I’m almost certainly off to see the Wizard

One in 60,000. Those are the odds a tornado will suck me away to Oz, or — far more likely in the real world — the afterlife. Those aren’t bad odds; I should be sleeping soundly at night, secure in the knowledge I’m far more likely to die of a heart attack (1 in 5), a random accident (1 in 36) or even electrocution (1 in 5,000, unless I try to install my own lighting fixtures, in which case the odds rise considerably).

Yet I’m not worried about my heart, falling off a ladder, or frying myself while attempting to remove a recalcitrant bagel from a toaster with a butter knife.

I am worried about tornadoes. Because of my new residence and my personal history. 

I’m moving this week, one poorly-packed box at a time, from my beloved lake house to Lori’s place, the Little House on the Prairie. It’s a nice enough home, but it is located directly in the middle of nowhere and has no basement.

There’s nothing surrounding this house but open fields, acres and acres of ‘em. You couldn’t plan a more enticing tornado magnet without actually drawing a bullseye on the place and opening a trailer park next door.

One in 60,000; those are the odds. That’s according to insurance company actuarial tables, the sort they use to determine how badly they’re going to gouge you in premiums. 

I should say, one is 60,000 are the odds for you and any normal person. The odds are higher for me. I don’t know if it’s because a deity hates me, I have bad karma, or whether there’s some sort of tornado-attracting pheromone I unconsciously exude in moments of stress, but tornadoes seem determined to get me.

They’ve tried. Three times so far.

The first attempt occurred when I was only an infant. My grandmother managed to get me into the root cellar scant moments before a funnel cloud swept her house into oblivion. The same thing happened again just a half-dozen years later.

Then when I was in my teens, while camping in Illinois, a tornado nearly dropped a cow on me. The airborne bovine missed my tent (in which I was, at the time, sleeping) by about three feet. I woke the next morning with a deceased, inverted cow reposing legs-up within touching distance of my sleeping bag.

So you can see that one in 60,000 thing doesn’t apply to me. You can also understand, I suppose, why I’m so nervous about moving to a basement-less home in the middle of tornado alley.

It’s just a matter of time.

But as John Denver said, “My bags are packed, I’m ready to go…” There’s no turning back now; my landlady at the lake house has already lined up a new tenant.

So, like a condemned man walking that last mile to the electric chair, I go to meet my fate. I hope the tornado, when it eventually comes — and it will come, make no mistake — spares Lori. Her only crime is loving a tornado-magnet like me. 

There’s no reason the poor kid should have to share in my tempestuous doom.

Mike Taylor's paperback, "Looking at the Pint Half Full," is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in Kindle format from Amazon.com.

With friends like these … you know the rest

I’m going to use my friends’ real names in this column, since there are no innocents to protect. These jerks are all guilty as sin and have it coming.

Don’t get me wrong, the four guys I’m about to write about here are like brothers to me and I love ‘em. I also hope they all develop painful, embarrassing skin eructations moments before meeting the girls of their dreams.

 I play music with these knuckleheads most every weekend in bars, clubs and outdoor festivals across the state. Like most aging rock and roll musicians, they’re emotionally stunted, egocentric, easily offended and frequently childish. In other words, my kind of people.

So why am I trying to curse them with complexion problems? Lemme tell ya.

We played over the Fourth of July weekend at Val du Lakes, up north. It’s a good gig. Big club, good crowds, free drinks.

My new girlfriend, Lori, accompanied me on the trip, kind of a working vacation. For the most part, we had a good time. Except for Friday night. Just before the start of the show, Lori and I had a little quarrel. 

Now, it doesn’t matter who was right (me, definitely ME, more innocent than gently falling snow on Christmas morning or the face of a newborn baby) or who was wrong (Lori, Lori, Lori! Queen of unreasonableness and overtly hostile mannerisms). The point is, we had a minor spat.

