The county fair is the only place for corndogs

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor and I went to the county fair the other day. Since moving to the sticks over a decade ago, I’ve tried to embrace my rural surroundings and all that implies.

I maintain a small garden (‘taters and onions this year—peppers last), I bought a chain saw and taught myself to operate it without cutting off any important appendages, I drive a pickup truck and actually use it to haul stuff.

I’m one flannel shirt from becoming Norm Abram. (PBS viewers will get that one.)

But the thing that most says “country living” to me is the county fair. Horses, pigs, cattle, sheep, chickens, bunnies, goats … all raised by 4-H kids in anticipation of this one week out of the year. The week when the critter they’ve cared for, nurtured and loved for the past 10 or 11 months is sold at auction and turned into cheeseburgers.

Frankly, I don’t know how they do it. You’ve gotta be born out here to feel comfortable with that, I think. I could never eat a steak I’d been feeding hay to and tucking in for the night the week before.

I’ve seen “Charlotte’s Web.” I know how traumatic the experience can be, even for farm kids.

At any rate, the animals are just a part of the fair. There’s the merchant’s building, which used to be filled with people from Peru selling jewelry made from clay and sweaters knitted from llama wool. These days it contains too many desperate politicians who want to shake my hand and loud women urging me not to get an abortion. Even the fair’s got to change with the times, I guess.

Despite the loud women and politicians, I still go through the merchant’s building each year. There are still a few clay jewelry sellers, after all.

Then there are the exhibit buildings, where the arts, crafts, home-canned vegetables, flowers and dioramas are displayed. The paintings and photos are my favorite. Everything from really, really good art, right on down to paintings that almost certainly have numbers on the canvas under the paint, are on display there. The talented, as well as those not burdened with great artistic skills—all receive equal billing and encouragement at the fair! It’s like elementary school for adults, and I, for one, love it. Everything in life should be like that.

The absolute best part of the fair, however, and the reason I go back year after year, is the corndogs.

Corndogs, to my way of thinking, are the perfect food. They’re compact, great tasting, greasy as all get-out, and have no nutritional value whatever. They are a treat to be scarfed down once a year, in abundance, only at the fair—the only place on earth (save for that “Pronto Pup” place in Grand Haven) that they’re prepared properly.

I recommend eating about half-a-dozen. It makes you slightly nauseous for a day or two, but it’s worth it.

For those worried about the calories, I suggest eating all the corndogs your belly will tolerate, then going for a ride on The Zipper. I can’t endorse bulimia, but hey, accidents happen, and those midway workers keep hoses handy for a reason.

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

Feeling your age on the tennis court

Occasionally, I’ll start thinking I’m not old. Not really old. Not old like my parents were old when they were my age.

During such times, phrases like “You’re only as old as you feel,” and “Age is just a frame of mind” sift through my consciousness like wind through the treetops, singing their soft, siren songs, until I almost believe them.

But something always happens to slap me back in my place, to remind me that age is not a frame of mind, it is the number of years you’ve lived. In my case, a lot. Sometimes—usually, in fact—that “reminder” is a comment from The Lovely Mrs. Taylor, the one person on earth I can count on to tell me the unvarnished truth, even when what I’m looking for is a heavily-varnished lie.

Other times, a brief encounter with a mirror in a brightly lit room is enough to shake my delusions of youth. Whatever the case, there’s always something preventing me from fooling myself.

This past weekend, it was tennis.

Mrs. Taylor got it into her head that our evenings could be better spent hitting a little, yellow ball around, rather than watching yet another “Law & Order” rerun on Tivo. For my part, I was perfectly happy seeing bad guys get what’s coming to them in 60 minutes or less. But Mrs. T is not to be denied. Not by me, anyway.

So after a quick trip to Wal-Mart to pick up some balls and a couple of the cheapest rackets they had in stock, I found myself standing on the high school’s tennis court. It was at this moment we realized we have no idea how to play tennis.

