august 13, 1987

i'd never been an emotional being. i think that was true with most of my generation. parents were children of the depression. raised in a practical fashion. around the home there were no open displays of affection. no hugging. no kissing. certainly no crying.

but it all changed.

i'd had kids before. two daughters. plus one that came already birthed. that was neat. but back in the day the father wasn't really a part of the birthing procedure. we simply hung out in the labor room, foolishly trying to offer up some kind of comfort to the wife as she's agonizing in labor pain. intermittently moaning, groaning, and swearing at us because it's all our fault. but when the actual delivery got close, they'd whisk mother away to what they then called the "delivery room" and send the expectant fathers to the "waiting room" to smoke, swill putrid coffee from a disgusting looking vending machine, and pace nervously.

but that had changed a lot by 1987. the hospital offered what they called the "birthing room". furnished lavishly with a hospital bed, sofa, various medical carts, and one of those tremendously comfortable hospital recliner/mini-bed things. and in the birthing room the father, family members, friends, casual acquaintances, even the homeless, were welcome to drop by and stay for as long as they wished. but what this really meant was that the father, me in this case, actually got to witness the birth.

yeah, we still endured the swearing, offered little comfort, but tried. (by then we'd gone through classes which attempted to turn expectant fathers into quality care givers. doubt it worked well in many cases.) but we were given deserved breaks when other friends and family members would drop by. but in our case, mostly it was hon - the expectant mother, me, the expectant father, and my second daughter, tori - the expectant sister. nice little family unit.

in the months prior to birth we had settled on the fact the new comer would be a boy. we had no scientific evidence. we didn't do the ultra sound thing to be sure. in fact, i wouldn't do that now. i think that ruins some of the thrill. there are those practical folks that will support knowing in advance. i say those folks have no spirit of adventure.

and knowing the child would be male, we'd picked names. as i sit here now i cannot even recall having picked names for a girl. had he been a she we may have been in trouble. but we had determined that our newborn son's name would be michael weldon nix. a decision that would soon have a dramatic impact on me, as weldon was my dad's name. and naming my kid after him was quite an important decision as dad and i had not been best of friends for all my life. but we'd really mended that in the previous few years, and we wanted to honor him with a namesake.

well, as the delivery really got under way i began to realize that this was a much more difficult task than i'd ever imagined. for me. i knew it was tough on mom. but she had doctors attending her. and meds. i had nothing. ok, things, when they really started happening, happened quickly. and there was a lot of birthing going on in that hospital that morning, so somehow they lost sight of giving hon the block or whatever they did. so in truth she suffered through the experience au naturale. but then, so did i.

i found myself growing a little dizzy. light headed. i had to sit. i finally couldn't watch. but tori was truly focused. as was hon. and tori was watching intently and giving me the play by play. and i was trying not to be sick. and then she said "here's the head, dad." and i moaned, perhaps louder than hon.

and in another moment, 11:21 a.m., the doc lifted out a baby. a screaming . . . . baby . . . . boy. and that was the very moment that i turned to an emotional being. there were factors contributing to this. i watched (almost) my baby being born. that's really the most amazing experience a fella can have. add to this the fact that it's a son (baseball, slot cars. we're gonna have some guy fun. no barbies or cabbage patch for this kid.), then top it all off with the fact that i'm naming him after my dad. well, something pent up for a lot of years just broke loose and tears began to flow. i mean sobbing, raging tears. nothing like i've ever experienced before.

then, after composing myself, i felt it would be important to call my parents and share the news. i was incredibly happy. and when you're happy, you wanna share. so i found a bank of pay phones (for you younger folks, these were land-line telephones that you dropped dimes into (dimes were money prior to inflation and now have evolved into the dollar) and got three minutes to talk before some rude operator interrupted you and said "your three minutes are up. hang up or pay up!" anyhow, these were the early "cell phones", no texting allowed.) dropped in a pocket full of dimes, and dialed my parents number.

