Thanksgiving morning I was driving our minivan out to pick up some breakfast from the only fast food restaurant open that morning (Bojangles). Turning onto a section of the main road in my hometown, I felt a strange rumble in the ride. At first I thought it was a bad section of the road, but after a few seconds, I realized it wasn’t the road.

I pulled off the street and into a gravel parking lot. I got out, walked around the van looking at the tires, and found the front passenger side completely flat. Well hell.

The morning was cold, and I was in just a long-sleeve t-shirt with no coat. This was not going to be fun. Changing a tire in the cold, in a gravel parking lot. Yeah, it had “blog whine” written all over it.

We had just driven into town the night before, so our travel junk was still scattered about the inside of the van. The trunk area was full of two scooters (with helmets), a bag of books that had spilt its contents, a folded stroller (Why do we still have a stroller in the van?), and various other family van crap that just gets in my way all the freakin’ time.

I started pulling the junk out of the back of the van and moving it to the middle area so I could get to the spare tire. After clearing the back, I discovered that the spare tire is not in the back. Well where the hell is it?

I pulled the owner’s manual out of the glove compartment. Reading the relevant section, I found that the spare tire is under the floor in the middle of the van — where I had just moved all the back junk to. Son of a bitch!

I moved all the junk back and cleared out the middle of the van to get to the spare tire under the floor. After moving all the first junk, I then had to move the box of toys, the sundry other scattered debris that boys leave in their wake, and the extra floor mats (’cause we have messy children).

I opened the floor section and unscrewed the bolts holding things in place, and at last tugged and pulled the spare tire out of the car. But there was no jack or lug wrench. What the hell?

I went back to the owner’s manual. According to the book, the tools are kept secured in a secret compartment in the trunk area — where I had just moved everything back to after moving them out of the way at first. Oh for fuck’s sake!

I moved everything out of the trunk again, and found the secret tool compartment. I pulled out the lug wrench, but then I couldn’t get out the jack. It was in its slot very tight; it wouldn’t even budge or wiggle. I checked the owner’s manual. I’m supposed to turn the jack screw to loosen it (contract it) in its position.

I stuck the back end of the lug wrench into the jack screw to turn it, but in its position, I could only turn it a quarter turn — not enough to loosen it. I tried turning the screw with my fingers, but it was too tight (or my hands were too cold). Damn this whole mess straight to hell!

I thought for a moment and figured, OK, I can call my mom to bring out her car. I can use her car’s jack to raise up this van and put on my spare tire.

To be continued . . .

Bullgrit

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From this recent raid in the junk of my dad’s attic, I brought home the box of Star Wars action figures, the Millennium Falcon, and my two of the Shogun Warriors. (Dragun and Mazinga are my two, Godzilla and Raydeen are my brother’s.) The Falcon and Warriors, I’m giving to my boys.

I had to clean them up before handing them over, though, as they were covered in a dirty dust from around 30 years of being stored open in an attic. I gave both boys a wet paper towel and let them clean up their respective Shogun Warriors.

When I first showed the boys their new toys, Calfgrit8 immediately jumped to picking which he wanted. Calfgrit4 had a sad face as he looked at the unpicked one, “I have to take the serious one,” he said with a pathetic frown.

Both Warriors have robotic faces, but Mazinga (the one CG8 initially picked) has a big metallic grin, and Dragun (the “serious” one) has a simple frown-like expression.

CG8 is always jumping first to claim a toy over CG4. This presumptuousness combined with CG4’s disappointed eyes made me say, “Wait, wait. I was going to give Mazinga to CG4 because he’s mostly blue (his favorite color), and Dragun to you, CG8, because he’s red (your favorite color).”

CG8 paused a moment, but he took the suggestion. CG4 burst into a grin as big as Mazinga’s and ran to grab up his new toy.

While the boys cleaned up their robots, I set about cleaning the Millennium Falcon. I tried just wiping it down with a wet paper towel, but good lord it was dirty. And all the nooks and crannies of the ship made wiping it only half effective. I eventually had to actually take it apart, removing all the screws and carefully removing the top.

I filled the bathtub with water and soap, and let the ship soak while we ate dinner. You can see in the picture how dirty it was compared to the white of the bathtub.

I did eventually get it mostly beige instead of dirty tan. I dried it off with a hairdryer, but I have to glue back some broken pieces — 30 years in a non-temperature-controlled attic made some of the smaller plastic pieces brittle.

Watching me wash the Falcon off like this prompted Calfgrit4 to want to wash the little spaceship brain from Mazinga’s head. He filled the bathroom sink with water and soap, and cleaned that little red spaceship to sparkling.

After dinner, the boys played with their new robots toys and seemed to be having a real ball. They’re very anxious to include the Falcon in their play, but they’ll have to wait till at least tonight for me to get it all back together.

