Ten Things That Really Bother Me, But Shouldn't

1. Knowing that even if I brush and rinse before I go to bed, I will still wake up with rancid breath.
2. Rascal Flatts songs.
3. People who don't merge one-at-a-time.
4. Fake testicles hanging behind pick-up trucks.
5. Tabloids. And anyone in them.
6. Girls wearing matching Velour sweatsuits out of the house. Same goes for guys and pajama/lounge pants.
7. People wearing Abercrombie t-shirts. Look at me! I overpay for everyday items!
8. People wearing Hollister or Quicksilver t-shirts. No one on the east coast surfs. Aspire to convince people that you are part of something of greater worth than the surf crowd.
9. Drivers using their windshield wipers at a setting far too high than what the rainfall merits.
10. The OBX/LBI/IRE bumper stickers. See my February 2007 blog post.

The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath was assigned reading in my freshman Honors Lit class in high school, and I remember that it was also the first book that I didn't finish. I made it through about 50 pages and then gleaned just enough from class discussions to fake my way (poorly) through the essay test. I forget what the 'conflict' was at the time--the '96 MLB playoffs is most likely--but I know I didn't give John Steinbeck's work nearly as much effort as it deserves. I subsequently resolved to never again leave a book unread.

To recall that I didn't get more than ten chapters into this classic helps to confirm that my literary discernment and skill as a reader has indisputably improved since 9th grade. I am presently reading my own copy of The Grapes of Wrath (a handsome old hardcover copy gifted from my sister as a birthday present) and I am now ashamed that I was so unmoved by this work as a young man of 14. As an older young man of 26, I can say now with certainty that Grapes is undoubtedly one of the greatest works I have read.

The Grapes of Wrath is the fictional account of three generations of an Oklahoma sharecropping family forced off their land by the bank to whom they have become indebted and lost their farm. They had lost their farm because of a series of extremely poor crops and the Dust Bowl of the 1930's. Sadly, the family distills their life and possessions into a single vehicle, traveling to California on the promise of year-round harvests and high wages. These promises prove empty and they find their prospects in California much the same as they were in Oklahoma. Men are steadily and effectively reduced to begging and stealing in order to keep their children from starving--often a vain struggle. Families dissolve or wither together as vagrants. The story is broad and terrible, yet the narrative is delivered in still, intimate moments and personal exchanges. Steinbeck's writing resonates with me and this story has gripped me like few have.

An excerpt from Chapter Five, an exchange between the bank representative and a tenant farmer:

You'll have to get off the land. The plows'll go through the dooryard.
And now the squatting men stood up angrily. Grampa took up the land, and he had to kill the Indians and drive them away. And Pa was born here, and he killed weeds and snakes. Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money. An' we was born here. There in the door--our children born here. And Pa had to borrow money. The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and we got a little bit of what we raised.
We know that--all that. It's not us, it's the bank. A bank isn't like a man. It's a monster.
Sure, cried the tenant men, but it's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's what makes it ours--being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.
We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't like a man.
Yes, but the bank is only made of men.
No, you're wrong there--quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.


The tragic nature of the story is what I find most moving, and perhaps because I find it somewhat relevant to my own feelings as a young man of 26 in a changing world. Recent months have marked the first times that I have felt genuine concern about our national/local economy, of which I am a part. In a much less tragic, although not any less real sense, I feel as if I can relate to the men of the Joad family more at this point in my life than I have in any preceding. I see the price of gas rising and I hear only foreboding forecasts--no real solutions. I find our finances tighter than they have ever been, and my only comfort is that I know that everyone around us is in the same situation. The themes of my struggles, albeit of far lesser sacrifice and tragedy, are not unsimilar to those of the heads of the Joad family--feelings of fighting a nameless, faceless entity; the necessity of resolve and hope in seemingly hopeless circumstances.

The migrant farmers occasionally burst in anger at not knowing against whom they are fighting. My reactions to the news reports and talk radio monologues are not very different. The magnitude of the struggle of an individual against a tide of injustice or hopelessness cannot be underestimated. I am reminded Russell Crowe's character in Cinderella Man (also set during the Great Depression) choosing to continue to box because "At least [in the ring] I know who's hitting me." Sometimes I wish I had such an outlet.

O God, our Help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our Guard while troubles last
And our eternal Home!

