With this ring ...

A ring on my finger once again!

It was sitting, waiting for me in a small box on my front porch when I stopped home between assignments Saturday afternoon.

I thought I was supposed to sign for the package, but there it was. No matter, I was glad they left it without my signature – mostly because of the hassle I would have been put through if I’d been forced to drive to UPS headquarters across town to retrieve it, but also because it was late Saturday and I didn’t want to wait until Monday to get what I’d been pining after for so long.

All sorts of strange emotions started coursing through my head as I picked the box off the front porch and brought it into the house - a huge dose of excitement, but also a sense of closure, and a tinge of guilt.

I put the box on the kitchen counter and grabbed a pair of scissors from the junk drawer. Before I cut the tape off the box, I took one last look at my naked ring finger on my left hand. It was exactly a year to the day when that finger last wore a wedding band, but that all would change as soon as I opened the box.

… I lost my wedding band at Leslie Park Golf Course the previous November 14th - most likely pulled out of my front pocket by the antenna of my cell phone. The loss of my ring, and the subsequent three-week, metal-detector search over five miles of snow-covered golf course, was well chronicled in a series of columns I wrote for The Ann Arbor News.

The story of my lost ring made the rounds locally, and soon I couldn’t go anywhere without someone asking if I’d found my ring. Rather than answer verbally, I’d hold up my naked ring finger. It got so crazy; one woman even offered the use of her search and rescue dog to help me look, and another woman felt so bad she actually gave me her father’s wedding band (I gave it back).

Most thought I was in the doghouse with my wife for losing my ring, but the truth was, she didn’t really care, she was just upset because she knew how much I loved it – and I did love it! Apart from my Timex watch, I’d never worn another piece of jewelry in my life before my wedding ring. When I got married in 1996, I picked out my ring with little thought while strolling through the mall one day with my wife (then fiancé) Julie.

She suggested I get a band made of white gold instead of yellow. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as white gold. What I found instead was a band with both white and yellow gold. The middle of the ring, the largest band, was white gold, surrounded by thinner bands of yellow gold.

It was simple. It was elegant. It was cheap!

For $300, I got the ring I assumed would stay on my finger until the day I died. It never dawned on my I might lose it on a golf course in a fit of stupidity 13-years later.

Before we got married, the jeweler at the store suggested I wear the ring a week or two to see how it fit. Sage advice, it turns out, because the ring was too big and felt quite awkward – always snagging on my pocket whenever I’d reach in for change, or grinding into the webbing between my fingers.

I returned the ring to have it sized down and engraved before the wedding. When I got the ring back there was a small scar where they had to cut it for resizing. It didn’t bother me in the least. I treated the scar like the tag on a pair of underwear – my ring now had a definitive front and back, and I always made sure the scar faced down toward my palm.

The jeweler also told me the discomfort I’d felt wearing a ring soon would disappear once my finger and the ring figured each other out.

“Your ring will find its place on your finger,” he said, “then it will slowly make itself a groove and you won’t even notice it.”

For the most part, he was right. My ring did find its groove. But it wasn’t like it just disappeared from my attention - I always noticed my ring.

I noticed when I put a few dings in middle band of white gold. I noticed the sound it made every night when I would plunk it in a little dish on my bedside table. I noticed the eye-watering pain it would create when it would sometimes snag one of my beard hairs when I put my hand up to my face. I also noticed how it would dig into my hand whenever I’d grip a golf club, or lift weights – unfortunately, a feeling that led to its loss.

I loved my ring, but I loved it even more because I didn’t wear it nonstop. I enjoyed taking it off at night. It gave my finger a chance to breath, and I enjoyed it even more when I put it back on in the morning – always cold, always sliding over my knuckle with effortless smoothness.

I even loved the way my ring looked when it wasn’t on my finger. I loved putting it in the small pouch in my golf bag with assorted tees and ball markers. I loved the way it felt it in my hand before I put it on my finger - it had a weight to it that seemed perfect.

Then, last November 14th, on an otherwise perfect day, it was gone - just like that.

My brother-in-law Chris was in town and we decided to go and play one last round of golf before the snow started to fly. Normally, I would put my ring in the small pouch in my golf bag with the assorted tees and ball markers, but the small pouch had broken, so I put the ring in my front pocket instead.

For the next three hours, Chris and I had a great time playing golf, but when the round was over, I reached in my front pocket and the only thing I felt was my heart sinking and my stomach getting sick over the realization that the pocket was empty.

For three weeks I held out hope I could find it – in fact I knew I would. I’m very persistent like that. Give me a challenge and I'll turn it into a quest – and my quest was to find my ring.

Unfortunately, with each empty pass of the metal detector, I slowly began to realize I might actually lose my quest. I started to get depressed. I felt guilty for leaving my ring to the elements. I felt mad that someone might already have found my ring and pawned it. I felt helpless and hopeless and stupid.

For the first two months after losing my ring, I’d wake up every morning and habitually reach for it in the little dish on my bedside table. Slowly, that habit faded - as did the tan line left behind by my ring. Eventually, the groove at the base of my finger from 13-years of wearing my ring went away as well - now every finger looked the same.

“It’s no big deal.” My friends said. “People lose their wedding bands all the time, just get a new one.”

“You don’t understand.” I told them, “I can’t just replace my ring - it would be disrespectful.”

“To who?” they asked.

“To the ring!” I answered.

My friends would shake their heads and walk away thinking I was off my nut. Maybe they were right. It was just a ring, after all - a circular chunk of 14k white and yellow gold. It wasn’t like it was alive or anything. It didn’t have feelings (good thing). So why was it so hard for me to replace it?

It didn’t matter. I was broke anyhow. Even if I wanted to replace my ring, I couldn’t afford to, the recession had shot the price of gold through the roof. My once $300 ring now priced in around $850. Besides, it was November, I lost my ring on the very last day the golf course was open so I knew if it was out there, it would lie untouched all winter until the course opened again in the spring.

I decided to give myself the entire month of April before I gave up the search. Even if I couldn’t find it, surely some other golfer or maintenance worker would.

April came, and with it came renewed hope. I alerted the workers at the course to keep their eyes out for my ring. I was hoping they might hit it with their mower blades and flip it to the surface where it would be visible. Of course I also knew they might just as easily run over it with a tire and push it helplessly out of sight, deep into the soft earth.

By the middle of the month, my ring had yet to be found, and now the rough was starting to grow. It was over. I gave up. I no longer reached for my ring in the little dish on my bedside table every morning. I stopped feeling for it with the other fingers on my left hand. The songs I used to tap on my car’s steering wheel with my ring were a thing of the past. My left hand easily glided in and out of my pockets with nary a snag, and I no longer pulled out any beard hairs by mistake.

It bothered me that I was getting used to being ringless. I was a married man, and even though a lot of married men don’t wear rings, I never thought I’d be one of them.

