Running on the dump

The other day I went for a run in Sunnyvale in the neighborhood just east of Moffett Field, where office buildings now flank the former Naval Air Station. My running path took me down Mathilda Avenue to the trails that run alongside the southernmost part of San Francisco Bay.

Most of the trails are flat, with one exception. There is a man-made mountain built from trash – an old landfill no longer actively used but firmly packed into a nice-sized hill. The active landfill is further east. Usually I run around the base of this mini-mountain, about a mile. But on this day for some reason I decided to follow a trail that went up the side of the hill.

It spiraled around as it rose and eventually I found myself on the top. Pretty good view from up there. To the west, you can see over the Moffett Field blimp hangars and on up the Peninsula, to the north is the Bay, and to the east you can see part of the grandstand at Levi’s Stadium, the drop tower at Great America and the mountains of the Diablo Range, including Mt. Hamilton.

I paused for a brief moment to look around. Then it struck me that I was standing on the accumulated trash of tens of thousands of Sunnyvale residents who had been coming to this dump for years. I couldn’t help but think about all the stuff that was buried there under my feet, and all the stories, too – a story for many of the discards accumulated during the years.

And part of that trash was once mine. We lived in Sunnyvale for 12 years, and made a number of trips to the dump to throw away things the garbage trucks wouldn’t pick up. I remember that distinctive “dump” smell – no longer present on the hill, but the same smell that I now get when I go to the transfer station in Redwood Shores. I also remember the seagulls wheeling around, and people backing up cars and trucks to heave stuff onto the piles that were pushed and shoved together by bulldozers.

I always feel good after going to the dump. There is definitely something liberating about finally parting company with a lot of things that were broken, obsolete or no longer needed. It’s a renewal, a fresh start of sorts.

And I felt good when I ran down off that man-made-mountain. The little nostalgia trip was fun. It was – well, maybe a virtual trip to the dump. And good exercise to boot.

More Montgomery baseball

(Please see previous post for context)

We’re going back to Montgomery to visit family in July and we plan to go see the Montgomery baseball team play. Once known as the Rebels, they are now called the Biscuits, for reasons I hope to find out. And they play in a new park called Riverwalk Stadium. We’re really looking forward to the game.

But no hill, no train smoke, and a team called the Biscuits – will it really be Montgomery baseball? We’ll find out!

I have fond memories of the old Montgomery Rebels, and I can name almost the whole lineup from those teams of the 40s:

• Pitchers: Stan Coulling, Marty Arrante, Chester “The Great” Covington, among others
• Catcher: “Mop” Brown, who whistled three quick times every few minutes. I don’t remember Mop’s real first name, but it may have been Charles.
• 1b: Al Brightman or Mac MacWhorter (Mac was a utility player who once played every position in the field in one game – one per inning – and was the winning pitcher!)
• 2b: Roy Carlin
• SS: Billy Spears
• 3b: Ray Wilson (A hometown boy. Ray’s dad, who always sat behind the Montgomery dugout on the third base side, was his biggest fan and would cheer him on with a loud “GoRay, GoRay, GoRay” whenever he came to bat)
• LF: Johnny Creel, who stuck his bubble gum on the button of his cap when he came to bat (there were no batting helmets in those days).
• CF: Billy Martin, a speedster who was the stolen base leader (and center field mountain climber).
• RF: Art Rebel, clearly the most appropriately named player on the team.
• Manager: Frank Skaff, and later Charlie Metro

The radio broadcasts were done by an announcer named Dave Manners. Like all broadcasters back in the day, for out-of-town games he would sit in the station studio in Montgomery and re-create the action from ticker tape messages. The message that would actually come across was something like, “Spears grounds out to short.” Dave would describe a whole imaginary at bat, pitch by pitch, sometimes running the count to 3 and 2, and add made-up color as if he were at the game. When Dave would pause, you could hear the tickertape clattering away in the background.

They don’t make ‘em (up) like that anymore.

The sounds of silence

(With a bow to Simon and Garfunkel)

“You will hear some silence while you wait.”

That’s part of the conference call recorded message that plays when you dial in before the call has officially started. The whole phrase goes like this:

“The leader has not yet arrived. Please stand by. You will hear some silence while you wait.”

It always intrigues me. How do you “hear” silence?

Whoa. Pretty deep thought there. Maybe a philosophy class topic. One hand clapping, and all that.

