Commando Fail, or How I Learned to Love the Shorts

Back in my hippie days- and for a while after- I went what is now known as commando style. We just called it "no undies", or "partial freedom". Total freedom would have been "no undies, no pants" but (a) I was free but not that free and (b) Atlanta at large was definitely not that free. Atlanta at large didn't want to know how free anyone was.

One fine, spring day I went to the doctor for a job-related injury- one totally unrelated to my freedom loving nether regions. The doctor decided I needed a penicillin shot. Do you know where penicillin shots go? Yup. Right in the nethers.

The young nurse giving me the shot was a little embarrassed, which made me feel the same as I leaned over the table with my butt hanging out for her and the world to see. An older nurse came in to talk with her as she gave the shot. They left to check on something. "Stay right there. We'll be right back."

I took them at their word and did just that, in part because they left the door open and there were worse things than showing my backside to whatever segment of Atlanta at large happened to stroll down the hallway. That segment happened be two elderly southern ladies. They kind of paused, their eyes got real big, then they started shuffling faster down the hallway. Great.

The nurses returned. "Are you OK?"

Having no reason to believe this question made any sense, I replied with a bit of sarcasm. "No, I think I'm dead."

The next thing I knew they had flipped me over on my back, were checking my heart and pulse, trying to look in my throat, asking if I can breathe, and generally making a scene. That was how I learned you can die from an allergic reaction to penicillin.

And it turns out that "Stay right there" actually meant "Pull your pants up and sit down". Who knew?

I stopped on my way home from work that afternoon to buy underwear.

On Ice in Norcross

In January and February of 1985, the Atlanta area experienced an infrequent serious cold spell. One day the official temperature at the airport was -8F. It was -10F in the boonies up north where I lived (outside Marietta) and worked (outside Norcross).

After more than two weeks of temperatures averaging below freezing, the pond by work was frozen to a depth of at least a foot. Kevin and John, both from Ohio, proclaimed it frozen enough to walk on. Kevin was amazed to learn the reason two of us kept asking was that we wanted to go play on the ice. "What's the big deal?" he asked several times.

The big deal, of course. was that we had grown up in the south, and neither of us had ever seen a body of water frozen enough to walk on. And so we did. We walked, we slid, we tried to run, we whooped, we hollered. Kevin and John watched for a minute, then headed back inside, laughing at us.

A couple of guys built like college football linemen wandered to the edge of the pond ten yards away from us. They looked back and forth at the ice and us. Finally one yelled, "Is it safe?"

"Sure. Just take it easy!"

Whereas we stayed within ten feet or so of the shore, they went straight to the middle of the pond, and proceeded to cut up like little kids. One of them fell. "CRRRAAAACCCKKKK!" Said the ice. We heard and watched the crack race away from the fallen man toward the edges, in two directions. Suddenly there were two pieces of ice on the pond, not one. It got very quiet. We all froze, so to speak.

The guy who fell started trying to get up. We were thirty feet away, near shore, and we could feel the ice move. We heard grinding and cracking. "Don't get up!" we yelled. "Just pull him gently and slowly to shore, away from the crack!"

They looked at each other. Slowly the guy on the ground raised an arm; his friend carefully (and slowly) hauled him to land. It worked just fine. How did two southern boys (and me a desert rat) know what to do? I don't know. It may be because we were voracious readers, or perhaps just because we were geeks, engineers, problem solvers at heart. But nobody had to be drug, shivering from hypothermia, out of the water, so it was a good day.

After that, we stuck to what we'd been doing before, racing our RC cars on the ice. We stayed on shore. Within a week or two, the ice age was over.

I had to wear a suit at JHK (long since bought by another company); the photo is of me, barefoot, in tie but sans coat, on the ice. Our camera didn't do a lot of zooming. This was as zoomed in as Kevin could get.

(I was thinking about rotating this photo 90 degrees, but was afraid I would fall. It's hard enough staying up on ice barefoot when the ice is horizontal.)

Wheels, Pt 1.75 - I (Still) Want to Ride My Bicycle...

The summer after 10th grade I took on a paper route. The guy who had it before me took me along on the back of his Honda Cub 50 scooter[1] a few times, and I fell in love with it. I really wanted to buy one, but my parents weren't ready for that. I needed something heavy duty, something with serious carrying capacity. I ended up with another red Schwinn, a heavy duty 26" single speed with a giant front basket and two rear baskets.

Dad was primarily interested in this bike holding up. I was more interested in multiple speeds; Augusta had some serious hills! On the plus side, I developed good leg muscles.

The truck delivered the papers to the Texaco at Monte Sano and Central (no longer there). We were supposed to be there around 2PM to start folding, rubber banding and packing the papers (and wrapping them if it might rain). By 3 we had typically started the route. One of my best friends, John Steiner, also had a route (he started first and found mine for me) (he started first and found mine for me). We'd work together to get ready, and some days we'd ride part of each other's routes together. Other friends-- Joe beck, Claude Thompson, and Matt West would usually meet to hang out while we got the papers ready, and sometimes ride with us.

I took on a second route. It doubled my money, but quadrupled the hills. On the plus side, John and I would race down about a mile of 15 degree to 20 degree slope on Central Avenue. That was a blast, other than the day John hit a parked car (I was elsewhere) and flipped over the top, destroying the front end of his bicycle. I doubt mine would have fared better.

