BORDER LOG

Wednesday, May 6th

The Legacy of Coach Russell "Dutch" Bischke


Thank you, Mr. Bischke by Brian McNeece


It’s 1965 at Wilson Junior High School. I’m in Language Arts class watching the clock. The moment the bell rings, I scoop up my books (no backpacks in those days) and pick my way through the crowd like a running back. Outside the building, I merge with other guys running toward the gym. Some of them are already taking off their shirts.

In the locker room, I spin my combination, flip open the locker door, grab my clothes and change into them at maximum speed. Others are ahead of me in this quick-change act because they wore their gym clothes under their regular clothes. We scramble toward the field.

There’s Mr. Bischcke, my PE teacher, standing by the gate with a clipboard in his hand. “Good morning, Coach,” I yell out. He waves. I head along the edge of the fence in a counterclockwise direction, putting on my t-shirt as I run. A few other kids are already way up ahead of me and another line behind me as I settle into a comfortable, soothing rhythm. Everyday we junior high rebels are running, running, running, for Mr. Bischke.

By the time the bell rings for class to start, I’ve already finished 2/3 of a lap. When I pass Coach Bischke, he makes a mark on his clipboard. I have about ten more minutes to get some laps before he blows his whistle. After that, our class will gather for inspection and then some regular sports like softball, tennis, basketball or an oddball game that Mr. Bischke will teach us.

On Friday, we will all do as many pull-ups and dips as possible. Mr. Bischke will be there with his clipboard keeping track of everybody’s performance. Then when all the students are gone, he’ll get a ladder and update a big chart on the wall above the lockers.

I revisited these memories of junior high school recently when I read about a ceremony honoring this man: Russell “Dutch” Bischke. That night I had a chance to shake his hand as the El Centro Elementary School District dedicated the gym floor to him. A fine brass plaque on the gym wall and lettering in the gym floor will remind folks for years to come that Mr. Bischke left his mark.

Junior high was a tough time for me as it is for many. Besides the usual insecurities of adolescence, I also was very intimidated by the giant leap from a neighborhood school to one that included all corners of our small metropolis. A day at Wilson included many layers of things to worry about. The opposite sex was full of mystery, promise, and excitement. Racial and crosscultural tensions added to the swirling questions that kids of that age have about their own identity. Where do I fit in?

Amid this vortex, Mr. Bischke’s PE class was always a safe haven. Sure, those first few times when you had to actually take off your clothes in front of other guys and take a shower in an open room—that was a shock. But soon it was just normal life.

There was something quietly magical about Mr. Bischke, the way he could motivate kids almost without saying anything. After class we would study the chart on the wall and marvel at what some kids had accomplished. I remember that Mario Avila had a jillion laps, and must have run the equivalent of a trip to San Diego and back by the end of the semester. I remember that some kid named Mike (can’t remember his last name) could do 31 pull-ups and 31 dips. Wow! He was almost Olympian in my estimation.

Coach Bischke wasn’t a Cal Jones type who exuded charisma and power and who could exhort an athlete into a peak competitive experience. Through a 41–year career, Mr. Bischke’s great gift was to calmly be there, organizing the event, taking down data, always alert and attentive, never angry or frustrated, in my memories.

There were a few times in junior high school when I was afraid to go to school. Would I be confronted by a clutch of threatening classmates as I rounded a corner? But in Mr. Bischke’s class, I could run away from all that, sweating, heart pumping, full of effort and private ambition to add to my stats.

I don’t really know Mr. Russell “Dutch” Bischke very well, but I always enjoy saying hello to him in these twilight years of his life. I’m a teacher too, but not once has a student arrived in my classroom running in nervous anticipation. You made a difference in thousands of young folks’ lives, Mr. Bischke, and without a doubt in mine. Thank you for all that you did.


bmcneece@adelphia.net">bmcneece@adelphia.net">brian on 05.06.09 @ 12:02 AM PST [link]


Tuesday, May 5th

Henry Knox--Poster Boy for the Great Recession


Heroes Rise and Heroes Fall by Brian McNeece

Fort Knox is the safest place in the safest country to keep your money, right? Hmmm? Now that your 401k has become a 201k, maybe not. The namesake of Fort Knox happens to be Henry Knox, this nation’s first Secretary of War. The tale of Henry Knox’s rise and fall seems especially timely, as Imperial County has been deemed by several major newspapers as the capital of the Great Recession. His ebullient resourcefulness during the revolutionary war degenerated into a tragic tale of ambition contaminated by greed. Sound familiar?

Before the revolutionary war, young Henry Knox owned a bookstore. He had no military training but liked to read books. In November of 1775, 25-year old Knox took an idea to General George Washington, whose army of rebels had laid siege to Boston, where the British were holed up. But without artillery, Washington couldn’t attack.

What Knox proposed seemed impossible. He suggested leading a team of men 300 miles north to recover 58 mortars and cannons from the abandoned Fort Ticonderoga and bring them back via river and land. He counted on heavy snows and iced-over rivers on which sleds might be pulled. Without the artillery, the Continental army was powerless to move.

Washington despaired. His men were cold, sick, underfed, and unpaid. Desperate times beget innovative responses: Washington approved Knox’s plan.

Knox had never led men before, but Washington commissioned him as a colonel. Heading north, Knox assembled a team of soldiers and local artisans to load the 60 tons of armament onto barges on Lake Champlain. For the next two months they battled blizzards, thaws, rocky terrain, and four treacherous river crossings.

One of the larger cannons dropped through the ice, creating a 14-foot hole. Instead of abandoning the cannon, Knox convinced his crew to raise it from the bottom of the river. When a boat sank, they raised it too. At one point, his entire crew was about to abandon the expedition because it was too dangerous to sled the cannons down forested slopes. Three hours of Knox’s persuasive enthusiasm got them back on the job.

Knox didn’t lose a single cannon. His delivery of the artillery turned the tide in the siege of Boston, as the British suffered a humiliating defeat and retreat, and gave the colonial forces renewed confidence that the British were not invincible.

During the 13 years of the revolutionary war, Knox repeatedly distinguished himself as a bold, creative, able leader. Today, 56 identical plaques mark his 300-mile journey over rough terrain, one for each day.

After the war, Knox was our first Secretary of War. Indeed, Henry Knox had a brilliant career as a revolutionary and administrator in the early days of our nation.

Knox was still on the rise when he retired to Thomaston, Maine. He turned to an astonishing collection of businesses, including barrel works, saw- and gristmills, wharves, fisheries, shipbuilding, brick making, orchards, lime quarries, grain fields, cattle farming, and real estate speculation.

Unfortunately, the lofty principles he had risked so much for seemed to have been abandoned. Our Declaration of Independence called for democracy and equality, but Knox proved intent upon turning himself into a feudal lord. Though of humble origins himself, his wife’s family had been wealthy English Loyalists who were able to hang onto about 180,000 acres of their land even after the Revolution.

But that wasn’t enough for Henry Knox. Through serpentine maneuverings, he assembled a million acre estate and nearly succeeded in acquiring four million acres more. His attempts to subdivide the land and sell it to the settlers already in place triggered an armed insurrection and repeated attacks on his surveying crews.

Knox was a voluptuary; like his wife a 300 pounder who enjoyed the good life and couldn’t get enough of it. But he spread his sizeable girth and appetite for achievement so thin over his many business ventures that they all failed. In the meantime, Knox and his wife built a 13,000 square foot house on a hill overlooking their land. Designed and built for appearance and not with careful attention to engineering, the house began to crumble after only thirty years.

Although the war-hero General Knox represented his area in the Massachusetts General Court (Maine then being part of Massachusetts), he eventually became so unpopular that he lost the seat to a local blacksmith.

Knox died in 1806 when he swallowed a chicken bone that punctured his intestine. He left his heirs nothing but the crumbling mansion and a mountain of debt.

The landscape has changed in the 233 years since Henry Knox led a magnificent mission to retrieve cannon, rose to become the most prominent man in the state of Maine, and then fell to ignominy through avarice, pride, and gluttony. His story resonates today and reaffirms Aristotle’s simple lesson our whole country has reawakened to: “Nothing to excess.”

bmcneece@adelphia.net">bmcneece@adelphia.net">brian on 05.05.09 @ 11:44 PM PST [link]


Friday, March 20th

In a Mexicali Mood


Love by the Glass

Brian McNeece

Just as Alex expected, the Refranes Bar was nearly empty. It was only three o’clock Friday afternoon. But that didn’t diminish his excitement. He had the whole evening ahead of him with his Nancy, and he was nearly giddy as he passed from the harsh sunny world of a Mexicali January through the swinging door into the dim red glow of the bar. She was there behind the bar, dropping coins into the register, her black hair cascading over the silky green blouse. Tight black leather pants captured her young plump buttocks like the skin on a ripe mango. He smiled and sat on the stool across from her.

Alex couldn’t remember when love and marriage, love and marriage like he vaguely imagined it one day long, long ago, had completely evaporated and was gone. After he and Elida got married, a couple of years passed. Two then three kids. They bought a tract house on the edge of town. The house filled up with stuff. Shoes and shirts and pants spilling out of the closet. Socks and underwear and papers off the top of the dresser. Cups and wrappers and knick-knacks on the end tables. Towels and blankets and more clothes on the arms of the armchairs, and finally boxes and jars and dishes on all the kitchen counters and the kitchen table. When the kitchen table filled up, they reached steady state. Nothing changed. Why the stuff didn’t go away, Alex couldn’t quite figure out. It had never been like that before he got married and left his mother’s house. He and his wife barely had enough room for each other in their house, not to mention the kids. Just to get enough room, they slept in separate beds.

“Hello baby,” he called to Nancy. She turned and nodded. He breathed in her fragrance. Her mouth moved as she counted silently. She raised her chin and turned back to her task. No hurry. Feeling safe inside the five-foot swath of the smell of Nancy, Alex looked around the bar. It wasn’t much to talk about, but it was clean and airy and open. The walls were bare block painted dark red. Alex loved the dark red light and the soft green tablecloths and the jukebox alone against the wall in the back on the dance floor. He didn’t mind the smell of spilled beer; it was no different than any other bar.

The music was off, and the place seemed too empty, too bare. He walked over and deposited some pesos in the jukebox. A pounding beat filled the room with sonic bubbles, musical pillows. He felt better now. A beer sat on the bar. Before eight o’clock, the beers were only one dollar. Nancy leaned over the bar to him and shared her fresh breath and left her soft, warm, delicate hand in his for a deliciously long time. “Buy me a drink?” she said. She put her forehead against his and let her hair form a tent over the space between them. She drew back. Her eyes shone bright and clear. She was so young, so beautiful. He nodded.

Fridays Alex didn’t work at his usual job at the hospital as a transporter. He was free to create a one-day a week life in Mexicali to balance the static clutter of his life in Calexico. His Calexico life was a haze of trips to and from school with his kids, a nearly daily marijuana smoke, an occasional ten minutes of sexual release with his wife, and some hours a day transporting documents and people from place to place at the El Centro Regional Medical Center.

He watched Nancy in the mirror as she mixed the drink. She was so young so fresh, someone you would want to meet over the papayas down at Vons. So fresh. She looked up and smiled. She was the only other person in the bar, and for an instant he felt he saw into her, through a clean, uncluttered space, she alone, content for a moment just to be there, in that place, with him. In another instant came a look of sadness, only to be replaced by her working smile.

In Mexicali, he owned three houses and one small apartment building. But for Nancy’s sake, it was many, many more units to manage, and for Nancy’s sake, he lived in Tijuana, where he was second in command at a construction company.

She rested her elbows on the bar and slumped so her head was below his. Even her eyebrows looked young and perfect, like a photo for a makeup ad. “I got the papers signed,” Alex volunteered.

“What papers?” she said. She ran her tongue along the corner of her mouth.

“Remember, I told you, my cousin Jaime, the architect, he’s going to build some apartments for me. That’s why I came today, for the papers.” He took her hand in his. She took a long swallow of her drink and wiped her mouth with her hand.

“Oh yeah. Good.”

Nancy used to be a model, and married young, at sixteen. Now she had three children and a husband serving eight years in prison for car theft. That’s what she told Alex. She hadn’t had sex for one year. That’s what she told Alex. But she didn’t go with men, she said.

