Eddie Vedder, Sean McKean, and us

Jules and I first met the dreadlocked and highly personable Sean McKean through our noontime Faculty-Staff Fitness yoga classes at Oregon State University (OSU). Later, Jules and Sean became friends, and he would often come to our house for a meal or to demonstrate his latest vaping device. One time he even helped me move a huge doghouse from our shed to the backyard (thanks, Sean!). For a couple of years, Sean co-taught yoga classes—dreadlocks flying between poses—with Jules at OSU's Dixon Recreation Center.

Sean often told us he was getting tired of his dreadlocks and wished he could muster the courage to have them cut off. One day, he did just that. The barber? Eddie Vedder, lead singer for Pearl Jam. Here's a video of how it all went down, so to speak:



Sean later offered us a lock of his shorn dreads, but we foolishly turned him down. It'll probably be worth thousands someday on Antiques Roadshow!

Jean Shepherd and me

You might be familiar with the 1983 movie A Christmas Story, which is about a young boy named Ralphie who tries to convince his parents, his teacher, and Santa that a Red Ryder BB gun is the perfect Christmas gift. The story is based on the semi-autobiographical writings of American humorist Jean Shepherd, who also narrated the movie.

I had never heard of Jean Shepherd before I had a brief but amusing exchange with him on the phone. It happened when I was about 14, and my neighbor Paul and I were listening to Portland's KBOO Radio, which at the time was having a pledge drive featuring Shepherd as its celebrity co-host. Shepherd was inviting listeners to phone in and chat with him, in exchange for pledging money to KBOO. At one point, Shepherd mentioned that he was a private pilot, and my ears perked up. My dad was also a private pilot who, with four friends, co-owned and flew a 1947 Funk airplane.

I decided to call, against all odds of getting through due to the undoubtedly high volume of calls. I seriously was not expecting to actually get to speak with the famous Jean Shepherd, whoever he was.

Miraculously, I got through on my first try. Shit, what will I say? Before I even had a chance to come up with something, anything, I heard Shepherd's voice booming through the receiver.

Shepherd: Hello, KBOO; Jean Shepherd here. What would you like to talk about?

Me: Um...uh...um...I...I understand you're a pilot.

Shepherd: Yes, I am.

Me: My dad's a pilot, too. He flies a 1947 Funk.

Shepherd: I once dated a funk!

I laughed, Shepherd laughed, he thanked me for calling, and that was it. Years later, when I saw A Christmas Story and realized whom I had spoken with, I felt both proud and embarrassed: Proud that I had actually spoken on the phone with Shepherd, but embarrassed by my inane choice of topics. Kudos to Shepherd, though, for not only managing to avoid shaming me, but for making me feel like I was his sidekick, setting him up for a joke.

And that's my little "Christmas Story."

Eddie Izzard and me

Back in July of 2008, Jules and I went to see British comedian Eddie Izzard perform at the Schnitzer Auditorium in Portland. Izzard was funny as hell, we laughed our asses off, and afterward Izzard treated the audience to an impromptu Q&A outside the theater. Jules had told me she would love to invite Izzard to our house for dinner, so near the end of the Q&A I shouted, "My wife wants to have you over for dinner."

To which Izzard replied, "Well, that would be nice, thank you very much, but we're off to San Francisco!"

Someone actually caught the exchange on video and posted it on YouTube:

 

Too Late to Say I Love You (a mostly true story)

I qualify this story as "mostly true" because it's about not just one of my grandfathers, but both of them rolled into one. The idea behind writing it this way was to memorialize and express my gratitude to both of them at once, from my 19-year-old perspective. I took a few other liberties with some of the details, but most of the anecdotes recounted here actually happened—in some fashion. In particular, I think this story captures rather accurately what an unmitigated and unrepentant smartass I was. My deep and sincere apologies to you, Grandpa and Grandma, and to everyone else in my family who tolerated me until I finally matured (a little). I love you.

Too Late to Say I Love You

The man was perfect. I watched him through a part in the curtains as he walked slowly up the concrete path. He had a little, Fuller Brush mustache under his nose and a neat, square-shouldered grey suit over his stocky body.

Step-Uncle Jim sat in a folding steel chair with his arms crossed. He looked at his watch and sighed. In the kitchen, his wife hummed and talked to the mixer, the oven, and the open refrigerator.

A grim nod from my father cued the rest of us to stand. The Fuller Brush mustache was at the door. Step-Uncle Jim, his wife, two teenagers, two parents, and a grand­mother squeezed into the limousine.

I needed wood for my two-story treehouse. Dad made me earn the money for nails by mowing the lawn and washing windows. But I ran out of grass and glass before I came close to earning the money for the two 4 x 8 sheets of plywood I would need. So I walked around all week with my hands in my pockets answering, "I could care less," whenever anybody talked.

