If It's Free...

Wednesday is free sushi night at Steel, and I know what you're thinking: If they're giving it away, it must be awful.

Wrong. This is first-rate bait. In fact, you nearly have to fight your way into the tiny bar area to get a piece of it, but in the end, it's worth the struggle.

On arrival, the first order of business is to acquire real estate. If you show up past 5 o'clock, it's SRO. Happy hour opens promptly at 5:30 with $5 martinis, and that's when the cavalcade of free food begins, too.

It's been going on every Wednesday for at least a couple of years now, and I do not know how money is made at this. I usually down a good $25 worth of sushi at MSRP, paying only for $10 or so in martinis. There must be 50 people there doing the same. They spill out onto the sidewalk, squatting against the wall and looking to passersby as if the Salvation Army had just gotten a massive donation of Japanese appetizers.

So either there's a tremendous markup on sushi the rest of the time, or we're enjoying some sort of tofu creation that has us all fooled. Regardless, no matter how much we eat, it keeps coming out of the kitchen for a solid two hours.

If you're seated at the bar, the bartenders will fetch plates for you; it runs up the tip. Those of us who want to enjoy the air-conditioning but haven't snagged a seat end up standing and either mooching the corner from a sooner's table or switching off—as Squeeky and I did tonight—one holding drinks while the other feeds both of you from one plate. There's no shame, because we all know why we're here.

Actually obtaining the sushi is whole 'nother job. Getting through the bar to the buffet is a contact sport, so the temptation once you're there is to pile your plate as high as possible. For this we have mastered the sushi pyramid, stacking an assortment of rolls along with the soy-sauce dish, wasabi, and ginger arranged, well, gingerly for the trip back through the elbowing mob. Above all, you do not want to spill. There is no way to look cool with a giant splatter of rice and fish chunks at your feet. It looks like vomit, for one thing. And you look lousy because you didn't even pay for it, and now somebody else is going to have to clean it up for you.

Probably you should just run away at that point.

This evening, Squeeky about swallowed her weight in sushi, so tonight she's on the sofa with her jeans unbuttoned like a fat uncle at Thanksgiving. I'm not feeling so good, myself. It's the first "date" we've had since Little Roo's birth a year ago, so perhaps neither of us remembers how to act when we're free. I'll tape Fred Thompson's moment on Leno and take an Alka-Seltzer. It's been a big day.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Social Values of School

In case you're doubtful about home-schooling because your child(ren) would miss the socialization provided by 30 hours a week in an institutional school, relax. I am the authority you've been looking for.

I attended public school K-12. Here is what I learned:

• Pretty people and smart people are better than the rest.
  
  
  
• Your age determines your grade level. No exceptions. You may only proceed as fast as the slowest student your age.
  
  
• Whatever you learned in Sunday school is null and void.
  
  
• Ostracize anyone who does not conform. This is done most effectively in the cafeteria.
  
  
• The teacher is unrelated to you, especially in the sense of an elder. Nonetheless, you must obey the teacher and accept her every word as truth.
  
  
• Corollary: If you disagree, the teacher must hate you.
  
  
• Talking about God is impolite.
  
  
• If you observe others shunning someone, join in. It's safer.
  
  
• You may want to know more about some subjects, and less about others. Too bad.
  
  
• Stop talking. Stop talking. Stop talking.
  
  
• Bored? If you're pretty or smart (or wish you were), you can always pick on those who aren't as pretty or smart as you.
  
  
• Showing up and staying in place are the most important things you can do. Even if you hate what you're doing.

And, finally, the greatest lesson for me:

• Once you take off that cap-and-gown, nothing anyone said to you in 12 years of school matters anymore.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:31 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The Saint and the Senator

In the past week, we learned that Mother Teresa questioned God's presence, and a U.S. Senator got caught soliciting sex in a public bathroom.

I'm going to borrow a phrase here: "Orthodox Christians are not surprised."

First, the nun.

Her diaries reveal that soon after she answered God's call to begin ministering to the poor in Calcutta, Mother Teresa wondered (in her diary) if God was really with her after all. She continued to express doubts throughout her tenure, even after the world came to admire her.

This made the news because secular types—and even many who purport to be Christians—think that someone up for sainthood shouldn't think such things. They're supposed to be confident in God's presence. Wasn't God, as the bumper sticker says, her co-pilot?

The histories of the saints suggests the opposite.