my niece answered. she was maybe 12 at the time, a bit sassy for her own good. i blew her off and asked her to get her grandma and grampa on the phone. so they picked up. and they obviously were anticipating the precise news i was set to deliver. i got through the "it's a boy" just fine, then when i started to tell them the name, well, i couldn't. the tears welled up again, the sobs returned, and i couldn't speak. here i am, a blithering, bawling idiot standing smack in the middle of a very public hallway with lots of foot traffic, all pointing at me and giggling. i think i finally blurted out the name. comforted only by the sobs i heard from my mom's end of the call. my dad was silent. my niece, ever understanding, was laughing at me.

so the emotion brought out by witnessing the birth, the emotion brought out by telling my folks we named him after my dad, it unleashed a whole awakening in me and i transitioned into a sappy, emotionally driven, blithering idiot.

and today, well, here we go again. i'm not sobbing as i recount these memories. i will confess to having a bit of moisture building up in my eyes. but i'm stalling off the deeper component. maybe later, when we take michael weldon "scooter" nix to dinner for his 23rd birthday . . . nah, i'm in control.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCOOTER BOB!

oh, and denise, i hope you bawled your eyes out when willie gene was born.

the jocks in the family

(memorial day, 2010)

spent a good part of the afternoon going through a box of old pictures and scanning them in to my computer. fun. found turbo's puppy pictures. random shots of some of our trips to the beaches in mexico. rocky point, el golfo. fun times. then found some stuff that i thought maybe i could write about. namely, the athleticism of the nix boys. i'll start with me. (and here's a picture of me in second grade - about the time i started playing baseball in earnest.)




i played little league baseball from the time i was 8 years old, i believe. thru what was then called minor league, then little league, ultimately babe ruth league - which sort of overlapped high school baseball. beyond high school, or during high school, it was called, hmmm, it escapes me. but some of us traveled from buckeye around to the neighboring towns playing baseball. i remember playing in laveen one night. baseball field down by the river. mosquitoes had a lot more fun than the players. drat.

i switched to softball, and in buckeye, kearny, yuma, played for another 20 years. love the game. love playing it. just lost my speed. and a good bit of my ability. i understand why the pros reach a point when they have to retire. and i was far from pro.

so, here's a picture i found from my initial little league team, the orioles. i was maybe between 6th and 7th grades.




so when i quit baseball, i needed some sort of jockdom outlet. and found it in stock car racing. i really didn't want to do it. but after a night of drinking way too much beer a friend talked me into driving his car the following weekend as he was going to be out of town. i spent the next week trying to maintain some semblance of manhood while backing out of the driving commitment at the same time. couldn't make it work. ended up driving. and, after a pretty big crash, which gave me cause to quit for the night, well, i couldn't as my buddies fixed my flat tire, bent up radiator and sent me back out to finish the race. i did, and i was hooked.

i raced a bit more that season - 85. then the entire 86 season, where i won a couple times and also won rookie of the year honors.

and then i quit. while i was ahead. and here's a picture of number 212, the pucker brothers racing special. first race for the car. first race of the 86 season. no dents, no dings. in the beginning, anyhow. didn't look anything like this at the end of the season.




following in my footsteps, scooter also played little league ball. but by then they had t-ball, minor b, minor a, major little league, senior league, and finally high school ball. followed later each year by fall ball. they spent more time playing organized ball than we did. but we played sandlot ball nearly year round. i think we had more fun. me, billy, schroeder, andrade, the baker boys, several others. ahhh, the times we had. oops, i digress. here are some pictures of scooter in competitive mode, along with one of he and his mentor.



so, now waiting for the next generation to kick in. rooster played some level of baseball this summer. but no games on the weekends when we were there. always next year i suppose. guess he's carrying the family jockey strap into the future.

it's a boy

well, it's official. i do have a brother. and even though i've actually had one my entire life, i have to count tuesday, april 13, 2010 as the official birth date of my brother glenn, cause that's when i actually met him. what a treat. and all these years of wishing i had a big brother to play baseball with, to help me work on my car, to just hang out with. now i gotta remember to tell glenn to bring his baseball glove next time he comes this way. and his tools.

the meet was set up by jo, and on tuesday evening jo, mac, hon and i drove up to edmond to glenn's daughter's home. glenn's daughter, i realize, is now my niece, glenda. and glenda and my nephew-in-law, mike, live not more than 20 minutes away. and on tuesday glenn, my new brother, and wanda, my new sister-in-law, were visiting my niece and nephew-in-law. made it very convenient to meet.