I decided to get a replacement - the sooner the better - now all I had to do was start saving some money (or maybe sell an organ) so I could afford one.

As luck would have it, I fell into a few freelance jobs and actually saved the money by the end of the summer. The only thing left was to pick out the ring. This sounds easy enough, but apparently ring styles change over 13-years. Every jewelry store I visited (and I visited quite a few) had rings similar to my old band, but not exactly the same.

Oddly, I found other styles I liked just as much, if not more than my original band. This created another problem. Should I just part ways with the original design and go for something completely different? Or should I stay true to what I had in the first place?

In the end it came down to two ring styles, both similar, but one very much resembling my original band. I put it to my family to decide (something I didn’t have the luxury of doing when I got married). My 13-year-old daughter swung the pendulum for me. She liked the style that was more akin to my original band. When I asked her why, she replied, “Because it reminds me of your first ring … and you really liked that ring.” She was right, and her words sealed the deal. I ordered the ring.

Now, exactly one year to the day after losing my ring, here I was, about to pour its replacement out onto the kitchen counter. After shredding open the bubble wrap, I pulled out a plain white box. Inside that box was a smaller green box, and inside that box was my brand-new ring.

It was shiny and bright, but not really all that much like my old one. The band widths were much different than my original, and it didn’t have the roll of my old ring - this band was pretty flat.

“Oh well, I guess this is it.” I said to myself as I pulled the ring out of the box and slid it on my finger.

The fit was snug – maybe too snug. The jeweler told me I was a size 9, but this ring barely, and I mean, barely fit over my knuckle. It had been a year since anything had occupied the bottom third of that finger, but now my new ring was trying hard to fit in – to find it’s groove.

At some point in time, I’ll most likely own this ring longer than I did the original - it’s my wedding ring now. I may even grow to love it (even though it didn't even exist the day I was married).

In the meantime I’ll try to enjoy the occasional snag on the front pocket, the tapping on the steering wheel, the clinking sound as I drop it into the little dish on my bedside table, and, of course, the occasional pulling of the beard hair.

My year of being ringless is over - long live the ring!

Remembering Andy

Mi Hea Kim caresses her son Andy's face during his funeral.

United States Marine Lance Corporal Andy Kim never saw the barrel flash from the sniper’s rifle as he walked point on a road patrol in Fallujah, Iraq, the first day of November, 2006.

He never heard the sizzle of the bullet as it seared though the air, or felt the burn as it tore into his neck, dropping him instantly dead on the ground just three days after his 20th birthday.

Kim’s death was no more or less spectacular than any other death suffered in any other war. He was just a soldier following orders and serving his country before he was killed in the line of duty by a carbon copy of himself at the other end of a rifle.

Just another tombstone in a cemetery marked with a flag - another kid who will never get married; never have kids; never get old and fat, and yet, his death was so much more than ordinary.

Three years ago this month, Andy Kim’s story unfolded before my eyes. I never met him while he was alive, but for two weeks in November, I got to know Andy very well in death as I traveled with his body to both his funeral in Ann Arbor, and his burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Kim’s mother Mi Hea and his father Don were kind enough to invite me, and Ann Arbor News reporter Jo Mathis, into their lives as they grieved the death of their eldest son. They told us they were “honored” by our presence. Can you imagine that? Honored by our presence.

By them saying that, it changed everything for me. Instead of feeling like a vulture, exploiting their grief, I felt a sense of responsibility to share their grief with our community – with the world.

People needed to know that Andy Kim’s casualty was far from ordinary. It was a death to be felt deeper than just the Anbar Province in Fallujah, where Andy was killed, or South Korea where he was born, or Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he went to school, or Arlington, Virginia, where he was buried. Andy’s death needed to be felt by everyone. His death was our death … my death.

The two weeks I spent with the Kim family are something I’ll never forget, even now, three years later when his death seems more and more trivial as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to spin their wheels and go nowhere.

The images of those two weeks are forever burned in my brain. The irony of his situation has never escaped me.

Andy Kim was not the stereotypical Asian kid. He didn’t excel in school and he got into his fair share of trouble. He was lost, like a lot of 18-year-olds, and then he found God - our God - the western version. Andy tried converting his parents to his newfound Christianity. But they didn’t understand and they resisted.

Soon after he found God, Andy also found the United States Marine Corps. He felt at home there, older and more mature than his fellow plebes because of his strong belief - a belief that made it easy for Andy to voluntarily walk point on road patrols. He had God on his side. He was saved; born again. Andy would take one for the team if he had to. He was expendable.

The other Marines in his unit may not have known that, but his parents did, and so did his kid brother Isaac. Andy told them so in his numerous letters home from the front lines. He may have been afraid of a lot of things, but he was not afraid to die.

The sound of Andy Kim’s lifeless body falling to the ground arrived before the sound of the bullet that took his life. It was a quiet death. The sniper had done his job cleanly – taking out the Marine point man completely undetected. He got his kill - an American, but his fatal shot started a series of events he never could have envisioned when he set his gun sight on Andy Kim’s head.

The news of their son’s fate numbed Mi Hea and Don. They’d left Korea for America when Andy was a 2-year-old. They didn’t want their son mandatorily serving in the South Korean Army upon his 18th birthday. Now their son had been shot dead wearing the battle fatigues of a country they weren’t even from. They struggled with their decision; they struggled trying to find answers and reason. They didn’t have Andy’s God to turn to. They were lost, much like Andy had been after high school.

Like every casualty of war, Andy’s body was about to embark on an amazing journey, logging several thousand air miles before finally being put into the earth. His only belongings - dog tags, a crucifix and a Timex Ironman watch - were removed from his corpse and dropped into a red velvet pouch where they would stay in the shipping crate next to him as he began his long trip home. First, he was flown to Germany, where his body was cleaned and embalmed; then it was off to Dover, Delaware, where his death was officially processed; and finally, Andy's body was flown to Detroit, Michigan, near his Ann Arbor home.

Don and Mi Hea were waiting on the tarmac in the pouring rain at Detroit Metro Airport when their son’s flag draped casket was taken off the plane. They would collapse in grief at the site of the coffin – the first of many times their grief would reduce them to hysterics in the coming weeks.

Andy's dog tag, crucifix, and Timex Ironman watch.

The red pouch with Andy’s dog tags, crucifix and watch were given to Mi Hea and Don - all that was left of their son. The Ironman watch was in perfect condition, still set 6-hours ahead to Iraq-time. Now it was keeping a post-mortem timeline. A timeline that began the moment it was slipped off Andy’s lifeless wrist. If only Mi Hea and Don could have those 6-hours back, maybe their son would still be alive.

In two days, Mi Hea and Don would have relatives flying in from Korea and Japan to attend their son’s funeral. The Kim’s younger son Isaac, a junior in high school at the time, became both the family’s travel agent and translator as the family dealt with the business side of death.

