When children ran free

 

On the 40th anniversary of the movie “Stand by Me,” people are amazed that the kids never seemed to be at home. Four boys spent two days looking for a dead body and even camped out overnight.

What? Their parents didn’t drive them everywhere? No 3 p.m. soccer games, no 6:00 piano lessons?

Are the streets more dangerous now or do we just hear more about abductions and other crimes today?

The movie brings back memories of the 1950s, which it supposedly portrays. Here are some of my memories. If you were a kid then, do any of them match yours? I lived in the California suburbs. Maybe your experiences in a rural area were different.

--Riding a bicycle all over town. Freedom from your parents. Typically, the 10-year-old on the bike knows everything that’s going on.

--Baseball games in the street. At first you sit on the curb and watch the big kids play. Then you start street games of your own.

--Earning money on a paper route. Afternoons after school and Sunday mornings. Spending profits on ice cream sundaes when the route was over. (They only hired boys.)

--Walking to school with friends. The best social time of the day.

--Lemonade stands in summer. I guess that still happens. The kid down the street charges 5 cents less and you claim foul!

--Hide and seek from one back yard to another, both boys and girls. Neighbors thought it was cute and didn’t complain. Your parents were fine with it as long as you were home for dinner. But they never knew where you were.

--Tree houses and club houses, where you and your friends could meet in private. Since my dad built one in our backyard, the other kids came to us.

--Summer vacation lasting seemingly forever. When school finally resumed in September, you felt like a different person.

--One precious moment sticks with me: About six of us went to a mobile home dealer’s lot to inspect trailers. The manager let us in and we pretended we lived there. We tracked dirt onto a throw rug. When the manager saw it, he picked the rug  up and said, “Don’t worry about it, guys. I was a boy once too.”

Ambivalent About sports

 I have aways loved sports but did not value writing about it. How meaningful is it to watch two guys play catch while another tries to hit the ball with a fat stick?

But how can you avoid some sports when starting at The Associated Press? When I was working the night desk in Portland, Ore., the coaches on two Northwest League professional baseball teams couldn’t agree on who was in first place. But I had to write the standings for the newspapers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. So it was Yakima over Lewiston. Sorry, Lewiston!

I did write a story on how all of the region’s football teams were playing terribly one fall. All but one of the newspapers refused to print it!

One thing that pushed me out of that job in Portland was a new requirement to satisfy the editor of the Coos Bay newspaper. Each day we had to write a recap of how each native Oregon player did in the NBA or —get this—the American Basketball Association.

So if was off to Last Vegas, where, of course, sports is a big thing! I covered multiple boxing matches, including one of George Foreman’s first and Sonny Liston’s last, both on the same night. I was thrilled to see the famous Howard Cosell with a ringside seat opposite mine. I was convinced Liston was dead when he had trouble getting up after a knockout, but he eventually shook it off.

Later, in the San Francisco bureau, I loved covering the world arm-wrestling championship in Petaluma, which I described as “the egg capital of the world.”

Occasionally I helped the sports reporter cover Oakland Raiders’ games from the press box. I was sent to the visiting teams’ locker room afterward to get comment. Since they usually lost, it was scary. How do you ask a 300-pound tackle why his team got trounced? “Because they got more points than we did” was a typical answer, accepted without argument.

We didn’t have much sports in U.S. News & World Report, but I really enjoyed going to auto racing and football training sites for an article “Dream Schools.” In Salisbury, Md., I followed around one young guy hoping to make it big in the new U.S. Football League, picking one of the most unlikely candidates. The rest of the class resented him for getting more press coverage than they did.  What happened to him? I don’t know, but the league folded the next year.

Wish I had been able to fly to L.A. to include women’s modeling schools, but I had to do interviews by phone because of budget constraints. Too bad!

You cn't please everyone

 

I do my best to avoid controversy with this column. But in over 60-plus years of writing, it is impossible to stay completely out of trouble. Now it’s confession time:

--In 1964 my publisher wrote an editorial against me when I sided with the city of Dover, Del., after It refused residents’ request to widen a street. That’s OK—he wrote editorials denouncing his wife too!

--I only heard the expression “Stop the Presses!” Once in my career. It wasn’t my doing, but the Pittsburgh Press dropped a line out of a recipe. Now that is serious!

--Once I wrote “Continued on Page 4” in editing a front-page Press story in 1966, and it was really continued on Page  11. My editor told me, “Mike, 40,000 people are going to be mad at you!” I quit shortly afterward.

