Driving Me Crazy

Steve McQueen in Bullitt

I can remember first learning to drive, slipping behind the wheel of my dad's sleek, new, charcoal gray Camaro Z28 with its T-tops and fat tires. It was a fast car and I'm pretty sure my little sisters were both in the backseat for that inaugural drive. I can't remember where I drove or for how long that first time. I only remember one thing: it was fast.

I remember being taught to ride a two-wheel bike. It was on the grounds of the Skinner Center at the corner of Central and Tanglewood in Midtown Memphis. We lived in the house across the street, on the opposite corner of that intersection. I don't remember the make of the bike, but there was plenty of high, chopper-style handlebar. And I'm pretty sure the tires were solid rubber.

My oldest son learning to ride a bike set a precedent - he taught himself. Neither of us had the patience for the lessons, we quickly learned. From that point forward, both JP and S have been self-taught on two wheels. GK is still a question mark on that rite of passage.

So far, C has been an eager learner and patient pupil behind the wheel of a car. And I've been uncharacteristically patient myself. We're older, I guess, and there's a lot more at stake. It's still not finished, still five months from his 16th birthday, and he's yet to take a vehicle out on city streets. But in an empty parking lot, he's as smooth a driver as Steve McQueen or Morgan Freeman.

Here's to many more calm lessons, and to many years of safe driving by all of my kids. And here's to the memories such milestones make.

Today's "Because I Said So" column in The Commercial Appeal:

If son's still driving in 30 years, he passed test 

I recently drove my 15-year-old son to a wide open parking lot, parked the car and handed him the keys. It was his first time behind the wheel of a car and my first time in the passenger seat with a teenager behind the wheel of a car since I was a teenager myself. I dialed 911 and let my thumb hover over the send button. 

He did pretty well, though, narrowly avoiding the few obstacles, and I only barked “Brake!” once or twice. 

I learned how to drive through a combined effort of my father and his midlife Camaro Z28 and Memphis City Schools. Despite your experiences on the streets of Memphis, many of us drivers had lessons. And how many Memphians my age were taught to drive by Mr. Rafael? 

After a three-week course of textbook and on-the-road tutelage, Mr. Rafael administered our final exam, a grueling, hourslong written and multiple choice test as I recall, only to tell us when we were finished to hold on to that test and if we were alive to read it in 30 years, then we passed. 

I’ve passed. And here I am trying to pass that knowledge on to my own son. Imploring him to check his mirrors, mind the blind spots and pump the brake pedal. 

When he was 6, I drove him to a wide open field at Tobey Park to teach him to ride a bicycle. It took only about 15 minutes before we were out of patience with each other and I loaded up the bike in the back of my truck and we drove home in silence. It wasn’t long after that when I was down the block talking to a neighbor, and here came Calvin, riding his bike as though he’d been doing so for years — self-taught. 

How much simpler would it be if they were able to teach themselves to drive a car? How much better would it be for our nerves if we could just send our teenagers away and have them return as safe and responsible drivers? 

I told him that day a couple of weeks ago, as we made circle after circle in the vacant lot, that it amazes me that just anyone can drive. That we allow anybody who is of age and able to pass a fairly simple test the opportunity to wrap himself in metal and hurl himself down the interstate at 65 mph. And then I told him to “Brake!” 

He’s a good kid, and I have faith that he’ll be a good, conscientious driver. I’m not sure how I’ll be as the parent of a driver, though. I don’t think there are any lessons for that, none that Mr. Rafael imparted anyway. 

I can’t imagine that first time I’ll stand on the porch and wave my son away as he backs out on his own and heads into traffic. I’ll wish him well. And I’ll wish I could give him just one last word of advice: “Brake!”

© 2013 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 

Something Pretty, Something Beautiful by Eric Barnes

Two things struck me while reading Something Pretty, Something Beautiful by Eric Barnes (Outpost19, 2013). The first thing is the movement. Not necessarily the way the book flows, though it will keep you interested and curious from start to finish. What I’m talking about is that when Barnes writes movement – a car full of teenagers speeding down the highway, kids running and tumbling downhill into a gulch, fighting and fleeing – it is as though I was right there in the melee covered with mud and booze. The action is swift, it’s breathy, sweaty and, quite often, bloody.

