Feels like Good Times (Perhaps)

Masks. Feels like halloween every day, without the candy. I can’t stand the notion of not wearing a mask. I do hope at one point offerings of candy while wearing a mask will be required before entering the grocery store or pharmacy. If you deny the candy, you will be physically removed from said premises and properly flogged and tased upon departure. I’ll take the candy please. I don’t wish for the trick.

Some people are worried about what they may look like to others if they aren’t wearing a mask. They may receive an “ewwe”, for me and for my wife, an “oohhhh”. “So, that’s what you look like.”

I’ll just take the candy, browse through the meat and seafood isle and be on my way.

Mother of God

I never realized how tough my mother was until I witnessed her challenge teachers or administration when she knew they were clearly wrong.

I was busted once in the rough and tumble, wacky world of challenge physical education when I was a senior in high school. Did I give a yankee dime about school as a senior? EEEhhh…No. I guess it showed when I was sent to the vice principal’s office after tackling my best friend on the school grounds and tossing his shoes out of our zip code.

We were playing Alligator Soccer. Alligator soccer you might ask? I will explain it to you simply and with lack of reverence. I don’t know what the hell that sport was all about.

When I entered the Vice Principal’s office, I wasn’t a first time offender. I’d been accused, rightfully, of escaping West Valley H.S. Alcatraz to purchase a Wednesday Whopper at Burger King. My previous friend involved in the sneaker throwing incident, Nathan Nypen, was an accomplice. That was a three day Saturday detail working on the chain gang. Picking up popcorn droppings, snow cone drippings, corndogs sticks. It was worth it. Whoppers are good.

The Vice Principal, who hated me and my family, called my mother to ensure my punishment was not only happening on the grounds of school, but also observed at home.

I was the last of my mother’s 13 children, so it wasn’t her first call from school administration. While responding to the Vice Principal’s horrific story of the shoe throwing incident, my mother asked the most logical of questions in a single word . . . “And?” The V.P. was stuck in a vat of, “oh, shit.” He was dealing with the wrong mom. My mother didn’t condone my actions, but in the previous years of taking care of us through births, Thanksgiving dinners, boxing matches in the basement, fights on the basketball court, setting fire, accidentally, to a back field, nurturing runaway cows, explaining to us why jail was bad, yet supporting us and the police in the process, she didn’t find this to be a felonious offense. The Vice Principal was speechless and provided his own apology while she listened on the phone and continued folding laundry with underwear skid marks. God bless her, and though I’m sure she was on the express way to heaven, hopefully Heaven isn’t littered with skid marks.

Mom did make me apologize to Nathan. Nathan knew my apology was as phony as me retrieving his shoe over the fence I’d tossed it off of. When he said thanks after jumping over the fence, crossing the closed school ground rules, I then tossed them over again. What a jerk.

Nathan laughed at both of my insincere apologies, but he loved the way my mother handled the “situation”.

He respected my mom, especially when she delivered my sentence for the crime, “Don’t do that again.”

She made every day our Happy Mothers Day.

Hell

Someone at the store told me to go to Hell today. I’m not used to that. I was wearing my baby blue mask, but I made the mistake of walking the wrong way in an aisle. Not more than five people were in the store, and I was condemned to burning in a lake of fire. That just doesn’t seem fair.

Forgive me for doing some wildly stupid things in my life, but is walking down the wrong lane in a grocery store reason for me going to Hell? I guess the prince of darkness is a little more strict than I fathomed while saying my prayers each night.

I never minded spending a timeout in school for a ridiculous reason, such as spitting while playing baseball. That’s not dealing with the man. That’s dealing with the evil playground monitors. I’ll take my punishment.

This guy at the store really irritated me. What did I really do which was so wrong? I blamed Jesus. Then, I just forgave him, and He laughed.

By the way, I walked away from the man telling me I could go to Hell. I was just a little bored and willing to turn the other cheek. We ate fish that night. I shared it with everyone on the island not willing to stand in line at the store. Maybe, Jesus had a good point.

Anti Social Distancing 101 (Dorothy’s Justice)

Many people have older sisters.  Very few of them have six.  I do.  Many people have sisters who are tougher than them and most people in the neighborhood.  Very few have six tougher than anyone in their zip code.  I did.

All of our sisters grew up in a glorious Catholic family, attending church each Saturday or Sunday.  Our sisters were angels most of the time and, hoping to stay in the good graces of God, said their prayers before bedtime and stood out as upstanding, smart, and hardworking citizens.  Then, every once in a while, someone would cross them.  Enter Satan’s little helpers.  If you messed with my sisters, you were simply deemed a fool whose face could be departed.  A fool and his money are soon parted?  No.  A fool crossing my sisters would only be deprived of one thing……blood. Trying not to be be overly dramatic, I did pity the fools who tested my sisters’ reputation as Jekyll and Hyde-ish.  Let’s just say they are probably on a “do not trifle list” managed by the government.

