The Next Day of the Rest of My Life

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

IMAGE: A map of Kings Island Amusement Park, as it appeared in 1973.

Mine was fifty years ago last Friday. We looked into that last week. The next one was fifty years ago today.

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The picnic grounds that later became known as an amusement park occupied a place east of Cincinnati. First known in 1867 as "Ohio Grove, the Coney Island of the West," it was later known as "Coney Island on the Ohio," and eventually just "Coney Island." Between periodic floods in the spring, and having extended the limits of its property, the Taft Broadcasting Company, which acquired the park by the late 1960s saw the need to expand the concept elsewhere. They found a plot 25 miles northeast of the city, near a little town known as Kings Mills. This explains the otherwise-inexplicable name of “Kings Island” for a theme park. Forty years ago today, I neared the end of one adventure, and began another, one that was to change my outlook on life, and on my self-image.

I had worked at the park briefly the previous autumn -- the "post-season" weekends, as they're called -- in the Rides department. I told them I had experience with canoeing, so they put me at a lake helping people get into and out of canoes. When the weather got too cold, they transferred me to the roller coaster. At the end of October, that was the end of that.

But I wanted more. They had a "Live Shows and Entertainment" department. The money was better, and one of my buds from high school, Chris "Seadog" Seipelt, was one of the animal characters. You know, those guys who walk around in the animal costumes and get their pictures taken with little kids and all that. "You should try out, Dave," he told me. "I'll even help you prepare the audition." He had this costume head which I wore as a prop, and with a 45rpm recording of Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes," I passed the audition with a presentation of "Bingo Learns to Dance." (Don't ask.)

And I was in.

The money was certainly better. And being in the Shows department had a certain caché that wasn't shared by, say, the ride operators or those who worked the food concession stands. Wearing jumpsuits for most of the day, the guys in our crew would go out for a half-hour or forty-five minutes in these costumes based on Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters -- Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, you know the type -- escorted by these girls known as "guardettes," who would do the talking (since we weren't allowed) and help arrange the kids for photographs. We also had a performance in "Hanna-Barbera Land" of "The Banana Splits Show," which was a fictional rock band composed of four animal characters, and a popular Saturday morning kids show at the time. We pantomimed to a pre-recording of the characters in action. Even as a rookie, I became renowned for my rendition of "Fleagle," the de facto leader of the pack.

It was hot. It was grueling. It was three or four times a day. It was worth every minute.

But the character for which I became best known, was "Templeton the Rat," from the Hanna-Barbera production of "Charlotte's Web." I actually learned how to make the character appear quite real. Once inside the costume, I would bend over slightly, with my head down, and bow my legs when I walked. That made the torso jiggle back and forth, and people actually could imagine seeing a live rodent trying to walk on his hind legs. I can still remember the uproarious laughter from the crowds as I walked away.

IMAGE: The Banana Splits, in an undated publicity photo.

I modeled for children's fashion magazines, and promotions for consumer products. But for all that, my greatest single achievement was being in a movie. After building Kings Island, Taft Broadcasting decided to build a sister park north of Richmond known as "Kings Dominion." They produced a fifteen-minute preview film to promote it in the Richmond area. Some footage was shot at Kings Island, after which the new park would be modeled, while other footage was shot at the construction site. The Banana Splits were the main cast, and I was "Snorky" the elephant, and the only rookie in the cast. We drove to Richmond to film some of it, and Dudley Taft (a descendant of President William Howard Taft) flew us home in his private jet.

Now, back to the ladies.

These girls who accompanied us came from the Guest Relations department, and were hired for their poise, composure, and -- oh yes, their bodaciousness. In fact, they were just about the hottest babes in the whole park. Not only that, but they were the nicest girls you could ever wanna take home to Mama. Most of the guys in the crew were working their way through college, and a few were pretty sure of themselves, especially when it came to the ladies, these ladies in particular. They struck out more often than not, at least at first, which surprised me at the time. After all, high school was nothing like this. I mean, there were rules, you see. You dated within your predestined social class, and never ventured outside of it. There was this one guy -- Tom, I think his name was -- and he told us that he could use every cliché he could think of and still win over the object of his affection. And it actually worked.

There were plenty of opportunities for Tom, of course, and anyone else so bold. We were young, it was summer, and after working hard, we would play hard. There were parties two or three nights a week, just the Characters and the Guardettes. Unlike them, I was not so bold. And one of the first things I learned, is that the girls liked me best for that reason, that I wasn't constantly on the make, which is why they named me "Character of the Year" in an informal poll. Even so, I dated quite a bit that summer, but I usually went for the younger ones, figuring that was all I could, uh, handle. The guys would get on my case for chasing "jailbait," a term someone actually had to explain more than once. I had no idea what they were talking about. I was far from losing my innocence that summer.

But it didn't matter. You see, I could still remember getting beat up by the kids in the neighborhood only ten years earlier. I was physically bullied all through high school. But that summer, for the first time in my nearly nineteen years of a so-called life, I knew what it was like to be ... popular.

IMAGE: George Clooney, yeah, that George Clooney. I knew his dad, sort of.

One week, "The Nick Clooney Show" was broadcast from the park. That was a local variety and talk show back in the 1970s. My buddy Terry and I actually met Nick after work. He was walking around in the park, and against my protestations, Terry called out, "Hey, Nick, over here!" And we talked shop for about five minutes. One day, he brought his family to the park, including a twelve-year-old boy named George. Nick went on to hosting old movies on the American Movie Classics channel. His son has enjoyed a measure of success as well.

Ya think?