glenda met us at the door. i don't remember what i was really thinking before the door opened, but i guess i was wondering whether or not the new nix's would look like the nix's i already know. and when i first saw glenda, with glen standing just behind her, it hit me that i don't even know what a nix is supposed to look like. neither of them looked like dad. but then, neither do i. nor jo. nor lynda. so i quickly realized that physical traits don't mean much at all. it's truly what's on the inside.

our visit with glenn, wanda, glenda and mike was very enjoyable. it was exciting to meet to begin with. but the four of them were so cordial and pleasant it was almost as if we'd known each other for years. i guess that's what's it's supposed to feel like when family members get together.

so now that the initial meeting is done, seems very natural to just include them in our family gatherings. we talked to them briefly about virgie, our aunt and now family matriarch. at 91, virgie is a great lady who, over the years, has been the one that's kept the members of the extended family in touch with one another. we gave glenn and group virgie's phone number, and the next day jo called virgie and gave her their info as well. within 24 hours glenn and virgie had met, over the phone anyhow, and had a two hour conversation. i think they'll like each other. and glenn and wanda live close enough to virgie that they'll be physically meeting very soon, i'm sure.

so all is looking well here as far as the recently expanded nix family is concerned. and for anyone who's interested, here are some new family pictures. plus, a very old picture i just found, circa 1927, a school picture, i believe. and there, in the front row, dad and glenn's mom standing side by side. how ironic is that?

- - - - - nix

in the early nineteen forties the moral values of our society were quite different than they are today. particularly so in rural america. and furthermore, rural america was quite different than rural america is today.

back then the rural america as my family knew it centered around a small general store with one gas pump, suitably named "joe-bob's" (largely because that was the name of the fella that owned it, and wouldn't you know it? a cousin of ours, once or twice removed.), a one roomed school, all nicely surround by family farms. a closely knit group. they all knew one another. and knew one another's secrets as well.

but i should start this at the beginning of the story. october, 2008.

dad died on thursday, in the wee hours of the morning. october 23. on october 24 my two sisters and i went out to henryetta to make arrangements and to check on dad's house, since it had been uninhabited for several months. we decided to go thru things in preparation for . . . what? i'm not sure. we really weren't sorting through things to determine who wanted what, or anything like that. we were just looking. oh, for his will, which was in his safe deposit box at the bank, and other paperwork that might be meaningful. mineral rights things and such.

lynda and i were looking in dad's closet. i guess we'd gone in there initially to get his suit, things that he'd be buried in. and on the shelf of the closet i noticed the leatherette satchel thingy that contained all mom's funeral momentos. sympathy cards and such, along with the guest book. on a whim i opened up the book and began to look through the names. remembering now that i was looking for names of folks we might need to notify about dad's death.

on the second page i noticed a name i didn't recognize at all. and that was surprising as the last name was nix. i had always felt pretty certain that i'd known, or known about, all the nix people in the area. but i wasn't familiar with this name. i asked lynda, "is this a cousin or something? this - - - - nix?" and then she told me what she knew.

we had moved to arizona when i was 5. i'd just turned 5, in fact. lynda would have been 11, jo 7. so both my sisters had attended the one room school in ryal, oklahoma. across the road from joe bob's general store, gas station and dental clinic. and school aged children from as far as 8-10 miles away all attended this school with my sisters. i think by then it had grown into a two room affair. plus a gym of some sort. and a baseball field. the point is, they all knew each other, these ryal kids. and some of the other kid had teased/told lynda that she had an brother, - - - - - nix.

she said when she'd been told this she went home and confronted mom and dad about the claim. and she remembered that they seemed to be a bit upset that she'd asked. but basically, they denied that - - - - - was related in any way.

fast forward a few years. we'd moved to arizona. lynda was maybe 12 or so. mom had started working at j. c. penney's. no longer a stay at home mom. and one day when lynda went out to get the mail she noticed a letter addressed to dad from - - - - - nix. and when mom and dad got home, again, she asked who this might be. and what was the letter about? and again she felt she'd struck a nerve. mom and dad did not want to discuss it.

