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.

The Mike Taylor museum; only a buck and well worth the price of admission

I’ve been working on an archaeological dig the past couple weeks. It’s been no picnic; I’ve dug and dusted, classified, sorted and cataloged. It was hard, boring work. Archaeology, it turns out, isn't always about Tyrannosaurus bones and long-legged, blonde assistants.

But at least I was unearthing familiar territory: my own previous life.

Let me explain.  About two years ago I lost my wife, my job, my house and 37-percent of my self-respect. Everything I had accumulated in 40-plus years went into boxes, most of which were packed away in a musty spare room in my daughter’s basement in Detroit. And there they remained until recently.

I (finally) landed a new job with The Daily News in Greenville. This required a move from my little garden apartment in Detroit and when I packed, I took the boxes with me.  My daughter was glad to see ‘em go.

I was lucky enough to find a great rental; a cool little beach house overlooking Baldwin Lake, less than two miles from my new job. I took this as a sign that maybe the Fates don’t hate me after all despite extensive previous evidence to the contrary. The apartment is situated at the top of a very large hill, one which affords a wonderful view of the lake and surrounding area. Joggers, hikers and bicyclists pass on a regular basis and the whole setup is very reminiscent of some sort of seaside vacation community. I fell immediately in love with the apartment and managed to convince the landlady I wasn’t a serial killer or escaped lunatic. (This was not as easy as it should have been.)

I started moving in the next day. That’s when the trouble started. I filled my son-in-law’s van with my many, many boxes of “stuff” and drove the three hours from Detroit to my new digs. It wasn’t until I’d hauled the third heavy box up the hill to my apartment that I began to realize there might be a problem.

I had 30 boxes. There are 50 steps going up that hill. Each box weighed approximately 30 pounds. Now, I’m no math genius (as will soon be made apparent), but according to my calculations (derived from a combination of two-digit addition and wild speculation, just like my checkbook) I would have to carry about 900 pounds up 50 stairs for a grand total of...um...a lot. Despite my lousy math skills I was quickly able to ascertain that gravity is not my friend.

Once the boxes--carried up all those stairs in what can only be described as the biggest thunderstorm of the year, so far--were unpacked, everything had to be put away. My last house had four bedrooms, an attic, a full basement and a storage shed. My new apartment boasts one bedroom, a living room better suited to a leprechaun than a 200-pound man, and a kitchen.

Some things would have to go. Not the photos. Not even the ones of The Former Lovely Mrs. Taylor.  Not the bundles of school papers the kids brought home from Kindergarten 25 years ago. Not the ancient cassette tapes of the god-awful rock band I played in back in high school. All those things, along with my collection of ceramic ducks collected during a dozen vacations up north, my notes for the novel that will be written “any day now,” my dollar store reading glasses in a prescription that was strong enough as recently as ten years ago...all these things are archaeological treasures.

I could never, never part with any of these. And so my new apartment is now a very crowded museum.

Admission is only a buck. I’m hoping you’ll all stop by. I’m going to need that money to rent a place to live.

Mike Taylor’s recent book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available in both paperback and eBook versions at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or on amazon.com. Email Taylor at mtaylor@staffordgroup.com.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you

I know people. Two people. Dianne and Bobby. Dianne works at the bank where I just opened a new checking account and Bobby recently repaired my stupid dinosaur of a car.

Other than D and B, I don’t know anybody, at least not in my soon-to-be new neighborhood.

For the past 16 years, I’ve lived in Lakeview, a bucolic Northern Michigan town surrounded on all sides by mile after mile of tilled fields, woodland and meadows. Of the 1,900 souls who live within the village limits I, over time, got to know 1,887 of them. The three Smith sisters—who may or may not comprise a witch’s coven depending on whose stories you believe—I never really met.

Many of the town’s residents are farmers, plumbers, drywall installers or employees of the village’s only factory, the brass works. There also are a couple doctors, two chiropractors, two dentists and two mechanics, of which only one is any good.

I know them all, by name. I know their kids, their wives, the names of their dogs. I could probably tell you what many of them had for breakfast this morning, or at least hazard a guess.

It is a small town and one I’ve loved long and often.

But I’m in the process of moving away from there. My stuff, what remains of it, is traveling one dinosaur-car load at a time to what will be my new residence in my fiancée’s town, near Grand Rapids.

