Gary and the Rutabaga Garden

A young boy named Gary lived near the airport, and from the steps on his back porch he could always see the planes coming and going.  When the planes flew overhead, the wind would pick up and Gary's brown curly hair would flap in the wind and fly in front of his eyes.  To keep his eyes on the plane, Gary liked to wear a yellow headband with his name written across the front.

On most days he saw the big 747s and 777s blazing thick white trails through the open skies.  If he was lucky, Gary would spot his favorite plane, the Twin Otter, flying low over the nearby corn fields.  He always said that if he could fly any plane, it would be the Twin Otter.  He liked how it could quickly ascend and descend, and with his hands Gary would imitate the Twin Otter diving and swooping like birds snatching fish from the sea.

One day Gary was in his usual perch, gazing up at the sky when something strange caught his eye.  As a 747 passed overhead, Gary tilted his head back to see the belly of the plane and he could have sworn he saw something attached to the belly of that plane.  Not wheels or stripes or landing gear or anything he normally saw but some THING, a thing with long hairy arms outstretched, clinging to the bottom of the plane.  That thing, whatever it was, had something red on its back, a little red bag or maybe a cape like the kind that superheroes wore. Gary really could not be sure what it was but he needed to tell someone right away.

"MOM!" yelled Gary, running from the porch through the back door and into the kitchen. 

Gary's mom was there in the kitchen slicing and dicing rutabagas she had picked from the family garden.  She stopped her slicing immediately when she saw Gary rush through the door, his brown curls bouncing along above his yellow headband.  

"What is it Gary?  What'd you see out there?" she asked.

"I saw a . . . a .... " Gary was breathing hard.  He slowed down to catch his breath.  Finally he said, "A thing!  A thing on the bottom of the plane, Mom!"  

"What do you mean 'a thing' You mean the wheels, Gary?"  

"No, not the wheels!  Something with arms and legs and a red backpack or a cape, Mom!"

"Well that sounds very strange, Gary," his mom said as she sat down at the kitchen table.  "Very strange indeed."  


But Gary's mom had no doubt that Gary was telling the truth as Gary rarely told lies or even exaggerated.  And Gary's mom had another reason to believe Gary:  just a few days earlier she had seen the very same thing while she was out planting rutabagas in the vegetable garden.  And that was not the first time she had seen it.  In fact, every day that she tended to her rutabagas she noticed that suspicious hairy creature on the bottom of a big plane.  She thought it was odd to see those long hairy arms and legs stretched across the belly of the plane but she had managed to convince herself that she had only imagined it.  Now, she knew it must be real.  They had both seen it.  

By now Gary had caught his breath and was looking up at his mom, waiting for her to snap out of the long spell of silence.  

Finally she spoke.  "Gary," she said, "grab three of the freshest rutabagas from the garden, the purplest ones you can find, and follow me. We've got to find that THING."  

Inspecting the City

On November 5th, 1975, Columbus residents awoke to the news that Mayor Tom Moody was reelected for a second term with a landslide 63% of the vote.  'Moody Wins Easily' was the front-page headline of the Columbus Dispatch.  The same day, a less heralded but equally moody Columbus resident emerged onto the local scene, making news in small print on page A-18 of the city's birth statistics:  "Mr. & Mrs. Jay Iams, 795 Clarington Ct, Boy."   For years I had quietly blamed my dad for my incurable moodiness, but this discovery seems to have exonerated him; I was born under the reign of Moody, and therefore I am.

The former mayor, who passed away last October, is remembered less for his moodiness than his progressive vision for the city during his nine years as the driver of the 'Bus.  Two-thirds of the current skyline reportedly went up under his watch, including the Huntington Center, One Nationwide Plaza, and the AEP building.  Moody also used his political savvy to set aside land for construction of Route 315 which, in an apparent tribute to Moody's legacy, is still under construction 34 years later.

Though history appears to have been kind to Moody's contributions as a mayor, he is remembered more, um, endearingly, for an incident that occurred during his final term in office.  He was out for a late night drive, perhaps after having a few too many drinks, and was involved in a car accident that is less noteworthy than the explanation he provided when asked why he was driving around at that hour:  "I was inspecting the city," he said at the time.

