Christmas vacation: Day 12

We played it low-key at my parents for New Year’s Eve Monday.

Dad and I spent most of the afternoon on the floor, picking through piles and books of old black and white photographs he inherited from my grandmother’s house, photographs of my great-grandparents and grandparents in their young adult lives. There were depictions of happy, simpler times during family gatherings at my great grandparents’ farm and my grandparents’ home. The pictures also brought to life more of the names that I’ve discovered during my research of our family tree. It was a great way to spend the afternoon.

We spent the final hours of the year watching “Enchanted” on TV and then New Year's Eve with Carson Daly. We could barely keep our eyes open long enough to see the ball drop, but we succeeded and called it a night very quickly after the hoopla died down in New York City – past midnight there but before the clock struck midnight in our time zone.

* * *

Tuesday morning we watched the Rose Bowl Parade and then packed up for our next destination: Sheboygan for another Christmas family gathering, this time with Kates’ father’s side of the family.

Once again, the girls slept for most of the two-hour drive. And they were greeted with hugs and kisses and fanfare when we arrived. Like our other family gathering Sunday, it was the first time many of them met Faye.

The dining table was covered with snacks, and conversations filled the room. And when the eating died down, there was more gift-unwrapping. Clothes, games, DVDs and toys were exchanged once more. … This time, the gift of the moment was a Baby Sniffles Ernie doll given to Faye. The significance of this is that Phoebe, Faye and I each got Ernie dolls as babies, all of which we still possess.

The party died down and we were on the road shortly after 6 p.m., heading to Kates’ parents Milwaukee apartment for the night.

* * *

The family gatherings complete, we reserved the remainder of our trip today and tomorrow for reuniting with old friends. Today’s destination: K-Town. We officially departed town 2 ½ years ago now, and it had been two Christmases since we last visited. We’ve seen some of our old friends from K-Town during meet-ups at different places, during other times. Only when we start to think about how young Phoebe was when we moved does it sink in that we’ve been away longer than what seems like a few months.

We met our good friends Laura and Kevin and Wes at their beautiful new house – that’s just across from one of the town’s Lake Michigan beaches. Laura texted me the address and we knew exactly where to find it (One of the great things about K-Town always has been that all of the streets are named by numbers, with streets running east-west and avenues running north-south. So when someone tells you to meet them in K-Town at, for example, 4303 Eighth Avenue, you immediately know, without having ever been to the place, that it’s located on the north side of town, eight blocks from the lake.). … After getting the tour of the house, we headed down the road for lunch at the Coffee Pot, a classic diner near the city’s downtown. I ordered a turkey melt, and it was arguably one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever tasted. … Over lunch, we caught up on each other’s lives, and Laura, who became a close newspaper buddy of mine, updated me on the continuing soap opera at the K-Town News. … Afterward, we headed back to their house, where Laura and Phoebe had fun making balloon animals. Laura made her a puppy, which Phoebe popped while playing with it in the car later – and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Not just today, but throughout this trip, there has been memories, nostalgia and sentiments at nearly every turn, on nearly every road we travel. It was prevalent when we joined family in one of my old stomping grounds Sunday, and I noticed it again last night as we traveled the road between Sheboygan and Milwaukee, especially through the highway network that makes up the Marquette Interchange through downtown Milwaukee and past Miller Park, where our beloved Milwaukee Brewers play ball. My family traveled that route so many days and nights, and looking out the car windows as we passed the old County Stadium, marveling at the engineering of the old Marquette Interchange or smelling the yeast that permeated the city from all the breweries, always ranked among the highlights of the drive. And there I was last night, telling Phoebe to look out her window as we passed Miller Park.

As we drove around K-Town today, there were more memories around nearly every corner, fond memories we built over seven years there. The first apartment Kates and I shared. The family-owned diners and Italian bakeries we frequented, some of which have changed hands. The hospital where Phoebe was born. The parks we visited. The old-time stadium where I played baseball on Sunday afternoons, and Kates would walk over with Phoebe in the stroller to watch me play. And, back to my newspaper experiences, all the crime scenes I covered.

We drove by our old house and then made our way up 75th Street, to Noni’s house – the place we took Phoebe for daycare during the first two years of her life, and the neither of the daycares we’ve had Phoebe or Faye at since then can compare. There was plenty more nostalgia there as we walked to the front door, Noni’s teenage boys greeted us and the family’s little dogs barked as they swirled our feet. The boys led us to the lower level which serves as the base for the daycare, and Noni lovingly embraced Phoebe like she always used to. Some of Phoebe’s old playmates were still there, and her handprint was still on one of the walls, too. Phoebe immediately started pulling out some of the toys, and Faye naturally joined the other kids playing on the carpet.