I can still remember getting off work at 7:30 in the evening, and going out into the park with a buddy, or a girl I was trying to impress. I remember going on the Alpine Sky Ride as the sun was setting, watching the big band play at the head of the fountain under the fake Eiffel Tower, and being one of the "plants" in the audience for the girl singers. I remember watching the fireworks every evening at ten.

Most of all, I remember never wanting it to end. But it did. We all went off to college, or wherever we were going. Some of my pals went up to Miami University, located in a bucolic college town known as Oxford, northwest of the city. Sometimes when I was there on the weekend for a party, I'd call up my friend Mary Margaret. No, she couldn't join me that night, she was studying. That's right, studying on Friday night. I was disappointed, of course, but I shouldn't have been. I later found out she married a classmate of mine, just after graduating from college.

One of the popular kids. Naturally.

I managed to work at the park for one more summer, but it wasn't the same. I found my only-recently-former girlfriend suddenly "pre-engaged" to some creep who spent three months tormenting me, when he wasn't pretending to be my buddy. He knew how to be everybody else's buddy, too, bringing porn films into the trailer where we took breaks. (Two of us usually left.) I spent the first half of the summer upset that things weren't the same. Why didn't time stand still while I was at college? Where was the magic? And who let all these ***holes in here?

I stayed in touch with some of "the gang" for several years afterwords, but eventually most of them faded away. I am still in touch with two of the guys; one of them a Catholic priest in Cincinnati, the other a retiree in Florida who, like me, married a Filipina. I have not spoken to any of the gals since leaving Ohio more than forty years ago.

It must be a very different experience now. Young women now join the young men in wearing the costumes, and the last time I checked, the characters were from the "Peanuts" comic strip, which can't be nearly as much fun. But most of all, they probably don't get away with half the stuff we pulled off. We had this thing we did to initiate the new girls who escorted us, something called "the squeeze play" ...

I guess you had to be there.

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I think Frank Sinatra said it best: “Life is like the seasons; after winter comes the spring.” In the summer of 1973, I learned that there was life after high school, a world without a label assigned to you, but one you made for your self. It's hard to believe today that such a thing would never have occurred to me. I also learned that nothing in this world lasts forever. You wait long enough, something changes. People move on, life goes on.

And so did I.
 

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

IMAGE: Archbishop McNicholas High School, Cincinnati, Ohio, as it appeared back in the day.

You might remember that expression from when you graduated from high school. It signaled a rite of passage, of moving on in life, whether to college, a job, a marriage, or whatever fate decided to bestow upon you as an adult. Mine actually occurred in the weeks before graduation, in two parts.

The first was fifty years ago this evening.

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I spent my senior year of Catholic high school in the advanced placement "Humanities Seminar," which combined the mandatory subjects of English, Religion, and Social Studies, into a unique interdisciplinary symbiosis. It was quite the challenge compared to conventional high school classwork, but one that cultivated a scholarly atmosphere worthy of college. The experience saved me from the boredom of "senioritis," not to mention the occasional degeneracy of whatever upper-class suburban white trash managed to slip through the cracks of the Admissions office four years earlier.

Mary Margaret -- her real first and middle names; I will spare her the disclosure of the rest -- was the quintessential "nice Catholic girl." She was very pretty without being overly glamorous, and had no pretensions about herself. We spent much of the latter part of the school year sitting next to one another. Even then, the way to my heart was for a gal to laugh at all my jokes. I won't say that a romance blossomed, although part of me at the time wished it had. While she was very much down to earth, something about her was inaccessible, untouchable, rendering me almost unworthy. This did not prevent a deep and apparently abiding friendship from developing. I had no steady girlfriend, and would not have known what to do with one anyway (having learned the hard way earlier in the senior year -- twice). So when the equivalent of the senior prom arrived -- we called it the "Spring Formal," don't ask me why -- I called her on the phone and asked her to accompany me, and she accepted. Fortunately for me, she was equally inaccessible to everyone else. She made no attempt to be. Mary wasn't one of those girls who hiked her uniform skirt six inches above the knee when she was a safe distance from the house. Nor was she interested much in "dating," so far as I knew.

I will save the perspective on that for later. Meanwhile, back to our misadventure ...

IMAGE: Some guy named Bill with (bad fashion sense and) his prom date. Used without permission or shame.

When that magic evening came, it was without a tuxedo.

My mother could not fathom my going to the expense of spending twenty dollars (about one hundred and forty dollars in today's currency, oh yes!) to rent a suit that I would only wear once. This was actually a mixed blessing. That meager price would have afforded me a garden-variety black tuxedo, with a plain white shirt and black bow tie, as opposed to the more expensive, and eminently more "stylish" brightly-colored polyester regalia with a ruffled shirt that was popular back then, and the subject of retrospective shame in the present day. So I wore my favorite brick-red Norfolk jacket with grey slacks, and my favorite tie.

Mary's mother was very nice, and took our picture by the fireplace before we left. She seemed to know my parents, my father in particular, but I don't remember how. I also don't remember who the other couple was that we went with that night. But he drove, and Mary and I sat in the back seat, holding hands, her head gently perched on my shoulder, wearing the orchid I bought for her. We had a very grand time, dancing the night away in the suitably decorated school cafeteria, as this was before renting an overpriced hotel ballroom was de rigueur.

When it was over, and I finally took her home, that goodnight kiss that every teenaged boy meets with anticipation and dread, never came. Girls like Mary didn't take kissing lightly, if at all.

I was driven back to Milford, and stumbled into the house at about three in the morning. Naturally, the old man was waiting. Now, in my younger days, there was rarely a euphoric occasion that he couldn't find a way to ruin somehow, at the breach of any infraction. The good news was, it wasn't in front of a crowd (which never stopped him before). The bad news was, I was up for at least an hour (which seemed much longer), admonished in no uncertain terms for keeping a young innocent girl out so late at night, and bringing shame and dishonor to our entire household. Immersed in his own Euripides play that he was, he ordered me to apologize to the poor lass at school on Monday morning, for being such a thoughtless rogue.