Given the opportunity to drive back in time with Mayor Moody, seat-belts fastened of course, what would Columbus have looked like?

City landmarks such as the Nationwide Plaza were under construction, and the Rhodes State Office Tower had been completed the year before, which at 692 feet surpassed the LeVeque tower as the tallest building in Columbus.  The old Ohio Penetentiary, the source of childhood nightmares for any kid unlucky enough to get a glimpse of it through a car window, was still nine years from its ultimate demise. The ghost of Sam Sheppard, the Ohio doctor who allegedly murdered his wife and whose story was the basis for the movie The Fugitive, may have still been roaming the Pen as Mayor Moody drove by.

On that day in 1975, when Moody's mandate to inspect the city was renewed, the citizens of Columbus were dealing with some of the same problems and questions as today's residents.  A sluggish economy led to a spirited national debate over the role of the government in getting things back on track.  One column in the November 5th edition of The Dispatch supported a recent speech by William Simon, then the secretary of the treasury, debunking the idea that the government can "identify, solve and somehow pay for all of the problems of society . . . a path that will inevitably lead to socialism in the United States."

Over at the Horseshoe, Buckeye fans were seeking redemption in the 1975 season after losing the January 1st Rose Bowl to USC by a score of 18-17.  Ohio State, with returning Heisman trophy winner Archie Griffin in the backfield, was ranked #1 in the nation at the time and with a scrappy Illinois team coming to town the following weekend,  the pressure was on coach Woody Hayes to have the team playing up to preseason expectations.  Sound familiar?

Non sports fans in Columbus had the option of heading over to the Southern Theatre to see Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby star in "Let's Do It Again" while those searching for a little more spice could have opted for the Busty Russell Amateur Night over at the New Garden Burlesque at 5th and High. The burlesque house opened daily at 10am, meaning there were probably at least a handful of patrons checking out Busty when I was born at 2pm that day. The Garden Theatre still stands today, though it appears to be searching for a new owner or a wrecking ball.

Learning about Mayor Moody - and the city he inspected -  inspired me to go out and inspect the city for myself.  My city-wide inspection began last night with a trip to the Newport Music Hall to see Mat Kearney, an up-and-coming singer and songwriter who wears a fedora.  Between songs Kearney noted that the Newport is America's "Longest Continually Running Rock Club."  Though I couldn't confirm this claim, I can say that the smell in the bathroom alone was all the evidence that I needed:  the Newport has been around for a while, at least since Moody was reelected.

My friend Chris went along for the inspection.  As we walked into the Newport we worried aloud whether we'd be the only relics from the 1970's attending this concert, and then we spent nearly the entire opening act looking at every single person in our field of view and categorizing each person as 'older than us' or 'younger than us.'  It was satisfying to find an equal number of people in each category as this allowed us to feel neither young nor old, just somewhere in the very gray and confusing middle.  We also wondered if other people might be playing the same game; was someone out there giving us the once over and adding us to their own statistical survey? Who else was here on a city inspection?  We tucked in our bellies and maintained our cool.

Of course, a city inspection is not without its dangers.  Sometimes when night falls and beer spills, the wild animals come out to hunt. (See:  Cougars)

At one point, we had to avert our eyes when we noticed a pack of local Cougars belting out the lyrics of one of Kearney's songs.  They were high-fiving each other, too. Somehow it made us feel less cool to be howling the same lyrics that Cougars might enjoy, and we started to worry that if we sang too loud the Cougars would hear the sounds of fresh meat and pounce on us from the shadows of a nearby pillar.

But tonight, there would be no attack, no car accident, no stirring on the streets of Columbus.  We mouthed the words to Kearney's songs, keeping one eye on the stage and the other on a swivel.  Moody would've been proud of the guy who was born on his re-election day; on this night, the city was at peace under my watch.