And for some reason, my band buds — Rocky, Calvin, George and Bird — seemed very interested in the conflict. I didn’t notice at first, but as the evening progressed and Lori continued to refuse to abjectly prostrate herself before me in supplication for forgiveness, I couldn’t help but notice the guys were all watching our mini-Cold War with more than casual interest.

I noticed the covert glances, the muttered comments shared when they thought I wasn’t looking, the score cards being passed back and forth. It turns out (as I learned after I finally apologized to Lori for addressing her by my ex-wife’s name, that my good, good friends had weeks earlier started a betting pool on how long Lori would last before she grew sick of my nonsense and dumped me.

If that had happened Friday, Calvin would have won; his bet was three months. George was kinder with a guess of six months. Rocky — arguably the only real “adult” in the band — was most charitable; his bet was nine months. Bird (curse his cynical, black heart) opted out of the pool entirely because they wouldn’t let him bet on anything shorter than one month.

You can see why I hate these guys.

Yes, I have had a few relationship “issues” in the past 30 years. Especially if you count all my former wives. But people grow, they get wiser, more mature. I expect Lori and I will last a lifetime. 

But, just to be on the safe side, I’ve placed my bet in the pool at 16 months. I want that jackpot.

This identity crises is of my own making

My little bar band was playing a Grand Rapids night club the other night when the couple approached the stage just as we were going on break. I could tell they were going to. Both of them — a fella and his wife, I surmised — had been glancing surreptitiously my way all night, and then whispering to each other behind their hands.

“Um, hi,” said the husband, a well dressed guy in his mid-50s, maybe. “We really like your band. I love the sax.”

Everybody loves the sax. When you play in a horn band, the brass get all the attention. I’ve learned to live with it.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You know,” the husband said, “you have a double around here someplace. A guy who looks just like you.”

“The poor schmuck,” I said. “Have you given him the number of the suicide hotline, just in case?”

“Ha-ha,” said the husband, politely pretending my joke was funny. “But seriously, this guy looks just like you. He writes a column for the local newspaper.”

“Oh,” I said. “I think I’ve heard of him. Somebody told me he stinks.”

My band buds, who have witnessed this routine before, walked away with rolling eyes and shaking heads. 

“No, he’s great,” the husband insisted, offended. “My wife and I read him every week.”

“Well, I heard he’s kind of a hack,” I repeated.

I was flattered by the fact the guy was starting to bristle as I continued to insult myself.

“You really shouldn’t criticize if you haven’t read his column,” the fella said. “You don’t know what the heck you’re talking about.” (He didn’t use the word “heck,” but a much more potent variant.)

At this point, I ‘fessed up and admitted my newspaper-writing “twin” and I were in fact the same guy. I thought I’d better, before he actually punched me in defense of my twin’s honor.

“Really?” he asked, the suspicion clear in his voice.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Yeah?” he said. “‘Cause now that I think about it, you don’t really look that much like him.”

“Well,” I said, “I am him.”

“What’s his name?” the husband asked.

“Mike Taylor,” I said.

“Is that it?” the guy asked his wife. She said she thought so.

“How many ex-wives does he have?” The guy continued to grill me. “Where is he from?”

“Four and Detroit,” I promptly responded. I couldn’t believe I was being asked to prove my own identity here. I pulled my wallet from my pocket and displayed my driver’s license. “See?” I said.

“Hmm … I guess it is you.”

“Yup.”

I could tell meeting me in person had done nothing to improve his fondness for my column. My mother, it turns out, was right; nobody likes a smart aleck. (Though she never used the word “aleck,” but a much more potent variant.)

A book written by Mike Taylor’s twin, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is again available at Robbin’s Book List in downtown Greenville.

The day I discovered the truth about priests

Warning: This column contains asterisks, exclamation points, pound signs and other symbols denoting a few fairly impressive curse words. If you’re easily shocked by phrases like “@#$!!” and “son of a $#%&!!,” you should probably skip ahead now to the sports section or comics page.

