Am I An Umbrellist?

Yesterday morning was rainy, and one of my male students proudly showed everyone his Sesame Street umbrella-- which I found shocking, as I would never be caught dead holding an umbrella-- they make me think of Mary Poppins and Singin' in the Rain, neither of which are particularly manly . . . and I am all man (except when I roller-blade) but I canvassed the class and found that most of the kids-- male and female-- were umbrella users, and quite a few had umbrellas on their person . . . and so I tried to explain my deep-seated emotions about umbrellas to them: first, if you don't use an umbrella, it's scary to walk by someone wielding an umbrella because you are in danger of getting your eye poked out by one of the vanes; second, an inattentive umbrella user might pour water on you; third, bad luck is certain to anyone who opens an umbrella indoors, yet kids find it irresistible, not only to open them, but also to twirl them; and fourth (and the root of my unbridled umbrellism) is that a man looks patently absurd while carrying one-- either opened or closed-- and he should either wear a hat or a hooded rain jacket and deal with the weather.

The Jersey Shore and Asia . . . So Many Borders, So Much Insanity

Placing your chairs, umbrellas, and ocean sporting equipment on the beach in July in New Jersey is a bit like setting up for RISK:The Game of Global Domination . . . you've really got to strategize in order to claim maximum space and secure your borders; this week we are down the beach with a group of nearly thirty folks, cousins and such, and they sleep late and rarely get to the beach before noon, so it is often up to me to claim a spot on the beach . . . my preferred strategy is to scatter shit all over the place, willy-nilly, everything facing a different direction, so it looks as if a disorganized and chaotic band of gypsies occupied the area, and perhaps seventy or eighty more people are due to show up; I'm also definitely not afraid to encroach on other encampments-- especially if it's a couple of stray unoccupied chairs-- because a small group is more willing to move, with the slightest motivation, whether it's the oncoming tide or a large and loud group of mainly hirsute Italians from central Jersey; also, I like to set up a personal umbrella and chair as close to the water as possible and as far from the main group as possible (while still maintaining a thin connection to the mainland, so not Hawaii, more like Cape Cod) and this is so that I can read in peace . . . yesterday morning, was typical: my family got out to the beach first, and I started a ragged and crazy line of chairs, zig-zagging everywhere, put the cart behind them, chucked some boogie boards and skim boards to the side, taking up lots of land and looking higgledy-piggledy and impossible to fathom, and then a few cousins showed up-- one of whom remarked on the horrible organization of the chairs-- and my family left the beach and walked to LouDogs and when we got back and I sat down in my chair, under my umbrella, things looked and felt different . . . I was hotter for one, the sand seemed drier, and the chairs were in a lovely symmetrical oval and though I was on the far edge, I wasn't as close to the water or the people in front of us as I was before . . . I assumed I was going crazy from the heat, read for a bit (Hue 1968 . . . the perfect mindset for this sort of conflict) and then I decided that something really had changed, something had been moved without my go-ahead, so I walked down to where the twenty-something year old cousins were chatting by the water and asked if anyone had moved the chairs and Nick-- the nicest guy you'll ever meet-- made the mistake of admitting he had moved several umbrellas and chairs and arranged everything into a neat and organized socially functional oval, so everyone was included in the group and everyone could see everyone else and chat and so that outside people could discern where we were sitting and put their own chairs down accordingly . . . it was all very civilized and though he had the best intentions, I reamed him out anyway, told him never to touch my chair again, explained the RISK mentality and how my umbrella outpost was designed to intimidate and amass territory, reiterated the importance of protecting and bolstering one's borders, and gave him a quick lecture on guerrilla beach apparatus fortification and entrenchment . . . and then I went back to the house and took a nap and when I returned, I had to take it all back . . . I misjudged high-tide, and the center of our zone was completely flooded out, my original position was lost to the ocean, and the spot where Nick moved my chair and umbrella was perfect, a little dry island amidst the water and wet sand, there was even a tide-pool behind the spot . . . so I complimented him for his effort and told him I was pleased that we now occupied a large swath of prime oceanfront sand, my chair and umbrella in the optimum position, and that I was especially pleased that the crew that was once in front of us, blasting "hot" country, had been washed away.

