an absence of flags,
it said on the sign … does not
assure safe waters

The lifeguards on Hilton Head Island fill out a message board with chalk at their lifeguard station listing current conditions.

Usually the board covers the basics, high tide, low tide, water temps and water conditions.

I grew up on the shore of Lake Michigan about seven miles south of the state park at Grand Haven.

On rough days, my Mom would have us call the state park and ask “What flag was out?”

The lifeguards at the state park had most of the same flags they fly down here in South Carolina.

Green flag meant safe to swim.

Yellow flag meant to swim with caution.

Red flag meant that that water was rough and swimming was not recommended.

We say thank you, hang up, yell “RED FLAG’ or what ever it was and then run off to go swimming.

When we were little kids, under the age of 10, my Mom made us wear life jackets.

Those old orange canvas ones with cloth ties that ate into your chin once the cloth got wet but when we got older we took our chances with the waves.

The temperature of the water in Lake Michigan was easy to find because The Grand Rapids Press displayed a horizontal thermometer in the lower right hand corner of the front page that showed the current water temp at Grand Haven.

We would get the paper about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and start screaming ‘the lake is at 72 the lake is at 72’ and we couldn’t wait to get to the beach.

We never stopped to think that that report was most likely 24 hours old and Lake Michigan water temps could drop 10 degrees in one hour if the wind shifted.

Nor did we ever think to get our own thermometer and put it in the water to see just how cold it was.

And it could get cold.

ACHING COLD my brothers called it.

Stick your feet in the water and in seconds they would be throbbing.

You just have to get used to it, we would say as we dared each to ‘duck under’.

We would wade out slowly, slowly as we eased our bodies into the water that was around 64 degrees.

It took a lot of effort to finally dive in and get it over with.

We had an old rowboat that we would paddle out into the lake where the water was over our heads and anchor it.

Lake Michigan was too rough to let a rowboat stay anchored off shore so we did this every day we went swimming.

Once the boat was anchored, we would flip it over and using it for a swimming platform.

When that boat flipped, anyone in the boat was going in the water and somedays, the water was so cold, that was the only way anybody was going to get wet.

I remember one day we flipped the boat over and the water was so cold, me and my brothers cambered over the side as it flipped and stayed out of the water and nobody was getting off into the water so we untied the anchor and drifted into shore.

It wasn’t until I started working in online news for WZZM13 in Grand Rapids that I really got into the mechanics of water temps.

The National Weather Service makes all of their data available to public for free, it is a service after all, if you can figure out what you need.

The file I needed was named something like metar/CONUS/MI_GL_watercond_temp.txt but once I got it, I was able to turn the data into a weather map with locations and temps and put it online.

This was back in the early days of the World Wide Web and nothing was ‘web ready’ and we created everything from scratch.

The file I found listed all the reported water temperatures at Michigan State parks on Lake Michigan from South Haven to Pentwater.

I was in the weather center chatting with meteorologist George Lessens and we got to wondering HOW the data was gathered and George picked up the phone and called the Grand Haven State Park.

He found out that at some point before 11 a.m. a park employee would take a thermometer tied to a rope and walk down to the water and toss the thermometer in and get a reading.

George asked, but no, there were no guidelines as to how long the thermometer should be left in the water or how deep it should be in the water or any instructions except to get a reading and call it in by 11 a.m.

It was, we decided, an inexact science.

Now I live a mile from the Atlantic Ocean.

The ocean is different from Lake Michigan.

It is warmer for one.

That’s just one, but it is a big one.

When I was a kid, we would get excited when the water in Lake Michigan was in the 70s.

Right now the ocean is in the low 80’s and it is wonderful.

The ocean also is saltier and I float so I swim better.

And there are … things in the water down here.

That is why where up north you have green, yellow and red flags, down here you have green, yellow, red, double red and purple flags.

A purple flag indicates that dangerous marine life, such as jellyfish, stingrays or man-of-wars are present in the water.

A purple flag can be flown with any other color.

I have yet to be bothered by any dangerous marine life since moving to the coast but I was bitten by dog in downtown Charleston.

