Portlandia And Points Beyond

Posted from Delta flight 1228, Salt Lake City to Indianapolis.

It’s a little like a foreign country up here in the northwest. Not quite. But almost.

Monday, Micki’s uncle Bob dropped us in downtown Portland. We walked a block to the Bike Gallery and rented two cruisers to explore the city. When we hit the streets, motorists, pedestrians, and even streetcar drivers were so patient and friendly, we knew we were in a cycling paradise.

We made a B-line to Voodoo Doughnuts. I ordered up a Maple Bacon Bar (a caramel-iced donut topped with 2 slices of bacon) and an Old Dirty Bastard (a classic yeast donut, drizzled with chocolate & peanut butter, then encrusted with Oreo’s). Micki went for “The Dirt,” (think dirt pudding on a donut).  As we settled at a picnic table outside, a car decorated with elaborate, demonic sculptures pulled up. The driver, a slim, middle-aged man in jeans and sandals propped open the door so all could hear KC & the Sunshine Band’s “Shake Your Booty” blaring from within. He donned a monkey mask and began dancing in the street.

Decadent donuts and some dude in a monkey mask dancing in the street: “Shake, shake- shake. Shake-shake-shake. Shake your bootie. Shake your boooootie.”

Yeah, not exactly breakfast in Indiana.

In the satirical TV show “Portlandia,” they say, “Portland is a city where young people go to retire.” Most jokes begin with a grain of truth. There are several grains of truth in that line.

Portland is a city where everyone has a dog or a bicycle, or both. It’s a city where, like its hip sister to the north, Seattle, people are pissed if you smoke cigarettes in public but fine if you’re smoking weed. There’s seemingly a micro or nano brewery on every corner. And across the street is an interesting restaurant of one sort or another that cures its own bacon or grows its organic arugula on the rooftop of their building. And across the street from that is a left-of-center gift shop or art gallery. It’s a town where gays and lesbians walk arm-in-arm or hold hands and nobody cares or stares. Make eye contact with pretty much anyone and they smile back, warm and welcoming. It’s a town where you can take a streetcar around the city center, light rail to the burbs, or Amtrak north to Seattle or south to California. And all three rail systems are clean and well tended. (Where’s the mass-transit stench of stale urine so familiar in Manhattan’s subway or Chicago’s L?) Wanna backpack the forest, hike the Columbia River gorge, ski Mt. Hood? It’s all nearby.

They plant roses in their highway medians and exit ramps, they cover their high-rise rooftops with gardens, refuse to “poison” their city water with fluoride and most overpass graffiti reads something like, “May the world be free of suffering.” They’re on the cutting edge of land planning, environmentalism is a cornerstone, and the organic and local food movements – unquestioned. Portland and Seattle seem not to give a flying-fuck what the rest of America is doing. They’re gonna do it their way.

So for a Hoosier, yeah, it’s kind-of a foreign country. And for this Hoosier, it’s kinda paradise. But no, it’s not the America I live my days in.

 

Chris & Micki on Purget Sound

Micki and I took Amtrak down to Portland from Edmonds, Washington last Sunday morning. A stones throw from the sailboat where we were staying up there on Puget Sound, you could take a ferry to various islands, jump Amtrak to Seattle, or enjoy the lovely, pedestrian-friendly town about the size of Noblesville with its old movie theater showing first run films, killer restaurants and coffee shops lining the streets, and farmers markets and breweries making life just that much happier. Everything is so well cared for, so thoughtfully tended, it’s almost a little creepy. Almost. Simply because it’s so foreign.

Seattle is Portland’s rival for hippest city in America. But no need to fight about it. I’ll happily take a condo in both city’s and just split time between the two.

The previous Saturday we took in Pike’s Market and dined on a deck beneath the 5-story high Ferris wheel overlooking Puget Sound. That night our Edmonds friends, Chris and Janelle, who used to live on Logan Street back home in Noblesville took us to a Sounders soccer game in Seattle. Imagine the number of people who show up for a Colts game showing up instead for a professional soccer game. There were 53,000 people in the Seahawk’s stadium. And not because there was nothing else to do. Literally right next door the Mariners were playing the Yankees in Safeco field.

American football exudes militaristic imagery. Two teams at war in helmets and uniforms. “Bombs” are thrown, defenses “blitz,” from the German war term “blitzkrieg,” and there are “neutral zones” and “trenches,” ala World War I.

 

Micki @ waterfalls along the Columbia River

Not soccer. The fans stream in with scarves, randomly chanting team ditties in unison, strangers picking up the tune and hopping and chanting along with like-minded strangers. Chris reminds me that to most of the world, soccer is a winter sport, so the scarves make more sense elsewhere. But no matter, on this 70-degree day scarves representing the local team are required wear. They’re part of a series of rituals in this sport that are not militaristic, but tribalistic. It is not so much standing on the ramparts watching two armies clash, but more a shoulder-to-shoulder hugging, dancing and chanting ‘round a Celtic or African tribal campfire in preparation for a gang fight. It is both more primitive and more gentile than American football. Earthier. Friendlier. Less contrived.

These are familiar rituals in the northwest. But not so much in my home state. If you’re wanting to flee conservative America, this is your homeland, whether you know it or not. I can’t see myself retiring to Florida and eating the blue-plate special of salisbury steak and overcooked green beans at a Morrison’s cafeteria, but I can see myself retiring here and eating grilled fish & clams late at a craft brewer’s tap room.