I’m sure there are rules to the game, but I have no idea what they might be. From years of channel surfing—during which time I have occasionally flipped past a televised tennis match—I know the game involves hitting a ball back and forth over a net.

As to scoring, there’s a “love” thing, I think, though I don’t know whether that means you have no score or that you really like your opponent. And I think you get 15 points every time you do something right or your opponent does something wrong, but who knows. Not me, that’s for sure.

Eventually, Mrs. T and I devised our own set of rules involving moon phases, wind direction, the names of four of the seven dwarves, and frequent shouts of “Noonan! Miss! Noonan!”

In the end, our game of tennis more closely resembled “fetch,” in which the ball is served, the person on the receiving end takes a swing at it with his or her racket, and the ball sails over the fence. Repeat three times (the number of balls we had with us) then go pick the balls up and do it all over again.

Frankly, I’m confused as to why people think tennis is fun.

After an hour of this nonsense, I was panting like Pavlov’s dog in a bell store. I was ready for a cold margarita and an Adirondack chair in a shady corner of my back yard, an activity that—unlike tennis—really is fun.

Mrs. Taylor is convinced our game will improve with time. She may be right. Personally, I’m not planning a trip to Wimbledon any time soon.

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

When you gotta go, a B&E seems like a minor matter

I should preface this column by stating the following: The text contained herein may offend the delicate sensibilities of some of our more cultured, refined and educated readers. If you’re like me, you can just go ahead and read on.

The day dawned bright and beautiful, an early summer’s Sunday as fine and lovely as a postcard. Beyond the sun-dappled bedroom window finches and starlings chirped and chittered, honeybees hummed through the breeze. In the distance, a dog woofed into the big, empty sky, sounding glad to be alive. It was for days like this that I moved to the country.

Previous experience should have told me that any day beginning this wonderfully is sure to end in disaster, but I was lulled by the sheer agreeableness of it all.

“What do you feel like doing today?” The Lovely Mrs. Taylor murmured as she rose to wakefulness.

“I dunno, bike ride?” I said.

Several minutes passed as Mrs. T processed my comment. Usually a quick-minded woman, she is slow to rise and doesn’t function well prior to breakfast, a shower and the morning paper.

“Lemme get ready really quick,” she said, finally, pulling back the sheets and heading for the bathroom.

I knew from experience that “really quick” meant I had time to fix breakfast, get dressed, shine all the shoes in my closet and translate the entire works of Dostoyevsky into Sanskrit before she’d be ready. I settled for breakfast.

Sunday’s the only day I eat breakfast, so I usually do it up right—Denver omelet, bacon, homemade toast with cherry preserves, some fruit, lots of Starbucks Breakfast Blend. By the time Mrs. Taylor came downstairs, I had eaten enough chicken and pig products to upset PETA for months.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Umph,” I said around a final mouthful of cherry preserve-encrusted toast. A nice, little bike ride was just what I needed to work off breakfast and maintain my near-perfect physique. (Look, if you’re gonna read this column, you should know some parts of it are truer than others, OK?)

Rolling down the driveway, Mrs. Taylor said, “We’ve got all day, let’s make it a long ride.”

“Oh,” I said. “OK.”

Now, my male pride would never let me admit this to Mrs. T, but she has considerably more stamina and ambition than I’ll ever possess. For one thing, she was learning to use the bathroom by herself just about the same time I was getting fired from my first fast food job, so there’s a bit of an age difference, one that becomes most noticeable on bike rides of more than 20 miles. Also, she’s more ambitious than I ever was.

Out we pedaled toward the edge of town and beyond. We soon were surrounded by fields of corn, beans and ‘taters, where front yards are measured in acres rather than feet. The miles rolled beneath us as we moved into the Big Empty. Nothing as far as they eye can see, which, in this gently rolling countryside, is far indeed. An hour passed, then two.

Suddenly, I was reminded of breakfast. Of the omelet, the bacon, the three cups of Starbucks Breakfast Blend. The homemade toast, rich in fiber. (Do I need to spell this out for you?)

My father-in-law’s farm—and Mrs. T’s aunt’s house—represented the nearest “facilities,” a couple miles farther up the road. I pedaled faster, then faster still. By the time I neared the farm I had broken the sound barrier, twice.

No one was home. Somebody’s always home there, but not this day. No sirree.

But that’s OK, I figured. Nobody locks their doors out here, and we’re family, for heaven’s sake.

The doors were locked. I tried the windows. Locked. I tried the cellar door. Locked. What’s up with this? I thought. Are they cooking meth in there?

Mrs. T muttered encouraging words about a gas station five miles back the way we had come, but it didn’t help.

In the end, paper towels from the barn in hand, I visited the nearby cornfield, glad for the early growth spurt caused by all the rain we’ve had recently. Mrs. T stood guard, but nobody drove by.

Until biking season’s over, I’m skipping breakfast on Sundays, too.

Karaoke: Harmless fun or work of the Devil?

When it comes to music, I’m polymorphous and indiscriminate—I’ll listen to anything. My record collection contains tracks as diverse as Miles Davis, Rammstein, The Ink Spots, Perry Como, NIN, Rob Zombie, Berlioz, Etta James and every single tune set to vinyl by Bob Brock & the B-Tones (best polka band in West Michigan, baby—nobody plays “The Chicken Dance” better’n the B-Tones!).

I love great vocalists (Pavarotti, Sinatra, Freddie Mercury); I love lousy vocalists (Dylan, Petty, The Lovely Mrs. Taylor in the shower).

What I don’t love, when it comes to music—and I use that word ever so loosely—is karaoke. Karaoke is, put simply, the work of the Devil.

If there is a hell, I’m sure the soundtrack features a half-drunk traveling window shade salesman singing the karaoke version of “There’s Got to Be a Morning After” into a microphone somebody purchased at Wal-Mart for $3.95.

The only good thing about karaoke is this: It’s easy to avoid. If I see a “Karaoke! Every Wednesday” sign in the window of a bar or restaurant, I know to go somewhere else on Wednesdays. A simple, elegant solution.

Until now.

The Japanese, who invented karaoke in the first place as a way of getting back at Americans for making fun of their high math scores, have come up with a new, even more diabolical, product—portable karaoke.

The “Hi-kara” karaoke machine is a 3-inch cube that works just like its full-sized siblings. Background music and words are downloaded off the Internet, and then a small screen displays the lyrics while the music plays.

According to Shigekazu Mihashi, marketing director for Takara Tomy, which manufactures the Hi-kara, the target audience for the device is middle-school age girls. And we all know the great taste in music possessed by most girls in middle school. (OMG! It’s Brittney!)

My own daughter, at that age, once forced me to take her to a concert featuring Tiffany and New Kids on the Block. I still wake up screaming in the night, reliving that concert in much the same way a ‘Nam vet might relive Kham Duc.

At any rate, it won’t be long until 7th-grade girls everywhere get their hands on the Hi-kara. Busses, airports, movie queues, McDonald’s, grocery stores—no place will be safe from the legions of Slumber Party Girls wannabes belting out squeaky, off-key versions of “Hit Me Baby One More Time.”

I may not have to wait until the afterlife to hear the Hades soundtrack after all.

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

Fighting terrorism one 20-mile ride at a time

What with the ongoing national anxiety over terrorism and the resultant formation of the Homeland Security Department, there’s been a lot of talk lately about what constitutes “torture.” Is torture only the really nasty stuff, or is forcing someone to sit through season three of “American Idol” in its entirety enough to qualify? (PS: Yes, it is.)

Personally, I don’t know. I’m repulsed by the idea of hurting someone in order to gather “intelligence.” I also don’t like the idea of some loony toon planting a bomb in a Twinkies factory in an effort to strike a blow for whatever deity/dictator/heavy metal guitar star he pledges his allegiance to.

So, like a lot of Americans, I’m confused, perplexed, ambiguous, and a couple other words that appear in the thesaurus under the word “confused.”