Isaac didn’t have time to feel the numbness his parents felt. He didn’t have time to cry. He was too busy gathering photos of his brother for the funeral, picking up relatives at the airport, translating for his parents to the Marine Corps, the funeral home director, the folks at Arlington National Cemetery – anyone who didn’t speak Korean.

The Marines from Lansing descended on Ann Arbor too – dozens of them. No fallen comrade would go unguarded. For the next two weeks, Andy’s flag-draped casket would be watched over by America’s finest.

A private showing of Andy’s body preceded his public funeral. Only Mi Hea, Don, Isaac, and 20 or so family members were there when the casket lid was opened for the first time since it arrived in the states. The last time Mi Hea had seen her son, he was living … breathing – warm. The sight of Andy in uniform, lying dead in a casket was more than she could take. Her grief needed no translation. Instantly she burst into tears and turned away. Then she ran to her son, bending over the casket and collapsing on top of his chest.

There was no sound in the church; nothing to drown out Mi Hea’s quiet moaning as she gently stroked her son’s face over and over. Nothing to block out the emotion of the moment as she kissed his forehead, then wiped her tears off his brass uniform buttons with her handkerchief. Mi Hea wouldn’t leave Andy’s side. She wouldn’t let Don or Isaac pull her away. For 20 minutes she repeated the same ritual of stroking his face, kissing his forehead and wiping her tears off his uniform.

Eventually, Mi Hea’s tears would dry and she found herself stumbling to the first row in the church with Don and Isaac by her side. The public soon would be in to see their son. Within an hour the church would be packed with Andy’s friends and relatives. Several World War II veterans also would show up to honor Andy.

Mi Hea and Don double over in tears as the lid to Andy's casket is closed for the last time.

When all had paid their respects, the lid to Andy’s casket was slowly lowered shut. Mi Hea and Don followed the path of the lid with their bodies, bending over as the lid dropped lower and lower. Soon, they were almost sitting on the floor, trying to savor one last glimpse of their son. Both burst into hysterics when the lid was closed for good. For an hour, at least, they'd seen their son again, but now he was truly gone and it was too much for them to handle as they doubled over in sea of tears.

But Andy’s burial still was a week away. His relatives all would stay in Ann Arbor until it was time to fly to Washington D.C. for the final leg in Andy’s journey. In the interim, I got permission from the local funeral home to visit Andy’s flag-draped casket in the home's basement where he was kept for the week before the burial.

Andy's casket in the basement of the funeral home, waiting to be crated and flown to Arlington.

It was a powerful sight. One that very few get a chance to see. The stars and stripes of the American flag stood out with such boldness in an otherwise dreary setting. For 15-minutes I stayed with Andy’s body. Nearby, another casket containing the body of 19-year-old boy killed in a car accident, waited for its funeral to start later that day.

A Marine guard would be dropping by soon to check on Andy’s body. I was told this happened every day the entire week he was in the basement. I wondered where Mi Hea and Don were at that moment while I was with their son. I wondered what Andy would say to me if he were still alive. I wondered if he knew the young man in the casket next to us. It was strange to be standing between the dead bodies of two young men whose ages didn't add up to mine combined.

I shut off the lights and left both boys behind. Grieving relatives of the young man killed in the car accident already were filing in upstairs. I’d be back at the funeral home in a few days when they would prepare Andy for his final journey to Arlington. I decided to accompany Andy and his Marine escort to Detroit Metro Airport for their flight to D.C.

Driving next to the hearse carrying Andy's casket down I-94 was odd. How many folks passing us could guess the hearse contained a fallen Marine? Once at the airport, Andy’s casket, already packed in a shipping crate, was removed from the hearse at the airfreight warehouse. To us, Andy Kim was a fallen hero; to the airport, he was 450 pounds of air cargo marked “human remains.”

Andy's Marine escort, and Northwest Airline employees salute his body as it's loaded onto the plane.

I wasn’t allowed on the tarmac with the Marine escort or Andy’s body, but I’ll never forget how every person at the gate pressed their faces to the window as they watched his casket get loaded into the belly of a Northwest Airlines jet. Several saluted once they saw Andy’s Marine escort and realized it was a fallen soldier being put on the plane. The next day I was on a plane myself with Mi Hea, Don, and Isaac, bound for our nation’s capitol.

Whatever grieving the Kim’s had set aside for a few days, came rushing back at the site of Marine Honor Guards carrying their son’s casket through Arlington National Cemetery. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. The rows of grave markers stretched out over the hillside in perfect white lines behind Andy’s gravesite. Apart from Mi Hea’s soft sobbing and birds singing, it was quiet. 

The pace and precision of the Marine Honor Guards was a true thing of beauty. The ceremony was short, maybe 15-mintues, but it was powerful. The sound of Taps ringing off the grave markers broke the silence and reduced everyone to tears. Andy Kim deserved such a burial – every fallen soldier deserves such a burial.

United States Marine Corps Honor Guard members carry Andy to his final resting place in Arlington National Cemetery.

Television crews from Washington were there; photographers and writers from the Washington Post were there as well. I asked them why they were interested in covering the death of a Michigan Marine. They told me anytime they get clearance from the relatives of the deceased soldier; they cover the burial.

A half an hour later it was over. Before we had left the cemetery grounds, U.S. Marince Lcpl. Andy Kim was lowered 6-feet into the same Virginia soil that thousands of other soldiers from several wars, as well as several U.S. Presidents, now call home.

Three years later, I still think a lot about Andy Kim, especially today - Veteran’s Day. I think of all our veterans, my brother included, who have risked their lives, or have given their life, for our country. It makes me humble. It makes me proud.

Andy Kim died a quiet death on November 1, 2006. But it didn’t go unnoticed, and it never will.

"Hello Hudson" - Cemeteries, Halloween, Ouija boards, and the fine art of all-out sprinting!

West End Cemetery by the light of the full moon on Halloween night. (photo by Lon Horwedel)

There are two kinds of scary in this world – good scary, and bad scary.

Bad scary is when you turn around in a mall and can’t find your son or daughter who was just standing next to you, or hearing sirens when your daughter is an hour late for her curfew and you can’t reach her on her cell phone. Thankfully, nine times out of ten, those instances turn out to be nothing more than a false alarm, and all you’re really dealt is a heaping dose of perspective.

Good scary is going to see a slasher flick with your friends, or playing a practical joke, or walking into an old cemetery at midnight illuminated by nothing but the light of a full moon … by yourself … on Halloween!

I can’t say I’m much a fan of slasher flicks, after high school they kind of lost their appeal – and practical jokes never flew well with me either, but as far as walking into a creepy cemetery at midnight is concerned? Well, that’s something I’ve never outgrown and still really enjoy.

At least that's what I was trying to tell myself as I made the long walk through the moonlit, grassy field leading to the old West End Cemetery behind my childhood home in Berlin Heights, Ohio, shortly after midnight on, you guessed it - Halloween.

