For Mike

When dad passed away in 2019, I found myself standing in the main room of the funeral home during his viewing. Surrounded by family, friends, and his coworkers, I was genuinely touched by the massive crowd that assembled. But I'm not fond of crowds, and this growing throng was starting to feel oppressive. I was getting both annoyed and agitated as I was being forced into two competing roles: grieving son and gracious host. The smile I wore as I greeted everyone who approached me was as fake as spray tan on a redhead. I knew their condolences were heartfelt and sincere, but all I heard was the muffled and garbled voices of adults from a Peanuts cartoon. That smile broadened as I dispensed handshakes and hugs, hoping my responses were halfway intelligible.

As the hours ticked on and the room filled, my emotional headspace was a maelstrom. I was angry that I had to share this extremely private time in such a public forum. That immediately transitioned to guilt as I recognized that they, too, were also grieving. With these flip-flopping emotions, my inner turmoil was rising quickly. Fueled by grief and loss, I was about to lose it when I heard a very familiar voice.

"Hey, Wayne."

I turned around and saw Mike. Still in his UPS uniform, he was at the tail end of his route that day. "I heard this was going down for your dad, and I just wanted to check on you."

I gave him the biggest hug and lost it.

The two of us ducked out of the packed main salon into a side room. There, in the quiet, we just sat. I don't remember our conversation, but the words didn't matter. What I really needed was a release valve, a respite from the parade of well-wishers just beyond the door. Mike's presence delivered that in spades.

That moment captured my friendship with Mike. I was living halfway across the country at this time, and on this particular evening, I hadn't seen Mike since he was a groomsman at my wedding 2 years prior. However, across distance and time, at a critical moment, he just showed up. My friend rescued me that night.

I often heard Mike quote Maximus from Gladiator, "What we do in life echoes in eternity." Mike embodied this creed in his personal relationships. He was very intentional in his interactions with people in his circles, investing time to create bonds and memories. His concern for even casual acquaintances was unmistakably genuine. Over the course of our 45 year friendship, I was the benefactor of his extravagant camaraderie, perfectly demonstrated that evening long ago at the funeral home.

He was a rare, genuinely good guy who cared deeply about others. People recognized his sincerity and responded. Everyone he met immediately liked him. It was a potent superpower of his that I both admired and envied.

Mike recently lost his long-running battle with an illness.

I'm now in the midst of dealing with the ramifications of losing one of my very few lifelong friends. Random memories have surfaced throughout recent days, and wistful smiles have waged bitter battles against tears.

I'm trying to find my personal way to honor the life of my friend. And I fear it's going to be a stretch for this confirmed curmudgeon, because it involves emulating Mike in his purposeful pursuit of connections.

I'd also heard him say, "Make what you do today worthwhile. You're trading a day of your life for it." As hard as it may be for me, I think attempting to be more like my friend, Mike, qualifies as worthwhile.

"Take your Chevy to the levee, and I'll drive my Ford to the fjord! Sultans rule!"

Rest easy, brother.

The Sun Is Shining Down - JJ Grey

Rock-tober 31, 2025

A major milestone occurred at the tail end of 1979 - my tenth birthday. This trip around the sun carried special significance as I simultaneously closed out my first decade of treading this sod and graduated into double digits. One of the benefits of this landmark achievement was my eligibility for my own Department of Defense dependent ID card.

In my mind's eye, having my own ID card was a telltale sign I was growing up. This wasn't like the Junior Superhero badge I got from sending in coupons from the backs of comic books. This was an official DoD credential that carried real weight and afforded a measure of independence.

Prior to getting my own, I had to be escorted by a current ID holder, usually Mom or Dad, to gain access to facilities on base. Now with my own ID, I could get onto the base by myself and enter the Exchange, Commissary, bowling alley, and movie theater without an escort. For ten-year-old me, a whole world to explore opened up. If anyone questioned my presence at any of these places, I merely flashed my ID. Membership had its privileges.