I’ll share an example.  My sister, Dorothy, was walking my sister Maggie to her first day of school.  Maggie was in elementary school and a bit nervous, so Dorothy was supposed to look after her.  Not to worry.  Dorothy did just that.  A student, who knew our family, made the mistake of calling Maggie “Maggie the Maggot.”  Walking up the flight of stairs, he would learn his lesson by having to walk that flight again, if he could, after Dorothy turned red, grew horns, formed a tail looking like a trident and tossed him down that flight of stairs.  “Call my sister that again, and I won’t make it that easy.  Consider yourself warned.” He never did it again.  And, it turns out, this guy was one of Dorothy’s friends.  She’s also infamous for ripping our brother Greg’s pants and shoes off, then making him walk through misty morning dog feces after he had forgotten a key part of his daily chores.

Now a mother of three, and a wife to “bless his soul” Steve for forty years, Dorothy is still alive and throwing.  Her fierce protection of others is one of many ways she shows compassion for her loved ones.  That being written, when pissed off, she will suffer no fools.

When on my side, I never felt nervous in her presence, unless I had done something wrong and feared being punished to the point of submission.  Ok, Dorothy,….that’s enough.

God Bless Dorothy.  God Bless them all.

The Every Other Daily Corona: Public Cess Pools

With the reopening of fishing and golfing, I wonder when or if they’ll open up public pools again.  Sadly, for some, I can guess it won’t be anytime soon.  As a child without a pool at our house, we’d frequent these pools regularly during the summertime pissing season.  I wasn’t a huge fan.  Having two public piss stations in our neighborhood, neither of them were too pleasing for me, but wherever my brothers went, well, I was their shadow.

Thinking back, sans the deaths, I would have welcomed the Corona Virus.  With the exception of one pool out of our neighborhood, I always thought of them as a possible death sentence amongst other unnatural disasters.  Having few friends my own age, I glommed on to my brothers and their friends.   They were all four to six years older, and took pretty good care of me, but there were countless times when they may not be present, thus fearing for my life and clothing.  This was after my brother, Greg, witnessed his bicycle being stolen five feet from the fence barricading him between the thief and himself.  Helplessly, he watched his bike and its new owner, bolt cutters in hand, laugh himself off into the distance.

Once, heading nearby to the same Mission Pool just on the next block past the corner of Mischief and Theft St.,  I proudly rode my bike to the pool in my brand new sneakers.  After some swimming and diving into the blue/yellow liquid, making it green, I left after about an hour to find my shoes missing from the locker I had placed them.  Clearly stolen, with no “witnesses”, or confirmed suspects, (all the deviant a-hole thieves working the locker room) holding back the tears, I rode home in my bare feet.  Walking into our house, leaving a bloody trail from the bottoms of my feet, my mother asked where my new shoes were.  It broke my heart to tell her they’d been stolen.  It was the first pair of really nice shoes she’d ever purchased me.  My very own.  No hand me downs.  Tom, my brother, four years older than me, knew some sleaze bag was prancing around with my shoes showing them off to his derelict family.  He saw red.  Enraged, Tom jumped on his ten speed, recklessly riding to the pool hoping to find the culprit.   With a different pair of shoes, I trailed him by a few lengths witnessing, to no avail, him busting into the locker room without asking for permission.  Tom was only around fifteen at the time, but as a varsity wrestler, he could lick most eighteen year olds in the valley.  Although scaring the hell out of each employee, he was forced to leave by adult personnel.  They were ready to call the fuzz.  Knowing nothing good happens when cops enter a scene, he decided to leave without finding my shoes.  If my brother, Greg, or the rest of our neighborhood gang had heard the news, they would have been right there with him.  I never saw those shoes again, but they did lose my business.

