Book Review: Pages In Heat

“Blue Highways”
William Least heat Moon
Back Bay Books
429 Pages






I read this book on the recommendation of a grade school and high school compatriot who I ran into up in Michigan. I was extolling the virtues of diners and she and a Lutheran Minister of my acquaintance began extolling the virtues of this book and his system of choosing the best diners which was to see how many calendars were on the wall. The theory was a simple one that the best diners were frequented by local and the best evidence of locals were their wall calendars for auto parts, insurance, etc... I do not know about the theory but the book is a serious one.

"Least Heat Moon was living in Columbia Missouri when with his life going apparently bad he decided to go on a little vision quest in his pick up Ghost Dancing and travel all around the country. The name of the book and the idea was to not drive on inter-states but only the blue highways on his atlas which were small roads through the “real” America. Wikipedia tells us:
“His pen name came from something that his father once said, "I call myself heat moon, your elder brother is little heat moon. You, coming last, therefore, are least." Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he attended the University of Missouri–Columbia where he joined Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity and received a bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D degrees in English as well as a bachelor's degree in photojournalism. He also served as a professor of English at the University.
He is a contemporary Missouri travel writer, and author of a bestselling trilogy of topographical U.S. travel writing.
Blue Highways, which spent 42 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in 1982-83, is a chronicle of a three-month-long road trip that Heat-Moon took throughout the United States in 1978, after losing his teaching job and being left by his wife. He travelled 13,000 miles, as much as possible on secondary roads (often drawn on maps in blue, esp. on the old style Rand McNally road atlas) and tried to avoid cities, living out of the back of his van "Ghost Dancing" and visiting small towns such as Nameless, Tennessee; Hachita, New Mexico; and Bagley, Minnesota in an attempt to find places in America that were untouched by fast food chains and interstate highways. The book chronicles the people he talked to in roadside cafés as well as his personal soul-searching.”

It is an interesting book. Written or experienced in 1978 and published in 1982-83, right about the time I was getting out of college and not getting into Law School immediately. It was a best seller but I didn’t have time for it then, and to be fair it was hard to make time for it now. It is an excellent book. It is most interesting in that it is just kind of a slice of life view of our country at that time and in that regard it was fascinating. He visited a lot of towns that were on the map that had literally ceased to exist and then when he had the chance he found people who told the stories and in the oral tradition, put to writing there is some brilliant stuff.

But it was kind of hard for me to read. there is no plot. He starts off heading southeast to the Atlantic coast and goes clockwise from there around the country. He sleeps in cheap motels and his truck. He meets religious people and he frequently quotes Walt Whitman to anyone who will listen. He is cold and miserable a lot. Besides sitting in diners he goes to bars a lot and talks to people there. There is some connection between diners and bars which need to be explored in some kind of scholarly article. He often has a hard time finding a place to park the truck where he will not be harassed and it is hard to feature in the post 9-11 era that anyone would be even able to accomplish this anymore.
I recommend the book as a bed side companion but it took me almost a month to get through it. He is an excellent narrator and seems to have a gift for getting people to reveal things about what they perceive the history of their places are. In that same vein I am reading a book called “Psycho-Geography” written by one of my favorites Will Self that is based on an idea that the places we live shape or psyche. More later. For this one, it is a must read if you are a reader. It is a classic, but like all classics, it takes some work. Good luck.

7 Slingers on the ten scale

Guest Columnist

I have a son, Jon, who just finished his 2nd year at Valparaiso. He is a nice boy and he has written a weekly column for their newspaper, The Torch, called “Becker’s Banter”. It is an odd little column, the college equivalent of Bill Mc Lellan and his mother and I get to read it after several weeks. But he asks me to write his last column of the year because he is... lazy. I might or might not have been a little drunk when I wrote it. I did not think I saved what I sent but just found it in my trash so for your reading annoyance, here it is:

“Sooooo... it is Wednesday. Your father has been working all day, dealing with annoying, needy clients who do not want to pay (grown up stuff) and at 3:00 (C.S.T.) you get this message on Facebook (because you are one of those creepy 46 year old men who had a Facebook account) that says:

“Do you want to write the last Becker's Banter of the semester? I brought the idea up to my editor and he really enjoyed it. 500 words, by sometime tomorrow if you are interested. It could be a reflection on my articles, or something completely different.”
This is your oldest son. Arguably you love him. You have subscribed to the Torch so that you can read his blathering on a week to week basis, albeit several weeks late because of mailing and general Torch management incompetence. In any case I have been reading my sons articles all year and as loving father a number of things suggest themselves:

1. He is not that funny
2. He has very little insight
3. He appears to be very much the product of his gene pool.

All of that having been said, as a parent (and a lot of you have parents) you have to wonder:

A. Why is someone paying 30 grand a year for this kid to go to school?
B. What is he EVER going to do with his life?
C. Why would any girl date him?

