Tagged: Ed Garsten
Drop a Dime
I wanted to drop a dime on a friend the other day, but there was no where to drop it, so I put the dime back in my pocket and took out my iPhone. All that resulted in was dropping scores of dimes into AT&T’s general fund.
The whole concept of dropping a dime on someone has recently been at the top of my mind as I’ve been reading several books set in the 1970’s and 80’s when pay phones were still an option for placing a call. Sure, mobile phones are a lot more convenient but there’s no romance to it, no panic over futilely digging in your pocket for enough coins, or impatiently waiting outside a phone booth while someone yammers with their cousin over whether to eat Italian or Slim Jims.
I wonder if Clark Kent risks a public exposure arrest because he has to change into his Superman duds in the middle of Metropolis’s main drag, or if college freshmen feel cheated because they have no place to stuff 50 of themselves in order to win a beer bet.
As a reporter, pay phones were my lifeline. I remember covering a trial in Greenville, Tenn. in 1986 for CNN that was given the nickname Scopes II because it involved whether or not the local district could teach evolution. The day the judge would announce his decision I was instructed to call it in forthwith and do a live phoner. The courthouse had only one pay phone and I knew I’d never get to it in time. So I paid the owner of the hardware store across the street 20 bucks to clear his pay phone immediately when I rushed in to file my report. He kept his end of the bargain and I went on the air within two minutes of the verdict being read. The bosses were thrilled and asked me to go on the air with Headline News and then an affiliate. I was then asked to record an audio track CNN Radio could use in their newscasts.
By the time I was done I had been on the phone for 30 minutes. The hardware store owner gave me the kind of look that said “I’d like to perforate you with one of my premium grade pitchforks.”
He then started scolding me that I’d cost him hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars since that pay phone was the store’s ONLY phone and I used it so long he missed a scad of expected incoming orders. Why he didn’t tell me that in the first place or charge me more than a piddly 20 bucks I’ll never know but I walked away with a big ol’ grin for scooping my competition by buying off the guy’s pay phone first. I did give him five more dollars before asking if I could just call the assignment desk. Yes, that’s chutzpah, but being Greenville, Tenn., they didn’t know what that meant and the guy told me to make it snappy and get the hell out before he showed me his hardware store also dealt in firearms and used me to demonstrate his marksmanship skills.
Nowadays that element of competition is gone. Everyone has a phone in their pocket and the thrill of screwing your competitor by bribing for access to the only phone around is gone.
Indeed, you don’t need any change at all any more to drop a dime on someone. With cell phones and sometimes spotty service the only thing being dropped, is your call.
July 4th Memories: Footballs, Fireworks, Falling Underwear
Fourth of July always meant two things back in Glen Oaks Village, where I grew up in eastern Queens: a glorious barbecue behind the apartments with our four closest neighbors, and foolish decisions regarding fireworks.
First the barbecue. Glen Oaks is a community so large it has its own zip code and is home to about 50-thousand residents. Built in the 1940’s and written up in national magazines, it remains a showplace.
We shared a common backyard that contained a long clothesline for all to use and expanses of soft grass. The neighbors set up long aluminum tables end to end in the backyard and each family had its own grill. Ours was a dinky thing we received as a free gift from the now defunct Bayside Federal Bank for opening up an account. It was just large enough, though, to cook a few hot dogs and burgers for my brother and me and our parents. Those big Weber grills hadn’t yet been invented.
One of our neighbors, the guy we always suspected was in the Mafia, had the best grill. It was about a yard in diameter on a fancy stand and he cooked Italian sausage. We always wondered what truck it fell off.
Another neighbor sounded like that old actor Peter Lorre and just as sinister. When he asked for another hot dog you could always imagine the next thing he’d say was, “or I’ll kill you.” Turns out he was very mild mannered. He just sounded like an assassin.
After eating we’d invariably start tossing around a football, which, in turn, always seemed to knock someone’s clean underwear drying on the clothesline. That action sparked the owner of the drying underwear to stick their head out their back window overlooking the yard and shout things that directed all of us to burn in a very warm deep, underground place. This only sparked us to start aiming for other items drying on the line and if you could dump a fitted sheet you won the admiration of all, and the raising ire of the the sheet’s owner who would call the cops on us only to be told, “sorry, but we’ve got four cases of wet socks ahead of you.”