My goal was to stroll into the cemetery and find the gravesite of Hudson Tuttle - a name that sounds spooky enough, but is even spookier considering Tuttle’s history.

Tuttle, who was born in Berlin Heights in 1836, made his living like most folks in my hometown did in back in the day; he was a farmer and a horse breeder. What made Tuttle unique was the fact he also was a spiritualist. Never a big believer in organized religion, Tuttle attended his first séance as a young man and apparently fell into a trance, writing spirit messages “automatically.”

Despite his lack of formal education (he only attended 11-months of school his entire life) at the age of 18, Tuttle wrote a book on spiritualism “Arcana of Nature” that was quoted from by famed author F. C.L. Buchner. Tuttle also was quoted from Charles Darwin from one his later books “Origin and Antiquity of Physical Man.” Ironically, neither Buchner nor Darwin had any idea they were quoting from an uneducated, 18-year-old, Ohio farm boy. On top of all that, Tuttle was the inventor of a Ouija board-type device he called the Psychograph. Tuttle and his spiritualist buddies used the Psychograph to contact the dead during their numerous séances. 

So I figured, what better gravesite to visit at midnight on Halloween under the light of a full moon than that of Hudson Tuttle? Believe it or not, I was alone because my kids were too scared to accompany me on the trek – wimps!

What was there to be afraid of? Just because West End Cemetery was perilously perched high atop the cliff bank leading down to Old Woman’s Creek and half the gravestones were either tilting this way or that, or cracked completely in half, was no reason to be frightened. And just because the most recent burial at the cemetery took place long before I was even born, was of no concern. And so what if there was a whole section in the cemetery devoted to children who died from scarlet fever – or small pox – or cholera - or even just childbirth. And just because the cemetery should be condemned because continual erosion is making it a matter of time before caskets start tumbling down the cliff bank and into the creek, doesn’t mean the place is spooky!

Still, there I was ... alone, walking the last 50-yards or so to the cemetery gate. The moon was so bright it was easy to see the tombstones jutting out into the night. All evening long I'd been bombarded with Grim Reapers, Freddy Kreugers, Jasons and escaped mental patients. But all of that was expected – this was truly scary.

As I got closer, I started remembering all the times I had visited the cemetery with my older sister and her friends when we were kids. We’d often take her Ouija board with us and put it on top of Tuttle’s grave to try and contact him. Of course there is security in numbers, especially when you’re a kid, so I think we all felt somewhat safe when the Ouija board’s planchette began roaming across the board with our nervous fingertips in tow.

Usually, before the last letter of the first word was completely spelled out, someone would freak out and bail. This would start a chain reaction among the rest of us, and soon it was a free-for-all back toward my house across the long, grass field. 

The speed attained by the average 11-year-old scared out of his or her wits is hard to describe. Any kid knows you can run faster in the dark – it’s a simple kid fact, just like swimming pool water is always warmer at night too - you don’t question it, it’s just a fact. Of course it didn’t hurt that the entire 500-yard sprint back to my house was downhill. Still, I remember my fear turning to absolute glee when I'd hit top speed about halfway home, knowing full well no ghost in the world could keep up with such an incredible gait. 

My feet barely touched the ground - it felt like I was flying, like most kids in my town, I may have been barefoot as well. If we were lucky, someone would have remembered to bring the Ouija board. If not? Chances were pretty good the board would stay there until morning light.

The memory made me crack up as I approached the gate.

“What is it that makes a cemetery so scary at night?” I thought to myself.

“It’s not like the dead care if it’s day or night – it’s dark to them no matter what time of day it is.”

I swung out around the gate that hangs half over the cliff bank - probably the only real scary thing I'd done so far that evening. Plummeting 150-feet off a shale cliff into Old Woman’s Creek wasn’t out of the question, but I’d swung around that gate so many times as a kid, it was kind of like riding a bike – even by moonlight.

Hudson Tuttle's tombstone.

Once inside the cemetery, I had to call on my memory to find Tuttle’s grave. Even though he was born in the 1830’s and died in 1910, his tombstone wasn’t all that old looking or scary. Not like some of the markers at West End that were truly creepy – even in daylight.

The ground was quite uneven in the cemetery, most likely from creep (the actual geological term for when the earth moves due to the gravity of a hillside) toward the cliff bank … or moles. Either way, it was enough to make me stumble a time or two. Once I actually stumbled enough to fall to the ground, this time over a bone. If I were a kid that would've been the time to bolt, but I realized fairly quickly that the femur I'd tripped over was merely a prank by one of the town’s freshly minted group of kids who’d probably just discovered the joy of ghost seeking at West End themselves.

The tall pine trees in the cemetery blocked out most of the moonlight and made it hard to see. But soon my eyes adjusted to the darkness and before long I could have read a book - maybe even a book by Hudson Tuttle! And wouldn’t you know it, my memory and my navigation skills must have been finely tuned, because at my feet was Hudson’s grave, along with his wife Emma’s.

It was just as I remembered. His tombstone was rather plain and modern looking, but still in good shape; clean with no debris or chipping, it was like he could have been buried last week. Before I got caught up in ringing up Hudson, my own cell phone rang. It was my concerned daughter calling to make sure the dead hadn’t abducted me. She’s 13, the perfect age for thoughts like that.

“Liv, it’s past midnight, go back to bed, I’m fine.” I assured her.

“Okay dad, but hurry up would you?”

I put the phone back in my pocket wondering what life would have been like if I had a cell phone as a kid and my mom would've called when I was in the midst of spiritual connection.

It didn’t matter. Here I was standing by Tuttle’s grave. I took out my camera and snapped off a few frames using the moonlight and a flash as my light sources. With every flash the entire cemetery would light up and then vanish in an instant.

On my last exposure I pressed the shutter and the flash lit up something I wasn’t expecting – a figure hanging from the branch of a pine tree. Suddenly, the 11-year-old in me kicked in and, just like I’d done a hundred times before as a kid, I darted up from Tuttle’s grave and began sprinting the 500-yards to my mom’s house.

Of course, tombstones that once stood erect now littered the cemetery grounds and I caught the edge of one right in my shinbone sending me reeling to the ground. No time for pain, I got up and continued on, sling-shotting around the gate with extreme precision before accelerating down the hill toward home. Halfway there I hit top speed, maybe not as fast as I was at 11, but pretty good for a 44-year-old. Once again I felt as my feet were barely touching the ground. A smile crossed my face - this was good scary, and soon I was laughing.

My heart was beating like a rabbit when I reached the safety of the house. Once inside, I walked upstairs and assured my daughter I was still alive, and then I hit the sack.

The next morning, the kids and I headed back to West End to sacrifice our Jack-O-Lanterns over the cliff bank into Old Woman’s Creek. Once inside the cemetery, I peered over at Tuttle’s grave once again, and there; hanging from a branch of the pine tree, was a toy skeleton.

