Keep Moving
In which I learn to tell a different story about my right ankle
Did I ever tell you about the time Ted Cruz wrote a letter to the Secretary of Defense warning them not to invade Texas, and my friends Elie Jacobs and Frank Spring and I wrote a response from Sec. Ash Carter to Texas’ very junior senator? Since it ran in The Huffington Post under the bylines of three people not named Ash Carter or having any affiliation with the Defense Department, we did not think we needed to label it as satire. But this was The Before Times, when the capitol’s press corps took more bait than a school of starving tuna, and inevitably honest-to-god reporters started calling the Pentagon, asking for comment about the Secretary dragging Cruz with lines like “While Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher may have found it necessary, even attractive, to invade countries that can easily be overrun, the present DoD considers such lopsided contests at best unsporting.” Soon, I got a call from a friend who ran the Pentagon’s social media. “We’re getting calls, Jason,” she said. “Could you label it as satire?”
My good people, John C. Calhoun’s first person account of his recent visit to The Capitol Grille is satire. We have enough racists spouting anti-constitutional nonsense running around Washington these days. The name of the piece’s true author is contained therein. Surprise and mirth await.
We also feature Josh Berthume, back with a look at how the DNC talked about our pain. And of course we offer a missive from the ‘90s with a chapter from Robin Whetstone’s Red Ticket.
And as always, we remember who we’ve lost and offer recommendations on what to do, read, watch, and listen to.
But first, did I ever tell you about my right ankle?
The story of my right ankle is a long one, and it used to be about why I would be a first-day kill in a zombie apocalypse, but this week the story about my ankle had a different ending. The wolf did not eat grandma, and I ain’t dead yet.
It began when the pandemic hit, and just about everyone where I works, worried either about getting laid off or infected, cancelled vacation. The bean counters realized that we were headed toward a December in which thousands of people would have weeks upon weeks of paid time off stored up, and managers began the mantra: Take some time off. But where would I go? Still, as tension and anxiety built new rooms inside my head, the couch started looking like a featured destination. There were books to be read, nothing to be done. Fine, I said, and booked a week in August to unplug.
Then they pushed the start of school for Hatcher the Younger back, and my week of nothing happened to coincide with helping Henry the Elder move into his apartment at College Station. Suddenly I imagined Hatcher the Younger and I, alone somewhere in Texas with a car, a half a tank of gas, and a credit card. We had nowhere to be, so that’s exactly where we planned to go. Instead of doing nothing, we would see nothing. We decided to visit the most nothing that exists within a day’s drive: Big Sky, the High Plains, the second-biggest canyon in the country. In West Texas, everywhere you looked there would be nothing, and more of it than anywhere.
We showed up late to help the Elder move into his apartment, which was in a three-story gray building identical to about 17,000 other ones, all serving a massive college that may or may not be holding in-person classes in a month. The only thing that made this one special was the person who lived there, a young man, the entirety of whom I once held with my forearm, his soft head cradled in my hand. I used to hold a straw just so I could feel his breath on my fingers as he sipped soda pop, and now he and his high school buddy are re-starting their lives. I looked around the apartment and felt the buzz of his independence, how he would be excited to live in this crappy apartment eating ramen because it would feel like his own. He turned down my offer for lunch, so I hugged him, told him I loved him, and left without a selfie to document the completion of my joyful duties.
“Did I read that right, that he didn’t want me to take a picture?” I asked the Younger.
“Oh yeah,” he said.
We talked about how conflicted I felt about letting him come back to school, how I’d rather him stay home with me but understood that he needed to go live his life. “I know you were glad to have him home,” said the Younger, “but I am looking forward to being the only kid again.”
I thought about how close he and I had become when the Elder was away for the first part of his freshman year, how now when I talk to both of them I turn to the Younger first, and how being the younger child meant he had his parents’ attention undivided by the ever-present First Born, and I shared a little of this with him.
“The attention is nice, sure,” said Hatcher, “but… you know when you call us for dinner?”
“Yeah?”
“I just want to walk down the hall without him punching me in the arm,” he said.