Now the fireworks. Our dads would score some firecrackers from the docks in lower Manhattan and we’d pretty much shoot them off with no incident, although it was always entertaining to slip a few lit ones through someone’s mail slot.
The worst case was when the brother of one of our friends was on leave from the Navy. He thought it would be cool to wrap up some .22 caliber bullets in an envelope, stuff it in a drainpipe, light it up and run like hell. Guess what? Bullets are faster than idiotic Navy guys on leave. The dumb guy spent the rest of the Fourth, and a good deal of the 5th through 8th in the hospital healing from his awesome stunt.
At least he didn’t shoot down anyone’s drying BVDs.
The Vend-O-Vacillator
Are you a “vend-o-vacillator?” You know who you are and you know if you’ve encountered one. I know I did today.
Here’s how it went down. You’re rushing from your desk to grab a quick afternoon snack to give you enough oooph to get to quitting time. You know that speedball of a Coke and a Twix bar will do the trick. You build up a head of steam towards the vending machine but mere inches from paydirt a lumbering co-worker who began his journey hours ahead of you waddles his butt to the finish line a moment before you.
While you know exactly what you want, the Waddler plans to make this his afternoon activity. First he presses his sweaty nose up against the glass to get a better look at the choices. He will examine each one, from the Raisinets to the yogurt-coated trail mix to the Snickers and Kit Kat bars.
Aha! His right hand approaches the numbered and lettered buttons that will deliver the goods but not until he counts out every penny he’s been saving since yesterday’s bivouac to snackland. You imagine a choice has been made and your turn will arrive but oh, cruel fate, this vend-o-vacillator has second thoughts about the honey roasted pig’s knuckle jerky. He removes his fleshy fingers from the keyboard and once again ponders which cellophane-wrapped comestible will satisfy his urge.
He suddenly notices a new offering which sparks another round of in-de-snack-cision. It’s raspberry-coated Slim Jims with guacamole dip. It seems like just the thing to both fill his stomach and slather on the middle age acne that now decorates his man boobs.
Shuddering with excitement his left hand quickly dives into his pocket, scooping out a pile of silver. He nervously picks out the correct complement of coins and slams them into the slot. When the message light finally invites him to “make your selection” his right hand takes over but it is uncontrollably shaking. E143, E143 he says aloud. He must press the individual keys with the letter E, then 1,4 and 3. Done correctly the silver spiral will rotate, freeing his quarry and dropping it to the space he will enter with his hands and retrieve it.
But, oh no. Instead of ecstasy, the vend-o-vacillator’s face is contorted in pain and disappointment. In his excitement he did NOT enter E143, but rather, E144. The difference was as large as that between a rose and ragweed, American Idol and talent, Donald Trump and sanity. There, at the bottom of the vending machine lay the utter dregs of vending, the lowest of the low, no one’s first choice…sugarless Spam.
Famished and defeated the vend-o-vacillator refused to surrender, even as I begged to just quickly get my Twix and be off. With his last 60 cents and dwindling lucidity he settled for a bag of salted peanuts. Common….salted…peanuts. He sullenly removed them from the machine, sat down and just stared at the unwanted snack asking himself so everyone could hear, “should I have chosen the cinnamon almonds?” Because the vend-o-vacillator’s mind never rests.
With Dad, It All Added Up…Eventually
Do you know what it’s like being the son of an engineer and being crappy at math? My poor father would slog home to Queens from Manhattan, enduring a 90 minute or more commute by bus and subway after working a 10 or 11 hour day only to be greeted with those heartwarming words from my mother, “Mac! Edward needs help with his math homework!”
Let me put this into perspective. Helping me with my math homework was roughly as pleasant as receiving a massage with a backhoe.
But this is what fathers do. I’d patiently wait for him to eat his dinner at 8 p.m. knowing what was to come. Here was a man who could figure logarithms in his head while watching a ballgame and I couldn’t decipher those ghastly word problems that merely asked when the train and car would collide on the Long Island Railroad tracks.