A scant 6 years later, I passed another milestone. Fulfilling the requirement of holding a learner's permit and not royally screwing up for a year, at 16 I was eligible for my driver's license. The privilege of lawful, unfettered access to any drivable destination was a game-changer.

In the intervening decades, I took full advantage of the freedom of mobility afforded me as a holder of a valid driver's license and explored many highways and byways that crisscross this country. That ID had a secondary purpose. It proved I was who I said I was. Whether at a bank, a bar, or boarding gate, my driver's license backed me up when I announced my identity.

Early in my teenage years, a more profound milestone quietly occurred. Mom went before a judge of the Federal Southern District of Mississippi's main courthouse in Jackson. There, she took the oath of allegiance and became a naturalized US citizen. 

Dad, through his service in the US Navy, was previously granted citizenship. This meant that I, a minor child born abroad to two naturalized parents, through a derivative process also became a US citizen.

The rights and privileges afforded me because of my citizenship are incalculable, and I love the freedom and opportunity this country granted me. I saw this as a debt of honor, and to repay it, I unhesitatingly raised my right hand to heaven and took a solemn vow to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Recent changes in policy, however, have brought new challenges.

Shockingly, one of the first actions the current administration took was sign an executive order ending birthright citizenship. I didn't think it applied to my case, but I had to read the verbiage several times to know for certain. Citizenship can be revoked, but this generally requires the commission of high crimes such as treason. Revocation of citizenship for anything less is onerous and repugnant.

By definition, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no authority over US citizens. But there are reports of ICE agents detaining and, according to some sources, deporting US citizens. If these reports are verified, it's a serious deterioration of rule of law, a core tenet of the founding of this country.

As a precaution, I now carry my US Passport card on me in the event I have to prove my citizenship. That I feel compelled to do this both saddens and angers me. Three generations of my family served during wartime as part of US forces, and the current actions of this administration and the actions allowed of Federal agents feels like a betrayal.

Regardless, each milestone, from my first ID card to my license and citizenship, has been a chapter in the story of my life. Each brought its own lessons of independence, weight of responsibility, and power of opportunity. All three shaped my identity and my perspective on the world. Moving forward, I intend to continue to honor the responsibilities I hold, to make the most of the freedoms I've been given, and to defend them as I'm bound by an oath sworn long ago.

Rock-tober out.

Jimi Hendrix - Star Spangled Banner

Rock-tober 30, 2025

The very earliest Halloween I remember was the fall of '74 when we were stationed in Annapolis. I was 4 years old and very enamored with all things Peanuts. Most kids had a teddy bear, but I went to bed hugging a Snoopy. That year when October rolled around, spurred on by the annual rerun of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!, my first costume was of course, Charlie Brown.

Halloween that year fell on a school day, and my kindergarten allowed us to wear our costumes to class. I thought this was a cool idea, but the resilience of youth likely suppressed the unpleasantness. All Gen-Xers remember these costumes - slack drawstring tops and bottoms made of thin, scant, single-ply nylon that didn't breathe and itched. The mask was equally ill fitting, its eye holes weren't well placed, and it smelled funny.

A year later, we moved to the Mississippi Coast, and my Halloween costumes varied over the next few years. I once was a Founding Father, complete with vest, shirt ruffles, and buckled shoes. This was actually a reused costume Mom made for my first grade's class presentation celebrating the '76 Bicentennial. The following year I was a circus ringmaster, again, reusing the outfit from my school's play.

At some point, every boy with a dad in the Seabees went through a phase where he borrowed his dad's field fatigues. My attempts to don Dad's gear lead to a very frumpy looking Sad Sack of a soldier along with a constant threat of tripping from those oversized boots.

I'd dispensed with costumes by the time I'd become part of the Island View Hoodlums, opting instead for causing mischief and mayhem on those nights rather than chasing Mars Bars and Moon Pies.

These days, All Hallows' Eve has lost its luster for me. I'll still go through the annual ritual of picking up bags of full-size Snickers and KitKats because breaking the vicious cycle of candy corn is one of my life's side quests. However, since we don't typically get any ghost or goblin visitors, I become the sole beneficiary of my candy choice largesse.