Seriously. You have read his columns? How interesting can the bathrooms in the library be? Why would someone write (and have the arrogance to think) that anyone would be interested about the curbs that go no where on what used to be the main university thoroughfare? Who really cares about the weather in northern Indiana? These are the questions a parent asks himself when reading the things their son “writes” while taking a dump in a library bathroom.

So you read your son’s “columns” and while not making you feel better about your “investment” in his education at least have the value of distributing them to his mother, grandmother and mother in law (who can all exclaim regarding how “clever” he is) have very little value to daddy. But still, it something....right? I mean at least your son (who will not get his hair cut for a family picture but who will cut his hair for a girl who asks him) is doing something...right? I mean, we pay all this money for our kids to go to school, get a degree, pledge a fraternity or sorority, do a lot of stupid things, put them ALL on the internet for their future employers (and future spouses parents) to see, so we should get something for our nickel...arguably. And this is what I get? 27

NORMAL AUTHOR JON BECKER









Well... 28 years ago when it was suggested that I leave Valpo, by the dean of men I did not have that much to show. And from my visits to the campus, discussions with my son’s friends, (a very sad and troubled group) I have decides, somewhat belatedly that this is not really that bad a deal. What all of you should be thinking is, how can I deliver my parents some “value” from this incredibly expensive college experience? As a parent I can offer a few clues.

1. Read a book or two.
2. tailor your education to serving God’s plan for your life.
3. Pray for your parents. (We need the help)

As the late Hunter Thompson (noted Lutheran Theologian) told us: “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”. Know it, believe it, live by it. “

Obama...gets stomped in West Virginia

It is strangely unsatisfying. Around Wednesday or Thursday the pundits and America’s Democrats began leaving Hillary for dead. Nothing happened in the previous 24 hours but the settling of North Carolina and Indiana, which fell out as expected Those two contests confirmed what the previous 40 or so primaries and caucuses had already confirmed. Barack can raise money, rouse people and say “change” 2-3000 time in each speech. Hillary brings a square jawed, long suffering intelligence with a confidence in her own abilities along with sour, old school politics. Barack wins many contests by huge margins, Hillary wins key States by much small margins. But the bottom line is that Barack wins. It has been that way since Super Tuesday where the math could not work out any other way. But now, she is dead. Super Delegates are peeling off a few each week and there is now a palpable sense of inevitability.

They were willing to let her hang around till June 3 and the last primary until she was quoted in The USA Today as saying:
“"Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me . . . There's a pattern emerging here."

Now the party strategists who were divided about whether this long term campaign dragging on is bad for the party, are divided no more. So Hillary is left for dead but like all good zombies she is walking around like she does not know it. there is a hubris among the Clinton’s which will not allow acknowledgment of defeat. Their spin meisters will begin discussing how she beat all odds to get as far as she did, fighting against the media and the establishment. To be fair she has beaten all of the odds to get so far but it has more to do with being a women and all the institutional challenges she overcame. She has transformed the discussion on that count and has made a great contribution to the national dialogue. I just wish that when she spoke i did not always feel like I was being scolded. I believe that and the nationwide exhaustion with the Clinton Bush years made someone like Obama a foregone conclusion. That this powerful man who can speak so brilliantly burst on the scene as she was moving forward has to be tremendously galling but her life in the public eye, like her life with Bill has never been a walk in the park. She will grit her teeth and move on, and no doubt, prepare for 2012.

Now it comes to Obama/Mc cain. I like John Mc cain. I have liked him almost his whole career, without always agreeing with him. he is, or was kind of like Bill Clinton for me in that regard. But in order to unite his party and rally the old politics he has, since Romney dropped out of the race, sold his soul. I know that with a guy like Mc Cain he is likely doing and saying what he thinks he needs to do and say to get elected and i have every confidence that he will break with Bush’s failed economic policies and that he will appoint common sense Judges who will apply the law with the spirit of our great constitution honored as opposed to interpretations of it’s literal meaning. Both those things are important to me. Unfortunately he is dug in to our failed policies in Iraq and that along with his age makes it an easy choice.

