Not a log cabin on a dark and stormy night, but not a bad start

It was the first day of summer vacation when my parents dragged me inside to tell me the news: I was adopted, by my father, anyway. I was 11 years old.

This was a big deal for my folks. They had speeches prepared; they still loved me, my dad was still my dad, nothing was going to change.

I didn’t care. All I could think about was how much fun my friends, Joey and Doug, were having outside in the summer sun while I was stuck in here listening to grownups drone on about stuff that didn’t matter. My folks’ entire presentation probably lasted only ten minutes or so, but it seemed to go on forever.

All I cared about was whether they were going to keep feeding me and whether I could continue living under their roof. Once I’d been assured both of these conditions  would endure, I was ready to boogie back to the great outdoors.

I was not a particularly introspective kid. It never occurred to me to ask who my “real” father was. I knew my mom had been married before, for a few weeks when she was only 17, to a guy named Bud. I assumed this  Bud fella was my biological father.

But honestly, I didn’t care. I just wanted to return to my game of kick the can. Eventually, no doubt wondering how any kid could be so incurious about his origin story, my folks turned me loose.

It was 20 years before the topic came up again. And that was only when my grandmother mentioned to my wife, a nurse, that Bud had had epilepsy. As a nurse, my wife knew that disease is often passed from father to son and – appropriately, I think – she freaked out.

It was only then that I began to hear the real story regarding the conditions surrounding my own inception. I relate the facts to you now only because all the principals involved in the story (save myself) have long ago departed this mortal coil.

Bud, my grandma said, was not my real father after all. My mother knew I believed this and never bothered to correct me. The reasons for this omission, I was to learn, were numerous.

It took some coaxing, but my grandmother slowly and reluctantly shared the true story.

My mother had married Bud on a dare. They were on their first date at the time.

Bud, only a year older than his new child bride, worked as a nurse; my mother was a beautician. Not surprisingly, the marriage was something less than a resounding success. It was also of very short duration.

A few weeks after taking her wedding vows, my mom skipped town. Bud filed for divorce. No one knew where my mother had hitchhiked off to until nearly a year later.

Turns out she had run away to sunny California, where she had landed a job as a “dancer” at a night club in the city of angels. (My grandmother was rather vague on this part of the story, but I’m assuming my mom wasn’t dancing with the Bolshoi Ballet and that tassels were likely a component in her work uniform.)

While living in an efficiency apartment above the night club, my mom met a young, Greek merchant marine. A customer at the club.

Mom and her Greek sailor lived together for a few months. Then he went back to sea and my mother came back to Detroit.

A week later she learned of my impending arrival.

So.

It took me a month or so to work up the courage to ask my mom for additional details. Some she gave up, some she never would, no matter how much I bugged her.

She claimed she couldn’t remember my biological father’s name, which is obviously baloney. I mean, she lived with the guy for months. She remembered his name. But I never learned it.

He was handsome, college educated and a good dancer. That’s about all I ever got out of her. In truth, it’s all I ever really needed.

Until recently, when my doctor wanted a detailed family medical history.  I could give him only half. I’d like that info, sure, but not as much as I like having an interesting origin story.

Mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 745-9530

Nothing says working class like chicken poo

I’m not a cheapskate. Quite the opposite. Money flows through me like sand through an hourglass. It enters my wallet through PayPal, the newspaper’s payroll department, a bar owner’s cash register and a half-dozen other sources. When you make your living as a musician/freelance writer that’s just the way it works.

The money never seems to stay in my wallet, however. Most of it I waste on frivolous stuff like food, the mortgage, gas for my Beetle. And every so often, I treat myself to something fun.

When I do, I try to make sure I get the most fun for the least amount of money. Not because I’m cheap, but because it makes sense. (Or “cents,” if you want to insert a lame pun here, which, apparently, I do.)

Some of the fun stuff I’ve purchased during the past couple years include 1) a ridiculously expensive photography drone, 2) an electric piano, 3) repairs to an antique typewriter The Lovely Mrs. Taylor bought me for my birthday, 4) some red, fuzzy dice for my car’s rear-view mirror, and most recently, 5) eight chickens.

That’s about it. May not sound like a lot to some folks, but it’s enough to keep me happy and entertained, and frankly, “happy and entertained” has been my life’s goal for the past 60 years. So far, so good, despite that annoying children’s story about the ant and the grasshopper.

At any rate, I try to make sure the “fun stuff” I buy has real value, at least to me. This will never change, not even if I won 30-million bucks in the lottery. I’d still shop at the dollar store, I’d still buy my T-shirts at Wally World, and I’d still stay in hotels that offer a senior discount. It’s just how I’m built.

Which is why I’ll never understand “luxury” products tailored to those with more money than brains. I’m thinking of junk like solid gold iPhones and jewel-encrusted contact lenses (there really is such a thing!).

Just how unsure of your own self-worth do you have to be before stuff like this makes it to your “must-have” list?

Yesterday, a Facebook friend posted a link to a luxury item that had to be seen to be believed. Since this was one of the four Facebook “friends” I actually know as a real, living, breathing human being, I clicked the link.

It connected me with an article about Nordstrom, the department store for people who can’t spend their money fast enough and need help. It’s the place to go if you need a $300 pair of sweat socks or $600 sneakers made by a Chinese kid earning 24-cents a day.

I was in a Nordstrom once and all I can say is the people shopping there must have inherited their millions; nobody that stupid could have earned the money themselves. Seriously, management should just place a big burn barrel at the entrance and let customers throw their money into it. It would save them from having to walk around the place and risking a possible coronary event brought on by sticker shock.

You think I’m being cynical? Then consider Nordstrom’s latest offering: $450, mud-covered jeans. According to Nordstrom’s sales department, the jeans are “inspired” by the working-class. They’re being marketed toward guys and gals who want to look as if they earn their money getting their hands dirty.

Yes, for real.

Stupid, right? But that doesn’t mean I can’t make a buck off this trend. So: attention Nordstrom shoppers! For only $763.99, I’ll sell you some of my old gardening pants. One size fits all, assuming you’re a lard-butt like me. I rarely wash them, so they’re filthy already. Also, for a limited time, I’ll let you wear them to clean out my chicken coop. It’s kinda cramped in there, so the experience offers plenty of opportunities to roll around in chicken poop.

Nothing says “working class” like chicken-poop covered gardening pants! (I may even make that my new business’ catch-phrase.)

I expect the cash to start rolling in any day now. By appointment only.

Mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 745-9530

Love in the age of dinosaurs

Let’s start out with the parental warning – this week’s column deals with issues of an adult nature. In fact, it’s all about sex. But since this is a family newspaper, we won’t be using that word.

Instead, let’s call if falafel. Because like the word we’re not using, falafels are wonderful and I don’t have them near as often as I’d like. Though I could, if I really set my mind to it.

As with so many things in life, when it comes to falafel, it’s all about timing.

Now, I’m not complaining about my falafel life; Mrs. Taylor (we’re officially dropping the “formerly Lori Frankforter” thing, at her request; she’s always hated her last name and doesn’t like being reminded of it in this column) is wonderful.

It’s just that we’re not having falafel as often as we used to. Sure, sure, I’ve been around long enough to know that when you first start sharing falafel with someone new, you just can’t seem to get enough. Falafel, I mean.

At first, you want falafel most every day, sometimes twice a day. Falafel seems like the most amazing thing in the world and you’re convinced your falafel is better than anyone else’s in the history of the world.

You may even find yourselves promising each other that you’ll never let 24 hours pass without at least a little quickie falafel.

But time passes and the day finally comes. You or your beloved decide you’d rather watch the season premiere of “Law & Order” than enjoy yet another falafel. Eventually, you’re having falafel once a week, maybe every other week.

And then a lot of time passes. You’re not kids anymore. You’re in your forties, your fifties and even – like me – your sixties. You never expected to live this long. Falafel, while still wonderful and one of your favorite things, is no longer something you can’t live without.

To make matters worse, there’s that timing thing I mentioned earlier. The problem, it seems to me, is that men and women – even geezers like Mrs. Taylor and me – while we still love falafel, rarely love it at the same time. See, different things put us in the mood for falafel.