The flag code comes down to this.

Safe to swim.

Use caution.

Swimming not recommend.

Do not swim.

Dangerous marine life.

You might think that this list should cover all the bases.

Yet today, Nick the lifeguard on duty, added a further note of caution.

On his notice board, Nick wrote, “Absence of flags does not assure safe waters.”

I like that.

Absence of flags does not assure safe waters.

I want that one a T Shirt.

That message would fit anywhere in the world not just the beach.

Just about the most right words for today I can imagine.

Always remember, an absence of flags does not assure safe waters.

imagination …
reconcile raw emotive
power of the past

In his book, Walk About (Published in America as Notes from a Sunburned Country), Bill Bryson writes about Australia:

One of the more cherishable peculiarities of Australians is that they like to build big things in the shape of other things. Give them a bale of chicken wire, some fibreglass and a couple of pots of paint and they will make you, say, an enormous pineapple or strawberry or, as here, a lobster. Then they put a café and a gift shop inside, erect a big sign beside the highway (for the benefit of people whose acuity evidently does not extend to spotting a fifty-foot-high piece of fruit standing beside an otherwise empty highway), then sit back and wait for the money to roll in.

Some sixty of these objects are scattered across the Australian landscape, like leftover props from a 1950s horror movie. You can, if you have sufficient petrol] money and nothing approaching a real life, visit a Big Prawn, a Big Koala, a Big Oyster (with searchlights for eyes, apparently), a Big Lawnmower, a Big Marlin, a Big Orange and a Big Merino Ram, among many others. The process, I am patriotically proud to tell you, was started by an American named Landy who built a Big Banana at Coff’s Harbour, on the New South Wales coast, which proved so magically attractive to passing vehicles that it made Mr Landy, as it were, the big banana of the business.

As an aside, I love that word cherishable or having the ability to be cherished and I am working on my own list but I digress.

I am happy to report that according to story in the Guardian, one of these big things in on its way back.

In the article, Sweet dreams are made of this: Queensland’s Big Pineapple is back. Is it still a big deal? by Joe Hinchliffe, Mr. Hinchliffe writes:

After 14 years of big promises, legal battles and a Game of Thrones’ style ownership jostle, the Big Pineapple finally reopened in June. Patsy, too, has returned, at the age of 93, for another ride around the track.

But it is not just over its former workers that this roadside attraction maintains its peculiar hold. In 2006 the National Trust of Queensland unveiled a list of state icons – alongside the Great Barrier Reef and the Gabba was the Big Pineapple. The year after, it was one of five big things celebrated on Australia Post stamps. In 2009 it was heritage listed. Last year the Royal Australian Mint stamped its likeness on a $1 coin.

For generations of Australians the Big Pineapple conjures up memories of road trips to the sunshine state, of birthday parties and weddings, of train rides and ice-cream.

And it got me thinking about things growing up that I experienced like the Giant Pineapple.

What for me taps into that raw emotive power of the past?

One such place for me and my family was the Dutch Village over in Holland, Michigan.

We would make the short trip when my Dad would take a week off.

My family had a cotttage on Lake Michigan where we would go in the summer and when my Dad took a week off, he would celebrate by not shaving.

But at some point during that week, Dad would shave.

There was a small bathroom off the kitchen.

My Dad would have showered and dressed for the day and would open the bathroom door to let out the shower steam.

In the morning the sun would flood through the back window in the bathroom and my Dad would stand in front of the small sink and look in the mirror and, very deliberately, shave.

Shaving cream spread over his face.

Firm use of the razor.

Down the sides of face.

Then up under has chin.

I can smell the scent of the shaving cream drifting in with the steam and sunshine.

I would be sitting at the kitchen table with my brothers and sisters eating breakfast and we would see Dad shaving and know that we would be going somewhere.

Maybe it would be the Coast Guard festival in Grand Haven.

Maybe it would be a longer day trip up to Sleeping Bear Dunes.

Most likely it was a trip to the Dutch Village.

It wasn’t much.

A glorified tourist trap.

But it was our tourist trap!

There were a few shops and some things to play one, a giant wooden shoe and a Dutch barn with barnyard animals to feed.

All operated by a staff in ‘traditional’ Dutch clothes.

We would first run to the candy store.

I remember one time when all of us Dutch blond kids ran in the sales lady said something like ‘you know they’re Dutch when the coming asking for bobbalars and chocolate Droste’s wooden shoes.’

Once when I worked at a local TV station in Grand Rapids, a team was sent out to cover the Holland Tulip Festival and I wrote a tease for one of news broadcasts along the line of … “The bobbalars are just as sweet …” and the anchor came over to ask what that meant. I then had to pronounce the word phonetically bah bah lars .. which she wrote down.

And there was the zweefmolen or swing carousel with swings that spun you high in the air in circle until you were ready to throw up all your chocolate wooden shoes.

This was a condition we called ‘zweefmolen disease’ and we loved to bring friends and new family members who had just married into the family to Dutch Village just to watch them get zweefmolen disease.

Seeing them stagger around was as much fun as just saying zweefmolen.

It was goofy but we loved it.

I loved taking my kids when we got kids to Dutch Village.

I loved watching them get zweefmolen disease.

My kids didn’t look like my brothers and sisters but I told them they were all Dutch anyway.

Nothing gets you odder looks than to live in the south and tell people that you are Dutch and it’s like they can’t imagine anything so exotic.

So for the folks in Australia, the big pineapple is back … ‘but is it a big deal?’, Mr. Hinchliffe asks.

Another case of the ‘You can’t go home again’ syndrome as nothing is like it was but then was anything like it ever was?

When my kids were growing up I watched a lot Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. and I remember that in that cartoon called ‘Rugrats’, the perspective was often drawn from about 1 foot about floor level, the perspective of a toddler.

In the movie Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams dares his students to stand on their desks to gain a new perspective.

I offer that to relive your childhood, sit on the floor, get your head down there and experience life as it used to be.

At the beach, with you head just above the sand, the beach stretches out forever.

At a park, the jungle gym is 5 stories high.

Mr. Hinchliffe closes his article with this:

“Today, the pineapple is a curious site next to a regional road with a serviceable cafe and a train ride. It takes a bit of imagination to reconcile what stands now with the raw emotive power of its past.”

It takes a bit of imagination to reconcile what stands now with the raw emotive power of its past.

I love that.

Embrace your imagination and get as low to the floor as you can go and tap in the raw emotive power of your past.

If nothing else, you will be looking up.

Also, make the trip to West Michigan and visit a little bit of old Holland at the Dutch Village.

Make it worthwhile and ride the zweefmolen.

Feel the raw emotive power of the past.

will you still need me?
feed me? Who could ask for more?
when I’m sixty-four

Not sure how this happened, which seems to be a common feeling, but I start my 64th year today.

Because of family history and often told family stories, I know that was I born around noon so as I write this, I still have 5 hours to go.

I know it was around noon because I was born on a Sunday and my Mom planned a family dinner after church and while I interrupted her day, my Aunt Marion came over and pulled the dinner together so all my brothers and sisters were sitting around the table when my Dad came home from the hospital to announce it was a boy.

All the boys cheered and my sisters all cried as it would have been a tie game had I been a girl.

I was 8th in what would be a family of 11 kids.

When I was 4, my Dad got a place on the shore of Lake Michigan just south of Grand Haven where we spent out summers so my birthday was almost always celebrated out at the lake.

In 1966, my Mom and Dad took me into Grand Haven to WT Grants and said I could pick out anything I wanted for my birthday.

In my mind the toy aisle stretched out sight to the left and right and towered over me.

I am not sure how long it took as my Father was generous but not real patient, a buyer not a shopper, and I selected an orange truck with a working steam shovel type crane that I could raise and lower and scoop up sand.

I am sure I had Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel in mind when I picked out as I always liked Mike as we shared a first name.

Which, as I am sure I have mentioned before, brings me to the topic of my name.

See, Mike had already been used as a first name in my family.

My brother Tim was born back in 1956 and was named Mike … for about 3 days.

Then my Dad said, ‘Nope, he doesn’t look like a Mike‘ and when the paper work was filled, he became Timothy John.

