Mickey Hadick

The Trap is a story about men on a fishing trip to the northern woods, who wind up on a hunting trip instead. This was the first in a short series I wrote based on stories heard from other people. Aspects of this story are true then. It's not like it's a particularly shocking story, and maybe that's its flaw.

This story was written at the end of my golden age of short stories. Shortly after this was completed, I made some life changing decisions, and my writing, reflecting the effects those decisions had on my brain, became different; I am dealing with the other consequences of those decisions in many ways.

My father was one to take an annual fishing trip to a remote location, but I have never done so. This story is the closest I've ever come to such a trip.

Labels: memoir, story

Fall is an iffy season for me. I enjoy the apples, and the smell of leaves, and the skies can be far more beautiful than at any other season. But it means that winter is around the bend, and it's going to get darker, and so there's a chance that days will pass without my seeing daylight. But I think it's important to be explicit about what I enjoy and why, lest it passes me by.

I really enjoy the fall colors, especially on a bright, breezy day. That's a bit much to ask here in Michigan, but I can dream. I especially like the very breezy days when the leaves start to fall. It reminds me of Hemingway's story, "Three Day Blow," which is not a particularly cheery story (it's about the sadness and confusion after a breakup) but I enjoy reading Hemingway, and that story is set in Michigan (well, the U.P.) and so the whole big mess is jumbled up in my head and it's all part of why I enjoy the fall colors.

I enjoy the rituals of football. The high school games on Friday nights, college games on Saturday, and so on. I actually don't watch that much football, but I enjoy it when I do, and I would enjoy it more under the right circumstances. I find it comforting to know it's there and happening.

I also enjoy the smell of leaves. On a dry day, when they're being raked into piles, the smell is concentrated, and it's conjures memories of jumping into leaf piles as a kid, having leaf fights with my brothers, and being ordered by our father to pick up the damn leaves. My father was a task master when it came to fallen leaves, and he instructed us in particular and preferred methods for stuffing the maximum possible leaves into a plastic bag. I have to believe that our city landfill is stuffed to the gills with bags of leaves, now dry and preserved by their plastic wrappings, and waiting to be discovered by scientists in the far future who will wonder with amazement what primitive people spent so much effort shoving leaves into plastic bags and burying them en masse. Well I was one of those primitive people.

My secret pleasure is in burning leaves. It's messy and unnecessary, but I've done it a few times, and I would do it again, at least once, if I thought I could get away with it. I learned the hard way that I wasn't supposed to burn leaves in this town.

The first year we moved here, we had a severe leaf problem. I attached a lawn sweeper to the tractor, and began gathering the leaves together in piles. I thought burning would be a great solution, and a coworker, Doug, joined me for the afternoon. As I carted load after load to the pile, he raked them into the fire, and we had a really smooth operation going. Then the fire department showed up to put out the fire, and explained to me in no uncertain terms that one simply could not burn leaves. Spoil sports.

A final side note is that Doug, who was a very good friend to us, passed away that winter at the untimely age of 48. I do enjoy the pleasures of fall, but it also reminds me that winter is not far away. I don't dread either one because of Doug's passing. If you live long enough, you bury enough friends and family that every season, every month, and every holiday becomes associated with the loss of a loved one. I don't condemn the season with the loss; only the moment. The moment passes by to make room for the next moment.

If your heart is strong enough, there is love and pleasure available to you in those coming moments. You just have to be ready to accept it, and keeping aware of what I love, I hope, makes me ready.

Labels: memoir, story

Soda pop, or just "pop", as we called it in Ohio, was not always like it is today. Drinking a pop was a special occasion, and closely regulated by our parents. The only soft drinks we kept around on a regular basis were ginger ale and tonic water, and those were left over from the rare evening party my parents held for other adults. My mother would often serve us ginger ale when we were nauseated or suffering from influenza. I'm not sure how ginger ale became a tonic, especially when there was tonic water already in the refrigerator, but I think it was a case of a mother feeling the need to do something for her sick child, and ginger ale tasted better than tonic water, so ginger ale it was. She served crackers too, so it was a one-two punch of soda pop and soda crackers.

When my parents hosted a day-time party, it was a cause dé celebration for us kids. This was typically in the summer, and was a thinly veiled excuse to have family members over to eat grilled hamburgers and drink cheap beer. As kids, we didn't care what the reason, and we endured the forced labor of cleaning the garage because the payoff, the reward, was unfettered access to pop during the party.

The pop was bought from a beverage store (at least that's how they were known in our part of Ohio). The store would be stacked and crowded with cases of bottled beer and and soda pop. There was a walk-in cooler in back for beer ready to serve. Placards and banners promoted various brands or specials, but in the era of supermarket coupons, it was cheaper to buy in quantity from these small, dark, family owned beverage stores, so advertising and merchandising was not really the point.

Going to the beverage store was an exciting precursor to the party. If brought along for the ride, we had an opportunity to influence some of the decisions. I was not that enamored of Coke or Pepsi back then, but absolutely loved root beer. My mother had a thing for cream soda, which I thought was weird, and would question the sanity of such a purchase. But the reality was that we were there to save money. A few name brand mixers were bought for drinks (the aforementioned ginger ale and tonic water) but for the kids and really old people, the cheapest soda pop available was selected.

That's where O-So came in. They were packaged in ten ounce bottles, and arranged in wooden boxes, in a mixed array of flavors: purple, red, orange, brown, and white. They were supposed to be grape, cherry, orange, root beer, and cream soda, but they tasted nothing like that, and it was just easier to refer to their colors, orange notwithstanding. Because the case of small bottles was relatively light, I could, as a kid, help load them in the trunk, which I did with great care. Fear of my father's retribution for wasting money and making a mess focused my attention.