If you’re mapping this trip in your head, yes, College Station is several hundred miles out of my way to help my son move a bed frame, a box of stuff, and a couple cushions, all for the pleasure of meeting his roommate, seeing his apartment, and hugging him and telling him I loved him without even the pleasure of a shared meal. I have spent time far less profitably than that. The Younger and I grabbed Sonic and let the satellites guide us toward the Panhandle.
If you are wondering how the hinter-most locales of flyover country are embracing social distancing and masks, I bring you encouraging news. I stopped at a couple convenience stores where masks were required. Every customer complied without argument. I found no red-state histrionics about muzzling or freedom. In fact, the only one not wearing masks were the clerks who stood behind counters unprotected by sneeze guards, ideally situated to spread infections along Texas highways. I resolved to keep moving, never stopping long enough to unbalance the (proximity * duration)/ventilation equation. It gets you when you stop moving. I don’t want to catch it, so I try to outrun it. We checked into a hotel in Wichita Falls that had sneeze guards by the front desk, reassuring me until the family of five rolled in behind me with naked faces. Picking up dinner that night, I saw a yard sign: “Pray for a cure.” My pedantic brain grumbled that a cure is not what anyone is searching for. We need a vaccine, a preventative. Until then, all we have are two options: stay inside, or keep moving.
While the Younger watched Twitch on his phone, I watched the first virtual DNC, which looked more like a television show than a convention, which, since I was watching television, I didn’t mind. It is what it is. More Americans have now died from COVID-19 than from the Yellow Fever outbreak in the late 1800s, and I wasted brain space clowning Bernie Sander’s aesthetic of standing in front of flags and firewood while wearing an outfit that made him look like a Rotarian who was trying too hard in 2005. Then Michelle Obama came on and cited the First Law of the Trump Presidency, while adding a corollary. “If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don't make a change in this election.”
We pushed our way onto the Plains the next day, the sky opening up into an impossible panorama of nothing but light rays reflecting off dust particles. The absence of everything makes nothing seem immense. The horizon blurred the edges of the sky as if we were driving into the ether. I had never seen that much of nothing until, that is, we drove up to and then down into the Palo Duro Canyon, and the edges of nothing exploded into prehistoric layers of red, orange, brown, and even a blue-tinged gray that encircled a winding carpet of surprising green. Georgia O'Keeffe lived nearby about a hundred years ago and wrote that the Palo Duro "is a burning, seething cauldron, filled with dramatic light and color." I found no research issues in her description, but that is not what struck me the most.
The Palo Duro Canyon is one big, honking hole, wider in places than Manhattan is long. No wonder Quanah Parker would hide the Comanches there. You could pour Lake Tahoe into the Palo Duro, add the Dead Sea, and it would still only be about two-thirds full. Volume in space is defined by its limits, liquid by a container. O’Keeffe was right about the color on the walls, but the space in the room fascinated me. When I jumped out of an airplane outside of Moscow in 1992, I stepped into the sky, a void, nothing all the way down to the ground. I felt like I did when I once jumped into a giant swimming pool, like there was too much water around me, the scale was all off, except that time instead of water it was air, and I was hanging helpless in the middle of it, held aloft by the harness of a parachute. Looking into the Palo Duro, I felt an urge to go into that void again, except this time to find a foothold in it.
We arrived late that day when the temperature was north of a hundred and set off. I’d dosed up on anti-inflammatories because I didn’t want to have to stop a hike midway due to pain. I needed to connect with the Younger, to suss out whether, as I feared, I had lost connection as a father. All the way from Austin, I’d heard the voice of Dad Eager to Connect and Dad Pointing Out Things coming out of my mouth. He did not seem particularly impressed by the sky, but he’s a direct young man. He will say things as they come, which happened as we were walking down a switchback trail from the lip of the canyon to the floor. The map promised that the CCC Trail was an easy 1.2-mile hike of moderate difficulty. The heated perfume of juniper singed my nostrils. My ankle, surprisingly, felt like it would hold.
The effort of the rough trail loosened his tongue. The Younger told me about his best friend, a child of Persian immigrants, who asked his father if he would teach him how to drive. His father, the Younger reported, replied, “My father didn’t even teach me how to ride a donkey.” Before I could point out the logical fallacy of equating Iranian dad logic with legal requirements by the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Younger said that he had already suggested I could teach his friend to drive.