Two Vacation Complaints

We had a great vacation with friends in Sea Isle City, but I know you don't want to hear about that (or you'd be wandering around on Facebook) and so I will skip the fun stuff and get right to the gripes:

1) when the kids say they are going to cook dinner for the adults, and the kids are bunch of middle school boys, then the kids are NOT actually going to complete this task, and will require help, supervision, and labor from their mothers;

2) beach umbrella carrying bags are impossibly small and getting the umbrella, flaps, pole, and stakes back into the bag required super-human dexterity . . . beach umbrella companies (particularly Sport-Brella) need to consider the circumstances in which a beach umbrella is going to be stuffed back into the bag: the person cleaning up the umbrellas is often the last man on the beach, and will probably be tired, inebriated, wet, and sandy, and could be battling wind, flies, or the tide . . . so I beseech you: stop trying to cut costs and use a little more fabric on the bag!

Am I Liable? Or Just Unreliable?

I've just walked out of the ocean with my son Ian, and I'm looking up the beach to where my other son Alex is sitting, wrapped in a towel eating a snack . . . and it's low tide, so Alex is a good hundred feet away from me . . . and then, without warning, sand fills the air over my son Alex's head and a micro-burst of wind, some rogue convection cell, crashes through our beach set-up and rips two umbrellas from the ground and whips MY umbrella high up into the air . . . and when I say high up, I mean really high-up . . . it flies over the life guard stand and it continues to go straight up until it's fifty feet in the air and for a moment it hovers and it's like Mary Poppins should be attached, but then it starts to plummet and people are holding their heads and ducking and screaming (Connell said it was like when a dragon swoops down and scares all the townsfolk) and it finally crashes into the ocean-- along with one of our beach towels which also got swept up in this miniature tornado, and they are both less than ten feet from where Ian and I are standing, and so we go retrieve them (but if the umbrella would have impaled someone, I think I would have walked the other way, because I don't want to get jailed for involuntary manslaughter because of shoddy umbrella installation . . . you don't garner much respect with the inmates for that crime) and our beach area was devastated, our belongings were scattered everywhere and Nicky was crying, unhurt but scared, but here is the strange part . . . the burst of wind did absolutely no damage to any of the surrounding beach equipment, just to our little area: weird.

Dave Uses an Umbrella?

Yesterday afternoon my wife and I took the train from New Brunswick to Princeton Junction and then we ran like hell to catch "the Dinky," a two-car train that travels back and forth from Princeton Junction to downtown Princeton-- and, anticlimactically, after we ran like hell to catch the tiny train, it sat there for another ten minutes-- but then it dumped us right where we needed to be-- a two-minute walk from the Dinky Bar & Kitchen . . . we were meeting our friends Mel and Ed there-- and it's an awesome spot, they converted old train station into a bar/restaurant with excellent tap beer and specialty cocktails and a delicious assortment of small, shareable plates-- highly recommended-- and because we took the train, we got to Princeton a bit faster than usual and we avoided driving in the storm (and we could drink copious amounts of alcohol) but the real reason I am writing this sentence is to explain how I have reflected and changed my opinion about something: instead of wearing a hat and a rainjacket-- it was too damned hot for that-- I brought and used an umbrella . . . and this is a big deal for me because nomrally I'm an umbrellist . . . I hate walking near people using umbrellas (they can poke you) and they are annoying to deal with once you get to where you are going, but I am starting to see when they could be useful-- and once we got to the restaurant, I folded it up and put it in the little umbrella stand, like some kind of Victorian lady, and I wasn't wet and I wasn't sweating and I didn't have to deal with a hat, so it was a decent experience so I might add this to my repertoire of annoying accouterments for the weather (like the scarf).

The Only Good Thing About Umbrellas . . .

I am admittedly an umbrellist-- I hate those things-- but I have found one good use for them: the I'm going to a picnic and I'm bringing an umbrella game; I just learned this game from some kids in my Creative Writing class-- to start you say: "I'm going to a picnic and I'm bringing an umbrella" and then other people ask to bring things, but you only "allow" them to bring the thing if they say "umm" before the item; for example, if someone says, "Can I bring . . . umm . . . a sandwich?" then you say "sure!" but if they say "can I bring a sandwich?" then you say "absolutely not!" and some kids know the game, some kids figure it out, and some kids go crazy trying to understand why you can bring certain things and not others (this is very similar to the the "I love coffee but I hate tea" riddle) and one girl, once the gig was up and she knew the trick said to me: "So I was being punished for speaking properly?" and I said "Yes."

Dave's Community Service Finally Pays Off!

Once again this morning, I did my community service shopping and delivery for my old dude. Pineapple chunks, Italian Wedding soup, chicken franks, bananas, apple sauce, two-liter diet lemon/lime soda, etc. I'm getting pretty good at his list. As I loaded the bags into the car, it started to drizzle.