Needless to say, she was sufficiently amused by the whole thing.

Before I left high school, I gave her a final token of my affection; a pair of Snoopy earrings I bought at a greeting card store. (It was the early seventies, after all.) She put them on immediately. After I left, we managed to stay in touch during the summer, but not as much as I might otherwise would have wished.

For you see, there were other events on the horizon, and the matter for our sequel, one week from today. Stay tuned ...
 

Childermas Reconsidered: My Important Year

“You’re beginning something pretty important, and it will be forever.”

On this day in 1954, actor Denzel Washington, professional wrestler Lanny Poffo, and magazine editor and morning news anchor Gayle King, were born -- as was yours truly. Shortly after seven in the morning, at Saint Ann's Infant and Maternity Home on Cleveland's east side, I came into the world. About two weeks later, already settled into the second floor of a modest duplex apartment, I received my first letter.

Saint Susanna Rectory
500 Reading Road
Mason, Ohio

January 8, 1955

Master David Lawrence Alexander
875 Helmsdale Road
Cleveland, Ohio

Dear Davie,

Before this letter arrives, you will have been welcomed many times. I wish to add my voice to the chorus of welcome however.

You're beginning something pretty important, and it will be forever. You've got a big job to do, and that is to save your immortal soul that the Good God has given you. Dad and mother will help you in that, and will consider it their most important duty and privilege, which of course, it is.

But God will likely expect more then usual from you. You see, you have very good stuff in you, and that makes His investment pretty heavy and serious. So you'll have to do more than most others because of your rich endowment.

But despite the fact that you mommie and pop are pretty high class folks, even they have their shortcomings. Take dad for instance. Somehow or other, dads have a way of wishing their sons were big guys before they are. And so they treat them kinda rough some times. If he gets to throwing you up in the air and catching you, just to make you rough, you better explain to him that you do not approve. The first way to do that is to cry real loud. Sometimes that does the trick; but not always. Then you have to use stronger measures. For instance, sometime when he has a nice clean shirt on, and he gets a bit rough, just throw up on that nice clean shirt. That, Davie, will do it! If even that doesn't cure him, I guess you'll have to write me for further suggestions.

And now, Davie, if there is any time that I can help you to straighten out either dad or mom, just drop me a line, and I'll be glad to do what I can for you. And be sure to give them my best regards, and congratulations too on your safe arrival.

Faithfully yours,

[Father] Charles J Murphy

I still have the letter somewhere, amidst a host of memorabilia, papers, magazines, pamphlets, photographs -- things that seem worthless to anyone but whomever collected them. They are the things that trigger the memories, that tell the story, somewhere between the lines that are their pages, and the dust that collects thereupon.

My Favorite Year

Life has its own challenges at the age of sixty and beyond. One is past the point of building a life, and the focus is on how to spend its last years gracefully. This year, at the age of sixty-two, I am officially eligible to collect Social Security. However, I'd have to quit working full time in order to do that, and my benefits would be reduced.

But there will be no retirement at the end of this year. In fact, 2016 has probably been the best year of my career. After more than thirty years as a professional graphic designer, I made the decision seven years ago to switch to videography. One condition was to also serve as a photographer. Another was to risk failure, but that was less certain than the risk of mediocrity. Three and a half years ago, I was officially reclassified, from being a "Visual Information Specialist GS-1084" to an "Audiovisual Production Specialist GS-1071." And with the most recent evaluation, I went beyond a "Satisfactory" rating of "3" to a "Highly Satisfactory" rating of "4" on a five-point scale. When I was in college, I wanted my graphic design career to specialize in multimedia. The only problem was, the thing that I wanted to do hadn't even been invented yet. The merger of art and technology took nearly four decades for me. Far from slouching into obsolescence, I am at the very height of my career. A prediction of two years ago is continuing into fruition.

While the year has seen discoveries, and rediscoveries, there were sacrifices that had to be made, disappointments endured. They will be the subject of a piece to be released as the year draws to a close.

And so it goes.
 

Childermas Reconsidered: Turning Sixty

“You’re beginning something pretty important, and it will be forever.”

On this day in 1954, actor Denzel Washington, professional wrestler Lanny Poffo, and magazine editor and morning news anchor Gayle King, were born -- as was yours truly. Shortly after seven in the morning, at Saint Ann's Infant and Maternity Home on Cleveland's east side, I came into the world. About two weeks later, already settled into the second floor of a modest duplex apartment, I received my first letter.

Saint Susanna Rectory
500 Reading Road
Mason, Ohio

January 8, 1955

Master David Lawrence Alexander
875 Helmsdale Road
Cleveland, Ohio

Dear Davie,

Before this letter arrives, you will have been welcomed many times. I wish to add my voice to the chorus of welcome however.

You're beginning something pretty important, and it will be forever. You've got a big job to do, and that is to save your immortal soul that the Good God has given you. Dad and mother will help you in that, and will consider it their most important duty and privilege, which of course, it is.

But God will likely expect more then usual from you. You see, you have very good stuff in you, and that makes His investment pretty heavy and serious. So you'll have to do more than most others because of your rich endowment.

But despite the fact that you mommie and pop are pretty high class folks, even they have their shortcomings. Take dad for instance. Somehow or other, dads have a way of wishing their sons were big guys before they are. And so they treat them kinda rough some times. If he gets to throwing you up in the air and catching you, just to make you rough, you better explain to him that you do not approve. The first way to do that is to cry real loud. Sometimes that does the trick; but not always. Then you have to use stronger measures. For instance, sometime when he has a nice clean shirt on, and he gets a bit rough, just throw up on that nice clean shirt. That, Davie, will do it! If even that doesn't cure him, I guess you'll have to write me for further suggestions.