In my brain it connected to another thought: On the radio, you never hear silence. “Dead air” is what the broadcasters call it. When dead air happens, it’s because somebody forgot to throw a switch or turn a knob or activate something. And for the radio people it’s a bad thing.

But moving on to the next thought, there is a time when you hear silence on the radio. On purpose. And nobody gets fired for it.

It’s in a broadcast of a baseball game. There are frequent lulls in the action on the field, so there are frequent pauses in the announcers’ talk. Those silences – when the announcers go quiet and all you hear is the faint murmuring of the crowd and the occasional shout of a vendor – are one of the endearing attributes of a baseball broadcast that makes it so pleasant, so accessible, so – well, listenable.

I grew up listening to broadcasts of baseball in Montgomery, Alabama. Our team’s name was the Rebels (Forget, hell) and they played in a ballpark named Cramton Bowl.

They don’t make parks like that anymore. It was used for both baseball and football, so it had a funny shape. There were grandstands behind the plate and along both baselines, but then on the first base/right field side there was a much larger extension of stands for football games. The right field line in baseball was also approximately one sideline of the football field.

When configured for baseball, there was this hill in center field. It was not a small rise, it was a serious hill. A center fielder in this park had to have mountain goat skills to catch long flies hit anywhere between left center and deep straightaway center.

And just beyond the left field fence, behind a big row of trees, there was a ravine with a railroad track running through it. In the days when there were still steam engines, a train would go by, chugging and puffing away, and if the wind was right, huge clouds of black coal smoke would roll up from the ravine and blow into the playing field. The left fielder would disappear in the smoke.

You had to be tough to be a Montgomery Rebel.

More in the next post.

Stayin' alive

I got a letter – an “official e-mail,” no less – from a “Mr. Adams Williams,” who identified himself as “Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.”

Mr. Williams advised me that “one Mr. David Woodruff, who claim to be your business associate/partner here in Africa,” was further claiming that I was dead and that “all relevant documentation/Informations regarding your Payment/Transfer be changed to him as the beneficiary of the payment” of $1,850,000 which, Mr. Williams said, the government of Nigeria owed me.

“We need to confirm from you if it’s really true that you are dead as made mention by your associate. You should note that, if we do not hear from you, it automatically means that you are actually dead and the information passed to us by David Woodruff is correct.”

If I was not dead, the letter went on, I was to “respond to this e-mail immediately” with my name, address, and other identification information, plus a copy of either my driver’s license or my passport.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I have not had great success in responding to these “help me collect millions of dollars for you” e-mails. So I decided, with some reluctance, not to answer.

Several weeks later I got to thinking about it – “Mr. Adams Williams” didn’t hear from me, so to his mind I am “actually dead” and “David Woodruff” has probably collected all the money that was rightfully mine.

That Woodruff. He’s always doing something like this. And to think he used to be my “associate/partner” in Africa. Why I ever trusted that guy in the first place I’ll never know.

And what can you say about the government of Nigeria? They’ve owed me money for years and have stiffed me time and again.

But back to my being “actually dead.” I suppose I should let my insurance company know so the life policy will pay off. And probably Social Security, too, so they can forward my checks to my wife. I mean my surviving spouse.

But there’s a silver lining. Since I’m “actually dead,” I no longer have to floss. Better yet, I won’t have to go the DMV later this month and renew my driver’s license.

I’ll just join all those other bad drivers on the road who really need to get a life.

Don't be inactive!

You gotta hand it to those bankers.

When it comes to separating you from your money, they’re creative geniuses.

Most recent case in point: On my most recent statement for by business charge card, there was a $20 item. The description: “INACTIVE ACCOUNT FEE.”

Well, now! They want to charge me $20 for not using my charge card? Come on! I agree it’s legitimate for them to charge me interest when I charge something, because I am in effect borrowing money from the bank to pay for something. No problem there.

But a $20 clip for doing nothing?

I protested. The young banker where I do business professed to be surprised by the charge, and called someone somewhere out there in call center land to see about getting it removed. After surprisingly little persuasion on his part, the answer came back, OK. The charge was removed.

(I can envision what was going through the mind of the person on the other end of the call: “Darn, another one caught on. Oh well, there are millions more who will just pay it and not complain.”)

You have to look for life lessons wherever you can find them, and I found one here:

Don’t be inactive. Stay active.

I don’t mean to necessarily go out and charge something. I mean keep moving, stay actively engaged in life, don’t sit around and do nothing.