we had older cousins that lived in the ryal area. went to the ryal school. across the road from joe bob's super market, laundromat and barber shop. and we visited the area just about every year on vacation. fun trip to come back to oklahoma and spend a little time getting spoiled by our grandparents and playing with our cousins. lynda heard more about - - - - - nix from some of our older cousins. but she'd learned not to try to discuss him with mom and dad.

as lynda matured and learned more life lessons, she paused at times to reflect back on the mysterious - - - - - nix, and formed her own opinion of what really had taken place. her conclusion, of course, was that dad had likely fathered a child out of wedlock prior to he and mom getting married. then, she'd just filed all this knowledge away in the back of her mind. and hadn't really given much thought to - - - - - nix for a very long while. until, that is, october 24, 2008. when i brought it up.

to say i was stunned would be a gross understatement. how can i possibly have lived through my 39 years of life, ok, maybe a few more than that, without knowing i had a big brother. as a small guy i'd always dreamed of having a big brother. in fact, back then my idol was my cousin shorty. a few years older than i. but a cool guy. he had a guitar, a motorcycle, and eventually, a car. and when i was 10 or 12 years old i wanted a big brother just like cousin shorty. and here all along perhaps i had one and never knew it.

and now comes the perplexing part of all this. lynda knows about - - - - - nix, and that he very possibly is our brother. and i know about - - - - - nix and that he very possibly is our brother. but what now? do we act on this. oh, and jo doesn't know. should we share this info with her?

well, i went to the family matriarch. aunt virgie. and her story pretty much confirms what lynda had surmised all those years ago. seems as though dad had some sort of relationship with - - - - -'s mother prior to mom and dad becoming an item. and - - - - -'s mother became pregnant. and she told dad that he was the father. and dad denied it. and denied it. and denied it.

back in the early 40's things were different than they are today. particularly in 1940's rural america. joe bob's america. with rare exception when a young woman came to be "with child", the father would always "do the right thing" by marrying the woman. dad did not. he denied any responsibility. i don't get it. because dad was always a pretty decent sort of guy. he normally did the right thing. and we'll never know now the why's and wherefore's of the story. only that - - - - - 's mom had - - - - -, and aunt virgie said that he sure looked like dad did as a child. not as conclusive as a dna match, but pretty compelling evidence for 1940 america.

so now i'm trying to figure out what i should do. virgie pretty much let me know that - - - - - existed, and that she was pretty well convinced he was, indeed, my brother. she even had a pretty good idea where he lived. at least, in what community. no longer ryal. and joe bob's store, gas station and mini-mall had long ago ceased to be.

should i try to contact - - - - - ? and, lynda, virgie and i all pondered whether or not we should tell jo. the general consensus was not to tell jo, as she's been the one closest to dad. she's lived closest to him for the last 20 years, had always had a sort of special relationship with him, and i suppose we felt she was hurting so badly with dad's death that she didn't need another blow like this. so we didn't tell her anything - yet.

but it was pretty much left up to me as to whether or not to contact - - - - -. i was stewing over this for a few days when i got a letter. addressed to: the weldon nix children. dad's address. forwarded to me. no return address. inside a folded, plain white sheet of paper. printed on it . . .
you have a brother
- - - - - nix
- - - - - - - - - -, oklahoma

now who's written this? well, i know for a fact it wasn't - - - - -. don't ask me why. it's too complicated. it wasn't him. but someone who knew - - - - -, knew his story, wanted us to get in touch with - - - - - . so, i got on the internet and did some searching. i found a - - - - - nix in - - - - - - - - -, oklahoma. an address. a phone number. and then i considered the impact of me contacting him. would it be a good thing. a bad thing. and ultimately i decided to take no action. my logic: - - - - - knew of our existence way back before we moved to arizona. we knew nothing about his. - - - - - knew our names (if he hadn't before), where we lived, when mom's obituary hit the local newspaper. (oh, a point of clarification, he really didn't attend her funeral, someone else with some sort of interest, perhaps the same one writing the letter, had signed his name in the guestbook.) but for whatever reason - - - - - made no attempt to contact us. perhaps he didn't want to know us. perhaps he didn't want us to know him. maybe he was put out by the fact that dad denied being his father. or maybe he didn't know the story in the first place. but for whatever reason - - - - - nix had not attempted to contact us. why would we presume it would be a good idea to contact him?