Reader, if I hadn’t been breathing so hard I might have ruined the moment. I could hear the voice of my wife in my head: “Pull it together, Stanford.”
We chatted about his plans for college, the friends he might get an apartment with, and how both of them have fathers in the Academic Great Santini mold, hard asses who think pressure makes diamonds instead of resentful kids who think they have to earn their father’s love. I’m from the Montessori school of not doing for a child what he can do himself. I’m a pit crew dad, here when needed, but it’s your race. And then the Younger made all the colors in the canyon brighter: “When I think about my friends’ parents, I’m glad I’ve got the parents I do,” he said. I told him that the most important thing for me was that he felt loved, no matter what. “You don’t have to worry about that,” he said.
The trail was not 1.2 miles. It was 3.1. Each way. Sweat drenched us, and the sunscreen ran down my forehead into my eyes. That’s why I was wiping them constantly. The sunscreen and the sweat just made it look like I was crying. The ankle held, only starting to hurt in the car on the way to the hotel.
The next day I roused him early, and we arrived at the trailhead just before dawn. The trail to the Lighthouse, the signature hike of Palo Duro, starts off deceptively easy on a wide, flat trail along the canyon floor, and before the sunrise crested the lip I was beating myself up for not packing sweatshirts. Then I remembered; I forgot to take my anti-inflammatories. My ankle twinged.
I would wager the entirety of my savings that I have the only ankle in existence that has had a hiphop song and a pop song written about it. If you want to hear me tell the long version of the story about how I broke it, click here. Here’s the short version. Remember that parachute jump in Russia I told you about? I broke my right ankle in three places when I landed, and the Kremlin Orthopedic Hospital made such a hash of Humpty-Dumptying it back together again that I have no cartilage anymore. I’ve had surgery for bone spurs. I’ve had it scoped. The next step is to have it fused. My ankle has been the excuse I give for not going on hikes with my family or walks with friends around Town Lake. I was close to living out the rest of my life avoiding walks and seeking orthopedic and pharmaceutical relief.
A year ago, I never would have attempted this hike, much less in Chuck Taylor All-Stars with zero arch support. What changed for me was seeing first my friend C.T. lose weight, and then my wife. Then my friend B.B. decided to drop some pounds. I had thought that my waistline was the inevitable result of middle age, but they made me reconsider. That, and seeing pictures of me at the Elder’s high school graduation and not recognizing my face. I puttered on my own, dropping out of the 230s into the 2-teens, and thought I was doing well. Then my wife joined Noom, and I copycatted because she made it look fun. Now I’m down 40 pounds and suspect carrying two dumbbells of fat on my midsection for years might not have been the best thing for my right ankle. It still hurts, but only after I walk a few miles, and the anti-inflammatories take care of what rest and ice don’t.
By the time the temperature rose into the 80s, the trail became a sharp V, cut by years of mountain bikes. Walking forward on sharply slanted surfaces is tough for those blessed with two good ankles. My ankle found new ways to grind against the socket. I tried to hide my limp while I rehearsed excuses about turning back. Age gets you when you stop moving. As long as I can walk, I will walk, so I kept moving. The V-shaped trail became a toil up a steep hill, the way seeming to dead end at the top. Up above me and to the right looked to be what might be a moderately dangerous path for a goat. I thought, “They can’t possibly mean…” Reader, they did in fact intend for me to lead my son along a sheer ledge around a blind curve at a considerable height. I marveled, not looking down, at the confidence the Texas Parks & Wildlife Commission was placing in me. The trail got harder, but the closer we got to the Lighthouse, the less I worried about not being able to make it, and before you know it, after one last climb, we did.
We sat at the base of the Lighthouse and looked in every direction for miles. We drank water and munched on fruit while we rested. My ankle showed a deep bruise but didn’t hurt anymore. A year ago I would not have even tried. That day, I made it.
“Do you ever look forward to becoming a grandfather?” asked the Younger, out of, and in the middle of, nowhere. Yes Hatcher, yes I do. And I can’t wait to push that child in a stroller. I might be limping, but I’ll be moving forward.