The Day Ohio Went Dry

Saturday’s big game between Ohio State and Southern Cal gave me a front-row seat to the wondrous effects of alcohol on the human mind. Little else can explain the sight of a young man with a painted face muscle his way through a crowd to confront an elderly couple wearing USC colors and yell “You suuuuuuuuuuck!”

It makes you wonder: what would life be like without alcohol? Once or twice I’ve stopped drinking for a few months for different reasons – medication, general self-disgust – and found that I sleep better, lose weight, and save money. But when I'm face to face with the golden glow of a frosty draft or the velvety, seductive tones of a glass of red wine, I always give up trying to give up alcohol.

If it’s hard to imagine giving up drinking for a month or two, it’s even more difficult to fathom that there was once a time in American history where the government tried to make everyone give up drinking. Forever! These were the days of the Anti-Saloon League and Prohibition. Given all of the recent arm-wrestling over health care in this country, can you believe that the government once worked together long enough – it took almost a year to get the required votes – to pass a constitutional amendment banning the “manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors”? You really have to care about public health to get that one passed.

Unfortunately, the idea proved to be so terrible, or at the very least impractical, that it became the first amendment of the constitution to be wiped off the books when it was repealed by the 21st amendment, aka the That Wasn’t Such a Great Idea After All Amendment.

As I watched thousands of Ohioans get drunk on Saturday, I wondered whether they knew of Ohio’s deep roots in the nation’s effort to ban alcohol at the turn of the century. The national Anti-Saloon League had grown from the efforts and organizational strategies of Anti-Salooners in Ohio, more specifically of Howard H. Russell, a lawyer and divinity student in Oberlin in the 1880’s. Russell and others had concerns about the emerging influence of brewers nationwide who had figured out how to produce, transport, and refrigerate their product in large quantities. Middle-class workers began to drink the cheap, readily available grog during their lunch hours, sometimes having the beer delivered in pails by local school-children.

One thing that Ohio taught other states leading the charge to prohibition was the value of holding ‘local-option’ elections which enabled voters to decide, on a town-by-town level, whether the town should be wet or dry. This grassroots campaign to rid the nation of sweet, sweet beer was driven in part by the efforts, publications, and propaganda of the American Issue Publishing Company based right here in Westerville. Eventually American Issue became the most widely circulated publisher of temperance literature, with over 300,000 copies of its journal published in 1907.

The literature printed and distributed from Westerville included newspapers, fliers, magazines, and cartoons promoting the voice of the temperance movement and highlighting all of the wretches of drinking. One section of American Issue published fictional, cautionary tales for young people tempted to drink. The best one I read was called “Pasture Gossip,” about two horses named Gypsy and Barney hanging out in the pasture swapping stories about the local drunks and the saloon keepers conspiring to keep them drunk. In the end, they conclude that it’s much better to be a horse, where at least your mind is safe from the poisonous ale plaguing the townspeople.

American Issue also composed songs to be sung at prohibition rallies throughout Ohio and the rest of the country. The chorus of one song called “The World Is Going Dry” goes like this:

We’ll work for prohibition
Wherever men are found;
We’ll fight the liquor traffic
In earth’s remotest bound;

Come join the mighty army,
Help raise the battle cry!
Rally now with us,
Be up and ready,
We’ll make the whole world dry!

As a means to stir up support for a cause, this song was not all that different from the one I heard sung by 100,000 people Saturday night at Ohio Stadium, where the world was not going dry:

And when we win the game,
We’ll buy a keg of booze,
And we’ll drink to old O-hi-o
Till we wobble in our shoes!

The origin of this song dates back to, you guessed it, the early 1900’s around the time that the brewers were gaining strength and the teetotalers began to fight back with songs of their own. When the eighteenth amendment was ratified in 1919 banning the production and sale of alcohol, the words of the Ohio State song – which was actually a patchwork of other songs from other schools, including Michigan of all places – were changed to:

And when we win the game,
I’ll tell you what we’ll do
We will yell for old O-hi-o
Till we wobble in our shoes!

