March 27, 1980

The troublesome thing about turning 30 is contending with the compulsion to assess the years gone by.  If it was possible to just become 30 without analyzing your life to that point, it would be far less painful.  But like a milestone midway through an extended journey, the 30th birthday forces you to stop, turn, and review the miles you have come.

What makes it particularly traumatic is the fact it is the first of such milestones encountered. The 10th birthday is a joyous occasion.  One's personage is somehow enhanced by having a double digit age.  Ahead are the exciting teen years.

Shedding the burdensome stigma of being a teenager makes the 20th birthday momentous. Adulthood has been achieved.  The past is merely preparation.

But by the time a person reaches 30 he is expected to have "become something."  He suddenly realizes that those long anticipated days of preparation should now be bearing fruit.

Peering back from the milestone last week, I was troubled by the apparent lack of advancement. The traveled path, in spite of considerable effort, looked so brief.

Under that cloud I accompanied two of the short people to the skating rink Saturday night. While Allison has honed her skills somewhat, Aaron still spends most of his time clutching for support as he falls.  He is, however, undaunted and his sojourns on the floor are short.

After warming up with a few creative spills, he set out to traverse the perimeter of the rink.  It was a long and arduous journey.  He would fall, get up, skate briefly, then fall again.  Sixteen times he fell and sixteen times he shook his head, picked himself up, and tried again.  I was reminded of e.e. cummings' "clumsily striving children."

When he finally got back around to where I was standing he fell with a crash at my feet.  I fought off a laugh because his face was so intent, so earnest.

As I helped him up he said, "Did you see how fast I skated, Dad?"

The human spirit is glorious.

Driving home from the rink amid the delighted and proud comments of the short people, I looked back quickly from the milestone and was overwhelmed by the progress....  ~T. Stucky

March 27, 1998

A week ago Saturday our favorite high school basketball teams concluded their successful seasons with a loss.  The following day our favorite college basketball team did the same. Monday a cold, dreary rain fell all day.  Tuesday the same.  Thursday brought blizzard.

Two days of heart wrenching loss followed by days of dismal weather prompted sullen contemplation of sport, of winning and losing, of life's humbling setbacks.

James Michener, who claimed to have "blindly, loyally, and often stupidly cheered for the Philadelphia Phillies through bad years and worse," said the experiences developed character. When a young literary critic told him his writing seemed exceedingly optimistic about the human race and raised the question of whether Michener had a sense of tragedy, the novelist replied, "young man, when you root for the Phillies, you acquire a sense of tragedy."

The same, it seems can be said of those Kansas University fans who spend their winters falling in love with the Jayhawks, cheer regular season victory after regular season victory, then watch their beloved become roadkill on the highway to the Final Four.  As opposed to the Phillies, who until recent years had a legacy of diamond ineptitude, the Jayhawks have the winningest record in college basketball over the past decade.  But like the Phillies, the Jayhawk season ends early.  This year, like Caesar, KU took a shiver in the back on the Ides of March.

More than 600 Kansas high schools took the court in December with their sights set on winning a state championship.  In the end, twelve teams achieved their goal-twelve teams cheered at the final buzzer.  At the collegiate level, thousands of teams are winnowed down to Sweet Sixteens and Great Eights and Final Fours, and finally National Champions.  For all but the chosen few, the final buzzer carries the sound of loss.

We laud the winners-those who pay the price, who spend extra hours in the weight room and gym, who hone their skills, who sacrifice and give their all to the team.  They are models to emulate.

But, Vince Lombardi to the contrary, winning is not the only thing.  Pete Hamill eloquently wrote of Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Sal Maglie, who in the 1956 World Series "hauled his thirty-nine-year-old body to the mound inning after inning, gave everything he had, held the Yankees to a few scattered hits and two runs - and lost.  That day Don Larson pitched his perfect game: no runs, no hits, no errors.  Yet, to me, the afternoon belonged to Maglie - tough, gallant, and a loser.

"Winning isn't 'the only thing.'  Such an idea muddles the idea of competition, not simply in sports, but in all aspects of our lives.  Winning isn't the only thing in love, art, marriage, commerce, or politics; it's not even the only thing in sports.

"Great athletes teach us that winning isn't everything, but struggle is-the struggle to simply get up in the morning or to see hope through the minefields of despair."

Winning isn't everything, Hamill concluded, living is the thing. "...and in life, defeat and victory are inseparable brothers."

Area high school teams who came home from sub-state or state tournaments without the big trophy, and the Jayhawks who fell well short of their aspirations spent the weekend in the melancholy late winter rain and snow.  When the sun returned and spring arrived with its revitalizating warmth, the great athletes began anew their efforts to roll the boulder up the mountain.