On Wednesday I confirmed our flight home and gave Micki the rundown as she headed upstairs with a cup of coffee in her hand. “Fly out of Seattle-Tacoma at 1:00, layover in Salt Lake City, then arrive in Indy at 10:23.” She smiled and shook her head, “No baby. I’m not going back. I’m staying here. You go on without me.”

We both know better. But it’s nice to fantisize about a new life in this foreign land all the same.

At The Foundling Wall

In Medieval times foundling wheels came into use in Europe. They were lazy-susan-type devices built into the outer stone wall of a church as places to abandon babies. Mothers who couldn’t afford to keep an infant or whose lives were too fractured to accommodate it’s tending could leave their child there. The baby was placed within the wheel from outside the church and then the wheel turned, transferring the child safely inside where a priest would find it. It was a way to let go of a precious burden without doing it physical harm.

The wall of the building where these devices were installed came to be known as foundling walls.

During the past two years I’ve written several times about my journey through separation and divorce, making this blog a bit of a raw diary. From the personal comments and emails I get, I know this has made some friends uncomfortable, but this organization of my thoughts and experiences has been a comfort to me, and as it turns out, to others as well.

I have been handed many books and self-help prescriptions from friends during this time, but nothing has spoken more directly to me than Thik Nhat Hans book “Reconciliation.” It’s not necessarily about reconciliation in marriage, but personal reconciliation with the inescapable realities of life.

I dog-eared a page from the book that lists the Buddha’s Five Remembrances and underlined two that struck me deeply:

“All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of a nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. I cannot keep anything. I came here empty-handed, and I go empty-handed.”

And,

“My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.”

In the Vietnamese temple in Indianapolis where I’ve spent many Saturday mornings in the past two years, we’re called to meditate on a simple counting from 1 to 10 as a way to clear our mind of chaos. I did that for a long time, and still do. But Thik Nhat Hans called for meditating on well-wishing, compassion for others, and letting go of personal burdens. I went time and again to those two “Remembrances.” And so I’ve spent many of those meditation sessions within the towering temple, with the Buddha before me, making small mental journeys to a foundling wall in my mind to give away the things I can no longer tend. The things that are not really mine.

I made up my own rules . . . or ethics about the foundling wall.

The foundling wall is a place where you let go of a piece of yourself, a part of yourself that speaks to your soul, something you built or nurtured with love and diligence – but that has become a painful burden to you, or to others you love. No one can force you to the foundling wall. To have something taken is theft. You have to give it freely. And no one can make the journey for you. You must go to the wall of your own resolve, and you must go alone.

I am a persistent person, often persisting beyond reason and logic. During this difficult time I found myself hurt repeatedly by a two close friends. I kept trying to reclaim or nurture these fractured friendships — beyond reason and logic, blowing on the flickering embers of our connections, offering olive branches only to have them slapped from my hand or left to wither. At the same time I complicated the friendships by forcing my own weaknesses and failings against my friends’ hurtful actions. I eventually realized I needed to let go. I needed to accept that we wouldn’t really be friends anymore, but simply acquaintances. That was a hard thing to do — to accept that two people I loved and had shared so much with would not be my friends any longer.

But there was peace in letting go of those relationships. Yes, there was hurt, but also peace to be found in going to that foundling wall in my heart, ­­­ kneeling down and laying those friendships in that turret-like device, symbolically turning it and letting them go. No pronouncement is needed at the foundling wall, just resolve to love and feel compassion for those you let go.

and count to 10 . . . and count to 10 . . . and count to 10 . . .

It’s not just a Buddhist calling. I learned it first as a Christian prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

While many parents of the middle ages were no doubt driven to the foundling wall by desperation, others must have had ample time to reflect and understand that while they could physically keep and care for the child, something in the failing of their stars and their circumstances was not enough. I can’t imagine their personal journey. But I can imagine mine.

I am a carpenter of sorts. I build things. There are things in my home that I built with my own hands, like an oak porch swing. I designed it in my own mind, imagining its form, the joints, the flush-finished brass screws to be polished smooth along with the sanding of the wood. It would all be built from salvaged wood, every piece of it pulled from a dumpster or garbage can. The discarded oak chalk tray from a school where I once taught would be the back rail of the seat. A stack of half-inch oak slats pulled from a garbage can would make the seat bottom and the back. Pieces of quarter-sawn oak baseboard from a demolished house would make its armrests. Then I built it. For years my children sat there as I read to them when they were small, or they swung hard and wild with childhood friends, pumping their legs with reckless abandon, laughing, or they curled up and napped there on a long summer afternoon, or cuddled with their first love as a teenager. My friends drank beer in that swing on warm summer nights and many a thunderstorm was watched from that swinging seat while lightening crackled across Old Town.

It’s just an object made from wood no one wanted. How does something like that worm its way into your soul? But in the division of property after the divorce, it will go. It is not mine. I cannot keep it.

It is a small item in the scheme of things, but a precious child of mine none-the-less. And so in yet another way, I knelt at that foundling wall in my heart, the place I take the things I cannot keep, no matter how much I want to. And there I gave it away. It was not mine. Even though I conceived and built it, it was never really mine. At age 53 I am grown up enough  — just barely, to do such a thing – to let go of yet another piece of my identity.

and count to 10 . . . and count to 10 . . . and count to 10 . . .