Also, it may seem to some that I’m poking fun at priests here. I’m not. I was raised in a home that boasted framed portraits of the Pope, John Kennedy and Jesus (in that order); priest-bashing is not in my repertoire. But if you’re the sort appalled by the mere notion that priests may occasionally fall short of perfection, please oh please, just give my column a pass this week; I’m far too delicate to field a lot of hate mail.

That said, I know the church has changed a lot in recent years and is no longer the stodgy, monolithic dinosaur it was (or seemed to be) when I was a kid attending St. Isidore Elementary School. Back then, our parish priests — one old (Father Czechowski or something equally Polish), one young (Father Pat or something equally Irish) — seemed nothing less than divine.

The nuns, who in those dark ages still served as teachers, encouraged this delusion and did everything in their power to indoctrinate us into the dogma that was old school Catholicism. So it was tough when, in fourth grade, I learned the truth about priests.

As a reward for having not driven any nuns crazy for an entire week (this was, for me, a major accomplishment) I was chosen — nun-speak for “drafted” — to help out in the rectory for an entire month. (For the unwashed heathens among you, a rectory is the home in which priests live.)

Serving there was a distinction usually reserved for goody-goody alter boys, so I felt appropriately honored. My duties consisted of arriving at the rectory before sunup and lugging in enough firewood that Father Czechowski could raise the sitting room’s temperatures to tolerable levels.

On some days, though by no means all, the Father treated me to a cup of hot cocoa once he had the fireplace blazing cheerily along. So it was that on one late December morning, just a few days before Christmas, I found myself perched on a footstool near the rectory’s fireplace, snow melting from my hair and eyelids as Father Czechowski prodded the embers with an ancient, iron poker.

Now, let me just reiterate, in those days we Catholic schoolboys held priests in the highest regard. The Bing Crosby movies alone had elevated the Fathers to near-mythical status in our eyes.

So I was more than a little surprised when Father Czechowski leapt back from the fire cradling his burned hand and exclaimed (get ready for the stylized profanity), “#$%!!! That @#$%!&!! fire is hotter than #@$!” followed closely by “Son of a @#$%!!.”

The Father had taken the Lord’s name in vain!!

He could not have shocked me more had he suddenly sprouted wings and flown off to Heaven. In fact, of the two scenarios, I would have considered the latter more likely.

Father Czechowski peered at me from beneath formidable, white eyebrows. “Forget you heard that,” he said.

For nearly 50 years, I did; until just now, I kept secret my knowledge that priests are people.

Coming up next week: you won’t believe what Soylent Green is made from.

mtaylor@staffordgroup.com

(616) 548-8273

When it comes to cars, nothing will ever top Blooey

I was talking last week with my son, the Chrysler rep, about cars we have owned over the years. He makes more money than I do and he has expensive tastes, so most of his cars have been nice ones.

Mine, on the other hand, have all been entrants in one long parade of rolling wrecks; the kindest thing you could say about any of them to date is that none have killed me.

The Van of Death, which finally gave up the ghost last week, was just the most recent in a line of unsafe, under-insured, rusted out heaps that have transported me from Point A to Point B since my 16th birthday. But driving wrecks has never bothered me. I’m not a “car guy” and never have been. I don’t define myself by what I drive and have never felt the need to compensate for anything, even during my mid-life crisis years.

Still, I am an American boy and we’re genetically predisposed to love our cars. So there have been a few over the years to which I grew attached. A 1965 Beetle with a top speed of 45 mph was one. An old Galaxy 500 — previously owned by my grandmother — was another.

But my all-time favorite was Blooey, the 25-year-old Volvo sedan I drove back when my kids still attended elementary school. I purchased Blooey (named for its color, by my daughter) from a guy’s front yard. She cost $68.22, all the cash I had on me at that moment. The car was worth more than that, but it had belonged to the guy’s daughter, long since moved away to school. He just wanted it out of his driveway.