The problems with Barack are many fold but me like many others will say, so what? it is the fact that he has no record of long term political “accomplishments” gained from Washington deal making that give me the hope that he will bring something different, that he will be something different, that he will transcend our current political nightmare of the 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent “mandate” that allows the winners to take all and carry their own agenda, no matter what the cost for the rest of the country. I am scared of Obama, more then a little because he is so charismatic and such a great speaker that there is chance for him to become a demagogue and a dictator if it all goes to hell. But, it will be exciting. My brother has been calling for a benevolent dictator for some time. Perhaps now he get his way.

Diner Review: Scott and Beverly's Other Place

Diner Review
Scott and Beverly’s Some Other Place
1500 Lemay Ferry
St. Louis, Missouri
314-544-8180

"All I wanna do is drink beer for breakfast
All I wanna eat is them BBQ chips
All I want is someone just to try to protect us
You can try but you'd never wanna try to defend us"
-The Replacements

Sooooo...what do you do about the bar that serves breakfast? I have one word. Celebrate. There is something about diner culture and alcohol that go together. I would guess it is likely the hangover that links the two but that is just my theory and, God forbid, I could be wrong, though in this case it seems unlikely.

I do not know where or even if Scott and Beverly have a place that is not “some other place”. I am sure there is a history here which I will likely have to take Pagano out with me to get the full story. I am sure it is in line with the great stories surrounding such venerable south city locations as “Skips”, “Skips Too” and “Skips Other Place” but i do not know.

SOP as it likes to be known on the door is a bar. It has a horrible little parking lot that makes you circle it and see all the bonafides of a good bar including a lot of trucks in the parking lot and a bar b q grill for outdoor grilling. There are grease stains on the outdoor back wall from greasy smoke pouring out of the vents. A very good sign. Upon entering it is dim with tables. On this Saturday morning there were several men at the bar drinking bloody mary’s which seemed very civilized for 7 on a Saturday.

The menu has all the basic stock along with their own version of the slinger which does not seem to include beans, I got a sausage sandwich that was excellent with the sausage having a slight spice to it which was very good. The hashbrowns, let me praise their hash browns. They were excellent (I laughed, I cried). Crispy fried into a patty with no discernible shape. Hot and slightly greasy when the crust was broke and perfect to mix up with anything else on your plate. I looked at the other patrons breakfasts and they all looked very good. It was kentucky Derby Day and so I celebrated at 6:45 with a Busch beer (very cold) which was a nice compliment for the grease. Busch Beer, it coats as it soothes.

The bartenders also served as the waitress. he was pleasant but would have been clearly overmanned if there was anyone else eating (other then the men drinking bloody mary’s at the bar). The iced tea was more then acceptable and on the whole I would call it an excellent experience.

They had a juke box, pull tabs and ATM and assorted bar games including mega touch. There is something about a place that serves breakfast that is just... a bar. I know Bukowski was not a big fan of breakfast but it begs for the guy who passes out for four hours and then walks up to the local bar to get breakfast, a beer, and start all over again. Kind of brings a tear to my eye. The location in deeeeeeep south county is also attractive as it allows the possibility of heading down to Broadway and doing a diner progressive dinner into the city. Perhaps this should become a group event.

8.5 Slingers On the Ten Scale

Book Review: Wow? Wao.

“The Brief And Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao”
Junot Diaz
335 Pages
Riverhead Books

I have been on a roll reading good books this year. I cull through a couple and don’t review everything I read. I review the ones I like and occasionally the ones I really hate. But this year has been good. I am sort of scared that i am going to hit a miserable stream of klunkers. Who needs that? So this book. This is a genre book. it will not grab everyone. But it should.
I am deeply suspicious of anyone who is not white, male, Protestant or Catholic and born in the United States. I always assume that these authors have nothing to say to me. I am of course, an idiot. But for the past 10 years or so there has been a rash of excellent fiction by...foreigners. I would say non-english speaking foreigners but these guys all probably run circles around most American authors. Lots of Indians, Pakistanis etc... Nice people and very insightful fiction.

One of my favorite authors, Madison Smartt Bell has taken an inordinate amount of his career to write historical fiction about Haiti. Brilliant stuff, that bores me to tears. So I was suspicious of Junot Diaz. He debuted with a book called Drown in 1996 and it was supposed to be brilliant and since then has taught and been a New Yorker contributor and all the pretentious thing a good author should do. I had no idea when I picked it up that the book had one the Pulitzer for fiction last year. I guess i should pay more attention.