I wish I could reclaim the wide-eyed, childhood infatuation with the holiday. Donning an alter ego and leveraging free snacks from strangers under the threat of roguish shenanigans was a pleasant way to pass an evening. Perhaps all it takes to regain that old Halloween magic is rewatching the Peanuts gang special. Recapturing that childhood wonder would be delightful—minus the janky costumes, of course.

Vince Guaraldi - Linus and Lucy

Rock-tober 29, 2025

Sneaking out of the house as a teenager had its challenges, but some factors worked in my favor. Mom and Dad's room, luckily, was on the opposite corner from our driveway, and they usually turned in early. Also, our house was on a slab, not a basement, and most of our flooring was carpeted - no squeaky floor boards to give me away. Getting out of the house was fairly trivial, but now the difficulties arose.

The first problem with Operation Breakout was the 'Stang sported a 302 V8 with after-market dual exhausts. Today's cars, with their little 4-banger engines or smaller, need you to be either in them or in very close proximity to hear them running.

In stark contrast, when I cranked the 'Stang, 302 cubic inches roared with a low, resonating rumble you felt in your bones. When the engine revved, windows rattled, neighborhood dogs commenced a howling chorus, and for a quarter mile around, startled birds flew away from tree-borne roosts.

There's no way I could start up the 'Stang in the driveway without waking the whole house. My genius solution was to push her back out the driveway and roll her down the street before firing her up. This led to the second problem with Operation Breakout.

A 1970 Mustang coupe was over 3,100 pounds of Pittsburgh steel and Detroit attitude and overcoming her rolling resistance became an exercise in applied physics. After shifting into neutral, I had to put all my weight onto the hood to start her moving backwards out of the driveway.

Once in motion, I quickly ran to the open driver's side window to grab the wheel, maintain traction with the pavement, and keep a grip on the car.

Turning the steering wheel was another challenge. The 'Stang had power steering, but only when the engine was running. So now, Breakout's mission parameters were: don't slip on the pavement, keep a grip on the car, and strong-arm the wheel into a turn so I didn't wind up running over the mailbox across the street.

Once on the street, it was just a matter of getting far enough down the road before turning the ignition key. Nosy neighbors, roused from their slumber, peered curiously from behind curtains at the source of the chest rumbling noise. But snitches get stitches, so back to bed they went.

Operation Breakout was successful, and now all roadways in the bustling metropolis of Long Beach were fair game. The possibilities arrayed before me put a smile on my face.

Perhaps I'd head down to the strip and hang out with some friends. Maybe I was in the mood for a solo speed run on I-10 so the 'Stang could stretch her legs. A more sedate cruise down Highway 90 with the boombox in the passenger seat cranked to 11 was another option. Or I might just park down at the harbor and enjoy the expanse of the night sky above and the brine scented breeze coming off the water.

The hours ticked away, and with my need for mischief sated, I cruised on back home, simply running Operation Breakout in reverse.

Years later, I can't help but chuckle at the lengths I went to on those late-night escapades. Operation Breakout might not have been the most sophisticated mission, but those sorties were rites of passage rewarded by the thrill of the getaway as much as the freedom of the open road. Sometimes, as I think about those nights, I imagine I can hear that rumbling V8 echoing through the quiet streets of Long Beach, a mechanical lullaby to my misspent youth.

Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run

Rock-tober 28, 2025

A few decades  ago, when Andrea was still a sign language interpreter, I tagged along to a party hosted by one of her coworkers. As usual at these events, English wasn't the lingua franca of the evening; it was American Sign Language (ASL). While I may be fluent in hand gestured expletives of several different countries, I was not conversant in ASL.

The situation didn't throw me for a loop. Growing up not speaking either Ilokano or Tagalog, the primary native languages in the Philippines, as a kid I was constantly surrounded by conversations I didn't understand. That evening, I just smiled and nodded my way past clusters of signers, fixed a plate, and made a drink as I went.