If you’re recently retired or fired or laid off, don’t sit there and bemoan your fate. Get off your chair and reinvent yourself. In fact, go to http://www.rebootyou.com/ and look around. You’ll find all kind of resources there to help you.

Either that, or send me $20.

The homeland security threat level today: pink?

My wife and I recently took a short vacation to Cancun, Mexico. On our way home, we learned something new about how our borders are protected.

Before I get to this insight, I’m happy to say that Cancun is delightful. Clean and new – only about 40 years old. Admittedly, what we saw was not Cancun proper but “hotel row,” an island shaped like a 7, lined with both moderately priced and luxury hotels, malls and theme parks, and connected to the mainland by bridges at both ends.

And the beach is postcard beautiful – sparkling white sand and the Caribbean a brilliant turquoise in the shallows and a rich blue in the deeper water.

Our itinerary included overnight stays both ways in Los Angeles, there being no direct flights between San Francisco and Cancun. So we went through both outbound security and inbound customs at LAX upon our return.

The TSA people were especially alert as we left. At the security point, they pulled my wife’s luggage for detailed inspection. The offending substances: Nordstrom delicate fabric wash, a white powder in a small plastic container along with alleged facial creams, all in approved 3-ounce plastic containers. The fabric wash didn’t pass the X-ray test, so the inspector had to take it out for hands-on inspection.

No problem. We complimented them on their diligence. Hey, they were doing their job and we thought they were doing it quite well.

After a wonderful stay in Cancun, we came back to LAX. After the usual long wait to show our passports, we made our way to the exit where a customs agent was collecting the tourist card you must present to authorities when you return from Mexico.

My wife, dressed in comfortable travel clothes that included a pink tunic top and pink pashmina wrap, handed the document to the guard.

He gave it a quick glance, said, “OK,” and waved us through. The speed surprised us.

“Is that it?” my wife asked.

“That's it,” the guard smiled. “Terrorists don’t wear pink.”

Flipping and YouTubing

I figured it was time. High time, in fact.

Time to join the YouTube Generation.

So the first thing I did was to buy a Flip video camera.

My reaction? Wow!

I was absolutely amazed at the capability of this stunning little device, completely impressed with its ease of use and blown away by how simple it is to take videos and then get them onto your computer.

I’d read a lot of praise for Flip, and now I understand why. It’s all true. Very small little box, not much inside except the Flip, a one-page quick start guide (that’s actually understandable), the warranty, a little carrying pouch and a wrist strap. It came with the battery half charged so all I had to do was take it out of the box and shoot a video, a 23-second epic of my wife sitting at our breakfast room table.

Then I slid the little button on the side down and out popped a USB arm. Slipped it into a USB port on the side of my laptop, and the Flip software automatically uploaded from the device to the computer. Downloaded my first video onto the computer.

In less time than it takes to write about it I was in the video business.

End of Part 1, now time to move on to Part 2: YouTube.

Figuring out how to upload a video to YouTube wasn’t as simple as learning to use the Flip, but after some trial and error, I figured it out. Now my first video (and a second test shot today) are uploaded to YouTube, along with – how many others? Several hundred billion or so?

Doesn’t matter, I did it.

Yes, I’m late to the party, but that doesn’t matter either. The important thing is that I have just opened a couple of doors to new worlds, and I feel great about it.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star...

“Hi honey, Happy Anniversary. Here’s your present.”

“Ooh, wonderful, what is it? It feels like a picture frame.”

“Open it up! You’ll love it!”

(Sound of paper being ripped off a frame.)

“Oh. Wow, what is this? What does the writing say? I don’t have my glasses. ‘Inter…’”

“International Star Registry.”

“International Star Registry? What is that?”

“I named a star for you to show you how much I love you.”

“You did what?”

“Named a star for you. This is the document that identifies the star and certifies that it is named for you.”

“Wait. It identifies a star named for me?”

“Yep. Just for you.

“But… there are so many stars up there. How do I know which one is named for me?”

“Oh, honey, that’s no problem. Look what’s on the certificate: the telescopic coordinates of the star, an informative booklet with charts of the constellations plus a larger, more detailed chart with the star named for you circled in red. So we can find it any time we want to with a telescope.”

“We don’t have a telescope. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“Well, we’ll get one so we can look at your star.”

“So do I now own this star?”