4 years later when I showed up, my Dad decided I did look like a Mike and Michael James Hoffman was listed on my paperwork.

Not sure what that says or means, but it had to have messed up paperwork in the global accounting of life somewhere.

The moment I got my truck home was captured on film by my Dad with his Nikon camera.

I posed with an army shovel and my new truck, ready to take on the world and all the dirt and sand I could find.

Scrapes and bruises that any 6 year old would have acquired over a summer and one shoe untied, that’s me.

Behind me in the picture are my three sisters, Mary, Lisa and Janet, who are plainly thrilled by my new truck and that it was my birthday.

That was 58 years ago and with the help of the photos, I can feel it, I can smell it.

As Jim Harrison writes in his book, Sundog, “So much of the emotional content of our lives seems to occur before we are nineteen or twenty … “

Now I am 64.

And by chance as I type this out at my desk near the ocean, the 3rd movement of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2 starts playing on the radio and it is one of my favorites.

A piece of music impossible to listen to and not feel light and light hearted.

I will take it as a good omen for things yet to come.

It is my birthday.

What can I do but, and when will I ever get the chance again, to quote Sir Paul?

When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a Valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine

If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four

You’ll be older too
And if you say the word
I could stay with you

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride

Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four

Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck and Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four

will you still need me?
feed me? Who could ask for more?
When I’m sixty-four

the dog did not bark
Gehrig did not play … my Dad
saw it not happen

Going through the New York Times this morning, I read the article, MLB City Connect: All 29 uniforms ranked, from the so-so to the sublime (click here to read and view the uniforms).

These are Major League Baseball uniforms that are part of Nike’s planned three-year cycle of cityinspired fits.

City Inspired means that the uniform captures the look, the feel, the vibe (in the City of Detroit’s case, Nike chose a pattern of tire tread’s to signify that the city has been run over I guess) of any given Major League city.

Nobody asked me but if somebody asked me, I would say they look like someone asked CHAT GTi to ‘DESIGN THE UGLIEST, DUMBEST most AWFUL Uniforms possible.’

If that WAS the intent, then Nike did a great job.

If that wasn’t the intent, I fail to grasp what they wanted to do.

If, as it is presented at it’s most base level, the goal was to sell more T-Shirts, I am not sure I know anyone who would wear anyone of these new looks.

In contrast I offer this picture.

This is Lou Gehrig.

The Iron Man.

The feller who held the record for 50 years of most consecutive major league baseball game played.

It was Grand Rapids Michigan native and GR Catholic Central grad, Wally Pipp who played 1st base for the Yankee’s who on June 2, 1925, told the manager he wanted to sit out as he had a headache.

The Yankee’s put in Mr. Gehrig who then played the next 2,130 games for Yankee’s at 1st base and Mr. Pipp became the moral of not missing a day at work stories.

Look at the uniform in this picture.

Everything about it is so right as almost everything in those Nike cItyinspired fits gets wrong.

This was the uniform of the New York Yankees.

The team that represented the city of New York.

The team Darth Vador would have played for.

The easy confidence of being number 1 and knowing it drips out of the logo on the cap, the simple black capital letters, and the smile on Mr. Gehrig’s face.

They were on top and their city was on top and they knew it and so did the rest of the world.

I have always loved this photo.

Both for its content AND its construction as a photo.

The grays and the blacks.

The dugout.

The bench.

And the story.

See, this photo is captioned, “New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig watches from the dugout during warmups as his Iron Man streak ends in Detroit, May 2, 1939.”

This is the day when Mr. Gehrig finally gave in to the way he felt and said he couldn’t play.

He didn’t know it, but he had Lou Gehrig’s Disease or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neurone disease (MND).

That diagnosis wouldn’t be released for another couple weeks, on June 19, 1939.

I remember liking this photo so much, that I took the book it was in, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It by Lawrence S. Ritter, and showed the picture to my Dad.

Dad took the book and studied the photograph.

Then he said, “I was at that game.”

He didn’t say anything else about it but I was impressed and that nugget stayed in my brain.