well, friday night, as is our tradition, we went to dinner with jo and mike. well, i did, as hon stayed home not feeling so well. somehow the conversation led to dad. and something made me feel that this was the opportune time for me to tell jo about - - - - -. so i did.

she was stunned. she even thought i was playing some kind of a real bad joke on her. so i brought her home and showed her the evidence. and she's hurt, probably, that we kept the information from her. she's mad that we felt it necessary to protect her. and i guess that's all justifiable. but as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions . . .

aside from the hurt/anger jo felt at being kept in the dark, she went through basically the same thought processes i had gone through a year and a half earlier. and she came to a different conclusion. she wanted to write a note to - - - - - and let him know that we now know about him. and tell him if he has any interest in meeting us, talking to us, or whatever, well, she'd give him her phone number. and she sent that note out today. we'll see where the story goes from here.

but being protected from all this, along with jo, are dad's grandkids. by way of explanation, i don't think any of us have ever felt that dad should win any father of the year awards. he was busy being a provider when we were kids. he didn't seem to take a lot of interest in us kids. i'm sure he loved us. cared about us. but, he didn't show the love. he was the product of a different generation.

however, when the grandkids came along, dad did become the leading candidate for the world's greatest grandpa. an honor he likely would have won many times over. now we have to share the legend of - - - - - with the grandkids that have always felt this guy was the greatest thing since sliced bread. and hope it doesn't shatter their image of the world's greatest grandfather. and i'm sure it won't. just a big surprise to each and every one of us.

so, the story's out. there it is. perhaps this is chapter one. or maybe it's the epilogue. i guess the next chapter is up to - - - - - nix.

the passion we call baseball

it's hardly a sport. really. not to the passionate. because what it truly is is a passion. (i'm thinking that although it looks a bit weird, it's ok in the grammatical sense to use two "is" 's together in a sentence.) something we live, breathe, enjoy.

and the first indicator we get that winter's ending (well, aside from the daytona 500) is the start of spring training. followed very shortly by the beginning of the baseball season. the crack of a bat hitting a pitched baseball. the smell of leather from a new baseball glove. the echo of an umpire yelling "play ball". the glare of the sun coming off the top rail of the fence. it's springtime. it's baseball time.

i became a fan early on in my life. seven or eight years old. for some occasion my folds gave me a baseball bat. and a softball. looking back the softball really didn't make sense. an indicator that mom picked these items out, not dad.

the bat was a ted williams model. and i was a student. i studied ted williams. not by getting on the internet and googling him. way too early for that. but i did it the old fashioned way. i went to the library, dug through the card file, jotted down the dewey decimel system sequence for the books that referenced ted williams. read them all. and i was a fan. a ted williams fan. a boston red sox fan. a baseball fan.

i remember so well that dad would take me to work with him on saurdays sometimes. he sold farm equipment, so spent most of his days visiting farmers and talking all things farming. and aside from farming, the hot topic was baseball. and i can remember more than one farm office we'd visit that always had a baseball game on the radio.

back in those days baseball was only on tv on saturday afternoon. other than the world series, of course. and whle dad and mister farmer visited and talked farming and tractors and plows and sled planters, i'd sprawl out on the office couch (there always was one) and listen to the ball game on the radio. and nap. an issue that evolved into a passion of it's own.

i started playing baseball, first i can remember, anyhow, at ate 8. minor league little league, i guess it was called. nothing like t-ball. clifford and i hadn't invented that yet. at 8 years old we were actually pitching and hitting. and fielding. and running. and keeping score. not like the little league minor leagues of today.

i played on the giants. and we won the championship in our league that first year. sadly i was away on vacation when the awards were presented and never received my individual plaque. shucks.

but the best years of our lives back then came when we reach 10 years old. then were allowed to play in the genuine little league. ages 10-12. tryouts, probably in march. some actually didn't get selected. i did.

teams were put together. and once you were on a little league team, you stayed there until you graduated, at age 13, to pony league. which became babe ruth league, which became senior little league, which became, hell, i don't even know what it is now. but no doubt, the best years were the little league years. the orioles.