But then a miracle!

An email arrived one day that said, “Why don’t you keep the porch swing? It belongs with the house.” She too has been to the foundling wall, the one in her own heart. And suddenly I find myself on the interior, receiving side of the wall while she kneels outside. I had not even imagined the easy return of this thing whose loss I had totally accepted.

But be warned: you can neither count on nor dare imagine the return of things left at the foundling wall. If you are prone to such mystical hopes and magical thinking, as I have been most of my life, then you do not belong at the foundling wall. Best keep clinging against reason to things that aren’t yours ­– that cannot be reasonably kept. Best torture yourself, your family, your friends with your senseless clinging than allow those corrosive hopes of reclamation into your mind.

There are so many people and things I have said goodbye to at the foundling wall these past two and a half years; family members, friendships, and possessions I’d nurtured with love and attached great expectation to. But that trying journey is now in the past. Regular, relatively peaceful day-to-day life surrounds me now and lies ahead as far as I can see. I knew that life once before. And it has returned to me now, in part because of the things I let go of.

Protecting a Neighborhood

Here we go again.

Yet another real estate investor is trying to rezone yet another home on Conner Street. This time it’s Larry J. Ley. He wants to turn the home at 1135 Conner St. into a commercial property. It’s been a residence since it was built nearly 100 years ago.

There’s a troubling uniformity to people who try to rezone Old Town Noblesville homes to businesses. They know little about the place and haven’t a clue what it’s like to live here.

As best I can tell, Mr. Ley fits the mold. He doesn’t live in Old Town nor does he appear to live in a neighborhood where anyone will ever try to put a commercial use up against his own home. In other words, he won’t personally have to live with the circumstances he seeks to impose on others.

Appearing to underline his misunderstanding, Mr. Ley met with the Noblesville Preservation Alliance board recently and promised he would take good care of the house. He perhaps thought if he promised to be a good steward of the home the group would support him. But this isn’t about the preservation of old houses. It’s about families and neighborhoods.

Why does the neighborhood want the home to stay residential? For the same reason such business/residential mixes are banned by deed restriction in every modern subdivision in Noblesville, and from the very neighborhoods where Mr. Ley has homes in Carmel and on Morse Reservoir in Noblesville.

Old Town residents are no different than people living in those protected neighborhoods. Neighbors know each other. Their children play together. Evenings and weekends they might end up talking on someone’s front porch or share a beer around a patio campfire. When on vacation, neighbors feed each other’s pets and watch over their homes. These are the building blocks of community.

Where businesses exist amid neighborhoods, it hard for residents to know the businessperson who goes home each evening to a different neighborhood. No child at the business will play with yours. You don’t share dinners with them and don’t help each other in times of need. Strangers come and go from the business all day. It sits empty at night. The yard is often a paved parking lot with a dumpster that’s emptied in the middle of the night. The business might even buy the house next door and demolish it for more parking. Subtract a second neighbor. And with each, subtract a little sense of community within the neighborhood.

Not much chance this will ever happen to Mr. Ley at his leafy Carmel address or his waterfront home. But he’s still looking to change the rules and the lay of the land for families surrounding the home he wants to rezone on Conner.

There hasn’t been a commercial rezone on the residential stretch of Conner in 25 years, and that last one was done to save a significant piece of architecture from demolition. In those 25 years, another home that was business actually went back to residential. That means there’s been no net increase in business in the residential stretch of Conner in over 30 years.

And that’s not a fluke. It’s the result of 3 decades of vigilance.

Families here have had to marshal their efforts time and again to protect their neighborhood. During the last attempted rezone, 7 years ago, I helped canvass the neighborhood, finding that nearly all residents from Maple to Logan opposed the rezone. I also found that even the businesses already here don’t want more businesses. They already arrive at work many days to find strangers parked in their parking lots. House another business in a tight residential area and see parking woes multiply. That’s why even the Presbyterian Church opposed the last attempt at a Conner Street rezone.

And Mr. Ley is trying to create his new business location at the end of a dead-end alley. Heaven help that block of families on both Conner and Maple who will now have Mr. Ley’s customers struggling up and down this dead-end alley, turning around in driveways and blocking garage doors – something they’ve already experienced in the past. Such things happen in other areas of Old Town where businesses have been allowed to locate among family homes.

What happens if Mr. Ley succeeds in getting a rezone? It would set a precedent. If you say yes to this property, what about the house next door? How could you say no? And then the next one . . .

It’s easy to imagine most of Conner and 10^th – our main thoroughfares gradually overtaken by businesses, gouging a commercial X through residential Old Town, cleaving it into 4 separate pods and bringing businesses up against the private back yards of one side of Logan, Maple, 9^th & 11^th Streets. Bringing business up against those private back yards is something that’s seldom discussed during these rezones attempts. What you do on one busy street will echo to a back yard behind it.

Do that and we’d start looking like Westfield and Cicero, towns that have done an embarrassingly bad job of protecting the calling cards of their small town atmosphere­ – their entry thoroughfares.

