My interactions with recreational fireworks as a kid were nearly disastrous

I don't know if kids still do this, but when I was growing up, my friends and I would play with fireworks any and every chance we got.

By "fireworks," I mean not only things that make loud noises, but also relatively innocent stuff like black snakes, smoke bombs, pop-its, and jumping jacks. If you could light it or throw it, and it did something cool, we were all over it.

In general, we were all over anything involving fire. I don't know what drove us to be such little pyromaniacs, but we loved us some flames.

The problem was, at least as far as I was concerned, the potential for injury was real and frequent. I never actually got hurt playing with fireworks, but that was only by the grace of God.

I remember once being with my friend Matt, who had gotten his hands on an M-80. These little bombs were the kings of neighborhood fireworks simply because of the explosive power and noise they generated. We couldn't have been more than 10 years old, yet here we were playing with something that could have blown our fingers off.

We decided to wedge the M-80 into a little crack in a picnic table at the playground. Matt lit it and we backed up a few feet. When it went off, splinters of wood flew in almost every direction, with one whizzing within an inch or two of my head. It could easily have gone into my eye.

Then there was the time Matt and Kevin were shooting bottle rockets across the street. I opened the front door to our house to see what was going on, and they very smartly decided to shoot one straight at me. I didn't get hit, but it did enter our house before exploding just inside the storm door.

I almost got in big trouble for that one.

My worst near-miss, without a doubt, was the time I nearly burned down my school with a jumping jack.

I've told this story here on the blog before. Here's how I described the incident in a post 10 years ago:

I was playing with a pack of jumping jacks I'd, um, borrowed from my dad. I was with my nephew Mark, who had to have been only 6 or 7 years old at the time. We were by the old Mapledale Elementary School, and ringing the building was a two-foot-high pile of dry leaves. My genius idea was to light a jumping jack and throw it into these leaves, so that's what I did. The leaves, of course, immediately caught fire, and the flames started spreading rapidly around the perimeter of the building. Mark and I ran away as fast as we could. Someone who was there told the cops I had done it, and by the time I got home, there was a Wickliffe police cruiser waiting in the driveway for me. My mother was, to put it mildly, not happy.

You'll want to know what I was thinking there. Heck, I want to know what I was thinking, but I don't know. Not even an 11-year-old boy can fathom the thought processes of an 11-year-old boy.

The only positive outcome was that the school did not, in fact, burn down. But that's only because the good folks from the Wickliffe Fire Department came and put out the mini inferno I had started.

Anyway, it's Fourth of July here in America, which means recreational fireworks will be out in abundance. If you celebrate in this manner, please stay safe and use a little common sense.

Like, for instance, make sure that when an M-80 explodes, it doesn't create projectiles that could potentially kill you and your friends.

That would really put a damper on the holiday.

My wife thought it was sad when I told her I used to play board games by myself as a kid

I received the Happy Days board game one Christmas in the late 70s. More often than not when I played it, I was by myself.

Growing up, I had a core group of friends with whom I used to spend a lot of time. In the summers, especially, we did a lot of stuff together.

But even when you're 9 years old and your options are somewhat limited, there are still times when you're not with your friends and you have to figure out how to amuse yourself.

The child psychologists call this "independent play," my oldest daughter informs me, and it's a skill I developed pretty early as the youngest (by far) of four siblings. I was rarely bored.

One of the things I used to do was to take one of the several board games I owned down from the shelf in my room and play it by myself.

Even if the game was designed for four players, I would put four pieces on the board, roll the dice, and take each piece's turn individually.

Amazingly, I never told Terry about this until recently. I say "amazingly" because I've known the woman for nearly 39 years and figured I had absolutely exhausted my childhood stories (and adulthood stories, for that matter) with her.

But apparently this had never come up before. When I mentioned it, she at first laughed, then she got a pitying look on her face, which was worse than the laughing.

She even took to our family text group chat to let the kids know their father had been a sad, lonely little boy who was forced to engage in multiplayer board games by himself for lack of friends.

But as I explained to the kids, it wasn't like that at all. It was just one of the things I did to amuse myself whenever Matt, Kevin, Jason, Todd, Mike or any of my other Harding Drive/Mapledale Road compatriots were unavailable.

The sad thing is, I now appear to have lost this ability. I'm typing this blog post on a Saturday night in our living room, only because I have completely finished today's (and most of tomorrow's) to-do list and wasn't sure what to do with myself.

Maybe it's time for a little solo Monopoly!