When I pulled into the apartment driveway, there was something new. A cute blonde woman-- wearing lasses and probably in her late twenties- sat in the trunk space of her Subaru. She was working on a computer, using the hatchback as an umbrella. I had seen her briefly in the apartment once before. I asked her if she was related to my old dude and she said, "No, just a roommate. Apparently, there are a couple of small apartments on the top floor." Then she complimented me on my good deed and we talked for a good thirty minutes. She once was an elementary teacher in Arkansas and now she's on a research grant at Rutgers. She was in the midst of collecting data from schools in Brooklyn when the virus hit. Now she's busy finishing up her research and applying for new grants. We talked a lot about how school might look in the future, the way this pandemic will pull back the curtain on income inequality and its effect on education, prom, graduation, my wife trying to teach math to elementary students remotely . . . all sorts of topics.

I think she found me charming and funny, though I was dressed like a homeless person and I haven't shaved in a while. And we were far enough apart that she couldn't smell my morning coffee breath, which wasn't particularly pleasant (I know this because I was wearing a mask in the Stop&Shop, which amplifies and exacerbates coffee breath). This is the kind of credit you should get when you do community service-- I think this would make a great commercial for the program, a guy drops off he groceries for an old dude and then gets to chat with a cute, intelligent chick. 

I'm sure she will tell her cute graduate school friends about me, and they will all be there next Friday to laud my good deeds.

Bonus Features!

I just noticed today that my backpack has a secret waterproof string bag-- attached to the inside of the pack with a string!-- and then my brother's girlfriend pointed out that our new beach cart has a secret side pouch and velcro tie that srves as an umbrella holster; I will utilize both these bonus features tomorrow.

Next Year, I'll Buy Her Some Earrings

 My wife is an excellent cook-- creative, efficient, and unflappable. Her skills are crucial in the fall, when our house is extraordinarily busy. She's usually consumed by teaching elementary school math and science, running the community garden, and directing the school garden club. The boys and I are consumed by soccer. Despite these hurdles, she whips up meal after meal, day after day-- often without any help. This fall she worked around four soccer schedules: Alex played JV soccer, Ian played middle school soccer and for a club team, and I coached the middle school team and the in-town travel team. She's also the go-to person for help with school work (I'm more of a school work consultant, good for specific questions but not really capable of sustained service). Catherine times our family dinners around games, practices, and buses. She's the household MVP, keeping us full and healthy. We rarely ordered pizza.

Years ago, at the end of a similarly busy soccer season, Catherine went on a two-week cooking strike. She decided there was a lack of appreciation for all the planning, shopping, prepping and cooking she had been doing. It was a difficult period. The scab labor was unskilled, surly, and mainly underage. Negotiations were tense. Meals were lame. We survived but did not thrive. The boys and I learned our lesson: it is difficult to plan and serve delicious healthy meals all week. Though we learned our lesson, we didn't learn how to actually pull it off.

Last year when the season ended, we preempted any sort of labor dispute by announcing that we would do the cooking and dinner clean-up for a week. The end of the season coincides with Catherine's birthday, so not only did we avoid a cooking strike but we also provided her with a birthday gift. That's a win-win.

This year for Catherine's birthday, I upped the ante. Not only would I cook for a week, but I would also plan the menu and do the shopping. At the grocery store. Now I know-- truly know-- what it takes to cook various, creative, delicious and healthy meals for a week. It takes the planning skills of Hannibal, the scope and courage of Alexander the Great, and the confidence of Napoleon. And running a campaign like this is stressful, and the best way to relieve stress while you cook dinner is to imbibe. So you'll also need the liver of Winston Churchill.



The first step is to make a menu. Here is mine:



Sunday: green chorizo tacos

Monday: pasta, meat sauce, and sausage

Tuesday: leftovers . . . everyone had something planned

Wednesday: grilled shrimp, snap peas, and thin-sliced crispy potatoes

Thursday: grilled chicken, broccoli and rice

Friday: out to dinner . . . yes!

The second step was the hardest (behind butterflying, pounding, and marinating the chicken breasts . . . so gross). The second step was to go to the real grocery store . . . the big ShopRite in Edison. We have a small Stop & Shop in town which I can handle-- I know where things are and there isn't a big selection, but the big ShopRite in Edison is much cheaper than the Stop & Shop in town. Catherine gave me an out on this one: she said I could do the week's shopping at the smaller, more familiar store, but I decided it was time to man-up. If I was going to do it, I was going to really do it. She told me that there were a couple of products that wouldn't be in the main store. They would be located somewhere called "the annex." The "annex" was connected to the main store by a passageway akin to King's Crossing Platform 9 ¾. I would have to sprint towards an aisle of cat food and hope for the best.

