I am a Man out of Time, I suppose.

Growing up I read Asimov and Clarke, Verne and Herbert, Heinlein and Bradbury, and of course, H. G. Wells.  I was eager to see the future they painted with their words; and it has come to pass.

Whether they really saw the future, or whether the engineers and designers have subconsciously created the visions they painted, I do not know.

As a boy I gasped in wonder at their visions, as a man, I am simply left to wonder.

Recently, I stopped in at a local grocery store one morning on my way out to spend the day hunting.  I was dressed in camouflage; pants and shirt, and jacket.

The 30-something clerk at the register excitedly said to me: “Wow, cool, I have one of the hats, but didn’t know they made a jacket.  How many points did you have to get for that?”

At first I had no idea what he was asking.  Then as we spoke a bit more, I realized that he had noticed the “Cabela’s” label on my jacket.  And the conversation led me to believe that he thought the jacket was a prize that could be earned by scoring enough points on a video game that Cabela’s markets titled “Big Game Hunter”.

While I didn’t laugh out loud at him, I left pretty amused.

Several hours later, I sat down to rest with my back up against the broad sun-warmed trunk of a California Live Oak some 4 miles from the end of the road.  In front of and below me stretched a large field of mostly mixed rye and native grasses in the Ventana Wilderness of Central California.  Spaced about the field were several other oak, madrone, and pine trees.  Skirting the edge of the field and rising above my position was an incline covered mostly in manzanita brush, with some buck brush and cactus mixed in.

The sun’s rays angled low in the sky sliding ever closer to the crest of the ridge on the opposite side of the valley.  Golden-toned light cast sideways through leaves and branches warmed the look as well as the feel of the air as the sun sank into a pillow of fog that hugged the far ridgeline.

I watched Blue Jays hop from tree to tree, screeching and chasing each other. 

In a dead bleached-white tree a red-headed wood pecker drummed holes into the top portion of the trunk.  Dead for many years, the tree’s bark had released its hold on the trunk and fallen to the ground in heaps around the still upright trunk.  The larger branches had also settled to the ground and formed the base of a large wood pile.

Squirrels sat side by side on the top-most branches of the pile, munching on acorns, and keeping a close eye on the activities around them.  A cotton tailed rabbit bumped along in and out of the tangle of limbs on the ground; dashing out to select a few mouthfuls of grass and back to chew them thoroughly before returning for more.  A covey of quail fluttered in fits and starts across the meadow, from tree shade to tree shade, scratching and poking around for food as they moved.

Winging overhead a golden eagle interrupted the circling flight of a red-tailed hawk, but not the ceaseless circling of the turkey buzzards who were riding the thermals along the ridgeline.  The hawk called its displeasure before sliding off to another valley out of line with the eagle’s travels.

Leaning there, warmed by the sun, watching the activity below me, I munched on some jerky, and chewed Pistachio nuts, drinking from my water now and then.  And my mind drew back to the clerk at the store and his video game; and his desire to “earn” a jacket by scoring enough points shooting video game animals while sitting in his darkened room staring at a colored screen.  And to the visions of the science fiction giants that I read as a kid; and their awe inspiring “future” that has come to pass. 

Nuclear submarines and travel to other worlds; cell phones and computers that you carry in your hands; and “virtual” pleasures and thrills that insulate mankind from the real world around us.

I see the near future of Total Recall where instead of going on vacation, vacation memories are planted in your brain; and of Surrogates where people really have no interaction, instead living their lives through the actions of their “duplicate robot beings”; and I grieve for mankind.

Mankind willingly sets aside the real, for watered–down imitations.  And as a result, most men and women live less than the animals in the fields below me. 

I believe that Asimov and Clarke, Verne and Herbert, Heinlein and Bradbury, and of course, H. G. Wells would all cry over that truth that has come to pass from their visions of greatness.

 Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved

Digging Holes

As a boy, I got lots of experience digging holes.

You have likely heard of the mythical army punishment of digging holes; where a soldier is forced to take a shovel and dig a hole that is 3 feet by 3 feet, and 3 feet deep.  It may be that the army never really made anyone do that, but my dad sure did.

You would have thought it was his favorite punishment for my brothers and I.  But I must admit that it wasn’t just some random thing with Dad, he had a plan.  Once the hole had been dug, we had to sift the rocks out of the dirt and move the rocks out into the driveway to add a layer on the dirt to keep it from being muddy.  And the hole then was filled back up, layer after layer.  We put say a layer of grass cuttings from the lawn and a layer of dirt; a layer of apple cores and skins (during canning season) and a layer of dirt; a layer of leaves in the fall and a layer of dirt.

Each hole that was dug in a different location.  I don’t know this for a fact, but I have always suspected that my father had a map of the yard with each and every hole carefully measured and recorded, dated, and tracked.  Over time, the soil in that yard became the best growing ground in the city.  Rock-free, rich, and airy.  Our house had Apple, peach, pomegranate, fig, apricot and plumb trees.  We grew everything from asparagus to zucchini, and grapes, and berries, and flowers.

Each and every hole was exactly alike.  The walls were true, the corners were square, the floor was level.  I know that for a fact.  I watched my dad check enough of them with a tape measure and a drafting square.

You might think that my dad had to make up reasons to punish us, but that wasn’t the case.  We got into enough trouble that he often had to find other punishments because he had too many holes waiting to be filled.

