Wall Drug

Pre-Election Rant-A-Day 3: The Wrong Kind of Better

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Blogger’s Note: I’ve had a terribly long and curmudgeonly blog post brewing in my head for months, and no time to write it. So I’ve settled on the “Rant-A-Day” format. The first Pre-Election Rant-A-Day is here. Number two is here. To recap: “It’s All Good” (aka “Go Along to Get Along”) kills democracy, and you can’t legislate happiness. Okay. Where are we today?

“[It’s] The Economy, Stupid.”
— James Carville

These rants began to take shape in my head a few months ago or so, after I posted a status to my Facebook page that got people talking. From August 11 at 8:31 a.m.: Jim Thorp wonders: If parents today feel as though, for the first time, their children may not have a better life than they had — maybe we’ve been seeking the wrong sort of “better” all along?”

What is this better we’ve been after? In my day-job, I write a great deal about economic growth and quality of life and human capital, and to a point, I believe we need to turn the economy around, lift folks out of poverty, and generally make life better for everyone. I mean, it sounds good. It makes sense. So why does my heart rebel?

Maybe it’s because, deep down, I agree with this guy (any excuse to use this clip; I picked this version on this site because the site was obscenity-free). In case you choose not to watch a very funny video clip (or in case they pull it at some point), permit me to quote: “When I read things like, ‘The foundations of capitalism are shattering,’ I’m like, maybe we need that, maybe we need some time where we’re walking around with a donkey with clanging on the sides…because everything is amazing right now, and nobody’s happy.”

We could use some perspective. We could count a blessing or two, and be content.

I’ve talked with my parents about their childhoods, and I know I am a generation removed from poverty. I’ve talked with friends who can’t find work — I know that edge is closer than we think. I also know my solidly middle-class five-figure salary puts me in the top quarter of earners in the U.S., and way ahead of most of the rest of the world. I know people making 10 times what I make, raising half as many kids, who look at me and shake their heads: poor stiff. I also know how comfortable our existence is. We’ve got too many bills, but we’re paying them. I’m in debt to my ears, for a modest house, yes, that has lost much of its value — but also for a million little things I used to think we needed so my kids could have a so-called better life. I know that if my family finances collapse because of reckless spending, it’s my own fault, and I know with each minivan load of stuff that goes to the church garage sale, or friends with new babies, or Goodwill, our lives improve, if for no other reason than we’re letting go. Even the kids are happier. They don’t miss it.

I remember when I got accepted to Yale — what a burden it was at first, to think that thousands of other students were trying to get in, and I applied almost on a dare, and got in. I didn’t even know if I wanted to go — I’d never thought seriously about it — and now I had the golden ticket. Leave Remus, Michigan, for a school of presidents.

I was scared.

I remember my dad pulling me aside after a day or so, and saying, “I just want you to know, you don’t have to go to Yale if you don’t want to. You don’t have to go to college at all. If you decide you want to stay here and work in the shop, that’s fine with me. Whatever you do, I just want you to be happy.”

Sure he wanted a better life for me, but that wasn’t measured in dollars or degrees. He had already given me a better life by being home for dinner, pulling me out of school to take me hunting and fishing, insisting that I work hard and well and contribute to the family, not drinking or smoking, and teaching me to say I love you (and even to cry like a man, on occasion). He sacrificed for his family. He gave me more than he got as a kid, but it wasn’t more stuff. It was more of himself.

My fellow freshmen at Yale thought I was nuts when I said I wanted to be a high-school biology teacher. They rolled their eyes when I shrugged and said I came East for an education, not a job. (Hear that? That’s the sound of a squeaking halo.) They were incredulous when I came back from Wall Drug engaged.

We used to want these things: to serve others, to better ourselves, to love and be loved. Financial independence used to mean “owe nothing to any man,” as St. Paul said his letter to the Romans; now it means a strong credit score and purchasing power.

On the radio yesterday, a prospective voter wondered aloud why his legislative candidates were obsessing over which president, Bush or Obama, was to blame for the economy, while Americans are dying in two wars. Where in this economic engine (and myriad other car analogies) do we, as people, live and move and have our being?

It’s not the economy. It never was. The economic collapse is a symptom of a world so suffering-averse that it would rather sell out its children than sacrifice its lifestyle.

We vote our pocketbooks and consume ourselves.