There was a point during my shopping trip when I nearly broke down and quit. I almost shed tears. Seriously. You'd cry too. The store was huge, disorganized, and there were too many choices. I was in there forever, wandering. I actually found the annex (and bought some facial tissues . . . but I never found the 9-volt batteries). And even after all that time in the store, I still had to stop at the Garden Farm Market on my way home for produce because I couldn't find anything decent at ShopRite.

Why was it taking so fucking long to buy some basic shit? Why are food stores insane?

The new episode of Freakonomics tackles this question. In it, business Professor Michael Roberto makes a pitch:



ROBERTO: “I’d like to open a new kind of grocery store. We’re not going to have any branded items. It’s all going to be private label. We’re going to have no television advertising and no social media whatsoever. We’re never going to have anything on sale. We’re not going to accept coupons. We’ll have no loyalty card. We won’t have a circular that appears in the Sunday newspaper. We’ll have no self-checkout. We won’t have wide aisles or big parking lots. Would you invest in my company?”



This store sounds like a train-wreck. But it turns out that this is a successful business. It's a description of Trader Joe's.

I highly recommend "Should America be Run by . . . Trader Joe's?" It's Freakonomics at its best. The topic sounds boring: grocery stores. But there's a compelling narrative, and an explanation of how you can succeed in a low margin, super-competitive, rather bland business. Trader Joe's is killing it in terms of sales per square foot. How the fuck do they do it?

There are no sales, no discounts, no Whole Foods/Amazon algorithmic data tracking. When you enter the door, you've joined the club. It's kind of fun. Sometimes there's free coffee. There are lots of employees and they are instructed to drop everything and help you if you need help. The last time we were there, my wife couldn't find blue cheese. An employee told my wife that she would go in the back and find the blue cheese for her, and then she told my wife to keep shopping and I'll find you and give you the blue cheese. Brilliant. My wife continued to shop and because the store is small, with no annex, the employee was able to easily find my wife and give her the blue cheese.

During my ShopRite shopping epic, I wandered the meat section at for fifteen minutes, looking for ground pork. I was obviously bewildered. I stumbled on someone who might have been the butcher and asked him if they had ground pork. He said, "Nope. None of that today." Do they ever have ground pork? Could he go in the back and get some? Could he grind some for me? I have no clue and I didn't ask. He didn't offer any more information. I bought some ground turkey instead.

Trader Joe's offers a limited selection of each product and they may switch out a product at any time-- although they always have the staples-- but because the food is good and because you haven't worn yourself out looking for things, when the product you want isn't there, you might actually try something new. The store encourages experimentation. And it's small enough to browse but large enough to have everything you need (especially if it's a branch that sells alcohol). They have three kinds of salsa instead of seventy kinds. And they don't cater to everyone. There's an ethnic bent to the food and if you don't like it, you can shop elsewhere. I've only been inside a Trader Joe's once, and I was slightly overwhelmed-- but I get slightly overwhelmed when I enter any new place, especially when people are frantically buying things . . . it's because I vividly imagine the environmental disaster we are rushing towards. This is more of a "me" problem than a problem with Trader Joe's, and now that I've learned about the store through a podcast, I'm more inclined to go there. Ridiculous, but a little background knowledge goes a long way with me.

Trader Joe's is small on purpose. A typical grocery store carries 35,000 different items. Trader Joe's carries 3000. There aren't that many aisles-- I could walk up and down every single one without suffering a panic attack. And they rush you through the line. No weird interactions where you have to "borrow" the cashier's club card. I don't need to develop that kind of intimacy with someone I just met. If I see them on the street, am I obligated to lend them my umbrella? You don't have a card? Do you want to sign up? Uh . . . maybe? I made that mistake once. There's a Trader Joe's up the road from us now, in North Brunswick. I might go there. On my own. And buy some food. Coming from me, that's a bold statement.

Once I made the menu and purchased all the food, the week went fairly smoothly. Or it appeared smooth from my perspective. I only lost my shit twice. The reason for the smoothness was the lubricant: alcohol. I don't know how people who cook every night don't become raging alcoholics.

My thought process always went something like this: time to cut and pound the chicken! Yuck! Gross! You know what would help with a task this time-consuming and disgusting? Some music. And a beer. It's almost five o'clock.