We made our final stop in K-Town at a Panera Bread to meet old friends Raechel and Shaun. Just as we did with Laura and Kevin, we enjoyed catching up on each other’s lives and just being in each other’s company. … I established close friendships with both couples during our years in K-Town – we experienced newspaper adventures together, attended concerts together and they were among those lucky enough to hold Phoebe shortly after she was born. I miss them greatly.

Phoebe made fast friends today with all of the people we encountered in K-Town, whether she remembered them from her previous life or not. When we were ready to leave Panera, she took Raechel’s hand and made her walk to the car with us.

We said our goodbyes, buckled the girls into their car seats and were driving again. Both girls were zonked before we exited the city limits and they slept all the way back to their grandparents’ apartment.

* * *

Now we’re watching “Horton Hears a Who” – a delightful little movie I never knew was made – and I can barely keep my eyes open.

We’ve made the rounds and we’re growing weary now, anxious to get back home – to The ‘Ville. To return to our normal routines and ways.

Farewell to The Pub

So a wall of The Pub collapsed this morning.

It was about 8 a.m. I had just arrived at my desk and was unpacking my bag when I received a text from the university police chief reporting the news.

I gasped.

And then Facebook was flooded with status updates and photos on the pages of my friends in The 'Ville and so many others who had a connection to the place.

The sadness flowed like the beer had in that place for decades. For so many of us, it was like losing a family member. The Pub is -- was -- an insitution in The 'Ville. Today will be known as a sad day in the town's bar history.

Said one faculty member: "You know, there are more Facebook posts on the Pub collapse than there were about Irene, our hailstorm, and the East Coast earthquake -- combined. I'm just saying, it's that important."

It was -- for lack of a better word -- the classy bar in The 'Ville. It didn't draw the troublemakers that resulted in headlines for the other bars. While all of the other bars in town took in students at age 19, The Pub was a 21-and-over-bar. It attracted a larger number of faculty and coaches than the others bars. 

I spent many, many nights there after newspaper deadlines and football games. Like my college newspaper office, it was a place my college friends and I loved to go to escape the pressures of our worlds.

Naturally, I wrote about it, too. For a college creative writing course, the professor assigned our class to write a short piece about a place. I wrote about The Pub. ...

Tonight, I couldn't keep from digging the piece out of my archives. This piece is more than 10 years old now. I've grown and matured considerably since I wrote it. But the sentiment remains the same, and the images depicted feel like they could have happened only months ago. ...

Goodbye Pub. It was fun.

Thursday night, this is my weekend. Not Friday, not Saturday. Thursday is my weekend. I’ve finished another week of the newspaper business, and I know I have one night to relax before the next week begins, and I catch up on all of the notes and assignments I’ve put off while trying to conquer the newspaper business. My boots find a rhythm on the sidewalk as the glare of headlights reflect on the puddles, my hands dig into the pockets of my black fleece, and I walk, my head down, my eyes barely visible under my ragged Dodgers cap. Three blocks and I’m there. Up the concrete steps and into the dark, hazy lights of the room.

“What’s going on, Horns?” Chris says.

“Not much, Chris. How are you?” I say. Chris, the local blonde-haired, baby-faced, pretty boy, cheerleading coach, sits on a stool by the door. He checks IDs and turns away the young twirps who show their fakes, thinking they’re sly enough to fool him. But they’re not. “This is an over-21 establishment,” he snarls. I’m 21 now, but I take pride in the fact that he’s always let me pass through without a hitch.

The brown booths that line the wall are loaded with people. Many of them I know well. Like “Cheers,” it’s a place where everybody knows your name. My best friend Jacob is tending the bar, while Jackie, his girlfriend, sits on a stool nearby, watching him with adoring eyes, chewing on a straw. John, the longtime cheerleading coach turned bar owner, lounges in the booth at the corner. He greets Coach Tapp, the city manager and other local celebrities who walk through the door with warm smiles and handshakes. Of course, Chris just smiles and let’s them pass, too. Checking their IDs is the furthest thing from his mind. Jimmy’s at the end of the bar. When his band’s not playing, he sits there watching the television set as it flashes scores from the NBA. He doesn’t know who any of the teams are, but he couldn't care less as long as he has his beer. And in the middle of the bar sits the town drunk, dressed like he’s just come from a construction site, only he’s not wearing a hard hat. He’s a big man with a chubby face and curly black hair, and his language is always slurred so we can never be sure if he’s really drunk. Nobody knows his name, but the blonde-haired girls that come dressed in their skimpy shirts and tight black pants love to tease him. Blake and J.P. sit at the other end of the bar debating the latest Missouri basketball game like a bunch of washed-up sports jocks who can only find competition in complaining. But like Jimmy, they don't care as long as they have their pitcher of beer.