But I may have a solution; one that will appeal to both the right and left, the patriots and the humanitarians: My bicycle.

My bike is a beauty, an older Fuji road model, still in excellent shape with a reasonably light, rigid frame and all the bells and whistles. (Actually, it has no whistle, but it does have a bell.)

It also sports a teeny, tiny seat, made of a space-age material that is —according to the manufacturer and the guy at the bike shop who managed to say this with a straight face—“super comfortable” for long, scenic rides through the countryside. It really is, too, for the first mile or so. After that, things go downhill fast, and not the kind of downhill most cyclists look forward to.

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor and I ride between 10 and 15 miles every night after dinner, and usually 20 to 30 on weekends. People who know me no doubt wonder how I manage to stay so—ahem—full-figured, what with all this exercise. Let me just say that beer and Mexican food provide more than enough caloric integrity to maintain my Jovian physique, regardless of any workout regimen I may undertake. Short of running daily marathons, I’m never gonna be skinny.

But back to torture and how it relates to my bicycle seat. And more importantly, how Homeland Security could use this knowledge to their advantage.

The beauty of it, see, is that riding my bike doesn’t look like torture. A phalanx of Newsweek photographers could line up along the road to shoot photos of bicycle-riding suspects being interrogated and no one reading the magazine at home would think twice about the possible inhumanity of it all.

Riding my bicycle looks like fun! And at first, it is. Even your average terrorist would think so.

For that first couple of miles, it’s a real lark; wind in your hair, sun on your back, the endorphin rush that comes from getting off your fat behind and actually doing something physical. Then—speaking of fat behinds—you notice yours is getting a little uncomfortable. That tiny seat, designed for guys who look like Lance Armstrong, is doing things to your Homer Simpson backside that God and nature never intended.

By mile five, you’re wondering why someone can’t build a bicycle seat that feels more like a Barcalounger and less like an iron maiden (the medieval torture device, not the rock band).

By mile ten, you’re just wishing there was a government agent nearby to whom you could confess, so he could get you a pillow to sit on and make the pain stop.

By mile 20, you’re no longer aware of your backside, except as a distant extremity that’s going to feel really, really weird when you finally stop pedaling and dismount. You no longer care about cadres, terrorist cells or political ideologies—you just want to get off the flippin’ bike, already!

And all the while, to people driving past in their comfortable Buicks and Toyotas, you look like you’re having the time of your life. Only you and Homeland Security know the terrible truth.

More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com.

Who’s your daddy? Not me, that’s for sure

Despite much masculine posturing to the contrary, the male ego is a delicate, fragile thing. Mine is, anyway. Like most guys, I usually pretend I’m above the opinions of others, that my self-confidence is an unassailable rock upon which the tides of opinion beat ceaselessly without creating the merest hint of erosion.

That’s baloney, of course; everybody wants to be liked. My guess is even Saddam Hussein’s feelings were hurt when people made fun of his moustache (which they did, a lot, though probably not while he was in the room).

But guys being guys, we do our best to bandage over our emotional ouchies, shrug off the baggage, and get on with life while doing our best to emulate Sylvester Stallone in any Rambo movie. Usually, I’m as good at this ego shell game as any man, however, last Thursday I got blindsided, but good.

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor was holding her annual yard sale, an event on a par with any major New York fashion show in terms of complexity, presentation and prep time. The only things keeping MTV from covering Mrs. T’s sales are the lack of a margarita fountain and a lip synch performance by Hannah Montana.

At any rate, her yard sales are legendary and people come from near and far to haggle over the junk she puts out there every year.

But to the point (yes, there is one, though I’m already having a hard time remembering what it was—male ego, that’s it): I was sitting on the front porch putting the finishing touches on last week’s column while Mrs. Taylor tended shop beneath a large beach umbrella, making change, answering questions, chatting with the neighbors. From the porch, I could see folks in the front yard, but through the screen, they couldn’t see me.