“That was good one Hudson, “ I said to myself, “a good one indeed.”

Chance of rain

Rain, rain, go away, but it's okay to stay today. (photo by Lon Horwedel)

It was raining when I woke up this morning. It started the night before last and hasn’t stopped; in fact it’s raining harder than ever.

The weatherman says it’s supposed to rain tomorrow too - not like it’s going to rain for 40 days and 40 nights, but it has been raining for 40 hours.

That’s all right; I don’t mind the rain ... oh, I used to mind ... I used to hate the rain. It kept me from playing golf or riding my bike. It soaked my shoes when I'd run, or rust my chain when I'd ride. 

The splattering rain on my face would annoy me to no end- so much so, I even wrote a poem about it in college called “I hate the rain.” 

But that was 25-years ago. Things change. Now I kind of like the rain.

I don't care if I play golf in the rain - it takes away the crowd, and I no longer feel the need to run or bike no matter what the weather. 

Rain makes me feel alive; it saturates colors while saturating me. It makes my sore throat feel at home and washes off my shirt sleeve after I’ve wiped my runny nose.

Rain knocks the leaves from the trees, then fills the street with swimming-pool puddles so they can swim. It drips down the back of my shirt collar and makes me cringe at its coldness. It splatters my glasses and gives me kaleidoscope vision.

Rain gives my windshield wipers exercise and cleans off the bottom of my shoes. It turns football fields to mud and cancels playoff baseball games in New York.

Rain brings out umbrellas for the wind to destroy. It makes earthworms surface and head for the sidewalk to die. It floods the gutters and seeps into my basement. It comes down in an assortment of directions and strengths - from drizzle to driving.

Rain has the unique ability to clean some things while making other things dirty. It’s a farmer’s best friend … and his worst enemy. It can irrigate his crops - or wash them away.

Rain can end a drought – or cause a flood, acting as Mother Nature’s Grim Reaper by accompanying hurricanes and typhoons on killing sprees. Rain can flush a life down an overflowing riverbank just as easily as it can rehydrate dying cattle.

Rain makes it okay to stay inside and not feel guilty. It turns books and music into my best friends and prompts me to feel creative. It sends me to the movie theater or the mall, or lets me just stay home and be alone.

Rain lets me daydream. It helps me formulate plans and prepare for the better life I’ll surely start to lead once it stops raining. 

But it hasn’t stopped - it may not stop for a while. 

It doesn’t matter - not today. Today is for dreaming. Today I like the rain.

Back to the basics

My daughters try to put on their 20-pound backpacks without falling over backwards while preparing for school Tuesday morning, October 20th. (photo by Lon Horwedel)

It’s not often that I feel sorry for kids in middle school. I mean, for the most part, I’ve been there and done that.

Puberty? -  Yeah, so what.

Pimples?  - Get some Stridex.

Broken heart? – It’s part of growing up.

But there is one thing today’s 11-13 year-olds have to deal with that is completely foreign to me – the 20 pound, scoliosis-inducing, bursting-at-the-seams backpack.

At some point in the last decade or two, the backpack has taken over as the main means for transporting everything but the kitchen sink to and from school (and judging by the weight of my two middle school daughter’s backpacks, I’m thinking the kitchen sink might be in there as well).

My oldest girl is an 8^th grader, my youngest a 6^th grader. They’re still growing - I think - it’s hard to say since various Jansports, Eastpaks and Swissmades are constantly pulling them downward.

The heft of their packs has gotten to the point where I’m beginning to fear for their health.  Since elementary school, their backpacks have continued to expand, even as their spinal cords have compressed. My great grandfather was hunchbacked from a life of hard labor - my daughters are becoming hunchbacked from a life of hardcover books!

Every morning I have the unenviable task of making my girls lunch and then trying to somehow smash the said lunches into their backpacks. Some days I just give up and hand them their lunch. Most likely, those are the only days they eat what still resembles an actual sandwich. On the days when I do manage to cram their lunch sacks into their backpacks, I’m pretty sure the contents have been smashed into some sort of peanut butter and jelly, potato chip, and granola bar paste – yummy!

How bad is it? Well, let’s just say they can’t even fit their backpacks in my car anymore; they have to throw them in the trunk (along with musical instruments, gym clothes and extra shoes). To them, it’s embarrassing enough they have to be driven to school by their old man in his Ford Focus, imagine how they must feel when that Focus is doing a permanent wheelie down the road and throwing sparks off the back bumper!

I suppose the backpack was a good invention. But maybe we’re starting to take advantage of the dual shoulder strap idea. Just because you can cram a lot of stuff into a backpack doesn’t mean that you should. If my girls manage to survive middle school without suffering a herniated disc … or just a plain old hernia, they may be equally suited for a career as a bricklayer, or a competitive weight lifter, as they are for college.

How their backpacks have even managed to stay intact is beyond me. I would have bet my life that a zipper or two would have given out by now. At the very least I figured the shoulder straps would have ripped at the seams. Amazingly, none of this appears to be true. 

Still, despite their strength and diversity, I’m left to ponder how helpful the backpack actually is to mankind. I had one as a camera bag for several years … and I hated it. Sure, it made it easier to haul my camera gear around, but just try and actually get to any of it – nearly impossible.

Overloaded backpacks also have the undesirable visual quality of looking like a diaper in desperate need of changing. Not only that, but backpacks sadly have cut into the natural social order of middle school boys by depriving them the opportunity to carry a girl’s books home from school.

If that’s not reason enough to find an alternative way to haul books, I don’t know what is.

Iowa and the Ghost of Ray

Iowa and the Ghost of Ray - A short story

IOWA

I’ve always been a light sleeper - even when I was a kid. That’s why, as a 6-year-old, the shadowy figure standing in my bedroom doorway at 4 a.m. didn’t frighten me one bit. I knew it was just my dad coming in to say goodbye to my brothers and me before leaving on his yearly pheasant-hunting trip to Iowa.

My brothers were sleeping, but I was wide-awake. Of course I never let my dad in on that little fact when he kissed me goodbye on the forehead. As soon as he left the room I would wait to hear his car pulling out of the driveway and wonder why he left so early. Then I would drift back to sleep and dream of Iowa.

That was nearly 40-years ago. A lot has changed in that time. My dad stopped hunting pheasant a long while back, but the memories of his trips to Iowa remain some of his fondest.

As for me, I’d never been to Iowa in my life. Never had any reason to – at least until last week when I was sent to Iowa City to photograph the Michigan versus Iowa football game.

My original plan was to take the entire family, but apparently the appeal of a 7-hour drive through cornfields wasn’t strong enough to get them on board. So I found myself alone on the morning of October 9th, packing my car full of camera gear, golf clubs and CD’s, before heading west … alone … on the very same route my father had driven childless many times before me.