The pop was loaded in a steel cooler and packed with ice. We were forbidden from drinking anything before the guests arrived, but there was usually so much barking about sweeping, arranging, and setting chairs that there was little time for worrying about it. Besides, as long as both of my brothers were suffering as equally as I suffered, it was okay to wait.

I believe purple was O-So's flagship flavor, but those went so quickly in the mad grab by kids that it was hardly even a factor in the decision. I remember ending up with "red" a lot. It may have been intended to taste like cherry, but it was always strong and spicy, and was nothing like the cherries from our tree out back. "Red," in fact, became my favorite because I was much more fearful of ending up with O-So's version of cream soda.

The cooler had a bottle opener on the side. That was the other neat thing: we opened the bottles just like the adults opened their beer. If we wandered away from the cooler too quickly after our grab, we might have to venture into the garage where a church key could be found among the tools. For me, as a kid, I was much more into holding onto a long neck bottle of something to drink, even though "red" didn't taste that good. It's kind of like getting married because everyone else is getting married, and then realizing the orange soda may have been more to your liking.

During one of the parties, we had lost a tree some time during the previous year, and so a stump remained. One of my brothers, or cousins, or an uncle, had the idea of pounding the bottle caps into the stump, and so the fun for that day was gathering the bottle caps, either beer or pop, and pounding them into the wood. Considering the amount of sugar we were consuming, we really needed to get busy.

As the party wound down, the bottles had to be returned to the wooden case, beer and pop alike. These were stacked in the garage to be returned the next weekend. In that sense, life itself is like a party: you build up and prepare to have fun; before you realize, the party is over, and you have to start cleaning up the mess. In the end, you're left with dirty dishes, trash, and maybe, just maybe, a few good memories.

Labels: memoir

Another of the short stories I wrote two decades ago, a time I am nostalgically referring to as my golden age of writing (golden because, at the time, I believed I would figure out how to do it), was "The Penny Box". It was inspired by the neighborhood in which I lived at the time, and the older generation I saw around me in those small homes. The house itself was inspirational: it was cute and cozy, but it could also feel dated and cramped; so much depends upon attitude.

Like my other stories, I spent months on this fine tuning the words and rhythm. I fretted over the plot and the situation. I dutifully sent it out to magazines and journals. I then added to my collection of rejection letters.

I have written dozens of stories that I never quite figured out, and which, upon reflection, I simply don't like. This is one of the stories I've always enjoyed. Now I wish I'd written more like this, if only for myself. If you don't like "The Penny Box", I understand completely. It may seem simple and deep, but it may also seem insipid and pointless; so much depends on attitude.

Labels: memoir, story

My first job out of college was interesting, but like so many things in life, there were good things and bad.

I was on a small team colloquially known as "fly and fix". If there was a problem with one of our computer systems that could not be handled by the local technicians and experts, my boss was expected to show up and fix it. I was being trained, along with another young man, to do the same sort of thing. When he flew in, he didn't leave until it as fixed, and worked around the clock to solve the problem. He had a long history with the company's mainframe computers, and was an expert troubleshooter. When I joined him, he was transitioning to being expert in the company's new line of powerful desktop computers.

Because of this odd and demanding constraints, he worked out of his home at a time where that was very rare. His basement was stocked with several of the new computers, every manual created on the system, and every possible peripheral. These computers generated so much heat that he had an air conditioning unit installed just for the basement. So for the first eighteen months of the job, I reported to this guy's house for work, and sat in his basement studying manuals.

I was able to dress casually, kind of rare for the day, and I brought a suit in case we had to visit a client. Three times I had to rush home to pack for a week. So the good part was dressing casually, not being in an office, and the excitement of rushing out to solve a problem. I also enjoyed learning the computer systems. That was the good.

The bad was being in a basement with two geeky men talking computers. Another bad part was traveling at odd times, long car trips, flights to weird places, and eating in lousy fast food restaurants on a daily basis. I would spend 18 to 20 hours with the same guys, talking about very little except the problem at hand. For my boss, this was the pinnacle of his career, and he loved every minute, especially the fast food; not so much for me.

But the absolute worst was the coffee situation. When we were in his basement, the coffee was in the kitchen, courtesy of Mr. Coffee. He had an odd policy about coffee, and would brew only weak coffee. He would then immediately turn off the burner. If you wanted hot coffee before that pot was empty, you had to warm it in the microwave. I hated that coffee.

Eventually, I hated that job. I hated that basement, and I kind of hated those computers. They led me down a technological dead end. All the things I learned from that of value were entirely tangential from the systems.

So what did I learn? That coffee is meant to be fresh. Oxidation begins soon after brewing, and no microwave can reverse that tragedy. For some people, their job is their life, and these people can be difficult coworkers. And that no matter how bad the coffee at a greasy spoon in Jackson, Missouri, reheated coffee, at least for me, will always be worse.

Labels: memoir, story

I went for a jog with my daughter today and it was chilly. I thought we should wear long sleeve shirts, but she wore a plain, short-sleeved shirt so I felt to do the same. I couldn't be shown up by my daughter.

It was cold. The wind was blowing stiffly, and there was the threat of rain. By the time we were at the football field, we were both freezing, and our fingers were hurting. We both had to swing our arms to get the blood flowing.

Near the midway point, she began rubbing her arms and I said, "Rub your trunk; your arms will take care of themselves."

It was a quote from "Batman Begins". Henri Ducard is coaching the vulnerable and misguided Bruce Wayne after having fallen through the ice during battle. And what would I do, who would I be, without modern culture?

I'd be vulnerable and misguided, that's what. And susceptible to crazy ideas.

Labels: story