i can still vividly remember going with the coach to the equipment room. a small storage shed on the little league property where all the equipment was stored. it wasn't affordable for all teams to have their own bats, balls, catching equipment. 3-4 sets of all this was shared by the six or eight teams. and the shed wasn't air conditioned. heat and leather conspired to give that room a really interesting smell. a little infield soil blended in. the smell reeked of baseball.

our teammates became our friends. our teams became our favorites (althought he orioles never supplanted the red sox, they became second, or maybe third behind the cardinals.) but little league was a mere portion of our young baseball lives.

ever see the movie the sandlot ? well, back in our day we had essentially the same thing. we had neighborhood makeshift baseball fields. started out to be my back yard. a bit too rectangular, as a liner down the first or third base lines didn't have to travel very far to become a home run. but there was a nice outfield fence, which made our home runs quite dramatic. schroeder was even strong enough in those early years that he could blast one over our fence, across the alley, and into the neighbor's grape arbor. and the neighbor was nice enough, and probably enough of a baseball fan, that he had no problem with us scaling his fence to retrieve the balls. never occured to us at that point that a schroeder home run ball might be sold on e-bay for a tidy profit. besides, our supply or baseballs was limited, so we continued to use even the most accomplished of them. and for days, weeks, maybe months at a time we had to play with a ball that was kept in tact by electrical tape. duct tape was relatively undiscovered back then.

we eventually moved our baseball field to a huge vacant lot across the street. me, schroeder, billy, mike, the baker boys, probably more, built a pretty nice sandlot field here. we piled up a mound. creating a makeshift dugout in the process. we fashioned a home plate from a quarter inch sheet of plywood. don't remember what the plywood had been in its first life, but i do recall that it was painted tan. we fully intended to paint home plate white, but somehow never got around to it. didn't really matter. rarely did we have enough players at any one time to have a catcher anyhow, so there was never a play at home plate that required a slide. just made the field look cool.

oh, and our field really lacked one important item. grass. it was dirt. and in the early spring, weeds. by mid-may the weeds were gone from the infield area. trampled. they still grew sporadically in the outfield. not so much traffic in one particular spot out there. well, with the exception of where the left fielder stood. and a second one, just a little farther out, where he stood when schroeder came to the plate.

yep. those were the days. and some of my fondest memories. but part of being a person is that you have to grow up. and grow out of little league. and get jobs and such. but i think those of us who were passionate baseball fans back then continued to be so even now. and i'm fortunate enough to have a son that seemes to have inherited my love for the sport. great to be able to share that. and to a degree, to re-live my best years again through his little league experience.

but wait. some claim baseball's a boring sport. ho-hum. a pitch. nothing happens. again. batter will hit one out of every, oh, four pitches? somewhere. not a lot of action. mosly in-action. the person that makes this assertion isn't a baseball fan. and to become one all you have to do is catch an arizona diamondbacks game broadcast when joe garagiola joins them in the booth. (one thing i really miss about living in arizona) (by the way . . . this will surprise any of you who tout football as a much more exciting sport: a group of fans kept statistics on all football games broadcast on tv this season. average tv time for a game was just a hair over three hours. play, time outs, commercials. of course, the clock time for an nfl game is 60 minutes. the surprising discovery here was that the total time where there was some action on the field was 14 minutes. 14 minutes out of three hours. i'm guessing baseball has more action than that.)

joe puts drama in every pitch. heck, he goes deeper than that. he studies the catcher's sign and speculates as to what the pitch will be, where it will be located there, and why the pitcher and/or catcher would choose to locate it there. he scans the defense and explains why the center fielder might be shifted toward right center, or the third baseman might be guarding the line. he watches the runner and gives you the indications he sees that the fella might run, might not. he explains, in short, that there is strategy involved way beyond throwing a ball and hitting it.

pitchers and catchers show up for spring training next week. the rest of the teams the following week. i can't wait to have the games begin. play ball.

basset bitches and the brambleberry bush

they got out. the girls. breached my almost nearly not quite impenetrable fence. escaped to freedom. i don't get why they want to escape. there's nothing out there that's gonna taste any better then the beneful premium they get fed twice daily when they're safe within the confines of friendly nixdom. but they're basset hounds. and, they're female. and take it from one who's spent a good deal of time around bassets and an even gooder bit of time around females, they're totally unpredictable. apt at any moment to go sailing off on a whim.

