Getting There

Welcome to Anamosa, Iowa. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

Maybe it was the sun beating on the side of my head. Maybe I was trying too hard. Maybe the vista was too dead this time of year. I’m not sure, but whatever it was that was keeping me from finding it, it was pissing me off.

Some people drink to find it. Some people take drugs. Not me. I take an eight-hour road trip to Iowa to find it. But dammit, this time it wasn’t working.

The mental peace I get from driving long distances by myself can be intoxicating. It’s a chance for me to unleash my brain and let it roam without interruption. I don’t even try to rein it in, I just make sure to cool it down and wipe it off before I put it back in the stable. But no amount of radio flipping or CD playing was doing the trick. My mind wasn’t wandering. I wasn’t getting there. I was irritated, not calm, and to make matters worse, my cruise control had gone belly up and now my ass was starting to throb with four more hours of highway staring me in the face.

Shit.

Normally the bowels of northwestern Indiana don’t bother me much, but this was different. Now I was wishing I’d have flown to Iowa. If not for thoughts of Buddy Holly and Richie Valens smoldering in a cornfield, I might have.

Double shit.

I became depressed. And why not? Who else could derive pleasure from driving to Iowa? Now I was just like everyone else, slugging along expressionless, mile after dead straight mile on westbound I-80, just like Henry Ford intended, but Iowa came quicker than I expected. I guess I was going faster than I thought. I had been banking on a third of the day behind the wheel, but when I arrived in Cedar Rapids early in the afternoon, only six and a half hours had elapsed from the time I left Michigan.

I wasn't hungry because I’d already eaten lunch on the road, and my room wasn’t ready for check in either, so with an hour to kill and nothing to do I stood in the hotel lobby and looked blankly at the wall.

Triple shit.

The last thing I wanted to do was head back out on the road, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to stand there looking at the wall for another hour, so I put my luggage back in the car, pulled my cameras out of the trunk and headed east on the first country road I found. Maybe, I thought, just maybe I might be able to find my peace somewhere off the beaten path, or at the very least, a secluded spot where I could piss.

The road I chose was hilly and the corn was dead. Barely another car passed me as I continued east until I saw a sign for Jones County – birthplace of Grant Wood, the man who painted “American Gothic.”

This seemed promising. The last time I was in Cedar Rapids, I had driven to the Field of Dreams movie site in Dyersville and some amazing things had happened. I found it that day, that’s for sure. A few strolls through the magical corn rows in centerfield and I felt like a kid again, not to mention my car radio, which had been broken for two years, started working again the minute I left the parking lot. Maybe a visit to Grant Wood’s birthplace would fix my cruise control and save my ass seven-plus hours of agony on the trip home?

Local farmer's ode to Grant Wood. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

Wood was born just outside the town of Anamosa, about a half hour from Cedar Rapids. I pulled into Anamosa and drove around a bit. It was small and quaint, but it had the most amazing state penitentiary I’d ever seen. I pulled into a small parking lot in the middle of the town and began to stroll around on foot, stopping to photograph things that caught my eye – an old VW van painted with clouds, a ball diamond across the street from the slammer, and the prison itself, which was very old, but definitely occupied because I could hear the inmates through the open windows.

Their talking started to loosen my mind a bit. Who’d have thunk criminal chatter would have done the trick? But it did. Not the turn-your-brain-loose-for-hours-on-end deal like a road trip gave me, but it definitely got me to thinking about more than the normal, mundane this-is-your-lousy-middle-aged-life-stuck-in-a-major-rut bullshit I was used to.

I started thinking about Iowa criminals. Were they just as evil as Detroit criminals? Crime isn’t the first thing that pops into your head when you think about Iowa, after all … farmers and pheasants maybe, but certainly not murderers or rapists. But there they were; chatting away not 20-feet from my trespassing self on the other side of a concrete wall built in the late 1800’s.

I asked a lady raking leaves across the street what kind of prison it was. She told me it used to be minimum security, but it had changed and now there were some pretty bad people in there. I asked her if it freaked her out to live right across the street from the prison. She shrugged her shoulders as if she hadn’t really thought about it much. But I thought about it.

I thought about Grant Wood too. He’d painted “American Gothic” 81-years ago, but he may as well have painted it last week – at least in Anamosa. If Facebook, Twitter, smartphones and computer games have taken over most of America, they somehow glossed over Anamosa.

Old neighbors stood at the ends of their driveways shooting the shit and drinking beer out of a can. Their laughter echoed off the walls of boredom. It was the kind of laughter I remembered hearing from drunken adults in my own small hometown in Ohio when I was a kid – a raspy mix of filterless Camels and Pabst Blue Ribbon guffawing out of their cancerous lungs, stomachs and wind pipes. They might die tomorrow, but Goddammit, they’re having a hell of a good time right now.

