Dysfunctional family tree

          It is not accurate to say "my dysfunctional family" unless I include myself, as I am a family member. I'm supposed to be the one who takes fewer chances and does not take risk for "risk sake." However, I exposed my dysfuntionality last week. This mea culpa concerns a recent knocking noise from the rear of my car. It started at the beginning of the week as a soft patter and continued as I drove it. I checked the wheel well and the fender was a little loose. That must be it. I looked at the lug nuts and none were missing. I checked the Internet and got some info on "rear differential." Last Thursday morning the patter turned to chatter, then clatter, then knocking. As I approached the I-205 Bridge, a multi-lane 3-mile long arch over the Columbia River, the knocking intensified in noise and frequency. It sounded like someone was beating the undercarriage with a jack hammer. I was traveling south at about 55 mph when the left rear wheel flew off. I did not immediately see the wheel, but the sudden caving in of the left rear, the crunching sound of the wheel drum gauging the concrete, and the overall sensation of me now driving a speed boat in rough water, left no doubt I was on three wheels. I looked to my right and saw a guy gasp and accelerate, letting me into that lane; the next lane was clear so I scraped into that one, and then finally rested on the shoulder of the road, two feet from a short concrete wall, beyond which was a 100-foot drop into the Columbia. I told my kids to always immediately take a car into a shop if they hear strange noises. It was something I should have done three days later and waiting it out almost turned my car into a casket. Oh, and the wheel? I watched it bound 30-feet into the air, then come down bouncing into the northbound (5-lanes) traffic of I-205. Thankfully it did come to rest, but a guy drove over it and got two flat tires.  Oh yeah, cost for repairs was $869 (I had to buy four new tires as well).

Surprise Boy the Main Dish on Thanksgiving

          Aunt Jan has been dating white-haired men, so it was strange to see the brown muss of hair in the transom above our front door. She had brought home Hula Boy. We hadn't seen him in almost four months and he'd changed: he didn't stride immediately to the pantry cupboard for snacks but walked into hugs and burps of surprise. Yes, now he was Surprise Boy. We had fun stashing him away and inviting people over, then suddenly pulling him out for the surprise. We ushered him to the Kreglos for Thanksgiving dinner, then moved him about from room to room to surprise everyone, wringing the most of this unexpected guest, our 18-year-old college kid. When that got old we took him places, shoved him to the door, at the Harris's for example, and yelled surprise. At 10 p.m. we were exhausted; it was like we'd taken our candidate on a last ditch Election-eve whistle-stop tour. Surprise Boy, eager to shed the Griswalds though, grabbed the family vehicle and toured the neighborhood with his unexpected self . . . so I don't know if Chad got home before Peg and Jenna left at 4 a.m. for Black Friday shopping. Why did they go without sleep (and common sense) to do this? Because shopping, for them, is not the opportunity to buy goods for the household, but to plunge the family into debt using unmonitored credit cards and buying useless expensive items that we don't need and, therefore, will only occupy cluttered closet space until discarded as "out-of-date" two years later. So I try not to think about it and look forward to using my free-drink coupon at Starbucks with Surprise Boy. Maybe we'll see someone we know.

Once More to Pine Hollow

          The end game was me sitting on a dark porch listening to static on a faraway radio station and staring at the dock lights on the other side of the lake. This was Pine Hollow -- now a discarded hulk, not unlike the frosted ice tea glasses you got for a wedding gift and never opened. It all began in 2005 when the tail did not wag the dog -- it possessed the poor animal: Peg and Jenna were buying new bathing suits and I suddenly found myself in a Sea Doo dealership being told by my family "we'll use it a lot." That led to paying twice as much as we wanted on a vacation house because it was closer to boat ramp. At first it was pure glee. If Martin Luther King could have imagined it, this, not children of all color playng together, would have been his dream. Evan, 16, Chad, 13, and Jenna 10, were perfect ages. Our friends came and they brought boats; there were long hot days tubing, skiiing, and wakeboarding, fueled with beer and barbeque and late night bonfires. The grass was brown and so was our skin. But by the middle of the second summer Evan began to spend 18 hours a day with his head pressed on the living room floor in sleep. The rest of the time he sulked around demanding to go home. Chad and Jenna, so enthused with the place at first, now boldly stated their feelings: "Do we have to go there every weekend? We're sick of Pine Hollow." Peg was busy wondering why we didn't spend 5 times more and get a place at a resort. So as I began to wake up alone more and more in Pine Hollow, I began to think of renting it. I announced this to the family and they were relieved they would not have to hear me beg them to go ever again. That was 2007. Grudgingly, now Chad and Jenna have recently said they miss Pine Hollow. I've told them to do what I do: Sit on the porch at home, listen to a battered radio, and imagine the school parking lot lights in the distance to be the dock lights at Pine Hollow.