Alex liked Nancy. The rhythm of their conversation was relaxed, even across the many silences when there was nothing to say and the music held them up with boulders and embankments of sound, and the light ball bathed them like a warm flurry of friendly stars. But she drank so fast. Alex was content to sip and chat and put the peanuts into his mouth then her mouth one by one. “Another drink?” she asked. Alex nodded again.

He had barely taken another sip of his beer when she returned to her slumped position on the bar with her second drink, her eyes bright, her smile ready. She reminded him of a little girl in grade school long ago, a girl with a magic wand in a play, a silvery crown, a princess, she was. As she drank from her glass, he noticed how perfect her fingers were, long and thinner than the rest of her, with perfect red nails.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” He knew the routine. Now began her many trips to the bathroom. When she left the room, he looked around, and seeing only the other bar girl setting glasses at the end of the bar, he quickly tipped his beer into Nancy’s glass.

Her drinks were $3.50 each. One dollar and twenty cents of that went to Nancy. Otherwise, she made about $10 per day. Just about any little job in Mexicali was $10 a day, about double the minimum wage. Alex always added a little beer to her glass when she emptied her bladder. If he was going to have to pay her for her conversation, she would have to get drunk. He was ready for a long night

The harsh bright light of day stabbed into his eyes from the mirror as three men entered through the swinging door. When Nancy came back, they huddled close to talk to her. The other bargirl was drinking with an old man in the corner of the bar, laughing and touching his face. Nancy served the new customers beers and lingered at the bar with them, smiling and glowing with the attention.

Alex was angry. Nancy was his girl. “Hey,” he shouted to her, glancing quickly at the three men. She looked at him and back at the men. She took two steps to talk to him. The full volume of the music made it unnecessary to hide his words. “You need to stay with me,” he said, his anger obvious. She raised her eyebrows. “All right, baby. Just let me get Betty from the back.”

As she passed the eager men, she seemed to put something extra into her walk. Alex scowled and left his stool. He crossed the empty space to a small table with a soft green tablecloth and waited for her. Betty emerged from a side door and attended the men. He saw their disappointment in the mirror, for Betty had a few more years on her and carried a scuffed, well-used look that the dim light and heavy makeup couldn’t hide. Too bad. Nancy was his girl.

She sat next to him in the low leather chairs with her knees hard against his. He put his arm around her and gently squeezed her to him. “Are you jealous?” she said into his ear. The music seemed to pull them together even more here away from the bar, here where Nancy was now his for the night, for as long as he wanted.

“Of course, baby,” he cooed. “You’re my girl.” Suddenly he noticed something. “Where’s your drink?”

“Oh, I finished it. I’ll get another.” She stood. For a moment he looked up at her face past her breasts pushing out her thin green silk blouse. Warmth flowed through him like a soul massage. He felt good. He felt very good.

Alex and Nancy sat against the wall through the afternoon, and the light no longer knifed at them when the door opened and closed. Other men filled the jukebox with pesos, and more bargirls appeared as if some rule demanded a perfect ratio of bargirls to patrons. She drank and he drank and the night wore on. How many drinks had she had–fifteen, twenty, twenty-five? He had no idea. What did they say to each other? Who could remember? He only loved her lightness; from her eyebrows and eyelashes to the way she lifted her fingers as she talked. Her full lips pouted red and tempting, and he kissed them now and again. At first she didn’t return his kisses, but little by little her kisses came back to him–little girl kisses.

She left for the bathroom, and now he didn’t worry about anyone seeing him tip his beer into her glass, for the bar was full with dark shapes bumping into one another in the cracks between the beat of the drum and the rocking steps of the bass and the warm swirling stars spinning galaxies across the red concrete walls.

He watched her cross the dance floor with her hand on her forehead, looking down, being knocked this way and that, unsteady. She was drunk. He rose and gathered her in his arms. She leaned on him for support, and he held her close, pulling her tight against him. She tucked her head under his chin and sighed and hummed into his heart. His Nancy. His little Nancy, who liked him and needed him and cuddled him. “Come with me,” he yelled into her ear. “Let’s go!”

She shook her head. Her hair dangled sloppily on his chest. She looked up to him and asked, “Why are you doing this to me?”

Alex was surprised. What was this? She wasn’t supposed to say anything like this. He shrugged. He put his mouth to her ear. “I want to be with you, I want you next to me. You make me do it.”

“Do you want me?” she asked. “Do YOU want ME?” She dropped her arms to her side and began to sob.

She sat heavily, grunting. He folded himself into his chair, for it was too small for his large frame. He didn’t know what to say, so he just sat. His hand rested on her young back, but he did not move it. Her back no longer felt like the back of a princess grown up, but of a stranger. He wanted to tell her that he liked her this way, he liked her taking his money drink by drink. He liked her being the boss and he being the boss, a fair exchange, his money for her perfumed air, for the five foot perfumed swath around her body, for her leather pants and silk blouse and the heaviness on her chest he felt when he danced with her, for her smile and for her breath. Here, he got something he didn’t get as a married man, some warmth, some presence, some romance. A teasing distance, an interest in a courting dance that he didn’t have to lead or win.

His hand was still on her back. He didn’t want to move it. Did he really want to take her someplace? Did he really want to go with her?

Nancy raised her head and looked at him. Her eyes were old now, drowning, sinking. “All you want to do is put your thing into me, that’s all. All this, all these hours, just for that.” She sat back clumsily in her chair. “That’s all it’s about–your thing.”

He wanted to tell her it wasn’t true. Where were the words? He could put his thing into one of those sneering whores lined up in front of the Hotel del Pacifico. Twenty-five dollars included the fifteen minutes of rent on the room and the condom. Not too much money, but don’t touch above the waist. No, he didn’t need that from Nancy.

She sat up. Her face was wet with the tears of a little girl and vacant like a house after a party. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Alex took the last peanut from the bowl on the table and chewed it slowly, his moustache moving up and down. He didn’t say anything.

“If you want me, if you like me, why don’t you let me stay in one of those apartments you own? Why don’t you help me, Alex, if you are Alex, if you own apartments?” She rolled her head as if to throw off the suffocating heaviness of her drunkenness.

He thought about having his Nancy always there, ready for him in one of his apartments. Fresh and soft and ripe like an avocado. Then he saw it all. Perfumed leather pants on the floor, high-heeled shoes spilling out of the closet, bras slung over the chair, panties in the corner, bus tickets, shoe boxes, tissue paper on the bureau And three kids in the other room with their underwear, comic books, X-Box controllers, candy wrappers, cups, shoes, pants. He saw it all.