One of the neighbors gave me a friendly wave as if to say, “Drop them cameras son and crack open a beer with us.” I waved back and nodded the universal nod that says, “You keep havin’ your fun, you don’t need any son-of-an-Ohio-redneck intrudin’ on your good time by suckin’ down your stash of liquid gold – but thanks anyway.”

The friendly neighbor acknowledged my nod and turned back to his crew at the end of the driveway. Up the street, a young girl and her brother were roller-skating up and down the sidewalk in front of their house. Every now and then a motorcycle would pass by, but for the most part it was quiet, except for the chatter of the prisoners that wafted out into the street through the open windows of the state pen.

If these walls could talk - Iowa State Penitentiary in Anamosa. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

After an hour or so it started to get dark, so I ended my brief excursion with rural America and headed back to Cedar Rapids. For the next day and a half I would switch gears and become a sports photographer at a major university. But I left Anamosa somewhat excited, because after eight hours on the road, my mind had finally switched on and I couldn’t wait for the drive home on Sunday.

The football game was a good one – nice and controversial with an exciting ending, but the one thing that stuck with me was how far off the weatherman was. A forecast of low 60’s and sunny skies gave way to a high of 39 with mid-day skies as dark as the bottom of a manhole cover. That was okay with me. I like gloomy skies and it never rained, so I didn’t particularly mind that I pretty much froze my balls off the entire duration of the game.

The other thing that stuck out about Saturday was that I left Cedar Rapids for Iowa City in the early morning dark, and I returned to Cedar Rapids in the evening dark. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worked from sunup till sundown, but I imagined there were a lot of folks in the state who could.

When Sunday morning arrived, it came with cloudy skies and 40 mph winds coming straight out of the south. Since I was driving due east, and Iowa’s cornfields don’t offer much in the way of protection from the elements, I knew this would make for some pretty interesting driving.

I decided to forego I-80, at least for a while, and take a road less traveled as I headed out of the state. It proved a wise decision. With little to no traffic, it didn’t really matter if a sudden wind gust blew me a little left of center since there was nothing for me hit head on but emptiness.

It was that emptiness that really hit home. I drove past field after field of dead, brown, bristly corn waving to me like the beer-swilling dude at the end of his driveway in Anamosa. I passed through small town after small town - each a carbon copy of the other – one gas station, a grain elevator, a pizza joint and a church, but not a human in sight. I half expected tumbleweed to be blowing down the street, but all I saw was an endless stream of freight trains, some a mile long I’ll bet, crawling parallel to my path heading westward, as if Manifest Destiny beckoned those coal carrying Conrails to a place where the grass was greener, and their payload burned cleaner.

The lines of the Iowa country road met the railroad tracks at the very same point well off in the distance. Maybe Grant Wood saw the same thing. Maybe every art teacher who ever taught perspective drawing stared out on the horizon from this exact spot in eastern Iowa, where all things come to a point on the horizon –roads, railroad tracks, cornfields, telephone lines ... and thoughts. They all started right there in front of me, just out of reach – always out of reach.

Off to the south the sun sliced through the clouds from time to time like a laser beam, blowing up distant silos in the middle of the fields with its bright beam of light that looked very much like an alien abduction was about to take place. When the sun hit my car, I wondered if some farmer looking out his window a mile away in that same field saw me in one of those same brilliant beams of light and found it just as amazing as I did? Or maybe he just kick off his shit-encrusted boots and poured himself a cup of Folger’s instant coffee without giving it so much as a second thought?

An epiheny? Or just a field? (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

It was that moment when I began thinking about my dead mother. I hadn’t missed my mom in a while, but I was really missing her now. I don’t think she’d ever even been to Iowa, but I felt like she was there, and when I say there, I mean inside my head.

I thought about my dad too. About how we don’t really have a whole hell of a lot to say to each other these days. Never really did. He’d been to Iowa plenty. He used to go pheasant hunting there every fall with his work buddies from Ford. I wondered if he’d ever traveled this same road, if he’d ever seen the brilliant shafts of sunlight blowing up the dead fields, or the railroad tracks and the highway coming to a point in the far off distance, or if he just slept the whole time while his buddies did most of the driving.

Whatever it was that had blocked my brain on the trip out, it had certainly been dislodged now.

“I gotta write some of this shit down.” I thought to myself. “There’s no frickin’ way I’m gonna remember all of this – hell, probably none of it.”

Everything seemed profound. Everything seemed real. My thoughts were flying around my brain so fast, I almost had to pull over. I was in mental overload. It was so overwhelming, I felt like I might actually cry and I had no idea why. Was it the corn? Was it the light? Was I happy? Was I sad?

Fuck if I knew?