That bar. That’s where J.P. and I met Blake during that crazy night in September, after our boys beat the hated rival in a football game for the ages. It’s the bar where I got flatout drunk for the first and last time in my life. The bar where Blake bought the shots, Jacob poured them and the three of us swallowed them down. Chris, Tapp and the football coaches stood around us, laughing at the humiliating site like little boys on a playground, and I was so wasted that Jacob was sorry and served me a water during the last round. And there was the night at the bar when J.P. and I met Blake, but didn’t feel like taking shots. This time we were on the losing side, shocked in the playoffs. Like a scene from a classic film, we looked like lost boys, lining the bar with the players, and Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” crooned on the jukebox.

There’s that darn pool table, the one that stems the memory of my Homecoming weekend and had Jackie and Jacob talking me into doing that crazy prank. That darn pool table that held me hostage while the Budweiser rep threw me down, tore off my shirt and dumped vanilla ice cream on my stomach before forcing that red-haired girl’s face into it. That pool table that had every man, woman and child in the bar standing around it, watching with glee as she licked the sloppy ice cream off my body. The pool table that I leaped from when she finished and hurried over to John, asking for a towel. John said he’d never seen me so wasted in my life. Little did he know I hadn’t had a single drink that night. And a girl I was dating at the time said the scene made me “so cool,” yet we were finished for good a couple weeks later.

And the shuffle board table, with its shiny wood top covered in power. John made it free to play on Thursdays just for us. He’s seen some of the screaming competition that takes place on that shuffleboard table and the crowds we sometimes draw, like we’re playing for the world championship. The teams are different each week, but the players are the same. No matter who we’re paired with, the trash-talking could rival some NBA stars. Jody calls me “Double-bumper” because of my unique style of bumping the weights on both sides of the table, but she can barely put it past the end-line. Then there’s Jimmy, the master of knocking weights off the table. You can count out Blake once he’s downed a pitcher, and John seems to always be on top of his game.

There’s that back room, darker than the rest of the place. It’s where Jimmy’s band and others have whaled, guitars have screamed and drums have popped. And that back room was the site of the greatest fish bowl contest this place has probably seen. April 2000, that girl who said I was “so cool” sat with me, only because we were underage and couldn’t legally join the contest. We watched as our two rival journalism staffs set out to see who could suck alcohol faster. A total of 16 heads crammed together over two fish bowls, filled with mixed drinks and gulped until there wasn’t a drop big enough for a goldfish to swim in.

It’s funny how a little more than a year ago, you wouldn’t have seen me in this place. But through this place, I’ve stumbled into the unknown and experienced feelings I never thought I would. Aside from that crazy night in September when J.P. and I stumbled home and barely made it up our porch, I’m still not much of a drinker, as they call them, and I probably never will be. But I look around, I see my best friends, think of the memories, and I know how much a part of me this place has become. Like the walls of this place that have been stripped away and replastered, I escape the harsh realities of my daily routine and find myself here before pushing into another round of the criticisms and pressures each week brings. This is my weekend, this is my place.

Good-bye Muscles!

... So I just packed up my old M.U.S.C.L.E. figurines and I'll be shipping them off tomorrow morning ...

I've been digging out storage shelves and boxes lately, trying to get rid of, well, junk. Mostly trinkets that have me wondering why I still have the stuff.

The M.U.S.C.L.E.s, which had been stored away in an old checking book box probably since my junior high years, didn't make the cut. As a child I played with the thumb-sized, flesh-colored creations constantly. During my family's Friday night stops at Shopko, I'd constantly beg to get a pack of the figurines, and once we were back home I'd be setting up a WWF-styled wrestling match with the things. Looking back at my elementary days, I'd have to say they were one of my favorite toys -- along with the Construx, Masters of the Universe toys, Star Wars figures, MASK toys, Legos and Micro Machines, of course ...

(this guy's Web site devoted to the M.U.S.C.L.E.s is CRA-zy ...)

Now they're going away to some collector kid in Massachusetts, compliments of eBay. I had 15 of them and sold 'em for five bucks.

I'm kind of going to miss the little guys. I should have kept at least one to decorate my cubicle at the office. Darn.

A day with the President

For anyone who didn't catch it, the NBC Nightly News tonight aired an interesting, and at times, fascinating broadcast that featured Brian Williams spending the day with President Bush...

You can view the interviews and the newscast here.

More striking to me were not the answers that Bush gave to several of Williams' questions (some of his answers were quite real, but there were others that exemplified the same gun-ho attitude and ignorance he seems to always have about the mess in Iraq), but the aura that only the President of the United States can portray. It's the fact that he's one of the most powerful individuals in the world, and while we are constantly criticizing him, you have to admire his leadership abilities and the burden he must bear for our country. It's certainly a job I wouldn't want.

It's the same feeling that I had in September 2004 when on a sunny afternoon Bush and his motorcade pulled into our fair city and stopped at a popular, family-owned deli. I didn't get to talk to him and I saw more of his coach bus and the Secret Service than I did of Bush. Several people denounced any bit of excitement about the event, but on that day I couldn't side with them. I lived it up to the fullest and thought, how many people can say they've even stood in the presence of the President? I can. And I think that's pretty cool.