--I announced the wrong date for a nuclear test in a  Las Vegas story for The Associated Press in 1966. Coincidentally, I had an interview with the local atomic energy director the same day, and it kept getting interrupted by phone calls from confused news media.

--I called the FBI after I opened the mail at the San Francisco bureau and found a threat from the notorious Weathermen in 1970. But I ignored the second letter I opened, a death threat against the visiting prime minister of Japan. “This is just some nut,” I decided. But others found the note later and got the FBI hoppping again.

--The Carter administration got upset when I wrote in Washington that Americans were not keeping up with inflation in 1978. They sent one of their experts to “educate” me. But I was right!

--In a report on Appalachia in 1984, I wrote that I had seen “people with corn-cob pipes.”. A U.S. News & World Report reader insisted I made that up because that never happens. I think he was right-I felt bad about it. Fake news!

--We got sued for a derogatory article about Vietnam veterans that I excerpted for a “Publisher’s Memo” that I wrote in the publisher’s name. But since it had his name on it, he had to testify in court in 1985, Avoided that one!

--I got dozens of angry phone calls at Satellite Orbit magazine when we dropped the TV listings for a religious channel in 1991. Apparently we were the only publication that listed them.

--But sometimes there was vindication. I wrote that the EPA was going to to impose tough sanctions on Philadelphia because of its air pollution. The Philadelphia Inquirer published an article saying I was wrong. My boss stood by me. But several weeks later, the sanctions were handed down. A loyal reader of the Kiplinger Letter in Philadelphia faxed me the true story. “Doan was right!” He wrote.  Yay!!!

--Drawing by Ron Miller

 

 

=

Southside's link with Spain

Fourteen young women spent their junior year of college in Madrid in 1963-64. Now, as senior ladies, many of them have  gotten together four  times in Cluster Springs in the last 25 years.

Eight  of “Las Chicas,” as they call themselves, met in March at classmate Pickett Craddock’s home, Oak Grove Bed and Breakfast.

A highlight of the women’s visit is a regular trip to Paco’s Spanish tapas restaurant in South Boston. Before opening his establishment in 2024, Paco Arrocha catered several of their dinners. Now they dine at his restaurant at least twice on each visit, conversing with him and his staff in the language they learned 62 years ago.

This time Arrocha found a video with scenes from 1960s Spain on YouTube and posted them on the restaurant’s TV screen.

“I think he is excited to have us there because we speak Spanish and of our experiences in Spain,” says Sara Jane Hartman of New York.  “It is so wonderful to feel so genuinely welcomed, and the food is genuinely Spanish.”

One of the Chicas is Meredith Carter Patterson, who grew up with Craddock in Halifax County. She lives now in Burlington,N.C.

““ When we get together it is so special becausenobody else understand how wonderful that year was for us,” she says. “As American students, we were given special treatment by wonderful teachers.”

 

Both Patterson  and Craddock attended Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., where the program was led by their teacher Dorothy Mulberry. This teacher also visited Oak Grove at one of their reunions.

How did Craddock get involved in the program? “I majored in Spanish just so I could go to Spain,” she says.

The 14 young women  stayed at residents’ homes, learning about Spanish culture from professors and picking up the language too. Julie Rawson of Vancouver, Wash., still communicates with one family that hosted her all those years ago.

Several became Spanish teachers. Craddock did not, but the Spanish was useful in arranging an adoption from Honduras and conversing with a foster child from Guatemala and one foster child’s parents.

I attended most breakfasts and one dinner with the group myself, and I played the piano while they sang  an old Spanish song that had no sheet music.

I did enjoy some of our conversations, but I don’t have the appetite for talking that they have. I marvel at how they can all converse  for hours on end for several days. I suspect that the bond they formed over this novel experience was a very strong one.

Viva las chicas!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arming myself for combat

It’s almost time to prepare for battle against dangerous intruders. These aggressive invaders are trying to destroy our way of life. They’re not the Viet Cong, the Taliban nor Al-Qaeda. They are  bamboo stalks!

On our Cluster Springs property, my wife, Pickett, is the creator. She plants bulbs and seeds that lead to beautiful flowers. I am the destroyer, the marauder challenging overhanging branches and expanding bushes too big for their britches.

About 100 years ago, one of Pickett’s ancestors planted a small patch of bamboo, thinking it would be a pretty addition to the farm. It spread quickly, and now it takes up 5 of our 400 acres. I’ll admit it looks nice, but it would double or triple in size if we left for a year and never cut anything back.

