The Rakers Lament

Fall is coming and going in a heartbeat and I am finding that once again I am thinking big, deep thoughts as I spend hours raking leaves. Very deep thoughts.

Sometimes a neighbors leaves blow onto my lawn.
Sometimes my leaves blow on to a neighbors lawn.
No big deal.

From the time spent raking I have contemplative time. Time to think on my life. Time to think about other people’s lives. Think about my marriage. Think anout my kids. Think.

Leaves fall every year.
They are God’s garbage.

Really I do not think about shit. I think about how much I hate raking. Last year when my kids (who were always useless rakers anyway) went away, or at least the boys went away I discovered something magical. I have a small patch of woods behind my house. Really just a bunch of over grown weeds with a few trees but hard to walk through and they provide a nice illusion of privacy in the summer. I also have a tarp back from 15 years ago when I thought it made sense to atach stuff to the top of the mini van and drive to Michigan (wrong). The magical thing was that instead of spending 5 bucks a bag for leaf bags and then stooping, stuffing and compacting leafs in these awful little bags that I could rake leaves onto the tarp, drag them back into the trees and dump them. I dumped so many last year that they were wase high and I went back there this fall with trepidation that there would be no room. But God had cleaned them up. There is something about leaf raking and knowing that I will wake up tomorrow and my lawn will be covered and there will be no evidence of my labor. Something Calvinistic. Something that speaks to the fleeting nature of all earthly achievement. Good Biblical stuff.

Insipidly Bad Leaf Poem With Worse Music: http://www.countrywhispers.com/autumnl/

So this year I am raking leaves again onto the tarp. Wet leaves because we had the rainiest October ever. The front yard got done yesterday. The Back today afyter the Ram’s game (and they are beating the horridly bad Detorit Lions). I wonder why one of America’s lions of poetry should write this bad of a poem that including the comparison of the leaf to being old.I guess it is just the typical fear of death that forces us to wax maudlin regarding the mundane.

And if I should live to be

The last leaf upon the tree

In the spring,
Let them smile,
as I do now,

At the old forsaken bough 
Where I cling.

The Last Leaf by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Seriously? I have to lean to Reagan on this one: "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." -- Ronald Reagan, 1981 But wait, there is more from The Gipper: "A tree is a tree. How many more do you have to look at?" -- Ronald Reagan, 1966, opposing expansion of Redwood National Park as governor of California. I guess this is why Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck revere him as a gog (little g).

Thinking big thoughts like... "why is God angry with me?"

R.I.P Death of Diners And More

It is harder when you lose a friend I guess but there is still something difficult about burying someone you do no like as well. This year we have lost two Diners, one of which will be missed and the other could go unremarked upon and no one would have ever known that it existed. Still, we have lost two more places to have breakfast and that is always a sad thing. Because even in the case of the bad diner there is always a hope that things might improve and it will become a good place. A comforting place. A place where I can come and hang out and read the paper and get set for the day. One of these places would have fit the bill... the other never had a chance.

So we lost After. After was cool. it was hip. It was made for a breakfast place for the late night crowd on their way home. It was not made for real breakfasters but instead for drunks and people working on losing the hangover. It was staffed in the morning by a group of fairly inattentive waitresses and always one guy cooking and the fact is... the food was good. Hot and fresh. great iced tea, good hash-browns, wobbly tables with red checked plastic table clothes with cigarette holes burned in them. All the good elements. A little kitschy in the way it was decorated but who cares. it was on Manchester in the “Grove” district which i used to think of as the lesbian district but that is neither here nor there.

Wheelers.... Wheelers opened recently and well... Wheelers just sucked. Wheelers closing was like putting down a vicious 3 legged pit bull. It did not take a lot of thought and in the end everyone was better off. While I went to After 4 or 5 times I only made it to Wheelers once. They did not have fresh iced tea, they had no sausage because “the truck had not come in yet” and you had the feeling that they did not do enough volume to have “fresh” food. Never a good feeling. The place had no atmosphere but was a big open room with some bad Coke souvenirs. Wheelers was right down the street from Billies anyway so there is really no reason for the place to exist anyway. It was...superfluous... at best.

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Sooooo... I have some concerns. My primary concern on march 12, 2008 was that I had purchased my last tank of gas... ever... for less then $3.00 a gallon. They are paying $3.50 all over the country and... well... it just made me sick thinking about it. I really remember .19 a gallon. I feel nostalgic... I feel old... I feel sad. But I will get over it. You wonder if gas would be so expensive if we had chosen a different course in the middle east. You wonder how much texas oil men will make this year along with Mobil Exxon and all the rest. You wonder. Or maybe you don’t... but I do.

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As long as we are burying people. As much as she can disrupt this race and damage the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is dead. So sayeth the Diner Review.

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We have not commented as of yet on the Elliot Spitzer thing. I think it is not needed. The whole thing was so trite and played out that I was once again embarrassed to be a man. That we as a gender can risk our families (and lets forget about his career. His dad is super rich and he will land on his feet as just a regular multi millionaire) for the sake of some fun. Well. What can you say. It is pathetic. I guess the only lesson i take from it is something I already know. We are all broken people, sinful in our own ways, sometimes special ways, and that grabbing the moral high ground when in the spotlight (or ever) is likely a mistake and sets you up to stumble. I do hope that if I ever stumbled in this way I would refuse my wife’s kind, well intentioned offer to stand by me before the cameras (in this case twice). I do not think anyone deserves that. I feel sorry for the wife and the daughters. I feel sorry for him because when you ride so high it must suck to have your humanity paraded before all the people you were lording yourself over. I do not have sympathy for his dad who I think thought he was going to be another Joe Kennedy and put his boy in the White House. What is worst is the picture they keep putting up where he looks like a goblin. So while we are at it. lets bury him too.

***

I would also like to bury St. Pat’s day but I think that is a personal grudge but lets do bury Irish food while we are here.

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I think that is it. It is on to march Madness and the Diner review will be turned over to our good friends at KUBE. March Madness is always great and it brings with the promise of Spring. Let the brackets begin!