The Great Dad's Day Doorknob-a-Rama

A new tie... Some hot electronics... Power tools...

These are the traditional Fathers' Day gifts for dad. Unless, of course, you were my Dad in the 80s. And then, I knew, gifting success might very well depend on finding...

(Wait for it.)

..A weird antique doorknob.

No, truly.

Among many, many other things, Dad collects doorknobs-- though not as avidly as he once did. I guess once you've checked out all the knockers that are out there... once you've gotten your hands on knobs of all sizes and types... you begin to realize you've seen it all. You settle for what you have. You become complacent.

Interest wanes.

But when I was around 12 or so, doorknobs took center stage in my family's weekend antiquing travels...

Also the dining room.

Yep, my father's dad had been a residential contractor, so I suppose the initial inspiration (some might call it "blame") for Dad's Doorknob-a-rama lies with him.

A pack rat in his own right, he'd brought home the leftover antique hardware from the places he'd renovated, and my good ol' Dad had taken a shine to them.

So it wasn't long before, displayed upon the walls as proudly as you please, there was a veritable museum quality timeline of door hardware. Doorknobs carved from minerals, doorknobs made from brass, doorknobs crafted from mercury glass, and some handpainted with delicate porcelain flowers.

There were knobs with glass beads embedded into them... Crystalline knobs that had turned amethyst from years in the sun... Black knobs, brown knobs, knobs from public schools in the 1800s... Each example was bolted to the giant Doorknob Display Boards that covered the walls of the room my long-suffering, doorknob-silent Mom used for entertaining.

It was initially always a little hard to explain to guests.

But what was more challenging-- at least for my pre-teen self-- was being around Dad when he was in doorknob scouting mode.

We'd go to quaint historic towns in Bucks County, PA, and good ol' dad was there with his camera, prepped to take documentary souvenir photos of...

Peoples' old door hardware on their homes.

It's not the easiest thing to sum up tidily for folks who spied him... the ones with questioning stares, the raised eyebrows. Was he casing the joint? No, he was just trying to get the lighting just right on that great octagonal pewter beauty.

Now, this was a time of my life when I pretty much was already embarrassed about... oh... everything. Like the fact Dad insisted on wearing black dress socks with Bermuda shorts.... The fact Mom always wore widebrimmed hats and big sunglasses, looking like Audrey Hepburn trying badly to evade the press...

The fact that I was, well, me.

So having people actually see me strolling the streets and waiting quietly while my dad spent time trying to get just the perfect shot of someone's brass knobs...

It was a special form of Adolescent Hell.

Add to that, any additions to his collection purchased for keepsies at the local flea markets went --not into the trunk of the car. No, see, that would be easy. We could almost have pretended we were normal then.

But instead, they went straight into Dad's jacket pocket... To be brought out to gleefully show the waitress at whatever restaurant in which we enjoyed dinner that day.

I recall him once asking some poor unsuspecting server, "Have you ever seen a pair of knobs like these?"

You can imagine, there really is no good answer to that.

So, as Father's Day is upon us once again, I think back to the days of Knob Hunting.

Now that the Pop has downsized, he has pared down the overall Doorknob-a-Rama quantities. His collection fits, these days, in one small display cabinet in his Florida home.

And that's okay by me. Because I no longer feel compelled, on a yearly basis, to venture into antique stores, peer into their glass cases, and force myself to ask to see their knobs.

Yep, these days, I get him a gift certificate for Ebay. Because, hey, on Ebay, they really have seen it all.


So tell me, what makes YOUR dad happy on Father's Day? I bet it isn't doorknobs. :)

Christmas Songs that Need to Be Written

The awesome beauty of crystallized precipitation... The joy of uniting with people who share a common genetic structure... Hard-shelled, protein-rich foodstuffs combusting over a potential fire-hazard... This is the stuff of Christmas song.

Yet, I can't help but feel there are other topics that reveal an even greater part of the Modern Family Christmas Experience that have not yet been addressed.

So rather than endure a 3,000th broadcast of George Michael's "Last Christmas" or McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime"-- which always make me want to puncture my eardrums with a marshmallow roasting stick-- someone needs to write about the subjects that are truly relevant to our time.

Subjects like:

• 35 and Sleeping in the Bunk Over Grandpa

• O Little Table of Lesser Fam, Where Dost Thou Put One's Knees?

• Yes, Yes, Yes, I'm Still Single, Auntie (Pass the Peas)

• Over the River and Through a Ten Car Pile Up On the Turnpike

• Egg Nog Helps Me Forget

• Silent Treatment for Sister

• Dreidel, Dreidel, Spun Way Under the Couch (For my Jewish friends)

• Guilt Brings Us Together

• Oh Christmas Socks, Oh Christmas Socks!