For instance, nothing puts Mrs. Taylor in the mood for falafel more than me working in the yard all day. Apparently, seeing me out there in my baggy gardening pants, the sweat soaking through my smelly T-shirt to highlight my rippling triceps (look this is MY column, lemme tell the story my way) really gives her a craving for falafel.

Likewise, when she comes to hear my weekend rock band play a show, she’s likely to start thinking about falafel. I’m not a great musician, but apparently there’s something about seeing me holding a guitar and singing really loud that makes her forget what a nerd I am in real life.

Unfortunately, real life won’t let me forget I’m 61 and have a gimpy foot, a present from a botched surgery. By the time I’m done playing four sets or working six hours in the back yard, I am beat! Falafel is the LAST thing I want. I want my pills. I want a beer. I want my recliner and a couple episodes of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”

I don’t want falafel.

When DO I want falafel? Well, on “date night” (if you’re a couple, you should have one of these!) Mrs. Taylor spends an hour or two getting dolled up. She puts on one of her slinky little dresses, curls her hair, works whatever other magic it is women perform behind closed bathroom doors.

When she walks out, ready for our evening, whoo boy, let me tell ya, I want falafel and how. But Mrs. T doesn’t want to put all that work into getting beautiful, then ruin it with a heaping helping of impromptu falafel. She wants to go out!

So.

That’s the problem with married falafel. It’s not insurmountable, at least not yet. And I understand that if it ever becomes so, there’s a pill for that. One that’ll help a guy remember why he was so crazy about falafel in the first place.

With any luck, that’s still a decade off, but I am open to the idea when the time comes.

After all, falafel with someone you love should be just as good the last time as it was the first.

mtaylor@staffordgroup.com

(616) 730-1414

Life isn’t always good, but sometimes it’s perfect

It was right around this time of year that I had the best day of my life. I believe (for no logical reason) that to each life, a certain measure of perfect moments are meted out at birth.

How many of these moments you encounter along the way depends in large part on the life you lead, how hard you’re willing to seek out those moments. You won’t find them on Facebook, or while watching reruns of “Dancing With the Stars.”

I found one of my perfect moments, and the best so far, in Canada. It was 1975, and I was backpacking along the Bruce Trail, a wilderness preserve running the length of the Niagara Escarpment. Not a trail for beginners, the Bruce traverses over 500 miles of some of the most untrammeled wilderness one can hope to find in the modern world.

And this time of year, in the early spring, it’s especially dicey, since the trail is only poorly marked at the best of times and in the spring it often peters out into impassable marshes, wetlands or densely-populated stands of pine or maple.

It’s not hard to get lost. And while 500 miles may not seem like a lot when you’re passing overhead in a 747, when you’re on foot, carrying a heavy backpack and a rapidly diminishing supply of Lipton Cup-a-Soup – your only food source – it is large indeed.

The trail was sparsely populated in the early spring; it had been four days since I’d seen other hikers. That had been a U of M history professor and her teenage son; they’d caught me napping buck naked on a bed of soft loam by a waterfall. But that’s a story I’ve told before; I’m sure it’s floating around the internet somewhere if you’re curious.

Three days earlier, a mother black bear and her two cubs had ravaged my backpack in the middle of the night and made off with all my food, with the exception of the Lipton’s. Cream of mushroom, if you’re wondering. Food even a bear wouldn’t eat. I’d been living on that since then.

I was down to my last envelope when I realized I’d lost the trail. In theory, all I had to do was listen for the sound of water. That would be the Georgian Bay. I knew I was somewhere between the towns of Lion’s Head and Owen Sound. Unfortunately, “somewhere” encompassed a whole lot of “nowhere.”

As I often do when it looks like all hope is lost, I sat down to eat. The packet of Cup-a-Soup did not exactly fill me to bloating, but it did momentarily tame the tiger roaring away in my empty belly.

While enjoying my scant repast, I took my bearings as best I could using the sun (which was mercifully bright and warm this day) and my old Cub Scout compass. I figured if I hiked south and east, I would eventually find the trail again.

Fast forward eight hours: I was no longer so sure. I set up my bug tent in a soft bed of pine needles and fell into exhausted sleep.

