Teeth gone, and another oldie….
The two wisdom teeth are now gone a week, and aside from residual nerve jangling in sites that used to be occupied, all is pretty good. And when it isn’t, there are pills…thanks to a fine dental surgeon, whom we shall call “Dr T,” for doing such a good piece of work. Talked with my butcher friend downtown and found out that when he had his wisdom teeth yanked twenty-five years ago, he really did have them yanked. Dentist put his knee on the chest and pulled. Think about it. Oh yes, the drugs these days are far superior too, I am told. Not even any nausea–and not out, but not at all aware of the unpleasantries going on in the mouth. Of course there is a lot of euphemism here; but in fact the operation was not nearly as problematic than it might have been. And let’s leave it at that–two wisdom teeth remain; perhaps their day will come.
Amidst continuing insanity in Iraq, which really should put George W. Bush up for impeachment, I ran across a column I wrote back in 1990, while heading west to CA from Kingston for a sabbatical leave (the most wonderful creation in creation)–we were on the verge of Gulf War I. So here it is, sadly, still pertinent, very much so……
BIGGER IS BIGGER
My companion raised the question as we traveled en route to California–an 8400 KM odyssey by car across the country whose citizens know how, the country with the right stuff, the country apparently ready to blast from the sandtrap of Saudi Arabia into a fuel-scale war in the Middle East to defend its cosumptive, consumerist lifestyle.
“How,” my companion inquired one bright morning in Minnesota, “can a land with such beauty and wealth be so anxious to go to war? Doesn’t anyone remember Vietnam?”
One cannot (and we did not) escape this seeming paradox–the peaceable kingdom existing alongside a seemingly permanent warfare state–no matter who the enemy or what the peril. Being Number One remains the major goal, the “only thing” as Green Bay Packer philosopher Vince Lombardi summarized it some years ago.
Several incidents along the way, insignificant and even trite when viewed alone, indicate anew that sporting endeavour–however defined–provides a mirror of American cultural values and apsirations, and a metaphor for political confrontation.
College football commands a following that elevates coaches and stars to a celebrity far beyond anything one might imagine in Canada. A stop in Madison, Wisconsin, to watch the “new look” Badgers host the California Golden Bears provides a case in point.
WIsconsin has been a Big Ten doormat over the past decade–not surprising given the money that schools like Michigan and Ohio State spend to field winners. But this year–we read in the local paper–would be different, what with the arrival of Barry Alvarez, fresh from Notre Dame, as new head coach.
“Barry Alvarez. Throughout his career, he’s been characterized as a player’s coach, a teacher, a great motivator, a disciplinarian. Yes, he is certainly all of these…..but he is also a principle (sic) symbol in an impressive rejuvenation surrounding the University of Wisconsin football program. Badger football is on the move again. Steppin’ out in the ’90s….Supreme confidence. Aggressive by nature….a winner….”
And so on. The game itself demonstrated that Wisconsin was still some distance from playing with the big teams, and that sports publicity at Madison (and most places) has much in common with the people who wrote up wars and made body counts during the Vietnam War.
The Badgers threatened three times from close in, settling both times for field goals, later turning an attempted pass fora TD in the 4th quarter into a 100-yard Cal interception, as the home eleven got whipped, 28-12.
At the outset, as Wisconsin outplayed Cal and took the lead, my companion asked if Cal was even on the field. This was a good question, as the Badger faithful among the 50,000 on hand were frightfully enthusiastic, behaving as they had dropped in on a religious revival instead of a football game. Those faithful made it difficult to root for Cal. Wisconsin was #1, and fans waved those large, polyurethane hands, with the index finger pointing toward heaven.
But once the momentum shifted to the wsterners, the rabid grew meek, like Wisconsin livestock before a thunderstorm. The plastic fingers disappeared, replaced by the sounds of silence–and a huge paper cup fight which involved the entire student section and entirely covered the stadium entrance. People were bored.
At halftime my companion overcame her objections and accompanied me to the Camp Randall Stadium floor to watch the Wisconsin band to its how. We stood at the fifty-yard one as that huge aggregation finished its performance. More than a hundred young men and women, dressed to the nines and making a sound that would pass muster in Hollywood, turned on command and marched directly at us.
One could sense by their serious and sweat-stained faces that the musicians took this as seriously, perhaps moreso, than the football game. As we looked on, nearly giggling at the self-conscious gestures (little goose-steps and hand-flips the most notable), the band kept coming, and coming, and coming.
Until I was literally nose-to-nose with a trombonist whose complexion on this warm afternoon lay somewhere between a tomato and a beet. “You’re doing a great job,” I wishpered. “Thank you, sir,” he replied. “Did we look OK?”
I could not answer that question, save to reflect that this version of seventy-six trombones was fin, but in no way near the Big Ten class acts at Michigan, Ohio State, or even Illinois. No less than American athletes, many of hte big universities recruit marching musicians, and the best also get scholarships. For Wisconsin, merely being “OK” will remain a big problem, a problem of self-image, just as failing to win will prove a predicament for the new coach.