After Jesus himself interrupted Saul's trip to Damascus, we have no record of any further interdictions. Saul/Paul was on his own after that. He had to keep reminding himself of that moment when God spoke to him, even as people lashed and imprisoned him for doing so. There were no follow-up memos along the way.

And that is the difference between us and the saints. They keep going, while we make excuses for ourselves every time we think God has stepped out.

So it's no surprise that even Mother Teresa questioned her commitment. What makes her a candidate for sainthood is, she stuck to her mission anyway.

Next, our deviant from Idaho.

He was observed behaving the same way police have observed others as they looked for sex in an airport bathroom. They charged him with several counts, and he pleaded guilty to one. Now he's claiming he wasn't really looking for sex in the airport's bathroom.

He is only fooling himself, and probably not effectively.

As a Republican, married man, and father, his acts are supposed to be surprising. But again, not to Orthodox Christians. We may eventually learn that he suffered a poor relationship with his father, or was himself the victim of a molester, and these would explain his behavior today. As for his apparent hypocrisy in publicly embracing the straight-and-narrow, that's just what some people do when they refuse to acknowledge their own broken foundations: They lash out at others' poor appearances. It's easier, and who doesn't choose the easy route whenever possible?

He's still behaving out of bounds, and although I hate to see another (R) drop out of the Senate, he should give up his post now. You don't do your party and your positions a service by leading a double life, any more than a cop should take bribes. There might be redemption in repentance, but so far all he's shown is defiance.

So, were these events not really news? In a sense, no, unless we see them as manifestations of the ordinary. They are reminders of the complexity and profundity of human psyches.

What cracks in our own foundations have we not tried to fix?

Which calling from God have we dismissed lately?

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The Key to Perfect Pitch

Apparently, perfect pitch is a genetic thing.

I don't know my scales well enough to name the note I'm hearing. However, if asked to sing a note from a song I know, or echo one I've just heard, I always nail it. I guess that's "perfect pitch" for someone who's never studied music.

It's always bothered me to hear someone sing off-key. I just want to scream, "CAN YOU NOT HEAR THAT YOU'RE OFF?" until I remember that, No, he can't. It's a gift. Someone once said that people with good pitch actually feel the notes, rather than hear them. That seems right to me, and it explains why off-pitch sounds upset me so deeply.

One experience in life will forever weigh on my record, however.

In my first car, I installed a Pioneer AM-FM-cassette with a Clarion equalizer and four speakers. It was a fine system for its time, about 40 watts per channel. I used it to play tapes I'd recorded from albums, mainly because they sounded better than store-bought, mass-produced cassettes.

The quirk of this particular Pioneer, though, was that cold weather slowed it down. The pitch of the music changed as a result. So even today, if I'm humming a tune that I once played on that old unit, odds are 50-50 I am singing one step low in key.

That could be disastrous if I'm ever onstage, starting a song off vocally before the band joins in.

I'd better figure a workaround before I start my singing career.

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Go, Postal, Go!

I watched our new postman today, attempting to deliver the mail for a good half-hour. It didn't take any special effort on my part; he passed our house six times.

First, he walked up the other side of the street, approached one neighbor's mailbox (we get front-door delivery in Rittenhouse Estates), then had second thoughts and marched out to the curb to check the house number.

That explains how we got the next-door neighbors' mail yesterday. Almost explains, anyway. All our driveways run along the property lines, and the guys who paint the numbers on usually do so when we're away. So we can't supervise and point out that putting the same number on both edges of the driveway leaves room for interpretation.

Even so, yesterday the guy delivered mail to our house intended for the one to the west, and our driveway—also on the west—has only our number on it. So he had no excuse.

This afternoon, once he finally located us, he delivered something he shouldn't have:

 

Upon seeing this, Wolf Dog was nonplussed. I tried explaining to him that, official as he looks in his German Shepherd livery, he ought to be in the favor of the feds, not on their list of suspects. (I suppose the two asterisks represent his canine teeth.)

"Do not deliver this form," it says. I'm thinking the new postman is illiterate, which isn't funny except in an ironic sense.

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Quality is Job 1

I did not come of age driving Fords. We were a Chevrolet family. The first Ford I drove dismayed me, as do the two I own today, and for the same reason.

It's the shifter, or the "gear selector" in owner's-manual language. Every Ford product I've ever operated has a spongy, imprecise shift lever. I can never be sure whether I'm supposed to grasp it underhand or overhand; neither feels right. And most of the time I have to look at the indicator to make sure I've gotten it into the correct gear. I'm usually right, but I still need confirmation.

It's that sort of uncertainty that led to a monstrous lawsuit a few years back by the family of a woman who, thinking she had set her Ford's transmission in park, got out and walked around back to close a gate and ran over herself. I do not regard her as Twit of the Year because I agree with the jury that Fords have wonky shifters.

Weirdly, years after that decision, they still do. The springs are all squishy; the detèntes don't guide strongly; and the hard stop above park feels more like a suggestion.

Would that Ford could swallow some of the pride they boast about and just copy GM's precise, confident mechanism, I'd consider buying a new Ford someday. As it stands, I only bought these cars because they were convenient and inexpensive.

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Out for the Week

I'll be away from computers for several days. I hope you have as good a time as I hope to have.

Live well!

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Flash in the Sky

The Perseid meteor shower came and went like Kohoutek last night. Which is to say, with four to eight eyebeams boring into the sky, we saw nothing but the reflected lights of Plano. I wished for a brightness knob I could turn hard left, or at least a power failure.

The kids had fun arranging deck chairs and sleeping blankets. I guess Squinx figured it's always cold at night where she is sleeping, so why be without heavy bedclothes in the driveway? I tried explaining what 84 degrees felt like, to no avail.

The mosquitoes had the best time of all. When the neighbor's security timer triggered two floodlights, they were sad to see us go.

i want someone to buy me Lileks' Gallery of Regrettable Food, but the remission of coffee-table books in this house will probably continue for several more years. Unless they're board books. Little Roo shows no reverence for publications. They're all projectiles or rugs to him. And one thing I can't stand is to see a book or magazine walked on.

Right now, as the first-time father of my first son, I am tussling with my attitude. Consciously, I know that to be a good father I have to respect him for who he is and whoever God wants him to be. Unconsciously—as suggested by the closing sentence of the last paragraph—I want him to respect the same things I respect.

Foolish, of course, because he may become my opposite. He might love football and have no patience for reading. Or he might decide that accounting is the be-all-end-all of professions, and aspire to nothing else. Tours of European cathedrals with Dad, tracking the subtleties of Western Civilization up close, could be his idea of Hell on earth.

And somehow I have to prepare my subconscious for that, because he'll read me like a ... book. Every father wants to help his son avoid the pitfalls that bedeviled him growing up, and yet those pitfalls will be in different places and take forms no one can predict.

So will the opportunities. I've daydreamed about what I would do if he announced one day before his 18th birthday that he was declining all his college acceptance letters to join the neighbor boy's band. What I would do, that is, after peeling my smoldering brain matter off the ceiling and packing it back into place.

And yet ... at that age I also fantasized about leading a band. How could I deny him the choice?

But what if he sounds like Bob Dylan? Should I be honest? "Son, you have the voice of a macaw undergoing surgery without anesthetic." Then again, if Bob Dylan had been discouraged at just the right time, he'd have taken that civil-service job in Trenton and be retiring to a mid-priced condo in Florida right about now.

So here it comes, the final test of my maturity. Will Rittenhouse rise to it? Stay tuned.

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Home Alone

When the day begins at 81 degrees, you know you're in for it.

Squeeky and the kids ran off shortly after dawn to partake of a library carnival. There's a oxymoron, eh? We had libraries in college that functioned as bedrooms for some (during finals, some of the students would wash up in the lavatories before heading off to class, having spent the night staring at the insides of books), but never a carnival.

After the festivities, they'd be off to a friend's farm to confuse the goats and chickens, leaving me with a good seven hours' work time around the house.

I am amazed, every time, how fast that goes by.

The first order was to finish the big windows. No, I still have not completed that job, if you count trimming and painting as "finished." Weather kept me away for weeks, as the prospect of slogging around in mud outside the house deterred me. Then there was the internment of Dad's ashes, plus a gazillion more pressing matters, and before I knew it two months had slipped by.

