To all the dumps I've lived before
And some of the nice places, too
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I’ll get to the meat of this post in a second. First: I’ve watched a ton of Olympics this year. I like to watch and imagine doing whatever it is they’re doing. Like, I can run 100 meters — not fast, mind you, but I could do it. I could swim — again, I’d come in last but at least I could perform the task. Shoot a gun at a target? No problem. Hit the target consistently? Problem.
And then I watch gymnastics and I think, maybe, MAYBE, I could walk across the balance beam without falling. Does that count? Other than that, there is not a single solitary task a gymnast completes that I could do.
Which brings me to: HOW IN THE HELL DO YOU DO THAT, Olympics power rankings
1. Everything by Simone Biles and that goes double for the vault and floor routines.
Rings.
Skateboarding tricks.
Synchronized swimming.
Diving that isn’t just running off the platform/board and screaming CANNONBALL as you plummet to the water.
On dumps, guns hidden in ceilings and the familiar smell of my boyhood home
This post was inspired by my friend Tommy Tomlinson’s latest newsletter. (More on Tommy below.)
I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit in what I now see as a Norman Rockwell like existence. Nobody moved on or off of our street, the dozen kids who lived there played outside together all day long, the moms fed all the kids regardless of who they belonged to, the dads all drank beer together out on their front porches, etc.
My parents lived in that house from before I was born until I was 35 (and they’ve only lived in one place since). I had hoped to give my own kids that kind of stability. Alas, my soon-to-be 18 year old has lived in five places.
Since moving out of my parent’s house to go to college, I have lived in … gosh, 18 places in four states, three of those states twice.
The worst by far was my first apartment. I moved into it sight unseen two days after graduating from college. The bathroom leaked. They fixed that, then the hallway leaked. They fixed that, then the entrance to the bedroom leaked, and so on.
The apartment sat behind a hair salon, and let me tell you, waking up to the smell of perm chemicals is really special. I visited there recently. My old apartment is a barbecue restaurant now. I would much rather wake up to the smell of pulled pork.
When I was cleaning out one of my many apartments on move-in day, I found a dead mouse in the cupboard. Which is better than a live one … I think … maybe.
A few months after we moved in to the first house I ever owned, I removed ceiling tiles in the bathroom and found an empty bottle of bourbon, a peanut butter jar full of silver dollars and half dollars … and a loaded pistol.
My guess is the dad of the house had his gun, booze and money stashed in the ceiling, and he died, and nobody knew it was there, so it sat there, untouched, for 30 years.
The house I lived in junior and senior year of college was torn down and replaced by another house though I’m at a loss to understand why they bothered. It was a dump but since when do college kids care about that? The owners could have invested nothing in the old house and kept making money forever. Maybe it got condemned. That wouldn’t shock me.
I lived above a jewelry store right after we got married. That jewelry store — the jewelry store that made my wife’s wedding ring! — is now a hot dog joint.
Which brings me to the state of the house I grew up in. I drove by there a few summers ago, as I do often when I visit my home state. The first time, I was mad at the new owners because I could see from the street that they painted “our” kitchen red. Oh, no, not red!
This time, I pulled in front of the house, parked and just looked at it for a second. The owner was working in the yard and asked (in a 100 percent friendly way) if she could help me. I said, “You bought this from my parents. I’m just looking.”
Her face lit up. “Oh yeah, Dick and Kay! They were great!”
I took immense pride that she remembered my parents 12 years after buying the house from them. I bet 99 percent of people never even meet the people they sell their house to, never mind leave such an impression that they remember them by name 12 years later. (Nobody who met my mom would be surprised.)
She invited me in, and I said no, that’s weird, and she insisted, and I said no, that’s OK, and she wouldn’t let me leave until I got a tour so I said yes.
I won’t bore you with a room by room breakdown, but highlights:
1. The garage is detached. There’s a space between the garage and the neighbor’s fence that is maybe three feet wide. When I was a kid, my dad was a sider. He used that space between the garage and the fence to store aluminum siding that he tore off houses. When the pile got big enough, he would sell it to a recycler. Anyway, I never saw that space without a ton of siding in it. When I told her that, it was like I told her a deep, dark secret. “No wonder we’ve been pulling bits of aluminum out of there for all these years!”
2. They fixed the basement, and I’m totally jealous. It’s a mancave now. It used to be a damp dungeon.
3. The kitchen is a deep orange, not red, which is OK only because she was so nice to me.
The smell upstairs is what struck me most. I walked up one stair and it hit me – a thin, musty odor emanating from the attic. I recognized it immediately. Suddenly, I was 12 again.
Tommy Tomlinson’s latest book is called Dogland and you should read it if you love dogs, love someone who loves dogs, love dogs who love someone, or are alive.
I started the book on a Sunday and finished it on aTuesday, which should tell you a lot about how good it is. I’m not a dog person. I’ve never had one, never been close to anyone who has one, etc., which also should tell you even more about good it is.
It is a masterclass in writing, storytelling and reporting, a perfect pairing of writer, subject and material. I laughed out loud, a lot. I thought I should take pictures of the best lines and share them, but I didn’t do that because there were just too many.