Dog tired from his endless day, my father, at times, grew impatient with my total lack of quantitative abilities, while my mother apologized that I had apparently inherited her gene for that deficiency.
By the time 10 o’clock rolled around and we were both exhausted out of frustration, and in my case, total shame, my father somehow figured out what small phrase of instruction would light my dim bulb brain and allow me to find the solutions.
Oh sure, sometimes voices were raised, and there were tears, but my father never gave up. He wouldn’t let me hand in an incomplete assignment or one with wrong answers.
I’m sure I never had the chance to properly apologize for putting him through that ordeal, but much later in life, when I started producing newscasts and backtiming required the use of math, he would ask me how I could possibly manage. I’d joke, “math? Oh, that’s easy.!” He knew better. With a broad smile and that knowing look only a dad could have he’d ask, “who you bullshitting?” A dad knows. He deserved a medal.
The World’s in its Cups
World Cup, Stanley Cup, the world’s in its cups right now over cups. Fans are thirsty for members of their favorite teams to hoist a cup, kiss a cup, march with or skate with a cup. A teams spends an entire season, and in the case of soccer, a wait of four years, of competing, conditioning, traveling, eating crappy meals, sleeping in lumpy hotel beds, enduring injuries and unending scrutiny from fans and reporters…for a cup.
The World Cup makes no sense because the award for being best at a sport that forbids the use of hands features hands holding up the world. Yellow card!
The Grey Cup is awarded to the top Canadian Football League team. While it’s called the Grey CUP, the cup part is tiny compared to pedestal on which it sits that looks like a cross between an eggplant and a Dalek. No offense, eh?
Since I’m a lifelong hockey fan and pathetic player, the cup closest to me is the Stanley Cup, the National Hockey League’s top tchochke.
It’s been called the most coveted trophy in sports…by three guys sipping their triple-triples in a Tim Hortons. It’s not really a cup at all. It’s a big silver bowl sitting on top of metal bands inscribed with the names of the members of the teams who won Lord Stanley’s vessel.
Dare I commit hockey heresy in pointing out the Stanley Cup has a very close resemblance to the apparatus used to drain old, gunky oil from an automobile. Yet, no one hoists, hugs or kisses the Stanley Cup’s doppelganger. 
Indeed, this alleged hallowed hunk of silver is abused more than prepositions in a high school English class. It’s been peed in, pooped in, licked, and who knows what else. 
Personally, whenever I hear about the Stanley Cup, I only think of Stanley Perlman. He was a kid in my second grade class with braces, curly blond hair and black rimmed glasses. He whispered to me one day, “Eddie, if you look in your father’s night stand you’ll find Playboy magazines.” I looked. I scored! Yes! At no time, however, did I hug, kiss, lick or pee on Stanley Perlman. However, he did move away shortly after that. But all these years, and centerfolds later, I lift my cup to Stanley….Perlman.
My Fitbit and I: Our first fight
I’m having an issue with my Fitbit and we’re going to have to sit down and talk about it. To be blunt, I think we’re screwing with each other. Yesterday I didn’t walk much but played the drums for a half-hour. When I checked the Fitbit app it said I had walked 8,000 steps and was active for 35 minutes. This made me feel good because I knew I had only actually walked about 7 steps but fooled the thing into believing I had walked a mile and was involved in hardcore exercise because hitting the bass drum and high-hat pedals mimics footsteps. When you add flailing your arms hitting the drums and cymbals that can fool the Fitbit into thinking you’re doing lunges or simply acting out the death scene in Hamlet.
Today was payback. I went kayaking in the Huron River and to make it just that much more difficult we started upstream against a pretty decent current. There’s a lot of activity involved aside from simply paddling. You have to put the racks on the car, load the boats, tie them down, then untie them when you get to the water, unload them and drag the things to the river. We go up the river a few miles then down the river a few miles and do the whole loading/unloading mishagos. I check the Fitbit app and a stupid grin is forming on its dashboard. Ha! It shows only 200 steps and six freakin’ minutes of activity! The daily goal is 10,000 steps and 30 minutes of activity and I’m pretty sure I bagged that before lunch. There’s a message from Fitbit. I call it up. I’m not pleased. The Fitbit has taken a fit. “Fuck with me, will you, fat boy? I’m on to your drummer boy deception and we’re at war. Just watch what I do with your heart rate! I’ll have you on nitro in a week!”
