Ten years later

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I still have the dream.

I’m standing outside at night. I hear the whine of a jet far overhead. I look up and see the airliner, darker than the night sky around it. The shape of its body and wings eclipse stars, then clouds, then trees as it falls to earth.

Sometimes I wake up at that moment. Sometimes the dream involves ushering a child or a dog to comparative safety behind an elaborate fountain like the kind you’d find in a town square. Mercifully, I never dream long enough to see the fire or hear the noise.

I’ve had the dream for the better part of 10 years now. Like my other recurring dreams — being lost, losing teeth and the classic being back in high school with no idea what I was doing or where I should be going — I’m not certain what prompted it, other than general anxiety.

Ten years ago this week, we all felt horror and shock and sorrow as we watched the events of Sept. 11 unfold. I doubt there are many of us who don’t still think about that day. Or dream about it.

Almost as vivid in my memory, however, is the memory of my relief when, a few days after the attacks, I first noticed a vapor trail in the sky. It was a sign that we were recovering, that things were moving back toward normal.

That recovery has seemed very slow at times and the nightmares linger. But we’re recovering, nonetheless.

(Photo above by Dallas commercial photographer Sean Gallagher.)

 

iPhoneography: Halloween stuff part one

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I love Halloween. And I love Halloween stores.

It’s a little more than a week into September, but yes, the first Halloween stores are open and Halloween stuff is popping up around town.

Expect to read a lot more about Halloween in this blog between now and the night itself, but here are a few iPhone shots I took tonight.

What says Halloween more than some bloody, severed fingers? Actually, I’m not that crazy about the dismembered body parts element to Halloween decorating. But here’s an acknowledgement of that interest.

Now this is more like it: Your good old fashioned spooky ghost type dude, hanging in mid-air. When you show up at somebody’s house in September and they have one of these babies up, you know they’re serious Halloween people.

One of my favorite things about Halloween is the creative costumes. Good homemade ones are the best, but sometimes professional costume makers come up with some funny ideas. Of course, I’m not sure most of us need help with an oversized belly costume, but in case you do, they have you covered.

Now this is a creepy mask. If I walked into someone in a dark room wearing a ventriloquist’s dummy mask, I would leave one of those Wile E. Coyote-style hole in the nearest door.

More soon!

Did Billy go from Family Circus to the moon?

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Have you seen those newly released NASA photos showing the footprints and lunar rover tracks left on the moon by astronauts?

Is it just me, or does it look familiar?

Voice mail: So over?

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Is it just me, or has anyone else fallen out of love with voice mail?

Don’t get me wrong. As a tool, voice mail is still useful. I can be away from my desk or away from home and people who are trying to reach me can still do so, more or less.

But I find myself dreading seeing that little red light that indicates I’ve got voice mail. I hate the “beep-beep-beep”  indicator when I hold the receiver up to my ear.

Maybe my disenchantment with voice mail stems from the messages that people leave for me. My heart just sinks when the voice mail program tells me the message is two minutes long. I slap my forehead when I realize someone has left a message for me when they really want someone else (I can picture them getting frustrated when they ultimately find out I’ve had to pass them along to yet another person. Sorry about that.).

I really hate voice mail, though, when someone leaves a long, deliberately paced message and then rushesthroughtheirphonenumberattheveryend. I wish I had a dime for every time I’ve had to listen to messages repeatedly to decipher the blast of numerals at the end.

There’s no doubt voice mail is a good thing, and we should thank Robin Elkins, who most likely created it. Like the fax and e-mail, it’s useful. And the technology isn’t to blame for unwanted faxes, spam e-mail and meandering messages for who knows who.

It’s the uncertainty of voice mail that puts me off, I think. Who tried to contact me who doesn’t know me well enough to know my cell phone number? And can anything good come out of that lack of familiarity short of a call from an attorney telling me I’ve been named in the will of a wealthy, previously unknown relative?

Maybe it’s just that I need an attitude adjustment. Maybe I can greet that little red voice mail indicator light with as much enthusiasm as the Christmas lights of my youth, cheerful heralds of delightful surprises to come.

Nah.

Calvin, Kmart and the Blue Light Special

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For some of us of a certain age and with a good memory, that “Calvin and Hobbes” strip — in which Calvin’s dad tells him he came not only from a store, but from Kmart, where he was a Blue Light Special — is particularly funny. Because some of us grew up at least within earshot of the Blue Light Special.

For a kid growing up south of Muncie, the center of  my shopping universe was the Southway Plaza, where I bought comics and had my first — and only — shoplifting experience (a story for another time).

But right up there with the Southway — figuratively and geographically — was the nearby Kmart.

Considering the sad state of Kmart today — struggling financially and spurned by even discriminating Walmart shoppers — it’s hard to imagine that Kmart was once the retail powerhouse that it was.