And now, Davie, if there is any time that I can help you to straighten out either dad or mom, just drop me a line, and I'll be glad to do what I can for you. And be sure to give them my best regards, and congratulations too on your safe arrival.

Faithfully yours,

[Father] Charles J Murphy

Sixty is the new forty.

Parade magazine recently broke the big news of a generation, that life really begins, not at forty, but at the age that everybody with an unpublished thought claims only seems like forty. Or something. We examine it more closely as we read the signs of The Times. For example, there's the one in New York ...

Yes, my generation, born between 1946 and 1964, has physical concerns: Friends are dying, joints are aching, and memories are failing. There are financial issues, with forced retirement and unemployment, children needing money and possibly a bed, and dependent parents. But for many of us, it is a psychological quandary that is causing the most unpleasantness: looking around and suddenly being the oldest.

Every generation gets old, but for those who were told we’d be forever young, it just seems more painful …

... which comes off as only so much self-indulgence. One is more inclined to identify with the voice of a similar name in London.

And please, can we stop this “60 is the new 40” thing? No one is saying 20 is the new 10. And who wants to be 40 anyway? An insipid, insecure age.

They're right.

I remember turning forty. I had been divorced two years earlier, and was only then getting used to the solitary life on my own terms again. I wouldn't return to that era even if it did buy me another twenty years on this earth below. The office environment had become thoroughly dysfunctional, my supervising official was an alcoholic and a sadist who made my life absolutely miserable, and who fooled everyone with a title (rather easily, I'm sorry to say) into thinking nothing was amiss. They would learn differently only five years later, and my view of management was forever changed (the details of which will find a proud place in my memoirs, or my retirement luncheon, whichever comes first).

I remember turning fifty. Sal and I were sitting in an Irish bar in Cincinnati. We were in town for her to meet my family. My life, for the first time in what seemed like … well, ever, was more or less where I wanted it to be. And where I was, was a helluva long way from forty.

I remember turning sixty. Or at least I will. But how, exactly?

It is when reading the New York Times piece, that part of you wants to say, oh, cry me a river already! And then you remember that you're actually talking to yourself. Yes, "my generation, born between 1946 and 1964," really didn't want to end up like our parents; old, in the sense of being "old-fashioned," confined to the rocking chair and decrying "these kids today." But you really can't help it, because "these kids today" really are a pain in the ass. You see it in the workplace. Not only do they not show much respect to their elders, but they really don't see the point of it. They are younger, brighter, prettier, more enlightened, and in many cases, they outrank you. What more could you ask of a generation?

At the place where I work, I am older than most of the people I see in the office, in the hallways, in meetings. The exceptions are almost all of Senior Executive rank, which I try not to think about, since over the years, people who couldn't organize a sock drawer have assured me that I have no future in management (and looking at them, I can see why). I have a son who's older than one political appointee or another, any one of whom could very well feel obliged to explain to me how the world works. It doesn't actually happen to me personally, but I know it happens to others. Alas, many of the Enlightened Ones will be replaced in two years, by those who appear even younger, but who are not, because I got older.

To reach sixty is to know that your own mortality is just around the corner. People get heart attacks at this age. Even the annual issue of Esquire magazine, the one devoted to maturing through the decades of life, concedes that after your fifties, "you're on your own." For me, going back to "the Latin Mass" was a sign of getting on in years, when after seeing "folk Masses" consisting mostly of aging adolescents trying to hang on to the unattainable, one is even less tolerant of anything with the appearance of novelty. Who wants to remember, or be remembered for, the things that pass like leaves in the wind?

Finally, and as can be discerned from the above, to reach sixty is to no longer care so much what others think of you, secure in the knowledge that, even if you had to, the die that is you has been pretty well cast by this point, and the world is going to have to live with it, if only for a little while longer.

The above being said, one can enter the later passages of life gracefully. Witness a certain Phyllis Tucker-Saunders of Newark, New York, for whom time will not slow her down. And there are so many others, who can look in the mirror and say, well, at least I still have my health. I can say that as well, up to a point. I have a herniated disc that got a good dose of Cortizone back in 2011, and there is the occasional flare-up of arthritis in my knees. I cannot walk for great distances without a cane, and even a minor back injury prevents me from being able to stand on a moving bus. So I have a cane with me, and I have to sit down.

And I'll still take to the hills around Mount Rainier when I tour the northwest. It's harder now than a decade ago. Still ...

On the other hand, people keep telling me (and without any prompting) that I really don't look sixty. Sal assures me of the same thing -- with my hat on.

The Road Not Taken -- Yet

It is the point in life when the light at the end of the tunnel that is retirement looms ever larger. They tell you to start planning for the inevitable, and so I shall. The soonest I would ever retire from the government is the end of 2020, when I will have just turned sixty-six. But even then, I imagine I will continue working for several more years.

And why wouldn't I?

When I was in college studying graphic design, I wanted to pursue an academic minor in multimedia. But even though I learned to use simple video equipment, and made a couple of animation films, what I really wanted to do with my life hadn't been invented yet. In the coming year, I will return to my studies in web design and development. I also found the sort of curriculum that is suited for my needs, not to mention my budget. Between that and a growing aptitude in video production, and I can finally say I have reached that goal of forty years ago, the marriage of art and technology. My next few years in my evolving profession could very well be my finest. I was always a late bloomer anyway.