I drove Blooey for four years — that worked out to monthly payments of $1.42. Factor in the fact I rarely carried viable insurance or purchased up-to-date license plates in those days and I was practically driving for free. Occasionally, a cop would notice the expired plates and I’d be forced to pay a fine and “go legal” for a few months before returning to business as usual. Even so, Blooey was a cheap ride.

Dinner trays liberated from one of my old man’s restaurants covered most of the rust holes in the floor, the ones big enough for my kids to fall through at any rate. Aubreii and Jordan would occasionally slide the trays aside to watch the freeway speeding by beneath their feet. My kids were thrill seekers.

I probably could have fixed the floor-holes permanently, but they came in handy at least once. It was during a fierce, summer squall. While newer, safer cars bobbed helplessly in a huge puddle that had formed in a dip in Alpine Avenue, Blooey immediately sank to the bottom where her wheels found purchase and drove us right out again.

Sure, toward the end of Blooey’s long and storied life it took about half a block to bring her to a full stop and she was leaking oil so bad I purchased 10w30 by the gallon, but still, she was a great ride.

A car, I think, is only as good as the adventures you have while driving it, only as good as the places it takes you.

At that, Blooey excelled.

If my new girlfriend loved me she’d move to a paved road

I love my new girlfriend, but I’m not crazy about the road she lives on. It’s a tough call as to whether the relationship will work, considering the shape of the road, but I’m hopeful.

She’s real cute, and she seems willing to put up with all the nonsense that seems to accompany me regardless of the efforts I put forth to stem the nonsense tide.

But … that road.

Calling it a road is actually a bit on the kind side. What it is, is a field with a couple trenches run through it. Trenches laid down long, long ago. Seriously. Her place makes the Little House on the Prairie look like downtown Manhattan.

As Susan Sarandon said in “Thelma and Louise,” it’s not the middle of nowhere, but I can see it from here. It is about as close to life on Mars as you can get without actually running out of usable oxygen.

Her house is nice and reasonably civilized. The toilets flush, the water runs; when you flick a switch, lights come on.

But there’s that road.

It looks like something German tanks rolled over on a wet day on their way to invading Poland.  

It’s bad.

I wouldn’t mind so much were I still driving the Death Van. The Death Van was (so I assumed) indestructible. It had been through nearly 300,000 miles of inept brake work (my own), oil changes that came only five or six-thousand miles after the little sticker on the windshield said they should come, and tune ups that … well, I’m kidding, it never had a tune up.

It was a piece of junk, but a piece of junk I honestly imagined would last me for several more years.

But it didn’t. It died. In part, because of my new girlfriend’s dark side of the moon road.

The strut broke. For those of you non-mechanical types out there (like myself) the strut is (apparently) that big springy thing behind your tires that looks like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. If it breaks, driving your car (or the Death Van) is (apparently, again) unsafe. It can literally kill you.

So I sold the Death Van.  Which was, as I mentioned, a piece of junk before so no great loss.

No problem there.

The problem is, my new car is really kinda kewellll (I spelled it that way on purpose).  It’s red and shiny. The tires actually have a little tread on them, which I am not used to. It doesn’t make embarrassing noises when you accelerate on the highway. Parts don’t fall off on bumpy country roads.

Except for Lori’s road. My girlfriend’s road would cause parts to fall off a Russian tank. It’s that terrible.

I’m not sure if it’s a county road, a city road, a township road, or just one of those roads from an old “Twilight Zone” episode where you get on it and never get off again. But it is terrible, and it’s doing terrible things to my new, shiny, red car.

I would say it’s a dirt road, but most of the dirt has splattered all over the side of my shiny, red car; there can’t, at this point, be much dirt left.

Still, I’m really fond of Lori and the only way to see her (without seeming like a complete wuss) is to drive to her house in my new, shiny, red car. 

I don’t know why love needs to be this complicated. Lori could just as easily own a townhouse in Manhattan.