Whether they reach the peak or not, they serve as a noble example for us all.   ~T. Stucky

March 20, 1986

The wind ripped a page from the calendar this week, revealing March.  It stripped dirt from fields and used it to soil the sky.  The wearing of hats or skirts demanded constant attention.

After slapping you about, like a barn cat toying with a doomed mouse, the wind filled your mouth with grit and sent you on your way feeling abused.  March is like that - a bully of a month we must suffer to reach April.  (April may well be the cruelest time, but March is doubtless the most pug-ugly.)

Watching the wind carrying topsoil away Monday afternoon conjured an image which had been pushed to memory's back attic.  It was a March afternoon in 1963.  Those were relatively tranquil days - no one had heard of Lee Harvey Oswald, Viet Nam was a distant country of minor concern, the Everly Brothers were as wild as musicians got.

A young boy walks in a line with his classmates from the school room to the front gate.  It is 3:15, the end of another day of organized education.  Just before reaching the front gate the boy breaks from the line to pull his bicycle from the rack - a 26 incher, red with white stripes, the chain guard and front fender are loose, wrapped around the box handlebars are canvas carrying bags.  The boy, in true Horatio Alger fashion, has started down the road toward financial success as a paperboy.

He bids his fellows good-bye until the morrow and pedals west, through a neighborhood of prim, brick houses.  The sun is warm, but a stiff westerly breeze makes pedaling difficult.  He stands on the pedals, forcing them down, leaning, face down, into the wind.

The life of a paperboy has its advantages.  Primary among them is having change that jingles in jean pockets.  A boy must have the means to buy baseball cards, and a paper route provides it. Ambitious lads could pay their weekly paper bills and still have ten to twelve bucks left over. This particular lad, lacking somewhat in ambition, was content to end the week with six to eight bucks.

Of almost equal importance to the monetary rewards were the social benefits - paperboys always had an excuse for ringing the doorbell of the class sweetheart.  (Ding dong.  "Would you like to order the paper?  Oh, hi, Patti, I didn't know you lived here.")

But there were also three curses which came with the canvas carrying bags and the boxes of rubber bands and the collection tickets - snarling dogs, Sunday mornings, and the wind.  Each was abhorrent.

Eventually, a paperboy got to know the dogs on his route; which ones could be blustered into submission, which ones had barks and no bites, which ones had bites and no barks.  Routes could be adjusted to avoid the worst of the measly curs.  Due to the repetition of the route - papers were delivered every day, rain or shine - truces between boy and canine were finally drawn.

Sunday mornings were something else again.  Although every other day of the week the papers were delivered in the afternoon, on Sunday they were delivered early; before the sun came up, before anyone with any sense was out on the street.  Some paperboys got a thrill out of clambering out of bed at 4 a.m. to pedal down dark sidewalks, breaking the silence of the night by plopping a thick paper down on cool concrete.

This particular paperboy, pedaling now against the March breeze, never got a thrill out of setting an alarm on Saturday night and having it rattle him from his sleep while the moon was still high.  In fact, he learned to despise Saturday nights, Sunday mornings and the relentless tick, tick, tick of that clock.

But he was not thinking of Sunday morning this afternoon.  Rather he was thinking about the wind - the final paperboy curse.  The canvas bags caught the wind, making progress even more strenuous.  But finally he reached the station, loaded his bags with 47 papers, and rode slowly off toward his first delivery.

He never reached it.  The wind was too strong.  His legs were too weak.  There was too much gravel in the gutter.  The excuses were endless; excuses which would never have escaped the lips of Horatio Alger.

The paperboy fell with his bike, the newspapers spilling out onto the street.  The wind wasted no time ripping them apart and blowing them in pieces down the sidewalk, through the yards, and on, forever.  He sat there, bruised in the gutter, and watched them dance away.

March is the bully we must suffer to reach April....  ~ T. Stucky

March 19, 1981

No household is complete without one.  You may have a fancy toothbrush holder, a self-cleaning oven, a garden hose nozzle, and two phillips screwdrivers, but unless you have The Jar there is a lacking in the home place.

At an early age we became aware of the importance of The Jar.  Dad was busy getting the lawnmower ready for its summer workout.  Carburetor parts were strewn from one end of the back porch to the other.  Everything, it seemed, which was needed to make that mower function was laying within arm's reach.

But then, as he sat amid the mower litter, Dad said with reverence, "Go get me The Jar."

There it was on the top shelf, reigning majestically over the utility room.  It was tall, thick and clean with a shiny brass lid.  When its contents were gingerly poured out onto the porch a wonder was revealed.  There were pieces of wire, springs, tacks, fishhooks, instructions for repairing the kitchen plumbing, two links from a bicycle chain, a piece of hose, a spark plug, two long toggle bolts, three peculiar chunks of metal, a dial from the radio, a used piece sandpaper, some kite string, seven paper clips, a bent curtain hanger, and a quarter-full tube of grease.  The remaining space was filled with nuts, bolts, screws, nails and washers of every conceivable size.

