Letter From Milo: And the Waiter Brings the Check

There are wonderful things you can hear from your doctor. For me, the ideal would be, “Milo, sir, you are a magnificent physical specimen. You can continue smoking, drinking, eating red meat, gambling, scandalizing the neighbors and fornicating for another 50 years.”

On the other hand, the last words you want to hear from your doctor are “cancer” or “heart disease.” Unfortunately, I heard those dreaded words from my doctor a few weeks ago.

No, it isn’t cancer. It’s heart disease.

Technically, it’s not heart disease, it’s a heart condition. It’s called Arterial Stenosis (you can look it up) and I’ve had it all my life and never knew it.

As my physicians, both graduates of the Triple A College of Surgery & Tuckpointing in Gary, Indiana, explained it, I have a sticky heart valve. That means that when the heart squeezes blood out of the chamber, the valve doesn’t close properly, allowing blood to leak back into the chamber. As a result, there’s not enough blood circulating through my system. The heart has to work harder, and, like most muscles, the harder it works the bigger it gets.

So, my heart is now slightly enlarged. Unless the condition is remedied it will continue to get larger until it’s as swollen as an Irishman’s liver on the morning after St. Patrick’s Day. Then, I don’t know, I suppose it’ll probably explode, leaving me in a rather delicate situation.

Here’s a bit of the discussion I had with my physicians, Drs. Loeb and Leopold:

“So, what are my options?”

“Actually, you’ve got some options.”

“What are they?”

“The first option is surgery. We can fix the valve and you can live a normal life. In fact, you’ll feel better than you have in years.”

“What’s the second option?”

“You heart will start failing in a couple of years and you’ll die.”

“What’s the third option?”

“There is no third option.”

“Darn.”

To be honest, I haven’t felt that well in the last couple of years. I’ve always prided myself on being a fairly strong person, but in the last few years I’ve felt a sense of weakness that I attributed to the aging process. I had no idea that the feeling of weakness was due to a heart condition.

Out of curiosity, I asked the doctors if lifestyle had anything to do with my condition. They said that my lifestyle was definitely to blame. Although Arterial Stenosis is a congenital condition, heavy drinking and smoking certainly aggravated the situation.

So, there you have it. I stayed at the table too long, ordering everything on the menu. Now, the waiter has presented the check and I’m going through my pockets to see if I have enough to cover the tab.

Surgery is scheduled for October 6th. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Big Mike: Something Stinks

This morning, as The Loved One packed up for the trip back to Bloomington, Indiana, she started sniffing around. “Uh oh,” she said.

“What is it, my angel bloodhound?” I asked.

She narrowed her search down to the environs immediately surrounding her luggage. “I think,” she replied finally, “that someone sprayed. Maybe.”

With that we both looked at the cat, Boutros, who’d been sitting on the floor watching her pack. Boutros glanced at both our faces, then proceeded to groom his fur. A cat fanatic (The Loved One, for instance) might interpret his behavior as a sign of guilt. A cat tolerator (me) would posit that he simply wanted to lick his coat.

In either case, Boutros might have left his calling card on The Loved One’s valise because she’s been staying with a work chum at her apartment, at which location there is another puss. Humans exchange emails, cats swap piss missives. By the time she was ready to load up the car, The Loved One still hadn’t definitively determined Boutros’s guilt or innocence.

That’s the essence of cat spraying. It starts out as some vague odor that may or may not turn out to be damning evidence. Sometimes the smell of cat piss is just your imagination.

I mention this because I’m sniffing something right now. I don’t like it one bit. It’s worse than cat piss.

Last night, Trivia night at Dick’s Pizza, Skip the Trombone Player brought in a couple of clips from the Lexington Herald-Leader. One clip told of a state-wide poll that had determined that fully 51 percent of Kentuckians believe Barack Obama was born in these holy United States. Which means virtually half the fine citizens of this Commonwealth harbor deep suspicions that the president was born in some spawning ground of terrorist brown folk like Kenya. Skip’s second clip was a story about the mini-firestorm that erupted over the University of Kentucky men’s basketball coach John Calipari giving that alien POTUS a UK jersey, complete with his name sewn on the back.