Then Grandpa came over. He had a whole carload of nice, beautiful, gorgeous, long waterski planks. Dad frowned. My treehouse was on its way.

I measured and sawed and hammered and nailed for a week. "The best treehouse on the block," I bragged to Older Sister.

"The only treehouse on the block," she laughed.

We went over to Grandpa and Grand­ma's for a Fourth of July picnic din­ner. Grandma peeled all the apples she had picked from their backyard for the applesauce; Grandpa was busy with the ice cream crank. Back then, they didn't have electric ice cream makers, so you had to break your arm to make the same dull vanilla they charged 49¢ for in the store.

I ran down to the basement to see if the mousetraps had caught any. I found three pieces of fuzzy green cheese—and an intriguing cardboard box stuck between the rafters and the ceiling. I ran back upstairs to con­jure Dad from beneath Life magazine, and led him into the basement to view my discovery.

"Yes sir," Dad whispered, "that's my old train set."

I made him take it down.

We set it up on the card table outside and ran an extension cord to the dusty transformer from an outlet in the kitchen. For an hour and a half, Mom and Older Sister scowled while Dad and I played with the old trains, laughing and inventing impos­sible track patterns for the limited but challenging twenty pieces. We finally ate dinner and left.

Some friends up the street from our house let us use their beach cabin one weekend. We took Grandpa and Grandma along for their 45th an­niversary. I couldn't see how anyone could live together that long, but I guess Grandma had practice from living with her first husband. Her first husband died when Dad was 12.

I chased Older Sister up some loose rocks with a long, slimy piece of kelp. She screamed and kicked, almost causing an avalanche, as I whipped her brutally with thin air. She was up 30 feet and the kelp was only 10 feet long. But she threatened to tell Mom and Dad that I had said a swear word or something, so I quit.

Grandma and Grandpa came walking along the beach wearing coats and scarves, and I looked down at my sunburnt legs. I thought, Somebody should tell them that the sun is shining, but I knew that they were old and couldn't wear cut-offs and T-shirts. I felt sorry for them.

We rode down to Barnacle Bill's for lunch, and I had some of Grandpa's abalone. I had never heard of abalone before, so I was taking my life in my hands. It was pretty good. I made a joke about the word "abalone" and Grandpa laughed.

In school, I was mainly interested in art and construction. Whenever it came time to paint, I was the first out with the supplies. I took some of my projects home to finish. I had a lot of brushes, paints, and mixing trays that Grandpa had said he had no use for, so I sometimes finished my projects before he other kids had begun. The teachers always called me "creative" because they though I was mixing all the different colors from the paint in the art closet at school. But it might be hard to get Chrysler Blue by mixing powdered green, red, and black watercolors.

I remember being taught to whistle. Dad used to call Older Sis­ter and me for dinner by whistling. We could hear his whistle from about a mile away. There was a girl at school who could whistle almost as loud as Dad. She put her two little fingers in her mouth and blew like a tornado. The teacher made her run two laps one day for whistling in Curt Schnaible's right ear.

I learned how to whistle from Grandpa. He showed me a really cool way to whistle. "You make a cup with your left hand," he demonstrated, "and it's gotta be watertight." He led me over to the kitchen faucet. "You put your first and fourth fingers to­gether, like this, over your second and third," Grandpa said. "Then you put your thumb like this." I tried it and tested it for watertightness.

It leaked about two drops and stopped.

"Good!" Grandpa congratulated, smiling proudly. I began practicing my whistle. At first it sounded like what Dad called "air in the pipes" when the toilets didn't fill up cor­rectly, but eventually I was a regular locomotive. I practiced whistling in school and finally the teachers stopped writing "creative" on my re­port cards.

I left one of Dad's wrenches out in the rain one day. It was a "monkey," ''pipe," or "crescent" wrench, I could never remember which. But that didn't matter after I left it out in the rain. Dad called it ''rusted."

"You'll have to fix your bike with a stick and a rock from now on," Dad said, not exactly smiling. I wanted to get on my bike and ride away, but all I could do was shuffle my feet and count the rocks in the asphalt. I wondered if I would get anything for my birthday the next week.

Two days went by slowly, then it was okay for me to laugh again. I quit using my napkin at the dinner table and forgot to close my eyes when Dad said the prayers. I was back to normal.

My birthday came and there was a whole armchair full of packages. I didn't have any friends over for a party, but there were just as many presents as the year before. I knew, because I counted.

I opened a long, heavy package first. It was a metal tool chest, complete with tools, from Grandpa. Dad smiled.

Mom brought cake and ice cream out to me while I was fixing my bike.