* * *

This morning, Calfgrit4 came out of his bedroom carrying his new-old Shogun Warrior. It’s almost two-thirds his height. It stands on the floor next to his chair as he eats breakfast.

Bullgrit

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In yesterday’s post, there was a picture of some KISS trading cards. Those weren’t the only band trading cards in the box — there were The Babies, Queen, and the Village People.

My brother and I both claim these cards belong to the other, but I honestly don’t remember these cards at all. I don’t remember either of us being even the slightest bit interested in the Village People. Although it would embarrass both of us for there to be any proof that these did in fact belong to one of us, really, we were around 12 and 8 years old in 1979 (the copyright date on these cards).

So I imagine whichever one of us these belonged to just thought the pictures of singing soldiers, cops, construction workers, Indians, and whatever the black leather dude is supposed to be were cool. I mean, it’s not like we had any idea about the background culture.

It’s kind of funny: we’ll both admit to being fans of long-haired idiots that wore makeup (Brogrit - Motley Crue), or pouting pretty boys that wore florescent blouses (me - Duran Duran), but we both get nervous at the thought of being pegged as a Village People fan. Even when our fandom days would have been our innocent and ignorant childhood days.

Bullgrit

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My brother and I were in our hometown this weekend, and one of the things we got together to do was go through our dad’s attic to get rid of a bunch of junk. Our dad lives in a new house in a new neighborhood way out in the country with his [relatively] new wife. But he still owns and upkeeps his old house on the edge of town, though it is not lived in by anyone.

We found lots of old treasures in the boxes from the attic. I took pictures of the items (a mixture of mine and my brother’s) that most made me smile
– all this stuff is from the 70s and early 80s:

Bullgrit

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The recent rocket launch in North Korea and the resulting international stress over it made me think about how volatile the world seemed to me when I was 18 years old.

In 1980, Congress reinstated the requirement that all men 18-25 register with the Selective Service System -– “The Draft.” The 1980s were the height of the Cold War, when the two most powerful nations the world had ever known had thousands of thermonuclear missiles aimed at each other. I turned 18 in the summer of 1985, and for a while, to me, every international incident reported in the news seemed a prelude to global war.

I remember receiving a phone call –- which I took on the kitchen wall phone with the 10-foot curly cord –- where some government official reminded me that I had to register within so many months of my coming birthday. For a few years, there had been television commercials reminding everyone of their duty to sign up. Before I turned 18, those commercials were just a normal feature of TV -– like the PSAs nowadays about reckless driving.

Then I turned 18. Suddenly, the realization that I had to sign up for The Draft became unnerving. There was always some international military incident in the news. In the grand scheme of the world, these incidents were minor things, but to a young man due to sign up for The Draft, they were scary warnings that the world was not safe and one could be conscripted into the army and sent to war.

The military and war were terrible things in the general 1980s cultural consciousness. The last war America had been in was the Vietnam War, and most movies and tales about that conflict were very negative with scenes of bloody Hell. And to top off the fear of war, it was believed that the next war would be a nuclear holocaust. So, you see, signing up for The Draft was no light-hearted act. To an 18 year old in the mid 80s, there was real fear of The Draft being enacted, tomorrow!. I remember being really nervous for a few days before turning 18, and for a few days after.

I went to the post office with one of my best friends (he was 17) to fill out the form for the Selective Service. We stood in the hallway of post office boxes while I wrote my information. My friend was normally a very “laugh at anything” kind of guy (as was I, generally), but even he asked me how did it feel.

“I’m nervous,” I said.

“Yeah, I bet,” he said. “I’m not the one signing the form, but it feels weird.”

It was all totally teenage self-centered angst –- the world revolves around me, everything that happens directly affects me. The intermittent nervousness lasted about a week in all, and when the world didn’t explode soon and I didn’t get called to the army quickly, my teenaged mind went back to the normal distractions: friends, girls, and games (not necessarily in that order).

But it was an interesting, if short, feeling of dread that I’ve often wondered if other 18 year old guys felt. Maybe I was just hyper-prone to worry? General cultural ideas about war and the military has changed since we banished the Vietnam War bogey man from our national consciousness. Maybe guys don’t fear war as Hell now, as many did then.

Bullgrit

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Continuation of Clash of Cultures.

Zee Zee had the demeanor of a hard man. Someone street tough and without humor. He was wiry muscular under his t-shirt, and always wore a white painter’s cap (more 80s fashion). Although he cooked as much as George or me, or anyone else, in my mind’s eye memory, I mostly only remember him washing dishes and cleaning.