Running through neighbors' backyards probably carried less risk in the early 80s than it does now

Mr. Kevin C. Buchheit, the man who served as my Phone-a-Friend when I appeared on "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire" (true story).

Today is my friend Kevin's birthday. I've known Kev as long as I've known our mutual friend Matt, which is to say since about 1974.

Kev has always been one of my best friends. We shared a lot of common interests growing up, and I'm very proud of the work he did for 20 years as a U.S. Border Patrol agent (a job from which he is now officially retired).

Back when we were annoying adolescents, Kevin, Matt, Jason, Todd and others of our band of Harding Drive friends would do something we simply called "The Route." We would traverse the entire length of our street on foot, but not using the sidewalk.

No, we would do this by sneaking through people's backyards, one after another. This would involve hopping fences, pushing through pricker bushes, avoiding dogs, and generally trying to keep a low profile as we trespassed on everyone's property.

The logical question is why exactly we did this. And I have no logical answer.

I have no answer at all, actually, logical or otherwise. It was just something obnoxious that, had the Wickliffe Police ever been notified, probably would have landed us a stern talking-to, if not outright conviction on some low-level misdemeanor.

I believe I completed the entire Route on both sides of the street, though for whatever reason, the west side was easier to navigate than the east (fewer bush-related obstacles and lower fences, as I recall).

As I think back on this, I realize we were fortunate not to have been threatened by an angry neighbor at one point or another. Plenty of them probably owned firearms, and some were likely of the shoot-first, ask-questions-later variety.

But then, the people of Harding Drive tended to be a little more tight-knit in those days, and I'm guessing most would have recognized who we were (even in the darkness of a summer evening) and simply yelled at us, rather than putting a bullet in our backsides.

Nowadays? My sense is that just as many people own guns in 2024 as did 40 years ago, but now they seem to be less trusting and more likely to use them on unidentified intruders.

All of which is to say I'm thankful we survived long enough to celebrate Kevin's 55th birthday today. Lord knows, we pulled plenty of stupid stunts back then that could have kept at least one of us from making it this far.

Happy birthday, Kev.

You wake up one day and realize you've been sent back to the 80s...now what?

I'm a nostalgic guy who looks back fondly on his younger years.

The music to which I listen is one example of this. I have many modern/semi-current tracks in my library, and I try to listen to new stuff all the time, but there's no denying that my tastes lean very heavily toward the 1980s.

For every Harry Styles song I own, you'll find 30 by The Police, 25 by Men at Work, 20 by Duran Duran, and heck, probably five by Kajagoogoo.

I follow quite a few retro 80s accounts on Twitter because I enjoy the cultural memories they feature. One of those accounts recently posted a question that caught my interest: If you woke up one day and realized you had been transported back to the 80s, what would you do?

If you are younger than 33, the first thing you would do is wonder why you had been sent to a time before you were even born.

But if you are 53 like me, this becomes something to ponder. If I was sent back in time 40 years, and if, let's say, I was only allowed to stay there a few hours before returning to the present, what would be my priorities?

Here are the five things I would probably do:

(1) Sit and talk with my mom and dad (and if they happen to be visiting, my sisters and brother): Kids, once your parents are gone, you can't believe the things you would do to see them again. They would wonder why 13-year-old me had suddenly taken such a deep interest in having a protracted conversation with them, but it would be amazing. The first thing I would do is walk into the living room and talk with them.

(2) Head to the arcade: I would have to spend at least a half hour at Galaxy Gardens, our local game room. I expended untold amounts of time and money there and it was wonderful. I could do without people smoking indoors like they used to, but hey, that's the price you pay for the privilege of time travel.

(3) Turn on the TV: It wouldn't take long to cruise through the 36 channels we had from Continental Cablevision, so I would stop at MTV and watch some of those classic music videos when they were still fresh and new.

(4) Round up my friends: This would involve actually going to their houses and/or calling their landlines (gasp!), but any combination of Matt, Kevin, Jason, Mike, Todd, etc. I could rouse would be worth the effort. Even if we just headed down to the railroad tracks and hung out (it was much more fun than it sounds, believe me).

(5) Enjoy the freedom of being without a smartphone: I could easily do this now by simply leaving my phone at home, but it wouldn't be quite the same. There was something appealing about a world in which you were mostly unreachable most of the time and everyone was OK with that. As miraculous as the iPhone is as a technological innovation, it also comes with hidden shackles I wouldn't mind shedding for a few hours.