So today I dragged out the 1" trim, saw, glue, ladder, scraper, nails, hammer, measuring tape, staple gun, and a little spike thing for driving finish nails, and you can see right there how half an hour evaporated just collecting and dragging stuff out to the workplace. Thing about trim is, it's only when you get down to the fine details of sticking it into place that you find little imperfections that you can't let be. E.g., some of the three layers of paint and caulk slapped up there since 1956 were caked in such a way as to prevent my laying the trim down flat. So a trip back to the garage for scraping tools was in order, plus the time it took to hone everything to a smooth surface. Thank God the glue remaining in the caulking gun from last time hadn't set. I had to cut the trim, spread glue on the back, tack it into place with finish nails, then cross my fingers that the nails held in the mortar between the bricks long enough for the polyurethane stickum to set. As long as a piece didn't plop off onto my hair, I'd be happy.

And it didn't. Wolf Dog kept watch on me through the windows as I worked. Once the corners were all finished out, I painted them with primer and took a break while it dried. Lo and behold, I discovered in the garage a half-dozen eaves vents I had bought but never installed. Screws, too. Well, no excuses: I'd have to use the primer dry-time to finally put these things in.

something happened nine years before i was born, when the builder of this house elected not to ventilate the attic nor install gutters. Perhaps he knew I would have some strange need to perform these tasks. Or, it being a boom time in Dallas, and just cut little corners like this and shaved a few dollars from construction costs. Whatever it was, I hope he's roasting in hell for it, because although I like doing crafty things, there is no fun in buzzing through old plywood over your head with a sabre saw, knowing when the rectangle is finished it's going to shower you with smelly insulation and sawdust. I'd hold an umbrella if I had a third hand. The job cannot be done from above, owing to the low hips on this house, and I was blessed not to have hit a single stud in the process of drilling and sawing. What I didn't do properly was the math.

Attic vents are supposed to go up every eight feet. Somehow I wound up measuring five feet between them. So I ran out of vents after finishing one side of the house. That meant an hour-eating trip to Big Box Home Improvement. As I've noted, it always takes an hour.

I got back in time to finish just as the family rolled in. That meant I would not get to paint over my primer, with the fumes and the sticky and the messy and the Little Roo going straight for the wet stuff, ugh, ugh, ugh.

I called it a workday and packed up my tools. The windows could wait. Heat stroke would not, and my T-shirt had been completely drenched since noon.

squinx is looking forward to the circus tomorrow. I am, too, except for the $15 parking fee. I wonder what that space would cost on a per-square-foot basis, per year, if $15 only covers it for a few hours. I thought I'd paid for the whole new hockey rink/basketball stadium/monster-truck boutique with some taxes I voted against back in 1999. Must be built on rising real estate.

I'll still drop them all off and park the car myself. We're taking a neighbor girl and Little Roo, and in the heat there's no sense baking all of us.

What Squinx seems just as excited about, though, is the Perseid meteor shower tomorrow night. We're granting a special dispensation on bedtime so we can camp out front 'til midnight, or however long we last. We'll see how long a five-year-old can stare at the same patch of sky without nodding off. If only I could train Wolf Dog to bark just as each meteor appears.

saturday night, time to check pbs to see which aging rock group has come back from the dead. Sometimes I leave the sound off to see if I can guess just by looks. It isn't easy. Most are in their '50s or greater, and those have all been highway miles. Tonight, I can't figure out who it is; the hair transplants don't help.

As Kenny Loggins once said, there's no retirement plan for musicians, and they have no other marketable skills. So they keep going, long as they're able, and as long as anyone will listen, or longer. I suppose the same fate awaits all writers. See you Sunday.

more...

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Rittenhouse Redux

There's some horribly sad and mournful song on the radio lately, and it works: Every time I hear it, I want to cry. It puts me in mind of, What would happen if I lost one of my children? My wife? Or all of them? Accidents happen. Even stupid things happen that cost a man everything, like infidelity, alcoholism, unemployment.

I think of Squinx growing up without a father ... or not growing up at all. A friend's sister just lost a five-year-old to cancer. I cannot begin to imagine that, yet it's part of the reality of life and death.

Gotta credit the songwriter, whoever he is. I'm afraid to look him up, frankly because even thinking about the song makes me sad again.

I came home this afternoon to find everybody in bed. Afternoon naps had gotten a late start. I went into Squinx's room, where she was wide awake and playing. I gathered her up in my arms and said, "I love you, and I'm grateful you're my daughter."

Whether she remembers that or not, it needed to be said.

more...

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Tire Straits

The Taurus' tires have reached the point of no repair. I'd plugged them several times—these tires attract nails like giant, rolling magnets—and when I rotated them just after buying the car two years ago, I marveled at their longevity. It appeared they were the originals, dating to the last year Hong Kong was a free country.