Something Pretty, Something Beautiful is the gripping story of four friends in Tacoma, Washington, and jumps around among moments of childhood until they approach the fringes of adulthood. Brian Porter is the narrator, though Will Wilson is the ringleader, a young man who carries violence and mayhem with him like a flask of whiskey. Teddy and Coe round out the foursome which blows in whichever direction Will Wilson commands. Those winds tend towards fights and break-ins and some arson while always, always moving.

The near-constant movement is what the young men engage in to fill the emptiness, to fight off boredom and, maybe, to keep from thinking of the future and what each might want outside of Tacoma. The book takes place in the 1970s, and if it were today they might all be diagnosed with ADHD. In Eric Barnes’s Tacoma of the 70s, however, teens swallowed a pill of recklessness, violence and peer pressure.

The second thing to strike me didn’t come to me until late in the book, until page 230 to be precise. It is that I hate these people. I don’t hate them for the things they do, although their actions on the whole are awful, but for what they don’t do. No one ever steps in to stop another from doing the awful thing. It is this lack of will, the absence of strength to be decent, that makes them so unlikable as people. This isn't to say I don't like the characters because of a flaw in the writing. Quite the opposite. Barnes paints their personalities and actions so well that I think of them as real, as walking and talking people. And I hope to never come across such in the real world.

The book is dark. Understand that. This is no light beach read. Barnes takes all of the anxiety, frustration, angst, anger, sex and violence that might collectively fill a high school full of adolescents and condenses it down into these four characters. He keeps it simmering on a flame until it's a bubbling roux and then he holds our wrist and forces our hand into the molten mass. The book is raw and touches at something we've all felt, whether it's the hope for something better or the frustration that it might never be.

There is nothing pretty or beautiful in this book unless it is that hope that there might be something better beyond the city limits and the lives these boys are destined to lead. The stories and the writing will keep you involved to find out if it's possible, to know if one or all of them pack up a car at last and find what it is that might save them. As readers, all we can hope to do is grip the roof of that car as it approaches dangerous speeds and hold on for dear life.

Eric Barnes grew up in Tacoma and now lives in Memphis where he is the publisher of The Daily News, The Memphis News, The Nashville Ledger and the host of Behind the Headlines on WKNO.

Because I Said So: Keep 'Welcome Back' sign ready for empty nest

My nest may never empty, not even for a night. S spent the night with a friend last night, but GK had one sleep over here. At the last minute, C went to a friend's for the night, so there are only three kids in my house as I write this. Only two of them are mine. I should probably feed all of them anyway.

In this week's Because I Said So column, I write about my youngest daughter's trial run with a

sleepover at a friend's house. It lasted about four hours. Not bad. My first one, at her same age, didn't last much longer than that. That boy whose house I went to is grown now and an ophthalmologist in Midtown with an office not two miles from where he lived then. The house was one on Peabody just off Belvedere and it towered over me just as his siblings did. Brothers and sisters were everywhere, it seemed, and delighted in chasing him down and lifting him up to swing him around by his ankles. It scared the hell out of me. Was I next?

I went home early that evening instead of staying and I'm not sure when a sleepover actually stuck, when I was able to get through my anxieties and fear of the new and unknown to stay all night. I wish I could remember so I could tell GK. Maybe it was the next weekend, maybe it was the next year.

A trial run is good, for them and for us. Having the four kids sleep out overnight would give us a look into the future at what our nest might be like when it's full of peace and quiet. Until then, we'll keep ruffling some feathers and breaking some eggs, and we'll welcome any little birdies who don't mind a crowd.

Keep your 'Welcome Back' sign at the nest 

My youngest daughter found a bird’s nest on the ground the other day and collected it. I can see it from my office window where she left it on the front porch. It puts me in mind of the term “empty nest” as it pertains to a house whose children have left, flown off into the world to make their own lives in their own way. 

I wonder if that nest on the front porch would hold me and this computer. 

There must be a thrill that comes with standing at the door and waving your child goodbye, his car laden down with furniture and books and clean laundry on his way to college, or a second marriage, or for whatever reason it is that children leave home. Don’t get me wrong, I want them to visit, and often, but I wonder about that sensation of seeing them go and then turning back to your empty nest and breathing air that is all yours, tasting the food in the fridge that is all yours and knowing that if you turn off the television, it will stay off. Does Nickelodeon even exist if there are no children to watch it? 