But my whole family shopped there. My toys came from there, I bought records there — vinyl LPs — and a lot of our clothes came from there.

And if you went to Kmart often enough, you were familiar with the Blue Light Special.

At random times during the day, the management decided it was time to push some slow-moving product. An employee was assigned the task of rolling out the Blue Light Special, which was a metal cart with a pricing gun and a metal pole with, literally, a blue light at the top. The lights were not unlike those at the top of a police car.

Some store employee would get on the P.A. system and announce, for example, a Blue Light Special on baseballs in the sporting goods department. A special price on baseballs would be available for the next 15 minutes, they would note. Customers who wanted to buy baseballs — or ham sandwiches from the deli, or sneakers from the shoe department — would make their way there and fill their carts.

I don’t remember my family often buying Blue Light Specials and to this day it seems like a curious marketing strategy. While the promise of a Blue Light Special might draw shoppers to Kmart, there was little to attract them but the hope that sometime while they were there a random item might go on sale. It was kind of like an internal Kmart lottery.

Apparently the Blue Light Specials, introduced in 1965 — during my early Kmart shopping experience — held on until 1991. A couple of years ago, the retailer tried to appeal to Baby Boomer memories by referencing Blue Light Specials and adopting a blue lightbulb mascot. But it was a little like when KFC made Colonel Sanders a hip-hop granddad; it’s hard to imagine who they thought they were appealing to.

Where have you gone, Mike Nomad?

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I was a newspaper fan from childhood, years before I would have guessed my writings would appear in print on a nearly daily basis. Decades before the Interwebs made it possible to connect with the big, wide world on an instantaneous basis, TV, radio and newspapers were my connection, my contact, to everything out there that was bigger than me.

Just as Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” was the avenue for a kid from Central Indiana to learn about the finer points of Jewish comedians and great jazz, so newspapers were a way for a Cowan elementary-schooler to begin to form a rudimentary grasp of current events.

And newspaper comic strips were the icing on that cake of information.

I read virtually all the comic strips, from the beautifully drawn but kind of impenetrable, plot-wise, “Prince Valiant” Sunday strips to the bread-and-butter comedy of “Hagar.” I read the comics page from the top down every day.

I can’t say I loved every single one — sorry, “Andy Capp” — but some of the strips I savored like cold Chocola on a hot afternoon. Even well into my adulthood, “Calvin and Hobbes” was the highlight of my day. I probably should have saved it for late in the evening so the day didn’t peak too early. I still mourn Dec. 31, 1995, when Bill Watterson ended his strip. I don’t think the comics page has been the same since.

But while the funny strips were probably the most enjoyable and the most accessible, I loved the drama strips. Well, I can’t say I spent a whole lot of time dawdling over “Mary Worth” or “Apartment 3-G,” but I read them.

The adventure strips, though, are another matter. A particular favorite was “Steve Roper and Mike Nomad.”

The strip began in 1936 — back then it was “Big Chief Wahoo” — which was well before my time. Journalist Steve Roper was introduced in 1940 — still well before my time — and eventually took over the strip. Adventurer Mike Nomad was introduced in 1956.

Roper and Nomad were the kind of duo that remains popular to this day, particularly in mystery novels that feature a more cerebral lead character and his quick-with-his-fists buddy. Roper was, fittingly for a journalist, the kind of guy who could not only investigate a crime but think his way out of a tight spot.

Nomad, with a flat-top haircut that looked like you could drive a pick-up truck across it without mussing a single hair, was the funnier, flashier character. He was known to hang out in Chinatown or down at the docks and usually ran afoul of some bad guys who wanted to prove they were tougher than Nomad. They weren’t.

I have to admit I lost track of Roper and Nomad after the duo disappeared from our local papers. I reconnected with their adventures, in a daily, incremental way, when I was out of town and picked up a newspaper that still carried the strip.

And I’m a little surprised that the strip continued until the day after Christmas 2004. By that time, the strip had allowed Roger and Nomad to age gracefully, although Nomad could still get into and out of a scrape or two.

He couldn’t get out of the slow fade of adventure comics as published in newspapers, though. While a few daily action strips remain, most have gone the way of Roper and Nomad.

 

What’s on your nightstand?

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We’ve got books all over our house. In bookcases and in boxes and filling those handy folding shelves that Target used to sell. I’ve got boxes of old comics and monster movie magazines in the garage (which themselves will one day be the topic of a blog entry or two).

But most of the book action in my household is on the nightstands.

All of us have a few books within reach, ready to be read in the few minutes each night before we (I, really) crash into fitful sleep.

The nightstand is where I put my glasses and my keys and my iPhone each night, but the two stacks of books, teetering a little precariously over everything, is what makes me feel comfortable.