The coach seemed baffled by all the uproar. All he was trying to do, he said, was try to drum up publicity for the team.

John Calipari, welcome to the USA, 2009.

It’s fitting that he — and we — should sniff around on the day that Obama is to give the nation’s schoolchildren their first coded instructions for overthrowing the republic. What a clever Kenyan terrorist he is — he’s the first Mau Mau/Commie/Nazi guerrilla rebel in history to foment revolution by getting himself elected head of state. Pretty neat trick, no?

I can be as snarky and smirky all I want but I can’t deny my own fear that something pissy is brewing. I’m sniffing around and coming to the conclusion that an ugly incident — or even series of incidents — is gonna take place before the end of Obama’s first term.

The anti-Obama fringe is driven by rage, racial hatred and willful ignorance. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t suggest that everybody who dislikes the president is a loon (even though so many of them love to wallow in that imagined accusation.) It’s just that the number of scary extremists who have god, ammo and white skin on their side seems to be growing every day.

Huge swaths of the population see the president as The Other. He’s not just The Guy I Didn’t Vote For — he’s a beast with horns. The military is good at this kind of thing. Drill instructors and the like don’t tell recruits that the enemy is simply a bunch of decent guys doing their duty for their country. No, they’re wild-eyed sub-humans who have no regard for life. They’re monkeys in camouflage. They are The Other. It’s easier, that way, to get people to fire automatic weapons at each other.

Will this Other-ness make it easier for some troubled punk to aim an automatic at Obama? Maybe it’s my imagination. I hope so.

Benny Jay: Happy Labor Day!

The first job I ever had was packing ice cream in an ice-cream factory in Evanston, Illinois.

It was in 1971.

I’d stand in the back room of this factory, packing ice cream into 16-ounce containers, which would get sold at the local grocery stores.

There were four other ice-cream packing teenagers in that back room. It wasn’t so bad when Eb — this super old guy — ran the show. He let us listen to the rock `n roll radio stations.

But it was a different story when Dan took over. That old sour puss didn’t give a damn about what we wanted to listen to — he kept the radio tuned to WGN. No offense to anyone who works at WGN now, but back then, I couldn’t stand WGN radio. It didn’t play rock `no roll. My memory is that it didn’t play anything except Paul Harvey, farm reports and boring phone calls from suburban housewives with screechy voices.

Anyway, they started me off at $1.65 an hour and promised that after three or four months they’d give me a raise.

But when raise time came, the big boss called me over with some bad news. Seems as though the country was in the grips of a mighty war against inflation. And as part of that epic battle, President Richard Nixon had ordered a freeze on wages and price hikes.

So as much as they wanted to give me that raise — and they really, really wanted to very, very much — they just could not do so. President’s orders, you understand. You wouldn’t us to disobey the president, now would you?

Right then and there I took a disliking to Nixon that exists to this very day.

By the way, they never did get around to giving me that raise, even after President Nixon lifted the freeze.  I guess they forgot.

Now I could be like one of those old timers talking about how tough we had it back in the good-old days and how much better we are as a result. But, I’m not going to do that.

As far as I can tell nothing good came out of keeping me from that raise — it certainly didn’t do a damn thing to help win the great war against inflation. And I’m still pissed off about it, almost forty years later.

Fact is I wish I never took that ice-cream-packing job in the first place. I wish I had gone to work bagging groceries at the local Jewel or Dominicks. Those boys had it good. They didn’t keep them locked up in the back listening to the whining voices of suburban house wives.  No, they got to stand up front and check out the girls who came in to buy groceries.

In retrospect, I realize that what I needed more than anything was someone — like a union — to stand up for me and demand the raise I never got.

Or maybe I should have had the guts to stand up for myself.

What’s that old Army saying my father always told me? Oh, yeah: “Don’t let `em shit all over you, open your mouth.”