And so it was, that after the Latin Mass today, for which I was the Master of Ceremonies, the sacristan dragged me to the rectory basement to help her bring my present upstairs. I tried really hard to act surprised by what I found as a turned the corner, really I did.

And so it goes, turning yet another corner, on to the next decade.
 

My Y2K Moment

Lately I have become interested in emergency preparedness and survival techniques. The good thing about such a skill set, is being ready for anything. The bad thing about such a skill set, is attracting others who are ready for anything, including those who are a little too ready. You know who I'm talking about; the "doomsday preppers." If you've reached the age of majority by now, you are old enough to remember what didn't happen when 1999 became 2000. Of course, it was a great time for COBOL programmers -- people who knew the language of the old mainframes that still held much critical information, but were supposed to go dead the moment the clocks turned over -- but other than that ...

It was New Year's Eve in 1999. I was invited to a special black-tie dinner by our then-communications director. It was strictly a private affair, so your tax dollars didn't pay for it. This gal I was seeing at the time was all set to introduce Mr Wonderful (that would be me) to her friends in the coming weeks, but you wouldn't know it by the look on her when I came to the door. Something was up, but I tried not to notice. (I'll get back to that.) But it was hard not to notice the wonderful full-course dinner we had. This was my first such affair. I hadn't seen this many pieces of silverware in my life outside of where it's stored.

You have to remember that I come from people whose place settings only had one fork, even when the good china was brought out. It's one thing to have a separate soup spoon, because you need that big one to, you know, eat soup. But two forks? What would be the points? (Get it? Points?) Now, imagine seeing three of them, among other things. As for the night in question, what did all those pieces do? Well, someone just said to start from the outside and work your way in. That did the trick. For more details, I obtained this handy illustration from Fatima and Andrew Spoor. Keep this handy in the photo gallery of your smartphone, and you'll always know which implement to use next.

What happened to the one that got away? Well, once the clocks turned over and our computers didn't all die on us, she dumped me two days later. I found out about two weeks after that, that she was already making time with an old flame of hers for nearly two months. He was in a high position in a cabinet-level department right across the street, and the whole Y2K thing was the occasion for their meeting up again. And again. And again. What made it worse was that we both worked in the same agency, the same communications office. I wasn't just dumped; I was publicly humiliated. I remember sending her a long, heartfelt letter in the spring of that year, telling her of how these things tend to revisit you at your own expense. Two weeks after that, she discovered she was in the latter stages of cancer. She passed away by summer's end.

That wasn't what I wished for her, obviously, but I remember how bitter I was at the time, and how I considered it a form of poetic justice. Not only is that a rather cruel thing, but it presumes to know too much of what the Almighty has in store for us. We see so little of the big picture. We need to dust ourselves off, and move on. Somewhere in the greater scheme of things, there was then, and is now, a reason.

So eventually I did move on.

Most of the good things that have happened to me in my life, have been in the last ten years. For all my good fortune, I never forget how fragile the human condition can be, and how, as Old Blue Eyes used to say:

“Life is like the seasons. After winter comes the spring. So I'll say a little prayer, and see what tomorrow brings.”

Oh, and when the old homestead was sold last year, guess who got the good silverware.
 

My Not-So-Epic Graduation

Thirty-five years ago today, I was awarded my degree as a Bachelor of Science in Design from the University of Cincinnati. Looking back on that evening, I can still remember ... how little there was to remember.

I had made a decision during my junior year, in lieu of any prospect of an academic minor in multimedia, to enroll in two film classes. One was a "Film Design" class in my own graphic design department, the other was an "Introduction to Film Production" course taught by the fine arts department. In the former, I did an animation in Super 8 format, while the latter was more ambitious, requiring a one-minute live action or animation piece in 16mm. I got an A in the fine arts class, but the sum total of workload was more than I could handle, and my academic advisor allowed me to take an incomplete with two of my courses. The price of the department's indulgence came a year later, when I did not graduate with the other twenty-six students in my graphic design class, but had to finish during the summer quarter.

We assembled on that August night in the basketball arena on campus. There was the usual jocularity amongst the tasseled masses, of course, to listen to a keynote speaker whose name I forget to this day. (My already-departed classmates were treated in the spring to the "boy mayor" of Cincinnati, one Jerry Springer. I met him once. He was just as obnoxious back then.) At the end of the proceedings, we were to line up and receive our degrees. It was then that the students from the College of Design, Architecture, and Art, were directed the other way, to the back of the room, where a folding table was being hastily assembled for the dean of our college, who arrived with an assistant, each of them carrying a cardboard box. Our names were called, and we received our "sheepskins" in about as unceremonious a fashion as one could imagine.

When it was over (such as it was), I met my brother Steve and sister Mary, and we headed uptown to Pleasant Ridge, to my Aunt Marge and Uncle Bill's place on Grand Vista Avenue. Their house was just down the street from where a scene from "Rain Man" was shot in 1988 starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman -- yeah that's it in the picture -- but that's another story. Anyway, we arrived at the porch, and Mom came out. That's when ...

She hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

Now, Mom's parents were not much with familial affection, especially Grandpa, not because they were cold, but it was just their way. It tended to rub off on Mom. In fact, Dad tended to be more affectionate towards us kids than Mom. The thing is, she had never done that before that I could remember, and I don't know what I did to make her start then and there.

It certainly wasn't relief that the expense of college was over. I paid half my way through college through my internships, and Dad financed the other half. While other kids went to Florida on spring break, I spent my breaks doing production work for a free-lancer named Tom Newsome. He taught me a lot that I didn't learn in school. I also got to be a teaching assistant that summer, in lieu of Independent Study. I learned a lot there too, like how being a teaching assistant wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I put my plans for graduate school aside.