I landed on the back deck where the only other person was our host's husband, also a non-signer. We struck up a conversation based on the common ground that neither of us really knew what to do at these shindigs.

It turns out he also grew up down south, and that led to comparisons of our formative years below the Mason-Dixon.

Since we were surrounded by language centric folks, our discussion turned to the uniqueness of southernisms. We laughed as we tried to outdo each other with tongue-twisting place names and surnames that defied obvious attempts at pronunciation.

I brought out my standards: Tchoupitoulas, a street in New Orleans, and Tchoutacabouffa, a river in south Mississippi. To complete the alliteration trifecta, I tossed in the north Mississippi county of Tishomingo.

We agreed that the last name, Hebert, always threw northerners for a loop. I've only known one guy, who  happens to be from Mississippi, who pronounces his name HEE-burt.

Southern colloquialisms also came up. I once worked with a northern transplant who got very agitated when one of us mentioned we "were fixin' to" do some random thing.

"But wait! You're not 'fixin' anything, dammit!"

"Weeelllll, would ya lookit that. By the way that vein's a-throbbing in your temple, it looks like you're fixin' to have a stroke. Aww. Bless your heart."

My conversation partner that evening did manage to introduce me to a southernism I'd never heard before: "moonlight and magnolias". From his explanation, it meant a state of serene, tranquil, bliss, and everything was right with the world.

"But, Wayne," you ask, "how would one use such a lovely, southern turn of phrase?"

Hold your horses, Boudreaux. Ain't no need to get your britches all cattywampus cuz I'm fixin' to tell ya.

Lets' say after a day that was hotter'n blue blazes, runnin' over hell's half acre and bein' busier than a cat on a hot tin roof, you're feelin' all tore up, rode hard, and put away wet. But then your best girl meets you at the door with a hug and a smile, some sugar, and a tall, cool glass of sweet tea.

Well, damn, son, that there's moonlight and magnolias.

Alabama - Song of the South

Rock-tober 27, 2025

High school teachers have a unique power to shape our lives, often in ways we don't fully appreciate until years later. Long Beach High School was fortunate to have a number of excellent educators during my time there, and our school consistently ranked highly in state and national standards tests. 

I had several favorites. One of them was Coach Robert Cave. An accomplished grower of camellias and a skilled artisan of carved wild fowl, he'd won national awards in both. To us, he was "Coach" and he taught Biology II and Marine Biology. While I was able to take his Bio II class, I've always regretted being unable to fit his Marine Bio class into my schedule.

Since Bio II was a science class, I already found it enjoyable, but Coach's passion for the subject made the class that much more memorable. A number of things I learned in his classroom I can still rattle off today, including the seven levels of taxonomy - Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Genus, Species. Not exactly useful in my tech job, but retained knowledge is always a win.

During the winter months, he lit off the Bunsen burner on his table and boiled water in a beaker. He explained it was to throw humidity into the air to counter the dryness from the season. This was new information to me, and I still have a designated cast-iron kettle that I use during the much colder and drier Maryland winters.

His tests usually had an extra credit question. Sometimes it was at least obliquely related to the material, "What type of sea turtle never returns to land?" Other times, it was strangely random, "Why are daytime programs called 'soaps'?"

I sat in the back table of the class between Thomas and Ronnie. Over the course of the year, inspired by Coach's penchant for trivia, our table initiated our own trivia challenges. At first, we tried to keep questions class related. "What's the body's largest gland?" and "What's the body's largest organ?" were typical. 

We eventually went off the rails. "Who's the patron saint of both sailors and children?"

While Coach Cave's trivia challenges tested our knowledge of biology and even pop culture, he had a more hands-on examination in store for us.

In a serious escalation from Bio I's dissection of a large earthworm, in Coach's class we were faced with the dissection of a fetal pig. Being at the same table, Ronnie, Thomas, and I shared the same specimen which Ronnie duly christened "Seymour D. Pig". We took turns wielding the scalpel and managed to not lose our lunch in the process, but tellingly, none of us became a surgeon.

It was whispered among us that a friend of ours received a challenge in another class: eat a portion of their "Seymour's" liver for $20.00. While I didn't witness the deed, others did and our friend claimed his prize. For context, $20 in 1986 is worth almost $60. Not an insignificant sum for a high school kid, but one I'd still pass on.

Coach's class made for a memorable year. He was a rare instructor who was able to instill his passion for the subject in his students. There's a plethora of biology factoids still taking residence in my grey matter that I learned while in his class. While I don't get to pull them out very often, on occasion they serve me well in trivia challenges and rock and roll blog posts.

Schoolhouse Rock - The Body Machine

Rock-tober 26, 2025

At a recent class reunion, we clustered into small groups of conversation. As I passed within earshot of several, they predictably turned to shenanigans we pulled back when we were in school. Amusingly, there was also universal agreement that they wouldn't tell their kids about any of these misdeeds.

As a natural rule follower, my school record is, embarrassingly, squeaky clean. But still, 6 years in junior and senior high school is a long stretch without some issues.

I was busted for one fight. In 7th grade, horseplaying with a 9th grader got out of hand and I wound up dragging him across the ground by his leg. A strong hand then clapped me on the shoulder and a loud, stern voice boomed, "Let's go!"

I looked around and was very surprised a crowd had gathered. The voice came from Coach Snow and he hauled us two former combatants to the principal's office. There, we got a stern talking to by Dr. Whalen, but I think he actually cut us loose.

In a possible affront to millennial sensibilities, corporal punishment was a very real thing at Long Beach Junior High. Some of our male teachers walked the halls brandishing large wooden paddles during breaks between classes as a deterrent to teen tomfoolery. I managed to dodge this punitive action until 9th grade.

One of my favorite classes was Industrial Arts or "shop". To this day, I still have and use some of the projects I made during that class. A picnic table I made during the year was still in use until it literally fell apart a year or two ago. Near the end of our freshman year, Mr. Nations, our shop teacher, wanted to send us off to high school with a parting gift from him.

He lined up the entire class in the middle of the shop and "gifted" each of us with a single swing from his paddle. Technically I got one paddling in school, but there was no street cred attached to the act.

In high school, I got one Saturday detention. If you had your license, you could drive to school and park in the stadium parking lot a block away. There was limited parking at the school's main entrance for staff and teachers. If there were available slots, these were issued to students via a lottery.

I was running late one day and as I drove past the front entrance. I noticed a student slot was open, and, noting the time, I gambled that whoever was given that slot wasn't coming in that day.

I lost that bet and was called to the office later that morning. The owner of that space did show up later and found a yellow miscreant Mustang squatting in her assigned spot. The penalty for that offense was my only Saturday detention. There's really not much street cred there either.

The summer between my junior and senior year I had to attend summer school because I didn't have enough class slots during the year for all my required classes. That was a drag, but it had a silver lining. The class was American History with one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Burger. The classes were going OK until the morning I overslept.

For some reason I didn't respond to my alarm that particular morning, but I managed to answer the phone next to my bed when it rang. I groggily said, "Hello?" The voice on the other end was deep and gravelly.

"This is Dr. Jones. Son, isn't there somewhere you need to be?" I'd just gotten a wake up call from the high school principal. I very literally jumped out of bed.

"Yes, sir! Sorry, sir! On my way, sir!" I was dressed, teeth brushed, and out the door in three minutes flat.

That's the extent of my school disciplinary record. There's wasn't a lot of substance behind the penalties, and it didn't really foster the image of a "bad boy" that the girls found appealing....in the official record. For every documented infraction, there were other escapades that managed to fly under the radar. I was never busted for drag racing  down the street behind the school, or bringing a hunting bow onto school property, or sabotaging a teacher's car, or handcuffing myself to a girl in the middle of the day. But those are stories for different posts.

Brownsville Station - Smokin' in the Boy's Room