so they got out yesterday. mid afternoon. just as we'd gotten back from the sojourn to wally world. unloaded. put away. and just as i was settling into the recliner to relax and watch the second half of the vikings game. not a big football fan, but looking forward to watching this game. favre makes an interesting story. like to see him do well to silence all the critics. and more than i'm a favre fan, i'm an anti-cowboy fan. dates back to tom landry. roger staubach. exacerbated by t.o. with apologies to one of my two favorite nephew-in-laws and my son-in-law, i detest the cowboys. and i know that the vikings and favre are winning, so i'm ready to settle and watch the cowboys bleed.

but before reclining in my recliner i peeked out the patio door. and there, past the back yard. across the outback (if you've read anything i've written here you're well familiar with the outback), and among the skeletal remains of what were, back in summer time, shrubs, bushes, trees, i see two white-tipped tails. basset tails. female basset tails. namely, trixie and petunia.

i hollered at hon to grab some leashes and i raced across the yard to catch the bitches (it's ok to call them that, they are, after all, female dogs) (oh, but don't tell them, as we're not sure they understand they're dogs) before they get down into the creek area. sadly i was too late to keep them from fording crap creek. (named for its smell, not a pretty one.)

by the time i got creekside the girls had already scaled the bank on the far side. not too far ahead of me. but bassets are rather short critters. they can roam through the underbrush under where the brush is. below the branching out branches of the bushes and small trees. i'm taller than that. i have to fight my way thru the dead vegetation. my progress is slowed accordingly.

i reached crap creek just moments after their crossing. in short order i found a rather formidable branch/log, down and spanning the creek. i stepped on it gingerly, it seemed substantial, i decided to try to balance-beam it across it. but as a safety measure i also grabbed the overhanging branch above which pretty much spanned the creek as well.

at about step number two i heard a bit of a cracking sound. my first thought was something analogous to "uh oh". but not quite "uh oh". and before i could take any evasive action at all, my left foot plunged down thru the now broken fallen branch/log and into the brackish - i wanna say water, but can't be sure - of crap creek. ok, a wet foot. wet ankle. wet calf. but not so bad. onward. but . . . another cracking sound? yep. and i didn't have time to formulate many thoughts as the branch overhead broke loose, smacked me in the head, and floated with me down into the very essence of crap creek. i hit, i guess, on some sort of uneven surface, as i quickly lost my balance and found myself lying on my left side. a foot deep in crap creek.

the smell hit me first. then the cold. then just the god-awful situation itself. my clothes are wet. i'm probably at least sort of injured, and my back's bad to begin with. and i still have to get out of this toilet and catch the damn basset girls.

so i pick myself up, somehow manage to crawl out of the slippery slope of the south bank of crap creek. quickly scanning the territory, i spot the white-tipped tails about twenty yards ahead. undaunted, i move onward.

i didn't know that barbed wire grows in vine form. i'd always viewed it as simply an industrially manufactured product. but right about at this moment in time, as i became ensnared, i realized that the original barbed wire, and no doubt the most effective barbed wire, grows. in vine format. along the slippery sloped banks of crap creek.

i'm wearing sweat pants and a long sleeved t-shirt. growing barbed wire likes sweat pants. and long sleeved t-shirts. it grabbed me and hugged my and cuddled with me. oh, and i should also point out that the half inch long barbs on the organic form of barbed wire are razor sharp. not only do they delight in snagging your clothing, they like to create deep lacerations in your skin. now i can't imagine what it would be like to traipse thru this growing thicket of barbed wire without long sleeves. or without long pants. for even covered as well as i was - well, by now i'm not only covered in what had been a nice layer of cotton clothing, but a healthy portion of whatever scum is suspended in the water of crap creek AND an ever increasing amount of type o positive that's now oozing from various areas of my appendages - this crap is nasty.

but i think i've used the term "undaunted", and i continued to be "undaunted". i'm on a mission to rescue my girls before they reach the major street a couple hundred yards east of where we were.