Originality is not hard to figure out. Just look at this lug nut.

No deformity on the right shoulder to suggest its having ever been turned counterclockwise. Some UAW guy in Atlanta air-wrenched these nuts into place per factory specs, and no one's touched them since.

But this week I went out for lunch and noticed the car's nose sitting a tad high in the parking lot. I walked around to find the right-rear, which had been shimmying ever since the Houston trip, expired. Upon wrenching it off, I found a bubble in the tread—not safe, not fixable, and not worth risking failure even if the leak was unrelated and could be plugged. So it was off to Tire Rack to study their supply of Kumhos.

Kumho is a Korean-made tire, low-priced yet long-wearing. I had researched them before, when the Explorer's all-terrain tires finally wore me out. Once again, I pawed through the customer reviews, ignoring the idiots who insist they rotated, aligned, and monitored pressures daily but only got 3,500 miles out of their treads. (The need to lash out at one's own stupidity and neglectfulness knows no limit, and customer reviews is the perfect place for it.)

For the size and type I needed, I saw almost all positive reviews, with praise for the tires' silence and slow wear. Those are my top criteria, as snow traction is something we only have bad dreams about in Dallas.

I can order Kumhos for $54 each from Tire Rack, but with freight and installation they will cost about the same as the tire shop wants -- $416, all services included. I appreciate a business that quotes the full price up front. Thursday, I'll drop the car off.

i slept in the spare bedroom last night, owing to a strangely upset stomach that awakened me at odd intervals. I feared that each time I started to nod off, Little Roo would think it was Squeeky offering to feed him, and I'd get zero sleep. So I exiled myself to the futon, rising once for a drink of water and once again to imprison Wolf Dog after he decided to go stand in the backyard and bark, intermittently, at nothing.

The mild stomach-ache continued into today. I ate nothing from 2 p.m. Monday until 8 a.m. Tuesday, when I broke the fast with a plum. Later, I downed a good-sized lunch and immediately regretted it, as the mass sat there holding my ribs apart as if I'd swallowed a football.

I don't feel much at all. Not hungry, not sleepy, not energetic, just neutral, which is distressing, because I need some passion in life. It's as if I've contracted the Whatever virus. And a virus I suspect it is, because body aches and lethargy accompanied the ache. Now I just feel unmotivated. Perhaps the rebound in a day or two will be worth it.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Where Is It, Exactly?

Until reading its name somewhere online this morning, I had forgotten "Alabama" was a state.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:24 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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On Comments

I believe it was Sinatra who said, "You're nobody 'til somebody mocks you."

I've been mocked already. It first happened more than 20 years ago, so I've been somebody for a good while now.

So, in the event this little project attracts trolls in comments, a.k.a. poo-flingin' monkeys, they will be treated the same way as poo-flingin' monkeys at the zoo.

And I won't post another word about them.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 04:36 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Death by E-Mail

Computer viruses have nothing on my latest observation.

After a long-term study of office e-mail, I believe a message by itself can kill people.

Every time one arrives with only a person's name in the Subject line (usually a company employee), that person is already dead. Funeral arrangements will follow.

It's the same pattern: Message pops up, full name in subject line, dude/chick is dead.

I have not yet tested what happens if I send an e-mail with the name of a living person as the subject. Will he die the instant the message is opened? Will it be retroactive, killing him last night?

Some mysteries are better left unsolved.

And if any of you send one to me subbed "Michael Rittenhouse," know that I will not open it, and two can play that game.

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Come Fly With Me

So some astronauts may have flown drunk.

They were going into space, people. Give them a break.

Those ships are on autopilot the whole way. Anything that goes wrong can't be fixed by a passenger—which is what astronauts are during launch and re-entry—so there's little for them to do but maintain the La-Z-Boy position while computers and God make life/death decisions all around them.

If ground ops didn't strap me in with a shot of brandy, that would be my last space mission. And I'd scream the whole way into orbit just to make that point.

Read The Right Stuff if you still don't get it.

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Pastoral Dreams

I've always daydreamed of a living in a house on a little hill with a nearby pond or river, lots of green space, and DSL.
 
OK, I added the broadband spec a few years ago. But the house idea has been with me as long as I can remember.
 
It's not that I'm antisocial. I like my neighbors, at least the ones who don't ply me with multilevel marketing schemes. I just really, really like open green space, where I can see the sunset, or keep some livestock, or plant a garden.
 