Damn, y’all
by the Hon. John C. Calhoun
South Carolina’s John Calhoun, the vice president to two different presidents belonging to two different parties, was a leading proponent of slavery and is credited as one of the fathers of the concept of minority states rights. Calhoun was first John Quincy Adams’ vice president, and then Andrew Jackson’s when the latter defeated the former. His relationship with Jackson soured because of the Nullification Crisis, in which Calhoun supported South Carolina’s position that because they didn’t support federal tariffs and claimed they were null and void, and the Petticoat affair, in which Calhoun’s wife led a mean girls revolt against the wife of the Secretary of War, leading to the resignation of almost Jackson’s entire cabinet. Calhoun debuts in The Experiment to comment on his recent visit from beyond the grave to our times.
All I desired was a racist nation where our riches rose as we oppressed our underclass pissants, but ya’ll have taken this too far.
Pain
by Josh Berthume
Josh Berthume, our Senior Dystopian Correspondent, sees hope and empathy in the Democratic National Convention.
We have to keep watching and knowing what’s happening. We need to know and feel the truth of it, deep in our bones. We have to share it with each other, too, which might be the hardest part.
Red Ticket: Happy in Our Own Way
by Robin Whetstone
Every weekend we serialize Red Ticket, Robin Whetstone’s memoir of her time in Moscow in the early ‘90s. Today, Robin begins to accept that something is going badly for her boyfriend at work, whatever that means. Now, if she could just keep him from finding his gun.
He was right, I had hidden his gun.
RIP
Glen Weldon’s father-in-law
This chaplain
This old coach
This professor
How we’re getting through this
Hiking the CCC Trail
Hiking the Lighthouse Trail
Visiting weird roadside attractions
Revisiting pranks we pulled on the Pentagon
Internalizing these ten rules for aspiring politicos
Learning that most change in votes are persuasion, not turnout
What I’m reading
Wendi Aarons: “I’m a suburban mom housewife — and here’s how to get my vote”
Stephen Harrigan: “The Statues Are Coming Down. Maybe That’s a Missed Opportunity.”
Eric Hoffer: “The True Believer”
Ryan Holiday: “Why Ego is The Greatest Opponent to Your Creativity and Success (And How to Fight Back)”
Elise Hu-Stiles: a poem about the kids' online learning portals
MediaPost: “Two Hispanic Marketing Luminaries Sign On To Make The Case For Biden”
Out: “Holland Taylor Explains Why She and Sarah Paulson Went Public”
Alexandra Petri: “I would like to give out some awards to the states in the DNC roll call”
It is possible I wrote this entire piece so that I would have an excuse to talk about the Rhode Island roll call. It is perfect in every detail, from the use of “Calamari Comeback State” to describe Rhode Island to the presence of the state appetizer itself. This realizes the potential of the roll-call-video form in ways no other video manages to do.
Katy Vine: “It Was Never Enough”
What I’m watching
Not sure what I think about Star Trek: Lower Decks yet, and neither does Glen Weldon.
Happy!, which a critic in Forbes called “very possibl[y] … the most insane television series ever made,” scored well with critics and even better with fans, who must be some twisted puppies because damn. Imagine Patton Oswalt playing an imaginary friend. Now imagine the worst stuff imaginable, if you’re a parent. Really, the worst possible stuff. Now a besotted Chris Meloni, whom I love, is our hero, of sorts, sent to rescue a daughter he never acknowledged. His failures as a man, father, and partner, not to mention as an ambulatory biped, are not even close to the dark territory this show leads you into. Happy! is also funny and sweet.
What I’m listening to
I just discovered Corpus Christi’s Quentin Arispe, who’s chosen the label “genderless queen.” And while we all have our own reactions to that, considered or not, consider what Quentin says that should mean to you:
I’m not here to push my ideas and lifestyle on you, I’m here to help you understand and love yourself, ALL OF YOURSELF.”
If you can’t get behind that, get out of the way, because this kid is making a bright future for himself. He was raised in a city called “Body of Christ,” so it’s no surprise that the lyrics for “Fruit” are rife with biblical imagery.
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