Top-Heavy

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

They say a child’s head grows to approximately 80 percent of it’s full size during the first year of life. If this is true, I must’ve cast a shadow like a Tootsie Pop as a child. There was a period as a baby during which I couldn’t hold up my head — try as they might, my folks couldn’t keep it off my shoulder. they would prop it up, and slowly, slowly, it would drop back down.

Developmental problem? Yeah. Too much head for my neck.

When I tried out for the high-school freshman football team in 1988, I weighed 125 pounds soaking wet, and only one helmet was left in the equipment room that would fit my head: an ancient, battered monstrosity with a lineman’s face mask that extended downward to protect a player’s throat, as well. It sat so far back on my head that I looked through the crossbars. The next fall we all got Air Helmets, with inflatable rubber bladders that allowed you to custom-fit them to your head. I received an extra-large helmet — and no air for the bladders.

I have a seriously large head. Not the biggest in the world. But probably the biggest you’ve seen …

It wasn’t until I took a summer job at Wall Drug after my second year of college that I understand the magnitude of the problem above my shoulders. I worked in the boot department, and occasionally would drift into the hat and western wear area to flirt with this gal, Jodi, who worked there. Her colleague, Cindy, tried to fit me for a hat one afternoon, and discovered there was only one hat in the place that fit me: a silver belly derby, size 8 long oval.

Let’s break that down:

  • Silver belly is kind of a pale ghost gray or off-white. My friend Jinglebob says real cowboy hats can be any color, as long as they’re black or silver belly.
  • A derby is, well, something like this. About what you’d expect a greenhorn Yalie to wear out West …
  • Size 8 is big. Darn big. According to The Hat Site, the average adult male human head is about a 7 1/4, which is a circumference of about 22 3/4 inches or 58 cm. My head is a little more that 25 inches, or 64 cm, around. This makes it, in The Hat Site’s estimation, “Probably the largest head size you will ever find …”
  • “Long oval” means I put the “egg” in “egghead.” Look at me from the front (now that I have, um, filled out in my thirties) and my head looks like a relatively normal grown man’s head. Look at me from the side, and it looks like a shaggy watermelon.

Size 8 long oval. This explains, with data, why they called me Warrior Dome during football season (claiming that we could suspend my helmet over the field in inclement weather and play beneath it) and simply Hed in the off season (which actually became my cartoonist alias for awhile in our underground student newspaper, Smoke Signals).

It also explains why, years later, when Bren, Gabe, and I decided to go to a Yankees game, I had to special-order a Yankees cap — and why it fits comfortably on my head, but has since stretched itself shapeless, front to back. It explains why the top item on my Christmas list last year was essentially a $30 stocking cap — the first I’ve found that would fit my head without stretching so thin that the wind whistled through it to chill my ears.

And it explains why, at a St. Paul Saints game a couple weeks back, I bought a cap for a team I had yet to see play ball. See, the Saints carry size 8 ball caps on site, and by some miracle of design, they shape themselves perfectly to my head, unlike the premium-priced New Era caps produced for Major League Baseball teams. For the first time since grade school, I have a cap that holds its shape (and doesn’t look like a yarmulke) on my head. The color’s nice; the logo’s classy; the tickets are cheap; and the games, kid friendly. I’m a Saints fan now. Sometimes a cap earns team loyalty, and not vice versa.

Summer Vacation, Day 27: Where the Heck is Gabe’s Watch, and What the Heck is a Slushie?

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

We left Cowboy Bob’s mid-morning and made our way to Wall. Drove past Hubba’s House in downtown Elm Springs, snaked down through the Cheyenne River brakes north of Wasta – ever since my first trip to the Dennis Ranch, that’s among my favorite stretches of South Dakota – and rolled into Wall, where we collected roughly 20 new states’ license plates (and a couple of provinces) in the Wall Drug parking lot.

We bummed around the world-famous drug store long enough for Gabe to realize he left his nice wristwatch in the restroom an hour or more earlier. I was guessing he left it at the sink, and reminded him that it’s water-resistant, so he can leave it on when he washes.

Nope, he took it off and set it on top of the toilet paper dispenser while he was in the stall. “Why?” I asked.

He thought a moment or three. “I don’t know,” he said.

The watch wasn’t at the lost-and-found, and Gabe was fighting off tears admirably. We were about to leave when I thought, If I were an honest tourist and found that watch, I wouldn’t know where the lost-and-found was. I’d turn it in at the closest counter.