“I have no idea of which you speak,” I reply. “There was no deception. I was simply making music and you were too stupid to discern the difference between percussion and push ups.”
“You call it music,” it spat back. “For me it was an exercise in restraint as you were a quarter-beat behind 90 percent of the time. You can’t blame me for being confused..and disappointed. Buddy Rich, you’re not.”
“Who are you to judge, rubber boy?” I rebutted. “Perhaps I was simply adjusting the time signature to match my personal interpretation of the piece, a la Neil Peart, the drummer in Rush.”
“Give me a break,” the Fitbit derided me. “Your syncopation was more like constipation. You never quite got it out right.”
Obviously we were at a loggerhead and I’m debating musical theory with strip of rubber, plastic and semiconductors.
I then decided to take the Gene Krupa defense arguing he was the first drummer to steal some of the spotlight from the front players thereby turning the drummer from just a timekeeper to a showcased member of the band.
“So you’re telling me your play for face time explains your blatant attempt to fool me into recording your billious banging as a serious musical exercise? Please…I was manufactured at night in an Asian sweatshop, but not last night!”
Tired of this useless argument I calmly removed it from my wrist, attached it to the washing machine’s agitator, tossed in a load and set it on “heavily soiled cycle.” I’m guessing by Tuesday my little mischievous fitness friend will have recorded about a million steps and 100 hours of activity and its little rubber tongue will be hanging out of that cheap plastic wristband.
I expect a sincere apology and 50,000 free steps after which I will stare it down with the message, “you can kiss my apps.”
A Hill(ary) in the Hand vs. A Third Round with Bush
Political handicappers and other hacks are predicting the 2016 Presidential election will come down to Clinton vs. Bush. This gives rise to the possibility a second Clinton and third Bush in the White House and the first time an ex-President’s spouse will have become the nation’s Chief Executive.
Let’s take those scenarios one at a time.
Third Bush in the White House. Would be proof the voters have adopted a diet heavy in milquetoast and political jams. It would also be disturbing that the name the leader of the free world prefers to go by, Jeb, is an acronym for his actual name, 
(John Ellis Bush) which could spark a rush of likewise naming newborn babies during his administration giving way to a generation of kids named Inc., Ltd., and SNAFU. That’s a dealbreaker for me.
Ex-President’s spouse as current President. I have no obvious objection to this, but it does make me think of the former Los Angeles Rams NFL team.
Georgia Frontierre inherited ownership of the team when her husband died and moved it twice: first from the LA Coliseum to Anaheim. Not her fault. Her late husband made that deal. Then she moved the team all the way to St. Louis.
I would not be in favor of moving the United States of America to St. Louis and would ask journalists to make that an issue at every campaign stop.
One also wonders what an ex-President does when his or her spouse is busy doing their former job. A little bit of research reveals the most successful strategy is resisting the urge to insert the phrase “well, I’ll tell you what I would have done,” when asked for an opinion about the current officeholder’s latest move. Not that the Clintons sleep together anyway, but this would cause connubial cloture.
None of this, however, has a single thing to do with Clinton’s qualifications to be POTUS, even if she does have to block out time on her calendar to throw hard objects at the First Bubba.
A President Acronym Bush, however, would have no such distractions since his family has shown its members are quite adept at holding high office while perfecting the art of the benign. Finish off Sadaam during Gulfwar 1? Naah..great set up for a Gulfwar 2. Do the right thing for victims of Hurricane Katrina? Naaah…let Brownie mishandle it.
There’s a long way to go before this thing is decided but it’s clear at this moment a tough political battle will ensue and you know, if the second time is the charm for Hillary Clinton it won’t be because she emailed it in.
