Big Mike: The Greatest Day

The East End of Metro Louisville, where I live, is an awfully white section of town. That's why the presence of the man sitting in the armchair at my Starbuck's this morning caused me to do a double-take. He was black.

He was waiting for someone, for a business meeting most likely since he was wearing a suit and he had that expectant look in his eye like the bazillions of others of a more ivory skin hue who do the same thing here everyday. I nodded at him and he nodded back. It was all I could do not to approach him, shake his hand, pat him on the back, and ask, Isn't this the greatest day this country has seen since, oh, who the hell knows when?

Good sense got the better of me, though. I thought, What if he's a Republican? What if he'd be insulted that I'd think he'd share my glee over Barack Obama's inauguration today simply because he's black?

Then, when ordering my coffee, I wanted to ask the barista, who was white, Isn't this the greatest day this country has seen since...? But again, I resisted the temptation, not because she was white but, aw I don't know, maybe because I didn't want to embarrass either of us.

Actually, this is the greatest day this country has seen since, well, I don't know when. We're not celebrating a war victory which entails by necessity the preamble of hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed human beings. We're celebrating the first election of a black man by a predominantly white nation in the history of the world. Man!

All my adult life I've thought the single greatest thing would be to witness the Cubs winning the World Series. No lie. I haven't had kids so I don't have the emergence of a Baby Pal to crow over. (In truth, I really wouldn't have minded having a kid or two - as long as they could live elsewhere and would go away whenever I was feeling cranky.) I haven't won the Pulitzer, the Nobel, or the National Book Award. I haven't made love to (in chronological order of my obsession) November 1968 Playmate Paige Young, Shirley (Partridge Family) Jones, Suzanne Vega, Dana Delaney, or Zooey Deschanel. Whatever dreams I had as a kid, save for earning my living in a creative field, have been so far unfulfilled.

So dreaming of the Cubs bursting out of the Wrigley Field dugout on a late October night to celebrate winning the championship of the whole wide world has kept me going despite living through the experiences of George W. Bush, 9/11, debilitating clinical depression, three specific lost loves, the administration of Jim Frey, and other unspeakable horrors.

Yet, today, as I drove to the Starbuck's and listened to NPR reporters breathlessly describe the early morning scene in Washington, DC I realized that a Cubs World Series clincher would rank a distant second. How crazy, how odd, how wild it is - we've fallen headlong into a world financial collapse and people are giddy with optimism!

I don't know what the next year or two will bring but I do know that I've had it up to here with people bragging about their Hummers, their flat screen TVs, their iPhones that allow them to communicate with the people of the Andromeda Galaxy, their sixth new/bigger/better home in the last dozen years, and all the rest of the trappings they've had to sacrifice their mean little souls for. I read the other day that sociologists and the like are astounded because many people are actually looking forward to living more modest lifestyles in the coming years, that this financial apocalypse will force us to become less materialistic and more interdependent. Hooray - the era ushered in by Saint Ronald Reagan is dead!

It's a great day and I'm lucky to be living through it. I can't ask for anything more - oh, alright - just the sight of Sweet Lou, Big Z, D-Lee and the rest spilling out of the Cubs dugout next October to celebrate the championship of the whole wide world.

Big Mike: Courage In High Heels

Celebrating MLK Day today. CNN is awash in nostalgia. Listened to his August 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial for the ten thousandth time. Nevertheless, every time he rides that crescendo into Free at last, free at last, thank god almighty, I'm free at last! I get goosebumps and my eyes start watering.

This needs to be said: J. Edgar Hoover, this nation's premier law enforcement officer, despised King. Hoover hypnotized his agents into believing King was "dangerous" and a "communist." He called him burrhead as a matter of course. No American president had the guts to kick Hoover out on his loathsome ass.

I remember the Monday after King's assassination. Sunday night thunderstorms had broken an unseasonably warm spell. The rain had cooled off the rioting as well. Still, there was no school that day. Over the weekend, newscasters and city officials had filled the airwaves with warnings for parents to keep their children home for the foreseeable future but my friends and I weren't having any of it. We organized a bike caravan to the forest preserve on North Avenue at the Des Plaines River. It was a good five-mile ride, fairly adventurous for a gang of 11- and 12-year-olds.

We started off with Pollack Julian from up my block as well as Louie LaFemina and Ronald Micci. We pedaled to the home of the tough Lenczyck boys, Danny and Terry. As we waited for the Lenczycks to come down, their younger brother Paulie begged us to let him come along. Danny at first was miffed when he heard this, then he relented. "Okay," he said gruffly to his little brother, "but no high heels!"

Paulie was 10 and never usually wanted to come out of the house. He preferred to stay indoors and walk around in his mother's feathered mules or dress pumps. Once, he answered the door wearing lipstick.

None of us ever teased Paulie for these quirks. Either Danny or Terry would have fattened our lips had we dared. They weren't happy about Paulie's pastime but he was still their brother. Paulie rode with Ronald, whose bike had a banana seat and therefore could fit two riders.

When we got to the forest preserve, Paulie started a fire and cooked us lunch. He'd brought a soup pan, a package of spaghetti, and a bottle of ketchup. When it was ready, we dug in and slurped the spaghetti like the Meryl Streep character in "Defending Your Life." By the time we were finished our shirts and faces were speckled red.

Sated, we leaned back and began discussing - what else? - baseball. The traditional opener in Cincinnati, scheduled for that afternoon, had been postponed, like many events in the aftermath of the killing but we were eager for the season to begin. The year before had been the first in decades during which both the Cubs and the White Sox had finished with winning records.

All of us were Cubs fans except for Louie LaFemina. He always seemed a contrarian and so it was with his baseball loyalty. It worked out well for us, though, because every spring he'd trade us all his Cubs baseball cards for our White Sox cards. Louie argued valiantly for the superiority of the Sox that day. We ridiculed him but he only argued more determinedly.

Finally, after 20 minutes of squabbling, Pollack Julian piped up. "Shut up, Louie," he yelled. "The Sox suck. They got too many niggers."

Well, Louie had nothing to counter that argument with and so he fell silent. It was Paulie who challenged Julian. "That's not a very nice thing to say," he said.

Julian snorted, "Whaddya, some kinda Martin Luther King-lover?"

"What's wrong with Martin Luther King?" Paulie asked. "I think he was a good man."

Oh, Julian howled! He laughed until he had to clutch his side in pain. "Didja hear that?" he hollered.

Ever since I'd met Paulie, I'd shunned him. I was afraid of him, quite frankly. What was I to make of this kid who enjoyed dressing like his mother? I was curious, though, about why he wanted to wear high heels. Of course, I never asked him outright why he did so. Merely posing the question might put my own preferences in doubt among the guys and, gulp, maybe even myself.

But that day even a scared rabbit like me realized that Paulie was the bravest among us. God forbid I would have told him so, though. It would be years before I could muster that kind of bravery.