On the other side of the valley was an even more sinister pool. This was Park Piss Pool.  It was a piss dispensary.  If the county could have figured out a way to fabricate fuel with this daily yellow mess, the world would be a far more efficient place.  Gallons and gallons of urinary grime and disgust.  However, it wasn’t the contents of the pool I despised the most.  It was a boy, or perhaps man, who was most definitely mentally disturbed and just flat out mean.  He scared any guts I may have had right out of me and countless others.  While trying to drown me or any other child not practicing social distancing with him, he was a menace.  I’m betting he was in his mid twenties.  His name was Glenn B.  He was also unfavorably known as The Park Penis.  Before throwing him out for several counts of attempted murder by drowning, the pencil necked lifeguards would allow us to witness his grand finale.  Looking like a six foot tall bowling pin, he’d make it safely to the diving board, pull down his bathing suit and piss into the deep and now deeper end of the pool.  Then, he’d further amuse himself by doing a whopper of a belly flop directly into the strategic area of his urine, thus creating a tidal wave of yellow terror.   Children would be screaming while pushing each other right and left with fright trying to find a tsunami safety zone.  It was chaos. Before paying to get into the pool area, I’d refuse when I saw he was present. He’d be there most of the time.  I’d stay on the monkey bars most of the time. While utterly baffling to me, they didn’t present him a lifetime ban for his ungentlemanly antics.

My father hated these stories, so on several occasions, weekends only, he’d take us to another public pool on the other side of town……..the West Side.  It was here he introduced us to another world all together.  Since our side of town was predominately white, we hadn’t really interacted with people of color, usually just cheering for them to race for the goal line on Saturdays or Sundays.  Sure, we had a couple of hispanics in our neighborhood gatherings, in fact they were welcomed as a part of our group, but other than that, it was mostly Irish, Italian, German and British white trash.  When we entered the West Side pool, we were outnumbered by blacks.  There was a little staring on both sides, but I never felt anything but welcomed, and not one ounce of threat or violence. I liked this pool far better than the ones in our neighborhood.  Years later, I gave praise to our father helping us not only acknowledge diversity, but embrace it.  It was deliberate. So, I guess sometimes you have to experience ugliness before finding the right pool.  It’s out there.  Just please don’t cough, sneeze, or most vehemently, piss on me when you find it.

***Following the publication of this blog, I was quickly contacted by an actual member of our Spokane Valley community who was disturbed with a memory this blog dragged out of his wet heart which he hoped to be dead and buried.  He had his own tale of Glenn B., A.KA. “The Park Penis”.   Jeremy S. writes, “I’ll never forget him.  He Kicked the living s–t out of me when I was at Park Pool.  I might’ve been in fifth grade.  I don’t remember what I said to him, but it had something to do with him bugging my younger brother, Andrew.  He held me under water and punched me multiple times.  It was frightening!  I remember the lifeguards pulling him off me.  The dude must have been 35 years old at the time of the beat down.  I crawled out of that pool bawling.”

***Yet another Glenn B. story from my brother, Tom.  He writes, “I will never forget that dude.  He would walk up and down the line of everyone waiting to get into the pool and terrorize them.  Shirtless with only tight shorts and cowboy boots, my friends, Joe and Ryan were waiting in line one day and Glenn slapped Joe and Ryan started crying.  True story.  He was a terror for sure.  He also circumnavigated the neighborhood on his custom built low rider Schwinn bike with fake throttle handle grips and long plastic pom pom strings beneath.”

Oh, the wonderful 80’s.

 

The Every Other Daily Corona: 6 Seats Away

My old man indoctrinated strangers in a civil, albeit it odd, fashion back in the early eighties when a few of his thirteen children were still in school. You could say he was a man ahead of his time, as he seemed to encourage people to socially distance from him on a routine basis.  He was a suit wearing, neatly combed executive at a radiology clinic in Spokane by day, and well…..a bum in the neighborhood on weekends.  Some of my siblings hated it, but I actually enjoyed it.  One of my brothers didn’t care for it at all.  Our old man would attend baseball games, wearing a mangy sweater with cigarette burns, talking to my brother about his last at bat in between innings.  It was usually encouraging and his analysis was often times spot on.  Dad had the credentials after being drafted to play professional baseball before fighting in the Korean War.  When my brother would return to the dugout, one of his teammates would ask him what that hobo was saying to him.  My brother was ashamed to admit that it was his father.

Taking his six foot rule a bit further with strangers was a bit embarrassing for the rest of us and our mother.  On a short weekend vacation to Seattle, he would find a hotel with an indoor swimming pool and hot tub.  While four of the thirteen children were horsing around in the pool, he wished to use the hot tub.  Once, their was a group of young couples probably in their mid twenties monopolizing the tub when dad was trying to find a place to sit.  There just wasn’t enough room, so he stuck his foot in the water and tried to make small talk with one of the couples.  “I’ve heard one of the easiest ways contract this H.I.V. Virus is sharing a hot tub with others who may have the virus.  Isn’t that the damndest thing you ever heard?”  Three seconds later, he had the tub to himself.  My sister, Maggie, who became a registered nurse and is on the front lines to this day was thoroughly embarrassed by his behavior even at the age of thirteen.  “Dad, that’s a bunch B.S.” Good old Rodney Gannon would just chuckle.