Little House in the Subdivision: Celebrating 23 Years in the Pulte Trailer Park
We’re celebrating, sort of, 23 years in our house today. It’s remarkable for a couple of reasons. One, earlier in our lives we moved an average of every two to three years chasing one job or another or picking up and leaving Central New York for Arizona to earn our graduate degrees, then to Atlanta when CNN called and to Michigan when CNN called 8 years later and told us to move up there to head the bureau. Second, and most significantly, it’s a home built by Pulte in 1978 and it remains standing. The fact that there are no walls perpendicular to the ceilings or floors just adds to its “charm.” It also means we needed to have every door in the place custom built. In fact when the folks from our favorite door company come over to measure they generally leave with deep marks on their heads from scratching them so aggressively.
When we moved into the place in 1992 we didn’t have much choice. To make sure our son would be admitted to the autistic program at the nearby elementary school we had a one-square mile area from which to choose a home.
We looked at several houses within that territory including one that apparently included a copulating couple in one of the guest bedrooms, since that’s what we discovered when the real estate agent invited us to open the door to “check out the closets.” The couple paid us no mind and we appreciated the closet space. But the house just wasn’t right for us.
One day, while I was about to shoot an interview in Cleveland with the CEO of a healthcare provide my pager went off with my home number. I excused myself and called my wife who apologized for the interruption but she’d found a winner that had all the features we required. When I finished the call I sheepishly turned to the CEO and deadpanned, “oh, sorry. We found a house.” He was a decent guy and warmly congratulated us but he was more interested in my watch, a gold Citizen my kids had bought me for Father’s Day a year before. He had thought it was a Rolex and even laughed when I told him I intended to fly to Mexico soon to pick one up from a vendor in Nogales.
My son and daughter were born in Decatur, GA, but grew up in our two-story Pulte colonial enclosure. We had the wooden swing set and rope ladder out back along with a sandbox I built. The two willows were both thankfully struck by lightening and had to be removed. The previous owners had installed a chain link dog run the size of a Manhattan studio apartment. We turned it into a vegetable garden and harvested peas, beans, mini pumpkins, squash and radishes that looked like they suffered from leprosy. Truth is, I only hung onto the dog run because the first day we moved in a neighbor came up to me right away and asked if we were going to have a dog. If not, could we please get rid of the ugly dog run which he could see from his patio. That immediately told me I needed to keep it, and I did, for 10 years. The neighbor moved.
Part of the basement still has the 1970’s-era faux oak paneling and a drop ceiling that drops a little every year.
It’s not the biggest, nor the smallest house but it’s comfortable and the thought of moving all the stuff we’ve accumulated over the years isn’t very appetizing.
We talk of retirement but to where? From our house it’s 10 minutes to the nearest lake, 25 minutes to the neighborhood ski hill, five minutes from the township hiking trail and moments from our favorite stores and restaurants.
I don’t know how much longer we’ll live here, but if it turns out it’s forever, I’m going to seriously doubt Pulte built it.
I Didn’t Visit Ferguson
Heading east on I-70 from St. Louis-Lambert Field it was a five-minute drive to my exit. As I approached the ramp there was a sign that read “Historic Ferguson, 1 Mile.” The arrow pointed north. My destination, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, was south. We took note of it and continued to the university where we were speaking the next day. The three of us went about our business preparing for our presentation then lapsed into a short conversation about whether to take the short detour to Ferguson. Afterall, two of us were former broadcast journalists and the lure of a location so much in the news has a strong pull.
We allowed our curiosity to simmer for the evening but the thought of seeing the city firsthand gnawed at us, but still, not enough to add a quick visit to our already packed itinerary. The plan was to give the presentation, spend a little time with the students afterwards then run to the airport for the return to Detroit. Sightseeing wasn’t part of the plan. But then things changed.
Events at the conference moved along quickly and we found ourselves with some extra time. An earlier flight back to Detroit was full so all we had was time. There were two ways to get to the airport from the school. Retrace our route which took us to that sign pointing to Ferguson, or around the southern perimeter of the college, circumventing the route to the infamous town.
The conversation was short. The decision, easy. Ferguson is not a tourist attraction. We would not be out-of-town voyeurs doing a drive-by assessment of a town with complicated issues. What would we learn by buzzing past locations seen so many times on the news, but not getting out and spending time speaking with people. Would they even want to speak with us–some PR people from a big corporation who once made our living asking such questions and writing the stories and simply wanted to be close to the big story once again?