And Mr. Ley told the preservation group the house he wants to rezone was in bad condition, suggesting he saved it. I showed the house to a client of mine right before Mr. Ley bought it. I’ve restored 4 homes myself and have a deep background in preservation. I found the house in excellent condition. If it was in such bad condition, why did he pay the highest price paid for a residence in Old Town since 2006?

And though Noblesville’s Planning Department officials told Mr. Ley that they wouldn’t support his rezone request, word on the street is he continues to throw money at the plan. Neighbors tell me he’s hired construction crews who are busy replacing original detail on the home. And he’s hired a local attorney and a surveyor to help him make his rezone case to the city.

But boards of zoning appeals and plan commissions were not created to fix overconfidence or feelings of entitlement or even ignorance. They were created to fix legitimate land-use need and hardship. If hardship exists for Mr. Ley, it is self-manufactured. 

Most of the Old Town families who are rebuilding these neighborhoods don’t have pockets deep enough to hire attorneys every few years to fight to protect their neighborhood. Hardly seems fair, but that’s the way of the world. They’ll have to count on their elected officials to protect the environment where they’re raising their children and the quality of life they’ve worked so hard to build.

Standing In The Doorway

We are experiencing a sea change in public opinion regarding gay marriage. It’s happening so rapidly the dwindling ranks of those digging in their heels against it must feel overwhelmed. Watching and listening to these naysayers has become a curiosity of mine.

They remind me a little of George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door, symbolically refusing to let black students enter the white school during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It’s similar not just because he was trying to deprive a class of people of their civil rights, but also because it was a bold taking of the wrong moral side of an issue at the precise moment that side began sliding down the slippery hill toward defeat.

Those who oppose gay marriage continue to pull the debate toward broad critiques of homosexuality. Does God approve or disapprove? Is it natural or unnatural? Will it destroy marriage as we know it?

The American public believes those are completely reasonable questions for an individual to ask himself, but they increasingly believe that has little to do with the public debate in a free society. They believe those are issues for personal reflection and personal choices.

I posted a pro-gay marriage comment on Facebook in the past year. An old friend commented, “Nope. The Bible says it’s wrong.”

There’s not much “live and let live,” in that reply. Instead it’s all, “My Bible says X, Y or Z, so I’m just gonna have to insist you obey my beliefs.”

I don’t get that.

We don’t try to regulate what church our neighbors attend, if any, or whether they and their lover are married or not, all of which have social implications. We consider those issues private business. Why treat marriage differently?

When I taught school, it was clear that some of my former students were taught by their parents to hate or at least disrespect Jews, or Catholics, or African Americans. And I shudder to think of some of the dangerous, fringe religious beliefs some people hold dear in this country. But none of that can be made illegal. There’s no way to force other people to accept my view of the world.

The simple truth is, what someone else believes, deep in his heart is none of our business to regulate. Even if we think the practice of those beliefs, like bigotry, are damaging to our culture, at some point you have to step back and accept that as long as the belief does no physical harm nor infringes on another’s rights, it can’t and shouldn’t be regulated.

A question I always want to ask the gay marriage naysayers: If you think gay marriage is bad, why not go ahead and teach your children it’s bad and for goodness sakes don’t enter into a gay relationship, but other than that, why can’t you just mind your own business? Why do you think you have the right to make such personal decisions for other people?

What two consenting adults do with their lives is none of our business, no matter how wrong one’s individual faith might say it is. Christianity teaches that adultery is wrong. Yet it’s not illegal. To control that, you’d have to start meddling in people’s bedrooms. That anyone would want to do that to heterosexuals or homosexuals is at best, bizarre.

This is a fundamental civil rights issue. Which means it’s not as simple as being called to look the other way when you disagree with the exercise of someone’s rights. You sometimes have to openly accept it. That’s the price of living in a free society. We have to tolerate interacting with things we disapprove of. That’s the cornerstone of the Golden Rule: treat people the way you want to be treated.

When civil rights legislation was passed in the 1950s and ‘60s, many organizations tolerated the laws, but wanted to retain the right to prohibit African Americans from membership or service. Gays and lesbians face the same sort of discrimination today. There are those who want to be able to exclude them from association or refuse them retail or business service. In a free society, how can we allow this?

In your personal choices, discriminate all you want. But in the public realm, everyone must be treated like a full-fledged citizen.

Those who oppose not only gay marriage but also broad civil rights for gays remind me of severe male cultures in the Middle East; societies controlled by men who insist a woman cover her face or wear a burka, or forbid they attend school. They actions say, “My moral view is so superior that I will not tolerate you living your life as you see fit. It’s an insult to me. So if you won’t willingly do what I say, I’ll pass laws that force you.”

Which brings us to another puzzling thing about the naysayers. Those trying to insure that government forbid gays and lesbians the right to marry are generally conservative ­– part of a political movement that claims to want to, “get government off our backs.”

        

Mind-boggling.

They don’t want the EPA telling them that they can’t fill in the wetlands on their farm, but they want the government to tell certain kinds of people whom they’re allowed to marry? They apparently want less government involvement unless it’s something they personally want to control. And then, they really, really want control over others.

But it seems apparent that this thinking is dying. And the speed of its approaching death is accelerating. The idea that people went to the polls just a few years ago in California to make sure another adult of legal age couldn’t live in a loving, legal relationship with another adult of legal age seems downright primitive. That’s how much things have changed in just a few years.