We went to the Western art shop and told the cashier what we were looking for. She said she thought they had it across the hall in the Country Store. Sure enough, there it sat behind the fudge counter. Gabe was so excited he snatched it from the hand of the young Polish gal at the cash register and nearly forgot his thank you – she was teasing him a bit, as though she had a watch but perhaps not his watch. Anyway, to remind him of his manners, I pointed out that her nametag said she was from Poland, and asked him how she he thank her. He was beaming at his watch and couldn’t remember.

“Dziekuje,” I told her.*

“Oh! Prosze!” she said.**

It was 98 degrees when we crossed the Badlands. We ate supper at a drive-in burger joint in Rapid City, and tried to explain to Trevor what a slushie is. We compared it to ice and juice, snowcones, whatever we could think of, but nothing was clicking. Finally Trevvy hit upon something that showed he hadn’t heard a word we had said. “Ooooooh!” he said. “Just like when you flush a toilet!”

Yes, my son. We are having Flushies for dessert. On second thought, let’s have floats.***

Now we’re at Grandma and Grandpa Venjohns’ place. It’s late. Sweet dreams!

* * * * *

* Pronouced “jeen-KOO-ya” – Polish for Thank you.
** Pronounced “PRO-sha” – Polish for both Please and You’re welcome.
*** Come to think of it, in this context, floats sound disgusting, too.

A Spot of Fiction: Church-Going

/ J. Thorp / 6 Comments

Blogger’s Note: I started this story some time ago, then forgot about it. Just found it again tonight. I’ve loved Jodi’s home state since the first summer I spent in Wall, but whether this story could be worth something, I dunno. Jinglebob? Anyone? I don’t know where it’s headed for sure, but is it worth pursuing?

We hadn’t been married more than a few months when the old man died. I don’t say “the old man” disparagingly — the whole family called him that, with a note of respect, while he was alive. Jenny’s grandfather had been a small, quietly pious man, the son of German Catholic immigrants — not the sort of man you picture taming the broad expanses of the western Great Plains, but, more often than not, exactly the sort you find.

Arnold Schraeder was no cowboy — he herded his cattle with a grain bucket and a stick, not a horse and a rope. The boy Arnold caught bullheads in the crick that snaked through the east pasture, and snared jackrabbits in the swale north of the little three-room house his father had built from the only construction material in abundance east of the Missouri River breaks — sod. As a young man, he cut and turned that same thick sod with steel single-bottom plow behind two massive, plodding oxen, shirtless and shoeless, in his father’s old breaches too long for his short legs and too wide for his slight frame. A set of narrow suspenders kept them up, and his mother laughed and called him “a strapping young fellow.” She conversed like a native speaker in both English and German, and could sing in Latin. His father spoke English like an Indian, and knew nearly as many words in Lakota. Herman Schraeder was reticent, gruff and loving in his way — which was to give presents whenever he could. Hard candy, a harmonica, a tortoise-shell comb, dark chocolates — he was clever with what little money they had, and had a knack for getting things even in those remote surroundings.

Herman and Susanna missed church only in the very worst winter weather — when the snow blew in too deep for the cart, they walked the two miles. St. Joseph the Worker stood atop a windy hill to the west of the Schraeder place: eight short pews beneath a tiny whitewashed steeple, with a small cast iron cross above the altar and hard wooden kneelers. The family had its regular pew and its kneelers bore the marks of Herman’s faith — two shallow impressions worn smooth and polished white by prayerful knees. The wood, like the church, provided the old farmer with what he expected — humility, grace and some small measure of forgiveness. He believed he deserved nothing more.

Herman was buried four years when the local population jumped to ten families, then a dozen. The diocese authorized the construction of a new church, and Arnold (who, between morning and evening chores, swung his hammer with the rest of the men in the parish) brought the well-worn kneeler home and affixed it to the foot of his bed. The next winter, when he knelt in his skivvies to offer thank to God for his young bride, she knelt beside him, took his hand and smiled.

“It’s as Tobia and Sarah did,” she said. “‘They said together, ‘Amen, amen,” and went to bed for the night.’”

He squeezed her hand without looking away from the crucifix above the bed. She took the squeeze as affirmation, and said her own prayer of thanks for a man who knew even the lesser books of the Bible, chapter and verse. She said the Lord’s Prayer, watching him from the corner of her eye. He prayed with such urgency!

In the coming weeks Lillian Schraeder learned two things about her new husband’s faith: that although he was church-going man, he was no scholar of scripture — and that she had been his first, too.