Four summers flashed by, tanning me in the park and teaching me in summer school how to measure the cir­cumference of the earth. I began collecting things that I thought would be valuable someday, like first-edition comic books and old tube ra­dios. Nobody knew about the comic books—I kept those private for in­tellectual purposes—but everyone on the block with an old tube radio also had my phone number. I collected padlocks and broken watches, too.

Christmas was on its way, and I was running low on money. Mom said I should sell all my "junk" so I could afford to buy presents for the family. I realized then where Older Sister got her sense of humor. I told Mom "No," of course, and she looked disgusted.

"What are you getting Grandma and Grandpa for their 50th anniver­sary?" she prodded. I said I didn't know, and made a joke about an IOU. Now Mom really looked disgusted. I went on chewing my gum.

Grandpa and Grandma came over Christmas Eve to bring us our presents. They looked tired as they got out of the car, probably from cooking roast and cinnamon rolls all day like every Christmas I could remember before. I opened the front door for them and put all their packages under the tree.

We had dinner and then gave Grandpa and Grandma their presents. They opened them, and after the usual conversation time from which I could never be excused, Grandpa and Grandma decided to leave. I got one of those looks from Dad saying, "Help them carry their stuff to the car," so I did.

I waved goodbye to Grandpa and Grandma and ran back into the warm house.

Christmas arrived at eight the next morning, to the familiar sound of shredding paper and four loud thank-you's competing all at once. But the others had only begun with their presents while I had narrowed my take down to one. My last package was a heavy one from Grandpa. I shook it a little from side to side, hearing the same sounds I had heard somewhere before, long ago. I ripped it open.

Just then the telephone rang and Mom got up to answer it. But I was too busy to notice; I had just opened another valuable for my col­lection. It was the old trainset. Dad's eyes glowed as he watched my face go from disbelief to pure joy.

Mom came back into the room and her smile was gone.

The Magic of Mirrors (a poem?)

When I was in college, a fellow student impressed me with his mirror writing, so I decided to try my hand at it. This, uh...poem? is the result.

Family Gathering (a true story)

"Observe an event and write succinctly about it," our journalism professor told us. So I did, and this is the result.

My family hated it—or, more accurately, were hurt by it. I can't say I blame them, because even though it's based on real events and conversations, the manner in which I chose to report them was unfair. My selection of only the oddest or most mundane actions and comments by family members made them appear two-dimensional and vapid—which they most assuredly are not. But at the time, my arrogant, ignorant 19-year-old self thought it was funny, and if my family didn't agree…tough!

My journalism professor, who, at 27 years of age was also arrogant and ignorant, liked my story—a lot. He liked it so much, he read it aloud to the class as an example of fine journalism. He even saved it and read it aloud to his subsequent classes over the next several terms. Much to my chagrin, accounts of his public readings found their way to my mom, who at the time worked in the college's education department. She was not happy with the notoriety.

My professor also shared my story with the editor of the college newspaper, who, in his youthful arrogance and ignorance, thereupon proclaimed me "the best writer here" and nominated me to become the paper's next managing editor (a post I would assume in the first term of my junior year—the term before I would arrogantly and ignorantly quit school to play drums in a rock 'n roll band).

The fact that my family hated this story makes me uncomfortable including it here, but I'm going to anyway because it's a revealing snapshot of who and where I was at age 19. Which is a place I am more than happy never to return to again.

The only other place this story has been published was in my book Stories, Songs, Poems, a Play, and Some Other Stuff Nobody Else Would Publish, which was illustrated by my friend Matt Wuerker. Matt did the drawing that accompanies this story.

Family Gathering 

Part One: Five Minutes

The dog takes off from Grandpa's lap. He abandons the scratching fingers to check out a noise in the back of the house. Pots and pans rattle in the kitchen.

Grandma is wearing a pink dress in celebration of her birthday. She is sitting in our widest chair because she is so wide. She is a Jehovah's Witness. She is a wide Jehovah's Witness. She is talking about a show that she listens to on KKEY radio.

"Shut that door out there," Dad yells to Brother. He gets up to close it himself.

"I want you to see our new piece of furniture," Mom yells to Grandma. She tries to turn on the stereo, which is what she means by the new piece of furniture. We've had it for eight months and she doesn't know how to work it.

Sister is wearing one of my shirts. She is sitting in the green armchair with her legs crossed.

Dad says, "Rick I think that problem with your clutch is in the adjustment."

I say, "No, you tightened it all the way six months ago. There is no more adjustment."

Grandma blows her nose. She is carrying on a conversation with the window: "Who in the dickens would want to kiss a guy with a beard?"

"Not me," Brother says.

"Not me," Dad mimics.

"What are you writing?" Sister asks.