So much has changed so fast. And for the sake of good Americans who for so long have felt they had to live their lives in the shadows, it’s about time.

Beyond my personal satisfaction that the electorate is moving toward an opinion I’ve held for a long time, I was especially proud of the recent debate before the Supreme Court. Listening to court recordings of the proceedings on the Defense of Marriage Act, I felt a renewed pride in my country.

We’re so quick to label those in power as uncaring and conniving, but from both sides of the argument, I heard intelligent people making intelligent and emotion arguments for and against gay marriage. I heard Supreme Court justices whittle and needle at those arguments with thoughtful debate; the very way you’d hope they’d challenge any argument. None of these sounded like bad people trying to abuse power or trick anyone. A decade ago, I think the debate would have been less admirable. Even the public face of the opposition is softening. We’ve definitely covered some ground as a nation since the Defense of Marriage Act was passed, an act that was passed with clear malice toward a class of Americans, with the primary intent of depriving them of their civil rights.

However the Court rules on this particular law, the trends of public opinion over the past decade are moving in one direction and picking up speed. So much so, it makes my heart hurt just a little for the naysayers, the ones today, “standing in the doorway.” The world is moving past them with empathy and acceptance for gay Americans. One day people will look back and wonder at this time when instead of opening their hearts with love and understanding, the naysayers dug in their heels and clung to doorframe.

Spring Broke: The Perks of Kurt

At right; my gal Sal. The photographer, Emily is reflected.

Everybody said I was crazy to agree to take 5 teenage girls (my daughter and 4 of her friends) on spring break to Panama City Beach last year. I assumed there’d be some headaches, but I was trying to be a good dad.

We left Indiana at 1:30 a.m. Friday morning and arrived in Panama City Beach mid-afternoon. The condo high-rise was nice; security guards at the entrance, clean elevators and hallways, lots of tile floors and granite countertops. The five 17-year-olds and I settled into a pretty amiable routine; they ran off to the beach and I cleaned up after them.

My Saturday, 3/31/12 Facebook Post: "Lesson #1 – When you're the lone adult on vacation with 5 teenagers: Your main job is closing open bags of chips and throwing away abandoned cans of half-consumed soda.”

My friend Shannon Plumer comments on FB, “If that’s your only problem, count yourself lucky.”

It would not be my only problem.

My Sunday, 4/1/12 Facebook Post: “Lesson #2 - When you're the lone adult on vacation with 5 teenagers: You discover awesome junk food. Abigail Fisher introduced me to Jalapeño Cheet-os. I now have a new guilty pleasure. You'll know me by my orange fingertips and the pollen-like orange flakes in my mustache.”

My Monday, 4/2/13 Facebook Post: “Lesson #3 - When you're the lone adult on vacation with 5 teenagers: I go for an early morning walk on the beach. The sites and sounds are beautiful . . . mostly. But I quickly discover that college kids have shitty taste in beer and are serial-litterers. Here and there, along the beach, time and again I see three things suspiciously clustered in the sand together: empty beer cans + discarded underwear + empty packs of cigarettes = I don't' wanna know the details - and I HOPE it's the college kids!”

At 11:40 my cell phone chirped: “Are you in Panama City Beach?” It was my old college buddy, Scott Brown.

I reply, “Yes Sir. Trapped with 5 teenage girls and 2 boys just showed up! Could use some adult conversation. You around?”

We arrange to get together the next day.

Our beach strip was crawling with Noblesville kids. I let the girls throw a party and sequestered myself in my room, watched TV and worked on my computer. After a couple hours the music got a little loud. I waded into the mass of kids and turned the music down, discovered a bottle of vodka on the counter and promptly told the girls, "It’s time for everyone to leave." As kids were gathering their stuff there was a knock on the door. It was condo security asking that we turn down the music. "Thanks. Sorry. It’s already turned off."

Tending these girls was like walking 5 oversized dogs all at once. Useless
leash in hand, I got drug down to the sidewalk time and again. I'll not
name them in full, for the sake of their futures . . . and to protect
myself from neglect charges. From left: KT, Sally, Josie, Emily, Abi.

My Tuesday, 4/3/12 Facebook Post: “Lesson #4 - Teens and college-age folks like to scream. They will stand at the edge of their balcony and scream to the great beyond, at any time day or night for almost any reason - or more precisely, for no reason whatsoever. Those on the beach below, moved by this expression will scream back. Reminds me of when I lived in southern Indiana. I could hear the coyotes howling to one another in the night. I feared the coyotes less.”

The girls had a fight of some sort and one of them wanted to go home. Her mother sent a plane ticket. I drove Emily to the airport.

We’re now down to 4 girls.

This screaming was taking its toll, along with going into the bathroom and finding the floor covered with water because someone took a shower without the shower curtain in place. And there’s dirty underwear and trash in the water.

In case you don’t know, high school girls live in absolute squalor.

My Wednesday, 4/4/12 Facebook Post: “Lesson #5 - Sadly, many teens struggle to understand the simple operation of the zip lock bag. The package of hot dogs? That fresh $8 bundle of shaved ham? While it may look enticing, the complicated function of zip lock technology puts it just beyond the reach of many teens. That's why you'll find the hot dogs and deli meats drying out in the refrigerator because the teen had no choice but to crudely rip the package open in the middle, and then, having done so, had no means of re-closing the bag. We teach them chemistry and advanced calculus. Why can't we teach them to open (and then perchance, re-close) a zip lock bag?”

The unhappiness born of the argument the girls had the previous day lingers, claiming another victim. A mom called to say a family friend was nearby and will drive her girl back to Indiana.

And then there were three.

My shopping and clean-up skills earned me a reputation. Josie tagged it, "The perks of Kurt."

That evening I left the girls to God-only-knows-what. I went out to dinner with my college buddy’s family. Ahh, adult conversation, how I’d missed you.

My Thursday, 4/5/12 Facebook Post: “Lesson #6 - Shhhh! Enjoy your coffee and walk on the beach whilst they slumber. The primitive local inhabitants were up late last night in their jungle of condo high-rises. The females painted their faces. The males beat their chests and howled. They all ingested trance-inducing concoctions and took part in crude mating rituals. For now, let these uncivilized beasts doze upon their futons and hide-a-beds, around their boom-box campfires, for they will soon wake and mass to worship the sun god. All ye over the age of 25, beware! The hip-hop & alt-rock drum circles will soon resume. Should you be deemed old and useless to the tribe, you may be thrown upon the funeral pyre. Tonight is the full moon. Heaven help us all!”

That afternoon while I was carrying in groceries and cleaning up messes, there was a knock on the door. It was security. “Sir, there’s someone on your balcony throwing things in the pool below.” I promised to take care of it. I walked quickly to the balcony and found two of the girls and a couple of boys sitting in lawn chairs, eating sandwiches and potato chips. They smiled at me innocently.

I began spending more and more time alone in my room or hanging at a different beach with my college buddy’s family.

My Friday, 4/6/13 Facebook Post: “Lesson #7 - Friends make all the difference. Just when I thought I couldn’t fall asleep one more night to the sound of police sirens, couldn’t take one more ride in an elevator that reeked of urine and stale beer, couldn’t take another walk on a beach strewn with beer cans, Jager bottles, and discarded underwear, and just when I couldn’t take one more air-brushed tee-shirt, the Brown-Richardson-Vendrely families found me. This near-normal family, who have only rarely needed redirection from law enforcement, nursed me back to health with charbroiled oysters, alligator meat, and the restorative powers of the Chicken Trio. My soul was repeatedly anointed with gin & tonic (Tanqueray and lemon, please!). Thanks to my old college buddy, Scott Brown for hearing my distress signal and inviting me down to the civilized end of the beach.”

Our plan was to pack the car at 8:00 that night and drive straight through to Indiana. At 3:30 in the afternoon there was a knock on the door: condo security. “Sir we have a complaint that there’s a couple having sex on your balcony.” I bolt down the hall in a rage expecting to strangle two naked teenagers. At the balcony I find one of the girls and her boyfriend standing, fully clothed at the railing kissing gently. I sigh, smile, and head back to the door to explain the misunderstanding.

“Sir, I don’t care what the truth is,” the security guard says. “A family having lunch on an adjoining balcony was offended. This is our third visit here to speak with you.” He holds up a contract with my apparent signature on it. “If you’ll read right here,” he goes on, pointing at the contract with an ink pen, “you agreed that if we had to visit your unit three times, upon that third visit you would be evicted. You now have 45 minutes to pack your bags and vacate!”

I thanked the kind man, closed the door, and let out a loud, “Whoooo-hooo! We’re going home!” And four hours ahead of schedule!

I drove the entire way, fueled by Monster and Redbull drinks, arriving, mercifully in my driveway at sun-up.

My Saturday, 4/7/12 Facebook Post: “Lesson #8 - The final lesson: Happiness is really all about perspective. Cruising north through southern Alabama on the way home last night, I was thinking, "I'm so glad this shitty week is over." At the exact same moment my 17 year old daughter looked to her two girlfriends in the back seat and said, ‘This was the funnest week of my entire life!’ The other girls all agreed.”

Buy Kurt's novel The Salvage Man

“A broken man, an abandoned house, and a lonely woman—all the makings for a beautiful, haunting tale of loss, forgiveness, and redemption. The Salvage Man is a lovely, bitter sweet story you won’t soon forget. I loved it!”

Sherri Wood Emmons, author of The Seventh Mother

Buy Kurt's novel Noblesville

“Meyer turns the pages of history with gentle care and a warm heart, creating a story I’ll remember forever. Thank you Kurt Meyer for opening a door to my beloved town’s past and allowing me to travel the streets and meet the people of Noblesville 1893.”

Susan Crandall, Author of Whistling Past the Graveyard

In Search of Child Support

This is a piece I wrote for NUVO Newsweekly a decade ago. Came across it and thought it was worth another read. I changed the names to respect the privacy of the subject's family.

Jenny sits in a chair against the wall in blue jeans and casual leather shoes, clutching a file folder against her chest. She is slender and in her late thirties. She's nervous. Her brown eyes are red at the edges, perhaps near tears. They dart from the door to the receptionist's window. 

This basement waiting room is half filled. It's a joyless, windowless place, lit by stark fluorescent lights. A name is called out. Someone gets up and disappears into the courtroom, also half filled with people. There is a somber, tense atmosphere, kinda like a funeral. Some people, like Jenny, are here to force collection of child support; others are behind in their payments.