The only night I didn't drink last week was Tuesday. Leftovers night. Soccer night. I now realize that soccer practice and the fact that my wife does most of the cooking are what stand between me and daily drinking. I know daily drinking doesn't always indicate alcoholism, but it's a step in that direction. And it makes you fat. If I had to cook every meal every night, with only my children to help (who are incredible at disappearing whenever there is work to be done) then my alcohol consumption would triple.

The two nights that I grilled were a double whammy. I normally like to have a beer when I grill . . . it's quiet and relaxing out on the porch; I can look over my sprawling bamboo plants into Donaldson Park. The dog accompanies me and occasionally descends from the porch to chase a squirrel off the property. A warm grill on a cold night, it's the life. But I normally have one beer while I grill. Because my wife is inside managing the other things. The vegetables, the rice, the potatoes, making the salad. whatever. Reminding the kids to finish their homework. Meanwhile, I'm "grilling," which includes a lot of staring into the park and enjoying the fresh air. Occasionally, I'll flip something. But grilling when you are also cooking other things inside the house is not relaxing. It's frantic. And when you're in and out so many times, feeling the pressure to get everything ready at the right time-- doing math, subtracting the minutes that the potatoes will be done from the amount of time it takes to grill shrimp-- then you might grab another beer as you pass by the fridge . . . or another glass of wine. Or another tequila, lime, and seltzer. It's dangerous.

I only lost my cool twice. Once was when I tasked Alex with cooking the snap peas while I finished grilling the shrimp. He decided they were burning-- even though we agreed we wanted them undercooked and crispy-- and he poured a bunch more olive oil in the pan. The peas turned out fine, but sort of drenched in oil. I snapped at him over those snap peas, and I shouldn't have. I told him he should have asked me before doing anything so radical, but then I changed my mind. Chefs get irate in the heat of the moment. I apologized and told him it was good that he took some initiative. Normally when I cook, I ask Catherine a million questions and it drives her crazy. Cooking is experimental, and Alex went for it. Next time he might know better.

The other time I got annoyed is when I was serving dinner and Catherine was fooling around on the computer. The house rule is that you're not supposed to be fooling around on the computer when dinner is served. This house rule is mainly designed for me, so when I chastised her, I had an out-of-body experience. It was like I was her, chastising me.

I'm going to chastise myself now. Time to get off the computer and do the dishes. And miracle of miracles, Catherine has already done the grocery shopping.

New Jersey Is Not San Diego

Every summer, I make grand plans for our back deck; I envision installing a retractable awning, or screening it and adding a roof, or even simply buying a pair of those giant, heavy duty umbrellas . . . but I never get to it, and then summer ends and I realize that the weather in central New Jersey is so disgusting that there is never a good time to sit on the back porch anyway . . . it's either too hot and humid, or too damp and humid, or too buggy, or too cold . . . and so we have this wonderful back porch, but the only resident who uses it much is the dog, who isn't as particular as the rest of us, and there's no way I'm buying a thousand dollar umbrella for him.

Deacon King Kong: Read It!

Deacon King Kong is the 51st book I read this year-- 2020 was good for something-- and it is the best piece of fiction I've run into in a long while; I'm not going to write a long review-- just read the thing-- but I will post up my Kindle notes . . . my favorite sentences from this fever dream that's exploded from James McBride's brain-- a fictionalized account of the Brooklyn housing project in which he grew up . . . the year is 1969 and it's all going down in this book, which is about urban decay and revitalization, baseball, drugs, race, language and tall tales . . . it is so much fun, even when it gets dark-- and there's some romance and a mystery to keep the plot cooking . . . the book begins with Sportcoat-- the old drunk church deacon, walking up to a young heroin dealer (who he coached as a child) and shooting him in the ear . . . but really the book begins with the mystery of the free cheese:

“Look who’s talking. The cheese thief!” That last crack stung him. For years, the New York City Housing Authority, a Highlight hotbed of grift, graft, games, payola bums, deadbeat dads, payoff racketeers, and old-time political appointees who lorded over the Cause Houses and every other one of New York’s forty-five housing projects with arrogant inefficiency, had inexplicably belched forth a phenomenal gem of a gift to the Cause Houses: free cheese. 

and then there's some backstory on Sportcoat:

When he was slapped to life back in Possum Point, South Carolina, seventy-one years before, the midwife who delivered him watched in horror as a bird flew through an open window and fluttered over the baby’s head, then flew out again, a bad sign. She announced, “He’s gonna be an idiot,” 

At age three, when a young local pastor came by to bless the baby, the child barfed green matter all over the pastor’s clean white shirt. The pastor announced, “He’s got the devil’s understanding,” and departed for Chicago, where he quit the gospel Highlight and became a blues singer named Tampa Red and recorded the monster hit song “Devil’s Understanding,” before dying in anonymity flat broke and crawling into history, immortalized in music studies and rock-and-roll college courses the world over, idolized by white writers and music intellectuals for his classic blues hit that was the bedrock of the forty-million-dollar Gospel Stam Music Publishing empire, from which neither he nor Sportcoat ever received a dime. 

