Dirty Harry He Ain't......

Just west of where I live sits the Village of Blue Mounds, a small hamlet of about 700 people featuring a trailer park, a few scattered subdivisions, a laundromat, and not a whole helluva lot else.

It also has one full time cop.

Now, short of breaking up the occasional drunken domestic disturbance at the trailer court, there's not a whole lot for this guy to do. Anything bigger, and the County Sheriff takes over. So how does this protector and servant spend his days?

Sitting on the interstate, about 1/2 mile from the town center, trying to nab speeders.

If you're local, you know he's always out there, and if he nails you, you're a goddamn fool for not knowing better. Instead, his bread and butter are the poor saps from Iowa, trying to make decent time from Madison out to the state line. The revenue generated by issuing speeding tickets to folks from the Hawkeye state has to rank right at the top of Blue Mound's yearly municipal income.

I used to be infuriated every time I passed old Barney Fife parked out in that median, aiming his phallic radar tube at me. Lately, though, that fury has been replaced by a sense of absolute wonder; as in, how can this guy stand going to work every day?

I'm sure he started out with intentions either noble ("I'm going to protect society!") or sinister ("I get to carry a gun and bust people!") But I'm guessing that nowhere in that dream was there a vision of spending entire days sitting in a hot car on a flat stretch of exhaust-choked highway, holding a radar gun and asking dozens of people, 'Do you know how fast you were going back there?' until it was time to punch out and go home.

Which is what he does, all day, pretty much every day.

For as long as I've lived here, the same guy has held the job, so either he's learned to swallow his humiliation at being one micro-step above mall security and is just glad to get a paycheck. Or, he's totally delusional and thinks he's the last line of defense between the good citizens of Blue Mounds and .....well, I guess from some poor farmer from Iowa drifting off the highway, somehow maintaining a straight line across three cornfields and a graveyard, and plowing into the laundromat?

OK, I fully admit that I have no idea what he thinks he might be protecting the town from.

Regardless, much like those "Real Men of Genius" radio ads, I shake my head and lift my glass to you, Mr. Blue Mounds Serial Speeder Apprehender Guy!

Still, I'll never know how you can stand going to work every day.....

Starry, Starry Night.....

Yes! The Netherlands wins!

For those of you who might not have noticed, I am not entirely mad about the World Cup. But that might've changed this afternoon, when a glorious little nation best known for wooden shoes and hash bars asserted its dominance on the "pitch," earning the right to play Sunday for (truly) a world championship.

The Netherlands!

I am officially on the bus. These guys ride bikes as a primary mode of transportation, have legalized pot and prostitution, and gave the world Vincent Van Gogh. Now, they KICK ASS at soccer. What's not to like here? It's like rooting for the Packers, if the Packers were all eco-friendly, socially liberal Deadheads!

It's an easy call. Their opponent in the finals will be either Spain--the country that brought European diseases to the New World--or Germany, about whom not enough white space exists here for me to list all of their transgressions against the civilized world.

Join me on Sunday in raising my hash pipe high into the air as I launch into a boisterous chorus of all 15 stanzas of "Het Wilhelmus" (OK, that their national anthem is 15 stanzas long may not necessarily be the coolest thing......but then, I've sat through a 35-minute "Dark Star" and not had a problem with it.....) and root, root, root for the Dutch team!

Drive-In

We took the kids to the drive-in on Saturday night, the sort of shameless exercise in cheesy nostalgia that we feel we've been parents long enough to foist upon our unsuspecting young charges.

At first, everything was hunky dory, a real slice of innocent good vibes straight out of the Eisenhower era. We backed the Vista Cruiser in so the boys could settle into a comfy cocoon of sleeping bags and pillows in the back of the wagon, and hung the speaker firmly from the hatchback support. A rollicking collection of Elvis' best movie tunes provided the perfect soundtrack. We settled into our lawn chairs with a big bucket of popcorn and a warm feeling of being the Best Parents Ever.

With the arrival of a beautiful, sepia-toned dusk, a vintage "Welcome to the Drive In" trailer and a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon set me to grinning like a fool. This was Paradise, 1950's style. Suddenly, I was Ward Cleaver; a snappy, successful paterfamilias. My bomb shelter was the best in the neighborhood. I owned a color TV, and had a fridge full of Oleo. All was right as rain. Until I realized I couldn't hear anything over the buzz.