Jenny watches the door uneasily, wondering if this is the day she'll come face to face with her ex-husband, the father of her daughters, a man she and her children haven't seen in nearly ten years. She hopes that today is the end, the resolution of all those years of searching and doing without. Either he begins paying support again or he goes to jail. She'd be satisfied with either outcome.

Jenny is in the waiting room of the 19th Circuit, IVD Court in the City County Building in Indianapolis, drawn back into the events of an earlier life. She sits against the wall with her legs crossed tightly, her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand.

What led to the end of her first marriage is at once unremarkable and startling. Husbands who stay out all night drinking are nothing new. But on one of those late nights Jenny got a devastating call revealing that her husband, Jim, had fathered a child with another woman. That was the end.

Jenny looks about the waiting room at the other hapless women, "It's humiliating to sit here and think of all the stupid mistakes you made that led to this moment."

Jenny and Jim divorced at the opening of 1991 after four years of marriage. They had two children; one daughter, two and a half and another, just fifteen months old. As it turns out the end of the marriage was just the beginning of a downward spiral of struggle for Jenny.

"After we divorced, he came to see the girls a couple times," she says matter of fact, "but he hasn't seen them or willingly paid a dime since. That was '91. I guess I never really believed from the start I'd ever see any support."

Jim didn't pay child support nor buy the health insurance the divorce settlement required he keep for his daughters. Jenny hadn't worked in four years, but got a job in a doctor's office at $9.00 an hour. Jim disappeared.

The folder Jenny holds in her lap is filled with ten years of desperate letters to prosecutors, legalistic letters of response from them and newspaper clippings about child support cheaters. The folder tells a heartbreaking, maddening tale of an irresponsible father, an overwhelmed child support system and disorganized prosecutor's offices grown callous and careless from the routine of dealing with desperate women.

In the early days after the divorce, the Hamilton County Prosecutor's office was little or no help in tracking down Jim or the child support Jenny needed. She shakes her head in exasperation, "At that time the person in charge of child support was rude and useless. They wanted me to do all the legwork - find out where Jim lived, where he worked. I tried, but couldn't find him. And while I looked I was working full time and coming home to two little girls, laundry, housework and bills. Wasn't looking for him also their job?"

Her back against the wall, Jenny sold her house to make ends meet. Soon afterwards, this woman who had once lived in a comfortable, middle class home in a Noblesville subdivision was signing her children up for Medicaid. She moved to Indianapolis and transferred her child support case to Marion County.

Seemingly, Jim Phillips had fallen off the face of the earth. He didn't file tax returns or communicate with his ex-wife. In 1992 the Marion County prosecutor's office issued a warrant for his arrest, but nothing came of it. There's no evidence that Phillips was particularly good at hiding from authorities or that any serious effort was made to find and arrest him.

Back in the court's waiting room Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Michael McGuire II hurriedly comes through a side door and motions Jenny into a conference room. He looks harried and overworked. Jenny disappears into the small room with him to find out what will happen today.

Jenny's personal transformation from victim to fighter came in the spring and summer of 1993 when the downward spiral hit bottom. On May 20 of that year, her then four-year-old daughter was diagnosed with diabetes. Without child support or health insurance she now had a daughter who would need repeated blood sugar tests, regulated food intake and two insulin shots a day.  A month later, Jenny came down with pneumonia but continued to work and care for her children, knowing she had no other option. There wasn't time to hunt for Jim Phillips or the money he withheld, she was just trying to stay alive. Jenny emerged from this dark period to discover that the Marion County prosecutor's office had made no progress in tracking down Jim Phillips, or the child support she needed now more than ever.

           

Later that year she wrote to then Marion County Prosecutor, Jeffery Modisett. "We've spent the last three years trying to rebuild our lives. Always listening to what you people are doing to help us single mothers who receive no support."

Jenny herself had been raised by a single mother who struggled to make ends meet. Her father apparently only occasionally paid support. In another letter from 1993 Jenny wrote, "Growing up in a single parent home, I swore I would never end up that way. Is it hereditary?"

No longer willing to be swept along by events, she began fighting back. She gained control of her life, but lived the often frantic existence of a single mother; at times, up all night tending to a sick child, who then went to work with her the next day because day care wouldn't accept ill children and Jenny couldn't afford a day long hole in her paycheck. She lived and breathed work and childcare, getting up in the morning with her daughters and falling exhausted into bed after she put them to sleep at night. It was a time of more Medicaid and free school lunches for the kids.

In those days the prosecutor's office would arrange a telephone conference only to put Jenny on the phone with an employee who couldn't find her file. During other calls employees were rude or treated her like a nuisance. As Modisett readied for reelection in late 1994, she wrote again, "I have received not one ounce of help, let along support. I wouldn't even try again except your office is launching such a large campaign for reelection. Every day is another article in the paper or another commercial as to what you are doing to help parents collect back support." At that point, Jim Phillips owed Jenny Williams nearly $40,000 in child support.

In late '94, the Marion County prosecutor's office notified Jenny that they'd asked federal authorities to help them track down Jim Phillips.  A year later, Phillips surfaced in interstate computers when he renewed his driver's license in Tennessee. Nothing ever came of it.