HONORABLE MENTION: 1983 was three years before I started dating Terry, so I might ride my bike to Robert Street on the other end of Wickliffe and see if I could catch a glimpse of her at home. This sort of stalking was frowned upon even then, however, so it might also lead to me spending a few hours in an early-80s jail cell.

I'm trying to remember how we planned vacations in the pre-Internet age

As I mentioned a few days ago, my family and I recently took a fun and relaxing vacation to Bethany Beach, Delaware. I booked our rental house through the VRBO app. We navigated the 9-hour drive using Waze. And of course we looked up information about local attractions online.

At no time during the planning or execution of this vacation did I speak directly with anyone. It was all facilitated by the little electronic miracles known as smartphones.

So now I'm wondering, how did we do all of this before, say, 1996? How did we plan vacations without the Internet? I simply cannot remember.

Here's a good example: At the end of my freshman, sophomore and junior years of college, I took trips to the beautiful city of Montreal. Each time I did this, I brought a friend (Kevin in 1989, Nate in 1990) or family member (nephew Mark in 1991) and we drove the 10+ hours from Wickliffe to Southern Quebec.

As I look back on it, I wonder:

• How did I make hotel reservations? That is, how did I know my hotel options, and where did I find the correct phone numbers to call? I couldn't just Google that information back then.
• How did I purchase (in advance) tickets for the two Montreal Expos baseball games we attended? Did I send them a letter or something? How did I know how much the tickets would be? Where did this information come from?
• How did I know the correct driving route to cover the 560 miles from my house to Downtown Montreal?

I can't remember how most of this was done, but I do know the answer to that last question.

The two options when it came to long drives back then were having a road atlas in the car with you and/or ordering a AAA TripTik. I always had the atlas handy, and at least once I remember getting the TripTik, which was a paper printout of very thorough driving directions provided by the helpful folks at the American Automobile Association.

Many of us back then had the special ability to decipher an absurdly detailed road atlas map while safely driving a car at 60MPH and trying to figure out exactly where we were and where we were going.

But what of the first two points? It's not like they listed Montreal phone numbers in the Cleveland Yellow Pages. How did I figure out who to call and what their numbers were?

I think the two answers were (a) library books, and (b) directory assistance.

Back when libraries mainly loaned out actual books, there was an array of destination-specific travel guides you could borrow when planning a trip. If these guides had been published in the previous 5-10 years, the phone numbers in them were probably going to be accurate. So those certainly helped.

There was also directory assistance. As long as you knew the area code of the place you wanted to go (in this case 514 for Montreal), you could dial <AREA CODE>-555-1212 and ask the nice person on the other end of the line for whatever phone number you needed.

There was a charge for this, of course, but it worked.

So I guess that's how I mapped out these trips to Montreal: Books, long-distance directory assistance, and large bound driving maps?

All I know is we somehow found our way there and back, and those vacations remain some of my most memorable.

But I'll be honest: I would much rather go the smartphone route. Fewer fines for overdue library books and no separate charges for each Google search. Technology has spoiled us far more than we probably realize.

Celebrating all things French today (except French fries, which aren't French anyway)

Today is Bastille Day. I'm always reminded that, on this day in 1989, my friend Kevin and I went to our high school French teacher's house unannounced and drank wine with her in celebration of the holiday.

I give Madame Whitehorn credit for being so gracious to us. She was under no obligation to invite two former students (who showed up unexpectedly on her doorstep) into her home on a mid-summer Friday morning.

Yet she did, and she remains one of my favorite teachers ever.

As I've mentioned, I took 14 years of French classes between the Wickliffe City Schools and John Carroll University, so I have a deep interest in French language and culture. It also doesn't hurt that, as a First World War buff, I have a relatively detailed knowledge of the geography of Northeastern France, where so many battles were fought.

By the way, contrary to what you may think you know about France's military history, the French army was a tough out in WW1. The Germans had deep respect for their tenacity and fighting capacity.

I've visited France twice, and both times I was in Paris. I've only scratched the surface of things to see and do there, but I do also someday hope to make it "en province," as they say, and experience some of the non-Parisian parts of the country.

The closest most Ohioans get to all things French is visiting some part of Francophone Canada. I have been to Montreal four times, and while it's lovely, it's not the real thing.

Nor should it be. It is a wonderful city with a mystique and culture all its own.

French people have a reputation for being rude and snooty, and I'm sure many are (just as many Americans are). But in the combined four days I've spent in France, the people I met were nothing but kind and gracious.

That includes the French woman whose job it apparently was to stand in the men's room while I peed at the Gare de Nord train station in 1999. I don't know if she kept any notes on customer behavior, but if she did, I'm sure she noted my exceptional cleanliness and respect for French urinals.