It is a good story filled with magic, tension, family disfunction and a little bit of history. I did not know the story and history of Dominican strongman and dictator Rafael Trujillo but it was full of impressive lore and even more it was scary. Really scary because as much as I call Bush a Nazi the fear of living in a REAL, heavy handed dictatorship is overwhelming in this book as the good looks of a mother and daughter take them across Trujillo’s path with disastrous consequences for them and their families.

One of the daughters moved to America and has two children, a daughter and a son Oscar. Evidently Dominican men have a heavy code of sexuality and Oscar as a child was quite a ladies man but then turns into a fat pimply dork. His largest worry as he grows up is that he will die a virgin. He supplements his lack of personal life with a huge fantasy life filled with writing, comics, fantasy games and books and has...no friends. The sometime narrator of the story is one of his sister’s Dominican boyfriends and he recounts his efforts to mainstream Oscar.

The book has lots of foreshadowing a conclusion marred by Fuku is long anticipated and we are not disappointed. As the book follows Oscar, his sister, their mother and grandmother through various points in their lives there is a tragedy and beauty to all the misfortunes and pain. The book attempts to make a stab at the majesty of life and all in all I would argue that it succeeds well. This one is likely a MUST read.

9 Slingers On The 10 Scale

My Life In Hell

Sooooo...I have to apologize. This Diner has been lax in his posting duties. The reasons for this can be blamed on a number of factors including general malaise, post March Madness depression but really can all be traced to two evil words.... “boot camp”. While I am sure that does not sound either evil or malevolent, many of you do not have the pleasure to know my level of physical fitness. I am a Becker which means I have very limited hand/eye coordination and prefer much more to “play” then to “compete”. This was fine up till about 30 when my rapid, hyper, caffeine fueled metabolism burnt off pounds. This allowed me to mock my beer drinking (swilling) friends who had developed the paunch early on. In retrospect this was a mistake.

I have had numerous bouts with exercise and fitness. I have proven myself to have, along with a lot of other admirable attributes to be a quitter. As an adult about the only “exercise” I sustained for a lengthy period was some time at the University Club playing squash in the morning. Even that had more to do with a hot steam and a breakfast then it did with staying in shape. I have, in no specific order, run, exercised on machines, tread-milled, biked, played tennis... blah, blah, blah. Everything other then aerobic and energetic sex has been tried and ultimately cast aside.

So it was with a lot of trepidation that I eyed boot camp. My wife had done it several years ago and along with dieting dropped a lot of weight. She decided to start up again in planning for our 25th anniversary and what I am still thinking to be a misguided goal of fitting into her wedding dress. Since I have been married for 25 years I knew my job was to be encouraging, but not too encouraging. I could be a cheerleader but if you go too much further then that there comes a point where she is questioning why HER weight loss is so important to you.... anyway... She has been getting up at 5:30 in the morning for a few months to go to boot camp. She knew that in the winter I hibernate but I made noises that when spring came I would “think about” joining her. This was a mistake. I believe in my Church they would refer to this as “giving the devil a foothold” in your life.

This left me with very few excuses when at the end of March boot camp “buddy day” came around. Buddy day is a thinly veiled recruitment technique for boot camp where you bring a friend or relative. So I got up on 5:30 with her (I might or might not have had a cocktail the night before) and headed for Kirkwood Park where a large boot camp group (cult) is shepherded over by a 105 pound 25 year old names ma-am. She is a nazi.

For those of you who have not been to a boot camp it starts with walking around the gym, followed by jogging and then you move to your position (where you have staked out a place with your mat) and you stretch...arms, legs and calfs for 15 minutes and then you start to exercise. Well, I had not exercised in a long time and when we were jogging in place I was not “warming up” but I was working out, kicking my knees up high. As we went into each exercised i was pushing from the start and not pacing myself at all and 15 minutes into it, not understanding my mistakes, i was light headed and thought I was going to puke. I took a brief break in the bathroom and came back for more and though, quite literally i was going to die.

As my wife drove me home as I was sweating and shivering, she inquired as to whether or not she should take me to the hospital but I mumbled “home” and that is where she took me. Upon arrival i went straight to bed where I lay for 20 minutes waiting for some equilibrium to return. It did and with it came the conviction that if i was in this bad a shape, it might be time to really do do something about my bad shape. So I told my wife i would commit for the next six week session. In retrospect this was also a mistake.