It was a marvel that so much could be contained in one jar.  But then, this was no normal jar, this was The Jar.

After a moments search, Dad found the spring he desired and in no time at all the mower was roaring like a hungry beast prowling for grass.

The scene would repeat itself innumerable times.  Whenever repairs were made to the car, the house, or the implements, the potent words were uttered.  "Go get me The Jar."  And The Jar never failed.  It always contained just the right piece to complete the task.  As time passed, other things were added to  The Jar.  When a job was finished and parts remained, they were granted the honor of residing in The Jar.  Regardless of what was shoved in, The Jar always expanded just enough to incorporate it.

When a young person leaves home he bids goodbye to Dad, Mom and siblings.  He also says adieu to The Jar.  It is a difficult void to fill.  There is no magic container to turn to when a nail or spring or fishhook is needed.  There is no tube of grease nor chunk of metal.  It is not an easy time.  Washers and nuts and bolts and screws must be purchased.  Nowhere is there to be found a dial from a radio.  But, slowly, extra parts do accumulate and they are piled in a jar on a shelf somewhere.

Last week, while framing pictures, there developed a need for a small hanging hook. Just before hopping into the car and heading for Prairie Lumber, we strolled into the kitchen.  And there it was, up on the top shelf, reigning majestically over the pantry, The Jar.

Pouring its acquired wealth onto the table we realized everything was there; the instructions for repairing the kitchen plumbing, the nuts, the bolts, the two links of bicycle chain.  There also was a small hanging hook.

After ten years of marriage, our household is finally complete....  ~T. Stucky

March 4, 1982

Nobody likes pedestrians anymore.  There was a time prior to Henry Ford when self ambulation was the only way to go.  Walking was a respectable method of movement.  No longer.

Those without vehicles are relegated to second class status--nobody wants ya if ya ain't got da wheels.  I never realized how true that was until last Thursday when, because our car was in the shop for repairs, I found myself on the streets of Hutchinson with nothing but legs for locomotion.  It was a humbling experience.

Drivers race by in their glistening metal beasts, their noses in the air, their glassy eyes gazing through the windshield.  Sometimes drivers wave to other drivers, but drivers never wave to pedestrians.  The class chasm is not to be bridged.

Next to the curb walks the pedestrian, plodding, eyes watching for broken bottles, ears filled with the racket of traffic, nose filled with fumes.  With no radio to cover the city's chaos, a pedestrian often talks to himself.  Some even stroll the boulevards singing.  As a result, drivers think pedestrians are addlepated.  In fact, pedestrians would just rather hear themselves than the engine of an old Ford.

The city feels different on foot.  Its sounds and sights are more intense, the scars more apparent, the beauty undistorted.  Pedestrians know you can't appreciate a city from the driver's seat.  You have to get out and touch it.  Pedestrians know a lot of things.

They know alleys are gracious places.  Drivers view alleys as dark, sinister caverns which are to be avoided.  But pedestrians see alleys as a short cut to somewhere.  They may be filled with garbage cans, graffiti, and oil coated puddles, but they save steps and for pedestrians there is no greater attribute.

While walking in the alley behind Main Street in Hutch, I came upon a veteran pedestrian.  His white unkept hair stuck out in flurries from his soiled hat.  A four day growth of gray stubble accented his aging face.  One eye was permanently closed by a scar, probably resulting from a blow administered by a driver, which ran from the bridge of his nose to his cheek.  His good eye was cloudy with smoke from the cigarette he had just rolled and stuck in his toothless mouth. He walked with a limp as if one leg was slightly shorter than the other.

We nodded in greeting--pedestrians don't talk much except to themselves.  Being new at public ambulation I watched him closely, hoping to improve my technique.  He kept his head down, no doubt watching for puddles or broken glass, but periodically he would lift his weak eye toward the heavens, apparently searching the skies for a sign.  When no sign appeared, he continued on, eyes downcast.

Thinking this must be the way of seasoned pedestrians I, too, followed his routine.  In unison we walked, stopped and gazed skyward, and then walked again.  When we had stopped the third time, the sign the old-timer had been searching for revealed itself.

A flock of pigeons passed overhead and he stumbled to the edge of the alley and pressed himself tight against the wall.  I followed suit just in time.  The pigeons dropped their message all over the alley.

Drivers watch pigeons and glory in their flight.  Pedestrians watch pigeons and worry about their message.

Nobody, not even the birds, likes pedestrians anymore.... ~T. Stucky

March 8, 1979

A few times in the last weeks, Aaron has grown weary of listening to typewriters clicking and has turned on the 1940 vintage television which is part of our office furniture.  He is usually met by the smiling face of Romper Room's Miss Marti.