Too quickly, we realized the folly of deciding to spend a warm mid-summer evening in a low lying Wisconsin field after a month of near-biblical rainstorms. The buzz, of course, was the sound of 10,000 mosquitoes, setting forth on their nightly rounds and finding no better feeding ground than right here in this swampy pasture, with a captive audience of movie watchers offering up an abundance of fresh meat.

We hurriedly sent up a defensive cloud of deet, but it was too little, too late. The beasts had swarmed the children, now wiggling and itching and crying out, trapped in the back of what had become an insect feeding pen. In an attempt to save the evening-and not waste the $24 we had paid to get in-we hurriedly swung the car around, rolled the windows tight, and resettled the kids in the front seat with big, conciliatory soda pops and promises of safety from the buzzing scourge. So long as those doors and windows stayed rolled tight-and mom kept vigilantly swatting the remaining invaders-everything would be just fine....

Except for one thing. With the kids camped in front, and mom squeezed into the back, there was hardly room for Big Daddy and his 6'4 frame to shoehorn into the vehicle without suffering from either severe leg cramps or mind-shattering claustrophobia.

Now, I've persevered through worse, or so I thought. Hell, I sat through my sisters Mary Kay induction ceremony; I could survive this. I gamely set up a couple of lawn chairs, sprayed myself down with bug spray, wrapped myself tightly in a blanket and stretched out just off the front bumper. Which was cozy and comfy and bug free for all of about 15 seconds.

Long story short, Ward Cleaver proceeded to spend three hours bouncing from leg to leg, swatting and scratching and cursing and wishing like hell that the projector would explode or the tornado sirens would go off or there would be some other natural bloody excuse for me to just jump behind the wheel and get out of that fetid, swampy, malaria-breeding ground with some small fraction of my sanity, and flesh, intact.

Alas, we all survived, and the kids are even talking about going back to the drive-in someday. I'm not sure yet where I stand on it, though. In the driveway tonight, a mosquito--or some other flying nuisance--passed by my ear, a little too close for comfort. I instinctively bolted inside, dove on the couch, and breathed a sigh of relief at seeing my television, cable box and DVD player ensconced in the beautiful, bug-free, 21st-century indoors.

World Cup Fever

Unlike so many of my friends, I was fortunate enough NOT to succumb to "World Cup Fever."

The whole thing got to be truly preposterous. The impassioned Facebook status updates ("Go USA! We're still in this!"); the hasty purchase of officially-licensed, grossly overpriced 'Team USA' gear; the tired old debate about whether soccer had finally "arrived" as part of the American cultural fabric.

The answer is, it did not (and it never will.) But what, beyond the irresistible jingoism of rooting for our boys to kick tail in an international competition, got people so excited in the first place? It certainly couldn't be the simple charms of watching guys run willy-nilly around a big grass field for 90 minutes to pretty much.....not score any points (unless you're a Chicago Bears fan; this, after all, is what you've grown used to.....)

Alas, with the dust having finally settled on our teams loss to mighty Ghana (!), I think I may have figured this out.

America is down. Way down. We all know it. We can't stop terrorism, our economy is in shambles. Hell, we can't even stop an oil leak, for corn sakes. Who really wants to be American right now? It hardly carries the cache it did in the past. So, along comes the World Cup....and we can all pretend to be European for a few weeks!

Suddenly, soccer is "football." Suddenly, we all like going to bars and watching soccer....er, I mean, football....while loudly singing group limericks, just like the folks in London do! "Look at us, world.....we're FOOTBALL FANATICS, just like the rest of you who don't live in a country where Sarah Palin could become the next President......"

Yep, this silly little game became a pure, unfettered dose of cultural escapism. It was our summer vacation overseas, brought to you by the good folks at ABC and ESPN. It took us away from the monotony of baseball and Tea Party rhetoric. And now.....it's over.

Oh, I could make fun of you all for awhile, but, like America herself, I'm bigger than that. I forgive your wholehearted, petty, but ultimately fruitless flirtation with other, "higher" cultures. I simply say: welcome back to reality, former soccer-crazy Americans. Count your blessings that you're not REALLY British (vanquished at their national game by the Huns, and still responsible for Tony Heyward) and take heart in the fact that REAL football is just around the corner.

Back in the Saddle. For No Apparent Reason.

The bug has bitten again, so rather than start all over again in some other cyber-neighborhood, I've decided to reopen the gates here at Nitro Vista. I've gone through and cleaned up the basement and attic a bit, leaving behind only those posts that I feel are even remotely worth revisiting some 18 months since I left the place.