In the name of dark, cynical newsroom humor, we used to crack, “yeah, we steal their image and take them out of context.” Still the idealistic Baby Boomer, my instincts told me to just leave it alone. Don’t be “that guy” treating a troubled burg as a place to kill time and an excuse to tell others, “I was there, ” in this era of “checking in” every place we check out. Driving through on a 5 minute detour to the airport isn’t “being there,” None of us have “been there.” Only those who live there can say that.
Indeed, understanding the complicated issues surrounding Ferguson, requires reflections, extensive reading, research. Going the extra mile, doesn’t not necessarily mean simply driving it.
A Fan Loyalty’s Statute of Limitations
There will be no conversation in my house tonight. There will be no conviviality. There will be only conflict…and deathly stares, possibly combined with smug looks of superiority. The husband and wife will set in separate chairs, watching the same hockey game, but seeing it quite differently. The husband calls it “the Rangers game.” The wife calls it “the Red Wings game.” The husband, I, am from New York. The New York Rangers of the 1960s and 70s spent the season in furnished apartments in the sprawling apartment complex in Queens where I lived. It exists today. It’s called Glen Oaks Village. The Rangers were part of my childhood. Boom Boom Geoffrion lived next door to my aunt and uncle and slammed the walls, screaming bad words in French when he returned to the apartment after a loss. Andy Bathgate swung his kids on the swings in the playground of our grade school, P.S. 186. We ran into the Rangers in the Silver Moon diner, and if we paid a buck, we could watch them practice at Skateland, a mile away. Rod Gilbert and Jean Ratelle and Reggie Fleming and Vic Hatfield waited for us afterwards and signed autographs. Ed Giacomin would put a cigar in the mouth hole of his goalie mask and dare his teammates to shoot it out. For $1.50 and our high school ID card we could get tickets to see the Rangers in the old Madison Square Garden. We lived for Marv Alpert to yell “Shot! Score!” The Rangers were life.
But life took me away from the Rangers when my wife and I moved across the country to Tucson, Arizona in 1978. The Coyotes were years from howling in Phoenix or Glendale, or wherever they are now. The only hockey was a pathetic minor league team called the Tucson Rustlers. We lost track of the NHL.
When I was hired by CNN in late 1981 I was excited to move to Atlanta, only to find out the Flames flamed out and moved to Calgary.
In 1989 I was transferred to Detroit to take over the bureau and we were reunited with the NHL. I could lustily root for the Rangers again when they invaded Joe Louis Arena. But over the past 26 years I’ve also become a loyal Red Wings fan and even attended a Red Wings fantasy camp playing alongside Chris Osgood and Hall of Famer Ted Lindsay.
How can you root for both the Red Wings and the Rangers? When does the team loyalty statute of limitations run out. How long do you have to be away from your hometown before you can’t root for your hometown team anymore?
I contend you never have to stop. Yes, I’m also a Yankees fan, but when the Tigers faced the Yanks in the playoffs a couple of years ago, I decided it was the Tigers turn to win my loyalty in hopes our town would see its first World Series victory since 1984. Another Yankee fan called me a traitor and said I could never go back. But it got me thinking about letting go. I’ve now lived in Detroit longer than I’ve lived anywhere. Must I give up my childhood loyalties in favor of teams representing the town where I’ve spent the most time? I don’t think so. I have specific reasons for rooting for my teams. I wish Detroit’s teams the best of luck. The teams that represent my adopted city. But I remain loyal to the teams that represent the first time I attended Yankee Stadium with my dad and brother, saw Roger Maris hit two of his 61 homers in ’61, attended my first NFL game with my brother and saw Joe Namath as the last man between the opponent and end zone take him down, even on gimpy knees. I remain loyal to the team that exposed me to Walt Frazier and Willis Reed even though they are, today, a pathetic shadow of past glory.
It’s OK. We will be sportsman and sports lady like watching the hockey game tonight. I will cheer if the Rangers score…but quietly smile when the Red Wings do too. My wife won’t say a word…unless of course, the Rangers get smoked. Then we’ll have a problem.
edLINES 