i spotted them again. now they're back on the north side of the creek. nearing the outback once again. so before they have a chance to go elsewhere, i have to get there. i grab my cell phone from my pocket and push speed dial 3, so i can let hon know they're headed back to the outback. my cell phone from my pocket, the same pocket which, moments earlier, had been bathing in the murky waters of crap creek. did i ever tell you about putting my cell phone thru the wash? well, that was a different phone, in a different pocket. and after the spin cycle that phone just quit working. and now i'm thinking i have much the same scenario with this phone. but surprisingly, it worked. hon answered, i gave her latitude and longitude readings for the dogs, and hung up just before i slid 20 feed down the south bank and back into crap creek once again. but just me feet this time.

i managed to circumvent the growing barbed wire without too many more cuts, scratches, abrasions, and climbed up out of the north bank just in time to see hon leashing up the little darlings. not the term i used to describe them at that point, but . . .

funny thing about all this, seemingly they were done roaming and heading back to our yard. and perhaps for no good reason, i'm covered in frigid shitty mud, blood, and who knows what else. my back's worse than ever. i've lost at least a pint of blood, and as i discovered a little later, i developed a softball-sized bruise on my left buttock.

it ain't easy being a basset lover.

oh, and yes, sorry mark. sorry chris. the vikings killed the sissy cowboys. and i missed the whole damned thing.

ode to college sports

big news on the college sports front - usc is likely to be penalized for allowing some athletes to receive payola, of some sort, while playing football/basketball for the trojans. namely, reggie bush and o j mayo.

well, there's a surprise. reggie bush came out of high school as part of a very average, middle class family. and somehow while he was attending usc his family was able to move into a veritable mansion somewhere near the campus. maybe, just maybe, he or his family were receiving some money from some unnamed source. ya think?

i'm not as familiar with the o j mayo story, but seems as though something similar occurred with him while he spent his nba mandated "one and done" year in college at usc.

these instances of abuse of the system were so severe that even the irs saw fit to get involved. now, suspension looming, forfeiture of scholarships, perhaps return of the heisman trophy by bush and maybe even the bcs national championship awarded to usc a few years back will be revoked. and pete carroll has decided to get the hell out of dodge and take the helm of the nfl seattle seahawks.

shame on usc and their entire sports program. shame on athletic director mike garrett. shame on . . . but wait, does the ncaa think for one minute that we're gonna believe this is an isolated incident? are we expected to think that usc is a bunch of underhanded, conspiring, glory driven fanatics who will do anything to excel in big time college sports? ok, yeah, they are.

however, they're certainly not alone. i doubt there's a college football program, a college basketball program, maybe even a college baseball program, that gets any serious recognition that isn't violating the spirit of the "amateur athletic" rules.

even smaller colleges, those to which we pay little attention, do questionable things for their players. i personally knew a player who was attending college on a scholarship. and for the four years he was there he took a job with the college to help support himself. his job: turning the lights off every night at the tennis courts. critical that they be turned off by midnight. very important job. and to make sure he did well at the job, the college installed automatic timers on all the lights so they would automatically turn off at the assigned time. i guess he was paid, in essence, to look out the window of his upscale apartment near midnight to make sure the timer was working. don't think the ncaa would ever give this matter any attention.

but the pressure to win at the big name schools prompts all programs to cheat. my best guess would be that if the ncaa really wanted to investigate, they'd find enough evidence to levy suspensions on all major college programs. tendering payment, in one form or another, to players on top college teams is the rule rather than the exception.

is this all bad? depends on your prospective. if you're an alumni of a given school you want to turn your back on the matter. if you're a sooner fan you want to point fingers at the texas program. but the bottom line is simply this - college sports, particularly at the major college level, is not amateur. these players are given lots of perks even in high school. labron james, as i recall, being raised by a single mom who worked in low paying jobs, was somehow able to drive a hummer when he was in high school. he skipped college in favor of the nba, but heck, doubtful his lifestyle could have tolerated the pay scale of college basketball.

i have to ask myself why these violations of ncaa rules are made such a big deal. if the ncaa truly wants college sports to be amatuer they need to really start enforcing their rules. not just making an example of one of the major programs now and then.