I peeled off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. I put on my sunglasses even though it was mostly cloudy. Ten miles ahead was civilization. Before long, I’d be crossing the Mississippi River and leaving Iowa behind in the rear view mirror. The next exit was my southbound turn back to reality. Back to the painful cramp in my ass and the continual formation of a blood clot in the lower half of my right leg as I cruised eastward on I-80 with its semi-truck traffic and zoned-out-latte'-junkies texting themselves into the medians and ditches of the world on an otherwise perfectly clear, dry day.

Author on the road. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: Aunt Dorothy Goes Home

Aunt Dorothy's burial on Wednesday afternoon in the rain. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

If there truly is no place like home, then Aunt Dorothy should be plenty happy now that she’s finally there.

After 97-years roaming planet Earth, Dorothy Demske was laid to rest at Michigan Memorial Park in Flat Rock on Wednesday - a perfectly gloomy and rainy October day that seemed fitting for a funeral and burial - if nothing else. And when I say Dorothy roamed the planet, I was being literal, because before she died, Dorothy trotted her wee frame across the globe to more than 40 countries and nearly every state in the U.S. - her latest venture in 2002 when, at the age of 89, she went out west to Colorado and Oregon to not only see what Mother Nature had to offer, but also hit the casinos.

She lived life like a rock star, or at least she kept the same hours. She was the most anti-geriatric person I ever met in that department. She’d sleep until the middle of the afternoon most days, and stay up until the early hours in the morning. I’m not sure how she made any friends at the American House, a senior home in Riverview where she lived the last decade or so of her life, or if anyone there even knew she existed since she was living in an opposite universe, but she did. In fact, everyone loved Dorothy … and why not?

Dorothy lived the way most of us wish we could. She had no fears, either about living, or dying. She was sure she would live to see 100 - she even looked forward to it, going so far as inviting everyone she knew to her century birthday party up to five years in advance! Well, she didn’t quite make it. Lung cancer, of all things, derailed her plan. Ironic given the fact she was a non-smoker. But at 97, or any age over 90 really, shouldn’t the cause of death always be listed as … old age?

Dorothy at peace. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

It’s funny that the last time I would see Dorothy would be at funeral, because it’s also the first time I met her – at my wife’s father’s funeral. That was 16-years ago, and I’ll never forget that meeting because at the age of 81, Dorothy stepped off the back of a makeshift platform set up at the gravesite, and did a backwards flop into a snow bank. She was perfectly fine, and in fact laughing about the whole episode, which not only brought levity to the situation, but also stole the show.

At the time, all of my mother-in-law’s siblings were still alive (save for two, who died at infancy). Dorothy was the oldest of those siblings, Marge, my mother-in-law, was the youngest. In between were sisters Mildred and Helen, and a brother, Jud. Within a year, Helen and Jud would die. Mildred joined them four years ago, leaving only the bookends of the Demske clan left to reminisce.

I’ve been lucky enough to be around for those 16-years to eavesdrop on some of that reminiscing, and it’s been fascinating.

Dorothy Demske loved to argue, but near as I can tell, she never really complained. She embraced the world around her like no one I ever met at any age. She didn’t care that her body was failing her, I guess because her mind was still razor sharp. Her stories were amazing; not only in their subject matter, but also in the way she told them. She was kind of like Yoda (certainly in size anyway) to all her nieces and nephews and their children, who would gather around her on holidays as she would tell stories about her childhood or her worldly travels.

Her life story was pretty amazing. She was born in 1914, and when the Great Depression hit, it hit the Demske family particularly hard. Living in Wyandotte, MI., her father, like many others at the time, had lost his job and eventually the family home. With five kids to feed, and no way to do it, Dorothy suddenly found herself taking over as the breadwinner in the family, working a job at the welfare office in Wyandotte shortly after she graduated from high school.

Photos from Dorothy's childhood.

“She would have loved to have gone to college,” her sister Marge reflected, “but there was no way back then – no money, no way to get funding.”

After the depression, Dorothy would stay in the working world at a time when most women got married, stayed home and had kids. She stayed single her entire life, going on to work at GM for 34-years before she retired in 1974. And where some folks struggle with what they should do with the rest of their lives after retirement, Dorothy never had that problem.

The world was her oyster, and at the age of 60, she was hell bent on seeing as much of it as possible, and sharing it with as many people as possible. Despite never marrying or having children, Dorothy made it a point to take her nieces and nephews (of which there were plenty) to Washington D.C.

That trip to D.C. was a real bonding experience, not only for Dorothy and her nieces and nephews, but also for the many cousins who made the trip. Cousins who often didn’t see much of each other and were brought together by Aunt Dorothy for a memorable visit to our nation’s capital. They were still talking fondly about those trips at Dorothy’s funeral.

And it wasn’t only this world that Dorothy loved to visit. She often talked about seeing visions of the dead. When she was a little girl, she vividly remembers seeing a little boy walk down the hallway outside her bedroom door. She told her mother about the little boy, and her mother told her she was dreaming. The next morning it was learned that Dorothy’s uncle, a young boy named Floyd, had died the night before. Dorothy insists the young boy she saw walking down the hallway was Floyd shortly after his death.

