfortunately, thought that somehow the expensive component had bounced out of the truck, and raced off. I am lucky that his wife discovered the missing box a few moments later, and luckier still that Tom did not get hurt during that wild goose chase.

I should really just get myself a very comfortable chair, sit the hell down, and never get up.

Sic Semper Tyranus — Water Bottles

2009-08-31T04:12:00.000-07:00

I am no longer a fan of water bottles purchased by the case, thrown in the shopping cart as an afterthought, and left in the trunk of the car just in case someone gets thirsty. I am not interested in the fact that the walls of said bottles are really thin, and thus use less plastic. I care even less about the recuperative powers of artisan spring water, considering that the supposed spring water is pumped from city water supplies in factories, the water being drawn from Lake Michigan. I know I have peed in Lake Michigan more than once, and I don't swim there very often. And I think fish pee there as well.

Using my own family as the basis of all my research, we as a society have gotten lazy and stupid about drinking water. Hydration is important, but not important enough to remain a part of the insanity that is the bottled water industry. It's marketed as being important and affordable, but when they started adding vitamins, as they did with Lucky Charms, to make it seem healthful, then they are turning back on the original premise of bottle water being more pure than tap water.

When I was a kid, my brothers and I often got thirsty in the car when driving around with our parents. We would complain. My mother would tell us to hold up our cup, and she would press the imaginary button on the non-existent fountain in our car, and she would make a hissing sound intended to remind us of water poring into a cup. But we didn't have a cup. The cup was imaginary, just like the fountain and the button. Her worry and concern for our thirst was also non-existent. We didn't have water in the car, so we were going to have to wait. The only things we had were thirst, sarcasm, and my mother's bad sound effects.

We survived, though, in spite of these deep hardships. Granted, we as a society spend more time in vehicles. We also use seat belts more regularly than when I was a child, so there's an increased chance that we'll survive a crash, especially one where the car rolls down the side of a ravine and is not found by rescuers for several days. In that scenario, it is important to have fresh water with you, preferably by your side in case you are pinned into your seat and unable to access the trunk where there is a shrink-wrapped case of water bottles at the ready.

Wall Drug, the tourist trap somewhere in South Dakota, exploited the no-water-in-the-car mentality with cryptic, intriguing signs placed along interstate 80, encouraging children to nag their parents during road trips to go drink the "free" water at Wall Drug. The venerable bumper-sticker slogan, "Where in the World is Wall Drug" can be reasonably replaced with "Who Cares About Wall Drug" simply because every middle-class car in America has a three day supply of bottled water in the trunk just in case of a roll-over accident.

So what's my point? I am now using a more permanent water bottle, one with a wide mouth that should be easy enough to clean. I keep it hanging around the house for those moments when I'm going for a ride, and I think I may want to use the trip for hydration as well as travel. If I'm truly around the house, I use a glass and maybe crack a little ice into it for style.

If given the chance, Nestle, or whichever greedy corporate entity it is that has set up water bottling factories in the Great Lakes States, would likely pump every drop of water out of the Great Lakes, and send that water, one bottle at a time, to whoever is willing to pay for it. If that happens, the land bridge between America and Canada will be established, and we'll be at risk for invasion by the Canucks. Although that nightmare scenario is unlikely, I'm still tired of paying more for water than I do for gasoline when I stop at Speedway.

I know my mother would have brought water along if it were socially acceptable back in the 1960s. She did her best, and the lousy sound effects distracted us enough that we forgot about our thirst for the moment. My mother, God rest her soul, did take us to Wall Drug. Once there, we had a cool drink of water. It was yummy, perhaps because we had waited, and had the opportunity to anticipate what that water would be like. She also bought the bumper sticker.

The Ultimate Sacrifice

2009-08-28T19:59:00.000-07:00

The house where I grew up was small, but we were happy. Relatively happy, I should say, because we didn't know any better, and pretty much everybody we knew lived in the same size house. There was, however, a problem that was difficult to ignore: one bathroom for five people. Looking back, I now believe that one drawback to indoor plumbing is that the things you do in a bathroom have to be done in the house.