We get a taste of such solitude early on. It’s called the sleepover, and it’s a rite of passage as meaningful as anything else — driver’s license, graduation, that first marriage. My youngest daughter, Genevieve, the nest collector, had her very first sleepover a couple of weekends ago. It did not go well. She was excited, of course; sleeping at a friend’s house is an adventure. It might as well be a trip to the moon with new foods and sounds, a different place to watch television and way of doing things. 

Somewhere around 10 p.m., though, there was a text followed shortly by a knock on the door and there was Genevieve, standing where that empty nest rests. Her friend’s parent was kind enough to bring her home, and kind enough to comfort her before that. Sometimes, these rites just don’t take the first time. 

I told her not to worry, that it happens to all of us. At least you made it past dark, I said. I was in the first grade as well for my first sleepover. The boy lived in a large home in Central Gardens and I couldn’t have been more excited about the chance to stay in such a grand palace overnight. I remember little of it, other than he had a dozen or so siblings if memory serves, and they were a rambunctious bunch who, I see now, loved their little brother. They chased him around and grabbed him up by his ankles, lifting him as high as they could. I might have been next and it terrified my 7-year-old self. My mother pulled back onto that tree-lined street before darkness fell. 

We give our children the things they’ll need in life — manners, confidence, a sense of right and wrong, a toothbrush wrapped in a baggie they’ll probably never use and then leave behind. After that, all we can do is stand on the porch beside whatever trash they decided at one time to collect and wave goodbye, knowing that, if things get rough, they will be back and they will be welcomed.

© 2013 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 

Telegraph Avenue

I’m not a writer with a set time of day to work on fiction. I’m more comfortable letting the mood strike me and putting down what I want to say, though I do try to touch on it each day, whether it’s writing a new piece or revising something previously written. A lazy writer, the mood does nevertheless tend to strike me at the same time each day, in the late afternoons and early evenings. It’s not an ideal time for someone with a house full of people, dinner to tend to, laundry, dishes, homework and bedtimes. I should be more disciplined, perhaps, I should set my clock for sometime deep in the a.m. or burn the midnight oil well into a new chapter. I have friends who write each day at the same time and I envy them their discipline. I’ve done this before, but only when I’m near the end of a project and want to push through, when the light at the end of the tunnel flutters my eyelids and wakens me before the alarm clock.

I’ve read that Michael Chabon, if he’s near the end of a novel, or on a particularly difficult portion of whatever he’s working on, will say goodbye to his wife and four kids for a stay in a hotel where solitude and peaceful working conditions help him realize his goal. I can’t imagine even suggesting such a thing in my home. Then again, I don’t have a Pulitzer, or any bestsellers, (or a published novel) to back me up. Chabon’s latest, Telegraph Avenue (Harper, 2012), is more evidence for why the man should have his own suite at the Chateau Marmont.

The book is the story of Nat Jaffe and Archy Stallings, longtime friends who are struggling to keep their record store, Brokeland Records – a haven for the denizens of Telegraph Avenue, for the hip, the has-beens and the policy makers of pop culture – open in the glare of a corporate megastore, Dogpile, threatening to take up residence in the neighborhood. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are partners in a midwifery practice and face their own struggles for acceptance in a world of ever-increasing medical convention. Archy’s estranged father, Luther Stallings, a one-time kung fu champion and blaxploitation film star, is a source of concern for his son like a migraine sneaking up from the back of the skull. And there are so many more, a whole, colorful cast of characters carrying the backbeat of plot like Parliament Funkadelic or the MGs.

In Telegraph Avenue, I imagine Chabon takes to heart the old adage “Write what you know.” Maybe he did a lot of research for his story based in Berkeley and Oakland, and the worlds of vinyl soul albums, 1970s film noir, leisure suits and all manner of vintage and pop culture from the late 60s and 70s. But maybe, when he had a question, he simply walked across his office to a wall-length bookshelf and took down a comic book or album to peruse, read, listen to and study. He loves this world he inhabits and wants nothing more than to give us a tour with a soundtrack provided by his very own mix-tape.

All Chabon books will forever be compared to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &Clay (Picador, 2000), which is unfair, but it is a book I carry with me; not physically, though I probably could the way Nate Jaffe’s son, Julius, carries his portable, plastic eight-track player, but inside me where it hums just as Nat keeps a constant beat in his head. It is a book that astounded me the first and second time I read it. The characters of Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay live in a real world swirled within the magic and fantasy that their dreams, fears, relationships, and lives are hinged upon. Telegraph Avenue isn’t so different, though the nostalgia – and there is nostalgia, to be sure, try not to overdose on it – takes us back, not to pre-World War II Prague, but to post-Vietnam San Francisco, and into the bedrooms of every 14-year-old boy ever, replete with the sloppy experimentation in music, sex, pop culture, and the independence they all precipitate.