Ten minutes into my drive it became crystal clear why my old man enjoyed his Iowa trips so much. The lure of the highway and the lack of noise from the backseat are powerful narcotics. With only myself as company, I stopped when I wanted, ate when I was hungry, peed when I had to pee, and sang as loud as I pleased to songs I wanted to hear.

Even though I’ve never been all that close to my father, at that moment I felt a real kinship with him as I plowed westward on I-80 through a driving rain. My fears of falling asleep at the wheel were unfounded. My mind was alive with thought the entire drive. Not even the hypnotic rhythm of the windshield wipers could put me down as I crossed the Mississippi River and entered the state of Iowa for the first time in my life.

“So this is Iowa.”

Iowa came as advertised - basically Ohio, just further west. Maybe a little hillier than I thought, and more trees for sure, but for the most part it was corn and farms - farms and corn. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I like cornfields. Corn is America’s crop - knee-high by the Fourth of July; lush and green by mid-summer; dry and brittle in the fall. I especially like it in October right before they cut it down to nubs.

On a rolling landscape, cornfields become a canvas for both man and nature. Whether they know it or not, farmers weave beautifully intricate patterns of green, yellow, crimson and brown, up and down the land. Pieced together like parts of a quilt, the beauty is there if only you open your eyes and look.

For the last two hours to Cedar Rapids I decided to turn off the music and enjoy the hum of the road mixing in with the fields of soybeans and corn.

This is our country’s homeland. Where things are their most real.

A few weeks ago when I was walking my son to school he asked me what was the most important job in the world. I had to pause and think, but I told him I thought being a farmer and a carpenter were the most important jobs, because if you can grow your own food and build your own shelter, what else do you need?

Now I was in the land of reality - a land of carpenters and farmers. I felt safe - I felt at home, but after 7 bleary-eyed hours on the road I also felt extremely tired as I pulled into Cedar Rapids at dusk. For the first time in a long time, I knew I was going to get a good night’s sleep.

THE GHOST OF RAY

After a quick shower and a bite to eat I turned on the television set in my hotel room to watch the American League playoffs. I didn’t know how long I would last, but watching baseball in Iowa seemed as perfect as the drive.

Iowa, after all, is the home state of hall of fame pitcher Bob Feller - the “Heater from Van Meter” as he came to be known after leaving his dad’s farm as a 17-year-old to pitch for the Cleveland Indians. Iowa also is where they filmed “Field of Dreams” one of the greatest baseball movies of all time, so what better place to watch a ball game than Iowa?

Sleep, as it turns out, won out over baseball by about the fourth inning of the Yankees –Twins game. There would be no light sleeping for me on this night. With the television still on, I was long gone, fast asleep with no chance of a comeback – at least so I thought.

… the ball came from down low, so low the pitcher’s knuckles seemed to scrape the mound as he let fly with his dangerous spitter.

The clock said 2 a.m. as I dragged myself out of bed to go to the bathroom. I turned off the television then stumbled through the dark to try and find the toilet. All the years of getting out of bed in the middle of the night to bring a crying baby to my wife for a feeding had left a permanent mark on my biological clock. Now it was a true rarity if I made it through the night without waking up at least once - sometimes twice.

No matter, it was always better to void my bladder than to try and go back to sleep fully loaded. Sure enough, within five minutes I was out cold once more.

… scuffed on the cover and blackened from mud, the ball sailed high and inside.

“Not again!”

I dragged myself out of bed for the second time. The clock now said 4:15, but that was Iowa time, to my body it was really an hour later.

“Geez, I gotta get a prostate test when I get back to Michigan.” I said to myself, not remembering the enormous amount of pop I drank in the car during my road trip.

My head was throbbing and I had a nasty kink in my neck. Hotel pillows never seem to agree with me, and this hotel wasn’t about to break that streak. I swam around under the sheets for the next 15-minutes trying to get comfortable, or at least find a position that might undo my kinked neck. This time, with my bladder completely empty, I knew I was due for a good, solid, three-hour chunk of uninterrupted sleep.

… it was cloudy and hot that August afternoon. The batter didn’t see the darkened, mud-covered ball coming inside on him. He never moved an inch to get out of the way when the ball exploded into the side of his skull.

Startled awake, I sat up.

“Damn!” I thought I turned off the stupid TV.”

The clock read 6:15 – the TV was off. For the third time I tried to get back to sleep.

… the ball shot back to the mound. The pitcher picked it up and threw to first thinking the ball had hit the bat judging by the loud crack it made. But there was no baserunner - he never left the batter’s box. Instead, he lay there motionless – fresh blood pouring from his ears, nose and mouth, turning the brown dirt of New York’s Polo Grounds into a bright shade of red.

“What the …? Man, I must be dreaming.”

The clock said 6:30. It was still dark outside. From the corner of the room came a soft-spoken voice.

“Go see Ray.”

For some reason I wasn’t startled. I’d had dreams like this before. I relished them - so real they stick with you a while. In the darkness, I could see the outline of an elderly man sitting in the corner.

“Go to the field.” The elderly man whispered. “Go see Ray, tell him Carl sent you.”

“This is crazy, what the hell is this, Field of Dreams part II?” I said.

“Go see Ray.” The man said again. “Tell him I’m sorry.”

… players rushed from the dugout to help the batter to his feet. A few steps later, he collapsed again - this time for good. Fourteen hours after being struck in the head by a high, inside spitball, the batter died in a New York City hospital with his pregnant wife and teammates crying at his bedside.

"Go where?” I asked.

“Tell Ray I’m sorry.” The voice said again. “Tell him I wish it were me.”

The morning light poured in through my hotel room window and finally jostled me awake for good.

“Man, what a strange dream.” I thought to myself as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and went to look out the window.

It was snowing.

"You gotta be kidding me!" I said out loud. "October 10th and it's snowing?"

I had planned on playing golf during the day since the football game wasn’t until 8 o’clock that night. In fact I was excited to add Iowa to my growing list of states where I’d played golf. But those plans now had been swept away by record low temperatures and a very unseasonable snow shower.

With roughly 10-hours to kill, I headed off to breakfast with a state map in hand to try and figure out how I was going to spend most of my day.

“Maybe I should go see Ray.” I laughed to myself as I sat down to eat. “Whoever the hell that is.”

Since my dream seemed so similar to the movie “Field of Dreams” I decided to see how far it was to the site where they actually made the film 20-years ago.

The waiter told me the movie was filmed in a town called Dyersville, and, as luck would have it, Dyersville was only a couple of clicks north of Cedar Rapids – about an hour’s drive away.

It was settled. My plan for the day was to head to Dyersville on a snowy October morning and see the site where Shoeless Joe walked out of the cornfield to play ball with his dead buddies. But before I left, I headed back to my room to check the rest of the day’s weather, grab my camera and do a little research on the site.

The weather report said the snow was expected to end before noon, so that was no problem. I also found out the site was free and open to the public through November – so that was even better.

