Men vs. Boys

Facebook is rife with annoying, nauseating platitudes and self-affirmations, much of them having little more in substance than the 1970s-era "HANG IN THERE" poster of a kitten hanging by its paws.

Sometimes I can't help but mock such posts with distorted lines out of "If You Give A Moose a Muffin." "If you give a moose a muffin, he's going to want some jam and a self-help book to go with that ..."

But something a friend posted today demanded attention. It pointed out the differences between men and adult-age "boys."

I've lately come to the ugly realization, through a lot of conversation and sociological analysis, that the world is too full of dysfunction, selfishness, neglect and abuse. Too often at the root of it all are boys who should act like men.
Crappy dads just might be society's No. 1 problem. I know of two marriages in which the dads' raging alcoholism (A liter of vodka to start the day? Really?) gave the wives no choice but to get out. I know of two others in which the dads have nothing to do with their children other than writing a monthly support check. A good friend told me that home-wrecking infidelity runs rampant within her church congregation, and the adulters all stand there acting like solid Christians on Sunday mornings. The manager of a local hotel noted that prominent members of this community have gotten rooms for use with someone other than their spouses.

There are horror stories about women, too, of course, but this blog post is not about them. This post is about men and what I saw on Facebook today.
It's a small list of difference between men and boys, and here they are:

"Here's to all the REAL men out there ... "
* Boys play house; men build homes.
* Boys shack up; men get married.
* Boys make babies; men raise children.
* A boy won't raise his own children; but a man will raise his and someone else's.
* Boys invent excuses for failure; men produce strategies for success.
* Boys look for somebody to take care of them; men look for someone to take care of.
* Boys seek popularity; men earn respect by knowing how to give it.
* Boys quit and walk away when things get hard; men will promise to love you through it all.

So are you a man or a boy? A Vietnam veteran once told me that the only way to survive an ambush is to fight your way through it, and the same can be said for facing the salvos of adversity that life hurls our way. How that adversity is handled not only distinguishes a man from a boy but defines character. A man's character also can be defined by how he treats those who have little or nothing in the way of something to offer him.

More real men and more character in this world might go a long way toward breaking this pansy, self-centered, "LOOK AT ME" society's cycle of broken homes and broken hearts.

Toaster Toast

The date that the old toaster oven fell into my possession is unclear, as is when the old battleaxe was created.
But I had the thing at least 15 years, spanning a variety of eras in life and producing countless tuna melts, pop tarts and toasted sandwiches.
The British invented the manual toaster in 1893, according to http://www.scribd.com. The United States joined the toaster arms race in 1909.
My beloved toaster oven originally belonged to my maternal grandmother, and if I had to guess, I'd say it was from the early 1970s. The oven survived seven of my residential moves involving five cities over the years, during which time the appliance gained a certain element of character.
Once the children were born, the oven saw heavy usage, toasting up pop tarts and other breakfast goodies, heating up biscuits and cooking garlic toast.
It's deteriorating state resulted in it becoming a kind of joke as well as a sentimental piece of history. My grandmother would have been proud to have seen how much workload the oven took on during the raising of my sons.
The oven even became a prop in a prank Christmas card, whose heinousness hopefully will never see daylight.
Alas, the toaster earlier this year finally was replaced with a shiny new state-of-the-art model. I stuck it in the camper for usage in its not-so-golden years in the great outdoors.
I pulled it out during a recent camping trip with the boys, and it looked even more horrible than I remember. I guess sometimes that you can get so used to something that its flaws and shortcomings become less apparent. Back at the house, I decided to give it a good scrubbing in hopes of salvation.
However, upon closer examination, the task not only looked insurmountable, but the darn thing just looked dangerous to use.
So with heavy heart, I conceded defeat and grudgingly tossed the thing into the garbage can.
It's easy to get blinded by even the most simple of sentimental things. And then again, too often we take too many things for granted.
The bottom line is that life presents a never-ending series of various things that we embrace and eventually have to let go.

The One About The Horned Toad

I was 9 years old when the series of great adventures with Dad began. He was heavily into building and shooting muzzleloaders, and the first adventure was to Brady, located near the exact center of Texas and home to the state muzzleloader championship.

I remember how I excited I was for the trip, which was in June 1972. (I also remember summer 1972 as a great one in my boyhood for some reason.) I fell asleep in the car somewhere on the east side of Austin. It was a time when young kids rode in the front seat, hardly anyone wore seat belts, cars got about eight miles to the gallon and a lot of people just tossed their trash out of their car windows.

When I awoke, we were well west of Austin, and the Hill Country landscape caught me by surprise. Lots of limestone and cactus. A fox scampered across the road right in front of the car. I remember tasty barbecue sandwiches at some rustic place.

Suddenly, Dad pulled over the car, got out, pulled off his cowboy hat and began stalking something on the shoulder. He caught whatever it was, brought it back to the car and handed it to me. It was a horned toad.

Over the course of the next few days, that horned toad was my companion. He would just cling to my shirt. I kept him in a Folger's coffee can. Not knowing what horned toads ate, I just fed him lettuce and tomatoes.

By day, Dad and I shot muzzleloaders, and by night we sat around campfires as geezers fired up guitars, fiddles and their creaky old voices. It was a world of Texas characters, the kind that humanity just doesn't make anymore.

Sadly, the horned toad died. Regardless of whether it starved or baked to death in the Folger's can, I knew it was my fault. I learned a great lesson about keeping the wild things where they belong. We held a tearful roadside funeral for him on the way back to Houston.

Anytime my boys, 8 and 9, capture some wild thing in the yard, like a lizard or a toad, and want to keep it, I remind them of the one about the horned toad. Passing along knowledge is part of this new chapter. They have reached the age of the great adventures with Dad, and my goal is to make the most of it. From sporting events to camping to just eating hot dogs and watching the Texas Rangers, I know that these are the times that they will remember most.

And if nothing else, perhaps one particular lesson I learned long ago and passed on to my boys will save some poor horned toad from an untimely death.

It's All In The Coats

The collection of a dozen or so coats in the closet these days represents more than various fashions and means of keeping warm.

Hidden in the pockets are personal historical items in the form of event tickets, wedding invitations and funeral programs. One coat has the program for my father's funeral in January 2007, while another has the program for my mom's funeral in September 2008.

Mixed in are a variety of receipts and even silly things such as tiny bottles of soap for blowing bubbles to send off a new bride and groom. A tuxedo's pockets hold flyers from formal events, while a blue-jean jacket's pockets preserve items from more down-to-Earth affairs.

Creating pocket museums in coats has been going on since college in the early 1980s. Coats have come and gone, as well as the myriad items stashed away in their pockets.

Three years ago this month, I interviewed for the Tyler Morning Telegraph business editor position. During a time of industry turmoil, I badly wanted out of corporate journalism and to land in the kind of indepenent, family-run operation I'd experienced and enjoyed in Georgetown and Killeen so many years ago.

It was love at first sight for this wonderful Tyler community, and every day here and at the newspaper validates the reasons for the scenery change.

The suit I wore for the interview in late October 2008 was a bit tight around the midsection, and the suit has sat unworn in the closet ever since.

Until today.

Having lost about 20 pounds in the last month through diet and exercise, I put on the suit this morning to gleefully discover a perfect fit, far more comfortable than it was three years ago. I'll be wearing it tonight for a community event.

A quick pocket check uncovered the receipt for the hotel where I stayed the night before the Tyler Morning Telegraph interview. And, like it was for the community, it equally was love at first sight for this company. A simple receipt brought me back to that moment in time, a life-change symbol almost as powerful as the programs for my deceased father and mother.

More historical pocket treasures await in the coat pockets of a long-discarded other suit that remains fashionable and has been dragged around for years in the hope that I will slim down enough to wear it again.

Maybe some day, many years from now, a program for my sons' weddings will find their way into that coat pocket. And I'll already have the decades-old bubbles on hand to send them off into their new life chapters.

The Geocache Kids Chalk Up A Big Win

The idea of using a GPS device to find boxes hidden in state parks caught fire in the hearts of my boys as well as myself past year.

Texas Parks and Wildlife last year launched the first Texas Geocache Challenge, in which two groups of state parks were used as a pilot to see if the event would gain popularity.

Tyler just happened to be in the epicenter of one of those groups, and Tyler State Park was participating, so we marched up there and, using a Geocache iPhone app, managed to find the box.

I'll explain more in a second, but first a look at this geocache thing. There is a subculture of folks out there dedicated to planting and finding a geocache, which basically is a fancy word for a container hidden somewhere and requiring the use of a GPS decide to find the given coordinates. Some are big boxes, like with the state challenge, while others could be large enough for only a small log to be inserted.

They are all around us and could be hidden in almost anything. There is one by Calder Elementary School hidden in a lamppost, for example. Many geocachers have handles and log their finds online. Here is a link to the official site: http://www.geocaching.com/

Back to last year. After the Tyler State Park score, we decided to see if we could find others in the region. My wife, Amy, came along for the find out at Purtis Creek State Park.

Each state-challenge box contains a unique hole punch to use on the log sheet. It also contains the answer to a log sheet question corresponding to that particular state park. The hole punches and completed questions are there so state officials can verify whether a geocacher indeed found the boxes. You also write your name in the box's log book. The first 25 people to submit a completed log sheet to the state got a commemorative coin and a certificate. Everyone else who submitted a completed log got a certificate. Another aspect of geocaching is trading trinkets. People leave behind things like plastic soldiers, and if you take something, you leave something. I've left everything from Buffalo Blonde (my band) CDs to a Cattle Barons T-shirt. Usually the prizes are not that grand.