There are small, insignificant issues I have with a storyline or two, but I’m willing to let those go because of the writing. There is nothing quite like a Chabon sentence. It’s like a steak dinner or a chocolate cake dessert, not just a slice, either, but the whole damn thing eaten in one sitting, with some ice cream on the side, and maybe a glass of ice cold milk.

Regarding writing sentences, Chabon told NPR’s Fresh Air:

“Sentences are the purest, simplest, most pleasurable part of writing for me. And it's the part that comes the easiest to me. … I love that aspect of it: the shaping of sentences, the crafting of sentences, that's the fun part of writing for me.”

And it shows. He packs so much into one sentence that I tend to read a page or two and then back off, lean back on the sofa, loosen my belt and digest it all. There is, of course, Part III, “A Bird of Wide Experience,” with its single, 12-page sentence, but that’s just showing off and, frankly, unnecessary. It’s more a testament to Chabon’s standing in the publishing world, and an overeager editor, than his writing ability. Can you imagine an unknown author including that bit in a query letter to an agent? “Oh, and in the middle I include one single sentence that goes on for a dozen pages. People will love that.” The rejection letter would be much more brief and written immediately after reading that queried sentence.

But that’s nitpicking because the writing is beautiful, all of it, every adjective (plenty), comma (many), clause, phrase, digression and aside. Chabon hooks his words together like train cars to take us on a journey through descriptive lands peopled with fanciful citizens, all dressed to the nines in their flamboyant Aztec numbers, and all strutting to their own brand of funk.

A Thousand Acres

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. No one won it in 2012. In response to the non-win of this year, Michael Cunningham, one of three Pulitzer jurors, wrote a piece for The New Yorker about why, or why he thought, there was no winner chosen. In this essay, he writes:

A proper respect for the mysterious aspects of fiction is encouraged by the Pulitzer’s guidelines, which are gratifyingly loose. The winning book, be it a novel or short-story collection, must have been written by an American, and should, ideally, be in some way about American life.

That’s it.

Smiley's novel is so much about American life that it's almost embarrassing to read, whether due to the raw emotions and familial relationships that leave the reader feeling naked and, at times, stripped of skin completely; or whether it's the knowledge of farming and farm life that she imparts so adeptly, knowledge that leaves a city boy thinking for the first time, "Wow, that all seems really hard."

A Thousand Acres takes place on a farm. Never mind where it is (it's in Iowa), it could be anyplace that people make a life, such as it is, from putting seed in the earth, watering it, praying over it, and waiting a predetermined number of days before learning if they'll make enough money to sustain them until the next growing season when it happens all over again.

The farm is just as the title says, one-thousand acres, in Zebulon County and has been farmed by the Cook family for several generations. It's a hard life, a life filled with days of routine and back-breaking work, but it's a life the Cooks have come to know; the only way of life they know. Larry Cook, a widower, has three adult daughters - Ginny, Rose and Caroline - and Ginny and Rose each have married men who work the land there, and their families live on the land and within walking distance of the house where Ginny and Rose grew up. They enter each others homes without knocking, making coffee at will, preparing breakfast or dinner, as though they are one big happy family. In walking to each other's houses, however, they're crossing land that is fertile with family secrets that threaten to push through the topsoil like weeds. There is no chemical to stop them, no farmer's trick that will keep such secrets from invading the lives of those who live and work the fields and threaten to do more damage than drought or hail.

The story is intricate, and the setting and characters detailed. The pacing moves with the monotony of farm life, yet is not monotonous. We are caught up in the chores and the fears of weather, with the cycle of life for farm animals and the importance of teamwork. The plot blossoms like tomatoes on the vine, each revelation a succulent piece of fruit to be savored on the front porch.

The Pulitzer finalists in 1992 included Mao II by Don DeLillo, Jernigan by David Gates and Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig. I haven't read any of those books, so I can't say with any conviction that A Thousand Acres is better or more deserving, but I can say that it is "about American life." It may not be my life, and it may not be your life, but the emotions, the character traits, the fears and lost hopes and want of something better, if not for ourselves, then for our children, are attributes present in all of us.