“Well, no. The International Star Registry doesn’t own the star, so they can’t sell it to you. But the star is now associated with you. It is something you can point at to know that there is something special out there for you.”

“OK. So, if I don’t own it, will astronomers and scientists recognize it as ‘my’ star?”

“No. The International Star Registry is a private company that provides Gift Packages. Astronomers will not recognize your name because your name is published only in the International Star Registry Star catalog. They periodically print a book called “Your Place in the Cosmos,” which lists the stars that they’ve named.”

“Well, dear, thank you for your thoughtful gift. I’m really touched to have a star named for me, that I need a telescope to see, that I don’t own but is ‘associated with me,’ that astronomers don’t recognize as mine, and that’s listed in a book which this outfit ‘periodically prints.’”

“Yes, honey, and because it’s you, I got you the Heirloom Ultimate version. Look! The certificate is beautifully matted in an architecturally inspired frame designed by Stanford White. The matte is a vintage eggplant color complimenting the colors in the certificate. And look what else: The personalized star chart is framed also in this package. The frame measures 24 1/2" X 20 1/2" and matches the frame in the deluxe package.”

“Who’s Stanford White?”

“I don’t know, I guess he’s a frame designer. Must be famous.”

“I guess I’m bowled over, even if it was free.”

“Uh, honey, it wasn’t free. You know they couldn’t do this and give it away.”

“You paid money for this?”

“Well, yes I did, but it’s our anniversary."

“How much?”

“Uh, well, it was only $489.00.”

“WHAT? FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-NINE DOLLARS?”

“Uh, yeah, plus shipping and handling.”

“Well, honey, I have to say I never expected to have a star named for me. And for only, say $500, after shipping and handling. You really know how to make your wife happy.”

“Anything for you, dear.”

“I’m almost speechless. I can only say one thing. You shouldn’t have. Really.”

Last word on Creamsicles

I have just finished a delicious raspberry Creamsicle.

First one I’ve had in too long to count. And it was just as good as I remembered. (Please see the preceding two blogs.)

Today I mentioned my “ice cream man” memories to a friend who told me that if I went to the grocery store and looked in the frozen foods section, I could find Creamsicles. “I know they are there,” he said. “My wife eats them all the time.”

That’s all I needed. Within 30 minutes I was in my neighborhood supermarket and sure enough, right in the ice cream freezer, there they were. I bought an 8-pack of orange and raspberry. As the Campbell’s soup ad used to say, “Mmmmm, good!”

The Creamsicle is a derivative of the 105-year-old Popsicle. In 1905, 11-year-old Frank Epperson of San Francisco left a mixture of powdered soda, water, and a stirring stick in a cup on his porch. It was a cold night, and Epperson awoke the next morning to find a frozen pop. He called it the "Epsicle."

It was a hit with his friends at school, and later with his own kids. They constantly called for "Pop's 'sicle." So in 1923, Epperson changed the name and applied for a patent. A couple of years later, Epperson sold the rights to the brand name Popsicle to the Joe Lowe Company in New York.

The Good Humor Company, a subsidiary of Unilever, bought the rights to all the “sicles” in 1989. Popsicle®, Creamsicle® and Fudgsicle® are all trademarks of Unilever.

I still need to figure out how my memory served up “Dreamsicle” instead of “Creamsicle.”

Neuron asleep at the switch

Last night I had an exercise in remembering something from my childhood maybe 65 years ago. The overall experience I was remembering was the arrival of the “ice cream man” on our street. Specifically, I recalled (or thought I recalled) a specific product the ice cream man sold. It was a combination bar of frozen juice with ice cream inside. I remembered it as a “Dreamsicle.” I wrote about it in yesterday’s blog.

This morning, in the shower, I had a flash: It wasn’t a “Dreamsicle,” it was a “Creamsicle.” I had remembered the sound of the word but I pulled up an incorrect rhyming version of it from my memory. The minute I got out of the shower I rushed to the computer, pulled up the incorrect blog and corrected it.

This got me to wondering how memories are created, stored and recalled in the brain. I Googled “how memory works” and found Public Broadcasting’s Nova Science Now website. There I was able to view and found a video of neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried talking about how memories are stored and retrieved.

According to Fried, an experience (say, the arrival of the ice cream man and buying stuff from him) is captured by a single neuron, or a group of neurons firing together. When the call goes out to recall that memory, the same neuron or neuron group fires again.