Our quest last year ended at Daingerfield State Park north of Longview. The Chevy Blazer, towing a camper, broke down halfway there. Weeks later, the boys and I decided to try again, and the Blazer broke down in the park entrance. We tried our best to find the geocache while Amy drove up to retrieve us, but after an extensive search, we could not find it. I suspected someone moved it to keep others from getting into the Top 25.

Since then, Amy gave me a serious GPS device to use. The state this year expanded the challenge to include several regions statewide, with 14 state parks participating in the Northeast Texas region, spanning from north of Sulphur Springs to Crockett and Mexia all the way up to Atlanta near Texarkana. That's a big region.

With no aspirations of being among the Top 25 first to find, the boys and I set out June 26, the day after the challenge started, to grab the Tyler State Park geocache. It took us 15 minutes to get near the geocache, but finding it proved difficult. I still relaid more on the iPhone app than the GPS, with which I was not quite familiar yet. My oldest son, Curt, 9, lost morale and started whining incessantly. I thought about giving up, but then I sat him down and said, "We can do this. The geocache is here. We just have to look hard for it. We can't give up." So we started looking again, and there, in the crook of a fallen tree, we found it. I learned my lesson about the unreliability of the iPhone app.

That sparked geocache fever.

A week later, my youngest son, Luke, 7, and I drove out to Martin Creek Lake State Park and nailed that geocache in minutes. I had become more familier with the GPS device and figured out how to get within 20 feet of the box. Two days later, the whole family toodled out to Purtis Creek, which required a long hike. Amy found the box before anyone else.

Geocache fever grew.

With sights set on completing the challenge and getting a certificate, the boys and I set out Saturday to score four geocaches in one day. The trip took us far north to Lake Bob Sandlin, two Cooper Lake State Park boxes and then Lake Tawakoni. As we found one box after another, it occurred to me that none of the boxes had more than a dozen visits. That meant the Top 25 was more than within reach.

Geochache fever soared.

We decided to score four more Sunday. That odyssey took us far south, to Mission Tejas State Park west of Alto, Fort Boggy near Fairfield, Fort Parker only 40 miles east of Waco and then back to Fairfield State Park. With each find, we got better and better at geocaching. There was a sense of determination in the car, and nary a complaint about the sometimes tough hikes, poison ivy, bugs and 100-plus temperatures.

Along the way, something else dawned on me. Many of the geocachers before us had remarked that they had like nine down and two to go, or had gone beyond the halfway point to 11. I'd thought we had to get all 14, and then I vaguely remembered something I'd read on the state website about this challenge.

On Tuesday, I contacted Texas Parks and Wildlife about the rules and was delighted to learn that geocachers had to get only 11 out of 14 in the Northeast Texas region. I grabbed our log, filled out the remaining paperwork and had the package in the mail to Texas Parks and Wildlife within an hour.

We're pretty much guaranteed an unexpected Top 25 finish, perhaps even a Top 5 finish, perhaps even No. 1, with this challenge. We hiked, learned about the environment, got some history lessons, did some father-son bonding and saw some spectacular scenery. Each state park is a wonder unto itself.

But most of all, we learned that the fruits of never quitting can be the best reward of all.



http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/spdest/activities/outdoor_recreation/geocache/index.phtml

This never gets old

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZa7hU6tP_s

Indy car racing rocks

I took the boys Saturday to the Indy car race at Texas Motor Freeway. There were 73,000 people there, although it's hard to know that because the seating area stretches for like a half mile.
It was a relatively upscale crowd compared to what I’ve heard about NASCAR fans, with the females often flashing people all over the place and lots of overall redneck behavior. I don’t think I’d want to subject the kids to that. (Even though I saw a lot of that as a kid at 1970s-era Texas chili cookoffs!)
Those NASCAR events draw like 250,000 people, and it practically takes days to get in and out of the parking lot. Plus, you wind up parking literally miles away from the track. So I think I’ll pass on that and maybe hit the Indy race again next year. What was great is that they divided it into two races, with the same drivers. They just switched up poll positions. It all counted toward points and standings on the Indy circuit, kind of like NASCAR does. Danica Patrick and all that were there.
The first race was over in an hour. That was plenty, and we were out of there and swimming in the hotel pool by the time the second race started. I imagine it took awhile for people to get out of there. Their cars go WAY FASTER than NASCAR vehicles.
NASCAR cars are capable of going about 215 but usually travel below 200 in a race. The Indy cars AVERAGED around 212 during this particular race, and they go so fast that you can hardly pick out the number on the car as it zooms by. The sound is indescribable and just gets into your bones.
Most people wear earplugs for protection, but unlike a lot of other really loud, eardrum-damaging things for which you use earplugs, you kind of want to listen to the race at full volume because it’s such an adrenaline rush to do so.