I was disabused of that notion this weekend, in the Ozark foothills where my father grew up.
 
Sure, we enjoyed the time we spent playing in the same creek I visited as a kid. The fresh air, solitude, trees—more trees than anyone could count. The tall grass ...
 
Stop right there.
 

 
So, for all my education and accomplishments, professional and personal, I remain a protein source for parasites.

Nearly a week later, I still have no less than a dozen red blotches where these lovely little insect marvels have "injected a digestive enzyme that ruptures the cells" and formed "a sort of straw for sucking the skin cell fluids." I also found six ticks, three of them embedded, and I'm not ashamed to admit I took great pleasure dousing them with hydrogen peroxide before extracting their corpses with a snap.
 
The chiggers, however, are all downside, having already scampered off with a belly full of my skin-cell fluids to escape punishment. The wounds they leave sit dormant until I think about them, when they begin itching again. I scratch around them so as not to aggravate the damage, and it's moments like these that I wish I were a dog and someone would just throw a stick to distract me. Nothing accelerates healing; all I can do is scratch, apply calamine, and wait.
 
Prevention for next time? Here's what the experts have to say:

 
So if I ever do get that house on the hill with the pond and the livestock and the DSL, you can easily pick me out on Google Maps: I'll be traipsing around the property in clown shoes and Hammer pants.
 
And that's another quality-of-life issue denied to me by the suburbs.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 06:38 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Soda Pop Story

The plastic bottles of soda we buy bear the message no refill, and I wonder how much of a mystery that poses to Americans under 30.
 
At Weingarten's, the supermarket of southwest Houston, we'd walk in the front doors right into a cloud of stink more like what you'd expect out back near the trash bins. It radiated from baskets piled full of 32-oz. soda bottles, returned by shoppers for the deposit money. We knew when they hadn't been taken out in a while, because the syrupy-bacteria odor would follow us a good ways into the store.
 
Shoppers returned their bottles for the deposit, a small incentive—maybe $0.05 per bottle, which meant more then than it does now—and I have no idea how Weingarten's kept track of that. Maybe we got a chit from an entry-level employee who had to stand amid the rotting Coke smell eight hours a day. More likely it was an honor system, and you just told the cashier you'd brought your bottles back, and she'd apply the refund to your purchase—or not, if you were buying more soda.
 
Periodically, the bottler's rep would show up and load all the glass into a truck. From there, I guess, it went to some sort of cleaning facility where the bottles were lined up and sorted before refilling.
 
Yes, they refilled the old soda bottles with new soda. And why not? They'd remain serviceable for I-don't-know-how-long, showing up on store shelves in paperboard six-pack carry-cartons, with abrasions all over the etched-on labels.
 
 
sometime in the 1970s, this practice died out. I guess as the science of plastics advanced, there was no need for all that glass to be carted from store to home, back to store, then to bottler, and back to store again. Or maybe they needed the glass to make silicon chips.
 
However, on a 1992 trip to Mexico City, I was reminded that the rest of the world isn't like the U.S.
 
I was urban-hiking up a hill called Chapultepec, which reminds me of the Alamo as a site of noble sacrifice-cum-tourist-trap. My group, which included one Mexico City native, paused at a street vendor's cart while I bought a soda called Boing. Its alien-orange color attracted me. I paid the $.50 or whatever the 12-oz. bottle cost, taking note of its bruised glass and figuring that like everything else in this town, it was just naturally shabby.

I started to rejoin the group, but our native accomplice motioned for me to stop. I turned back toward the vendor, who was coming out from behind his cart in a friendly but determined manner. I looked again at my friend for an explanation.

"You're supposed to drink it here," she said. "He needs the bottle back."

I almost laughed. Yes, that's how slim the margins are in the Third World. You drink the soda, then you give the bottle back. To the same guy you essentially rented it from. So he can get it refilled. And not lose a nickel, which his family needs.

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Flat Is Beautiful

Lately a growing number of former Communist Bloc countries are adopting flat taxes on corporate and personal income.

It's a marvelous principle. In Bill Buckley's famous example, a man who drives his taxi 60 hours a week should not be taxed more punitively than a man who only drives 40 hours a week. Yet, that's exactly what our progressive income tax does. Additional work pays less and less, as it pushes the worker's added income into higher tax brackets.