• Tales from a Christmas Form Letter

• The Airline Peanut Feast

• When Santa Brings Math Flash Cards

• In the Glow of the Shining Leg Lamp

• A Toy Worth Trampling For

• Black Friday, Blue Christmas

• Please Don't Eat the Garland

• Ornament Physics with Fluffy

• Weeping on the Keyboard (The Sappy Christmas Email Forward Song)

• Who Stole the Light-up Baby Jesus?
  

...And, of course, many other soon-to-be-classic hits!

I hope this preliminary list will inspire you talented songwriters out there to really get creative and make music that reflects Christmas as we truly know it. Because I have to tell you, McCartney's really getting on my last nerve.

Help me.

Please.

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Question for today: Any new Christmas song ideas you'd like to add to this list?

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The Quest for the Holy Easy-Bake

"It's the thought that counts." That's what adults tell kids about gift-giving after they've unwrapped the seventh annual itchy, orange knit sweater with a kitten appliqued on it from Great Aunt Eunice.

Eventually, years of orange kitten pullovers, and pen sets, and copies of Dan Rather's biography (what kid should be without?) forge a sort of resigned appreciation for the gift-giver instead of the gift.

And by the time we reach our second decade, we step across the threshold into the adult world, with a certain deep wisdom. One which no longer focuses on the greedy materialism of youth-- as we now have our own cash and can buy whatever the heck we want for ourselves.

Which interestingly, rarely includes orange knit kitten sweaters.

In my own greedy, materialistic youth, I had wanted-- like I've discovered millions of girls of my generation had-- an Easy-Bake Oven.

Ah, yes-- the Easy-Bake Oven! The shining, light-bulb-powered tool of independent tea-party hostessing and tooth rot.

Now, I was not the sort of kid to ask for things for Christmas-- or any other time of the year, for that matter. This, like being Heard as well as Seen, was completely Illegal in my family.

I don't know how it happened, but I'm sure it was instilled in me in the very early hours of Kiddom. Much the way crying babies are left by some Native American tribes to howl alone in the woods until they get it out of their systems once and for all and stop embarrassing their parents in front of the neighbors fer cryin' out loud.

So my parents and I had a routine worked out. I would think about the things I'd like to get for Christmas and not tell anyone. They would then buy my Christmas gifts. After this, they would ask me what I wanted-- y'know, to see if it matched the things they already got me.

And I would say, whatever they got me was fine. They would go away smiling to have such a terrific kid who was not a problem whatsoever like all of those other kids who actually wanted stuff, the greedy little piglets.

And I would open up math flash cards and reading workbooks on Christmas morning and pretend to be excited.

I wrote the book Martyrdom for Munchkins, in case you were wondering. It was 30 pages and in Crayola marker, but still an introspective work for its size.

My one loophole in all of this was asking Santa. Now, unlike other kids, I didn't actually go talk to Santa because, again following the family ideals, he doesn't really want to hear about that sort of blather, he's a busy man with other kids to see, go read somewhere.

So I had developed my own canny theory about him.

I figured, if he knew when you were sleeping, he knew when you were awake, if he knew if you'd been bad or good...

Then he knew about the Easy-Bake.

Yes, my Santa had advanced mind-reading abilities-- sort of like Professor X of the X-Men but with less angst and more hair. And for several years, there was nothing in my mind but flash card sums and the throbbing desire for small cakes I could frost myself in my bedroom whenever I wanted.

By about year four of this-- with ne'er an Easy-Bake to be found reflecting in the glow of the Shiny-Brite ornaments on the tree-- I had to adjust my theory.

Oh, Santa was still a mind-reader, all right, I determined. But he just didn't give a flying fig whether I got my light-bulb-powered tool of baking delight or not. He had a world of other kids to attend to, and I was wasting my time.

So this one year, when my parents had already bought everything per normal and asked, "What do you want for Christmas?" I actually said it. It slipped out of my lips like smooth creamy icing.

"I want an Easy Bake Oven."

The words sounded so strange outside of my head. They bounced off the harvest-colored kitchen walls and echoed back at me.

Mom blinked, surprised I had veered so far off script. "Oh. Well. We'll see," she said, recovering nicely, I thought, from the curveball I'd thrown at her.

And with that, hope glowed in my heart like a tiny cake-baking lightbulb.

A week or two passed and the anticipation was building. I could almost taste those cakes melting in my mouth. So sweet,so slathered in pink icing and so loaded with jimmies and those little silvery edible ball-bearings.

This was going to be the best Christmas ever! It was getting so the anticipation was almost more than I could bear! And so when my parents went out one Saturday, leaving me to my own devices in the house, I verged violently from protocol once more.

I went searching for my Christmas gifts.