The stack of books at the back of the nightstand is shamefully neglected. Some of those books have been there for a couple of years. They’re books that have been recommended, gifts that I’m meaning to get around to, books that I bought on sale just because I could and books that I’ve actually read before but want to keep handy. “Gregor the Overlander,” by “Hunger Games” author Suzanne Collins, is one that has been highly recommended to me. “Devil in the White City” by Erik Larson is one that I’ve already read and highly recommend.

On top of that stack is a small legal pad, complete with Harry Potter pen, that I keep handy just to jot down notes.

The front stack on my nightstand sees the most action. That’s where you’ll find my latest library books. On top of that stack right now are three books in Craig Johnson’s series of mystery novels about Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire. If you haven’t read Johnson’s books, you should because they’re great. Good stories, even better characters and a great take on life from his crusty old sheriff protagonist. And you can say, “Oh, I’ve read those books” in case a proposed A&E cable TV series about Longmire is a hit.

Also prominent on the front stack is “The Encyclopedia of Appalachia,” a hefty reference book with a depth of knowledge that matches its weight. Anything you want to know about that region that’s so dear to my heart can be found in that book.

We’re trying to corral our books in this household, figuring out if we want to get some new bookcases. If we do, how we store our books will probably change.

I can’t imagine any change, however, that will rob my nightstand of books.

Geektastic: Jonny Quest stop-motion animation

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This makes me all geeky goosebumpy.

A stop-motion animation artist named Roger Evans has produced a two-minute-long-or-so version of the opening credits of the classic 1960s animated series “Jonny Quest.”

Yes, this talented man has produced a stop-motion animated version of an animated cartoon, but if that stumps you, you’re missing the point. And probably checking out the wrong blog.

If you’re an old school “Jonny Quest” fan, you’ll appreciate the behind-the-scenes details of how Evans accomplished this. Here’s the webpage with the info.

And if you don’t get a tingle every time the Quest jet cuts through the clouds, I’ll double your money back.

Just for fun: Buckaroo Banzai

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Here’s a little something for my fellow geeks out there: The end credits of the 1984 film “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.”

The movie, starring Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum and Ellen Barkin, came out in the summer of 1984 and was met with a collective “Huh?”

The story of Buckaroo, a surgeon/musician/adventurer, and his posse was a throwback to pulp stories featuring superheroes like Doc Savage.

But the movie left a lot of people cold. It did play like a long inside joke, admittedly, but it was an inside joke that I appreciated.

I saw this at the (now gone) Northwest Plaza Cinema in Muncie. It was the summer of “Ghostbusters,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Star Trek III” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” and Buckaroo and the Hong Kong Cavaliers got lost at the box office.

Overlooked as it was, there’s been talk of a sequel and of  a TV series, and Buckaroo’s HQ, the Banzai Institute, has a Facebook page.

And the legend lives on in the film’s cult status.

Weather hates us: Blizzard of ’78

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Watching bits and pieces of the Hurricane Irene coverage the past few days makes me think of the two greatest weather events of my lifetime so far: The Blizzard of ’78 and the ice storm of 2005.

A lot of people in this part of the Midwest have compared the two in the years since the January 2005 ice storm and most people I’ve spoken with say that in some ways the blizzard was less harrowing. The loss of electric power for most of us during the ice storm — we were lucky and only without power for three or four days, although some were in the dark and cold for a week or more — was worse than being cooped up at home after the Blizzard.

Although I’m not signing up for a recurrence of either, I think I’d prefer to relive the Blizzard of ’78 if I had to choose. The January 1978 blizzard — up to 20 inches of snow across much of Central Indiana, whipped by high winds into road-closing drifts that often reached to the rooflines of homes — paralyzed much of the state.

But aside from keeping us out of school for days, the blizzard had other good (bad?) effects. My family, which lived on a farm in the country at the time, was pretty well prepared and didn’t go without necessities. My brothers had borrowed some friends’ snow shoes and made forays out a few times, walking the two miles to the Marsh at Southway Plaza, the nearest grocery store.

Eventually a snow plow got down South Walnut Street and we managed to get out. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what a surreal first trip we made down the newly-0pened road. The snow had drifted higher than the tops of cars and the plow had made a virtual tunnel, open at the top, one lane wide all the way to town. There were a couple of wider spots to allow cars to pull over for the passage of the sparse other traffic.

In the decades since the blizzard — certainly by the time of the ice storm — I knew that weather emergencies were no longer an impromptu vacation from school and responsibilities. Now we still have to get to work and school. Life goes on, even after a weather disaster.

So I’m feeling for people on the East Coast who are dealing with damage and, long after the 24/7 news coverage ends, will be picking up the pieces.

By the way, I don’t have any Blizzard of ’78 pictures. The photos included here are from northern Indiana and were found on a website about the Blizzard. But they’re very representational of how I remember roads and driveways to be once we had tunneled our way out.