So let’s say each neuron in the group of neurons that captured the original visit by the ice cream man remembered one part of the experience: one captured the look of the ice cream box, another the sound of the cow bell that signaled the ice cream man’s arrival, and several others the taste of various goodies in the box.

But on further reflection, there must have been one neuron for each quality of each particular product – in this case, the Creamsicle. One neuron got the flavor, one got the temperature, one the location of the ice cream inside the icy blanket around it, one the stick frozen into the Creamsicle to provide a handle and, finally, one got the name.

So let’s dig a little further. Maybe there were several neurons assigned to grab the name. One got that it ended in “… sicle.” Another got that the first syllable sounded like “…eem.” And the one in charge of getting the first letter probably got “C” at the time – but something happened to it along the way.

Now, 65 years later, along comes a memory call: Hey, remember that bar with frozen juice on the outside and ice cream on the inside? What was it? Every frozen-bar-with-ice-cream neuron hustles up to bring its part: Here’s “..sicle,” and here’s “…eem,” and… “Hey, where’s the neuron with the first letter?”

Well, it turns out that neuron was asleep at the switch, as it were. “Duh, I’ve forgotten. Maybe it was ‘D’ for ‘Dreamsicle,’ because they were pretty dreamy-good. So I’ll offer up ‘D.’”

For a few hours, the other neurons accepted the D. But this morning the faulty first-letter neuron snapped awake and said “Hey, wait a minute, it was C, not D. Creamsicle, not Dreamsicle.”

Why did it fail? It came close, but it failed. Has it been doing other things since the ice cream man came by? Remembering algebra, sunsets, the smell of apple pie in the oven, an acquaintance’s name, a dentist’s appointment? Has it been overworked?

Or has it been lying there in the cranial soup, with no responsibilities other than remembering “C?” Did it just go flabby? Use it or lose it, and I didn’t use it?

I’ll probably never know. But I have certainly profited by the experience. I’ve delved deeper into my brain than I thought I would. And I may know a little more about how this amazing organ works – maybe one neuron’s worth.

One thing is for sure. After all this, that dumb neuron better not come up with D again.

The ice cream man

I just read a story by writing instructor and coach Sharon Lippincott entitled “Too Old for Ice Cream,” and it took me back.

Her story was about an encounter – or rather, a non-encounter – with a modern-day ice cream truck – a red van with a raised roof, a neighborhood-tempting sound system, numerous big decals and a cooler hung under the window on the passenger side. She was struck by the contrast with the “white, spotlessly clean” ice cream trucks of her youth.

The teenage driver passed her right by without stopping – twice – and Sharon wondered if he thought she looked too old to be buying ice cream. Upon reflection, she happily dismissed this notion, went to her freezer at home, pulled out a Klondike bar and thoroughly enjoyed it. Her pang of nostalgia, it turned out, was about ice cream trucks, not ice cream.

Even though the story was published in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review almost three years ago, it was as fresh for me as a frosty Popsicle. It brought to mind the ice cream vendors when I was a little boy – before the days of ice cream trucks, when “the ice cream man” came by pushing a clunky white box mounted on two bike wheels or pedaling a bike-powered version of the same basic box.

They didn’t have amplified sound systems. They had cowbells hanging on their handlebars. Still, you could hear them half a block away.

The chocolate and vanilla delicacy known today as an Eskimo Pie today was a “Big Boy” to us. There were also Fudgesicles, which were all chocolate with no coating. But Popsicles were Popsicles then, just as they are today. And every now and then, if we were lucky, the ice cream man would have Creamsicles, which was a Popsicle on the outside and ice cream on the inside. Heaven on a stick!

The ice cream man – who more often than not was a teenager – also had something really special at the bottom of his box – dry ice. That’s how they kept the ice cream from melting. If you begged long enough, and the ice cream man was feeling generous, he would break off a tiny piece of dry ice and give it to you.

It was so cold you couldn’t hold it in your hand. You had to toss it back and forth or it would burn you. You would put a penny on the dry ice and it would sizzle – in addition to getting very cold. If you were really brave and cool (no pun intended), you’d put the dry ice in your mouth (making sure you had enough saliva to keep it swishing around) and “blow smoke” by breathing out with your mouth open.

I agree with Sharon that you never get too old for ice cream. Sometimes, in the interest of health, the refreshment option is frozen yogurt. But for genuine goodness and perfect taste, nothing beats old fashioned ice cream.

Except, every now and then, a Creamsicle.