The real question, though, is how did my mother survive all of those years amongst four men? The house was built in the late 1940s, and was of a simple design. A square foundation, 30 feet on a side, for a 900 square foot home. The main floor was divided into four rooms: kitchen, living room, master bedroom, and an "other" bedroom. Part of the space that would have made the "other" bedroom decent sized was devoted to the bathroom.

It was difficult for that many adults to live in that amount of space in the 1960s. If we were Mexicans then, yeah, sure, no problem, or if we were Eastern European immigrants in the 1900s—but we were neither of those things, so my father converted the attic into a bedroom for his three sons. We each had our own bed and a dresser for clothing. With the problem of sleeping space corrected, that other bedroom was converted to "TV Room". In it we could fit a sofa, an end table with a lamp, and a television—and that was all that we could fit.

We would pile into that room as a family: some sitting on the sofa, the rest recumbent in front of the television. It seemed comfortable and serene. We were warm, and cozy, and together. But there was a problem.

The problem with togetherness is that we all emit odors. Teenage boys especially. We also expel gas. It can be a very serious problem. Oddly enough, amongst family, you achieve a certain familiarity with these various bodily functions that does not cause embarrassment (although perhaps it still should). At times the stench would be so great that we would tell each other, "Hey, go to the bathroom, because I think you just shit your pants."

The bathroom, however, was no escape. The shared wall would not mask the various noises one makes on a toilet. Because of its age, that bathroom also had no vent the way modern homes do, so the air could only circulate back into the house. (There was a window, but, during most of the year, it could not be opened.) That bathroom and our TV room shared a heating vent, in fact, so if the furnace was not blowing hot air, then smells were wafting forth and back between the rooms.

And yet we recall those days fondly. We do not linger on the unhappy moments, unlike the smells that lingered in the air during Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart. We didn't know it at the time but we had invented Smellivision and, unfortunately, it was tuned to a station featuring a forever-length movie about Uranus.

W8 Monitr is dead -- Long Live W8 Loss

2009-08-28T03:57:00.000-07:00

This is a notice that my interactive web site, w8monitr.com, will no longer be available at that address. I'm pulling it down for re-tooling.

However, I have also had a series of articles there that discuss my weight loss, nutrition, and healthy lifestyle. Those I want to persist, and they'll be available here at MickeyHadick.com in the articles section.

Big vs. The Wizard of Oz

2009-08-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

I caught the ending of "Big" the other day as I was flipping through channels. To quote a wiser man than myself, "Big" is one of those movies that, if you happen to stumble upon it as you are getting dressed, even if you are just-out-of-the-shower-bare-ass naked, you will sit on the edge of the bed and watch whatever remains of that movie.

In the final fifteen minutes, as Tom Hanks's character (Josh) finally confronts his dilemma, I noticed some subtle things I don't remember. He's making the presentation for his interactive comic book, and is describing how the child playing with the comic book will run out of options and finally discover what he has to do to win the game. That's when the light goes on for him, and he makes his final choice.

Maybe everybody in the world noticed that, and keeps it fresh in their memory, but I had not, so I was struck by the elegance in the story telling. Perhaps it was a bit heavy-handed to unplug Zoltan the Fortune Teller before making his wish, but embedding the solution to his problem within the context of his work is pretty clever.

They attempted the same thing in "The Wizard of Oz", but I always found it dissatisfying that the ruby slippers had the power all that time while Dorothy absolutely, positively, wanted to get home. In today's parlance, Dorothy had every right to say, "Are you f***ing kidding me?" She embarked on the journey for the sole purpose of getting home, whereas Josh resists going home; in fact, once he became intimate with Susan, Josh seriously considers staying. All of Dorothy's trials during her journey were contrived to delay her; Josh's adventure made plain to him what he needed to do.