* * *

Three rows of cars stretched for a quarter mile in front of him, humming their contentment. Not a long line. The night wasn’t late, only eleven o’clock. He would cross the border drinking a cup of coffee and cooperate fully with the agent. He wasn’t drunk. Maybe he drank about ten beers, but over eight hours, it was nothing. He was used to it. Some of every beer went into Nancy’ glass, so she shared in his sea of liquid love.

So many people complained about the lines to the border crossing, but Alex enjoyed having his place, knowing step by step he would get to where he was going. What was the hurry? Alex took comfort in the certainty of it, the order, the inexorable progress. He took his foot off the brake and flowed automatically forward with the car in front of him.

A hundred dollars for nearly eight hours with his Nancy. He settled back into his seat and remembered her fragrance, her skin. He felt good. He could do whatever he wanted. He wondered if his Elida was home yet, whether she had gone to her mother’s house after work to pick up their kids, or would his house be empty. It didn’t matter. Elida would be there sometime tonight. And when he woke up in the morning, she would be there, waking the children, fixing the breakfast. Not his breakfast, but she would be there.

Traffic moved quickly. He fumbled for his green card as he rolled up to the inspection booth.

“Going home to the missus?” said the officer. Alex squinted at him. Did he know him? He vaguely reminded Alex of one of his teachers in junior high.

“Yeah.”

“Did you save a little romance for her?” The officer returned him his card.

“Huh? A little romance? Yeah, sure.”

Alex pulled away from the booth and weaved through the concrete barriers. A little romance for Elida? Who the hell was that guy? Elida wasn’t too old, but she was thin, not like a real woman. Anyway, she didn’t like him. A little romance? Hmmm. He felt warm in the afterglow of Nancy. Well, he would see; he would see.



bmcneece@adelphia.net">bmcneece@adelphia.net">brian on 03.20.09 @ 12:48 AM PST [link]


Friday, February 20th

Is This the Eye of the Storm?


Roosevelt Calmed Much Rougher Waters

Brian McNeece

Seventy-five years ago our nation changed presidents in the middle of a grave financial crisis. The stock market crash of 1929 was soon followed by dive in commodity prices, factory closings, and wave after wave of bank failures.

For four long months, from November 1932 to March 1933, the nation worked itself into a panic. Those four months perhaps were the most nervous, unsteady months in our government’s history, for in that span the churning forces of the Great Depression picked up power over the becalmed shoals of policy making. Behind the scenes FDR picked his team and began formulating plans to put ballast back into a foundering ship of state.

Unlike Hoover, who was a quiet, self-made man, Franklin D. Roosevelt grew up amid privilege. Handsome, athletic, and intelligent, he went to the best schools and met the best people, traveling to Europe eight times before he was fifteen. Everything came easy to Franklin until 1921, when at 39 years of age he contracted poliomyelitis. During years of recovery, he struggled to teach himself to stand and walk with heavy metal braces for public events. Otherwise, he kept to a wheelchair as a near-paraplegic.

His affliction seemed to soften and deepen his soul, for as time went on, FDR came to champion the common man: the farmer, the factory laborer, the small businessman trying to survive in a toughening world.

In his inaugural address, Roosevelt spoke the famous words, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Inspiring rhetoric, but untrue. There was plenty to fear. Industrial output had dropped by a third in the last three years. Unemployment was 25%. The foreclosure rate today is nothing compared to the loss of property in the winter of 1933. Thousands of banks had failed when frightened depositors demanded their money. To prevent a total collapse of the banking industry, Roosevelt ordered all banks closed for the first week of his presidency. That’s right. No banking transaction occurred in the entire United States for a week.

To calm the nation, Roosevelt cozied up to a microphone and spoke by radio to the nation in the first of his famous “fireside chats.” In his smooth New England voice, he had the ear of millions of Americans as he explained why he had closed the banks and how important it was for Americans to bring their money back to the banking system. His landmark chat to the nation seemed to have stemmed the panic.

Before Roosevelt, Hoover had communicated to the nation by occasional news conferences during which he answered only pre-submitted questions of his choice. In contrast, FDR invited reporters into his office to gather around his desk twice a week and answered questions thrown at him, enlisting the press into his confidence as if they were helping him create policy as he spoke. My mother remembers listening attentively to his weekly fireside chats as a regular family activity.

Roosevelt’s New Deal and the U.S. entrance into WWII are commonly given credit for pulling us out of the Great Depression. After decades of retrospection and dispassionate analysis, a more nuanced opinion has emerged. Roosevelt’s experiments in government intervention into the engine of capitalism were oftentimes contradictory; his personal control over haphazard programs may have simultaneously harmed and helped the nation recover from its prolonged economic hardships.

Today we have another enormously popular, smooth-talking Democratic president following on the heels of a tarnished Republican as inept at communicating extemporaneously as Hoover was. Obama brings cool, studied confidence to very tough times.

Unfortunately, today’s financial hurricane can’t be calmed by weekly fireside chats as we all listen to our radios. Today’s financial mess results from a web of deals so complex that no roomful of experts can claim to understand it. What was precipitated during the Great Depression by a run on the banks by ordinary depositors has been repeated by runs of a very different sort. Subprime mortgages were packaged into tranches and leveraged into highly speculative deals backed by credit default swaps. When financial institutions themselves made a run on those insurance policies, the levers in an over-leveraged system broke.

Closing the banks for a week won’t quiet the currents of chaos in the ethereal heights at which these toxic assets were traded, and nobody quite knows how to prevent the trickling down of difficult times from becoming a torrential flood.

In his first 100 days, Roosevelt and a compliant legislature created and passed fifteen far-reaching programs that entangled government into the business of the nation as never before. Today, Obama hears the siren songs of “stimulus,” of politicians from the left and right exhorting Big Government to throw billions—maybe trillions of dollars into the economy.