So the structure dictates you work only as much as you need to. If you work harder, you'll only get penalized.

There are much bigger implications to this. My old boss liked to use the example of a pop star, in his time, Billy Joel.

Let's say Joel is sitting in his Hamptons mansion, counting his millions on the coffee table with his supermodel wife primping in the mirror. She turns to him and says, Hey, that last album did well. Why don't you make another one so we can buy a house in France?

And Joel says, Eh, I dunno. We've got all we need. The royalties from the music I already have out there will support us as long as we live. Besides, additional income will get taxed away at some ungodly rate. We'll end up with less than half of what we really worked for.

She responds with, Pleeeze?

And he says, Nah, I don't like touring anyway. Too much work.

She lets her negligée fall slowly to the floor.

However, Joel doesn't respond because he's looking at the TV just then, where a reporter announces that Congress just lowered the top income-tax rate by two-thirds. Suddenly, the idea of cutting another album sounds a lot more appealing to Billy Joel. He picks up the phone to call his agent.

i know ... who cares if the super-rich get more money under a flat(ter)-tax scheme? But stop and think what Billy Joel's productivity means to his producer; sound engineers; shareholders of his record company; and the T-shirt printers, arena beer salesmen, and parking-lot attendants as he goes on tour to support that new album.

Billy Joel's just a conspicuous example. All across America there are entrepreneurs who love to make money. They may not live lavish lifestyles; in fact, most of them don't. But to them, the challenge in life is to start and operate businesses for profit. Many don't care so much what kind of business; somebody or some group of investors owns every Supercuts, KFC, lawn service, and gas station you patronize. And when income-tax rates fall, they suddenly find the time to start even more businesses, and by the way hire people who otherwise would not have had a job.

The benefits ripple out all over the country. The only thing that slows it down is, as I remember in the late '80s, a shortage of labor as all the available workers get hired.

However, that's a problem we almost never have, because the kind of growth a flat tax would foster will never happen here.

It's not the Democrats, or economic liberals, as some might conclude, although those people will fight such proposals. Simply put, a flat tax won't catch on because of all the people who have a vested interest in keeping the tax code complicated.

It's the accountants.

Think about what a flat tax would do to them. If you could send your tax return in on a post card, why would you pay H&R Block a plug nickel?  Why would any business employ a top accounting firm, and maybe hotshot consultants on top of that, to help it find ways to keep its tax bill down, if the government simply took 10 percent off the top and stopped there?

Now take the next logical step with me: Who are among the top contributors to presidential campaigns?

Yep.

Without the president leading the way, it ain't gonna happen. Top brass at the accounting firms ply him and all the other candidates with cash to make sure they have the loudest voice and the most direct line to the White House if their business is ever threatened. You and I can't compete. And we're unlikely to take to the streets over this.

I wish I knew a way to make the flat tax happen here, because I don't want to have to learn a Slavic language just to live in a country that maximizes prosperity and opportunity.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Dad at Rest

My eldest sister, her grandson, my wife, daughter, and son and I began the weekend at a family reunion in north-central Arkansas. There were so many people to meet that I hadn't met, I almost wanted a seating chart in the form of a family tree, so I could figure out where to begin. I picked the oldest-looking one in the room, figuring I might not get another chance to see him.

I sat down with my father's cousin and told him who I was. As he talked about growing up with Dad, I sensed my grandfather in his every word, gesture, and inflection. Tears rolled out of me, and I just let them go. This wasn't a time for vanity, but for listening. He wanted to say more, I could tell, but like so many old people he seemed troubled that so many of his cohort were passing away of late. I thanked him and got a picture of our three generations.

a few weeks ago i spoke to the current owner of my grandfather's farm about what I wanted to do with Dad's ashes, and he responded with astonishing kindness. He said he'd leave the gates and house unlocked for us, and even mow the field where we planned to gather, so as to make it more passable. I thanked him and promised to report back to him when we were done.

My uncle B. met us at the reunion with his second wife (he lost his first to cancer some years ago). We drove north the most direct way toward the farm, and of course there is no direct way through all those hills. With two hours' drive time to think about what to say, I still had nothing by the time we arrived at the old home site; just a printout of Psalm 90 and the Book of Common Prayer. Those would have to do.