She would continue having visits from the afterworld her entire life, most recently from a pair of trousers and shoes belonging to her brother Jud. They never frightened her; instead, she was always calm and relieved by them. Dorothy considered herself something of a medium – and the visions were a way of letting all her loved ones know that the deceased were giving Dorothy a sign that everything was all right. Most people stop believing in ghosts when they grow up. I think Dorothy started believing in them even more.

St. Patrick's Church in Wyandotte where Dorothy's funeral was held. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

In the last five years, I’m not sure if I ever saw Dorothy dressed in anything other than a bathrobe. She made it a point to come and visit Marge at least a couple times a year and she would always stay for a week during her visit. For a woman who probably weighed less than 100 pounds, she sure loved to eat. And listening to her argue with her younger sister about the silliest things made me realize that siblings never really leave their childhood habits or birth order behind, no matter how old they are.

But Dorothy was also a magnet - a world-class storyteller - a walking history book. She had a way of taking over a room, even if it was filled with kids who normally don’t give older folks the time of day. Thankfully, my brother-in-law Terry had the foresight to recognize this gift and he decided to bring a tape recorder with him on a visit to see Aunt Dorothy one quiet afternoon about four years ago. Terry interviewed Dorothy for several hours about her life that day, and he brought that tape to her funeral where we all were blessed to hear Dorothy tell some of those stories one last time.

More amazing than the stories was the fact that there were more than 50 people gathered, both old and young, on a cold, rainy Wednesday afternoon, to hear those stories told by an old woman who never got married or had any kids of her own, but who easily had the biggest family of any of us. Even in her death, Dorothy had a way of holding the room as we all sat there silenced and entranced by her tape-recorded voice talking about the first time she and her dad went out for a drive in his brand new car, or the time she rocked her baby brother to sleep when she was five years old, a month before he died.

I was looking at a picture of Aunt Dorothy that was sitting on our table as I listened to her tell those stories. It was like she was there. In some ways I wondered if she was. Either way, I got the feeling we’d be seeing her soon.

In the end, maybe the Priest presiding over her funeral said it best when he said, "I never once heard her say, 'I wish I would have done something different.'"

How many of us can say that?

R.I.P. Aunt Dorothy.

Going Down Swinging

Jim Thome sits in the Indians dugout at Comerica Park in Detroit, Monday night, September 26th. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

It wasn’t supposed to end like this … or maybe it was.

The Hollywood endings had already taken place earlier this season for Jim Thome, the affable slugger who spent most of his hall-of-fame career with the Cleveland Indians until he left as a free agent in 2002 for Philly, and then Chicago, a brief stint in Los Angeles, and then Minnesota, before finally returning home to Cleveland at the end of August to play what might be his last month of professional baseball.

Over the course of his nearly 20-years in Major League baseball, Thome has smashed 604 home runs, most of them the “no-doubter” type, becoming only the eighth player to hit more than 600 round-trippers in a career (and only the fifth who wasn’t linked to performance enhancing drugs). And of those 604 majestic dingers smashed out of ballparks nationwide by the humble native of Peoria, Illinois, none were more memorable than the two he launched into orbit on a beautiful August night in Detroit when he hit numbers 599 and 600.

It was a night I’ll never forget because I was there with my family, sitting six rows behind the Minnesota Twins dugout with tickets I scored from a friend at a charity golf scramble in June. At the time I got the tickets, I joked how cool it would be when Thome jacked his 600th homer that night. I never thought it would actually happen.

But it did happen. And it was magical.

Before we left for the game, my son decided it might be a good idea to make up a sign for Thome just in case the improbable actually happened. So he sat down at the kitchen table with a piece of poster board and a black marker, and proceeded to create a 24 x 36 inch “Thome is my Homie” masterpiece. The poster was so catchy, and our seats were in such a prime location, that by night’s end he and his sign not only made the Tiger’s live game broadcast three or four times, but he was on ESPN’s SportsCenter the next morning and his picture was splashed all over the internet. Of course none of that really mattered to us (well, maybe it was a little bit cool) because we knew we had witnessed history.

Eamon with his sign (and his dad) right behind the Twins dugout. (Photo by Robin Buckson/Detroit News)

Oddly enough, a few short weeks after his history-making night, Thome was unceremoniously placed on waivers by Minnesota. But, as luck would have it, the Indians designated hitter, Travis Hafner, hurt his foot the same week, (ironically in Detroit) so the Tribe claimed Thome off waivers for the stretch drive of the season and it became clear that one of baseballs nicest guys would end his career in the same place where it all began.