It was only after a long while working together that I saw he wasn’t really as mean as he looked like he would be. In fact, he was a nice guy. He was pretty introverted, and did his job without chat. But he wasn’t abrasive or off putting when I dealt with him.

I found out his real name one time when I saw his paycheck envelope, but I don’t remember what it was. He went by Zee Zee and that’s how I knew him. (He said his cousin was called Cee Cee.)

One night in the late summer, (after I had turned 16 and could drive to work on my own), there was an accident in the restaurant. It was after closing and I was cleaning up. Zee Zee was sharpening a knife in the back, and I heard him curse. Zee Zee rarely spoke, and I don’t know that I ever heard him curse before.

I rushed to the back room to see what happened, and I found him holding a cloth on his hand. He told me he had cut his hand. There was a good deal of blood on the table, and the white cloth was reddening up pretty quickly.

I asked if we needed to go to the hospital, but he said, “No, let’s just go to the drug store.”

He was the elder of the two of us, so I did as he said. I drove us in my mom’s car to the nearest drug store.

We both went inside together and I picked up the items he told me to, we checked out, and went back out to the parking lot. I helped him use the alcohol and bandages to clean and wrap up his hand. He had bled a lot, and I was thankful for the dark of the evening — the only light we had was from the parking lot lamps — so I didn’t get a real good look at the cut. It must have been pretty deep. I was surprised at how he didn’t complain or show any sign of being in pain.

Some people walking through the parking lot would look over at us as we handled the bloody cloth, the alcohol, the bandages, etc. Zee Zee commented, “They probably think we’ve been fighting.”

“Well,” I said, “you’re the one who’s bleeding, so I must have won.”

Zee Zee actually chuckled at that. I think that was the only time I ever heard him laugh at anything.

He took a few days off from work to let his hand heal, and my step-dad told me I should have taken him to the emergency room (for insurance and such). But when Zee Zee came back to work (after seeing a doctor, at my step-dad’s insistance), it was like nothing unusual had happened.

He was his regular quiet and hard self, and I was back to being intimidated by his quiet and hardness.

* * *

All in all, my several months working at the Chick-a-burger, in the inner city of my small town, was a truly educational experience. I learned something about a lot of stuff that I had only known through the television and movie media and suburban myths.

So ends my tale of my clash of cultures.

Bullgrit

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Continuation of Clash of Cultures.

Two of my coworkers were neighborhood men in their twenties: Zee Zee and George. (I’m not positive the guy’s name was George, and my mom can’t remember either. So, having no way to check for sure, I’m going to call him George.)

George was a ladies man, suave and debonair. George loved talking to the lady customers, and apparently the lady customers loved talking to him. But when no woman was around to hear him, he’d point to a girl or woman out in the table area or parking lot and give me a reading on them.

“She’s out looking for a man. She’s not even being picky. Look at the way she smiles at every man that looks at her.”

“Uh oh, that one. That one you should stay away from. See how she has her hand on her hip. She’ll cut you.”

He’d often make a date through the service window for a woman to meet him at the local dance club. He always went to the dance club after work.

In fact, a few times, he came to work already dressed for the club. He’d come in wearing a double-breasted, purple suit with a white shirt and a thin black tie (this was the 80s) and work a full four-hour shift, and then go straight from the restaurant to the club. I never asked, but I always wondered didn’t he smell of hamburgers and fried chicken when he went to see the ladies?

I would never wear my cooking clothes anywhere after work. But it didn’t seem to matter for him. Maybe it worked for him?

One day, a couple of girls (older than me, younger than George) came to the window and ordered some food. In talking with me and George, they mentioned there was a dance going on out in the parking lot of the restaurant. We could see the crowd gathered in a tight group, but we couldn’t see what was going on other than cheering and laughing.

The girls invited George to come out and dance. George declined, saying he doesn’t break dance (was the craze of the 80s). The girls said the guys weren’t break dancing; they were doing a new dance called “The White Boy.”

George and I laughed, and he commented that maybe I should go out there and win the competition. I declined saying I don’t know how to do The White Boy. George said neither did he, “So I guess we can’t join this dance party.” Everyone laughed.

(This White Boy dance was mentioned a few times in my months working at the Chick-a-burger, but I never got to see what it looked like. I have no idea other than, judging from the comments on it, it wasn’t a flattering set of moves.)

One time I had one of my Dungeons & Dragons books at the restaurant with me. George saw me reading it and we conversed briefly about the game. Turns out he knew guys who played it when he was in the army, and had watched them play a couple of times. It’s probably ironic that his knowing and understanding what D&D was bumped up his cool level in my eyes.

But that was George: always friendly, always ready to smile.

Now, Zee Zee, was very different, but not in a bad way.

Clash of Cultures series to be continued (just one more post) . . .

Bullgrit

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