An attractive young lady in a brown sweater approached Mrs. T’s “checkout” table with a few books, a puzzle and an “almost new” carton of Lincoln Logs. While Mrs. Taylor was tallying up her purchases, the woman said, “Does Mike Taylor live here?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. T.

“I thought so,” she said. “I saw him mowing the yard a few weeks ago. I love the Guinness Brothers.” (The Guinness Brothers is the name of the little bar band I play in on the weekends. Not the best band in the world, but we don’t charge that much, so it all balances out.) “They’re really good,” the woman added.

Mrs. Taylor made a non-committal grunt. She knew I was eavesdropping from the porch and figured my already inflated ego could do without additional excitement.

“My husband and I go see them every chance we get,” the woman continued. “They’re our favorite band. We both read his column in the newspaper, too. He’s so funny.”

“Umm-hmm,” Mrs. T said. She later told me that, even from out in the front yard, she could hear skull bones shifting under the rapid expansion of my head. I have to admit I was feeling pretty pleased with myself at that moment.

Then it all came crashing down.

“Well, anyway,” the woman said, as she tucked her purchases into a canvas bag. “Tell your father we’re big fans.”

Father.

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor didn’t bother to correct her. She just sat there under the beach umbrella wearing a Mona Lisa smile, listening to the sound of my head deflating.

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

The real education takes place during summer vacation

A couple weeks back one of my fellow columnists, Kathy Runyan, wrote a piece in which she implied that, deep down, most kids would rather be in school than on summer vacation. Now, Kathy’s a good friend, a very sweet lady and—in my opinion—the best columnist since Erma Bombeck, but she’s also obviously a little crazy.

Either that, or a girl.

I remember hearing rumors, back when I was toiling away at St. Isadore’s Elementary, that some girls actually liked school. We didn’t have the term “urban myth” at the time, but I assumed it was something like that; a fairy tale invented by girls to further distance themselves from the grimy, skin-kneed rabble that is prepubescent masculinity.

Whatever the case, I do know there are no schoolboys who pine for the chalk-dust-smelling confines of the classroom during summer’s long, temperate months. The school year is a time of vacant stares, watched clocks, irrelevant memorizations and flickering fluorescent lights.

Summer vacation, for a boy at least, is when the real education happens.

Remember that writer, Robert Fulghum, most famous for his book “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”? Well, all I ever learned in Kindergarten was that I prefer chocolate milk to white, and that you really can eat paste.

The things I really needed to know I learned during summer vacation.

For instance:

- Nothing feels as good as June grass against your bare feet. But there are boards with nails in them out there; care must be taken.

- Crawdad pinchers don’t really hurt that much, but it takes courage and faith to discover this fact for yourself.

- Grapes you pick yourself from wild-growing vines taste better than those you buy in a store, even though they have huge seeds in them and are frequently a little sour. Same goes for strawberries.

- A bicycle can go just as fast as you imagine it can go, and as far.

- A book read in a tree fort on a sultry July afternoon is infinitely superior to any book assigned by your teacher—even if it’s the same book.

- If you lie on a hillside beneath a star-littered night sky and gaze upward long enough, you will see God.

- Like grapes and strawberries, watermelon from the neighbor’s garden tastes better than watermelon from a store. But it also tastes better to your neighbor; don’t expect him to give it up without a fight.

- Skateboards are fun. Sidewalks are hard. It’s the same with life.

- If you sneak one cigarette from your father’s pack on the bedside stand, it won’t kill you. Unless you’re caught.

- Trains, not books, are the preferred transportation of the imagination.

- In the summertime, you sometimes become aware of air, even when there’s no scent upon it but the veiled aroma of faraway times and places.

- Life—despite sour grapes, boards with nails, and the distant shadow that is the resumption of classes in September—is good.

Oh, school serves its purpose, I suppose. We must learn to read and write, after all. But it’s during summer vacation that we learn the things worth reading and writing about.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or petitions to increase the length of summer vacation, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429. Miss a week? More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com/advancenewspapers.