On Saturday night in 2009, exactly one hundred years after American Issue was wallpapering the state of Ohio with anti-alcohol admonitions, Buckeye nation confirmed that the warnings have fallen on deaf ears as 100,000 Ohioans drank, yelled, and, when the game was over, wobbled their way out of the ‘Shoe.

Just Say Yes

One of the advantages of living in a place like Korea is the option of being linguistically clueless.  Conversations sometimes involved little more than pretending to understand local taxi drivers and convenience store cashiers.  Pretending was easy: I maintained eye contact, occasionally nodding my head and making a short ‘hm’ sound every thirty seconds.  My students used to do this when I would explain Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar.

           

But here in Korea, there’s a tacit agreement:  I’ll pretend to understand you if you pretend to understand me.  You talk for two minutes, then it’s my turn.  All questions must be of the yes/no variety, and should predictably call for a yes answer.  One time a taxi driver had asked me a series of questions over the span of our short drive, to which I dutifully responded yes.  He seemed content with all of my yes’s until one yes left him startled. Whether he had asked if I wanted to turn right or if North Korea should be bombed, the answer clearly should not have been yes. 

            “Yes??!” he said incredulously.

    
     

“Oh, I mean…no!” I corrected myself.

           

“Yes, yes,” he confirmed, smiling, and continued to talk with no further questions.

           

Back in America, I'm finding that the yes/no conversation rules aren't followed.  Here, it's all about making snappy comments to show off our wit.  Though I can't prove this scientifically, this is especially true among men.  Our conversations tend to go like this:

A:  Witty comment

B:   Witty retort

A:  Touche!

B:   (Scurries away before next witty comment)

Nowadays I find myself on the losing end of these verbal jousts. My witty remarks don’t seem to come to me until long after the moment has passed, much like George Costanza’s Jerkstore line.

A few days ago I got a verbal frappacino from the barista at the local Caribou coffee.  I walked in around 9am, well before the first intelligent thought had passed through my head.  The barista had been downing shots of espresso for hours by then.  When he noticed my blue t-shirt adorned with a picture of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home, it was game on.

“Thomas Jefferson! 3rd president of the United States, author of the Declaration of Independence, though he did own more than 500 slaves," he exclaimed.

“Yeah…um.” I responded.  As a graduate of Mr. Jefferson’s university in Virginia, I should’ve had something to add.  I did a little Google search of relevant information in my brain, but it returned zero results.  "Quite a guy," I mustered.

“So what can I get you this morning?”

“Just a coffee?” I ask, wondering if it’s too late for this.

“Big one, small one, fat one, tall one?” the barista rhymed.

“Ummm."  I produced the 'whatever is fine' look.  Though I'm 6'3" I felt much shorter at this point.

“Thomas Jefferson would go with a large,” he concluded.

I let out a single, labored ‘ha’, slowly stepped away from the queue, and immediately wondered why I had left Korea.  Sometimes it's nice to live in a world of complete and total ignorance.

Tis' the season to be irrational

It’s three weeks before Ohio State kicks off against Navy and our season tickets are nowhere to be found. As an unemployed 33-year-old living in my parents’ house, I make myself useful by lurking near the mail slot every day around noon, peering out in anticipation of the postman’s arrival. Sometimes I spot his blue sack ambling down the street, then resist the temptation to walk over and request a peek into his mailbag.

In fact, one set of tickets had already arrived, a pair of faculty tickets in C-deck. But another set, two prized A-deck 50-yard-line tickets, were missing. These tickets had been in our family for as many years as my dad had worked for Ohio State, thirty and counting.

 These were the tickets that allowed me to see Keith Byars rush for 274 yards and five touchdowns in a 1984 game against Illinois, to watch as Eddie George eclipsed that mark by steamrolling the same Illinois team for 314 yards in 1995. Three decades of memories from the Horseshoe were embedded in these tickets; the anticipation of their arrival began in the spring when applications for tickets were sent out. The day of their arrival was looked forward to with as much zeal as Christmas morning.

Today could be the day. When the postman reaches our house, I stay clear of the windows lest he see me and discover what a ticket-stalker I’ve become. I wait for the sound of the mail swooshing down through the chute, then I make my move toward the slot. But the hunt returns no bounty. The magic manila envelope bearing a red-lettered return address never arrives.