PUBLISHED IN KENOSHA NEWS, Sept. 2004 -- When news of a presidential motorcade passing through the city filtered this week rumors of a stop at Tenuta’s began to fly.

At about 3:15 p.m. Friday, those rumors became truth as seven buses, including one carrying president George W. Bush, slowed to a stop in front of the popular delicatessen and liquor store on 52nd Street.

"Nobody flat out said it would happen and even to the end nobody knew for sure," said Tenuta’s owner Chris Tenuta Friday night, hours after the visit. "There were probably more rumors out on the street than we were told. We were never told or never given any inkling that something was happening."

Either way, Tenuta’s sign scrolled the message "WELCOME TO KENOSHA MR. PRESIDENT!!" and hundreds of people had packed the storefront by about 1 p.m. Friday, waving American flags and Bush-Cheney campaign signs.

While the smell of Italian sausages emitted from a store window, the crowd and anticipation swelled. At about 2:30 p.m., Kenosha police began blocking off side streets and officers warned the crowd that a clear street meant the president would be passing through within about 20 minutes.

About 45 minutes later, cheers erupted from the crowd as a helicopter began circling overhead. Within moments dozens of Secret Service men began streaming from SUVs onto the roadway and another official led a bomb-sniffing dog around the store’s perimeter, giving the appearance that a presidential stop was imminent.

Moments later, motorcycles and police squads sped by with their lights flashing. And the motorcade, headed by two red, white and blue buses with the slogan "A safer world, a more hopeful America," slowed to stop in front of Tenuta’s. Chants of "Four more years" and "We want Bush" sounded from the crowd and one woman screamed, "George, we love you!"

When the president stepped off the bus, local police were among the first to greet him.

"He went right to me and he said, ‘Thank you, you do a nice job," said Lt. Jane Finley. "… Really, I was awestruck. It was very impressive. He was soft-spoken and very kind."
Police Chief Dan Wade said he too was impressed with Bush.

"It was quite an honor," Wade said of shaking the President’s hand. "All I told him was ‘Mr. President, keep the world safe for my granddaughter, Maddie,’ and he said, ‘You got it partner.’"
Bush also greeted numerous residents lucky enough to be standing outside the store, including

Louise Greco, 66, who was like a giggling teenager when the motorcade left and she recounted her presidential kiss. As Bush passed her, Greco said, she assured him he would win over the voters in Wisconsin. Bush replied hopefully and kissed Greco on the right cheek.

Eric Morgan, 30, decided to stop at Tenuta’s only because the police blockade stopped him from going directly home after work. While his mother and son had been waiting for hours across the street, Morgan arrived at Tenuta’s with the motorcade and still managed to shake the President’s hand.

"It was just kind of weird," Morgan said. "I didn’t know what to really think or say or do. It was like watching a movie or the news. You see it all the time, but until you’re right there. I couldn’t settle down after I left."

And never mind that 13-year-old Elizabeth Clark has already met the pope. She was equally starstruck by a hug from Bush.

"Wow, I was like out of breath," she said. "It was so amazing."

Inside Tenuta’s, the President greeted about 40 people, including employees and about 10 customers who Secret Servicemen couldn’t hustle out of the store. Bush declined to try any of the store’s popular food, but he did take time to greet almost everyone inside.

"He took the time to say hi to everybody," Tenuta said. "Most people he gave an autograph and stopped to talk to each person personally and he discussed different things with them."

Spotting one man wearing a Chicago Cubs cap and another sporting a Chicago White Sox hat, Bush briefly discussed some baseball philosophy. However, no one put the president on the spot regarding political issues or policies. In all, Bush was inside the store for about 10 minutes.

"It was probably one of the few chances I’ll ever get to be that close to the president and I had my children with me," Tenuta said. "For him to come in and be as a personal as he was and take the time out. It’s once in a lifetime."

But while the visit for Tenuta’s family and others in front of the store became the chance of a lifetime, the experience quickly turned into the bust of a lifetime for the majority of the crowd.

At about 3:10 p.m., several minutes before the motorcade arrived, police ordered the mass of people crowding the Tenuta’s storefront to the north side of 52nd Street. The arriving motorcade subsequently blocked almost all views of Tenuta’s and the president stepping off the bus.

"We didn’t come to see the bus," said one elderly woman.

Secret Servicemen and police officers fanned out along the street’s north side, offering hope that Bush might come to the other side of the buses, but he never appeared.

"We waited here for two hours — not even an acknowledgement or a wave," said Rose Thome, a 58-year-old woman. "This group has really been a friendly Kenosha. But it’s a shame he didn’t stop and wave."