I was surprised to find that there's still some good stuff in here. Damn, I used to be funny.....

So, bear with me while I dust and vacuum and go about setting up house here again. Soon, with a fresh coat of paint and some nice new plastic lawn furniture, this will be a fun place to visit, just like it used to be.

Winter Storm Warning

There was a giant blue stain across the weather map on TV a few minutes ago, a blob of indistinct shape hovering over the upper midwest with the word "Snow" posted ominously over it.

We're going to get blasted. Ten inches, "they" say.

While that conjures up any number of alarming possibilities, the most daunting is this: school is very likely going to be cancelled tommorrow. Meaning I will be locked down with two antsy, wiggling, fighting, nosepicking, shrieking jackals; by days end, there will be an enormous lump of wet boots, gloves, hats, socks, and snowpants strewn around the front hall. There will be ice balls underfoot throughout the house. Legos and plastic soldiers will carpet the floor. I will be fetching snacks, wiping noses, mopping ice melt, and refereeing disputes from sun up 'til sundown.

And then, I will get to go out and shovel ten inches of snow off my driveway and sidewalk.

The myth of the snow day is that children are enraptured by the glorious freedom of an unexpected day off; that they head out with sleds and hockey sticks and frolic the day away until their parents are forced to drag them off the sledhill or frozen pond at dark to come inside for a steaming bowl of homemade vegetable soup and handmade cinammon rolls.

The reality is: they will pull on four layers of mobility-limiting outerwear and go outside just long enough to get covered, head to toe, in clinging snow; then fling open the kitchen door, letting in an ice cold blast of arctic chill air and white powder which will drop the internal temperature of the house by an immediate 78 degrees. They will trudge in and stand in a rapidly swelling pool of ice melt on the kitchen floor while they lick the snot that is running down their face. They will wrestle off their clothes, drop them in a sopping pile, and demand that you make them hot chocolate-which they will promptly spill on the rug. Ten minutes later, they will start pulling on the abandoned snowsuits to start the process all over again. Ad infinitum.

By 2:00, a grouchy dad will be seriously thinking about serving codeine cough syrup and Grand Marnier for lunch, all the while wondering what he has done to receive such a raw deal from God.

At times like this, my friends, only singing cats can lift my sagging spirits. Fortunately, I know right where to find some.

Take me away, fellas.....

White Light, White Teeth

There's something primordially satisfying about hurling your children across the snow at great speed on a brightly colored plastic disk. It's a great equalizer. Winter may cascade down in frozen heaps, making the roads impassable and burdening your soul with an initial "Oh, Shit!" gloom. But we persevere. We crush it underfoot and under sled. We turn it into entertainment.

The boys and I built a short, fast sled run yesterday afternoon from the western slope of our yard across the neighbor's driveway and into her front yard. After a few shakedown runs, it congealed nicely into an icy track, a 30-foot high-intensity mini-bobsled run that in short order had the boys howling with delight and my upper body aching from the strains of repeatedly launching them down it. Needless to say, I cried "Uncle!" long before they were ready to quit, but nonetheless, a good time was had by all. And whether by pure coincidence or nature simply rewarding our stubborn refusal to yield and hide, the snow stopped falling just after we trudged back inside for a well deserved hot chocolate.

Isaac lost his first tooth the day after Thanksgiving, a major milestone and a painstaking process which unfolded with great drama over an intense 36 hours. He's been feeling peer pressure on this, as most of his classmates are happily gap toothed and have been for some time. So it was with a mixture equal parts excitement and fear that he revealed the dangling incisor to us, not sure what was now required of him.

"Well, you have to pull it out," we responded, and the change in pallor that overcame him quickly indicated he was expecting something a little less intrusive to happen.

Still, he worked it and worked it and worked it, obsessively, all day and into the night, twisting and pushing and rolling, all the while providing play-by-play and the occasional yelp of discomfort. His single-mindedness was impressive; he bore down with the focus of a heart surgeon performing a quadruple bypass.

Friday morning, his face flush with triumph, he woke us with a cry of "I got it!" There, cradled gently in his hand, was a tiny speck of a tooth, and on his full-moon face a grin big as all outdoors, a gummy tableaux of pride, relief, and unabashed joy.

The tooth fairy slipped him a buck that night.

And his old man took him to a basketball game and let him gum popcorn the next.