There's Treasure Everywhere

As was true last year, my hands have not been sitting idly by during these spring months still too wet to continue paint the house exterior. Putting a birthday present to good use, I spent the early part of May 2007 demolishing the concrete walkway/steps leading to our front door and then spent Memorial Day weekend (and beyond) installing a new walkway of field stone with my brother Joel.

This year's May project was transforming a 4-feet by 16-feet grass area just outside the back door into a vegetable garden. I started in late April, and now, a Saturday morning and a half dozen evenings later, the garden is ready.

Converting a grass plot into a garden plot is one of my least favorite landscaping tasks, mostly because it involves removing sod. This element was particularly frustrating because the sod to be removed happens to be the healthiest portion of grass in the backyard.

As such, the grass root mat was especially thick and cutting out the sod was increasingly difficult. I worked as efficiently and methodically as I knew how, cutting out squares measuring two-feet by two feet and then digging them up with my spade. Not wanting to waste the topsoil that was clinging to the grass roots necessitated shaking out each sod square until the topsoil had been rightly redeemed. Shaking out topsoil from sod is perhaps my second least favorite landscaping task, but it did yield some surprising results.

I had hardly made a dent into the formidable mound of sod squares and was shaking the topsoil from only the second or third of many squares when I first encountered what I consider buried treasure (my wife thinks otherwise). Upon discarding the spent sod square and searching through the topsoil below, I found the remains of a wild Indian chief, complete with head dress and rifle!

Not a real Indian chief, of course, but a yellow plastic figurine in the style of the inch-tall "Army Men" toys that little boys play with. This particular figurine had a full head dress and was aiming a rifle. And it was hardly another sod square until I discovered at whom Indian chief was aiming--a young cowboy with a cocked pistol, ready to fire! I had found some boy's lost toys!

What a miracle had just met me in the mundane task of shaking sod squares! How my pity party was crashed with the discovery of treasure in my topsoil! Imagination took hold and soon flooded my mind with thoughts of the additional treasure that may have awaited me--Indian arrow heads, old coins, jewelry--the possibilities were endless. Following my initial discovery, my senses were piqued with each stroke of my spade, listening for--expecting to hear-- the sound of metal against hollow wooden chest. For the remainder of the day I was far from my backyard and was instead trying to outwit a hoarde of pirates on Treasure Island.

Alas, my excavations were not deep enough to encounter any buried treasure of real monetary value. I finished clearing the garden plot, screened stones from the salvaged topsoil, and put a border of stained four-by-four's around. I'm pleased with how it turned out and am looking forward to literally reaping the fruits of my labors.

In all I unearthed two Indians, seven whole cowboys, one half cowboy, one half army man, one helicopter sans blades, one rusty hinge, one rusty bracket, two rusty Exact-O knife handles, two marbles, one Bic pen, a plastic quarter dated 1984, and a lucky medallion from the Philadelphia Zoo. Not a bad haul for a boy like Tom Sawyer. Not really too valuable for a boy like Scott Pearce.

Becca and I spent $796.06 on gasoline in the month of March 2008.

"Sheet of Integrity"

Listeners to the Mike and Mike morning show on ESPN radio will recognize the title phrase. "Sheet of Integrity" refers to, as I have recently become convicted, what a sports fan is obligated to stick with when participating in multiple NCAA tournament pools. 2008 is the first year that I have limited myself to one "Sheet of Integrity."

Every year I hear the same self-justification from fellow pool junkies: "I have Teams A, B, C, and D in the Final Four for my office bracket, but I entered Teams B, C, F, and J in my Cousin Vinnie's pool." I admit that I have been guilty of succumbing to the temptation to post different brackets in different pools. Mike Golic's reasoning was enough to convict and convert me. I am hereafter a one-bracket per year guy.

Advantages:
- Adds to the tension with each game. One bracket makes each pick more of a do-or-die scenario.
- Legitimizes boasting about correct upset picks. If you had all your money on Team X making the Final Four when no one else did, you have sole bragging rights. If you picked against Team X on your other three brackets, you lose all credibility.

Disadvantages:
- If you have a crucial team fall early, you lose all your money in all your pools early.
- Not only do you lose money, but you likely lose much interest.


Win or lose, Opening Day is just a few weeks away!