It clicked that the game must have been in Detroit and that my Dad had made the trip down there from Grand Rapids where he lived and where I grew up, to watch the Tigers play the Yankee’s and was a witness to history of Mr. Gehrig’s last game.

Looking at this picture brought this memory back for me and I wondered about the box score for the game.

I searched, “Lou Gehrig’s last game” and got a bit of a shock.

Lou Gehrig’s last game wasn’t May 2nd.

According to the records, Lou Gehrig’s last game was April, 30th, in New York.

I knew my Dad had not been in New York City in 1939.

Or at least I was pretty sure and if he had been, he never mentioned it.

What was going on here.

Could my Dad have been mistaken?

Could my Dad have made it up?

I have to say it really bothered me that for years I had it in my mind that Dad had been there.

And now it seems, he wasn’t.

I thought about it some more.

I checked Gehrig’s playing record and there it was.

He played his last game, ever, on April 30, 1939.

In Yankee Stadium.

On April 30, 1939, the batting records, the numbers, everything, all stop.

I don’t mind telling you I was pretty blue.

Then it hit me.

I was searching for the wrong day.

The dog DID NOT bark.

On May 2, 1939, in Tiger Stadium, Gehrig DID NOT PLAY.

Gehrig did not play for the 1st time since 1925.

And my Dad, 19 years old in the spring of 1939, was there.

I often think of my Dad.

He was a Dentist and in fact, started Dental School that fall in Ann Arbor, Michigan and I have always wondered if he was in Ann Arbor to register or something when he decided to drive over to the ball game in Detroit.

I can see him sitting the table with the baseball book in his hands, studying this photograph.

The one with the Tiger Stadium stands in the background.

It was probably about 40 years after it happened that Dad was looking at that book with me.

I think that is was about 40 years ago that me and my Dad had this conversation.

My Dad might have been sitting at the table with me but I bet in his mind he was 19 and sitting in Tiger Stadium.

Just another memory of me and my Dad.

Got a lot of them and I feel lucky to have them.

By the way, in that photo is another Yankee ballplayer wearing number 11.

That is the great Lefty Gomez.

You might not remember him, but I bet you remember for what he said,

“I’d rather be … ,” said Lefty, “ … lucky than good.“

cribbage master is
a masterpiece – the only …
complete cribbage board

Fifteen two.

Fifteen four.

Fifteen six.

And a double run for 14.

And the Jack for 15.

I can hear my Dad saying it as we played cribbage.

“Lot of power in that kitty”, my Dad would say as he discarded.

That meant there were 5’s, 10’s or face cards in there.

My Dad loved card games.

We all learned poker and a game we called Minnesota Red Dog.

Some of us learned Pinochle but I couldn’t handle dealing multiple cards at a time.

And cribbage.

You would be sitting there.

Dad would walk by and stop and look at you.

“Cribbage?”, he was ask?

You would say yes and you would be playing cribbage to save your life.

My Dad only knew one way to play and that was take no prisoners.

My Dad’s cards showed on his face.

The look on my Dad’s face if he had held a double run of 5,5,6 and 7, discarded two face cards and turned a 5, told the entire story of what was in his hand.

“Cribbage?”, he was ask?

Playing cribbage with my Dad using a Druke Cribbage board.

Playing cribbage with my Dad always using a Druke Cribbage board.

Made in Grand Rapids.

If you grew up in Grand Rapids, like I did, you knew the building on the West Side with the Chess Set Knight on it.

But it was paging through an old copy of New Yorker magazine that Druke Games came to mind.

In the October 30, 1948 edition, I came across this ad.

With the text: Drueke’s Cribbage Master is a masterpiece for the “fifteen Two” fans. A Once-Around board, it has an additional new feature of playing corners, games, points, skunks and high hands. The only complete cribbage board. #3.50 at better stores everywhere.

My first thought was of all the places for this Grand Rapids company to advertise but the New Yorker?

Really?

Then thinking about the New Yorker and 1948 and the New York City crowd of the late.

And though some more about Druke games.

Classic cribbage boards and chess sets.

And I thought.

Where else?