1983

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Constant Time Travel: Is There Such a Thing as “Right Now?”

When waking up from a dream I don’t want to be in, there is that pivotal moment right before my eyes open that I realize how wonderful life is.  Because I return to the comfort of reality.  Not trapped in an eerie sub-world with a grey and pink cloudy sky.

Similarly, I sometimes forget how old I am.  I often hesitate when people ask.  In the milliseconds before I answer, my mind travels through different ages I could be.  The most common:

“Am I seventy-five years old, with most of my life behind me?  Is my body aged and limited by decades of wear and tear?  Have I truly lived my life?  Have I been the giver I need to be?  Or have I lived my life selfishly?”

A millisecond later, the wheel has spun, and the arrow points to “28”.  I say out loud, “I am 28”.  Over a third of my life is finished, but that still leaves two thirds.

Like waking up from a dream, I realize I am still young, and I’m so grateful.  The problem is, despite hearing “hold on to your youth” and “enjoy this while you can” from older adults, especially starting once I graduated high school, I can’t do it.

I can’t appreciate “the now” anymore than I already am and have been.  In fact, I try to hold on to the present too strongly.  And then it becomes the recent past.  So then I’m holding on to the past and the present at the same time.  Almost to a fault.  It’s always been a part of who I am and how I think.

My senior year in high school for our “class prophecy” read aloud at Class Night, the day before graduation, my peers predicted that in 10 years I would still be living in Fort Payne, wishing I was in 1983.

I am a person known for my desire to want to freeze time.  Or ideally travel back to my younger years.  All my classmates were aware that even as a freshly turned 18 year-old, I romanticized about the 1980’s more than is humanly normal.

I feel time is going by too quickly and I’m not even 30 yet.  Like the forced moving screen on certain Super Mario levels, all I can do is keep moving forward.  And like love and money, there will never be enough time.

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What Ever Happened to the Amusement Park Called “Canyon Land Park”, Near Fort Payne, Alabama?

 

During the early 1970’s up until circa 1983, there was an amusement park called Canyon Land, just a few miles outside of my hometown of Fort Payne, Alabama on Lookout Mountain. In ‘70’s fashion, very comparable to the Dharma Initiative on LOST, Canyon Land could best be described as “1977 carnival meets small zoo”. One of the rides was a ski lift that took people over an actual canyon, Little River Canyon.

Being that I was born in 1981 and the park closed a few years later, my descriptions aren’t based on me being there during its prime. But my parents did go on dates there as teenagers.

 

Fortunately in 1993 (7th grade) my church youth minister Eddie McPherson was able to rent the shut down amusement park for $4 for the Halloween season. Our youth group put on an evangelical version of a “spook house” called Hell House. We used the old roller coaster carts and its track to manually push the guests through a “no flashlights allowed tour of hell” which ended with a bright room featuring Jesus (played by my dad) who invited them to Heaven.

It was a lot of fun for a 12 year old kid to explore that old place. The grass was taller than I was, where the parking lot used to be. Much of the place had basically been frozen in time as it evidently was abruptly shut down. In a room that stored all the old ski lift chairs, I found a completely intact Mellow Yellow can from 1979 (which I still have in my old bedroom at my parents’ house.

 

The urban legend is that the man who ran the place just let all the zoo animals go free into the woods. Therefore, to this day, jaguars and monkeys and all kinds of exotic animals can still be spotted on a lucky day. That would be fun to believe.

Because I helped resurrect Canyon Land for a few weeks in 1993, I tend to imagine what current lively buildings and attractions would be like if they became old an abandoned. Like Starbuck’s, for example. Twenty years from now, will all those Seattle-esque building be defunct? Like the old Food World building that remained years after the Super Wal-Mart came to town.

Not so much a ghost town. But a ghost attraction. Once filled with people laughing and buying ice cream. Now, only visited by raccoons.

Canyon Land is so forsaken that not even the Internet really acknowledges it. No Wikipedia entry. The best Google was able to do was take me to Ebay where someone is trying to sell Canyon Land postcards and tickets from 1970.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Fort-Payne-Alabama-Canyon-Land-Park-Card-Tickets-1970_W0QQitemZ310185209860QQcmdZViewItemQQssPageNameZRSS:B:SRCH:US:101?rvr_id=

Also, for anyone who would like to purchase Canyon Land, it’s currently for sale. For the low, low price of $2.4 million.  http://www.mycampgroundsforsale.com/park_detail.asp?ID=11

 

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Holiday Dinners are a Chinese Buffet in Disguise

In the final scene of the 1983 classic holiday movie, A Christmas Story, Ralphie’s family is forced to have their Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant because their neighbors’ dogs ate the turkey. Today I had my first holiday dinner of the season. I reminded myself how miserable I would be (like with every other holiday feast) if I ate too much.

For the first time ever, I was successful. I controlled myself. I didn’t feel like I had been given a tranquilizer dart after the meal.