Moving back to Cleveland to finish his career seemed to be Hollywood-ending number two for Thome, but just for good measure, Cleveland’s front office quickly put together “Jim Thome Night” for the Tribe’s last home stand of the 2011 season. On that night it was announced that a larger-than-life statue of the popular slugger would be commissioned and placed beyond the left-centerfield fence where many of Thome’s titanic homers had fallen back to earth during his storied career. And wouldn’t you know it, as if on cue, Thome mashed a 440-foot bomb that landed in the exact spot where his statue will soon stand.

Unbelievable.

That was just a week ago. On Monday night, Thome arrived in Detroit, the same place he’d entered the history books a month and a half ago, for the last three games of the 2011 season. I was excited because for the first time in my career as a photojournalist, I’d finally gotten the chance to cover Major League baseball, and the prospect of photographing one of my favorite players in action was reason enough for me to forget about the day-long rain and head for the Motor City to see Thome up close and in action.

But this time there was no magic. The Indians had long been eliminated from the playoff chase – the reason they picked up Thome in the first place, and Thome looked tired and worn as he sat in the same dugout where he’d been cheered so loudly by the Tiger fans on that incredible August night, that he came out and tipped his hat to the crowd.

Now he just sat quietly between teammates young enough to be his sons as the starting lineups were announced. He sat there with batting gloves on his hands, but no hat on his head. He didn’t really need a hat, he was hired only to hit the ball after all, not field it. He had no need for a ball cap, or even a mitt. All he needed was his pine-tar-covered batting helmet and a rack of Louisville Sluggers. But the truth is; he didn’t really need them either - at least not on this night.

Thome would sit the bench the entire game – a game that saw the Tribe get absolutely waxed by the red-hot Tigers, 14-0. Occasionally, Thome would disappear to the locker room for a while, but he’d always reappear to check and see how things were going.

He moved gingerly as he made trips to and from the locker room. A reporter from Cleveland that I’d met in the press box before the game told me that Thome had issues with his back. To see him walk, I didn’t doubt it was true. But then again, Thome seemed to do everything at a snail’s pace. He ran slowly. He talked slowly. He couldn’t seem to ramp it up for anything unless it was time to swing a bat. The speed and power he generated with a baseball bat was anything but slow, and that violent collision he created over 600 times with bat and ball was something I was yearning to see one more time.

I spent most of my time peering at Thome sitting on the Indians bench from the photo wells located at the ends of the dugout. Every now and then, he would look my way as well. But it wasn’t so much as if he were looking at me, as it was looking past me. His eyes were red, as if he’d been crying or hadn’t gotten enough sleep. Neither was true, I suspect, more likely dry contact lenses or allergies. But there was sadness to it all – for me anyhow.

It was hard not to feel for Thome. He's easy to root for because all he's ever done is play ball and be a nice guy, but now his 41-year-old body was starting to let him down. This was most likely it for him, I suspected - the last three games of his career.

Baseball is a kid’s game played best by kids, and Thome was no longer a kid. He’d turned back the clock several times over the past two seasons. He reminded us he could still mash with the best of them ... when he got his pitch. But his opportunities for that pitch were shrinking, and with each successive at bat, Thome was moving one step further from his playing, and one step closer to Cooperstown.

There was an emptiness to the night. A real flatness that is hard to describe. The young players on the Indians team, several of them September call-ups or Latino players who spoke little English, hung together and joked at one end of the dugout as the first year of their careers wound to a close. They would go on to play winter league ball in Mexico, or maybe Arizona, as they continued to hone their skills to try to remain in the big leagues. Thome, on the other hand, had nothing to prove, or improve. He sat quietly on the bench staring out at the field. He had two games to go, but for one night at least we were equals on the ball diamond. We were both spectators.

The next night Thome did play. This time I watched the game at home on television as Thome went two for three, scored two runs and knocked in two more before being lifted for a pinch runner late in the game. The Tribe lost 9-6, but Thome looked young again.

Wednesday night was the final game of the season for the Tribe, and once again, Thome was on the bench. It didn’t seem fitting, but I guess if his last game was a two for three, two RBI outing from the night before, that wasn’t so bad.

The game was close – a real see-saw battle that was tied until former Indian shortstop Jhonny Peralta struck back at his old team by hitting a solo homer in the bottom of the eighth inning to put Detroit up 5-4. That was it, I figured. The Tribe’s season would end with a four-game losing streak and Jim Thome would ride the pine to end his career.

But it wasn’t the end. Jim Thome wasn’t done yet. With one out in the top of the ninth, Cleveland called on their slugger to pinch hit against Detroit’s eccentric closer Jose Valverde. It was a fan’s dream – power against power. Valverde had been perfect on the season. In 48 save chances, he had yet to blow a one. But Thome could change all that with one more magical swipe of the bat.

Tigers closer Jose Valverde. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

I watched with great interest, not because the game was close and tension was in the air. I watched because I knew this the last time I would get to see Jim Thome standing in a batter’s box.