There was really no secret where Mom hid them. Nestled among her shoes and purses in the bottom of my parents' closet they were, naked and exposed, vulnerable to prying eyes and groping kid fingers.

What was this? A weaving loom with enough materials to make part of one whole potholder...

And here? A Little Professor math quiz calculator, marked with bright orange "As Is" stickers...

And under that? A new set of markers-- that was excellent, of course, as I tended to go through them like Kool-Aid. But they weren't the true Holy Grail I was after...

So what was this? At the very, very bottom of the bag?... Could it be?

It was a Betty Crocker Cake Mix, a muffin pan, and a couple of cookie cutters.

I sighed and wiped away a tear, slipping the mix... the pan... the cutters-- all that was NOT an Easy-Bake Oven-- back into the bag and buried it all once more under the shoes and purses and the Little Professor Math Quiz calculator, which never did work right unless you turned it on and off 20 times first.

I was nine and I had seen the future. And like Galahad, the only knight to have fleetingly set his peepers on that Holy Grail everyone was so hot on, I knew...

The lightbulb of hope flickered and winked out. The quest had ended.

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Today's question: So what was your Holy Grail of gifts as a kid? And did it live up to expectations?
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Nature's Big Sneeze

"...The hurricane....?"

"...Wanted to ask you about the Hurricane..."

"...Your dad, how is...?"

"...Evacuation of the Florida Keys, is he...?"

As Tropical Storm Fay makes landfall, folks who know my father lives one island down from Key Largo in Florida all wanted to know about his evacuation plans. And I tell them:

"Ha! Evacuation plans? De Pop don't need no stinkin' evacuation plans!"

And then, because it makes me sound like a horrible, callous daughter (also with a mysterious Mexican accent considering I'm a redhead living in Pittsburgh), I have to go on to explain:

You see, Fay was predicted as a Category 1 hurricane.

The Pop only considers evacuation for a Category 3 hurricane.

Cows and Auntie Em in her rocking chair have to be flying by the window before my father even considers loading up the car and leaving la vida Margaritaville. This has been discussed thoroughly and at length between he and I more than once.

Believe me. It has.

It doesn't matter if the sky turns black and the canals and palm trees swim with blood and pina colada mix. It doesn't matter if plagues of grouper fall from the sky or, say plagues of lawn furniture from a yard three canals over drop in for a visit.

It doesn't matter if the neighbor's cat, Mr. Mittens, will be clinging to the top of the flag pole down at the marina by day's end. Or if Jimmy Buffet himself crashes through the back porch screen with a plate of cheeseburgers and that lost shaker of salt....

The news says Category 1, and one laughs in the face of a Category 1. It is apparently not so much a storm. It is a sneeze... with gusto.

So around 10:30 yesterday morning, I got an email from the Pop. The gist of it was (and I'm paraphrasing here):

I guess I'm not going to get to go to Dairy Queen today for my medium pineapple milkshake and barbeque sandwich which I have every Monday night for dinner. The winds are at 60 miles an hour outside and the neighbor is out in the wind and rain looking for Mr. Mittens.

I don't know why. I'm sure Mr. Mittens has found shelter somewhere.

Now, of course, I am not only worried about my dad. I am now worried about the welfare of the neighbor, and Mr. Mittens. Who I have never even met before. (The neighbor, I mean. I think Mr. Mittens might have rubbed up against my leg once.)

Reading the news this morning, it appears Fay's winds have reached the 75 mile an hour range over the Keys... Just under what it takes to make this tropical storm an official hurricane.

And I know my father is there at home, strapping himself to the mast as the power zaps out, the first floor floods, and neighborhood pets and free-range iguanas everywhere are swimming for higher ground. But let's get back to the really important things here...

The Pop's schedule has been all blown to heck because he never did get his Monday Dairy Queen run.

Gosh, the whole week will have been thrown off!

Stupid Mother Nature.

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Shutterbug Pop and the Runaway Train

I've been thinking of getting a video camera.

Of course, knowing me, I will likely end up spending less time using it to capture meaningful holiday moments and unique historical attractions-- and more time figuring out how to do stop-animation film of, say, Marshmallow Peeps staging an Easter-time jailbreak or something.

But to each his own.

The thought of the video camera, however, brought back memories of the last real family trip my parents and I took together-- a trip to Disney, in my 17th summer...

And how the Frontierland roller coaster made a, er, lasting impression on my Pop.

I believe I mentioned last week that during the 80s, my father had a very high-tech video camera. Which meant it was roughly the size of a Victorian steamer trunk for a six-month voyage. And this being my last trip with the folks before permanently flying the nest, the Pop was determined to document ALL the memories using this fine example of technology.

So, as we passed through Frontierland, and waited in line for the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride, my father decided that it would be pretty cool to film being on the ride.