During this time, we also were sneaking out of our houses early in the morning. Our "gang" would roam around the city, avoiding headlights, hanging out in friends' yards, and generally just enjoying our freedom. A couple of the guys got picked up twice by the cops. Both times they simply took them home and didn't wake their parents up.

That summer I also rode my cousin Simms' minibike around Fairfax, SC, especially on a neighboring farm. I got sideways trying to jump it and crashed, cracking the crankcase. It refused to run. I felt horrible and offered to pay for it. Simms told me to keep quiet. Dad kept pushing me to get a repair estimate but Simms wasn't having it; he was bugging his parents to let him have the hand me down car from his older brothers. That eventually worked and he sold the minibike. I got off Scot free.

The "gang" got into trouble near the end of the summer. Since afternoon paper routes included the Sunday morning paper, I'd been using that as an excuse to get out even earlier Sunday morning. One of those Sunday mornings we got caught somewhere we shouldn't have been and my parents made me quit my job.

Some time during the school year, that bike was stolen off our front porch. We never even had a clue who took it. That week, Martin Goodale decided to sell his 10 speed Schwinn racing bike (he road raced a lot) to help fund a new, better race bike. He had put about a thousand dollars into the Schwinn but sold it to me for $125. I was in love.

About the only thing I didn't use that bike for was going to school; Westside was too far away, with too much traffic on Washington Road. I rode it everywhere else. It stayed in Augusta the next summer when I bought the Yamaha 80 and worked in Atlanta, but I rode it a good bit my senior year.

After we graduated high school Martin O'Rourke and I put at least a couple of thousand miles on our bikes. We went all sorts of places within a 50 mile radius. We spent several hours on July 4th in an empty, six story parking garage at a downtown bank. We'd ride up and race down, ride up and race down. After a couple of hours we sometimes took the elevator up. Once we carried the bikes up a stairwell, just because. Sometimes we'd hear a car coming, move aside as someone raced up then raced back down and roared off. We wished we'd thought to bring skates.

There's nothing quite like drifting a 10 speed on racing tires across sealed concrete, huge cement beams inches away, avoiding oil spots, dirt and leaves, and the occasional, candy apple red, Plymouth Roadrunner.

Later that summer Phil Sacco, Dan Croft and I were at a service station across from Daniel Field airport, putting air in the tires before a road trip. Phil emptied his back tire, adjusted it slightly on the rim, and hooked it up to the compressor (it had a low airflow setting), and started talking with the mechanic. A minute later, we noticed that Phil's tire had grown about an 8" bubble on one side. About then the tire exploded, sounding like a .45 caliber pistol under the metal awning. We all jumped at least a foot. Two of us rode while Phil walked about a mile to the nearest place we could buy him a new tube and tire.

After that we stuck with hand pumps.

I took the Schwinn with me to Georgia Tech. It served me well in Atlanta (even hillier than Augusta), both on and off campus. One afternoon that first September in college I rode about 10.5 miles each way up North Ave and Northside Drive, out past West Paces Ferry to Mr Hale's house. During Rush Hour. I was going about 40MPH in 45-50MPH traffic. Cross streets were hairy; at least twice someone pulled out in front of me and I swear my clothes brushed their bumper as I passed. I rode home just before dark; traffic wasn't nearly as bad. The uphills were still brutal, the downhills exhilarating.

One night the following quarter I came back to the dorm really late from a party. I was exhausted and rather drunk. I'd walked the bike home as much to help stay upright as anything. I couldn't get the lock to engage, so I just wrapped the chain around the bike and the park bench in front of the dorm, thinking it looked locked.

Needless to say, it was gone the next morning.

This is called a stupid tax. I recommend not paying this one.

[1] Tag line: "You meet the nicest people on a Honda!"

Occupy Taco Hell!

When I was almost 11 we moved from El Paso, TX to Augusta, GA. We went from having great Mexican everywhere to NADA. I think the grocery store had three Old El Paso products (refried beans, taco shells, and Spanish rice) that was the sum of "Mexican food" available in 1966 in the deep south.

After a few years heard about a Mexican restaurant coming to town. The whole family was excited excited, but Mom and I could hardly wait. We were there opening day. We were a little nervous because it looked like McDonalds.

It pretty much was a Mexico themed McDonalds. You probably guessed it... Taco Bell. (Or as I tend to think of it these days, Taco Hell.)

Their overall food quality was better then (so was McDonalds'), and at least it was Mexican-ish. We wanted to laugh and cry at the same time; we were so disappointed, but... they had tacos! Sort of. We ate it.

It was only after Taco Bell showed up that the grocery store started carrying taco mix!


In Atlanta in the 1970s and early 1980s, there was a scarcity of Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants. The one Tex-Mex (labeled Mexican) restaurant we found on Ponce de Leon (Pepe's, R.I.P.) was good, if a little subdued, spice-wise. Most of the Mexican-run Mexican restaurants were heavily Americanized (or more accurately, deep south white folk-anized) because of local tastes.


Now I'm back in Texas. The area is lousy with good Mexican and Tex-Mex (with Chuys heads above all others in the latter category). And yet... Taco Bell abounds.

To each their own. You can have your Taco Bell. I'll stick with fresh ingredients and flavor, thank you very much!