May God bless Obama with the wisdom, creativity, and toughness to do the right thing. It ain’t going to be easy flying into this perfect storm.

bmcneece@adelphia.net">bmcneece@adelphia.net">brian on 02.20.09 @ 02:33 PM PST [link]


Confessions of a Rationator


Sensible Opinions that You Don’t Want to Hear by Brian McNeece

Nobody likes a party pooper. Sadly, that would be me. When the confetti starts to fall at the end of the championship game, I say, “Look at the mess they’re making. My God, they’re pouring trash from the sky.”

When you watch a thriller movie with me, I say, “That’s a shame they had to crash that car and blow up that parking structure. All that destruction of perfectly good things that somebody labored so long to make. What a waste!”

I admit it. I’m a wet blanket thrown onto the fire of irrational exuberance. At a Thanksgiving feast you’re likely to hear me say, “This is way too much food; we’ve have leftovers for a week and then we’ll throw a lot of it away.”

Nobody wants to hear the logical, sensible view. What’s the fun in that?

At night my house is dark except for where the people are. I follow my wife and kids around to turn off the lights and the ceiling fans. “Why do you leave them on?” I ask them. “You’re not there to use that electricity. You should live more lightly on the earth.”

They mock me. They make fun of my adjusting of the thermostat so that for every hour of each day the heater or air conditioner is set to maximize its efficiency. If we’re not at home, climate control should be off, right? So what if it takes a few hours or the whole day for the system to bring the inside temperature back to comfortable?

I almost got divorced over a new television. The old one was still good. Sure, the on-off button had fallen out, and you had to use two remotes to get it working, but still--the picture was fine.

I rain on your parade. I can’t help it; there’s a tiny, insistent creature that claws its way from my cerebral cortex into my throat. Before I can stop it, I hear myself saying, “Why would you buy a Mercedes, BMW, or Volvo? The repair bills are astronomical. Get an Accord or a Camry or a Fusion. They’re all fine, reliable cars with good mileage.”

By the way, wash your car yourself because it takes the same amount of time to go somewhere and pay for it.

You want to buy a dark-colored car? This is the desert, bro. It’s going to be 20 degrees hotter than a light-colored car.

You want the best coffin available for your loved one? You’ve got to be kidding; a cardboard box would make your dead relative just as happy. Actually, he doesn’t care at all. Spend the money at the wake on the living people who are grieving.

See what I mean? I’m a most annoying guy when people are trying to spend their money in a way that suits them. If the recovery were going to depend on people like me buying stuff, we’d still be in 1933.

I wouldn’t have built the new local mall. We already had plenty of empty buildings, and now we have more. Why build new buildings when the old ones still work?

I don’t like meetings that take longer than an hour. Hey you, you’re getting off the subject! This meeting is not about you. My real work is waiting for me in my office.

Don’t tell me something more than one time. I heard you.

You should wash your clothes only when they’re dirty, right?

Eat the whole apple, eat the crust of the pizza, and clean your plate. Waste not, want not.

I’m the guy who goes to a company party and tells the band to turn down the volume. Don’t you know that noise stresses the adrenal system? And besides, we’re shouting into each other’s ears to talk to each other. What the band’s PA doesn’t damage, our screaming will.

Why put a plastic bag in a trashcan? You don’t put a trash bag around your plate. Just wash the trashcan from time to time. A zillion discarded trash bags are clogging up the biodegradation at the landfill.

Aren’t I a spoilsport, a killjoy, a stick-in-the-mud?

You want to pay how much to go to that motel? To sleep? They even charge you to park! Surely we know someone nearby who will share their floor.

Buy a birthday card for a friend? Do you know that most of those cards cost $5! They open it up, look at it, smile and throw it away. Write a note on a piece of paper. Make a little drawing. If you think they’d be offended that you didn’t spend $5 on them, insert the bill. They can find something they really want.

Don’t buy drinks at restaurants. That’s where they make a killing. And anyway, sodas are bad for you. Drink water. It’s free.

bmcneece@adelphia.net">bmcneece@adelphia.net">brian on 02.20.09 @ 02:17 PM PST [link]


Saturday, November 22nd

Mexico Used to Be Such a Conservative Country


A New Mexico

Brian McNeece

The elderly gentleman sat in front of the TV in the auto shop waiting room. He was stylishly outfitted with a cowboy hat, guayabera shirt, khaki pants, and simple boots. His gray moustache finished off the picture of a dapper Mexican man content with retirement and in no hurry.

On the TV, a confident, buxom, and splashily decorated hostess stood center stage with a proud young woman. Outside the circle sat three young men in director’s chairs. Deeply significant music intoned in the background to let us know that the contestants were immersed in a life-changing decision: the girl was choosing which one of the men she wanted.

As far as I could tell, having joined the show in the final moments of the process, the qualities of each of the candidates had already been aired, most significantly their sign of the zodiac (which they wore on their chests). Hobbies, favorite foods, colors, etc. had also been discussed. Now she picked the man of her dreams. But wait! He got to pick back! And, oh my God, the stud on the end is shaking his head. The audience groans, and the young lady (expertly comforted by the beautiful but aging hostess) exits the stage.

In a jiffy another beautiful young contestant takes center stage. She knows what she wants in a man. He must like to cook; he has to like dogs. He must be sensitive, affectionate, but confident and strong. The serious music rises. It has the lugubrious, spacey tones of the sound track to a horror film.

The music stops; she chooses. He nods. The hostess invites him to join his new paramour. They embrace; they kiss. They more than kiss. Their heads gyrate, their mouths open. It looks like they’re trying to clean each other’s back molars with their tongues. The audience applauds wildly. Finally, the hostess pulls them apart like boxers out of a clinch. She announces that the show will pay for one date for the new lovers, and she wishes them well in the romance and true love in their fantasy future.

I’m shocked. I’m dumbfounded. Yeah sure, I grew up in the sixties. Some of you remember. Make love not war. The girls burned their bras, let the hair grow on their legs and said, “I am woman; hear me roar,” and the sexual revolution was on.

About the same time, in Mexico, a girl still needed a chaperone to go to the ice cream shop with her boyfriend. About that time, a Mexican girl who wore pants—much less short pants—was a sin vergüenza (shameless) and was risking her family’s reputation.

In some traditional Mexican families, the children kissed the father’s ring before they went out, as if he were the Pope, and he in turn made the sign of the cross over his daughter to protect her from malcriados she would soon encounter.

I was shocked at the display of frenzied necking on the TV, so I asked the stately señor next to me what he thought of this method for meeting someone of the opposite sex. I thought for sure he would echo my outrage at the brazenness of it, the total lack of decorum for such a sacred step in the courting ritual that would of course culminate in a perfect and blessed matrimony.

“Que bueno,” he replied.

Que bueno? I thought. Que horror! Without comment, I asked him how he had met his wife.

“We met in my pueblo way in the south,” he said with a wistful look in his eyes.

What were the circumstances?

“It was in the plaza. She was just walking along.”

Was it during one of the Sunday promenades? I asked.

“No,” he said, finally disengaging himself from the TV. “No. I saw her and it was like I just couldn’t help myself; I approached her and began to walk with her.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Fifty-three years.”

A new show begins with a “doctora” wielding a gavel in a courtroom. A young man and his former girlfriend stand at adjacent lecterns. He’d been sending her a couple hundred dollars a month for her and her mom. Found out she was seeing another guy. Stopped sending the money. Wanted some back. Big disagreement. Within a minute, both parties are screaming at each other just like on Jerry Springer, except in Spanish. “Liar!” “Shut up.” “Cabrona.” “Idiota!”

Mr. Retired Mexican sits in rapt attention, content to take in the drama of his new Mexico.

What had happened to the land of polished appearances?

The next day, I happened to be driving to Mexicali. Crossing the border, I glanced up at the billboard directly above the median. Three bikini-clad beauties lounged in inviting poses on the beach. The text said, “Cuando quieras”--Whenever you want. The message is clear: come to Mexico, the land of ready, nubile women who aim to please.

A new Mexico. Yes indeed.



bmcneece@adelphia.net">bmcneece@adelphia.net">brian on 11.22.08 @ 08:00 PM PST [link]


An Interesting Cast of Characters


An LA Kind of Neighborhood
Brian McNeece

Recently I had occasion to visit St. Vincent Medical Center in downtown LA, where I struck up conversations with an interesting pastiche of characters.

First was Agustin, the night security guard. He’s from Managua, Nicaragua , where I’ve visited twice. “During the revolution in 1979,” he told me, “the Sandinistas used our house as a command post. I was just 8 years old. The Guardia Nacional [the dictator Somoza’s security force] knew what we were doing, but they were cool. They knew the people were right and Somoza had to go.

“Later on the Sandinistas betrayed us. They were only out for themselves in the end.” It turned out that Napoleon is married to a gal from Mexicali. “See you at the Fiestas del Sol in October,” he told me. “Or in San Felipe.”

Marielena from Zacatecas drew my blood. “I haven’t been back in 18 years,” she told me. Why not? “Well I only make enough to pay the bills. I can’t afford to travel. Besides, I don’t even like Mexico. Here, at least if you’re poor, no one says nothing to you. They treat you the same. In Mexico, they treat you like an animal. In my next life, I’ll be an Americana. Tell you what, if you want to go to Zacatecas, invite me. You pay and I’ll be your guide.” Marielena smiled.

Lina is the nursing assistant on the night shift at St. Vincent Medical Center. Lina is from Nigeria. She’s missing a few teeth, and her face shows the ritual scarring from her native country, a low-tech tattoo, I suppose. I say to her, “ Nigeria is a country with a lot of oil wealth.” And she says, “That’s true, but the money’s not circulating. The rich people want to get rich quicker and the poor just stay poor. I came here to this country because at least if you work, they pay you. In my country, you work for six months and you don’t get paid. That’s why everyone is resorting to crime, just to put food on the table. If I go back to Nigeria, I’m going to bring the American way to them. You watch.”

Manuel attends a tiny fruit cart on the sidewalk near the hospital. He is a small, timid looking man from Guatemala. When I told him I had climbed Volcan de Agua just outside of Antigua, he had a blank look. I wonder how much Spanish he speaks, for he told me his native language is Quiché. How much for the fruit? Four or five dollars. Maybe that’s all the English he knows. He sits and sits next to his little metal and glass cart, on his crate, under the small umbrella. Just sits.

Dr. Richard Folkman came into my hospital room and saw the book on the tray “The Way of the World” by Ron Suskind. As he read the dust jacket, I told him, “The author is a Wall Street Journal writer. He despises George Bush.”

“Everybody hates George Bush.”

“Suskind says he’s been a bully all his life.”

“No he hasn’t,” said Dr. Fishman. “He’s a nice guy.”

“You know him well?”

“Sure. I used to play golf with him. A nice guy, but a lush in those days.”

“So you didn’t see him as a bully?”

“Not at all. Probably he gets intimidated by people around him who are smarter than he is. Protects himself that way. He was always a fun guy to be around. A big drinker. Then one day he showed up at the golf course with a couple of six packs of non- alcoholic beer. ‘I’m on the wagon,’ he said. We said, ‘Right, George.’ Later, when I found out he was governor, we all chuckled. Then when he was elected President, we howled.”

“What was he doing then?”

“Nothing. You know, first his dad was director of the CIA, then the Vice-President. He wasn’t doing anything. This was before he owned the Texas Rangers. He’d just had his first oil deal with some other Texas investors, but that went belly up. One time we were golfing at Pebble Beach and the Secret Service cleared the course for us. We were the only ones playing. And around us were guys with automatic weapons. It was a little strange.

“I was at the White House when US troops arrived in Baghdad. That was an exciting day. We had lunch with Bush last December. I took my daughter with us. She’s a college student, of course a Bush hater. He charmed her completely.”

“So do you think he was up to the job of President?”

“He was on 911,” said the doctor. “After that, I think he listened to the wrong people. The real Darth Vader of that bunch,” continued the doctor, “is Cheney. But George Bush, a nice guy.”

bmcneece@adelphia.net">bmcneece@adelphia.net">brian on 11.22.08 @ 07:58 PM PST [link]


Monday, August 18th

Obama's Plane Raises Ire


Hysteria Hits the Roof Before Reason Can Compose Itself by Brian McNeece

Anyone over the age of seven is familiar with a court of law. When I was a kid, we watched Perry Mason deliver clean justice out of a mess of knotty claims against his clients. Numerous courtroom films and now Court TV have made us a sophisticated culture when it comes to the concepts of innocent until proven guilty through admissible evidence and the mounting of a convincing case.

Despite being a culture built on due process, those foundations are being flooded with the corrosive acid of hysterical emails boiling with hate. People I know, people who I otherwise consider to be rational--kind people--send me these emails. It worries me that so many people seem to be jumping to conclusions on the flimsiest of logical connections.

By now the majority of people who read this and who use email have received the message about how Obama is DISGRACEFUL because of what he did to his airplane. If you have received this email, you will remember that Obama had the gall to paint over the American flag that was on the tail of his plane. According to the email Obama is a clown who is ashamed of his country. If he gets elected, the message implies, our government will turn into a hideous bloated monster, followed by communism or worse!

Remember that this is because he painted over the American flag on the tail of an airplane that his campaign leased. The plane was leased from a company called North American airlines. (A more sympathetic viewer might call this choice of a lease a very patriotic decision.) Throughout the primaries, Obama’s campaign left North American’s paint job intact, including the trademarked flag logo on the tail. When Obama locked up the nomination, his team had the plane re-painted and the interior remodeled for the fall campaign. In fact, once the candidate put his name and symbols on the plane, he couldn't keep the flag--unless he painted a different version. So the new paint job used Obama’s red, white, blue campaign logo in place of North American’s.

The email also mentions that Obama, instead of the American flag, has his own image on the plane. It’s all about me, claims the email, implying that Obama is tainted by an oversupply of egocentrism. How dare he? Let’s see, he’s running for president of the United States. Yes, that’s pretty egocentric. He’s spending millions of dollars to put his name and face everywhere he thinks you and I might see it. Isn’t that what people do when they run for office?

To be fair, we ought to look at McCain and his plane too, shouldn’t we? That’s what it means to make a case and analyze an issue. What do you know, McCain doesn’t have a giant American flag on his campaign jet either. And how about that, he’s got his name writ large all over the thing.

After I read this angry and indignant email about Obama, I went to his website for the first time. You know what I saw there: Not one image of an American flag on his website. And McCain’s website? Guess what: not one American flag either.

Perhaps by now, American flags are waving on both websites. But think about it, does the lack or presence of an American flag on the candidates’ planes, websites, cards, or promotional materials have anything to do with their patriotism? I don’t think so. How can you judge a person by what they don’t have on their materials?

Neither of the candidates has a picture of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Thomas Jefferson on their airplanes. They don’t have an image of the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, or even a map of the United States! Just think of all the images of our great country that they don’t have on their airplanes—Betsy Ross sewing the flag, the “Don’t Tread on Me” snake flag, Paul Revere on his famous ride, George W. crossing the Delaware, the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

At least Obama is leasing a jet made by Boeing, an American manufacturer; McCain flies a French-built Airbus A320. I don’t make much of this, or else I’ll be considered a communist soon for driving a Toyota.

Other Obama incidents spawned equally condemning emails. When photos caught Obama onstage as the only candidate without his hand over his heart, folks were quick to conclude that he was un-American. They didn’t mention that it was during the National Anthem and not the Pledge of Allegiance, nor that it is customary just to sing the anthem without the hand over the heart.

When Obama said he was going to stop wearing his American flag lapel pin, the internet crackled with screaming of un-American! Shoot first, check the body later to see if it was the right target. Obama wanted to make the point that the symbol and the sentiment are two different things. He once again wears the flag lapel pin.

Since the indignant, anti-Obama email did get me to go to both candidates’ websites, I saw that both of them have provided curious minds with summaries and oftentimes detailed treatments of their positions on a whole array of issues. The media often overwhelms us with hyper-kinetic, fragmentary and often highly biased, exaggerated, or mocking snippets about each candidate and their views.

Go to their websites from time to time between now and November. Actually read and consider what they have to say. Certainly take into account their votes or prior occasions (although neither of them has been doing their job as U.S. senators since the campaign started two years ago.)

In a democracy, the people are the judges and the juries, so if you plan to vote, do your duty and take a look at the evidence instead of accepting unsubstantiated claims.


bmcneece@adelphia.net">bmcneece@adelphia.net">brian on 08.18.08 @ 09:11 PM PST [link]


Monday, August 11th

Summer Bike Racing in Baja California


Night Warriors on the Ciclopista by Brian McNeece


Even though it’s 100 degrees at trackside, nobody complains about the heat. After all, it’s nightime. It’s Friday night in Baja California’s capital city of Mexicali in the heart of the usual scorching desert summer. Calentísimio! We’re racing road bikes on a 500 meter asphalt ciclopista or velodrome. Thousands of bugs seem happy enough buzzing madly around the lights above the track. A stiff humid breeze from the Sea of Cortez will make the race more interesting, and maybe it helps, just a little with the heavy heat. Maybe it helps.

Families with babies in strollers and youngsters in mini-kits of the local cycling clubs lounge on the side of the track. Races for the “infantiles,” including everything from tricycles to juniors are over, and the young ones are plying their parents for ice cream or dulces (candy), churritos, or hot dogs being sold from tables.

My race is coming up next. The novatos, or novices, have just finished, and the women are starting up. This is Mexico, so nobody minds if I warm up on the outside of the track. If it were a race in the US, an official would be on the megaphone immediately, screaming at me to get off the race, you idiot, no one on the track who’s not in the race. But this is Mexico.

As I cruise on the outside of the track, Tino comes up alongside me. He’s a veterano too, in my race, a guy I’ve raced ten maybe fifteen times before. “Why do we do this?” he asks me. “Nothing obligates us to suffer as we do.” A few years ago, when Tino was new to Mexicali, he showed up at a crit on a fixed wheel bike. He got plenty of sidelong glances, but stayed with the bunch to the finish and took the win in the sprint.

Tino and I have trained together too, for he lives in my town of El Centro. But once the race starts, no talking and no friendship. “I guess it’s an addiction,” he says and smiles. Tino is on the Exinsa team. They have three riders in my race: Tino, Elias, and Ricardo. Modesto is usually the team leader, but I don’t see him tonight. Still, it will be three against one. My teammates, the Cimarrones (Rams), are all in other race categories, so I’m on my own unless I can strike a deal with someone.

We veteranos line up. There are twelve of us. Two years ago the veterano class was anybody over 40. But Benjamin, 58, complained. How can we be expected to compete with somebody 18 years younger? So last year they upped the vet class to 50+. This summer, Benjamin is not around. I notice that Zambada is racing. He’s 48. Ah, that’s okay. Jorge Arredondo used to be a tough vet competitor, but he’s 44, so they make him race with the elite racers. I’m 56; Tino might be 50, maybe not.

Twelve of us are at the starting line. Waldo is back there. Waldo always races, although he’s probably 64 and gets dropped after about four laps. His grandkids are racing in the novice and the elite groups. Waldo is always smiling, happy to be riding. Hey, there’s a new face. It’s a guy named Miguel. Wait a minute, he’s in his 30’s. But this is Mexico. He hasn’t been training, (sez he) so what the heck.

I remember Miguel: he punched a guy in the face in Ensenada because the guy supposedly elbowed Miguel’s son during the sprint finish. Blood spattered all over the pavement. Miguel spent three days in the Ensenada jail. Now he’s in my race. Swell.

Race director Francisco “Pollo (Chicken)” Santacruz reads off our names and then says, “We have some new rules.” He looks at me. “Brian, you translate, okay?" We survey the field. Everybody but me is Mexican. “Oh, never mind,” says Pollo. “If you get lapped, you must ride outside the white line. You cannot draft on the lead group and the lead group cannot draft you.”

“The people behind should get the inside lane,” I suggest. “Otherwise, the race is over.”

Pollo scowls in derision and waves aside my suggestion. “Okay, 25 minutes plus two laps. Go.”

Since we’re old, we usually start up reasonably, with nobody jamming at top speed. That is, unless my teammate Tony Darr from Imperial is in the race. Tony often does a track stand at the starting line and then hauls ass while the rest of us are clipping in. So if he races in the vets, he just might try to lead the race from start to finish. The rest of us hate that. Tony is not here tonight.

The wind is in our face as we take the first turn in a counterclockwise direction. I lead through the first lap at a moderate pace, looking warily over my shoulder for the first attack. Here it comes, good old Tino blasting up the track around 26 miles per hour. I stand up to chase him down, for if he gets a gap, he might stay away indefinitely. His teammates won’t chase; they will sit on a wheel until it’s their turn to burn out somebody else’s solid fuel.

I pull the group up to Tino, who has backed down to about 21 miles per hour. We cruise around a couple of laps with the lead changing a few times. There’s Miguel next to me. I give him plenty of room.

The line of racers weaves across the track. The leader, now Francisco, pedals slowly, resting, ready for a new attack. Now it’s Elias, a big quiet man with a thick torso. Elias is dead meat on hills because of his size, but around a track, he’s a force to be reckoned with, for he can maintain a torrid pace. Once again I chase. Where’s everyone else? Suddenly I have my answer. As I approach Elias’s wheel, the third member of their team, Ricardo, comes screaming by on the downwind straightaway. Behind him is Rogelio Zambada. I crank it up and somehow get onto Zambada’s wheel. We’re six minutes into the race, and I’ve already had to sprint twice. I can do that about four more times before I’ll have burned all high octane fuel.

As we hit turn three I wave to the other Rogelio, and Blackie, and Tino’s son Daniel sitting with his friends. The curve is banked up about 8 feet from the field to the perimeter, topped by a small wall. A running track skirts the entire Ciudad Deportiva (Sports City), and there are usually moms and dads and kids jogging or walking.

Because of the wind, we’re always looking for the sheltered side of the rider in front of us, who in turn is always trying to prevent our finding it. So consequently, the lead rider will first hug the inside and then the outside of the track, depending on the wind. During the Elite race, forty to fifty riders will pass by the spectators on the outside edge of the track going 30+ mph, creating a lovely sizzle of precision bearings and the pulling power of a diesel semi, the force of their displaced air buffeting anyone standing too close.

Tino takes a turn, then Elias. Then surprise, suprise, Zambada is at the front. Everyone has their head down, going all out. I pass Elias, who sounds like he’s about to hoark his lungs onto the pavement. That’s racing; on the edge of the abyss, the pressure building up in our eyes and forehead, the road ahead starting to blur as our hearts hit the danger zone. That’s racing. Once again, I chase down the attack group, and I’m burning up precious fuel.

Ricardo whizzes past me. We’ve already lapped Waldo, Francisco, and a couple other racers unknown to me. Miguel has dropped out. I sprint for Ricardo’s wheel and hold on for a lap. Just when Ricardo slows, Tino and Elias go turbo and pass both of us. All this while on my wheel, Zambada comes by me. Tino and Elias have a four bike gap. I’m gasping for air, and so I yell, “Calmado!” to Zambada as he comes by.

He ought to be my ally. I’ve been doing most of the chasing on the Exinsa boys. If a fresh Zambada will just keep a fast pace, I can grab his wheel and we’ll steadily close that gap. But no, Zambada cranks it up, bridges the gap and leaves me and Ricardo behind. All I can do is hold my maximum pace and hope that the three leaders will get disorganized or inattentive and allow me to catch. Strategy now calls for Ricardo to sit on my wheel for the rest of the race.

I seem to get closer to the leaders, but then the gap widens and soon they have half a lap on me. It’s no use. Lap after lap, Ricardo sits on my wheel. Suddenly I pass through a small flurry of yellow butterflies, blown in I suppose from the farm land to the southeast of the city.

I gaze at the ambulance in the corner of the field, wondering who will crash tonight. During one road race a few seasons ago, a car clipped one of my teammates. He finished the race, but when we approached the ambulance driver for first aid, he said the ambulance was empty. We asked, “What do you expect to do, just pick up corpses?”

The battle for the finish goes on across the infield: Zambada outsprints Tino, with Elias third. I beat Ricardo for fourth.

After one cool down lap, I roll up to Zambada at the high end of the track, where he is whooping it up with his cheering section. An animated winner, he giddily thanks me for helping him during the race and promises to return the favor next week. I seem to remember this speech before, but no payoff yet.

At trackside, I congratulate Tino, who says, scowling, “Zambada should have worked with you.”

I rinse the dried sweat off my face and change out of my cycling gear. It’s still 98 degrees on my car thermometer at 10:00 p.m. Warm, but there’s a breeze. A pleasant night for a race in Mexico.

bmcneece@adelphia.net">bmcneece@adelphia.net">brian on 08.11.08 @ 12:22 AM PST [link]



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