The next morning dawned cold but sunny and I continued my wandering route toward what I hoped would be civilization. Hours passed.

Hunger, exhaustion, solitude. By the time I limped into a small fishing village located bayside, I was a cleaned out shell of a man. All I wanted was a Coke, some donuts, and a cheap hotel room.

At first glimmer, the town seemed storybook perfect. Idyllic little homes set along the main (and only) street, well-tended yards, a ramshackle general store, a white, steeple-topped church.

But no people. None. At 11 a.m. on a whatever day it was (I had lost track). The general store was locked up. It took a few minutes of walking along the main street, but eventually I started getting creeped out by the complete emptiness of the place.

If Rod Serling had stepped around a corner and yelled “Gotcha,” I would not have been surprised. I sat on the general store’s wooden porch to figure out what to do next.

I was so hungry that – for the first and last time in my life – I considered a little breaking and entering. I’d grab a box of donuts and a Coke and leave ten bucks American on the counter. No harm, no foul.

Before I got the chance to begin this life of crime, the church bell rang. The double doors flew open and the congregants spilled out, including the owner of the store. He saw me sitting on his porch and crossed the road.

“Hiker?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“We’re closed,” he said, “sorry.”

“Can I just get some donuts? I’m really hungry, sir. A bear ate my food.”

“Well, I suppose I could open up for just a minute,” he said, smiling. “Christian thing to do and all that. Guess I can’t let you go hungry on Easter.”

Twenty minutes later I was sitting on a dock in the spring sunshine, my back propped against my recently-resupplied backpack. The reflections on the pristine waters of the bay, the sweet, innocent scent of April in the air, my mouth crammed to capacity with chocolate covered pastries … it was one of my perfect moments and I knew it.

Sometimes even now when things get tough I remember that day. For all the bad that happens in an ordinary life, there is an equal measure of good.

You just gotta find it.

Mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 730-1414

Fear is the primary ingredient in Parent Soup

Until you have kids, you never really know what fear is. I’m talking real fear here, not some drive-in monster movie eek, followed by popcorn and soda, but the kind of fear that brings down giants, that tears at your soul and summons every bad demon within 1,000 miles to live, for a time, in your very heart.

The kind of fear that can be caused by only one thing. A missing child.

Almost every parent has experienced that “Where’s Johnny?” moment at least once, the moment your ears frantically demand an “I’m here, mom!” from across the parking lot.

Among my nefarious offspring, it was my daughter, Aubreii, who was the real escape artist. She went missing so often it was miracle I didn’t just start letting her find her own way home. But I didn’t. I’m her father; I was genetically predisposed to walk the neighborhood in abject terror until she turned up.

She always did. But not always right away.

If you’re thinking I was a terrible, neglectful parent, you probably don’t have kids of your own. I kept a close on eye on the monsters, from birth through tenth grade or so, after which I let up my vigilance, but only in small increments over several years.

By the time she was five years old, my daughter could have escaped Attica or some death row super-max with ease. She once tunneled – yes, tunneled – under a fence surrounding our back yard. She had to move a pile of boulders larger than her head – I’d piled them against the fence specifically to thwart her escape attempts – before she could begin digging her way to freedom. She used a sandbox shovel. She was four at the time.

I swear, the kid carried wire cutters in her diaper.

My sons, Jordan and Jim Bob, were a different story. They followed me around like baby ducks. They’re both grown men now and I can probably still tell you exactly where they are at any time on any given day.

That’s what made it so scary the day Jordan went missing.

He and his sister (James was still several years off) were outside playing hide-and-seek with some neighbor kids. As was usually the case, they were outside, then inside, then outside, then inside, outside-inside-outside-inside – you get the picture. There was a lot of door-banging going on, but most of that was drowned out by the sound of screaming first-graders. So it didn’t bother me much.

It was summer vacation, getting on toward dinner time. Eventually, Annie, Kristen, Leonard, Sam and all the other kids were hollered home for supper.