So it is my task to take clippers and cut down every new stalk I see. Frequently I come back from the battle with war wounds: cuts from the thorns from other plants it hides behind.

 Do my attacks kill the bamboo? No. I can’t cut that deep. It just keeps it from growing enough to spread further through an underground network of roots. If I keep the stalks from sprouting leaves, it drains them of energy.

The invasion is the worst in May, when bamboo pops up seemingly overnight. The ones I missed are the easiest to spot the next winter, when their leaves are the only green things amidst the bare trees.

Some years ago, a distant bamboo society came to inspect the huge strand, but they couldn’t take our bamboo with them. People have suggested getting pandas, but that’s quite impractical. They wouldn’t get along with our dogs anyway. Maybe there is a way to poison the bamboo, but Pickett is opposed to pesticides.

A few weeks ago she found someone who can eradicate the bamboo with a process called forestry mulching,  but at a high cost. Then  I thought, “What? A huge bare spot outside our kitchen window? It would take months, years, for trees to replace it. Leave it there!

So I guess I will lead an infantry attack on bamboo until I am no longer physically able. Here is a a secret that I will share with you: I actually enjoy it!

 

 

Left behind by technology (and my song about it)

Many seniors are feeling left out as the Information Age progresses.

It’s getting harder all the time to do business online. Websites and phone prompts are difficult to navigate and passwords more complicated than ever.

Younger people may be able to get by instinctively, but aging brains cannot. Seniors have been disenfranchised.

It isn’t enough to enter your user name and PIN anymore. Now you you have to enter a code texted to your phone as well in “double authentication.”

Of course, you must log in to buy tickets on many sites and prove that you aren’t a robot. Some seniors just show up at the door, hoping against a sell-out.

I may be 84 years old, but I’m not stupid. As a technology reporter for three national publications, I was an early adapter to desktop computing, the World Wide Web and Facebook. But I retired 17 years ago and my mind isn’t what it used to be.

Too many times I have booked the wrong date for  a hotel room. Now  I insist on calling the local hotel and making a reservation over the phone.

When I want a drug refill, I just tell the pharmacy clerk what I want a few days in advance. I have trouble reading the numbers on the pill bottle anymore or navigating the phone system.

This column was inspired by our experience with the Social Security website, when we needed a tax form. Not only was it hard to log in but it made Pickett take a selfie of herself and make a photograph of her driver’s license.

She finally gave up and we drove to the Social Security office, where someone printed the form out for her. We lost it again and she had to go back, but I won’t blame Social Security for that! Just last week, she opened an envelope where she had put one of the missing forms. “Here it is!” She said proudly.

So there’s the problem. What’s the solution?  I have several suggestions for tech companies that might help.

—Make more use of facial recognition, fingerprints and voice recognition.

—Let people speak to the website more easily to get what they want.

—Stop changing a website’s navigation so often with updates.

—Have uniform ways of doing repetitive tasks. Why can’t every ticket seller have the same format? And have you ever had to enter a new credit card to make automatic payments? Each company has a unique way of changing personal information. With passwords, of course.

—We can make more use of AI. Most older people hate AI, but when I have a problem like these, I go to ChatGPT and ask what to do. I wrote about this before: Once when I couldn’t get through to my cable company, ChatGPT advised me to just  tell the cable company’s AI voice  to “cancel” and you get right through. It worked. After all, AI characters know how their brothers and sisters think!

Appropriately, here are the words I wrote to a song I wrote several years ago.

You can hear it in this link.

Password Blues

I’ve got the password blues, I just can’t get  in.

My bank account is frozen and my wallet’s too thin,

What can I do? This just isn’t fair.

I wrote it down some place, but I don’t know where.

 

Refrain:

Password Blues, please let me in.

Password blues, I don’t know my PIN.

Password blues, I lost my long list.

According to the Internet, I just don’t exist.

 

“Forgot Your password?” Now here’s where to click.

This whole awful process just makes me so sick.

They texted my phone. But where’d I put  that?

I’ll have to call the bank and have a long chat.

 

They’ll give you a password but please don’t explode.

With capitals and numbers you just can’t decode.

It will pop up always in a a password app.

But when you need it, what happened to that?

 

Facial recognition, the new tech religion

Will solve this problem, require no decision.

But I’m wearing a mask or maybe a hat.

The website looks and asks: Who the heck is that?

 

To prove who you are and show you aren’t a trickster,

They’ll ask: How many cars are in this picture?

I just don’t know. My idea is better.

Give me your address, and I’ll mail you a letter!