So for the last few weeks, as the Diner review has been on hiatus, I have been traveling to Kirkwood each morning with my wife and going through a series of exercises. I realized immediately my prior mistake and began pacing myself (loafing) during warms ups and taking full advantage of stretching out (I have never and probably never will be able to touch my toes) and generally pushing myself in each activity until I had to quit. My wife’s boot camp name is “Walker” which led to me being named “Texas Ranger”. After watching me for this period the regulars are in the process of renaming me “Softcore”. Nice.
The exercise is hard but I know it is good. We run on Mondays, work on abs on Tuesdays (Tummy Tuesdays), arms and upper body on Wednesdays and whatever she wants on Thursdays. When the weather is nice we go out on the parking lot. So half way through the session what have I learned:

1. Exercise makes me want to and gives me an excuse to eat like a horse. I have become like a Hobbit having 5 or six meals a day.

2. Losing an hour at work in the morning is not good for my work productivity (which is questionable anyway).
3. I have not lost any weight

4. Over all I do not feel any better (which reminds me of the time I stopped drinking for six months) other then a smug feeling of being superior because I am exercising.

5. When I get home from work I am really tired (which is why the Diner Review has been on hiatus.

I am going to follow through on my commitment to my wife regarding boot camp (having failed so spectacularly in so many other commitments to her) but I cannot see doing this long term. It is too hard to have to get out of bed at 5:20 four days a week and the work thing is a problem. I will intend to go back to boot camp after taking a session off but being a quitter, who knows. I am thinking yoga should be next foray into fitness. Sooner or later someone (perhaps a doctor) is going to force to start eating more like a human being and less like a goat. That will be a dark day indeed my friends.

Book Review: The Appeal: John Grisham

Sooooo... despite everything that I say about being a pretentious reader it appears I have read three John Grisham books in the last year so... what kind of fool am I and how ashamed am I? Fairly. But surprisingly I am not extremely embarrassed. Likely a metaphor for my life where I really enjoy claptrap and connived, stretched, but easy to read plots. I like things easy and simple.

But this book. This book was really, really intriguing for a number of reasons. I will not wax on and on about how average Grisham is and how it is lowest common denominator literature... it is all true. But who really cares. It is awesome and this particular book is a much needed read.

Recently they failed in another attempt in beautiful Missouri to sack our Missouri Courts Plan where we have a committee put together a panel and the governor needs to pick one from the panel. This last year there was evidently, allegedly some deal making which resulted in a panel where the governor had no choice and it pissed him, and big business and evidently conservative Christians (of which oddly I still consider myself) off. You see most other states elect all their judges leading to campaigns and fund raising and money. And these judges have to stand for election every few years for another campaign and more money. Our plan of appointed judges is not perfect but once they are in, they are in and cannot be bought or sold. They might have bias but at least not bought and paid for bias... anyway....
So in this book we have the typical villains, big corporation raping the environment and killing a lot of people. A small town couple practicing law in Mississippi takes them on and wins but alas... there is the appeal. The judgment is for the tens of millions and there are hundreds of cases which will be filed if the verdict stands. And... the appeal takes a while to percolate through the system giving the big corporation and their fixers plenty of time to find a conservative judge they can get elected in order to shift the deeply divided appeals court in their direction. We meet all the people. The brave lawyers, the nobly suffering injured people and the vicious hustlers and fixers.

All the characters are drawn sharply and there is not much effort that needs to be exerted to figure out good guys and bad guys. As the case winds it’s way through the system we see the fixers work their magic finding a good looking young defense lawyer from a good church with absolutely no distinguishing marks or record for anyone to crucify him over. He runs, and flies around the State on a wave of money against a much beleaguered female appellate court judge and as the appeal nears hitting the court...

A lot of things happen. Surprisingly none of them good. I have always said that grisham does not know how to end a legal book. As this one has a lot of disasters and you wonder about how long it is going to take to wind it up with the requisite happy ending. The calamities make you squirm and twist and get anxious about how the good guys can win and he hits a nice (very troubling) plot device at the end which frankly just seems over the top but... he ends this one well, and not happily... but with a lesson which is a great one.

grisham is heavy handed with his political views but, since they seem to align with mine. .. thats fine. I highly recommend this one folks. It will make you think and you can breeze through it in a few days at worst.

9 Slingers on the 10 scale.