Come to think of it, the point of that old Army saying is you’re damned no matter what you do — sort of like working a job, when you think about it.

Oh, well, it’s not like we have a choice.

Happy Labor Day, everybody!

Big Mike: Obama’s A Ni-ni-ni-nazi!

I grew up in the benighted, anencephalic Galewood neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side. Nothing — not the mobsters who lived and whacked nearby, not the Russkies with their H-bombs, not even Richard Speck — was as terrifying to my childhood neighbors as the prospect of a black family moving onto the block. If the neighborhood elders could pass on only one lesson, it was that your daughters and wives would be lost the first time they came within a 50-yard radius of a black man. My hand to god.

Those elders conveyed their feelings frankly and openly. They didn’t worry about political correctness. I’m glad for that; I moved out of Galewood as soon as I hit the age of 18 in large part because I knew precisely what the prevailing philosophy was.

I make it a point never to use the catchphrase politically incorrect. Those who do generally talk as though jackbooted tyrants stand over them, threatening to slap on the manacles every time they hint that guys like action movies or Mexicans like hot food.

It’s true, though, that you’ll be ostracized from polite society should you slur gays, blacks, the mentally retarded and other traditional punching bags. Heck, even using the term mentally retarded can bring a sidelong glance from some people. None of this is new. My mother once told me that when she was a young girl, no one uttered the word cancer out loud. It was such a terrifying concept that merely hearing it deeply troubled those within earshot.

But these taboos are so fleeting.

Not long ago, I watched a British television production called “Tipping The Velvet,” about a young Victorian-era actress who discovers her own lesbianism. Tipping the velvet, I learned, was a vulgarism for cunnilingus at the time. Now, thanks to time and geography, the phrase has lost all its ability to offend. Imagine turning on a holographic TV in the year 2112 to watch the story of a young woman discovering her lesbianism in 2009. The show’s title? “Eating Pussy.”

Still, today’s verbal prohibitions have become de facto laws in mass media and other, actually respected institutions. This sensitivity — some might say hypersensitivity — has filtered down to the neighborhood. Now, sadly, it’s virtually impossible for real bigots to articulate their true feelings.

I debated with a co-worker at the Pulitzer-Lerner Newspapers back in 1989 about some universities forbidding students from using or writing certain slurs, even in their private communications. This co-worker, a black guy, was happy the universities were outlawing such speech.

“Words hurt,” he said. “What if my grandmother came to visit me at college and she had to hear some idiot dropping Ns left and right? It would hurt her.”

“Yes,” I replied, “but when we penalize speech, we drive those guys underground. I want to know exactly where they are at all times. Let ’em shout it out. Then we know what they’re up to.”

So now, what does the student who hates blacks do about his feelings? How about the businessman who’s certain all Jews are out to cheat him? And the senator who enjoys tap dancing in the Minneapolis airport men’s room now and again — how does he express his utter contempt for fags?

Today, the senator can’t step up to the podium and announce that all queers ought to be horsewhipped. The student will have to bite his tongue. I suppose the businessman can start a chapter of the Pat Buchanan fan club – but that’s my point!

Because we’re so sensitive to every conceivable real or imagined slur, we’ve forced the bigots to use a dangerous code. They’re creating languages and strategies that mask their fear and loathing. They’re gaining listeners, adherents and media attention by doing so.

Now I ask you: can you imagine so many people getting so worked up over watered-down health care reform bills being proposed under any other president? Had Al Gore become president in 2001 (as the majority of voters wished) would there be the same bitter, mad, high dudgeon we’ve seen at these town hall meetings?

And what are people really talking about when they equate Barack Obama with Hitler? Or when they call him a fascist and a socialist? (Go figure that contradiction out.)

Here’s my take: they can’t call Obama a nigger (or, worse, a half-nigger) so they’ve concocted lunatic theories and accusations as outlets for their bile. Just last week, the right-wing-world suffered seizures because Obama plans to address the nation’s school children via video this week. He’s gonna recruit them into the socialist, communist or (horrors) Democratic party, they’re saying between gurgling sounds. Yeah, nothing like a good lecture on doing your homework and finishing high school to swell the ranks of the revolutionary hordes.