And with that, the tradition of an anticlimactic college graduation was begun, one continued by my son Paul earlier this year, when he graduated fere cum laude from the über-prestigious Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, with a 3.4 grade point average. Naturally, he carried the tradition a step farther than me. he didn't bother showing up. (My GPA was 3.0, by the way. Don't ask.)

At the end of the day, I might have been better off considering the experience I gained from both the delay, and the circumstances that caused it. I was aspiring to a specialty that was yet to be invented, one that I only could conceive in vague terms, and would only be realized with the advent of the personal computer, the graphical user interface of the Macintosh, and the advent of the internet. With a bit more nerve, I could have been Nick Selby before there was a Nick Selby.

But that's another story too.
 

The Next Day of the Rest of My Life

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

IMAGE: A map of Kings Island Amusement Park, as it appeared in 1973.

Mine was forty years ago last Sunday. We looked into that last week. The next one was forty years ago today.

The picnic grounds that later became known as an amusement park occupied a place east of the city. First known in 1867 as "Ohio Grove, the Coney Island of the West," it was later known as "Coney Island on the Ohio," and eventually just "Coney Island." Between periodic floods in the spring, and having extended the limits of its property, the Taft Broadcasting Company, which acquired the park by the late 1960s saw the need to expand the concept elsewhere. They found a plot 25 miles northeast of the city, near a little town known as Kings Mills. This explains the otherwise-inexplicable name of “Kings Island” for a theme park. Forty years ago today, I neared the end of one adventure, and began another, one that was to change my outlook on life, and on my self-image.

I had worked at the park briefly the previous autumn -- the "post-season" weekends, as they're called -- in the Rides department. I told them I had experience with canoeing, so they put me at a lake helping people get into and out of canoes. When the weather got too cold, they transferred me to the roller coaster. At the end of October, that was the end of that.

But I wanted more. They had a "Live Shows and Entertainment" department. The money was better, and one of my buds from high school, Chris "Seadog" Seipelt, was one of the animal characters. You know, those guys who walk around in the animal costumes and get their pictures taken with little kids and all that. "You should try out, Dave," he told me. "I'll even help you prepare the audition." He had this costume head which I wore as a prop, and with a 45rpm recording of Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes," I passed the audition with a presentation of "Bingo Learns to Dance." (Don't ask.)

And I was in.

The money was certainly better. And being in the Shows department had a certain caché that wasn't shared by, say, the ride operators or those who worked the food concession stands. Wearing jumpsuits for most of the day, the guys in our crew would go out for a half-hour or forty-five minutes in these costumes based on Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters -- Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, you know the type -- escorted by these girls known as "guardettes," who would do the talking (since we weren't allowed) and help arrange the kids for photographs. We also had a performance in "Hanna-Barbera Land" of "The Banana Splits Show," which was a fictional rock band composed of four animal characters, and a popular Saturday morning kids show at the time. We pantomimed to a pre-recording of the characters in action. Even as a rookie, I became renowned for my rendition of "Fleagle," the de facto leader of the pack.

It was hot. It was grueling. It was three or four times a day. It was worth every minute.

But the character for which I became best known, was "Templeton the Rat," from the Hanna-Barbera production of "Charlotte's Web." I actually learned how to make the character appear quite real. Once inside the costume, I would bend over slightly, with my head down, and bow my legs when I walked. That made the torso jiggle back and forth, and people actually could imagine seeing a live rodent trying to walk on his hind legs. I can still remember the uproarious laughter from the crowds as I walked away.

IMAGE: The Banana Splits, in an undated publicity photo.

I modeled for children's fashion magazines, and promotions for consumer products. But for all that, my greatest single achievement was being in a movie. After building Kings Island, Taft Broadcasting decided to build a sister park north of Richmond known as "Kings Dominion." They produced a fifteen-minute preview film to promote it in the Richmond area. Some footage was shot at Kings Island, after which the new park would be modeled, while other footage was shot at the construction site. The Banana Splits were the main cast, and I was "Snorky" the elephant, and the only rookie in the cast. We drove to Richmond to film some of it, and Dudley Taft (a descendant of President William Howard Taft) flew us home in his private jet.

Now, back to the ladies.

These girls who accompanied us came from the Guest Relations department, and were hired for their poise, composure, and -- oh yes, their bodaciousness. In fact, they were just about the hottest babes in the whole park. Not only that, but they were the nicest girls you could ever wanna take home to Mama. Most of the guys in the crew were working their way through college, and a few were pretty sure of themselves, especially when it came to the ladies, these ladies in particular. They struck out more often than not, at least at first, which surprised me at the time. After all, high school was nothing like this. I mean, there were rules, you see. You dated within your predestined social class, and never ventured outside of it. There was this one guy -- Tom, I think his name was -- and he told us that he could use every cliché he could think of and still win over the object of his affection. And it actually worked.

There were plenty of opportunities for Tom, of course, and anyone else so bold. We were young, it was summer, and after working hard, we would play hard. There were parties two or three nights a week, just the Characters and the Guardettes. Unlike them, I was not so bold. And one of the first things I learned, is that the girls liked me best for that reason, that I wasn't constantly on the make, which is why they named me "Character of the Year" in an informal poll. Even so, I dated quite a bit that summer, but I usually went for the younger ones, figuring that was all I could, uh, handle. The guys would get on my case for chasing "jailbait," a term someone actually had to explain more than once. I had no idea what they were talking about. I was far from losing my innocence that summer.

But it didn't matter. You see, I could still remember getting beat up by the kids in the neighborhood only ten years earlier. I was physically bullied all through high school. But that summer, for the first time in my nearly nineteen years of a so-called life, I knew what it was like to be ... popular.

IMAGE: George Clooney, yeah, that George Clooney. I knew his dad, sort of.