We parked along the road by the creek where we all had played as kids, and I pulled in through the gate the owner had left open for us. Uncle B. and I headed up the hill to look for the old house's remains. The land has changed significantly since my last visit 20 years ago. The woods have reclaimed most of what men had cleared over the last century; trees stand where cattle used to graze, and where gardens were once sowed and harvested. To find where the house stood would have meant slashing through thickets of young growth. We settled on a shady area between the spring and where my uncle could best recall the house had been, and called everyone together.
 
I had read Psalm 90 in church the previous week. Here is the full text. It begins, "You turn men back to dust, saying, 'Return to dust, O sons of men,'" and it seemed appropriate to this occasion. Apparently the Book of Common Prayer's writers thought so, too, because, as I paged through the book for an opening prayer, I found the same psalm in the funeral liturgy.
 
When I opened the box of ashes, Squinx asked to see. I showed her, and told her that dust is all that's left of us here on Earth when we die; our soul goes on to meet God. She's of an age that she accepts truth readily; it's when we grow up that we have difficulties with it. That is probably part of why, at moments like these, it is the adults' voices that break, not the children's.

I put the ashes along the edge of the woods. The land already knew Dad. They're just reunited now.
 
Uncle B. offered some words of remembrance, and of gratitude to see that his late brother lives on in his descendants. Sister led us in "Amazing Grace." B.'s wife, having lost her husband some time ago, lent a comforting presence to the recently aggrieved. We made our way back down to the creek.

As we reached the road, I looked up at the trees standing high over us. There, across the clear sky, a rainbow appeared.

in the creek, i washed the box the ashes had been in. The water ran cold and clear over the same stones we as children had picked over to look for gold, or crawdads, or for a round rock to skip downstream. Squeeky and I gathered all the smooth ones we could find to take home for some patio stones we'll cast later this summer. Great-nephew and Squinx competed to throw as many as they could get their hands on.

 

Uncle B. opened a cooler full of refreshments, and God bless him; I had only thought of our spiritual needs. He told us more stories, of fetching water from the spring, and how his brothers had looked after the farm's previous owner in his last days, for which he had repaid my grandfather with the deed to his property. I needed to visit the old place one more time, knowing full well it would not look as I'd last seen it. I just wanted one more picture to take with me. (This was a house my father had not really known, down the road from the home site where we left his ashes.)

As we got ready to go on up the road, I stuck our rental car in mud. No amount of rocking would free it. (I would later find that the traction control was stopping the drive wheels each time I started to move.) I went back up the hill and disassembled some sort of old wooden fixture I'd seen at the edge of a field. Had Dad himself nailed this together at some point? The boards were just the right length to wedge into the ruts I'd made.

 

Uncle B. stunned us all with his agility, wedging rocks and lumber under the tires, and with his energy in pushing the car while I worked the pedals. Eventually we turned off the traction control and got enough momentum to get out of the ruts. Trial-and-error beats technology: Dad would have been proud.

it is hard to see the house from the road now, through all the growth. Without Granddad to mow the grass and keep the ticks away from the house, we knew we would be in for it later. But I still needed to see the place up-close, so we did.

Walking up the driveway, we passed under the same big walnut tree I remember as a boy. Stone pillars, with broad, cement platforms we used to climb on, still span the old house's front porch. Its wooden planks lead down to a tall, narrow white rock at the south end, which still serves as a step I used to clamber up and down, as it was too steep for me. The carport and most of the barn are gone.

The current owner, true to his word, had left the house unlocked, and we entered to find it rearranged inside. Pictures were hard to take inside, and, honestly, I would rather remember it the way it was. The kitchen and dining room are full of bunks; it's a deer-hunting cabin now, with card tables, chairs, and a couple of appliances. I'm grateful to know that good times are still had here.

I wondered what had happened to the old cars parked way out back. In all the underbrush, all we could find was this one. It startled me, actually, as I was looking in another direction when it appeared at my side.

 

We gave the house one last look and headed back up to the road together. The gravel still makes that familiar crunch when walked or driven on. Otherwise, the place is quiet, as it always was on summer afternoons.

This gate, just off the driveway by the house, always seemed to call me, promising another rolling hill, one after another, off into the distance, to God knows how far. We'll all pass through a gate like that someday, in the hope that we will meet Dad, and so many more.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:10 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Missed Again

Sanders tells me the last one of these I posted has been driving him crazy because I didn't disclose where in Dallas it was. "I know it's out there," he opined, "just not where."

Perhaps we should go on some sort of Cool Hand Luke mission with crowbars.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:26 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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