It all comes down to the fear of his half-black penis. People who’ve never before given a thought to bills in Congress, the state of health care or what kids are listening to during the school day are suddenly becoming outraged activists. By using such verbal sleight of hand, they can spew all they like and still be validated by Campbell Brown.

No one gets any TV face time by announcing he can’t bear the idea that a nigger is his leader. The mainstream media would ignore him. That kind of honest language has been marginalized to the point that it’s a now a symptom of a new type of mental illness.

But that doesn’t mean the feelings behind it have gone away.

I thought I was the only one entertaining this suspicion until I read Joan Walsh in Salon the other day. “I mean, really, what besides Obama’s race could make him so scary to these people?” she wrote. “The hysteria Obama inspires in his far-right foes is primeval, primordial…. “[T]here’s a deep strand of irrational paranoia that can’t be anything other than racial. These people don’t merely disagree with him, they distrust and dislike him viscerally. He’s not merely wrong, he’s scary; even terrifying.”

I wonder if I was that same teenaged kid growing up today — would I recognize the coded bullshit?

Benny Jay: Full Moon Yoga

I’m watching “Apocalypse Now,” when my wife walks out the door.

It’s the third or fourth time I’ve seen this movie, and my wife saw it thirty years ago and that’s enough for her.

She’s joining a bunch of women who will be practicing yoga on the beach under the full moon. They do it once a month in the summer — call it full-moon yoga. I’m not making any of this up.

See, that’s the thing about women. They’re different than men. They practice yoga under the full moon. We watch “Apocalypse Now” — again and again.

“Pick me up at 8:30,” she says.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, as bombs and shells blast away.

“I’ll be at Lawrence and the lake….”

“Yeah, right,” I say, not wanting to miss a beat.

I watch it to the scene on the beach, where Robert Duvall‘s making the soldiers surf while the bullets whiz by: “If I say it’s safe to surf this beach, captain, then it’s safe to surf this beach. I mean, I’m not afraid to surf this place. I’ll surf the whole fucking place!”

I like that line so much, I play it again. Somethings never get old.

I see it’s getting dark outside, so I pause the movie and drive to Lawrence and the lake, the exact spot where my wife said she’d be.

Only she’s not there. No one is. The corner’s empty. Pitch black, too. Spooky as all hell. I get out of the car and walk up a slight embankment to the top of a ridge that overlooks the lake. My God, what a sight! The moon’s like a big orange ball, casting its ghostly glow on the sand.

I see some kids throwing a football, but no women doing yoga.

It sort of irritates me. I’m easily irritated when I’m hungry and I’m hungry. Seriously hungry. And we’re supposed to eat at Annie‘s Chinese restaurant.  I’m already thinking about the Kung Pao Shrimp. I’m not kidding, this place makes the best Kung Pao Shrimp.

I look at my watch. It’s 8:20. I figure wherever my wife is she’ll call me when she’s done.

I go back to the car and turn on the radio. They’re playing The Who.

Another car pulls up along side me.

I crank up the volume. I pretend I’m Pete Townsend playing guitar: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss….”

I’m wailing away on my air guitar when I remember there’s a car next to me. I sneak a peek. The guy in the front seat’s staring at me.

It hits me — he’s gay. The lakefront’s the place gay guys go to find other gay guys. Big Mike told me all about it years ago. Not that Big Mike is gay. He just knows lots of stuff.

This guy must think I’m gay! Why else would I be sitting in my car out by the lake all by myself in the middle of the night?

I think about calling out the window: “I’m not gay! I’m just waiting for my wife, who’s doing this full-moon yoga thing.”

But I think: What if he’s not gay? What if he’s just waiting for his wife  too? Or worse, what if he doesn’t believe my story. I mean, full-moon yoga? It does sound like a stretch. Who the hell does full-moon yoga? He’ll probably think I’m a rookie gay guy — just taking his first steps out of the closet.