One week, "The Nick Clooney Show" was broadcast from the park. That was a local variety and talk show back in the 1970s. My buddy Terry and I actually met Nick after work. He was walking around in the park, and against my protestations, Terry called out, "Hey, Nick, over here!" And we talked shop for about five minutes. One day, he brought his family to the park, including a twelve-year-old boy named George. Nick went on to hosting old movies on the American Movie Classics channel. His son has enjoyed a measure of success as well.
Ya think?

I can still remember getting off work at 7:30 in the evening, and going out into the park with a buddy, or a girl I was trying to impress. I remember going on the Alpine Sky Ride as the sun was setting, watching the big band play at the head of the fountain under the fake Eiffel Tower, and being one of the "plants" in the audience for the girl singers. I remember watching the fireworks every evening at ten.

Most of all, I remember never wanting it to end. But it did. We all went off to college, or wherever we were going. Some of my pals went up to Miami University, located in a bucolic college town known as Oxford, northwest of the city. Sometimes when I was there on the weekend for a party, I'd call up my friend Mary Margaret. No, she couldn't join me that night, she was studying. She always liked to study on the weekends. I was disappointed, of course, but I shouldn't have been. I later found out she married a classmate of mine, just after graduating from college.

One of the popular kids. And so it goes ...

I managed to work at the park for one more summer, but it wasn't the same. I found my only-recently-former girlfriend suddenly "pre-engaged" to some creep who spent three months tormenting me, when he wasn't pretending to be my buddy. He knew how to be everybody else's buddy too, bringing porn films into the trailer where we took breaks. (I and one other guy usually left.) I spent the first half of the summer upset that things weren't the same. Why didn't time stand still while I was at college? Where was the magic? And who let all these ***holes in here? I stayed in touch with some of "the gang" for several years afterwords. I am still in touch with two of the guys; one a Catholic priest in Cincinnati, the other a retiree in Florida who, like me, married a Filipina. I have not spoken to any of the girls since leaving Ohio more than thirty years ago.

It must be a very different experience now. Young women now join the young men in costume the costumes, and the last time I checked, the characters were from the "Peanuts" comic strip ,which can't be nearly as much fun. But most of all, they probably don't get away with half the stuff we pulled off. We had this thing we did to initiate the new girls who escorted us, something called "the squeeze play" ...

I guess you had to be there.

I think Frank Sinatra said it best: “Life is like the seasons; after winter comes the spring.” In the summer of 1973, I learned that there was life after high school, a world without labels assigned to you, but ones you made for your self. It's hard to believe today, that such a thing would never have occurred to me. I also learned that nothing in this world lasts forever. You wait long enough, something changes. People move on, life goes on.

And so did I.
 

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

IMAGE: Archbishop McNicholas High School, Cincinnati, Ohio, as it appeared back in the day.

You might remember that expression from when you graduated from high school. It signaled a rite of passage, of moving on in life, whether to college, a job, a marriage, or whatever fate decided to bestow upon you as an adult. Mine actually occurred in the weeks before graduation, in two parts.

The first was forty years ago this evening.

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I spent my senior year of Catholic high school in the advanced placement "Humanities Seminar," which combined the mandatory subjects of English, Religion, and Social Studies, into a unique interdisciplinary symbiosis. It was quite the challenge compared to conventional high school classwork, but one that cultivated a scholarly atmosphere worthy of college. The experience saved me from the boredom of "senioritis," not to mention the occasional degeneracy of whatever upper-class suburban white trash managed to slip through the cracks of the Admissions office four years earlier.

Mary Margaret -- her real first and middle names; I will spare her the disclosure of the rest -- was the quintessential "nice Catholic girl." She was very pretty without being overly glamorous, and had no pretensions about herself. We spent much of the latter part of the school year sitting next to one another. Even then, the way to my heart was for a gal to laugh at all my jokes. I won't say that a romance blossomed, although part of me at the time wished it had. While she was very much down to earth, something about her was inaccessible, untouchable, rendering me almost unworthy. This did not prevent a deep and apparently abiding friendship from developing. I had no steady girlfriend, and would not have known what to do with one anyway (having learned the hard way earlier in the senior year -- twice). So when the equivalent of the senior prom arrived -- we called it the "Spring Formal," don't ask me why -- I called her on the phone and asked her to accompany me, and she accepted. Fortunately for me, she was equally inaccessible to everyone else. She made no attempt to be. Mary wasn't one of those girls who hiked her uniform skirt six inches above the knee when she was a safe distance from the house. Nor was she interested much in "dating," so far as I knew.

I will save the perspective on that for later. Meanwhile, back to our misadventure ...

IMAGE: Some guy named Bill with his prom date. Used without permission or shame.

When that magic evening came, it was without a tuxedo. My mother could not fathom my going to the expense of spending twenty dollars (one hundred and five dollars in today's currency, oh yes!) to rent a suit that I would only wear once. This was actually a mixed blessing. That meager price would have afforded me a garden-variety black tuxedo, with a plain white shirt and black bow tie, as opposed to the more expensive, and eminently more "stylish" brightly-colored polyester regalia with a ruffled shirt that was popular back then, and the subject of retrospective shame in the present day. So I wore my favorite brick-red Norfolk jacket with grey slacks, and my favorite tie.

Mary's mother was very nice, and took our picture by the fireplace before we left. She seemed to know my parents, my father in particular, but I don't remember how. I also don't remember who the other couple was that we went with that night. But he drove, and Mary and I sat in the back seat, holding hands, her head gently perched on my shoulder, wearing the orchid I bought for her. We had a very grand time, dancing the night away in the suitably decorated school cafeteria, as this was before renting an overpriced hotel ballroom was de rigueur. When it was over, and I finally took her home, that goodnight kiss that every teenaged boy meets with anticipation and dread, never came. Girls like Mary didn't take kissing lightly, if at all.