And other than Dianne and Bobby, everybody here is a stranger. Moreover, there are a lot more than 1,900 people living here. It ain’t Manhattan, but it’s bigger than my old hometown, by quite a bit.

Lakeview boasts a grand total of three restaurants, not counting the McDonald’s, which nobody counts because it’s located on the county road and not downtown, like a proper business should be. Also, it’s a chain.

My new town, on the other hand, has more restaurants than I can count; you can even get Thai food. At night.

I really like that. I like that I can buy a pair of jeans or a DVD without driving for an hour first. Convenience is a whole new experience for me.

But I’m already spending a lot of time here, and frankly—despite being able to see more of the woman I love—I’m feeling a little lonely. The town’s just too big. You can tell a town is too big when you pass someone on the sidewalk and they don’t say howdy. That’s happened to me here. Twice.

The folks aren’t unfriendly, exactly, they’re just…city. Suburb, at best. Whichever, they live close enough to the city that they’re always a little apprehensive about being mugged or buttonholed for spare change. So they don’t make eye contact, they don’t wave, and they don’t say howdy.

That’s why Dianne and Bobby are so important to me. Dianne (Founder’s Bank) and Bobby (Tuffy Muffler) both know my name. Dianne’s a great teller and Bobby’s a very good mechanic. (He got my dinosaur running, a feat only slightly less miraculous than turning water into wine.) Even if they were both lousy at their jobs, I’d be thinking kindly of them at the moment.

Here in my soon-to-be new hometown, they’re the only friends I’ve got.

Hopefully, that won’t last forever. I plan to start saying howdy to everyone I meet, whether they say it back or not. A change is gonna come, baby, and it’s got to start somewhere.

It took me 16 years to meet everyone in my old hometown; there are ten times more people living in my new one. I’m up for the challenge. So howdy there, stranger. Put ‘er there.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

It’s never easy leaving the place we love most

I keep trying to tell myself I don’t mind losing my house. Like a lot of Americans in these troubled times, I will soon join the unfortunates who – for whatever reason – are leaving behind the one earthly possession they most treasure.

In my case, the loss of my beloved domicile is the logical extension of The Former Lovely Mrs. Taylor’s departure earlier this year. When she left, she took with her the second income that made continued ownership of our little country estate possible.

In short, I just can’t afford it on my own.

My mother would have heart palpitations if she knew I was discussing (gasp) financial matters in a public forum. But folks, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one in this predicament.

Whether due to spousal departure, job loss, health issues, or just this rotten economy in general, thousands of people across the country lose their homes every week.

Not that I’m actually “losing” mine, at least not yet. But I am putting it up for sale. The odds of it selling before I’m forced to strike some sort of unhappy bargain with the bank are not good, however.

The bank, I should point out, has been great to work with on this, and no, that comment’s not intended as irony or cynicism. They don’t want to see me lose my home any more than I want to lose it. But they are in the business of making home loans, not “home gifts.”

Anyway, I’m calling the Realtor tomorrow and listing the place. It’s going to be tough, in large part because it’s the only home I’ve ever lived in for more than a few years in a row.

As a kid, my family moved so often it would have made more sense for us to reside in a covered wagon with cabalistic symbols painted on the sides. My dad could have sold snake oil while mom played the tambourine. We were like a military family without the military.

The practice of regular relocations followed me into adulthood. I’m not sure why. I think by then I was simply used to the idea of moving every couple years.

When The Former Mrs. T and I moved to our little house in the country, I reveled in the fact it was the last move I would ever have to make. For the first time in my life, I would put down roots and really be part of a community.

But life, apparently, has other plans for me.

The house – once upon a time “our” house – and all the dreams that went with it, will soon belong to someone else. I’m trying to not whimper like a wet kitten here, but it ain’t easy.

I wonder; will the home’s new owner know how many times I had to cut the molding in the upstairs bathroom before it matched up properly? Will he or she like the colors The Former Mrs. T chose for the living and dining rooms before she lit out for parts unknown? Will the home’s new occupant appreciate the dozens of trips we made to nearby farmers’ fields to “pick rocks” with which to landscape the back yard?

The answer, of course, is no.

All these things will be no more than memories. Eventually, even the memories will fade.

Life, we’re told, is defined by change. In every important way, life is change.

Just this once, I wish it wasn’t.

Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.