And that driveway.  If we had really transgressed, we knew it, because we were assigned a hole in the driveway. 

As good as we were at digging holes, the driveway was a special punishment.  It had been driven on for years and years.  And every year we added more rocks, and every winter those rocks got pressed down into the dirt.

The top 6 inches of the driveway sure could work up a sweat.  A hard swung railroad pick would make about a ¼” divot and then bounce up with each swing.

Today, someone would call that hole digging “child abuse”.  They would be wrong.

It was instead character building.  We learned to value work, and we learned to take pride in what we could accomplish.  We learned to reach inside ourselves for strength, and resolve.  It built muscle, and determination.

It built men.

Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved

Captain Dodgeball verses WarBall

Mohammad Ali or Sugar Ray Leonard; Babe Ruth or Mark Mcguire; Coke or Pepsi.

Match ups are very often fuzzy and confusing; usually totally subjective.  Mired in the hazy history of decades of change and endlessly debated by observers who are living their lives quite separate from the details of the comparisons.  But one match up that is easy for me to answer is the question of which version of dodge ball is the most demanding.

I speak confidently on this subject; from personal experience; from the stress and the stretch of arm and back muscles, from the bruises and abrasions of ball to skin contact. 

As a boy I spent countless hours playing Captain Dodgeball beginning at 11 years of age when I joined Boy Scout Troop 939 in Livermore California. Captain Dodgeball was the favorite meeting night game for us boys.  We meet in the multipurpose hall of the First Presbyterian Church in town.  A room that was roughly 70 feet long and 25 feet wide, with solid walls at each end and high ceilings.

Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, while the restrictive structure of “civilization” was rapidly encircling the wildness of preteen and teenage boys, it hadn’t closed the circle with brick-solid walls quite yet.  Boys could still run, and climb, and chase, and fight mock (and real) battles.  We could challenge each other, and ourselves, learn our limits, and expand them. 

The forty plus boys in the troop would split up by patrols and face each other as teams on opposite ends of the hall.  No real dividing line existed, as long as you had the “balls” to cross the centerline, putting yourself at greater risk, you could pursue your quarry as deep into the other team’s line as you dared.   The game began with each team armed with one red rubber ball.  At the signal to begin, the boys who had the balls would run towards the centerline, take aim at someone, and let fly.

We learned to throw hard.  No, not like that; I mean REALLY HARD.  Hard enough that no one wanted to get in the way.  Hard enough that no one could possibly catch the ball as it would bounce off as they flinched from the impact.  Hard enough that if we didn’t connect with someone’s flesh, the ball hit the far wall with enough force to bounce all the way back to our side before it could be stopped and trapped.

 That was the key to Captain Dodgeball.  Learning to put 100% of you muscle, weight, and spirit behind the ball.  Putting enough “heat” on the ball that it left colored marks on the wall when it hit; and discolored flesh behind if it didn’t make it to the wall.

Yep, that was Captain Dodgeball and my friends and I cut our teeth on it, at least the teeth that didn’t get knocked out.

Then, in my freshman year of high school, I was introduced to WarBall.

It happened on the first rainy day of the year.  We all headed to our gym class as scheduled, changed into our workout clothes and were told to assembly in the Boy’s Gym.  There on the hardwood floors of the basketball court the Coaches told us that since it was raining, we wouldn’t be going outside and would instead be playing WarBall in the gym.

Two seniors were selected as captains of the opposing teams, and they began choosing team members.

Times were was no different then than now, and I am sure you all know that as a freshman I would be picked only after all the seniors, juniors, and sophomores had been teamed up.  Both of the captains loudly proclaimed that they didn’t want any whimpy freshmen on their team.  But ultimately we were all chosen and as luck would have it, several of my Scout friends were all chosen on the same team as I.

The Coaches told us that this was the toughest dodgeball game ever devised because there were 6 balls in use at all times and you just couldn’t keep track of it all.  The opposing team huddled up, they obviously had a plan.  The whistle blew, and the game began.

The other team held onto its three balls while our side threw our three.  Then, controlling all 6 balls at once, each in the hands of a senior, the opposing captain yelled out “lets smear some freshman” and all six ball holders raced at the line.  Each had singled out a freshman on our side.  Four of those freshman were Scout Patrol members of mine.

All four of us caught the balls thrown at us.  They had no heat.  The opposing captain had thrown at me; he threw with his arm only, no back, no roll to his hips, no back foot off the ground.  I knew I could catch it and jumping squarely in front of it I caught it cleanly.

Then, because it was the way of Captain Dodgeball, I raced at the centerline, planted my left foot rolled right shoulder up and over, followed by right hip, and the right foot came up fully off of the ground.  And because it was the way of Captain Dodgeball, my target was the guy who had thrown at me.

The captain on the other side was turning to run back  away from the line when the ball connected firmly with his right temple.  It was the first and last attempt he had to dodge a ball that day.  Knocked him off his feet, and either it, or the wooden floor, knocked him unconscious. Three other seniors on the other side were “knocked out of the game” by my fellow patrol members.

All 4 of those balls bounced back to our side of the line.

The game came to a screeching halt.

The coaches summoned the nurse.

The senior was carried to the office.

Freshman were never chosen last again.

Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved