Shopping Spree

The brain is a mysterious thing
About three pounds
Pinkish gray, meatloaf shaped
Containing our entire worlds
Which sometimes get out-of-whack
Over the silliest things
Like mine did yesterday.
So much so that I have to pause
and ask.
Am I really going to tell this story?
Yes, because it might help you avoid the night I had
And maybe, in telling, I can find a way to render it
Less embarrassing.

So on Wednesday....
Wait.

First, background.
My older boy is going off to college in the fall.
California.
A different climate.
He'll need a new wardrobe. Californian clothing.
Pastel colors. Light fabrics.
Which his mother set busily to collect
at Kohl's, and Filene's Basement, and the other discount outlets
we usually patronize.
But as summer progressed, I began to stew.
A boy also needs expensive stuff.
A few pricy things.
To boost the old ego.
I know I did.
Not something plucked off a pile,
not something second-rate, sagging on a plastic hanger.
Not something overlooked, damaged, left behind
Something new.
Something fancy.
Something bought with care, amidst wood, aided by an attentive clerk.
Something special. 
Enter Brooks Brothers' 50 percent Off Semi-Annual Sale.
The newspaper ad caught my eye.
Brooks Brothers.
Classy. Elegant.
Abraham Lincoln shopped there.
John F. Kennedy.
Why not us too?
I knew my wife, frugal, guarding our hoard of pennies, would not approve.
So, trying to smooth the way, I did some groundwork.
Called her upstairs. Spoke to her, softly but emphatically.
Explained the psychological value of a really expensive shirt
Maybe some summery shorts.
"Set a budget," she replied.
So I stretched my mind to the limits of excess,
and figured ... $200.
I would blow $200 at Brooks Brothers to send my son off to college properly.
The boy was willing
It seemed a plan.
Meet in Millennium Park after our respective jobs.
He's working, downtown, at 18.
Fine boy.
And we stroll up to Brooks Brothers,
we enter a fantasy world, clubby
Pants with turtles on them.
We held up shirts.
We run our hands over fabrics.
I subtly guide him. A Madras shirt perhaps,
Very California
Plucked, not coincidentally, off the "Two for $99" rack.
And since we'll need a second to qualify,
this blue and white striped Oxford.
Plus shorts, powder blue.
We fall under the care of Bradley.
A sharp young man himself.
Politely helps us into the dressing room.
The lad looks good in his Madras shirt.
Ditto in the Oxford. The shorts go with them both.
Bradley puts a dimpled blue searsucker jacket on him.
Only $398.
"No thank you," we decide.
Ditto for the white Stetson straw hat
So now we're checking out, two shirts, shorts,
$192 total.
Just under our budget.
I sign the Mastercard, the successful and generous dad.
Our boodle goes into the matte black Brooks Brothers bag.
We hit Michigan Avenue.
6:03. Just time to make the 6:19.
Hop into a cab.
My hand snakes into that luxe Brooks Brothers bag.
As if acting on its own volition
Hmmm...
Two shirts. One $55. One $65.
Not two for $99 at all.
My first wild impulse is to order the cab to turn around.
Figure this out.
But we'd miss the train.
And alarm the boy.
Happy with his transaction
It's only ... $21 more.
Eat the $21.
In for a dime, in a for dollar....
We just make the train, running. 
And so I try to go about my evening business.
Push the thoughts aside.
Yes, I should have checked the receipt,
but I was out of my element.
Out of practice.
Rusty.
Intimidated.
I had never been inside Brooks Brothers.
Always check the receipt -- a good lesson for $21.
A bargain.
Let it go.
Easier said
Than done.
Every time I walk away from the thing.
It hops up and
circles around to meet me..
This echo.
This phantom.
Hi! Miss me?
I keep thinking of the story in the New York Times that morning.
Walgreen's perhaps moving its corporate headquarters overseas.
The great titans of wealth, amassing more.
Already rich.
Yet relocating around the globe, maybe, to save another 10 percent.
As opposed to little me, timid mousing myself into Brooks Brothers
Dragging my elder son.
Not managing to save anything at all
While trying to be something I'm not.
And disguise him as something he isn't.
To rub a little of that luster off onto our shabby lives,
so he can pretend to come from a fancier place than he does
with the genuinely rich swells he's going to encounter.
Both of us, lured in by 50 percent.
That I did not in fact get.
Through some kind of accident
The sort of thing that happens to me
A lot
Life seemed one long rigged game
That I naturally lose.
Pick a shell! It's easy.
It looks so easy
For other people
The incident sat there.
And vibrated.
A high pitched sound
Something like a shriek
Something like a sigh
I laid awake at 2 a.m., knowing it was nuts,
the whole thing nuts
discussing the whole nuts thing with my wife,
again; she, patience itself.
This big Brooks Brothers gaffe sitting on the foot of our bed.
Giving off a smell
A sound of wasps
And 3 a.m.
And 4 a.m.
"This is crazy," I thought, feeling genuinely crazy.
When you meet insane people
And realize with horror they're locked
On a single triviality
This must be how it starts
I'll end up with a shabby sandwich sign
marching back and forth in front of Brooks Brothers...

Eventually we slept.
Morning.
The thing sat there, smaller
But still there.
Morning! Miss me?
I dressed—no Brooks Brothers here—went to work
Shabbily in my Kohl's chinos
But took the sales slip with me.
A plan.
Not ambitious.
I would call Brooks Brothers
And ask them to explain
Because I wanted to understand.
That's all.
What happened?
Maybe each shirt was two for $99
But not paired with each other
That must be it.
I wanted them to explain it.
So I could understand.
I figured I had bought that right
For my $192
Brooks Brothers opens at 10 a.m.
I phoned at 9:15, thinking I'd get them early.
Again at 9:45.
Again at 10:05.
Got Allen.
Or Alan.
I didn't have him spell it.
He called up my purchase record.
No problem, he said, apologizing for the inconvenience. I'll make a price correction.
He took my address to send the receipt.
And that was it.
Unexpected.
I had never thought of that.
Never imagined it would go that way.
I thanked Allen.
Or Alan.
Profusely.
The sour chemicals in my brain drained away.
The thing that had tailed me for 12 hours.
Gone.
Suddenly it seemed very clear
All my anxieties
My kid leaving for college before his dad got rich
My squeaking through a world where  my ship isn't even a smokestack on the horizon
Never mind coming in.
The bills that come faster than the paychecks.
And still trying to be something I'm not.
All of those concerns tap-dacing on my head
At 3 a.m.
Unwilling to leave.
Ignoring my request that they please leave
Gone now on their own
All so clear.
We are creatures of emotion and status, yearning and disappointment.
At least I am.
And I hope you too.
Otherwise I'm going to look really stupid.
Our brains are electrochemical mush that can do the oddest flips for the oddest reasons.
When I told this all to a friend of mine,
she mentioned something her mother says.
"The hardest rains are over soonest."
Meaning, sometimes a cloudburst will drench you,
and the stronger it is, the sooner it passes.
The clouds part and the sun comes out again.
Boy that feels good.
I had forgot what feeling good felt like
Quickly too
Knew that it would pass, and tried to hurry it along.
But these things work on their own sweet time
While it was there at two
and three and four a.m., 
it seemed as if it had always been there
and would always be there.
Horrible.
Over a few shirts, and twenty bucks.
To a guy who bought a house, a car and once
watched autopsies for eight hours
I hope that isn't crazy, that it's just human.
It seems very human to me.
Which true, at times, is very close to crazy. 
That's my story
And I'm sticking with it
Sometimes the big problems are easier to than the tiny ones.
Solutions are always there; usually involving waiting
Of course the Brooks Brothers folks took care of me.
How could I not suspect they would?
I never imagined it.
Only good business and I hope someday I feel flush enough to go back.
Nice stuff.
Quality material
I almost have to go back, someday.
Dust myself off, get back on the horse.
Thought next time
I'm checking the price on that receipt before I leave.


Postscript

I got a lot of feedback from this piece, but the most apt came from my cousin, Harrison Roberts, who shared this line from Thoreau, in the passage where he warns about endeavors requiring new clothing: "Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives."

The pendulum keeps swingiing ....

    In all the excitement over the Supreme Court ruling to limit the availability of contraceptives to women who work for Hobby Lobby, Monday's column, on last week's Supreme Court ruling limiting the right of women to walk into an abortion clinic unmolested (gosh, anybody else notice a trend here?) got lost in the hubbub. So I thought I would post it here. 

    Though I will ask again, because it can't be asked too many times: what's wrong with letting individuals decide their religious practices for themselves? And why do women, still, represent a second class group of inferiors whose moral decisions must be made for them? 

     If only women got divorced, but not men, then they might, on their way to consult divorce lawyers, have to push through a gantlet of abuse from self-proclaimed advocates of the sanctity of marriage, urging them to cling to their marital vows, no matter how dismal a prospect that might be.
     But men also get unhitched, thankfully, so society permits both sexes to breeze through the process unencumbered, or at least unencumbered by the unwelcome intrusion of strangers telling them what to do.
     Only a woman can get an abortion, however, so the rules change. Women, even in the United States, even in 2014, represent a second class of citizen who can be harassed to a degree seldom directed toward men.
     Don’t get mad at me for pointing it out.

     There are many angles to approach this: ethical, social and of course legal, as the U.S. Supreme Court reminded us last week, when it unanimously rejected a Massachusetts law requiring a 35-foot buffer zone between the protesters who gather to confront, howl at and, yes, occasionally “counsel” women trying to enter clinics.

     This is, it saddens me to say, the legally correct decision; we can't have laws handcrafted to stop a certain kind of speech at a certain sort of place (which is why a similar law in Chicago might withstand scrutiny, since it affects all health care facilities, even though nobody is confronting patients heading to get their flu shots, at least not yet). That urge, if indulged, could unravel the First Amendment. A law aimed to prevent the Westboro Baptist Church from showing up at military funerals with their neon "GOD HATES FAGS" signs would end up stopping people from showing up at Bruce Rauner rallies with "RAUNER'S A FRAUD" signs, and we need more, not less, of those.

     But law is only one facet, only a rough approximation of our values, a blurry mirror. Law often misses truth. It sure does if you read the SCOTUS ruling, with its fantasy of grandmotherly counselors leading confused teens away from the abortion abattoirs. The truth is, if women entering clinics only faced, in the words of the Pro-Life Action League, "this peaceful ministry consist[ing] of gently reaching out to women," then such "buffer zone" laws as the one struck down would never have been enacted. Nobody is trying to squelch those chipper young Save the Children canvassers who invade Michigan Avenue every summer. They might annoy, but they don't threaten the way anti-abortion protesters do routinely.
     The implicit threat, conveyed by tone, volume, proximity and past attacks, carries a burden that the law doesn't see. Like Westboro, they carefully choose a moment of vulnerability. We are so accustomed to these encounters, so inured with their talk of notional babies, we forget that, stripped of dogma, these are groups trying to press their religious beliefs upon the unwilling.
     Men would never permit it. Take another process that requires a person to enter a place - say, buying a car. Let's say my reading of the Bible led me to believe that buying new cars is sin, and I led bands of believers to try to persuade people not to buy cars.
     How long do you think society would allow my co-religionists to cluster around the doors of dealerships, displaying huge placards of starving children in Africa and fish killed by pollution and other supposed fallout from the evils of new car ownership?
     Answer: not long.
     Critics of the Supreme Court ruling point out that the Supreme Court itself uses law to keep protesters far at bay.
     "A painted line on the sidewalk is easy to enforce, but the prime objective of the First Amendment is not efficiency," sniffed Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., secure in the knowledge that he can go about his business without having to pass through a mob, which is not something abortion clinic workers nor their patients can claim.
     The powerful always see to themselves. The powerless, aka women, particularly young women entering abortion clinics, need society to have their backs. We allow this abuse to take place because abortion is a grotesque procedure we'd rather not think about. Maybe it's time we did instead of yielding the field to religious fanatics. We wouldn't allow it elsewhere. Wouldn't allow temperance bands to block bar entrances, nor church groups to block football stadium gates, trying to "counsel" fans to go to church instead. We can't look to law to solve this problem. Instead, we should ask: What can we do to change things? To stop living in a society where it can be sincerely suggested that women lack the ability to make moral choices for themselves? How can we thwart those who deny women their rights?

One last chance to honor them before they enter history

     Before 91 veterans of World War II board a jet at Midway Airport early Wednesday, before the Southwest pilot powers up the engines and the tower clears the plane for takeoff to Washington, D.C., where they will be heaped with honor and visit a monument to themselves that most have never seen, Lindi Strobel has to answer their questions, calm their fears and coax them aboard that plane.

     “I receive from one to 20 calls per day,” says Strobel, a volunteer for Honor Flight Chicago. “On average, seven to 10 a day from veterans who have applied to our program.”

     They’re curious, concerned, skeptical. The Honor Flight program, at first glance, can seem too good to be true: Vets of WWII are flown to Washington, given a tour with maximum care and attention, well fed, then taken home? For free? Really? And then there is their own health to think about.

     “They’ve received the medical information in the mail, these forms that address questions of potential health issues,” Strobel said. “Doubts start to creep in as to whether or not to go on the trip. My name and phone number go out with the forms. They call the number. They get me. Usually it’s a veteran calling. It might be a spouse, caregiver, niece, nephew, grandchild, neighbor, you name it. The most common concern is: ‘Do you realize how old I am?’ ”

     She does. Given that World War II ended Sept. 2, 1945, or nearly 69 years ago, the answer would be: in their late 80s or early 90s. They’ve taken vets up to 100 years old.
     Though all-too-well aware of how they themselves have aged, the vets have a tendency to think of their comrades as still young. One female vet worried about going on the trip, since the vast majority of participants are men. "She made it clear that she would dance but that was it," said Strobel. "I said I would defend her honor."
     Most have health issues. "We have veterans fly with us who can't walk, can't hear, can't see," Strobel said. Two doctors and eight nurses go on the trip. Each vet also has a companion when they get to D.C. "We're set up to deal with the issues of aging, to make sure each vet has a carefree and safe day," she said. "My role in this is to paint a picture for them, an accurate portrayal of what their day will look like."
     And what will that day be like?
     "It's the longest day you can imagine," Mary Pettinato, Honor Flight Chicago's CEO, said. It begins with the vets, some of whom haven't traveled in years, arriving at the airport, "scared to death."
     Then they catch sight of the Andrews Sisters act, waiting for them at the gate.
     "The guys start waving at them, tapping their feet, posing for pictures," Pettinato said. "By the time we arrive in Washington and are met by 75 active-duty military, they're giggling, joking about how they could have landed the plane better."
     They board buses, visit the various war memorials, the Lincoln Memorial, have box lunches, tour the Air and Space Museum.
     At Midway, there is a welcome home.
     "That's a bit of a surprise," Strobel said. "Quite a celebration - a couple thousand people are there. Bands play, flags fly. It's like a Fourth of July celebration on steroids.
     "To see these veterans, the humbleness," she said. "They're just shocked so many people are interested in them. They're not expecting anyone to be interested. They get on the plane and think it's over, and then they land. . . . One I will never forget, a gentleman said that this one day took away 60-plus years of pain and hurt he has been harboring. You can't quantify that. It just makes you want to find more of them, as many as you possibly can, to have this experience. It's clearly something very meaningful to them; they can't possibly understand until they do it."
     Honor Flight Chicago is the largest of 133 chapters in the nation. It runs eight flights a year, April to October. The next flight, July 30, is already full, but there are four more. Interested vets should call 773-227-8387.
     "It's the greatest day you can imagine," said Pettinato, who co-founded the chapter in 2008. "We consistently hear that the Honor Flight is the best day of their lives."
     She said the typical WWII vet, like many elderly folks, lives a life settled into routine.
     "His day at home is very mundane," she said. "But on this day, he puts on a World War II veteran's hat and everywhere he goes, he's recognized and thanked. Some haven't been thanked for 70 years. Many, when the war ended, got off a ship, hitchhiked home and were told you need to get a job tomorrow. That's it. On this day, they realize what they did for our country so many years ago is truly appreciated."

The wayward shoe

     What is a story, anyway?
     A chain of circumstance, 
     A skein of incidents, 
     Binding together characters, action, plot
     Or a gathering of facts,
     Assembled to lead toward a conclusion.
     But it doesn't have to be that.
     It could be anything.
     Like a child's shoe perched upon a fire hydrant.
     "What kind of story is that?" you ask. 
     Where are the characters?
     Well, there are two, for starters.
     A child of course.
     At that size, and along busy Walters Avenue, probably carried.
     A girl, judging by the pink lining and flowers.
     A boisterous girl, by necessity, 
     Kicking, playfully I like to think.
     But perhaps in tantrum.
     The mother, holding her with one arm.
     Maybe a bag in the other. 
     Eyes on her goal, a parked car perhaps.
     Keys already in hand
     Doesn't notice the airborne shoe.
     Flung by a chubby, arching foot
     Tumbling away from the pair
     And so our story begins.
     
     The little girl feels it instantly, misses it, 
     And maybe even cries out, and points
     But either lacking words
     Or ignored
     As kids often are
     The mother, preoccupied notices
     Only a higher pitch to the cry
     Doesn't turn, doesn't look, doesn't hear
     A shoe softly landing upon the grass
     And so they leave it behind.

     Now a lacuna, a span of time
     The cars start and stop, 
     The shoe waits
     The mother and child gone
     It could be a minute, or an hour
     Or a day
     The shadow shifts around the shoe
     The ordinary passersby pass by
     And time, which we craft stories to tame
     To pretend that we can
     Tumbles forward too.

     Then the second necessary character.
     Who starts the second act
     The one who notices the shoe 
     And lingers
     Where others either didn't see
     Or saw and didn't care
     It wasn't me but
     I like to think it is a guy
     His heart swells
     Pity for the errant shoe
     Picks it up.
     And regards it.
     Such a little shoe.
     To be out of place
     Like us all, now and then
     Such a shame
     And he looks around.
     Searching for the woman.
     As men will do.
     But seeing no mother.
     And no child.
     Nothing but the indifferent cars sliding by.
     His eyes fall upon the fire hydrant.
     Newly painted.
     Redder than red. 
     
     Our third character.
     To begin the third act
     The squire, the servant
     Squat and strong and mute 
     The vassal whose job.
     The man immediately realizes 
     It to hold the shoe, to offer it
     To the mom, should she return
     By accident or design 
     Searching for the lost shoe
     Or just happening by
     So he balances it
     Just so.

     And more time passes
     The hydrant tirelessly proffers
     The fourth character
     The hero of our story
     The wayward shoe
     An unexpected vigil
     Poised, balancing, en pointe
     Waiting for the mom 
     To come back and claim it
     Does she? Does she return?
     Or is the shoe buffeted away.
     To meet a lonely, inglorious end
     Discarded somewhere?
     It turns out our story is a mystery.
     As stories often are.
     Without an end
     But not without a moral:
     There is good in the world
     People who will pick up a shoe 
     A tiny lost shoe
     And have pity on it
     And balance it just so
     In the slim hope
     That one little lost shoe
     Will find its way home. 

     A postscript, 
     One final character
     On a rainy night, the last in June
     Sets out on a solitary mission
     The narrator, stepping lively
     To rendezvous with a shoe
     That may or may not still be there
     The sky dark, the heavens drip
     The hydrant ... once again bare
     Not on the ground either
     Our heroic shoe must be claimed and home
     Or else gone off alone 
     To search for new adventure
     As must we all. 

Supreme Court gets religion

Latin for "Hear the other side."

     Well, enough birthday cake and self-administered back pats. There's a world out there. The folks at the paper's Early & Often political site asked me to react to the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling, and this is what I wrote:

     Religion keeps pushing.
     That’s what religion does. That’s how something becomes a religion and not a collection of strange ideas held by a few scattered and marginal groups. By pushing, hard, for centuries and never giving up.
     Faith will use any legal means, and whatever non-legal means, it can to push you into the fold, or get you to behave as if you were.
     In eras when it can stone you, it stones you.
     In eras when you can be ostracized, or shamed, or put in the stocks, it does that.
     In 2014, it declares that Hobby Lobby, a family-owned corporation based in Oklahoma City that sells arts and crafts supplies at a nationwide chain of stores, is not only a person, but a religious person, and its right to keep its employees from easy access to the contraception it scorns trumps those employees rights to easily get that contraception.
     And on Monday the United States Supreme Court went along, ruling that the owners of Hobby Lobby, joined by a Pennsylvania furniture maker, are within their rights when opting out of Affordable Care Act including contraception in a spectrum of benefits, since birth control violates the company’s religious beliefs....

To continue reading, click here.

One more time!

Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,
ninety-nine bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around,
ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.

Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall,
ninety-eight bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around,
ninety--seven bottles of beer on the wall...

I sang the song all the way through once, beginning to end, down to that very last bottle of beer on the wall. I was 17, working in the kitchen of the Bob Evans restaurant in Berea, Ohio. My job was to bake biscuits, batch after batch, hour after hour, and, well, in that era before iPods, heck, before Walkmen, one sometimes sang to oneself. 

Or at least I did.

Eventually I hit upon this old, endless camp song, and went the distance.

Which came to mind when I thought about today, June 30, being end of the first year of this blog, Every goddamn day.

I can see why. Both are exercises in persistence.  You have to keep singing, keep writing, to tell yourself it's somehow meaningful, or at least worth doing. I did indeed go the distance, every goddamn day, bare none. So ka-ching, the digit turns tomorrow, Year One in the bag...

The odd thing is, it wasn't hard. Unlike many writers, I actually like to write, the physical sitting in a chair, mashing words together and molding the thing into something half decent. It's fun—I probably shouldn't use that word. How good could something be if you have fun doing it? People who are having fun, well, you wonder how much gravitas they really possess. Which is fine. I'm not going for gravitas.

What am I going for? Something interesting. Or amusing. Or both. To have a little thoughtful piece of something, along with a picture, for you to read and see, every day. And it's working, as far as I can tell. Readership grows, slowly. Some 40,000 hits a month now—more than 42,000 in June, the best yet—which is about 30 percent more than the first few months when this began.

Not a lot of complaints, which is gratifying, in this gotterdammerung of griping that is the Internet. I've tried to be my own critic, asking myself whether writing it every day, every goddamned day has made me watered-down, facile, repetitive, trivial. And I don't think so. At least no more than when I'm on top of my game. I never cringe when I go back and read something I've posted previously. I hope that isn't an alarming complacency. Satisfaction sounds very close to self-satisfaction, to smugness. But the thing feels about as good as I can make it.

The most surprisingly thing is that I was never stuck. Posts were like picking raspberries—you might have to dig into the leaves a bit, at times, but there's a lot of juicy stuff there, if you look for it. About a third came from things I was writing for the newspaper, which didn't mind my posting them here, so long as I link to the paper's site and don't just swipe my own work.

How did the blog do? We are all about metrics—probably the worst thing about the Internet age; we care so much about being popular that we don't think about being good. But looking at the stats, this year the blog has had ... checking ...385,676 hits; 1,056 visits day, on average. I usually write one post a day, but sometimes events demand a second, for a total of 420 posts. The most successful, Welcome to the Steinberg Bakery, a comment on businesses that feel their religious freedom is being impinged having to serve gay customers, drew nearly 10,000 hits. The pieces often have staying power. Its follow-up, Welcome back to the Steinberg Bakery, was posted at the end of March, but got 2,000 hits on Monday alone, thanks to the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision (and a much-appreciated retweet from Dan Savage). 

In late December, I posted a six month assessment. Then we were averaging 914 hits a day, and I was hoping that by now they'd have more than doubled, to 2,000. What I got was an extra 142. Not the success I was hoping for, but it will have to do. A little more than a thousand people a day.

So small ball, in the wide sweep of the Internet. Nothing went viral, no six figure days. I am happy to nail my thousand hits by lunch, feel extra satisfied if it gets to 1,500, and thrilled at 2,000 and beyond. My victories were humble ones. Alex Ross, the New Yorker's music critic, weighed in on a piece I wrote about opera. David Axelrod retweeted something I wrote. Dan Savage was a frequent supporter. Gene Weingarten at the Washington Post. Eric Zorn at the Tribune was supportive, and Nancy Nall Derringer, and other bloggers I respect. I like days when the blog sends out a ripple. Some days it doesn't. Some days it feels like singing in the shower, but those days happen in the paper too, and being a professional means soldiering through those days and waiting, crouched in your foxhole, for the illusion of relevance to return.

I did make a little money from it—Eli's Cheesecake ran paid ads in November and December, and BasketWorks traded a cache of black Moleskine notebooks for ad. Not much, but I used part of the cheesecake money to commission a poster from Hatch Show Print in Nashville, and I got a kick out that, selling a few dozen, and giving the others away to publicize the blog in a fashion I found satisfyingly retro. Some places have had them up for six months. I plan to print up a new one for 2015. The poster made me happy. Heck, the tubes I sent the poster out in made me happy. They're solid tubes.

My wife has encouraged me to stop at some point—hang up the "Gone Fishin'" sign in August and pick the thing up in September. But then it wouldn't be every goddamn day, would it?  I think it's okay to haul something good out of the archives, when relevant, and so long as I don't do it too much. I'm going to replay my home repair series in August, since it'll be new to most readers, and I will appreciate the breather. That said, I believe showing up every day, getting in the traces and pulling the plow. On days when I hit the wrong button ("Save" instead of "Publish") and the new post doesn't go up at midnight, someone complains. True, it's only one reader, but I don't want to keep him waiting. 

A thousand people seems like a lot to me. If a thousand people showed up at your door every morning, you'd find a way to say something to them. Many a minister labors over a sermon that not 10 people, never mind 100, never mind a thousand, will hear. Kindergarten teachers sweat their lesson plans for two dozen 5-year-olds. So I can't see pitching this so I can have an extra half hour a day to play Candy Crush Saga. If I keep it up, maybe next year we'll be doing that 2,000 a day, on average, then 4,000, then 8,000. There are successful ventures that have had slower starts, though none come to mind. You can't quit your way to the top.

Disappointments? I wish the thing resonated more. The readership seems pretty local to the Chicago area, with a few expats in California. I wish the newspaper would tuck the blog somewhere on its web site. It feels a snub that they don't, but maybe it'll work out for the best, in the long run. If the paper had its imprint on it I couldn't say "fuck" when the occasion calls for it. 

What else? The Google Blogger system froze up after I created my template, so I can't change the fonts or the colors. I've tried to figure out what the problem is, but can't, so that's maddening.  Then again, they provide this platform for free, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.

Back in that hot kitchen at Bob Evans, when I finally neared "One bottle of beer on the wall," I had an inspiration. I got done, paused for one second, then called out, "One more time!" and began to sing the damn thing a second time.

Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,
Ninety-nine bottles of beer...

So here we go into Year Two. One more time! 

At least.

But first.

Thank you everybody who took the time to read what I had to say this past 365 days. And thank you to everyone who will read in the next year. If it's half as fun to read as it is to write, then you're enjoying yourselves a lot. As my friend Rick Kogan likes to say: onward.

—Neil Steinberg

Family ties, literally

     "At least I brought my shoes home."

     Spoken with a certain defensiveness, almost a note of pride. Hey, cut me some slack dad, I've got the shoes.