Both movies suffer from Ex Deus Machina in that Glinda and Zoltan hold magical powers that start and stop the action. Well I can forgive that. But if forced to choose, I'd watch "Big". I might, however, flip over to "The Wizard of Oz" to catch that scene when the hair stylists in the Emerald City are giving the Cowardly Lion the old once-over—those babes were put together.

Gizella's Torte Cake

2009-08-24T18:41:00.000-07:00

This is the recipe for my grandmother's (Gizella's) torte cake, scaled down for eight inch pans...

Top and Bottom Layers

8 egg yolks
8 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla
8 egg whites
4 Tbsp flour

Preheat oven to 375. Beat the egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla for 12 minutes (and we mean BEAT).

Fold the flour into the beaten egg yolks (slowly).

Beat the egg whites until fluffy. Fold the egg whites into the above mixture. When combined, pour evenly into two greased, eight inch pans. Bake for 25 minutes at 375.

Middle Layer

4 egg yolks
4 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
4 egg whites
1 Tbsp cocoa
4 Tbsp ground walnuts
2 Tbsp bread crumbs

Beat the egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla for 25 minutes. Fold in the cocoa.

Beat the egg whites and fold into above mixture. Add the walnuts and bread crumbs. Bake for 25 minutes at 375 in an eight inch, greased pan.

Filling

1/2 lb. sweet butter
2 cups ground walnuts
1/2 cup milk (scalded)
6 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
3 Tbsp bread crumbs

Beat the butter and sugar and vanilla. Pour the scalded milk over the walnuts and combine. Add sugar and bread crumbs.

Use the above mixture between the layers of the cake. Then frost with chocolate frosting.

This cake is very dense, and can be savored in small portions.

My grandmother, and then my mother, made this for family celebrations. It has been made with as many as 42 eggs, and can be used to feed an army. In fact, if Kaiser Wilhelm had enlisted the Imperial Chef of the Hapsburgs, and served Viennese Torte cakes to the Wermacht, they would have marched through Moscow before winter set in, and the world would be a very different place. Instead of Little Debbie Devil's Food Cakes, we'd all snack on "Kaiser Willie Tortes". But what do I know? It's not like I'm happy or anything.

One additional note is that I have no idea how they made this before the age of electric appliances. The above can take three hours, and tears apart the kitchen. How Gizella did it with just a wooden spoon is beyond me.

2009-08-23T07:16:00.001-07:00

I tried to make a 21 egg torte cake, but used the wrong size ns and they didn't bake through. The lesson: follow the directions even if the recipe is vague.

Beer Heals All Wounds

2009-08-12T19:38:00.000-07:00

In light of the recent "Beer Summit" I told a story from my past that resulted in a similar settling of differences over beer. This one is posted to my articles section, and is itself called "Beer Heals All Wounds." It's about me, the cherry tree I climbed as a child, and a dispute with a stranger that resulted in a fist fight.

Many years ago, men frequently settled disputes with fisticuffs. That doesn't happen nearly as often. I'm not saying we should have a Fight Club or anything, but maybe we should have a "Raise Your Voice and Bare Your Teeth" club; we are primates, after all.

2009-07-22T10:42:00.001-07:00

I can post from my cell phone now, but this raises the spectre of having something to say at any point in time. I am into bathroom humor. I need new material.

2009-07-21T17:31:00.001-07:00

The urinal is out of order.
Sorry for the inconvenience. That was what the sign in the pro shop men's room stated. It's just that I was in pain. Sad bladder :(

A Corn Hole Tournament

2009-05-30T17:30:00.000-07:00

A simple game of bean bag toss takes on a very different tone when you call it "Corn Hole", depending on where you live. This tournament took place in Ohio, and we knew exactly what was meant. Our friends in Wisconsin, when we offer to play corn hole with them, raise an eyebrow.

A Series of Mysterious Events

2009-04-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

Thursday evenings are trash night for me, meaning that I have to gather up trash from around the house and put the trash dumpster out on the curb. Trash is picked up on Friday mornings, and they claim the right to pickup starting at seven a.m., and you don't want to miss it.