I was driven back to Milford, and stumbled into the house at about three in the morning. My father was waiting. Now, in my younger days, there was rarely a euphoric occasion that the old man could not find a way somehow to ruin, at the breach of any infraction. The good news was, it wasn't in front of a crowd, not that that ever stopped him. The bad news was, I was up for an eternity (which was probably closer to an hour), admonished in no uncertain terms, for keeping a young innocent girl out so late at night, and bringing shame and dishonor to our entire household. Immersed in his own Euripides play that he was, I was ordered as a matter of obedience, to apologize to the poor lass at school on Monday morning, for being such a thoughtless rogue.

Needless to say, she was sufficiently amused by the whole thing.

Before I left high school, I gave her a final token of my affection; a pair of Snoopy earrings I bought at a greeting card store. (It was the early seventies, after all.) She put them on immediately. After I left, we managed to stay in touch during the summer, but not as much as I might otherwise would have wished.

There were other events on the horizon, and the matter for our sequel, one week from today. Stay tuned ...
 

Babes in Boyland

By now we've all heard (ad nauseum) about the Notre Dame vs Alabama football game this past weekend. (I'm still hearing about it at the office, from people who spent about as much time on a football field as me. That ain't sayin' much.) We've also heard about how ESPN commentator Brent Musburger went ballistic as Katherine Webb, the girlfriend of Alabama's A J McCarron, and (invariably) the reigning Miss Alabama USA, appeared on the screen.

“Wow, I'm telling you quarterbacks: You get all the good-looking women.”

Everyone thought this was tasteless and boorish, which it probably was. Many also thought that it bought into stereotypes about how star athletes always get the really attractive women, some of whom are (or so the story goes) a little short on intellect. Personally, I can't imagine where such Neanderthal notions originate, but let's go back about forty-some years and give it a try, shall we?

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Clarisse -- I'd love to use her real name, really I would -- started her first year at my Catholic high school, just as I was beginning my second. She was smart, beautiful, vivacious, and with all that, she was also the girl next door, if by "next door" you still meant the respectable part of the city where the school was situated, as opposed to the podunk town from which I was bussed every day. During my sophomore year, I thought she was unattainable, and so was content with a convivial and platonic friendship. By the following school year, I got past those limitations, and with good reason. The annual Mardi Gras dance was coming up, and when I asked her to be my date, she happily agreed. My high school was a shallow, artificial world, but to my adolescent mind, I was finally moving up in it.

In some respects, my high school was no different than any other in America. If you played intervarsity athletics, was reasonably good at it, was reasonably good looking, and wasn't a complete klutz around the ladies, you could pretty much write your own ticket on the social food chain. (You didn't even have to know how to dance. In the post-hippie, pre-disco era of the early 1970s, I'm not sure anyone knew.) It also helped that you brought honor and glory to the school, which paid off in alumni contributions to the athletic boosters club, and mentions in the daily newspaper. I would not have qualified for this elite caste, but Clarisse hung around with girls who did, in what amounted to a "jocks only" policy when it came to dating.

Now, the Mardi Gras was a time-honored tradition, brought to the school by the order of sisters who ran it, and whose motherhouse was in New Orleans. The event was preceded by the seniors electing a Court of Honor, consisting of two dozen senior men and women, from which a King and Queen were chosen. The other classes voted on attendants to the court. Clarisse made the grade, one of three girls and three boys in her class, the former escorted by any one of the latter. It was here that fate intervened. Clarisse had to break the bad news to me, that her social obligations to this event precluded being my date (which didn't seem to be a problem for others, as I recall), and my invitation was unceremoniously returned. Naturally, I was crushed. She did a great job of pretending to feel bad about it to my sister, who was her classmate. And there wasn't enough time left to ask someone else to be number two on your list. But the order and harmony of the status quo was restored, and all was right with the world, myopic though it may have been.

But take heart, dear reader, for the story had a happy ending. Clarisse ended up "going steady" with the guy who escorted her (who it turns out may have been a very distant cousin of mine), and they married shortly after graduation. Mr Storybook went on to teach at the high school for many years, as he and Mrs Storybook were often feted for their years of service to dear old Alma Mater.

Seven and a half years after leaving that cultural wasteland, I got the hell out of Dodge City, and except for reunions every ten years (where I manage never to run into those two), never looked back. In recent years, my old high school has had the audacity to recognize achievement in other fields of endeavor besides athletics, and with no small amount of enthusiasm. I wish I could congratulate them, but I think Huey Lewis and the News deserve the credit.

(What's that you ask, am I bitter? Why, do I look bitter?)

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In the book of Proverbs, it is said that “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” (31:30) You have to wonder if the Katherine Webbs of the world ever learn this the hard way, or if they just get tired of everyone telling them how pretty they are. What else can people say? “Hey, loved that term paper you wrote on quantum theory. You should get that published.”

They could also say nothing at all. Part of the reason that women wear head coverings in many cultures and through much of history, especially those who are married, is due to how sensitized they are to the unwanted attentions of men, preferring to save their beauty for someone more worthy, like, oh, their husbands, maybe. This is hardly an endorsement of that practice, so much as a reminder of why it would exist anywhere at all -- especially inside a Catholic church during Holy Mass; now that IS an endorsement! -- and how easily the base elements of our human nature, especially among the male of the species, can be easily provoked.

That being said, there are worse things that can happen to a woman than getting ogled by men, after voluntarily entering a beauty contest and subsequently dating the college football star, don't you think?

Or don't you?