 

But even with the careful planning of portion control, it’s easy to eat too much and feel groggy the rest of the day. I discovered why today. Holiday dinner are a Chinese buffet, in disguise. All the major elements are there:

Meat that has little flavor (turkey). Cooked vegetables that are saturated in butter and often intertwined with pork (green beans). Plenty of carbs (mashed potatoes, hash brown casserole, macaroni and cheese, and of course, dressing). And a sugary dessert (carrot cake, pumpkin pie, egg nog). All set up on two big folding tables. Come-and-go-as-you-please-there’s-plenty-more style.

Really, eating Chinese food for the holidays isn’t much different than what we do anyway. Except there are no labels required to inform us of exactly which meat is being served. Because that’s never a good thing.

 

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Pickles Make for Good Reading Material- Episode 2

 

There’s nothing like that childhood feeling of hearing the campy music of an ice cream truck coming near.  So much excitement, so much anticipation.  Everyone loves delicious ice cream.  But just because ice cream is universally the best thing a kid can get from a travelling salesman, it doesn’t mean that other good things can’t be sold in these trucks as well.  Obviously.  There are also Book-Mobiles.

But what else?  One of the best questions in the world that often goes unanswered is this:  Why not Pickle-Mobiles?  What a perfect idea when people are grilling out in the neighborhood.  The Pickle Truck pulls up just in time!  The perfect accessory for the perfect burger.

BBQ pickles.  Mustard pickles.  Cheese-filled pickles.  Candied pickles.  Super Sour pickles.  Frozen pickles.  Beef jerky flavored pickles.  Vanilla pickles.  Tossed salad pickles (comes with Ranch tipping sauce).  Caffeinated pickles.

In neighborhoods where the Pickle Truck really proves to be the most successful, a pickle buffet would also be incorporated into the event.  This would play up to the international, regional, and dietary preferences regarding the love of pickles.  The options would include, but not be limited to the following…

Aspartickle:  Pickle sweetened with Aspartame, causing it to have fewer carbohydrates but still leaves the person feeling like they should have just got the pickle they really wanted because artificial sweeteners will never really be the same thing as sugar.

Fiberickle:  Pickle coated in flax seed to ensure regularity.

Mexickle:  Pickle wrapped in a burrito with refried beans.

Chinickle:  Pickle fried in a doughy batter that causes the person to still be hungry after eating it.

Heart of Dixickle:  Pickle deep fried in sausage bits, dipped in A-1, then wrapped in a buttermilk pancake.

Wickle:  Pickle with a chicken wing bone surgically planted inside, to give the feel of eating a chicken wing.

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Manspeak, Volume 1: Humor

It was April 2002 when I first learned/realized that humor is an expected male trait. My sister and I went to this $5 concert some new young musician guy was doing in Birmingham, AL. Supposedly he was about to make it huge and this show was to thank the local radio station for being the first to play his songs. It was none other than the pre-Jessica Simpson, pre-Jennifer Anniston, pre-tattoo sleeved John Mayer.

For months following the concert, I was unable and unwilling to remove his No Room for Squares album from my CD player. I picked up on the fact this 24 year-old kid swam in something I could relate to, and it wasn’t just our shared love of the year 1983. He spoke my language. The third track, “My Stupid Mouth”, had a line that said, “I just want to be liked, just want to be funny, looks like the joke’s on me”. That’s when I realized that I was not alone in that I felt responsible for having to be funny, because I am a guy.

While no doubt there are countless social expectations from the female gender, one that is not important and vital is humor. That’s a guy thing. Compared to the overwhelming number of male comedians, it’s more difficult to find successful female comedians. The ones I can think of right off, are not the norm for what is considered feminine: Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Wanda Sykes, and Roseanne Barr.

I’m a personal fan of Ellen. I watched her talk show every day my senior year of college. She’s like one of the guys. And I think that’s why I relate to her so much.

The big exception to this “guys have to be the funny one” rule of comedy is Friends. Three men, three women, and they’re all funny. The show was co-written by a man and a woman. That 50/50 designation of both the actors and writers was part of the massive success of the show. Both men and women could relate to the humor and the characters. Even Seinfeld had a 3 to 1 ratio of male to female actors. Friends broke the mold.

Yes, attractive and feminine women can definitely be funny: Anna Faris, Tina Fey, Cameron Diaz, and Chelsea Handler. But I still see a tom-boyish quality about them. Where it at least seems like they grew up with all brothers. And for every one exception, there are five Seth Rogen’s, three Jon Stewart’s, and four Adam Sandler’s.

Men are expected to be funny, at least in some degree. Even Ben Stein, as dry and drab as he is, is still hilarious. (“Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?”) And the Terminator in his violent mission of destruction, right before he returns to the police station by running a squad car through the glass doors and blows away all those in his path, declares, “I’ll be back”. That, is funny.

While this may put extra pressure on a guy, there is a trade-off. Guys don’t have to find the perfect pair of shoes to match every “cute outfit” they own. Or give birth.

“If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.” –Marilyn Monroe

All pictures with the “JHP” logo were taken by Joe Hendricks Photography:

Blog- www.photojoeblog.com

Website- www.joehendricks.com