I knew the story of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson quite well. Cut down in his prime not by tragedy, or injury, but by then baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Jackson, and seven other members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, were banned from baseball for life by Landis for supposedly fixing their World Series clash with the Cincinnati Reds that year. Shoeless Joe would never play in the majors again. Worse yet, despite having a glove that was dubbed “where triples go to die, and the third highest career batting average ever (.356), Jackson remains an outcast from the Baseball Hall of fame.

These facts I knew - what surprised me was to learn that Jackson and I had the same birthday, July 16th - albeit, 77-years apart.

Halfway to Dyersville I started thinking about the movie and how much fun it must have been to make such a cool flick about such a great game. James Earl Jones was great, Kevin Costner too, and Ray Liotta as “Shoeless” Joe was ….

“Wait a minute … what the hell?” Suddenly it began to dawn on me.

“Ray Liotta?… Shoeless Joe? … the same birthday? …go to the field? – GO SEE RAY!”

“Nah, that’s just nuts.” I said to myself thinking of my dream. “Nothing but coincidence - besides, who was the old guy in the corner?”

Before long I was pulling into Dyersville, a small farm town that seemed like every other farm town I’d driven through on the way there. When Hollywood picked up and left the town 20-years ago, they certainly didn’t leave any Hollywood behind.

The site was three miles out of town, and amazingly, it looked exactly the same as it did in the movie. There was no Hollywood magic here. The field and the house weren’t put in by special effects, the cornfields weren’t props - everything was exactly the same.

The place was open, but I had it all to myself. As I strolled out onto the field, I realized that not only did the field look the same as it did in the movie, the dimensions of the diamond actually were correct as well.

The pitching mound was truly 60-feet from home plate, the bases were 90-feet apart, and it was roughly 300 feet down the line to the cornfields in left and right - 400 or so to dead center. Instead of golf clubs, I wish I had brought with me a bat, ball and glove – even though it was only a shade above freezing.

Despite the raw temperatures and the biting wind, like all ball diamonds, it had a calming effect on me. The rustling corn stalks in the outfield, though, seemed a bit scary.

“Go see Ray.” I chuckled nervously to myself. “Well, I’m here Ray, now what?”

… she couldn’t take the grief any longer. She pulled the plug on the poison, drank it down, and then slowly drifted off to death while her daughter slept in the next room.

“What was that?”

Without knowing why, I walked toward the corn in centerfield. I had heard something - probably the wind - but if Ray was there and I was supposed to find him, the cornfield seemed as logical a place as any to start looking.

It had been a long time since I’d been in a cornfield - about as long as I could remember. But there I was, walking into the same place “Shoeless” Joe had walked out of 20-years earlier with the cameras rolling.

About 20-feet in was all I could muster. I didn’t want to chance “crossing over” into some other dimension. My wife and kids expected me to return from Iowa, not disappear in a cornfield with a bunch of dead ballplayers.

The wind was howling, but inside the cover of the cornrows it was calm – and warmer.

“Ray, are you here?” I whispered half serious. “Carl says he’s sorry.”

… the girl’s fever wouldn’t break. The measles were taking their toll. Within days she would join her mother and father in death.

Behind me the wind picked up and sent a chilly blast of stale air rustling through the corn. I turned around only to be smacked in the face by the sharp, serrated edge of a cornstalk leaf. It hit me so hard it knocked my glasses off my face.

Immediately, my eyes began to water in the cold wind as I struggled to find my lost spectacles. Through my watery-eyed, blurred vision I tried to spot them on the ground, but couldn’t.

“Crap, where did my glasses go?”

Careful not to step anywhere lest I crush my only eyewear, I bent down and gently swept the ground with my hands. They were nowhere to be found.

Thinking they may have fallen into the open neck of my coat, I slowly stood up and began to pat myself down when another gust of cold, stale air rushed down between the cornrows like a freight train. The wind gust hit me full on and nearly knocked me off my feet.

Staggering to maintain my balance, I saw something move just above my head. I squinted hard enough to make out what looked like a young man wearing a ball cap emblazoned with the letter C. The figure drifted in and out of focus as my eyes watered even more from the cold wind.

Normally I would have been scared out of my wits, but for some reason I wasn’t frightened

“Ray? … Is that you?” I asked.

The wind died down and my eyes stopped watering long enough for me to get a clearer look. Nothing was there – just me, and a bunch of dead corn.

I continued to search my body for my glasses and was relieved to find them awkwardly snagged on my coat pocket. At the very least I knew I could now safely drive my car back to Cedar Rapids.

I’d had about enough of my adventure in the corn so I put on my glasses and turned to leave, but as I spun around I noticed there were cleat marks in the soil behind me – very distinctive cleat marks. Cleat marks only made from baseball spikes.

“That’s crazy.” I thought to myself. “Who would actually wear their baseball spikes out here?”

Oddly, the cleat marks went in only one direction - toward the ball field. But the marks stopped at the last row of corn, three or four feet shy of the outfield grass - they never crossed over into the field of play.

I turned behind me to see how far back I could trace the cleat marks, but they were gone. I looked down at my feet where the last set of cleat marks had stopped ... they were gone too!

Now I was frightened.

“Ray? Is that you?”

It was dead calm.

“Okay, that’s it. I’m outta here.”

I wheeled around one last time to head for my car and leave the Field of Dreams for good, but I couldn’t move - something made me stay.

There were no more voices. I saw no more visions. But I stayed nonetheless.

I stayed and I sat in brittle rows of centerfield corn on a cold October day in Dyersville, Iowa. I stayed and I watched as light snow began to fall upon both the corn and me as I tried to figure out what I was supposed to do.

Then, just as simple as that, it all came together. For one brief moment the dials in my brain all fell in line and it became crystal clear.

“Ray? … Carl? … Tell him I’m sorry? … Ray isn’t Ray Liotta!" I exclaimed. "It’s Ray Chapman!… and Carl is ... Carl Mays!”

Ray Chapman was the Cleveland Indians shortstop that was killed when he got hit in the temple by a pitched ball in 1920 ... a ball pitched by Carl Mays!

The C on the hat - the cleat marks stopping before they got to the field – “Go see Ray.” Ray was here - here in the cornfield. Ray was the one who was supposed to keep playing on the Field of Dreams - not “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.

Jackson got to play a whole other season before he was banned from the game, and even then he supposedly played minor league ball undercover. But Chapman was cut down in his prime - killed by a wild pitch at the age of 29 - he never got the chance to play again.

Ray Chapman and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson were teammates on the Indians for three years before Jackson was traded to the White Sox. The film got the wrong player - they should have picked Ray!

“RAY.” I called out.

“RAY CHAPMAN ... go play ball Ray - Carl says he’s sorry.”

Again, it was dead calm.

The brief snow shower had passed, but I was getting pretty cold, and this time I really did get up and decide to leave. I walked out from the cornrows and headed toward the infield, never looking back even though I could hear cornstalks rustling in the wind behind me.