Valverde quickly got ahead of Thome, 0-2, with a pair of fastballs that painted the inside corner. My heart sunk. At that point I figured he was done. But Thome was in no mood to chase anything off the plate, and Valverde sure as heck wasn’t going to give him anything good to hit, so just as quickly as he’d thrown two strikes, Valverde evened the count by throwing two balls.

His fifth pitch missed as well, and now the count was full, three balls and two strikes. My 11-year-old son told me that he hated full counts when he plays, whether he was batting or pitching, because he knew he had to throw a strike on a full count as a pitcher, or else he'd give up a walk, and he knew as a batter he was supposed to get a hit, or at least a walk, when he faced a full count. It was an interesting perspective from a young ballplayer, and I wondered if Thome and Valverde were feeling the same way.

As a viewer, I was excited because I knew, I just knew that this would be the one time Valverde would have to throw a big, fat strike to Thome, and I knew, I just knew that Thome was going to smash it high and far into the late-September air, and I would get treated to one last Hollywood ending.

Valverde twisted his pot-bellied torso toward center field before slowly unwinding it and slinging a split-fingered fastball down the heart of the plate at 94 mph. The pitch was flat and just above the belt. Thome's eyes locked on the pitch, he planted his right foot firmly in the dirt and began to uncoil his thick frame one body part at a time until his hips snapped into place and his massive forearms whipped the bat at lightning speed into the strike zone.

I sat on the edge of my chair waiting for the inevitable collision of rawhide and lumber - waiting for home run number 605 to sail out of Comerica Park. The bat was nothing but a blur as it swooshed toward history. A loud smack followed. But it wasn't the smack I was expecting, it was the smack of the ball firmly planting itself into the pocket of a catcher’s mitt at 94 mph. Thome’s body continued to uncoil violently as his bat sliced through the air in front of home plate before slowing to a stop.

Strike three.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Or maybe it was.

Jim Thome walked slowly back to the dugout one last time. He’d gone down swinging, his career most likely over, and even though I couldn’t see his face clearly on the television, I suspected his eyes were a little red. Just like mine.

Thanks for the memories Jim.

(Note: As of Thursday, Thome was hinting around that he may be back for one more season. I, for one, would love to see it.) Here's a link to a video of Thome's homer on "Jim Thome Night" in Cleveland last week:

http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/video/play.jsp content_id=19544591&topic_id=8879220&c_id=cle

Finding My Religion

Jesus at the DIA. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

When I was in the third grade my mother was certain I would someday grow up to be a priest. This seemed rather odd to me given the fact I was already cussing like a sailor and I really liked looking at boobs. Still, she seemed undeterred in her vision of my future, so she sent me (and my siblings) packing to Catechism every Saturday.

I suppose it could have been worse. She could have sent us to Catholic school instead. But my father had gone to Catholic school and he didn’t turn out so hot, so I think my mother took the safe route by only giving us small doses of the guilt and humiliation doled out by Catholics as part of their indoctrination into their religion, hoping we might somehow actually like it.

Of course, every proactive move my mother made to strengthen our faith in God was met by an equally retroactive move by my father who routinely used the names of God and Jesus Christ on a daily basis, but never in prayer.

“I don’t understand why we have to take these Goddamned kids to Catechism every Saturday.” He would moan.

“Tom, watch your mouth.” She would snap.

“Jeee-zus Keee-rist! Do you really think it matters? He’d reply, as we kids shook our heads in agreement with our Father, who art in the livingroom.

My dad already knew we were probably beyond reproach, but my mother still held out hope, so they struck up a deal - we’d go to Catechism until our confirmation (never could tell what we were confirmed as - idiots? morons? sacrilegious miscreants?) and then the rest was up to us.

It was then and there that I thought I ought to at least try and understand Catholicism if I were going to have to endure several more years of being looked down upon by the kids at St. Peter’s who treated those who didn’t attend their school as if we were lepers (very un-WWJD, if you ask me).

It was tough to digest some of the material being taught by the less-than-friendly teaching staff who treated us like we were prisoners being shipped in every Saturday so we could be set straight before being released back into mainstream population.

I swear my teachers never smiled – not once. They were all converts to the Catholic religion, which even the Catholics will tell you is the worst kind of Catholic (totally fanatical). I was scolded all the time for not knowing the proper “Catholic speak” which is to say I was always kneeling at the wrong time, saying the wrong prayer, standing when I was supposed to sit. I even farted once while walking into the church. This brought a chuckle from my classmates and the Priest (who actually seemed like a pretty cool guy - young, long hair) but not my teacher.

I was made to feel shame for my flatulence and I was assigned to say 15 “Our Fathers” and 20 “Hail Marys” for my sin. That was kind of a problem since I didn’t exactly have either prayer memorized at the time, so I decided to pray for God’s forgiveness instead.