In August of 1996, Jenny remarried, and the long lonely struggle of single parenting ended.

Jenny emerges from the conference room. "They're sick of me," she says. "Why? Because when they don't return my repeated calls, I call their bosses. In nearly 10 years of trying to get the support he owes my girls, this is only the second time I've gotten far enough to get to court." The first time was a month ago. "And still we're getting nowhere."

In her folder is a clipping from the Indianapolis Star dated March 30th, 1998, highlighting Marion County Prosecutor Scott Newman's "Most Wanted Child Support Offenders." The worst of the ten offenders owed $51,700 in back support. But Jim Phillips was not on the list. This, even though the prosecutor's office had tallied his unpaid child support by then at nearly $86,000. Jenny says, "You see something like that and in some ways it stops being, 'He owes my daughters money,' and it starts being about justice."

A month later, as Jenny and her new husband, Bob Williams, neared completion of an adoption process that would legally name Bob the father of her daughters, Jenny made a final attempt to find Jim Phillips. She wrote a letter to Marion County Prosecutor, Scott Newman. Finally, after eight years, there was progress.

Soon thereafter, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, Michael McGuire II, found Jim Phillips in the little town of Locust, North Carolina, working in a manufacturing facility. Ironically, just as Jim Phillips's daughters were legally no longer his and he was no longer financially responsible for them, his wages began to be garnished, forcing him to start paying the $85,897.58 in support arrears he owed. After eight years of waiting, the $230.00 a week Jim Phillips was supposed to pay began arriving. With it, Jenny started a college savings account for her daughters. It felt like a small measure of vindication after years of struggle.

But Jim Phillips did not pay willingly. First his employer protested the garnishing. Then Phillips threatened to sue his employer if it didn't stop. In March of this year the payments ended. Jim Phillips had apparently been fired from his job.

A voice calls through the door of the courtroom, "Jenny Williams." Once inside she moves toward a long, high, wood grained counter with Deputy Prosecutor Michael McGuire. The ceiling is low in this claustrophobic courtroom. Rows of seats are half filled with those waiting their turn before the judge. Jenny and McGuire stand to the right of presiding Master Commissioner, Carol Terzo. An attorney approaches the counter and stands to the left.

Jenny scans the room for Jim Phillips, but he's not there. Turns out, Phillips had hired an attorney via the Internet. This even though at a hearing a month earlier the court insisted that he, personally must come to Indiana today to answer for the unpaid support or face arrest. No matter, Commissioner Terzo proceeds, ignoring her own order from a month earlier.           

Deputy Prosecutor McGuire wants to establish a new benchmark of arrears to submit to North Carolina. When he reads off the figure, in excess of $66,000, the gallery of spectators gasps. A few women laugh nervously, perhaps comparing their own unpaid support with Jenny's ridiculously huge amount. McGuire and Commissioner Terzo rapidly argue the incomprehensible legal details of Jenny's case as if she isn't there. Phillips's attorney interrupts from time to time, explaining that he knows nothing about the case. At one point he waves a cashier's check in the air, prepayment he received from Phillips for his legal services.

Jenny is asked no questions and isn't allowed to speak. Quickly, it's over. They've established a set amount that Phillips owes and his attorney, without even really trying, gets him another month's reprieve. Commissioner Terzo showed no surprise, anger or exasperation at Phillips's ten years of hiding, stalling or avoidance of court orders. On this assembly line of court cases they rapidly move on to the next case.

When she passed through the metal detectors in the hall outside before the hearing, Jenny had seemed anxious about seeing Jim Phillips again. Was she afraid of her ex-husband? "No," she insists. "I was afraid that he'd ask me something like, 'How are the girls?' and that would have sent me right over the edge." The tension of anticipation is gone now, and the gentle edge to Jenny's personality returns. She's relaxed.

Driving home, Jenny thinks of her own father. "After he died, my brother and I went to his apartment and cleaned out all his stuff. When I was going through his papers, I found an old receipt for a child support payment he made for me and my brother when we were small." She stares ahead, over the steering wheel and shakes her head at the heartache of it all.

Jenny's second marriage has answered her earlier, painful question. No, single motherhood need not be hereditary. But some qualities are passed down. Even though she's always tried to shelter them from her personal struggles with single parenthood, Jenny's daughters display the same will and drive that got her through the hard times. The oldest got a paper route because she dreamed of buying her own computer. After nearly a year of work, she'd saved enough. And Jenny’s younger daughter aggressively participates in countless sports and other activities with an insulin pump attached to her waist. But both girls know little about their mother's pursuit of the child support their biological father has avoided all these years.

Jenny Williams harbors remarkably little personal bitterness about the money she did without during the difficult years when her girls were younger. "It's not my money," she insists, "it's theirs. He owes it to them. And it's not right that the system should just let him get away without paying it."

But for most of an entire decade the system has carelessly done exactly that. Yet, that may change. Finally, on November 22nd, the court made good on it's threat of two months earlier, issuing a warrant for Jim Phillips's arrest. It's now up to North Carolina authorities to act on the warrant and decide if the father of Jenny Williams' children will get away without paying.

A footnote: I have had sporadic contact with Jenny Williams over the years, but I have no idea whether she ever got another penny from her ex-husband. Yet, I do see her daughters on Facebook. They have both graduated from college and are healthy and happy young women.