Aubreii rolled into the kitchen (literally; she wore little pink, plastic roller skates that entire summer) with winded enquiries as to what Chez Dad would be serving that evening. She was gratified to learn pizza was again on the menu, since I was on deadline for a small magazine article and hadn’t had time to cook.

“Get your brother and wash up,” I told her. She was gone a couple minutes. When she returned, she said the words every parent fears more than zombies, the apocalypse, and reruns of “Dancing With the Stars.”

“I can’t find him.”

“What do you mean? Did you call outside for him?”

She admitted she hadn’t, so I did. Nothing.

“Did you check his bedroom?” I asked. She had, but I checked again anyway. Nothing.

I walked around the house, then around the neighborhood, bellowing his name every five seconds or so. A few neighbors stepped out their front doors.Then a few more. This was a neighborhood made up of young families and it didn’t take long for the search party to form.

The search expanded, block-by-block, the panic growing. Doors were knocked on. Questions were asked. “Have you seen this little boy? Blonde hair, blue eyes, six years old? Probably picking his nose?”

The police arrived and joined the search. Two cars, four officers. Going door-to-door, asking questions which, frankly, nearly killed me: “Have you seen any strange cars in the neighborhood? Anyone driving slowly? Any strangers?”

Lord, I’ll tell ya, it’s been 30 years and I can still barely write about it without a trace of that old, familiar terror rising like a bubble in my throat.

One officer asked to see his bedroom, even though I’d already checked there. It was while picking through the laundry hamper that the cop found Jordan, napping soundly among the towels and sheets.

If you’re a parent, you already know what I felt at that moment. If you’re not, no words of mine can ever convey that feeling.

Fear. It goes part and parcel with parenthood. And here’s the part that’s most awful, that nobody tells you about until it’s too late: It doesn’t end when they grow up and move out. Like life itself, it endures.

Now go hug your kid.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 730-1414

Chickens or kids, there’s really not that much difference

I mentioned a couple weeks back that Mrs. Taylor (formerly Lori Frankforter) had lost her mind and we are now raising chickens. Turns out I may have overstated the “losing her mind” part.  The idea wasn’t as crazy as it at first seemed.

We have eight hens (pullets, if you’re a chicken person; I’m not; I have no idea what a pullet is, other than it eats a helluva lot of chicken feed). They’re still living in the guest bathroom, ensconced in heated plastic bins with chicken wire tops on them.

I have to admit, at first I thought the idea was ridiculous. Mrs. T (fLF) and I both grew up in the city and have absolutely zero knowledge of anything ag related. Everything I know about farm life I learned from reading “Charlotte’s Web” and watching the movie, “Babe.”

Neither of those sources went into sufficient detail to give me the knowledge needed to establish an agrarian lifestyle. Fortunately, it’s not exactly rocket science.

Rising chickens, it turns out, is a lot like raising kids. When Aubreii, my first child, came along, I was practically a kid myself. At least from the neck up.

I had no idea what fatherhood would entail. Does anyone? And if they did, would anyone be crazy enough to go through with it? Sometimes, ignorance can be a good thing.

Then came Jordan and, via marriage, Jim Bob. It took all three of them and over 20 years before I felt I’d gotten the hang of the whole parent thing. By then, of course, they were grown. God knows I made mistakes along the way. Still, none of my offspring have climbed a water tower to take pot shots at student nurses, so I guess I did OK. Or maybe I just got lucky.

Either way, I’m hoping the same formula holds true with raising these dumb birds. The learning arc is accelerated, of course, but so far, it all feels very familiar.

As with the kids, when the chickens first entered our home, they were cute, little bundles of downy sweetness, impossible not to love. The girl at Tractor Supply Company cautioned me to not “cuddle” them. I did anyway, even though they are – according to the literature – lethal balls of contagion just waiting for their chance to transmit the super-flu to every last human being on the planet.

Just like kids.

Contagious or not, they were cute. Super cute! I sat in the guest bathroom for hours on end just watching their goofy antics as they tumbled to and fro in their never ending search for a warm spot in the wood chips. They seemed genuinely grateful for each refilling of the food and water containers, chirping happily day and night.

But as with kids, that baby stage didn’t last long. Within a week the downy, yellow fluff had begun to fall off and was replaced by scruffy feathers best described as the bird version of zits.