Jesus at the Outsider Art Show in Harbert, MI. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

“Please God, or Jesus, or whoever is up there, could you maybe find it in your heart to forgive me for farting in church today? I swear I didn’t do it on purpose. Honestly, I tried to hold it in, but it just slipped out. I suppose I should have farted when I was outside before I got into the church because it was really windy and it wouldn’t have echoed so much, but sometimes you just don’t think about these things until it’s too late. Anyhow, I’m supposed to say a bunch of “Our Fathers” and “Hail Marys” but here's the problem ... you see I don’t really know either prayer all that well, so I’m kind of hoping you might cut me some slack on that one too? I promise I’ll try harder to be good in the future. Thanks God. Amen.”

It wasn’t the last time I prayed to God, but I quickly realized most of my prayers were asking for forgiveness for something I’d done in Catechism. My first (and last) communion was a debacle. I hated the way the communion wafers tasted (although I did find they made awesome Frisbees for my G.I. Joe at home) and when they told me it was really the “body of Christ” I was ingesting, I pictured myself as a cannibal eating what was left of poor Jesus.

I also got into trouble when I wet my hair down with Holy water from the Baptismal font (hey, it was picture day and my hair was sticking up) and when I went to Holy confession for the first time, I found I really had nothing more to confess other than the fact I often cussed and I liked looking at boobs.

My punishment? (Besides being laughed at by the Priest) You guessed it - 15 “Our Fathers” and 20 “Hail Marys”

I’ve grown up to be an even worse Catholic than I was when I was a kid. I still swear as much as ever, I rarely go to church, and I even got a vasectomy after my third kid was born. I don’t think I have enough life span left to say the number of “Our Fathers” and “Hail Marys” I'll need to gain absolution with the Catholics, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not a spiritual person.

Faith is something that has always astounded me, probably because I don’t have much of it. But I admire those who do have it, especially those who seem to have an abundance of blind faith. They seem at peace with themselves – with their world.

That, is not me.

I question everything, including faith and religion, and I wonder how anybody could not. My mind won’t let go of things easily. I’m always looking for proof of a higher power, and even though I haven't really seen it yet, I still pray every night. I still feel a closeness to something, but I wonder why I have to label it? Whether that label is Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, or Islam. What difference does it make? Why does one have to choose? Why does one have to be a firm believer in any of them? And what makes one better or worse than the other?

Better yet, why should it matter to anyone what I, or anyone else believes in? Am I really that important? Do I really have to be born again? Why can’t I just be who I am and let the chips fall where they may?

I struggle with the hypocrisy of religion all the time, especially the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” which apparently only applies to folks of the same religion since more people are killed because of a difference in religious beliefs than any other cause.

But just because I don’t have a lot of faith doesn’t mean that I don’t think about it. Even when I was a kid and I hated Catechism, I still liked daydreaming in church when I was looking at the larger than life Jesus on the cross behind the altar. I imagined hanging out with him, or talking to him. I used to close my eyes real tight and hope to hear something from him, but all I ever heard was my teacher yelling at me to keep my butt off the pew when I was on the kneeler.

Today I keep looking. I keep listening. I know the older people get, the more religion plays a part in their lives. Certainly, proximity to death and the unknown of what happens after death strengthens that belief, but my mind can’t even let that one go. I still wonder if there is a heaven, and if there is, isn’t it getting pretty damn crowded about now? And do I really want to go on forever anyhow? Maybe coming to an abrupt end isn’t so bad.

I guess none of us really knows the answers to any of these questions. Some folks see signs all the time – even if it’s in the form of a rust-stain Jesus on a water tower or a burnt-spot Virgin Mary on a potato chip. But for me it’s not that way.

Sometimes I wonder why God would let so many bad things happen to good people - not that I hold it against him. When my best friend died from cancer at the age of 40, I didn’t curse him, and when my mother struggled to breathe on her bedroom floor last March, I didn’t ask him to keep her alive.

I don’t put expectations on God. I don’t feel like it’s God’s job to answer my prayers. I suspect, if he does exist, he’s got bigger fish to fry (but only on Fridays of course) than to take care of my petty wants and needs.

I guess if God truly made me, then he loves me no matter what, much in the same way I love my kids. And even though I can be a complete asshole sometimes, for the most part I think I’m a pretty good guy - despite the fact I still swear too much and I like to look at boobs!

Amen.

You Say It's Your Birthday?

A nice assortment of cards from my kids with my old driver's license. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

I turned 46 yesterday.

It was strange on many fronts, but most notably the fact that right up until midnight the day before I turned 46, I still considered myself to be 45. In years past, I’d always started referring to my up-and-coming age several months before my actual birthday, just to get used to the idea.

I’m not sure why I was holding on to 45 so hard. I guess I kind of like that number. I like any number that ends with a five. They’re easy to add and they’re right down the middle, just the way I like things.

Forty-six, on the other hand, is a bit harder to swallow.