Romper Room has over the years become a children's television tradition, but if you have not watched it recently, a synopsis may be in order.

The idea of the show is that an attractive, smiling, gentle lady (Miss Marti) is solely responsible for the entertainment of six preschool age children as well as the children watching in the sanctity of their own homes.  The preschoolers on the show take part in delightful games, delightful stories, and delightful situations while asking delightful questions.

The show is a half hour of bliss--most of the time.  Sometimes, the man who screens the youngsters for the show blunders, changing the entire complexion of the program.  Now and then a little tow-headed kid, usually named Tommy, who sports the most devious of grins, finds himself on the show.  He attempts to make the most of his half hour in the limelight by doing his level best to get Miss Marti to take a swing at him.

When the kids are instructed to lightly toss their small rubber balls into the air and then catch them, Tommy rifles his into the camera.  While the other kids are walking around mooing like cows, Tommy is perched on the desk crowing like a rooster.  When Miss Marti looks into her "Magic Mirror" to see all the children in television land, Tommy beans her with a cupcake.

Incredible as it may seem, Miss Marti, a graduate of the Mary Tyler Moore School for the Terminally Gleeful, continues smiling, says something like "Tommy, good do-bees don't hit Miss Marti with cupcakes," and then carries on, pausing only briefly to wipe the side of her face.

Bearing in mind that there is already too much violence on television, we would like to see, just once, for her own sanity as well as ours, Miss Marti completely lose control.  To see her grab little Tommy, shove a rubber ball in one ear, a cupcake in the other, and then hang him by his thumbs from a ceiling beam would do our hearts good....  ~T. Stucky

March 19, 1987

There is a hint of a tiny drop of blood on our living room carpet.  You must look close to see it. It's there because a referee called an intentional foul in the Salina Bi-Centennial Center Thursday afternoon.  

Such are the relations of life.

Haven's boys earned themselves a trip to the state basketball tournament with a victory over Nickerson in the sub-state finals at Chaparral.  On the strength of their 21-2 record, they were seeded fourth and were pitted against Mulvane in the opening round of state competition.

We debated making a journalistic trip to Salina for Thursday's game, but because of prior engagements and because we knew the Wildcat boys would handle Mulvane and advance to play Friday and Saturday we remained close to the home fires.

Although Haven fell behind in the first half, they came on strong after intermission and took a four-point edge into the final minutes of play.  Haven's misfires at the free throw line in the final seconds gave Mulvane an opportunity to sneak back into contention and with ten ticks of the clock remaining, they took a 59-58 lead.

Then came the fateful whistle.  Haven's Gerry Dickey was going for the basketball as he has all year, attempting to force a turnover to give the Wildcats a final chance to clutch victory.  But the referee blew the whistle and called an intentional foul, giving Mulvane two free throws and most importantly, possession of the ball.  One blown whistle does not a game make, but it did vanquish Haven's state title hopes.

As a result of that whistle, we did not travel to Salina Friday and Saturday.  As a result of that whistle we were at a pitch party Saturday night.

Pitch parties are a Midwest social phenomenon.  People in the East gather at cocktail parties to guzzle martinis and discuss how much influence William Safire's wife has on his daily column.  In the West, they congregate on the beach with the latest hallucinogen of choice and discuss the impact of El Nino on the AIDS virus.

In the Midwest, our lives still salted by the work ethic, we feel uneasy about gathering just to drink and talk.  Idle hands are the devil's workshop.  So we shuffle cards and we make bids and we keep score and in between the hands we discuss life for a while.  The conversation is light-hearted, children being mentioned much more often than William Safire.  AIDS is more the punch line of a joke than a real concern.

The advantage of a pitch party, as opposed to a Midwest party without cards, is that there is social circulation.  By winning a round a couple advances to the next table and changes partners.  Parties without pitch resemble an Old Mennonite revival meeting--men on this side, women on that side.  Pitch brings the sexes together comfortably.

While there is mingling there is also competition, another element dear to the hearts of Midwesterners.  At the end of the evening, scores are tabulated and functional prizes are presented to the high and low scorers.

So it was that we brought home from the party a nifty, all-purpose-get-lost-in-the-woods-have-no-fear pocket knife.  And so it was that Sunday morning Carly was examining the knife and closed the blade (she's a year away from Brownie knife safety training) on her finger.

Before she could arrest the trickle of blood with a band-aid, a wee drop floated to the carpet.

And so it is that pain was inflicted on our shortest offspring and a stain was inflicted on our carpet by some nameless referee in Salina.

It just makes you wonder why he blew that whistle, doesn't it....   ~T. Stucky