Forget it — I put the car in gear and drive away.

But here’s the thing — he follows me. That’s right, up Lawrence and down the inner drive towards Foster. He’s got his high beams flashing off my rear view mirror so I can barely see.

I push on the gas, losing him at the light; then I shoot up Foster, down Lake Shore Drive, turning east on Lawrence until I’ve gone full circle, parking  right back where I started.

Another car cruises up and parks next to me. A different guy looks in. No! Not again!

My cell phone rings. It’s my wife. “Where are you?” she asks.

“Where am I? Where are you?”

“At Lawrence and the lake….”

“No, you’re not….”

“Yes, I am….”

“I don’t see you….”

“That’s cause it’s dark….”

“Walk to the street light,” I tell her. “Hurry up. I gotta get out of here. These guys are like carnivores….”

I sit in my car under the street light and, sure enough, from out of the darkness, come the shadowy figures of women, bearing yoga mats.

My wife and her friend, Jeannie, suddenly appear. They have the blissed-out, God-is-good-glow of women who have done two hours of yoga on a beach under the full moon.

Definitely more blissed-out than me, who spent the better part of the last thirty minutes on the run.

“Let’s eat,” I say. “I’m starving….”

“Me too,” my wife and Jeannie say in unison.

We drive to Annie’s Chinese restaurant on Sheridan and order a ton of food. Let me tell you — these chicks can eat! I mean, they’re shoveling it in. I thought I was hungry, but they’re staying with me, bite for bite. Right down to the last peanut in the Kung Pao Shrimp.

Hey, man, when you’re hungry, you gotta eat. I guess that’s one thing men and women have in common.

Randolph Street: Highway 61–Route Mid-America

Corner–Arcola, Mississippi

Cowboy–Fort Madison, Iowa

Sanders Cafe–Percy, Mississippi

Doorway–New Orleans, Louisiana

Bale Hedge–Fennimore, Wisconsin

Christmas–Percy, Misissippi

This is a personal look at mid-America that I shot between 1976 and 1985.  These were taken along the approximately 1700 miles of US Highway 61 that roughly follows the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Minneapolis, then juts northeast to Duluth and along the western edge of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay, Ontario.  All photographs © Jon Randolph.

Big Mike: The Farmer’s Clunker

The farewell tour continues.

Printer Bob has been one of my political debate nemeses at Dick’s Pizza on Goose Creek Road. He’s not as antediluvian (shout out to Harold Washington!) as Captain Billy, but I’m not about to equate him with Molly Ivins, either.

He is a great story teller, though. With his Ohio River Valley accent (just short of being punctuated with y’alls but twangy enough to charm the electorate,) his flashing eyes, his broad, theatrical hand gestures and waving arms, Printer Bob can hold an audience in thrall.

Here’s Printer Bob’s story about another, equally adept storyteller he’d encountered on a road trip.

Bob: “I had to go down to southern Kentucky last week. My uncle died — Uncle Gerald. He was a preacher for the Church of Christ. They had 24 preachers at his funeral service and they all spoke. They got five minutes each. I thought it’d never end. He was a real man of god.

“I went down there with my son, Adam — you know, the college boy. After the funeral we turned around and started drivin’ back home. Well, we were hungry so we stopped in at this BP truck stop off Interstate 65. It’s about a hundred miles south of here. I been there before. They got some of the best homemade pies and cakes — bar none. I had the apple pie and Adam got the carrot cake. We were sittin’ at the counter shovin’ it in — man, it was good!

“So we’re eatin’ and this farmer is in there, too. Musta been his hangout. He’s there with his ole buddies, drinkin’ coffee down at the end of the lunch counter. He had the bib overalls and the mud on his shoes — the whole thing. Farmer’s tan. He’s talkin’ politics, loud.

“He’s tellin’ ‘em that he don’t trust Obama anymore. He was an Obama man — can you believe it. This ole Ken-tucky farmer. He voted for Barack Hussein Obama.

“This guy was hot! He says, ‘I liked Obama. I voted for him. Now I hate the bastard, He’s a liar!’”