At age five, Baby Sportcoat crawled to a mirror and spit at his reflection, a call sign to the devil, and as a result didn’t grow back teeth until he was nine. 

Sportcoat was a walking genius, a human disaster, a sod, a medical miracle, and the greatest baseball umpire that the Cause Houses had ever seen, in addition to serving as coach and founder of the All-Cause Boys Baseball Team. 

and then-- in contrast to old school Sportcoat-- you've got the corrupted youth:

you've got the Clemens was the New Breed of colored in the Cause. Deems wasn’t some poor colored boy from down south or Puerto Rico or Barbados who arrived in New York with empty pockets and a Bible and a dream. He wasn’t humbled by a life of slinging cotton in North Carolina, or hauling sugarcane in San Juan. None of the old ways meant a penny to him. He was a child of Cause, young, smart, and making money hand over fist slinging dope at a level never before seen in the Cause Houses. 

and the requisite Italian mobsters . . . this is Brooklyn in the late '60s:

Everything you are, everything you will be in this cruel world, depends on your word. A man who cannot keep his word, Guido said, is worthless. 

and various kind of crime:

“A warrant ain’t nothing, Sausage,” Sportcoat said. “The police gives ’em out all over. Rufus over at the Watch Houses got a warrant on him too. Back in South Carolina.”  

“He does?” Sausage brightened immediately. “For what?” 

“He stole a cat from the circus, except it wasn’t no cat. It got big, whatever it was, so he shot it.” 

Where’s the box?” “The church got plenty money.” “You mean the box in the church?” “No, honey. It’s in God’s hands. In the palm of His hand, actually.” “Where’s it at, woman?!” 

“You ought to trade your ears in for some bananas,” she said, irritated now. 

and superstition:

His wife put a nag on him, see, like Hettie done to you.” 

“How you know Hettie done it?” 

“It don’t matter who done it. You got to break it. Uncle Gus broke his by taking a churchyard snail and soaking it in vinegar for seven days. You could try that.” 

“That’s the Alabama way of breaking mojos,” Sportcoat said. “That’s old. In South Carolina, you put a fork under your pillow and some buckets water around your kitchen. That’ll drive any witch off.” 

“Naw,” Sausage said. “Roll a hound’s tooth in cornmeal and wear it about your neck.” 

“Naw. Walk up a hill with your hands behind your head.”  

“Stick your hand in a jar of maple syrup.” 

“Sprinkle seed corn and butter bean hulls outside the door.” 

“Step backward over a pole ten times.” 

“Swallow three pebbles . . .” 

They were off like that for several minutes, each topping the other with his list of ways to keep witches out, talking mojo as the modern life of the world’s greatest metropolis bustled about them. 

“Never turn your head to the side while a horse is passing . . .” 

“Drop a dead mouse on a red rag.” 

“Give your sweetheart an umbrella on a Thursday.” 

“Blow on a mirror and walk it around a tree ten times . . .” 

They had reached the remedy of putting a gas lamp in every window of every second house on the fourth Thursday of every month when the generator, as if on its own, roared up wildly, sputtered miserably, coughed, and died. 

and there's a shooter in the vein of The Wire's Brother Mouzone:

He wanted to say, “He’s a killer and I don’t want him near you.” But he had no idea what her reaction would be. He didn’t even know what Harold Dean looked like. He had no information other than an FBI report with no Highlight photo, only the vaguest description that he was a Negro who was “armed and extremely dangerous.” 

and a romance between an Irish cop and an African-American church sister:

“I’ll be happy,” he said, more to the ground than to her, “to come back and bring what news I can.” 