Time for Vultures to Circle

In first grade I was told by a mustachioed nun to never let food go to waste because children were dying in Africa. Permanently imprinted in me, I have dogged my children all their lives to eat leftovers. It's usually me though, who pries the tops from faux Tupperware, mixes the dormant bacteria-laden food and then watches it "blend" in the microwave. Evan for some reason actually paid some attention to me and will eat cooked leftovers in a "raw" state (no sauces, garnish, or evidence that any other food has touched the surface). Evan recently left home and we heard he landed a spot on a friend's floor for the time being. Well, he's come over to watch football the last two Saturdays and we've allowed him to make Evan Nachos - simply chips with microwaved sizzled cheese over them. Last Saturday, I offered him Friday's steak and he was too full after his redneck fondue plate (nachos). He fell asleep at haftime, stayed that way -- on the floor -- for four hours and never ate the steak. Trouble is, Peg and Mai won't eat it and my doctor says it's too much cholesterol for me. So, tommorrow when he comes over for the football game, I've planned to give him the same steak (now going on 8 days old) but with a bottle of his favorite barbeque sauce on the side. It'll be just like the old days when he used to live here: a pond of Sweet Baby Ray's on the plate and a big chunk of meat stuck to a fork dangled over it, and Evan will be driving his teeth into the brown meat like an anxious preschooler attacking his first cotton candy.

Once more to Jane Street

It was going to be a trip to 8-Mile Road because Jenna was obsessed with the movie, but I was coaxed on by passengers Evan, Jenna, and cousin Cayla. They wanted to see "the old neighborhood." My sister, Gravalier, wanted none of it and pleaded for me to turn around. As we decended down Chalmers from Jefferson, there seemed to be more multi-colored cinder-block "party stores" than homes; the store windows and doors had thick black bars guarding goods that undoubtedly would be paid for through 6-inch thick bulletproof glass. Along the street were vacant lots, lots with piles of debris that were once homes, boarded-up houses with painted gang codes and brick scorched like open barbeques at Belle Isle Park,  and people, lots of people. Two things I'd read about Detroit before I visited crossed my mind as we stopped at a light on Charlevoix: Detroit was named one of the 10 deadliest cities in the world; and it is a "one race" city. I could remember the urgent sound of my mother's instructions in 1967: "Roll up the windows and lock the doors; we're in a bad neighborhood." Gravalier was claiming an anxiety attack and reaching for medication. The kids wanted to wave at people and "be friendly." I told them I wasn't sure how the Detroiters would take that: a carload of white people waving and gesturing in an area it didn't appear any white people traveled. For, as we winded our way through the old neighborhood, passed St. Juliana Elementary School, passed our childhood home on Jane Street, passed Denby High School, and finally ended up on 8 Mile, we did not see one other white person; however, it didn't seem like anybody really noticed anything different about us.

Goon squad has yard sticks

Here's a quiz: How far can you park your car from a driveway on a residential street? Hint: it's apparently the reason I got a ticket yesterday. Now I park and return to look straight to my windsheild because I don't know what other microscopic limitations are required from the Vancouver Police Department of the SS. Also, how far am I suppposed to stop before a stop sign? How far is my car allowed from the curb? How far can I be from the white or yellow line? I'd better find out answers to these and all other "how far" questions because I know they'll be in my driveway soon.

Campus three-wheeling goon squad

Campus parking monitors have no other calling than to generate money. They view cars like advertisers view  ads that need to be clicked on a web page; the more paper they can click under a wiperblade the more they make. Parking enforcement personnel has to be the lowest calling in the world for those that crave power. Riding around in aluminum sided mopeds, they are due even less respect than the person who dresses in a chicken suit in front of the local Cluck and Shuck . Today I parked on a street next to the college and came out to find a "ticket" on my windshield. This "ticket" was the size and texture of a grocery store receipt ($30!). After time and day, the crime was printed in dark: driveway access. Below that, it said "appx 2 feet." I parked between two driveways and there was about a foot or so on either side of my car. No signs about restricted, limited, or banned parking anywhere. Is there an ordinance that states I have to be 24 inches away from a driveway? Well I measured my car: 14 feet. Tomorrow I'll measure the curb. Among my complaints when I get this in court (even if it has to be a class field trip that day!) is that on the first day of classes, with students and instructors driving dizzy in pursuit of spaces, why not issue warnings? The only answer is that these predatory parking police will take money because they have no control over anything else in their lives.

Ordinary Joe