High Plains Panhandler

Fare thee well, Zimmermans

Today some friends of ours moved away in a loosely packed caravan made up of a Penske truck, a trailer hitch, two cars, two dogs, a two-year old boy, two double basses, and a cello. They're headed for the greener pastures of Vermont where, unlike Texas, distance is measured in miles and not in time.

It was a sad farewell. Last night we had them over for dinner, but they couldn't stay long since they were closing on their house the next morning at 11 and still hadn't finished cleaning their closets and packing their clothes. After they drove away last night, Megan and Colleen started wailing, the kind of wailing you'd expect to see depicted in a Renaissance painting of the end of the world. They shrieked and they cried, and, finally, after all the tears had ended in a bout of sniffling, they asked why the Zimmermans had to move away.

There's really no good answer for that one, at least, no good answer that would satisfy a three, six, and eight-year-old. All you can do is explain that sometimes, for some people, things change, and they have to do what's good for their family, no matter how hard it might seem at the time.

So today was another day, and the magic that manifests itself as short attention spans eased the pain, fading the image of the Zimmermans, their dogs, their double basses, and their little boy into a foggy memory that will, over time, become more and more transparent. Even today Megan and Colleen had no problem saying that the Zimmermans weren't ever coming back, but this was during dinner, and I think they were so focused on getting dessert that the entire PBS kids lineup could have moved to Uzbekistan and they wouldn't have given it a second thought.

So long, Zimmerman family. We wish you luck, and hope that wherever the wind pushes you, you land on a patch of soft grass where the music is beautiful, the people are friendly, and everyone has a little bit of Texas in their hearts.

George Bush Traffic Jam

It took a couple of years, but on our recent trip to Albuquerque we finally figured out a conspiracy that reaches into the highest levels of government. George Bush, president, wants to make us late.

Two years ago we were in Albuquerque trying to get to Fuddruckers for lunch. We were driving down one of those streets downtown named after Things You Dig Up (Coal, Gold, Iron, Loot) when we turned a corner and ran smack into a surprise traffic jam. Cars were smushed all together, pointing every which way, looking like a group of bumper cars at the end of the ride. We were stuck and couldn't move, although eventually, with deft van handling, Suzanne was able to rock our way back and forth out of the fray and wheedle our way to an empty side street so we could get away from whatever mess that had caused the traffic jam. What we soon discovered that no matter where we went, the traffic was clogged up. That was because the president was in town and all the entrance ramps to the freeway had been secret serviced, shut down, and barricaded.

All we could do was wait, so we pretended we weren't hungry (try that with three kids!) and stuck it out. The traffic lasted quite a long time and we never got to see the presidential motorcade, so the whole afternoon had a crummy exhaust fume flavor to it, but that's what happens when the Big Cheese is in town. Maybe being stuck in traffic while listening to Ricky Martin blaring from a car stereo two feet away could be construed as doing our civic duty, but at the time we were hot, hungry, and eager to move on.

We didn't think any more of that until this past Saturday when we were back in Albuquerque and stuck in another traffic jam in almost the same place (although this time we were headed in the opposite direction). We were making our way to Explora, the new Children's Museum when we turned a corner and ran smack into a clump of cars waiting for a parade to pass.

At first we thought it was a slacker St. Patrick's Day parade, but then we were able to read the signs people were holding in the air. It was a peace march! Except on TV, I had never seen one of these before, so this was pretty exciting. The funny thing was, instead of all these intense, scary people wearing beads and trying to poke the sky with peace signs, all the marchers were very friendly. We drove by slowly to see what was up, and everyone waved and smiled and kept on marching. Actually, strolling is more like it. It was a spirited yet relaxed parade. So we honked and gave them the thumbs up because, really, peace is a awfully good idea. It's one of those things you can't really dislike, sort of like babies and ice cream.

Yet, it held us up and made us arrive later than we had expected. So when we gave it some thought over dinner we realized that both traffic jams had been caused by the president and maybe, just maybe, this was a subtle reminder that we should vote for him or he'll make us late for the important stuff, like the $3.75 Lord of the Rings matinee.

We aren't so easily tricked. We've got maps and power steering. That's the secret to finding the back roads.

The Flying Star

Here we are in Albuquerque at The Flying Star, our favorite place in town (picts taken with a Sony Ericsson P900 mobile phone):

Crime and Punishment

One of the benefits of living in Potter Country, Texas is that you can count on getting a jury summons every three or four days. The first jury pool I sat on was a few months ago. They didn't pick me for the actual jury, but that might have had something to do with the following conversation:

Defense attorney: "Mr. Nair, this is a criminal driving under the influence case. Beside the right to remain silent, what other rights does the defendant have."

Me: "Well, apparently the right to party."

I didn't mean to sabotage my chances of being on the actual jury, so this week when I was summoned again, I didn't slouch and, I answered questions using words such as mitigate, rational, and quantify. Based on that and my subtle crime-fighting demeanor, they picked me to sit with the eleven other jurors and help determine the fate of someone I had never met before in my life.

This is how jury duty works in the Texas Panhandle: at 8:15 in the morning about 80 of us gather in a large room with puny elementary school desks. We sit through jury duty indoctrination and are then filtered down to a manageable 50 or so. We, the 50, are then taken upstairs to the courtroom where we're asked all sorts of questions by the defense and prosecution attorneys. These questions are similar to: "Can you be fair?" "Do you believe everything the police tell you?" "What is reasonable doubt?" You know, that kind of thing.

There are, always, the one or two guys who will say anything to get out of their civic duty. One particular guy actually said that if the police arrest you, you're guilty. Trials are a waste of time, and we should get rid of the courts. Then he added, as if all that weren't enough, that he has a prejudice against all women, even his ex-wives.

Thankfully, justice might be blind but she isn't dumb, so this loser got the boot while I moved up to the jury box at the front of the room. As soon as we were seated, the trial began, and I wasn't sure what to expect. (The only other time I was close to a jury was when my mom was on a jury when I was in sixth grade. I remember sitting there while Mr. Prator explained to the jury that God had told him to bring a gun with him in his taxi cab that day. Gun wielding taxi driver who talks to God? You can see where this trial was going in a hurry.)

Our particular trial was about a guy who stabbed his wife 39 times two years ago. She lived, but oddly she testified (she's in jail now too) that he didn't do it, and she couldn't remember who did. So here's the funny part about her testimony:

Prosecutor: "So did the defendant stab you that night?"
Wife: "I don't remember."
Prosecutor: "You don't remember who stabbed you 39 times?"
Wife: "I don't remember."
Prosecutor: "Well, when your husband stabbed you that must have hurt."
Wife: "Yes, it did."

On TV the defense attorney would have jumped up at this and yelled out something about the exculpatory non-evidentiary exhibition of the blah blah, but he didn't. I think he didn't because everybody in the room knew the guy did it. Yet he said not guilty, and that's what he gets to say, until the jury contradicts him.

We deliberated for about 45 seconds and found him guilty. We had to go back the next day to figure out his punishment.

Punishment day was a little harder. Everybody in his strangely disconnected family (blood relations were hard to find in the confusing mass of step-grandmother, uncles twice removed, and live-in boyfriends) pleaded for leniency. Even the victim, who testified again a second day in her stylish orange prison garb, told us that he had found the Lord, had given up using meth, and was now a good person.

I wish he had done all that before stabbing someone 39 times in front of a ten year old little girl. We gave him 27 years in prison, which we considered very lenient, especially since he had already been in prison for four and a half years for stabbing someone else.

The defendant didn't testify about his guilt, but when we were figuring punishment he did. When the prosecutor pointed out that he had served almost his entire previous five year term, she concluded that he must not have acted very nicely in prison. That was when his face turned to stone and he said slowly, "I did what I had to do."

I half expected to hear ominous organ music fill the courtroom on that one.

It didn't take much to convince us in the jury that this was a bad dude, and he needed to go away for a while. Too bad Dr. Phil doesn't make prison calls. This guy sure could use some help.

In the end, after the judge read our verdict, he thanked us and excused us. We filed out of the room just in time for lunch. I swung by Arby's and picked up one of their market fresh roast beef sandwiches (they're very good), and I thought how strange it was that a juror and a defendant cross paths and in the end, one goes to prison and other other goes for a sandwich.