During the aerobics era, we’d often have people in our neighborhood walking the streets to get exercise.  If they lived more than one house away, our old man didn’t know any of them.  He’d be outside smoking a cigarette, and stop them in mid stride just to offer them a cigarette.  I’ve never seen such sinister looks from people.  I thought it was hilarious.  “Well I NEVER!” would be the usual response from some old bag trying to exercise on our street.  You’d never see them twice.  Our dad’s shit eating grin was delightful.  Out of his office on the North Side of Spokane, he made the Valley his own little world by, in very civil ways, pestering those who didn’t know him all for his own amusement.  He took his job so seriously, I think it was his way of winding down, and lightening the world up a bit.  My friends, who knew him well loved it.  While tossing a baseball or football around in the front yard with my friends, they would stop the action and nudge one another and say, “Hey watch.  Mr. Gannon is going to say something funny to this person walking down the street.”  It never failed.  It brought belly laughs for them.  I’d just smile and shake my head.  I guess he was amusing those who knew him as well.

Rodney wouldn’t go to movies much because of the crowds.  We’d sometimes convince him to go to one we knew he’d enjoy.  Raiders of the Lost Ark was playing at a local theater and it was packed, thus difficult to find many open seats together.  You could have referred to it as social distancing from our father at the theater.  I was sitting next to Maggie when she nudged me and had me look up to where the old man was seated.  He’d always buy two supersized barrels of popcorn, one for him and one for others to share, even if they didn’t know him.  Normally, if it wasn’t a packed theater, the people sitting next to him would whisper, “Let’s get the Hell away from this weirdo.”  With no other seats available, they couldn’t move six seats down, so they’d humor him and take the popcorn and pass it on down the line.  That didn’t bother us.  Watching him eat the popcorn was borderline embarrassing.  Anyone who didn’t know him would be convinced it was his last meal.  One handful or front loader at a time, he would shove three quarters of it in his mouth leaving the other quarter in his or someone else’s lap.  That was during the previews.  When the previews were over,  the popcorn was gone, and not wanting to leave his seat, he’d offer a complete stranger twenty bucks to go get two more buckets, one for him and his girlfriend and one for himself.  He’d also tell them to keep the change hoping they’d just leave with his twenty spot and walk to the nearest Chinese restaurant for a decent meal.  They’d return with the popcorn and, by the end of the movie, they even seemed to enjoy his rascally behavior.  With butter soaked hands, they’d even bid our old man adieu by shaking hands with him.  “That was one Hell of a movie.”  And he, was a helluva man.

The Every Other Daily Corona: Lose Yourself

Even though they were before my time, I love watching the old black and white Laurel and Hardy episodes.  Happy humor.  I also liked the Gong Show. Now I must confess something about embarrassing humor and the depths of which we’ve sunk to keep ourselves busy and sane, sometimes insane, when spending the majority of our time at home.

My wife and I were chilling with Alexa this morning when the song Lose Yourself, by Marshall Mathers, AKA, Eminem, began in the background.  My wife decided to bust a rhyme with Marshall.  I had no choice but to dance to her Karaoke.  Just imagine Laurel and Hardy doing this at the Apollo Theater.  That’s pretty similar to how we probably looked, just with far less talent.  Much like the Gong Show, Alexa put a halt to this very, very extraordinarily white couple singing and dancing in the bathroom with my wife taking a break from putting on her makeup. (Makeup during a pandemic???? Who does this? That’s borderline blasphemy.)

While my wife was trying to bust a rhyme,  it was more like crushing a rhyme, in the negative sense.  My dancing, with half an apple in my hand and the other half in my mouth was equally as dreadful.  However, we were able to laugh at ourselves and were wildly thankful no one was recording it.

Crazy days.  It reminds me of the year Sir Charles Barkley said, “These are crazy days.  Who would have thought that there’d be a time in our lives when the best golfer in the world was black (Tiger Woods) and the best rapper in the world was white (Eminem).”

I wish the topic was as light as that, but it isn’t.  We strive to search for laughter and smiles so we can go to bed with hope and peace in our hearts rather than fear in our minds.

Strange days indeed.

Reading?: The Every Other Daily Corona

Chaucer, Hardy, Frost, Shakespeare, Swift and Twain.  Amongst others, they were on the long list of my required reading in college.  The latter two were a couple of my favorites.  Do I wish to go back and re-read some of their classic novels, plays or short stories during a time when we do have time on our hands?  Not me.  It’s not the type of reading meant for the toilet.  Maybe a couple of Thomas Hardy “classics” which would ultimately clog our septic system.