* * * * *

Lilly was twelve years gone when Arnold passed. That second church was gone, too, or rather, converted to secular use as the favored watering hole of the younger generation of farmhands. The Mission Bar served as sanctuary and confessional for young men and women too broke to leave town and too bored to stay home. That it was somewhat seedier than the other local dives is perhaps not that surprising — considering that the owner had no qualms about converting a house of worship into a bar …

Constant Rebirth

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

One of my first and formative lessons at Yale was the utter ineffectiveness of religious appeals to those who do not share your faith. As a result, I tend not to lead with my faith when making introductions or arguments. Increasingly, however, I’m realizing that A) much of what I enjoy talking and writing about involves religion or spirituality, and B) people should understand where I come from so they can disregard me with reason!

I grew up the son of a fallen-away Catholic mother and an … atheist? agnostic? closet Buddhist? … father. I made my First Communion somewhere around fifth grade, during a church-going streak of a couple years, as I recall – but my spiritual upbringing was shaped as much by Dad and his Little Grandma, a remarkable, diminutive woman who raised him up right – on the Bible, if not in the Church. To this day, he’s one of the most Christian people I know, despite the fact that he sees no evidence or need for a God, per se – benevolent or otherwise.

So I arrived at Yale in 1992 a country kid of relatively modest means and an old-fashioned upbringing not tied tightly to any particular faith tradition. I roomed with six other guys whose views and values were as different from mine as our hometowns – rural Remus, Michigan, versus Cape Cod and Walpole, Mass.; New York; Philadelphia; Chicago; L.A.

They grilled me over my views on abortion, abstinence, drinking, you name it. I believe I surprised them on two counts: my strict adherence to these values despite being nearly half a country from home, and the fact that I didn’t reference the Bible or God in my arguments.

I didn’t because A) from a religious perspective, I wasn’t sure what I believed, and B) the non-religious majority in the room didn’t buy faith-based arguments and dismantled our one strongly Catholic suitemate simply by asking why. (He quickly discovered that although he believed precisely what the Church taught, he had no idea why they taught it.) Instead, I pursued these discussions as dialectic, working out the truth of my values through their constant challenges. In the meantime, that first semester I took a class in physical anthropology, focusing on human evolution, and quickly fell in love.

I majored in anthropology and studied human evolution for four years. Halfway through, I took a summer job at Wall Drug (yeah, that Wall Drug – the one with all the billboards) and fell in love again, this time with a cradle Catholic. And I learned a couple things in the process.

First, I learned that, on the whole, scholars who study human evolution are generally great critical thinkers, quick-witted and skeptical, and they generally lack a family life. (They seemed like a terribly smart and lonely lot.)

Secondly, I found out that a cradle Catholic and a skeptic-in-training make a pretty mean team in the search for Truth.

Jodi’s quiet faith, and a wonderfully honest and human priest named William Zink, brought me back into the church (not to mention my mother, who, like me, is now a lector). I’m Catholic and proud to be so, although to this day I sometimes have doubts and misgivings about the Church, its teachings, and my own faith* – and I’m not at all convinced that we’ve cornered the market on the Kingdom of Heaven.** But I know what I get from the faith tradition I practice, and it’s too good to give up and go looking elsewhere.

Besides, where would I look?

*****

vigil

we watch for signs
signals too dim to light our way
stop us dead.
we wait – for what?
an invitation is ours
each day; each moment
we are born again
to do more good
to do better
god is god the everpresent
he leaves not
each dawn an easter
each day a rebirth

j. thorp
27 sept 01

*****

I’m never sure how I feel about that poem as creative writing, but when I wrote those words, they seemed like a revelation.

Life is a constant series of rebirths – perhaps the most dramatic in my life is described in an essay called “Thomas and Me,” which can be downloaded here.

It’s long; ask Jodi if I can ever tell a short story. Feel free to share your thoughts.

——

* Father Bill told me that even priests have their doubts and not to let mine get in the way of experiencing the fullness of life in the Church. He also assured me that the head on my shoulders is God-given, and that, as long as I continue to seek, I’ll be alright.

** You’ll see on my short list of favorite books “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell and “Living Buddha Living Christ” by Thich Nhat Hanh. I don’t necessarily buy everything these fellows are selling either, but they make for compelling reading. Jesus said, “I am the Way,” right? I believe there are a lot of non-Christian people walking that Way, narrow or not!