It’s a nothing age really. Not a milestone birthday by any means. Not like the first (hey, we didn’t kill our infant) or the 13th (wow, the kid’s a teenager) the 16th (holy shit, my kid can drive) the 18th (sorry kid, you can’t drink yet, but you can vote) the 21st (have a beer!) 30th (time to grow up asshole) 40th (yeah, about that 401k, maybe it’s time to start putting something in it) or 50 (well, you lived a half a century – congratulations). That’s why I was so surprised I dreaded it so much.

I think it all started on Thursday at the Secretary of State’s office when I had to get my driver’s license renewed. I went early in the morning to beat the crowd, which I did, and I even put on a nice shirt for my new picture. Having a nice picture of myself on my license may be a silly thing to worry about, but it is the picture I’m stuck with for the next four years and it’s the first thing I see whenever I open my wallet. (Nobody wants to look like a complete ass in their driver's license picture, but let's face it, the over-under on doing just that are pretty high!)

So far, in my previous seven tries, I’ve been somewhat lucky to come out of the “one-shot-and-your-done” photo session with a fairly decent picture. I think this is due, in part, to the fact that I’m a professional photographer so I kind of know how to pose, but probably more to the fact that I have a summer birthday so I’m always tan in my photo.

This year, I was surprised to find out that they actually show you your mug before they slap it on your license. I didn’t shave the morning of my renewal pic because I thought a little razor stubble might make me look more intriguing or handsome in an older way, you know, like George Clooney or Brett Favre. Needless to say I was a little taken aback when they showed me my photo and I looked more like a sleep-deprived psycho killer.

“How is that?” The Secretary of State employee asked me when she showed me my photo.

“Who is that? Is more like it.” I answered. “Wow, I look like shit.”

It was true. I had bags under my eyes; my razor stubble was darker than Clooney’s (more like Time-magazine-cover-O.J.), and the summer tan on my face had somehow gone from “glowing” to “official NFL football” in the past four years.

To make matters worse, they didn’t even ask me if I wanted to be an organ donor. When I brought it up, the woman just looked at me as if to say, “Yeah, well, you’re kind of getting to that age where your organs are a little too used and no one really wants them.”

Hey, I want them … they’re not so bad … are they?

I left less than 15-minutes after I had arrived – record time for the Secretary of State’s office, and a good thing apparently, since I don’t have much time to waste now that I’ve officially crested the wave into old age ... or at least older middle age.

Crap.

I’m closer to 50 than to 40 - halfway to 92, which I probably won’t see, so by all rights I’m more than halfway dead. This doesn’t sit well with me, not one bit, and my son didn’t help matters much yesterday when he asked me if a lot of people die on their birthdays. What the hell kind of question is that? I told him he'd better hope not since it just so happened to be my birthday and we were barreling down I-275 at 80 mph.

Just in case, I felt my pulse to make sure everything was okay. You never know these days. The older you get, the more paranoid you are about your health. Heart attacks, cancer, strokes, aneurisms – hell, there’s a number of killers waiting at the doorstep, and that number only increases with each passing year. I’ve been lucky up till now, but you never know, earlier in the week I was battling constipation and I ended up blowing out a hemorrhoid (if that’s not a harbinger for bad things to come, I don’t know what else is - goodbye Captain Crunch, hello All Bran!)

As luck would have it, I lived through the day. It wasn’t much of a birthday (as it shouldn’t have been). We were going to go to a Detroit Tiger’s game, but my son got invited to play in a baseball tournament by one of the travel baseball teams in our division who needed an extra player, so we did that instead. I’d rather watch him play than the Tigers anyhow. It was a lot of fun for me, and even more fun for him.

Eamon pitching for the Northville Cubs. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

Later that night we all went to dinner. Nothing fancy, just Red Robin, but I made sure I got a turkey burger instead of a hamburger since I’m getting older and I need to watch the fat. I even gave my free dessert to the kids. Sadly, I was in bed before midnight and it was all over.

Unlike my childhood when I raked in all kinds of cool, summertime booty for my birthday like ball gloves, squirt guns, pup tents and skateboards, this year I got cards from my dad, my sister and my mother-in-law. My kids gave me cards too, really nice ones in fact – hand made even, and the stuff they wrote inside made me realize that if nothing else rubbed off on them, my sarcasm sure as hell did, and that made me very proud.

It turns out my kids actually dig me. Even if I embarrass the hell out them when I wear a Speedo to the city pool, or fart in front of their friends, they still think I’m pretty cool for a dad, which means a lot to me. I mean, how many dads can have their kids call them an asshole in their birthday card and take it as a compliment?

They make me not care about getting old, but they also make me want to hold on to my youth even more. And these days, with all the uncertainty in the world and in my life, it’s nice to have something you can count on, and for me that something is this:

No matter how old I am, I’m almost certain my kids will grow up long before I ever do!