Fun and Games Dept

It was the summer of 1976 that we first attended “Vacation Bible School” at the local church. My sister and I, to the best of my knowledge, were baptized as Methodists, just like my mom and dad. I believe I was baptized in the village, and not at the small church in town where my grandmother played the organ. I have no idea why this is the case, other than maybe the fact that my grandmother’s brother-in-law was the minister in the church where she didn’t play the organ.

My sister is two years younger than me, almost to the day. Her kindergarten teacher was also the wife of a minister, at the “Church of Christ’ in town. The church is flanked by the cemetery on two sides; there’s a decently sized house to the east of the church where the minister and his wife lived. They adopted two children. Even though the whole church and school thing was kind of a taboo mingling back in the 1970s, somehow my sister’s kindergarten teacher convinced my mother that we should give that church a try. They weren’t Methodist, the church where my grandmother played the organ had closed, and my grandmother’s brother-in-law had retired from ministering. So, why not.

The church was kinda big on youth stuff. There’d be Vacation Bible School and then there’d be youth group and we were all promised our very own Bible once we were able to recite all the books of the Old and New Testament in order without hesitation.

The youth group segregated the boys from the girls in activities a lot of the time. It’d usually end up that four of us boys would participate in activities that involved sports, field trips, and worksheets where Jesus was depicted being pious in ditto purple. It was the summer of 1976 that the church took the four of us boys to Marineland, a fun filled family place in Niagara Falls, Ontario. The four of us piled into the backseat of the minister’s Mercury with burgundy Landau roof. He had an FM radio that displayed a “STEREO” indicator in amber when tuned to the beautiful music station out of Syracuse. The night before the trip to “Marineland”, the four of us, me, Billy, Milt, and one other boy that I think was named Mike, spent the night at the minister’s house so we could get an early start on the three hour trip the next morning. After washing my face and hands while the minister shaved and make sure I cleaned up, I went downstairs. They had a big grand piano that he let me play around with while he got the other boys ready for the trip.

I vividly remember praying a lot during the trip. We prayed before getting in the car. We prayed at lunch. We prayed for snack .We prayed at Carrols Restaurant on the way home. The minister’s wife was originally from Alaska and she was what I would call a “husky nice”. I also remember Marineland in Niagara Falls, Ontario. One of the “killer whales” was named Shamu and I bought my Mom a souvenir which was a squirrel holding salt and pepper shakers. I also remember the drive and how the other boys were playing a game in the car where we closed our eyes and guessed the next kind of car passing us on the Thruway. Milt would always say it was “a rig”. I felt like a normal little boy at that moment, a feeling I never really felt all that much growing up.

We suddenly stopped going to that church and we didn’t go to any church for a long time. Turns out someone in the church told us we’d be burning with the Devil because we weren’t “dunked” when we were baptized. I never learned all the books of the Old and New Testament well enough to recite them. My Bible is from Kmart.

But I still remember the trip to Marineland with a smile. It would be when I was in eighth grade that my dad would declare I needed to be a member of the church choir. I obediently joined and enjoyed the experience where my grandmother’s brother-in-law was no longer a minister. I’ve always loved making music. Right before confirmation, the minister told me the Methodist church had no issues with the homosexual, just in case I wanted to know. I was a junior in high school at the time. Happy to hear this, I still lost my interest in organized religion.

While many have the best of intentions, the human spirit can not capture , comprehend, or relay the secrets of the Universe. It’s all a part of our experience.

It’s when we think of our time with “God”, and we subsequently smile, is when we know our true connection.

As a former radio guy I have a focused interest on what I hear on media. I’m hyper critical of podcasts (more on that in a future blog post) and I enjoy detecting trends in obvious use of automation on today’s radio airwaves.

In the Midwest, Chicagoland in particular, advertisers really LOVE their jingles. Jingles were fading out of favor when I left radio in 2004 but they’re still very prevalent on the radio stations I listen to throughout the Midwest.

