Home Field Advantage

Dear Blog Reader:

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am doing fine. I must admit that I was blown away by the response to the last blog about greeting people as they come to the end of our driveway. Thank you.

Labor Day has come and gone. Fall is here in spite of the high 80 degree temps. The beans are in the turning mode. One farmer, a particularly ambitious farmer, planted his beans the 1st week of April. He snuck them in just as the ground was barely dry enough to support his equipment and just before 2 weeks of rain that kept everyone out of the fields for three additional weeks. As a result, that one field is harvested and ready to plant a good crop of wheat if he so desires. So he has bragging rights and we will wait a couple of weeks as the beans and the corn dry. As we prepare for harvest, try to remember to take it easy as you come up behind that massive equipment lumbering down the road that was paved when the equipment was much smaller and jerks who thought that they were the center of the universe lived in the big city instead of country estates.

Sure you are in a hurry to get to the drive through for your breakfast burrito, but look at the physics of the problem. That tractor or combine weighs a gazillion lbs. It is 12 ft wide on a 16 ft wide road. You take up the remaining 8 ft. Oops! There are only 4 ft remaining. You in your car even with your considerable Big Mac fed girth, only weigh in at around 4000 lbs; a lot less than a gazillion lbs. So . . . Let me get my calculator. Let's see. Now carry the one. Yep, in this confrontation, you are not the center of the universe no matter what you think. No matter how important that meeting was when you left your house late, you will lose. You are definitely going to scrape the paint on your car.

That public service message out of the way. I love this time of the year. The full moons are brightest for September, and October. I have no idea why. But they are bright. I do love to walk through the house at night with the moon pouring through the window. I can look out the window and see the outline of late summer sunflowers drooping over as their heads fill with winter bird forage. As fortune and my 54 year old prostate would have it, I was up at 3:00 the other morning (as usual). I stumbled into the bathroom and was startled by the moon flowing in through the bathroom window illuminating the toilet in that soft lunar light. Yes, the throne looked like a majestic throne. I must admit that I took a few extra moments to sit there and soak in the ambience and specialness of the moment in my royal splendor.

That is the September moon; the Harvest Moon. October's, the Hunter's Moon, will be even brighter. So bright in fact that it will drive people crazy all over the midwest and they will congregate on the banks of the Wabash River in Tippecanoe county and have a feast of the Hunter's Moon. And you GenXers and Millennials thought that you had invented Cosplay. No you just move it from the country side to the city where the newspapers can take pictures and publicize the madness.

Speaking of things out of place, the lovely Miss Beverly and I trekked up to East Lansing Michigan to spend a day with Grace and Chris a few weeks back over the Labor Day weekend. I like the Lansing environs. Michigan's state capital, a rusted out industrial base and a college town all wrapped into one. I do think that the college town part has a biggest influence on the things that I like. College towns are an interesting phenomena. Mom and dad send all of their disposable income to a far away place where it is accumulated 30,000 times and the augmented by college loans and suddenly you have the ability to sustain a hundred or so small independent local eateries. Yes, the food is very good there. Chris and Grace have taken us someplace different every time and I have not been disappointed in the quality of the fare.

I like visiting Grace and Chris. This trip was no exception. The food was great. Getting away and resting was good. Grace and Chris schooled us in the game of Pickle ball. We were Pickle ball newbies and have found that we like it a lot. I am sure that you have heard that Pickle ball is the fastest growing organized sport in America. I know it sounds impressive but since Grace and Chris were the only people playing and now Bev and I are playing; that 100% increase counts as the fasting growing sport in America. If four of you want to continue this explosive growth but are unsure of how to play Pickle ball, it is basically tennis slowed down for baby boomers. The glorified wiffle ball slows the game so that from time to time, I can run across the court and track down one of Bev's tremendous backhands.

It was the signs in East Lansing that caused me to pause. They surprised me. I don't know why. I think I was surprised because I noticed them. The first was on a bumper. Apparently, a doula was very proud of her chosen profession. That is good. I know of accountants with "accountants do it by the numbers" bumper stickers and "Exterminators are to die for" stickers. Well, we pulled up to a Subaru and there was a bumper sticker encouraging me to "catch the wave; Water birth". What? It made me uncomfortable. I must admit I have an aversion to water. I don't know why. I swam a lot when I was a kid. However, overtime I have become less and less comfortable around the water. I spent two lovely weeks of vacation this summer on the shores of Lake Indiana and never got my knees wet. I think that it comes down the fact that I have no gills. My ancestors made some radical choices a few million years ago to venture out on the land. I am sure that the first few breaths were difficult. There was some gasping and panting going on. However great, great grandpa Jim stuck with it and we have left all of that dissolved oxygen gill exchange behind for lungs. I really don't see the need to take a step backward and see if our babies have any inclination to revert back a few million years.

The other sign that took me aback was actually on the back of a T-shirt. I was behind this guy and I could not quite figure out what his shirt said. It had a lot of words on it and a graphic of this bull's head on it. I wasn't sure but I was pretty sure that the last word ass. I am not opposed to the tastefully done cuss word. However, since I was at church and this guy was in the front row, I was intrigued. I squinted. I used my iphone. I used all of my observation skills. I think the word right before ass was Candy. Then my new friend turned around and I realized that he picked this work of art up at a WWF match. Well I had enough clues that with my handy Iphone, I could figure out the rest. I soon found out that the Rock often ridicules his opponents by threatening to lay a smack down on their candy ass. Grace and peace to you too Dwayne. Don't you hate it when you get your church shirt out of your WWF drawer? I do. I think that he may have realized it about halfway through the song service. There was a lot of shirt tail tucking going on. So much so that I was unable to get a picture of it for the blog.

Why did I even notice? If I would have been in Ingalls or Indianapolis on my home turf, I would not have either sign. If I would have noticed, it would not have risen in my consciousness to the level of comment. Why is that? What had suddenly changed? In the end, I have to admit that I am just a home body at heart. I love home. I am comfortable at home. Away from home, I am on edge. I am in search of all things that make me uncomfortable. Every instance becomes another indicator that things are not right; that I should head home as soon as possible. Proof of the point that I was making; thank you very much. I want to point it out to everyone around me that this place; not my home, is not safe and not worthy of my continued presence. I do feel sorry for the kids. Who wants to be reminded that your chosen hometown is full of people who want to drown their new born babies or lay a smack down during the passing of the peace? I don't. That is why I ignore it around home, and why I point out all of those flaws when I am not home.

They say that home is where the heart is. It is also the place where your babies are born on dry land, and your candy ass isn't about to get smacked down. Yes, home is where your toilet is bathed in royal moon light at 3:00 a.m.

Take Care.

Roger.