Because I Said So: Launching youngest daughter in first grade has its hurdles

As a kid growing up with books of science fiction and black-and-white movies ful of creatures and oddities from outer space, my entire universe consisted of Earth and Mars. Sure, the Moon was there, but the Moon is a neighbor, as familiar to us all as the property fence or a dog's bark. But Mars is the next neighborhood over, familiar for its proximity, yet alien with its different trees, styles of houses, cars and people who look just like us, though they're not neighbors; not completely.

And yet Mars is close. Certainly close enough for alien beings to fly a saucer over for a cup of sugar or to sit on the porch for a spell and, eventually, eat that neighbor's dog. It's close enough for me to have thought as a kid that we Earthlings would one day put a craft, if not a person, on Mars. It was doable. Of course it would be possible, we put a man on the Moon and Mars is just around the corner from there, isn't it?

Probably a stranger concept to a 7-year-old boy than one day touching the surface of Mars is parenthood. Being a father was an entire galaxy away from where I was, and as alien as whatever that was that came from the ship at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At that age, there is no way a parent could understand what we feel, our fears, our interests, our complete inability to comprehend time and distance in outer space. And yet, when I took G to first grade last week and she melted into me with tears and pleading not to have to go to school, I knew exactly where it was she was coming from. It wasn't Mars, or even the Moon, it was a time and a place I remember well. It's another world called Childhood and it is as strange and exotic a place to me now as a planet called Parenthood seemed to me 35 years ago.

We're all explorers going through new worlds blindly whether those worlds encompass another planet, another continent, the next street over or being responsible for another little life. It's all exciting and, we find out, it's all very reachable. What we need to do is keep our eyes and ears open, learn as much about the landscape as we can and try to enjoy the ride.

This week's Because I Said So column from The Commercial Appeal:

Launching youngest daughter in first grade has its hurdles

Last week, I scattered my four kids like comet tails and left them with their various teachers at their various schools. For the older kids, this is old hat, they're pros who have been at this for years. They may not like it — in fact they don't — but they understand the routine and joined the countdown to the launch of another Memphis City Schools academic year.

But then there's Genevieve. She's the youngest and the most spirited, some will say. A challenge, her parents say. Things did not go well that first morning of first grade. There was a lot of clinging and tears, and even some desperate pleas for her sentence to first grade to be commuted. Alas, I left her there in the capable hands of Mrs. Armstrong and the whole Richland Elementary crew.

I came home, walked the couple of blocks back, and turned on the Internet to see that NASA's Mars rover Curiosity had landed safely the night before. Space exploration fascinates me, and I was enthralled watching video images from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, as the rover touched down and the scientists went crazy with exultation.

That celebration was rightly deserved. Those people landed a buggy on a planet 35 million miles away with more ease and less drama than I had landed my daughter in a first-grade classroom two blocks away. Granted, they're rocket scientists and I'm only a parent, and parenting isn't rocket science. Or is it? Maybe when scientists come upon a complex theorem that becomes easily proven, they say, "Well, it isn't parenting."

Adam Steltzner, a mechanical engineer with the laboratory, said the rover's landing "is the result of reasoned engineering thought." Reasoned thought is as unnatural to a 6-year-old as space travel. When told that school can be fun or that it won't last so long or that her friends will be right there with her, all she can imagine is an endless expanse of black sky, a vacuum of loneliness.

Upon re-entry into the school's atmosphere, while dodging other children and supply-laden parents, my daughter began to break apart, the heat from the classroom too much to bear; the promise of another school year built up until not even her protective khaki jumper could withstand the pressure and she exploded in a barrage of tears. And what could I do? I'm helpless. I'm a parent. I'm ground control, yet I failed to keep her grounded in any sense of safety and serenity, while floating there among her friends and siblings.

They call it the "seven minutes of terror." That's how long scientists had to wait upon Curiosity's entry into the Mars atmosphere before they found out whether their rover was intact on the surface of the planet. It takes us about seven minutes to walk to school in the morning, but I had to wait seven hours to find out that Genevieve did eventually compose herself, that she acclimated to the foreign surroundings of first grade and that her own curiosity about it all proved to be stronger than her home's gravitational pull.

Richard J. Alley is the father of two boys and two girls. Read more from him at uurrff.blogspot.com. Become a fan of "Because I Said So" on Facebook: facebook.com/alleygreenberg.

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.