In the past, these evenings--"trash night" as I call it--has been a moment of contemplative solitude for me. I am alone and performing an ordinary, rudimentary task, allowing my mind to wander a bit. It is not a form of meditation, but it is calming for me, marking the end of a week. I handle our trash with my hands, and I have a sense of the proportion of our activity. If we have had a party or friends staying for the weekend, there will be more trash than usual. If I have been in the mood to dispose of things (and there is much need for that mood) there will be large bags stuffed with now useless toys or household goods. It helps record in my mind what things have been like for me during the week.

On occasion, I've realized that there was not much in the dumpster, and so I've questioned myself what has happened that the amount of trash is down. I worry that I left the laundry room trash can unchecked, or that maybe there are things lingering in the corner of the garage that perhaps could be discarded.

The most interesting dumpster story happened many years ago, back when my Poobrador, Blue, was still alive (a Poobrador is a Poodle-Labrador mix--my own invented name). I was taking him for a walk late one trash night. I carried two bags of kitchen trash out to the dumpster and then continued on into the night with Blue on a leash.

When we returned, Blue began barking at the dumpster. He would not quiet down, and would not relent. He focused on the dumpster as if he were a drug-sniffing canine, and Scarface himself was in the dumpster.

I began to suspect there might be a rat inside. It was garbage, after all, and rats have to eat something and somewhere. I gathered my courage and flipped open the lid of the dumpster. A raccoon was inside the dumpster, and raised his head and stared at us. Sometime during our walk, he must have gotten inside, drawn by one of the bags. Blue, of course, went berserk.

This week, early in the evening of Trash Night, I noticed that one of our trash bags had been left out next to the garage, and the bag was shredded and our kitchen refuse, egg shells, wrappers, and spoiled food, was now scattered across our lawn. Whoever the culprit, they must have taken the bag with the intention of dropping it in the dumpster, but failed to complete the final three feet of the journey.

I did not rush to clean the mess; instead, I treated it as a crime scene.

My wife had no memory of carrying out a trash bag and leaving it short of its destination. But neither could she account for her whereabouts on Sunday evening which, by my examination of the refuse is when that bag made its way outside (there was a blueberry yogurt container amongst the mess, and I recalled eating blueberry yogurt Sunday morning). The easiest thing would have been for her to blame our son, but she didn't recall asking him to take out the trash.

I next interrogated my son. He claimed to have not taken any trash outside at all in several weeks. I believed him. For him to do anything resembling work, it requires an amount of nagging that makes it impossible to forget, and it is extremely unlikely that he would remove the trash from the kitchen and take it outside without being asked to do so.

Our daughter does not even know where the dumpster sits, such is her lot in life that she does not deal with garbage.

I was suspicious once again of my wife. Is it possible that she took the trash out with good intention, but was distracted in her task and left it in harm's way? I brought her to the scene of the crime, and pointed out in particular the yogurt container that suggested to me that this was trash brought out no earlier than Sunday, and likely no later than Monday (we generate about one bag each day). There was a wrapper from a Nestle Crunch bar, an empty cream cheese container, coffee grounds, apple cores, banana peels, school papers, plastic ware, and scraps of food, all of which scattered in the section of yard next to our garage. Our dogs had had a field day with this, I assumed, but there was the possibility of a raccoon making the mess during the night.

My wife clung to her story of not remembering having taken out the trash and leaving it in the yard. I was forced to let her go. As often happens on Law and Order, I did not have sufficient evidence to press charges. I put on work gloves and picked up the trash, bagging it in a new, fresh pull string bag.

There is, of course, the slim possibility that I left it there, but it is my habit to take trash directly to the dumpster, and not linger or explore. I hate to think I could do such a thing to myself, creating, indirectly a mess that I would have to clean. Truth be told, however, I couldn't account for my whereabouts on Sunday evening either.