“Go and play Ray.” I whispered under my breath.

“Go and play.”

... I rolled over. The clock said 7:15.

Note: Ray Chapman remains the only professional baseball player ever killed on the field. The spitball thrown by New York Yankee pitcher Carl Mays put a three-and-a-half inch depression into Chapman’s skull. Chapman’s wife Kathleen, who was pregnant with their unborn daughter at the time of his death, committed suicide by drinking poison six-years later. Their daughter also would tragically die from the measles a year after her mother's death.

Mays, who was never well liked in the majors before he killed Chapman with his fateful pitch, was hated by many afterwords – especially by Ty Cobb, who handed Mays this note after Chapman’s death ...“If it was within my power‚ I would have inscribed on Ray Chapman’s tombstone these words: ‘Here lies a victim of arrogance‚ viciousness, and greed.' "

Had Chapman lived, many felt he would have been a sure bet for the Hall of Fame. Ironically, his replacement, Joe Sewell, lived to be 90 and was enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

As for Mays, he went on to pitch many more successful seasons after Chapman’s death. He died in 1971 at the age of 79 never fully able to live down that horrific August day in 1920 calling it “the most regrettable incident of my baseball career …I would give anything if I could undo what happened.”

Despite having more than 200 career victories and a lifetime earned run average of 2.92, Mays has been left out of the Hall of Fame, most feel because of the pitch that killed Ray Chapman.

Following Chapman's death, league rules mandated that baseballs could no longer be used in game play if they became scuffed or muddied, but wearing batting helmets (which would have saved Chapman’s life) didn’t become mandatory until 1971 - the same year Mays died.

Falling

(photo by Lon Horwedel)

“Whoa – what just happened?” Red said to himself as he regained his bearings.

He tried to look around, tried to move, but he couldn’t budge an inch. All he could do was stare straight ahead. Suddenly, to his horror, Red saw the rest of his family high above him slowly coming into focus.

“No, this can’t be.” He cried.

But it was true. Red was on the ground.

He’d heard this might happen. Rumors had recently grown from whispers to shouts amongst his brethren in the branches. They said their new color was a sign the end was near. But Red didn’t believe it - he couldn’t believe it.

“How could this be the end?” He scoffed at his friends, admiring his bright, new crimson coat.

He ignored all the talk - dismissed it as gossip.

The tales of aunts and uncles being shredded to bits by lawn mowers; the fables of grandparents being incinerated in roadside ditches; the horror stories of cousins being pressed between book pages or turned into compost – all so unbelievable.

But here he was, sitting in the blanket of green grass he’d only ever seen from on high before this moment. Cool and wet and nowhere near as comfortable as it looked, the pointy tips of the grass blades pricked at Red’s undersides. If not for the round, soft leaves of clover, it would have been no better than resting on a bed of nails.

Up to that point, Red never paid much attention to the grass. It had always been “down there” he had always been “up here.” He was better than grass. Smarter ... loftier ... safer! He never dreamed in a million years they would ever meet.

Oh sure, every now and then Red would peer down at the emerald carpet covering the roots of his home. He even felt genuinely bad when the man with the noisy mower would come by and hack up any dissenters bold enough to reach for the sky. The slaughter was unfounded; the screaming unbearable, but the stupid grass never learned its lesson, it just kept growing and reaching before being cut to pieces.

Somehow, most of the grass survived the weekly carnage. Red even noticed that he and the grass had become the exact same color by the end of May.

But not anymore.

The bloodroot color of Red’s skin now stood out against the lush, green grass with screaming severity. He was alone now, easy to spot – defenseless. If the man with the mower came by now, it would be light's out for Red.

Somehow he had to find a way back to his branch. How he wound up on the ground in the first place was confusing enough, so getting back to the tree was going to be tricky.

Falling was scary. Red didn’t even remember letting go as he spun in circles on the way down. He wasn’t quite sure how his stem just “broke free” from the branch. In fact, he’d been careful to always hang on extra tight after a summer thunderstorm sent several of his friends to their untimely deaths.

Red had been feeling a little weak lately, but he chalked that up to a cold. He attributed his change in skin color to maturity. It was true he was no longer a young bud, but Red was far from dry and brittle.

When Red finally hit the ground the landing was soft and painless. But now the grass was making him itch, worse yet, it began to snicker at his fate.

“You think you’re so great.” Grass said. “You think you’re so smart. Well look at you now Mr. Bigshot. How does it feel to be down here on the ground with all of us lowlifes, huh?

Red was scared; the grass had him hooked in its grasp and wouldn’t let go.

“The rakes will be out soon.” Grass said. “That's if you’re lucky enough not to be mown to bits first!”

“Why won’t you let me go?” Red begged. “What have I ever done to you?”

“You – you and your condescending friends," Grass snarled, "you all think you’re so great – so pretty. Well how do you like it now?

“Please, this is some kind of mistake, you don’t understand.” Red pleaded.

“Oh, I understand perfectly.” Grass replied. “You spend all your time up there safe in the sky while I get stomped on by kids all day, sprayed with chemicals every week, infested with worms, dug up by squirrels and pissed on by dogs! The only thing you have to worry about is the occasional caterpillar. What’s not to understand?"

Red started to cry.

“Quit your whimpering!” Grass demanded. “This will be over for both of us soon enough.”

“What do you mean, both of us?” Red asked.

“We’re doomed maple boy!" Grass said. “It’s October pal, you and me are on our way out.”

“On our way out where?” Red asked.

Grass started to laugh.

“We’re dying Red!” Grass answered. “Well … you’re dying, I’m just dormant.”

“That can’t be.” Red insisted. “I’m only five-months old.”

“How long did you think you were gonna last, big shot? Grass asked. “Did you think you were immortal? Did you think you were an evergreen? Read my lips Red – you are DECIDUOUS!"

“It can’t be true – you’re lying.” Red said.

“Am I? Grass responded. “Look at your skin pal, it’s already starting to shrivel and curl. You got a week if you’re lucky, maybe two if it’s cold. You fell early Red, you weren’t supposed to be here for another couple of weeks and now you’re already starting to decompose.”

“Stop it!” Red screamed at the grass. “Just shut up – you’re wrong. Do you hear me? Wrong!!!”

“You believe what you want to believe ol’ buddy," Grass said, continuing to laugh, "but if I were you, I’d pray they mow us down before the snow flies."

Then Grass stopped laughing and pulled Red closer to the ground.

"Don't worry Red." Grass whispered. "It’s a mulching mower, got blades sharp as razors - you won’t feel a thing.”

Red tried not to listen, tried not to look. He closed his eyes and dreamed of spring. The air was cool on his surface, but the sky was gray and still.

There was no breeze to free him, no way to get back home, so Red did the only thing he could do...

He lay on the grass and prayed the mower woudn't come.