Remembering Dave Sasek on the Fourth of July

This is Dave.

Earlier this year a childhood friend of mine named Dave Sasek passed away in a car accident. I hadn't spoken to Dave in a number of years, but like many who graduated from Wickliffe in the late 80s/early 90s, the tragedy of it really knocked me for a loop.

The years in which I hung around with Dave were relatively short, starting maybe in sixth grade and lasting into the early part of high school. He lived on the next street over from me and we played football together.

I'm thinking of Dave today in particular because of an episode that happened on this day in (I want to say) 1984 or so. Dave and I, along with our friends Matt and Kevin, attended the Wickliffe fireworks and were walking home afterward, since none of us could yet drive.

We passed a yard in which some little kids were playing with sparklers. Dave paused, looked at them, and said very matter of factly, "You'd better stop that, or the police are going to come and set you on fire."

It was stupid, obnoxious, and utterly perplexing. And I couldn't stop laughing. When you're a 14-year-old boy, trust me when I say you laugh at dumb things like this constantly.

Yet it was right in line with Dave's twisted-but-intelligent sense of humor. He did stuff like that all the time, and he was one of the few people who could make me laugh on cue.

Dave also turned me on to the music of The Doors, and we played quite a few hours of Atari in his basement together. That was where we found the secret dot in the Atari game "Adventure" and discovered the message hidden in the game by the designer...quite the find at the time.

Anyway, as  I said, we lost track of each other post-graduation, but I was incredibly sorry to hear what happened to him. I just may light a sparkler in his memory tonight (and believe me when I say I'll be giggling in his honor the whole time).

I didn't used to require a running fan to sleep at night. Now I do.

 

I am, by and large, a very good sleeper. I fall asleep quickly, and for the most part I stay asleep.

I do, however, have two requirements:

1. The room must be relatively cool. I do not sleep well in the heat at all.
2. There must be a fan running.

#1 has always been true for me. #2 only became a thing within the last decade.

I don't recall how it happened, but at some point I turned into one of those people who must have white noise in order to sleep. There is a small white window fan on the floor near my side of the bed that I switch on every night as Terry and I are settling down.

I realize I'm not alone in this and that many people also like to have a fan going at night. I just wish I still had the same championship-level sleeping ability that one time allowed me to get three full hours of sleep while laying on my friend Kevin's concrete driveway in the middle of a hot summer night (this is absolutely true).

Maybe it's because I've hit middle age, I don't know. The fact is, to get the rest I need, that fan has to be humming along all night.

My son Jared is the same way. It is not the only curse I have passed down to him, but along with my addiction to nasal mist, it is among the worst. I'm sorry, buddy.

I live in a little bubble where it's easy to forget there are still people who smoke

Like many people of my generation, I grew up in a house where both parents smoked. That was just kind of the way it was. Many teachers smoked, store clerks smoked, and even your little league coaches smoked. It seemed like most adults smoked.

There was never actually a time, though, when "most" U.S. adults smoked. The peak year for American smoking, according to several sources, was 1965, when a reported 45% of Americans 18 or older were regular smokers. That figure has since fallen to about 14% as of 2019.

By all accounts, that's a good thing. Smoking remains "the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States," says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Common sense tells you it's simply not a good thing to do to your body.

(I do, however, still love the quote from Ricky Romano, a neighborhood kid with whom I grew up who seemingly smoked from the time he was in early elementary school. When my friend Kevin said to him, "Hey, Rick, smoking causes cancer," Rick calmly replied, "Ice cubes cause cancer.")

Still, 14% of U.S. adults is a lot of people, something along the lines of 34 million individuals. And the thing is, I rarely see any of them actually doing it.

I work for a non-smoking company, so there aren't people standing outside of our buildings puffing away (though a few do congregate across the street to light up). No one in my family smokes, thankfully. And with most indoor public spaces now designated as no smoking areas, it's not like it used to be in the 70s when housewives would smoke while pushing their carts up and down the aisles of grocery stores.

The effect is that, when I see someone smoking or smell it as a car passes by, it takes me by surprise for a split second. There's a part of me that wonders every time, "Wait, what's going on?" Then my brain flashes back to 1981 and I realize what's happening. "Oh, he's smoking. That's right! That's still a thing!"

The point, I guess, is it's amazing how different the world is today, and how insulated our individual existences can be that we forget people still engage in an activity we associate with the distant past.

This is one of the few times that I'm mostly grateful for my sheltered life.