“I’ll be waiting,” Sister Gee said. But she might as well have been speaking to the wind. 

the dark side of the drugs: 

Men who made their girlfriends do horrible things, servicing four or five or eight men a night, who made their women do push-ups over piles of dogshit for a hit of heroin until, exhausted, the girls dropped into the shit so the men could get a laugh. 

and, finally, a clash of values that is epic and poetic:

"I’m in the last Octobers of life, boy. I ain’t got many more Aprils left. It’s a right end for an old drunk like me, and a right end for you too that you die as a good boy, strong and handsome and smart, like I remembers you. Best pitcher in the world. Boy who could pitch his way outta the shithole we all has to live in. Better to remember you that way than as the sewer you has become. That’s a good dream. That’s a dream an old drunk like me deserves at the end of his days. For I done wasted every penny I had in the ways of goodness so long ago, I can’t remember ’em no more.” 

He released Deems and flung him back against the bed so hard Deems’s head hit Highlight the headboard and he nearly passed out again. “Don’t ever come near me again,” Sportcoat said. “If you do, I’ll deaden you where you stand.”  

I Hate Umbrellas and Minor Tragedies

When I visit weather.com, I want to know if I'm going to need hat and gloves, or if I should carry an umbrella (actually, I hate umbrellas, ellas, ellas, and would never carry one) but instead I find myself reading salacious headlines such as "16 Year Old Dies After Half Marathon" and "Honeymoon Ends in Tragedy" so I'm going to switch over to the homelier (but more accurate) alternative: weather.gov.

Double Beach Vacation (During a Pandemic)

This year, this oddball year, my family was kind enough to allow me to combine my annual guy's get-together-- Outer Banks Fishing Trip XXVII-- with a family vacation.

We've obviously been itching to get out of New Jersey, and we were able to find an affordable rental a block from the beach in Kill Devil Hills. Milepost Nine. As a bonus, we were able to bring the dog.

Here are a few notes for posterity on our vacation during a very weird time. 

1) We stayed at my buddy Whitney's house in Norfolk on Friday night. Whitney's daughters were there, and they are lovely. One just graduated high school and the other is going to be a senior. Aside from playing Bananagrams with them, my boys did not attempt any social interaction with them. Not a word. 

Par for the course.

Whitney and I attended the Friday fraternity Zoom happy hour from his upstairs music studio. It's hard to fit two large men in one Zoom square. 

Lola came up to join the Zoom at one point, and she knocked over a hollow-body guitar with her incessantly wagging tail, denting the body. Sorry, Whit!

2) Saturday we got up early so we could beat the July 4th traffic. We got to the Outer banks at 8:30 AM. No traffic but we had a lot of time to kill. We couldn't get into the rental until 3 PM, and we weren't going into any restaurants, because we were avoiding indoor spaces-- plus we had the dog.

We went for a hike in the Nags Head preserve, which is an amazing place-- an aquifer fed forest on a sand dune-- but it was humid and buggy. So we drove down to Rodanthe, way south of the main action, and hung out on a beautiful beach. 

Lola dug a hole in the shade and was quite happy. 

3) Beaches on the Outer Banks are more "anything goes" than in New Jersey. You can swim anywhere . . . near the lifeguards or not. There are also lifeguards on dune buggies that roam the strand, but if you drown before or after they drive by, you are SOL.

You can bring your dog to the beach, surf anywhere you like, smoke, legally drink beer, and do whatever sport suits your fancy. There's plenty of room to spread out.

While the freedom and the space are a nice change from the Jersey shore, you have to endure more chaos. One of the most entertaining moments from our vacation happened while we were sitting idly on the beach, under umbrellas. It was quiet and the beach was not crowded at all.

Then a horde of college-aged kids poured out of a house a hundred yards down the beach. They all had surfboards. They took the water by storm. Most of them were excellent surfers, but none of the boards had leashes. They were swapping boards, boards were crashing in the waves, the people in the water were in jeopardy of getting hit. They were weaving in and out of each other as they surfed. It looked like a circus. A dude and a chick tandem-surfed on a paddleboard. Occasionally, someone would bring out a six-pack of beer and toss a beer to all the interested parties. Theses people would chug a beer while they surfed. We had never seen anything like it. This went on for a good two hours. We never saw them again.

4) We saw a couple of biplanes fly by with Trump 2020 banners. One had something about the American worker. The other said something about independence. Folks cheered and clapped when they saw the slogans. That reminded us we had crossed the Mason/Dixon Line.

5) Lola really enjoyed playing in the warm surf.

6) The kids really enjoyed playing in the warm surf. While my older son Alex is an experienced surfer, that's no fun to watch. Much more enjoyable to check out Ian, who rarely surfs. 

Zoom in on his face in this picture . . .

Actually, I'll do it for you.