This video from TikTok made me laugh out loud (I really LOL’d) today because it is very, very true. You just can’t escape the “Midwest National Anthem”.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma showed an “enhanced” threat of convective activity for the northern half of Illinois today. It seemed like the perfect day to take the afternoon off from work to do some storm chasing.

We were out the door by 12:30 PM.

Now, I’m not a professional storm chaser by any means. As a private pilot I have a good idea of what weather is trying to do, so usually I can find something interesting that Mother Nature is up to while out and about on one of these missions. It took us a few hours to get to the northwest corner of the state. My husband asked where all these storms were, as the sky was clear, the sun was bright, and the temperature was hot. To the northwest I could see a smattering of clouds building on the horizon. I remarked, “we’ll see something soon”.

Within the hour, in Wisconsin, about 20 miles north of Galena, Illinois, the sky started getting very dark.

I decided we needed to keep heading northwest, so I started following back roads as displayed by the Jeep Cherokee’s GPS. It took us over some beautiful southern Wisconsin farmland. We were right where Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa come together.

As we reached the top of a hill, I could see the clouds rolling in. We parked the car with a wonderful view of a shelf cloud forming.

The storm felt so close it was like we could almost reach out and touch it.

The wind started picking up and pretty soon small hail briefly made an appearance before being replaced by crazy amounts of rain and much higher winds. I decided it was time to follow the storm from behind, and we back tracked along our route. If I had continued further in our original direction, where it was still raining very hard, I’d be going in and out of valleys along the Mississippi River. The weather radio was warning about flash flooding. I didn’t want to be part of that.

Unfortunately (in case terms), no tornado activity was to be part of this storm. Earl took some video of the rain and wind while I drove us along the back roads.

Overall, it was a great storm chasing experience and we had a fun time together. We meandered across the prairie to get back home. All in all, our little adventure was 10 1/2 hours in the car.

There’s a reason we go away when I take vacation time. It makes it harder for work to get at me and the pressures of the current state of the country to get to us. I took three days of staycation this week and I’m headed back to work on Monday.

I’m already planning my next sabbatical.

While driving through Northwest Illinois, I took a couple of snaps of “Americana”.

These days I spend a lot of time on the balcony. The weather is decent (albeit a bit humid and hot, even at 9:30 PM at night) but the view is nice and there’s few bugs here in the city.

I never thought I would get sick of watching television but sometimes I feel the need to just sit on the balcony and do very little. As I remind my team at work from time to time, we may all be used to working from home but we’re still working under unusual circumstances. There’s a subtle increase in stress levels; COVID-19, politics, riots, all of the angst in the country. It all adds up.

I sit on the balcony and I watch the flights into O’Hare follow a shorter than usually approach because of the lower amount of air traffic these days. Watching airplanes always makes me smile.

I’m taking some time off later this week because I haven’t used vacation time since February and I have a lot of time left. It’ll be our first “staycation” in maybe forever. I’ll probably spend time on the balcony when I’m not flying airplanes or chasing thunderstorms.

We all need to chill.

This is still one of my favorite songs of all time. From 1987, here is Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield and “What Have I Done To Deserve This?”.

In October it’ll be a year since we were at Walt Disney World in Florida. It’s not uncommon for us to go this long without visiting the House of the Mouse, but with this whole pandemic thing I’ve been thinking a lot about vacations and the like.

One of my most enjoyable experiences at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World is “Soarin’”. I love this attraction; the sensation of flying is awesome, the newest film is very well done, and I really enjoy the music and the scents they blow in your face on cue with the film.

Earl is playing “Catan” on his iPad right now and the music reminds me a little bit about Soarin’ at Disney. I’m ready for this pandemic to be over so we can get on with some fun and frivolity again.

But we’ll do it on our terms, when it’s safe, and we can enjoy it without worrying about getting sick.