But that's the way the system works, and it works pretty well, all things considered.

The Peace Farm

This weekend we were invited to a dinner honoring Mary Emeny, a really neat person here in town. I know Mary because I serve with her on a couple of boards, as well as working with her on the new Performing Arts Center downtown. Her grandfather invented barbed wire, and she's been all over the world helping orphans and women.

The invitation for Mary's dinner was very intriguing because it came from the Peace Farm, which is a group of people who own some land right next to Pantex, the big nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant north of Amarillo. Don't confuse this with the Peas Farm, which I think is in Ohio somewhere.

Because we had never met anyone (except Mary) from the Peace Farm, we weren't sure if we were supposed to wear Birkenstocks and beads to the dinner. We did bring along our two friends from Canada, thinking that bringing Canadians to a Peace Farm dinner was like bringing a bottle of wine to a regular dinner party. It made us look sophisticated, suave, and multinational. Plus we drove over in their Volkswagen Bug, and although it wasn't a Prius, it had a little flower vase on the dashboard. In case they had a secret password at the door, we'd show them the Bug and they'd let us in for sure.

We met at the Polk Street Methodist Church, and surprisingly, you couldn't tell right off that this was a group of the Amarillo peace counter-culture (come on, you have to admit it, Amarillo probably has 840 guns per person, mostly rifles and shotguns. Peace only comes up in conversations like: "That's a big squirrel. I'm a-gonna get me a piece of that"), but the closer you looked, the more you could see that there were earthier people in the room than what you'd normally see at the mall.

Dinner started with a couple of small, heartfelt speeches. Then we launched right into the poetry reading. Here's the thing about poetry: most of it is really terrible. Really. There are few truisms in the world, but one of them is that everybody thinks they can write, and those that really believe it usually end up writing poetry. Bad poetry. Really stinky, cliché driven, adjective thick poetry. And the worst kind is stuff that is utterly heartfelt and utterly damaging to the ear.

So it was with Peace Farm poetry.

The poets meant every line, I know that. I know they struggled and agonized over every word and every syllable. You could see that they were earnest, so very earnest, in what they had written. That's what made listening so tough. Now, don't misunderstand. There were some good poems too, but the bad stuff always overshadows the good stuff. That's why you've got to be a masochist to enjoy open mic poetry nights at coffee houses.

Besides that, the evening was very nice (except that everyone kept calling me Ed). One time Mary introduced me to someone by telling her that I worked for another company in town, which I immediately responded with my standard, "Oh, no not them. They're a bunch of communists." Then I realized that this might not be the right thing to say in that particular room. So I changed it to Nazis, but the damage had been done. I had called someone a Communist-Nazi, which is like calling someone an Amarillo Beach Bum. The oxymoron forced us to flee from the room, jump in the Bug, and make for a Starbucks where we joked around some more, mainly to squeeze another hour out of our babysitter before we headed for home.

Really though, the folks from the Peace Farm were a lively, wonderfully passionate group. That was good to see. Off all the sins we live with today, the lack of passion is one of the greatest, because without some sort of meaning, whether it's peace or family or goofy stories on a webpage, we end up with one hollow day after the other. The measure of a great life isn't in great deeds but in small passions whose sum is something wonderful.

That's my poetry, and I'm sticking to it.

The Jesus Rash

Alex has been on and off with his potty training, pull-up enthusiasm. Some days he does great. Some days, well, not so good.

Today was a not so good day, and Alex ended up with a little rash on his bottom. After dinner tonight, Suzanne and I were talking to Alex about his potty training misadventures. This is how the conversation went:

Suzanne: "Alex, did you get any stickers on your pull-up sticker chart today?"

Alex: "Three stickers!"

Suzanne: "No, it's more like zero stickers. And now you have a rash on your bottom. Do you know how you got a rash?"

Alex: "Ummmm . . . from Jesus!"

And then, like always, you have to find a magazine or newspaper or something big to hide behind while you laugh, because you know Parent Rules forbid the kids from seeing you laugh at such a thing. If the kids did see you, you'd be doomed.