Part Two: Five More Minutes

Grandma tells us about stove bolts they had in cars 50 years ago. She is interesting. I don't understand what she is saying sometimes, but she is interesting. She is old and funny. She tells us about a dog that was poisoned by a lady who lived across the street in 1941. "The Witch" she calls her. "The Niggers" she calls black people. Her dog used to chase Niggers, until he was poisoned. The Witch poisoned her dog. He was a beautiful dog.

Grandpa is in the kitchen. Sister is in the bathroom. Chopin is on the stereo. Grandma continues.

"And they're going to get a new screen," she says to the window. She watches the rain.

"Will you come and cut the ham?" Mom says to Dad. We are having ham for Grandma's birthday dinner. It is a pre-sliced ham. Dad wonders what Mom means by "cut the ham," so he gets up to investigate.

Sister comes in. I look at her blue-striped Adidas. "It's raining…it's halfway snowing," she says.

"It' s kinda half rain and half snow," Dad says.

Brother moves his foot.

Grandma and Grandpa are looking at a fuzzy black-and-white-striped pillow on the floor.

"What kind of fur is it?" Grandma says.

"What kind of fur is it?" Grandpa says.

"I think it's just imitation fur," Dad says. The pillow is made of rayon. It has become matted from people who sit on it and watch TV. People like Brother, Dad accuses.

I sneeze.

"As soon as the marshmallows are melted, we can eat," Mom says.

Grandma reaches for her "walker" and slowly helps herself out of the big chair. She moves into the dining room. We follow and the walls close in around dinner.

Three Loud Bursts (a true story)

Many of us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we first learned of the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the tragic events of 9-11. This story recounts what I and others were doing on November 22, 1963, when we learned that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. It's an amalgam of personal reflections, news reports, and interviews I conducted with friends, neighbors, and family members (the quote mentioning a "technical director" came from my dad, who worked at Portland's KATU TV at the time).

Three Loud Bursts
We practiced multiplication tables at our wooden desks. Mrs. Ryan walked around the room with her hands behind her back, checking answers and making sure we didn't cheat. Shannon, the prettiest girl in the class, sat across the aisle to my left. Mrs  Ryan passed between us.

We turned in our papers and waited for morning recess. It was nice weather: a few clouds, but fairly warm, for November. It would be good to go run on the playground. We listened to the by-now-memorized rules and regulations for recess…no hitting, no sliding down the bank, no teasing the girls…we listened and waited.

In another part of the country, a black car moved slowly down a wide road. Seventy-six degrees, just past noon; the convertible top and side windows were down. Six people rode along and smiled. "You can't say that Dallas isn' t friendly to you today," one of them said. Thousands of people lined the streets, taking pictures and waving.

Mrs. Ryan was cut short by a crackling loudspeaker above the door. She stood by her desk, looking up. A woman's faltering voice gave us the news. "President Kennedy has been shot," she said.

"I was at home…I heard it over the TV. . . I was shocked…couldn't believe it."

"…sheer terror…I was buying groceries…some woman said the President had been shot…I came home and listened to the radio."

Some closed their eyes, some watched Mrs. Ryan with her head in her hands. Shannon cried.

"We will have two minutes of silence for prayer," the voice said.

"We were visiting some friends…sitting in the living room…deathly quiet. The TV was on…'President has been shot'…President Kennedy has been shot." 

"KENNEDY SERIOUSLY WOUNDED…PERHAPS SERIOUSLY, PERHAPS FATALLY BY ASSASSIN'S BULLET…PRESIDENT SLUMPED OVER IN THE BACKSEAT OF THE CAR, FACE DOWN…CONNALLY ON THE FLOOR OF THE MIDDLE SEAT…THREE LOUD BURSTS…"

A Secret Service agent assigned to Mrs. Kennedy said, "He's dead," as the President was lifted from the White House touring car. Mrs. Kennedy's clothes were stained with blood. She watched as they carried her husband into the hospital. 

"It came over the loudspeaker in the gym…our teacher broke down and cried…we wondered what was going on."

"We were going to do a commercial…everything stopped…the technical director couldn't push the buttons."

Mrs. Ryan let us out for recess.

"You shot the President! You're a Communist!" we joked, running around the blacktop. Shannon stood by the swings. Craig noticed that someone had forgotten to raise the flag all the way, and we wondered why.

The sun felt good.

A bullet was found to have penetrated Connally's chest and lodged in his thigh. The wound was serious, but not fatal. In Emergency Room One, doctors worked on the President. Jackie Kennedy stood quietly by…"looking brave, but fear was in her eyes." She called for a priest. An oxygen tube was inserted in the President's throat, and he was given transfusions of whole blood. A doctor tried to stimulate his heart with chest massage.

The doctor monitoring an electrocardiograph reported no heartbeat: "It's too late," he said.

We came back in from recess.