Like teenagers, they seemed to have sprung up overnight. They were no longer sweet and cute. They were lanky, unattractive, demanding, moody. Any of this sounding familiar, parents of teens?

They began to squabble among themselves. There’s always an abundance of food and water in those plastic bins, but still they find reason to quarrel. And those sweet, little cheep-cheep noises they made at first? Those have been replaced with angry bawk-bawks that leave little doubt as to their meaning: “Daaaaad! Henrietta is molting on my side of the cage again!”

Fortunately, those “teen” days are almost over already. In another week they’ll be moving outside to the coop I recently built them, which is considerably nicer than the house I live in myself.

I feel ready to let them out into the wider world. Sure, I’ll still feed and water them, just like I did with my kids when they first moved away. But if one of them wants to move back into the house, well, that’s not happening.

Likewise, they can forget about me loaning them any money. Other than that, raising chickens is a lot like raising kids.

I got this.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 745-9530

The best word in the world? Bacon, no question about it

Bacon.

Mmm … such a beautiful word. That word does things to me, things that words like “cute blonde” used to do, sort of. And unlike cute blondes, bacon never broke into my apartment to steal back two year’s worth of birthday presents.

But that’s a story for another time. Today, we’re talking about bacon, the best argument I can think of against vegetarianism.

It’s on my mind because my neighbor, Justin, gave me a couple pounds of it the other day. It came from pigs he raised over the course of last summer.

Since I didn’t give him any grief about putting in a small pen and populating it with two oinkers, I guess he felt he owed it to me. He didn’t, but he felt he did and I sure the heck am not going to tell him any different.

The bacon was, by far, the best thing I have ever eaten. It was cut thick, each slice a work of art, a rich tapestry of fat and lean laid out in symmetrical strips and vacuum sealed. I didn’t know how good it was going to taste when he dropped by the house to give it to me. This is probably a good thing. Had I known, I might have been tempted to kiss him and Justin doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would take kindly to that sort of thing.

Mrs. Taylor (formerly Lori Frankforter) expressed an interest in trying some of the bacon herself, and initially, I intended to share. Then I tasted it. After that I was like Gollum with the One Ring; nobody was going to touch my precious bacon.

I doled it out carefully over the next few days. Bacon and eggs for Monday’s breakfast, then BLTs for lunch the following two days.

Then it was gone. I was left with nothing but the memories.

I tried not to weep openly, but was only partly successful.

I don’t know why that bacon was so special, so much better than the stuff I can buy at the grocery. But it was.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact I had witnessed the growth of the pigs themselves, from cute, little Babe-like bundles of pink all the way through to their final exit from their pen, large, fat and resigned to their fate. Theirs was a short life, but a good one, I think.

Justin, who also keeps chickens, takes very good care of his critters. They’re comfortable, warm, well-fed. Hell, my own parents didn’t treat me as well as Justin treats his animals.

Or maybe it was knowing they were raised out in the fresh air (or as fresh as the air ever gets around a pig pen) that made the bacon seem so sweet. Maybe they just got better feed. When it comes to pigs, there’s a lot I don’t know.

But it seems to me there’s something about seeing to your own food, rather than just picking it up at a store, that just makes it, well, better. I’ve got to admit, Justin (and his gift of bacon) have inspired me.

I’m too much of a citified wimp to raise an animal myself with the intent of eating it. I grew up reading “Charlotte’s Web” and other stories of anthropomorphized barnyard residents who invariably displayed more humanity than their human masters.

So, nope. No pigs for me. But, as I mentioned last week, Mrs. T (fLF) has decided we’re going to raise chickens. We won’t be eating the birds, but we will be eating the eggs. That much my city boy psyche can handle.

I’ve heard fresh eggs are better than what you can buy at the store. It’ll be a while before I know for sure. Our chicks are still pretty little; we won’t be seeing eggs from them until summer’s end, at the soonest. But by next spring, they should by laying like crazy.

And should Justin decide to give me another package of bacon from this summer’s crop of oinkers to go with those eggs? Well, let’s just say I’ll be in hog heaven.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 745-9530