I told Suzanne that maybe we should get in on this whole Mel Gibson thing with our own movie: The Passion of the Pull-up.

The Violin Recital

This weekend Megan had her Suzuki violin clinic, which made for a long rehearsal Saturday and ended with a Big Event Recital Sunday afternoon. As is our Suzuki custom, the soloist got to choose the restaurant for dinner. Megan chose Nothing But Noodles (a big bowl of mac and cheese) and an Oreo mint Blizzard from Dairy Queen (I was hoping for ice cream from Marble Slab, but alas, it was not to be).

Click here for a little video of Megan's recital. It's squeezed down quite a bit, but it's still probably unmanageable for modems. Sorry.

Megan's Recital video.

Wacky Wednesday

Today was Wacky Wednesday for Megan's kindergarten class. Megan dressed up in all sorts of wacky wear: seven different kinds of bows and ribbons for her hair, a backward shirt, crazy pants, a sandal on one foot and a dress shoe on the other, my old bike riding sunglasses on the back of her head, and swimming floaties on each arm.

When I dropped her off at school this morning, I watched her go up to her wackily-dressed friends where she immediately dropped her coat off her shoulders like a maestro shrugging off a cape so that her friends could bask in the glory of her wackiness.

She kept the wacky clothes on all day, taking them off finally for a bath tonight. She seemed to have quite a bit of fun. I'm inspired. Tomorrow I'm going to try Wacky Work day and only talk to people in Pig Latin. Maybe that'll stop everyone from coming to my office.

Ivegay emay anay iceay-eamcray andwichsay, urkway ackeylay!

Destination Imagination

This weekend we had quite the adventure in Lubbock, which is two hours straight south of here - straight enough that you can put the car in cruise control, hit play on the iPod, lean back, and take a nap. No steering necessary.

We went to Lubbock for Colleen's second grade Discover Imagination group. Discover Imagination (or D.I.) is an outside-school program so that kids can be creative at solving puzzles, doing brainbusters, and getting out of cleaning their rooms. Suzanne was one of the coaches for Colleen's D.I. group this year, so every week they met after school and worked on all sorts of fun and interesting things. This all led up to the final challenge, which had certain constraints put on it by the Official D.I. people. This year the kids had to come up with a presentation that included: taking a journey, meeting a critter, and doing something with two boxes.

The thing about D.I is that the kids have to do everything. Suzanne had the difficult job of guiding them along, but she was forbidden from giving them any advice on what to do for the presentation or telling them how to do the story. So instead of my describing the story, here's Colleen's rendition (Colleen played the critter - she had three legs, the fake one she made from a wrapping paper tube, a sock, 48 miles of tape, and an old shoe):

"It starts with Zucka watching TV, and the other kids are practicing their songs. Their group is The Sparkles. They get a letter to go to Rock and Roll land, but then they crash and then they meet a librarian. The librarian tells funny rhymes. Her name is Miss Carza and she has three legs. She gives them a magic book of spells, which tornadoes them to Rock and Roll land, and they get there just in time. The End."

The group did great, and the judges in Lubbock were very gracious with their comments. Afterward we went to the Lubbock Science Spectrum for a couple of hours to run off some elementary school energy. Megan and I bought tickets to see the IMAX movie Bugs. Afterward, I was trying to explain some of the movie to Alex and Colleen (who weren't interested in sitting through it).

"We saw a butterfly go from egg to caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly to . . ."

"Death!" said Megan gleefully. That was true enough (a praying mantis got her in the end). I guess the cycle of life didn't bother Megan as much as I had expected.

We drove back Saturday evening, and a little south of town we ran into a massive thunderstorm. Thunderstorm! With rain! I had to put my windshield wipers on high, which is a rare occurrence around here. Really, I think the last time we got rain that went on for more than ten minutes was during the Johnson administration. But we got through it all safe and sound, and once we were home we conked out and then spent the last part of the weekend recuperating.

The next day I could see that Megan had a little shine in her eyes, and when I asked her what was what, she told me slyly that she was thinking of herD.I. group that I would coach next year.

Uh oh.