      Time: 11:15  p.m. Maybe 11:30. Earlier this week.
      Place: our living room in the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook. At dinnertime, our 18-year-old former high school senior, on the cusp of heading off to college, had announced that he and some pals would be eating their dinner at Prairie Grass, Sarah Stegner and Rohit Nambiar's excellent restaurant.
      Some kind of two-for-one burger special had caught their frugal teenage eye. Kids like bargains. 

      That was 7 p.m. After 11, we started to worry. A long time for dinner. A text went unanswered. Finally we got the word: at his pal Jacob's.
     Whew.

      So now he's back, sprawled on the coffee table—a sturdy coffee table, he's comfortable there—and a thought strikes him.

     "Oh," he says to me. "I left your tie at Jacob's house."
      My boy works a summer job in a law office downtown. He owns no ties of his own—well, a brown bar mitzvah tie, but that's it. Rather than go out and equip him with a new tie wardrobe he might never again need—not a lot of call for tie-wearing in California—he just uses mine, which is fine; I hardly wear them anymore myself. So I wasn't distraught by the news one had gone off reservation. Okay, you left my tie at Jacob's. Just bring it back, eventually.
      Though a troubling thought did bubble up. I didn't suspect it so much as say it as a kind of minor punishment.

     "Was it because I asked you to hang them up this morning?" I asked, half seriously. Yesterday's tie —a red paisley—had ended up a crumpled ball next to the computer in the living room. I had meekly hung it up, but while doing so pointed out that the least he could do is return the things he borrows. I mean, as it is, I have to tie them for him, which is already an indefensible paternal indulgence. He's 18. Not only do I tie the tie, but I then have to slip it around his neck and tighten it, quickly tucking the tie under the back collar; the hardest part, I can tell. There's some tactile discomfort and I try to get it over as fast as possible while he tries not to twist away. To be honest, I kinda like the process. There really isn't anything much else he needs me to do for him anymore; pay the bills and shut up. So the tie business is really the last vestige of physical parenting, of snapping on rompers and pulling on little socks and wiping his nose. A long time coming, as they say, it'll be a long time gone. Maybe he feels that way too, deep down, because every time I suggest he let me teach him how to tie a tie for the love of God, he waves the idea away. Soon but not now.
    What's so hard about tying ties? Not to get all back-in-the-day, but I learned how to tie a tie because I was playing Mr. Darling in the Camp Wise production of "Peter Pan," so not only had to tie it properly, at age 15, but tie it properly onstage in front of 200 people, while reciting lines. "This tie, it will not tie, not round my neck. Round the bedpost, yes, 10 times I've tied it around the bedpost...."
    Or words to that effect It's been almost 40 years. My dad didn't teach me, he was 100 miles away. I don't remember who did; maybe I figured it out myself.
    Anyway, it struck me that, instead of returning it to the tie rack in my bedroom closet as requested, like a decently-raised son would do, he hadn't even returned it to our home. Perhaps even vindictively. The tie was across town, no doubt crumbled in a ball beside Jacob's computer.

     I cast him a doleful look.

     "At least I brought my shoes home," he said, earnestly, sincerely.  That brightened my mood immediately. I'm not sure where that came from—perhaps from the fact that he carried them. Black Oxford wing tips, no doubt uncomfortable as midnight approached, so kicked them off as he ... what did the boys do again? Oh right, poker and ping pong. I looked at him closely. Sober. Alive. Returned under his own power with no intercession from the police necessary. One should count one's blessings.

     "Well, try to get the tie back from Jacob at some point."

     Though to be honest, it is a purple tie with yellow bursts on it. I don't know what madness had gripped me to buy it in the first place. I haven't worn it in years, and probably will never wear it again. If he had dumped the tie in the trash and never told me I'd have never missed it. But he doesn't have to know that.
     Oh, and he brought the tie home a few days later, leaving it for me to find in a crumpled ball on the coffee table. I wordlessly hung it up. I'm going to miss that.