Being the biggest and the best, the flashiest and the noisiest–seems the great goal of all American life. In Huron, South Dakota, my companion (who doesn’t eat much but must eat often) confronted a cinnamon roll for breakfast that could have served as the space vehicle in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. The roll was large, floundering over a full-sized dinner plate. John Wayne or Clint Eastwood would have loved it. But my friend, after asking what it was and apologizing that it would have taken her several days to eat, sent it back.
So it went through the journey–huge portions of food eveywhere–portions to make both of us candidates for the defensive line of the Chicago Bears–or TOPS. How could the Republic avoid an epidemic of obesity if portions were this big? [Editor’s note: here in 2005, the question was a good one. Sadly, the portions have grown larger and larger and the citizenry bigger and bigger].
As glorious scenery rolled by on the back roads of America, we could not escape car radio reports of “great” seasons in store for “powerhouse” football teams like Kearney State, Osceola, North Dakota Wesleyan, South Dakota State, and North Texas State. We listened, amidst static provided by one of many montain thunderstorms, to a community college rodeo, in which thw winning bronc rider was interviewed and spoke of continuing his rodeo career at a “good” university. “My father wants me to go,” he said haltingly, in the only full sentence he managed.
We happened upon the world mountain bike championships in mountainous Durango and aptly named Purgatory, Colorado, where alledgely sane people rode bikes over terrain best reserved to mountain goats, and lived to tell about it. The winners of these races were clearly people who could endure the most pain over protracted periods of time. Some suffered serious injuries and would never ride again.
On the final day of this memorable trip, we visited an old friend from high school. Back then she was pretty, perky, preppy–and she had gone off to the University of Colorado, by her own admission, to find a husband.
That was in 1960 when she pom-ponned, and he played 3rd string QB for the Buffaloes. I’d looked forward to a short , chaty visit to catch up on lives and children, but she immediately plopped us in front of the TV (was it 3 or 4 feet wide?) and flipped on a video that she’d made–featuring her her three athletic kids, two now grown and gone, the third playing quarterback for his father at a local community college.
“It’s only twelve minutes,” she explained, as excited (and perky and preppy) as ever. “You’ll love it!”
We looked on in wonderment as we beheld a superbly professional job of splicing excerpts from TV, old home movies, photographs, yellowed news clippings–in which the kids were featured as mega sport stars. Nearly every shot featured a sport enue, proving tht mom had been on the diamond, in the dugout, behind the bench, above the balance beam–everywhere. My god, I thought (a chore itself after a transcontinental drive), here, really, is “supermom”! Only a graduation from the Air Force Academy and a marriage (a week after the graduation) marred the all-sport motif–and the music over, with songs like “The Way We Were” and “My Hero,” were scored and choreographed no less painstakingly than anything done by Marvin Hammelisch.
The supermom had tears in her eyes when the video ended. We had tears in our eyes too, for a different reason. We certainly knew that we were in California. And we knew that this all-all-American mother had been in the dugout all right, and that she’d overlooked the balance beam.
Her daughter, a near-Olympic class gymnast for UCLA, had gotten her start in the gymnastics club that her mom helped found some fifteen years earlier, and which now is (yes) one of the biggest in Southern California.
But the daughter paid some unpleasant dues along the way. Because of her need to keep lithe (and not lose points from judges who shouldn’t judge performance on physical apperance but do), she had reached the point by her senior year where she had never menstruated and had resorted to a binge-purge eating regimen. She had discovered what all of us over twenties know–that we cannot look like Nadia Comanici.
One night, after eating three pieces of pizza and going upstairs, her mother followed her, went into the bathroom, and found the evidence.
The scene that followed was tearful–on both sides. The gymastics star spoke of her scholarship and the responsibility she felt toward her parents for keeping it. Her mother wisely and instantly decided that enough was enough–no more gymnastics. The price was too high. The daughter left the UCLA team and again became a human being.
That evening provided the denouement on largeness–a visit to the LA airport (not recommended) to pick up my son, who’d accompanied the UCLA football team to Ann Arbor to play Michigan that afternoon. We’d listened to the Bruins lose while driving through the Mojave Desert. My son is in a sort of seventh-heaven in Westwood. He now handles facilities (the Rose Bowl and Pauley Pavilion included), and that’s a long way from Frontenac Secondary School, class of 1984.
As the team deplaned, some of the largest specimens of humanity that I’ve seen outside of the World Wrestling Federation TV spectacle stepped into the airport lounge–6-7 and 275, 6-8 and 280, 6-4 and 312, and so on.
My son–who stands 5-9 and goes about 145 lbs–was among the last of the Bruin entourage off the plane. “God!” I exclaimed, “your team is huge!”
“Yeah,” he replied, “but Michigan outweighed us about twenty pounds across the front line,” he replied.
I thought about that cinnamon roll in Huron, South Dakota.