Me: “Well golly, Printer Bob, what happened to change his mind?”

Bob: “I’m tellin’ ya! He had this ole 1964 aqua blue Chevy Pickup. He was gonna bring it in for Cash for Clunkers. Now I notice that Adam is payin’ attention to him. A little too much attention, if you know what I mean. It looks like Adam’s gonna start talkin’ to him, ask him questions or somethin’. I’m makin’ shushing motions at him but you can’t tell a college boy anything. He knows it all and he’s gonna let the world know all about it.

“This farmer says he brought in the Chevy pickup and picked out a nice new pickup. He says, ‘I was sittin’ there waitin’ for the man to bring me my check. The salesman comes up and goes Okay, that’s all, see ya later. Shakin’ my hand. Pushin’ me towards the door. I’m thinkin’, What the hell’s goin’ on around here?’

“The farmer’s buddies are lovin’ it. They’re pokin’ each other in the ribs and laughin’.

“The farmer’s got ‘em, right? He says, ‘I thought they were gonna give me $4500 cash on the barrelhead. That’s what they said — Cash for Clunkers! I wanted the cash right in my hand.

“His buddies are screamin’ now. Adam says to me he should know that no one ever promised people would actually get cash for their clunkers. I tell ‘im, ‘Let it go. Concentrate on your carrot cake.’ But, no-o-o-o. He’s gotta set the man straight. ‘Let it go,’ I tell ‘im.

“Well, it’s too late. This farmer notices Adam’s listening and now he starts talking toward us as if we’re part of the audience. Adam goes, ‘That’s not how the program works. You don’t get the money, you get it taken off the price of the new car.’

“The farmer’s shocked. ‘Whaddya mean?’ He’s raisin’ his voice. ‘It says right there — Cash for Clunkers. Cash!’

“I’m finishin’ up my pie fast. I tell Adam to finish his carrot cake. I wanna get the hell outta there. We pay the tab. Just then, the farmer and his ole buddies start gettin’ up; he wants to show ‘em his new pickup truck. So we’re all walkin’ out at the same time.

“We’re out in the parking lot and this farmer throws the hood up. Adam walks over there and starts lookin’ at the engine like the rest of ‘em. They’re all standin’ around pointin’ at things like they know what the hell they’re pointin’ at. Guys, right?

“I’m yankin’ on Adam’s arm but he ain’t comin’. He asks the farmer what his miles per a gallon was on his ole Chevy pickup.

“The farmer goes, ‘I had no idea what my miles per a gallon was. The gas gauge stopped workin’ 10 years ago. All I know is, when it stopped smellin’ like gas, that’s when I knew I had to fill it up.’

“His buddies are rollin’ on the pavement. The farmer admits he likes his new pickup but now he has to keep it up for his audience, right? He’s goin’ on and on about how he got screwed by Cash for Clunkers and Obama is a liar.

“Now he’s gotta give ‘em the peace day resistance, right? He says, ‘Then, on top of it all — they made me buy insurance!’ His ole buddies are roarin’!

“He goes on about how Obama’s in league with the insurance agents. I can tell Adam’s chompin’ on the bit. I’m whisperin’ to him, ‘Let it be. It’s okay.’ Adam takes this deep breath again and now I’m punchin’ him in the arm. But, no, he’s gotta have his say. He tells the farmer that everybody has to have auto insurance — ‘It’s the law.’

“The farmer looks at Adam like he’s crazy. He goes, ‘Not on the farm it ain’t!’”

Now, Printer Bob owns the crowd at Dick’s Pizza as thoroughly as that southern Ken-tucky farmer owned his ole buddies at the BP truck stop. For the rest of the night, whenever someone says something ridiculous or unbelievable, we respond by quoting the farmer’s kicker. In fact, later on Bob begins to tell another customer that Massachusetts representative Barney Frank once got away with running a gay prostitution ring out of his Washington apartment.

Me: “Hey, Bob!”

Bob: “What?”

“Not on the farm it ain’t”