I do love to read, especially when it’s not required.  Even though it will be obsolete, until it is, I will still subscribe to the newspaper.  One of my favorite parts of the day is taking the Super Quiz with my wife even though the man producing it often gets bored. Subject: Different Fonts.  How riveting!  We like American culture, geographical areas, famous prisons, some science, sports,  languages and other topics besides Plain Clothing or Band Aids.  It’s fun.  I then read her the daily Seattle Rant.  These can be hilarious.  “To the man next door who keeps his ten cats in a tree on his property.  They keep me up all night caterwauling.  I hope he burns in Hell.”  I used to read the sport’s page, but, well you know.

Saying 75% of my reading is done on the toilet is probably an understatement.  When I’m interested in an article from The New Yorker (my most pretentious magazine) my wife may walk by the bathroom and politely ask me if I’m ok.  “I’m fine.  Though, I may be little sore when I exit this room.”  When the New Yorker becomes too sophisticated, I mean when those ridiculous cartoons which are somehow published for unearthly reasons become agonizingly thought demoting, I return to a favorite standby….Readers Digest.  Written at a sixth grade level, it’s right up my aisle.  Additionally, most of the publications are uplifting and educational.  If I ever decide to get a pony, I now know because of R.D., one of the pony’s many attributes is licking the skin of an unripened avocado until it’s ripe in only twenty licks.  Pretty cool.

Then there’s the internet.  I can read various articles which may or may not convince me to join certain clubs or cults.  This flat earth society one is really tricky.   I’m right on the border.  My wife would say, “You mean the border of insanity?”

I want to believe in Bigfoot, but most of the stories on the Net attempting to convince you of its existence, really just push you in the other direction.  The elusive Sasquatch was not your taxi driver.

We also like looking up lists such as the top 50 movies of all time.  We’ll make bets on who will guess the most out of the top ten.  I lost the last bet because I put Cocktail, Road House, and Breakin Two, Electric Boogaloo on the list.  Personally, I think I was robbed.  There must be a reason they are on cable all the time.

Sadly, my favorite author, Pat Conroy, passed away.  I haven’t read a novel since his passing.  Oh my God!  I almost  forgot about the Bible.  It reminds me of a movie my family has cherished for years, and has now become one of my wife’s favorites as well…  Paint Your Wagon.  Portraying a full time inebriate, Ben Rumson is played by Lee Marvin.  One of his lines after a very pious lady asks him if he’d ever read the bible was “I have read the Bible Mrs. Phinney.”  Mrs. Phinney:  “Didn’t that discourage you from drinking?”  Ben:
“No. But it sure cured my appetite for readin.”

Whether you like or don’t like the Bible, novels, the paper, magazines or any other form of reading, it still stimulates our minds.  That’s a good thing, and like the great and powerful former Vice President Dan Quayle once said, “A mind is a terrible thing to lose.”

Prayers for all.

 

The Daily Corona: The Good News

The good news is we can watch T.V. during these trying times. The bad news is we can watch T.V. during these trying times.

tv-addictThe great news is we can watch movies like The Bad News Bears.  Anyone who doesn’t love this movie can shove it straight up their ASS!  That’s a semi direct quote from the movie.  The boy shouting this after losing the championship little league baseball game is a white haired child who believes authority is overrated. (He reminds me of someone I know.) The boy, Tanner, was suggesting where the opposing team could place their trophy.

We also knock down some Datelines from time to time, but when that becomes too much of a downer, we switch gears and check the Mafia Channel.  It takes much less time to find out who kills who.  This is definitely not “Whodunit” theater.  It also provides early morning conversations about which one of us had the worst nightmare.  Good times!

I get my exercise when Desperate Housewives of Rathdrum, Idaho shows up on our screen.  She gets hers when I switch to a Classic Major League Baseball game from the late seventies.  Pathetically, I do remember games I watched when I was six.  Hell, I even remember most of the players.  As I’ve stated previously in blogs, we both love baseball, and we miss it, but she doesn’t understand why I sometimes live in the past,

We do occasionally pry ourselves away from the T.V. long enough to take morning and evening walks with our lunatic dog, and I try to cook up something edible daily.  Well . . . this blog is getting as old and boring as watching Corona T.V..

 

 

 

The Daily Corona: Social Distancing from Carbs

My wife is working from home.  She’s a garbage collector.

I also work from home and cook at home.  During these strange Corona times, let’s just say we’ve been overloading on carbs.  So, instead of staying six feet from away from a stranger, we’ve made a decision to stay six feet away from carbs.  She tried to kiss me this morning, and I ran away.  She yelled at me and called me a carb.