Now, two weeks till kickoff and the whole family is starting to sweat. Repeated phone calls to the Ohio State ticket office end in a familiar refrain: The tickets have been mailed out, we’re told, and they’ll be there soon. The trouble is, the tickets were all mailed out a week ago. Friends and fellow Buckeyes have already received their season tickets, which only compounds our fears that ours have been lost.

We begin to assume the worst: our prized tickets have been fumbled, perhaps intercepted at the line of scrimmage. But who? And how? Can they be recovered? Another call to Ohio State answers the latter question: even if our tickets never arrive, they can be reprinted with new barcodes and picked up at will call on game days.
This is very reassuring, but then this thought occurs: the original tickets are still on the loose. Two real Ohio State season tickets, somewhere within I-270. I am no longer a mail stalker – I’m now part of a CSI Columbus investigation.

My sister Sara becomes my co-conspiracy theorist. One afternoon we sit down to hash out the crime and its web of consequences. We agree on a couple of things: the original tickets have definitely been stolen, must be en route to a local ticket broker. Those tickets are officially hot, and, if Stub Hub’s current prices can be trusted, the set of two could fetch as much as $4000 on the open market. For the USC game alone, comparable tickets are going for almost $1500 for the pair. There is a lot of money at stake here, so we follow the money down its dirty trail.

Sara and I imagine this scenario: Someone pays $1500 for tickets to the Ohio State – USC game. An exorbitant price, yes, but maybe it’s a once-in-a-lifetime purchase, an anniversary gift or an extravagant birthday present for a Buckeye fan from someone who really, really loves this Buckeye fan, knows what it means to go to this game. The new owner of the now-voided tickets makes preparations for game-day. A full day of tailgating in the shadow of the ‘Shoe, of reveling in fall’s glory, of hoping aloud that the tickets are worth it, that they’re OSU-Miami worth it and not OSU-Florida worth it. This is the year, the night that we will reverse our fortune.

Night falls and voices rise as fans make their way toward the stadium. The illegitimate ticket-holder arrives at the gates and is told, sorry, you can’t come in, that these tickets, worth so much only minutes ago, are now worth no more than the cardboard they were printed on. A week of game-day dreams vanishes in a poof of scarlet and gray. Somewhere in the deep and dark forest of Craigslist, the seller reclines on a bed of cash.

Sara and I hope this all can be avoided, and we really hope the buyer of the black-market tickets won’t track us down. We consider sending out a blast email to Columbus area ticket vendors, telling them not to buy or sell these tickets; maybe a public announcement in the Dispatch could prevent it all. But we try to be realistic: this will not end well for some unlucky Buckeye fans. It may not end well for us.

It’s five days before Navy and Ohio State take the field. Though our new tickets are guaranteed, I have no leads in our investigation of the lost tickets. The case has stalled. We fear an inevitable confrontation at the seats, maybe with a guy who had too much to drink, got in the stadium somehow, wants to find out who is sitting in the seats he paid for. It won’t be pretty.

Back at home, the phone rings. This could be the break I’ve been waiting for, the one piece of information that will help me crack the case.

“Hi Steve, it’s Mom!” says the cheery voice on the line. She’s always cheery, no reason to think she has a lead.

But there is news, a suggestion for me to check an envelope that has been sitting on her desk for a few weeks now, the one containing the C-deck faculty tickets. Cordless phone in hand, I walk toward the desk, knowing what a discovery of the tickets would mean: the irrational flu has stuck again. I find the envelope, feel its thickness, know immediately that it’s fatter than one set of tickets should be. I reach in, pull out, and unfold not one but two sets of season tickets, all attached in a series of perforated sections.

“They’re here,” I tell my mom, and we both acknowledge how collectively stupid we feel as a family.

Maybe we were stupid for not checking, for letting our minds wander down such a sinister path when the tickets were in our presence all along. But maybe we were just being irrational, as irrational as we all get when football season comes to Columbus.