7) One night Aly-- a girl I teach with-- and her husband came over and had drinks on our front porch. Dan told me he had been coming to the Outer Banks his entire life. He was twenty-seven. I informed him that it was the twenty-seventh year of our annual guy's trip to the Outer Banks. In other words, I am old.

8) On Thursday and Friday, I abandoned my wife and kids to hang out with my fraternity buddies.

These guys.

Thursday was a long day of drinking, catching up, and cornhole. No one ate any real dinner. There were chips and salsa and some cold bbq, but that was it. The main course was beer.

Catherine picked me up at 1:15 AM and I got to go back to our lovely air-conditioned beach house and avoid sleeping with all the snoring men. She's a great woman.

The next morning I was a little rough around the edges, but Ian wanted to play tennis. By 8 AM, we were on the court. It was very hot and humid. While I was proud to be running around after a long night of drinking local IPAs,  at 5-5 we decided to call it a draw. I was dehydrated and going to pull a muscle.

Friday, folks were a little hungover. We sat on the beach, swam, chatted, told jokes, and played cornhole. Mattie O and I continued to reign supreme at cornhole. We started nearly every game down a few (or more) points but Mattie's mantra-- "We're fine"-- held true every time.

9) The other thing that reigned supreme was the Truly hard seltzer. A few of us had never tried one. A few had, and swore by them. After a long night of drinking hoppy beer, I must admit that those things were wonderful. They go down way too easy.

We discussed which flavor was the manliest. Mixed Berry? Pineapple? Mango? Passion Fruit? 

Black Cherry seemed to be the only flavor even vaguely marketed towards men. 

Cucumber Lime might be what James Bond would choose . . . if he had to.

While absurd, those things were easy on the stomach and after you had one, it was well-nigh impossible to drink a hoppy IPA. They are the wine coolers of 2020.

Talking to Dave Fairbanks about how nice the Outer Banks is in September and October, and how calm the island was during the lockdown has given me a new goal in life: live somewhere in the offseason! 

Someday.

A note on the jokes that were told on the beach: in this climate, any jokes centered on race are a bit dicey. Everyone gets that. So the jokes that were mainly focused on bestiality. And then there's this one, that the whole family can enjoy (if you can do an impression of a whale).

On Friday, my wife picked me up at 9 PM, because we were getting up early and heading home Saturday morning.

Thanks for hosting Whit, and thanks for everyone that attended. It's astounding we can still put up with each other. While we call it the Outer Banks Fishing Trip, there's no fishing. That's a testament to how much everyone likes to hang out.

On the docket: a ski trip where no one goes skiing.

10) Meanwhile, Friday evening, while I was on the beach chatting and playing cornhole, my wife and kids were packing the car. 

They did get to enjoy the sun, sand, and surf during the day-- we really lucked out with the weather, and aside from a few jellyfish, the water was perfect.

During the packing of the car, something unfortunate happened. Catherine expertly packed the huge rubber sack that goes top of the van. That's normally my job, but she did a better job than me. She put the zipper in front! Why didn't I think of that? And she got two boogie boards in there, along with the beach cart, the chairs, and the umbrella. Impressive. 

Has she earned this awful task? 

I think not, she already does too much.

She does all the organization inside the house. the only item I added to the packing list this time around was "blackening spice." I imagined we'd be blackening some fish, but it was too easy to order take-out seafood. We did NOT use the blackening spice.

We got up on Saturday at 5:30 AM, finished packing the car, and made the haul home. The ride went smoothly, aside from a Wawa in Virginia. While I was pumping gas and watching a video on the little screen on the gas pump about Wawa's impeccable cleaning, Catherine was inside the store surrounded by a bunch of people who weren't wearing masks. She wrote an irate comment on their website.

Now we're back, cases are spiking, we are in quarantine until we get tested on Tuesday, and it's back to the usual . . . which is unusual. We're living through history right now, and we don't know how the story ends. It's maddening. But we were lucky enough to have the resources to get away from it all for a week. It is a different world out there, it doesn't feel like a pandemic-- the Outer Banks has had less than a hundred cases, in total. 

It was great to see the guys, and it was great to get away with the family . . . even though we've spent a LOT of time together. The change in location helped. 

I hope we can do the same thing next year. I hope there is a next year!

Bonus Features!

I just noticed today that my backpack has a secret waterproof string bag-- attached to the inside of the pack with a string!-- and then my brother's girlfriend pointed out that our new beach cart has a secret side pouch and velcro tie that srves as an umbrella holster; I will utilize both these bonus features tomorrow.