Now, I don't know if you're familiar with this ride or not, but it's styled like a runaway train, rolling through jagged Old West mountains and dry desert terrain. And is it fast! Many a set of Mickey Mouse ears-- and a zippity-do-da-dinner-- has been a casualty of this ride.

Having explored this ride previously on a band trip, I was well aware of this fact. But see here's the thing:

My dad is a very intelligent man, but he is not what you'd call "A Listener." I've learned over the years that I have about a five-word limit on my part of any conversation before he's already delving into more important things.

It's sorta like using Twitter. I know I'd better get what I have to say out in the allotted characters or it's all a no-go.

(Now I think about it, I probably became a writer so I could complete full sentences.)

Anyway, so when the Pop was explaining his plan for the Best Family Video Ever, I was getting out phrases like...

"But Pop, this is fast and--"

"Really fast, Pop! I don't think--"

"The curves, you see, are quite--"

"It winds, Pop, centripetal force, and--"


No dice. The five-word limit was still in place.

So as we strapped ourselves into the car-- Dad in the center with the electronic steamer trunk hoisted onto his shoulder-- well, I admit, I felt a certain smug anticipation. I mean, I know why I didn't stop him, but why no one else gave it a shot, I really can't say.

Or why he didn't pay attention to the signs saying "Secure Your Belongings, This is a Super-fast Ride and YOU, Sir, Still Seem to be Holding Very Expensive Recording Equipment."

Some footage apparently is worth the risk.

So the ride began at a nice enough pace. We chugged up the hill, the Pop smiling benevolently at Mom and me with the glow of a cameraman destined for home movie greatness.

And then we got to the top and Pop's whole perspective on the matter shifted.

So did the video camera.

As we roared around the turn-- the sounds of Jethro Tull's Locomotive Breath seemed to come to my ears-- and the camera had decided it would prefer to bow to the forces of physics over the force of one very determined tourist from New Jersey.

It took a feat of astounding strength for my father to even retain his grip on the machine-- so fast were we clattering over the rails, around horseshoe bends, and s-curves, with animatronic buzzards fluttering in wait.

The Pop managed through sheer will alone to force the camera into a spot of relative stability back down into the car, onto his leg. The ride, two thrilling minutes for some-- two terrifying minutes of destruction and potential lawsuits for another-- slowed at the station, the engine letting out a steamy sigh of relief.

My father did, too. We exited and Pop rose, only to notice his upper thigh had taken on a brand new feature...

A Victorian steamer trunk-sized, camera-shaped bruise.

I used my five word allotment:

"Told you it was fast."

Pop didn't find it nearly as funny as I did.

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Sticky, Deej, Jarhead and the Sauceman

I've often thought my tales of childhood would benefit from manufacturing a sibling. It seems like there's an automatic lack of balance when you're dealing with just one kid:

Baseball stories are lackluster as you hit and pitch to yourself...

Playing walkie-talkie takes twice as long, and you always already know the Secret Code...

And puppet shows are one step away from The Three Faces of Eve.

The closest thing I had to siblings were my cousins, 300 miles away. And after a long weekend of tackling and torment, I'd seriously begin to rethink the benefits of being an only child.

My cousins were boys-- all boys-- VERY boys and there were four of them, all at least five-years-younger than I was, and descending in age from there.

Sticky, the eldest, spent much of his growing up years looking like a bobble-head, with an disproportionate amount of cranium per capita of torso and leg. He's turned out just fine, in cause you were wondering. But there were about 10 years there where I would have told you he was encephalitic.

I was fairly sure it was the size of his head that make him fall off his bike so much. That and the fact that he knew if he fell off dramatically, ran inside crying and told my aunt we cousins pushed him, why he could grin at us from behind her back. Plus, his brother and the rest of us would be in deep camel dung for the rest of the day.

Sticky was a talented frame artist.

Sticky's brother Deej was sarcastic from birth. It probably came from having a brother prepared to sacrifice you to the Parental Gods for want of a better hobby. I never have seen another toddler with such world-weary disillusionment...

"Do you want a peanut butter sandwich, Deej?"

"Nah, what's the point? It'll only be gone and I'll be hungry again someday."

I think he was three when he discovered the sort of existential crisis that most people only discover after 30 years at a dead-end job.

The Sauceman got his name because he'd given it to himself at an early age. It might have had something to do with a love of applesauce, or we might have just misheard. None of us are precisely sure anymore.

Sauceman was blue-eyed and white-blond and allergic to absolutely everything. You could tell, because he'd go from white to puffy pink in no time, like some histamine-riddled mood ring.

Jarhead was Sauce's younger brother, and the last of the clan. If you shaved Jarhead's noggin, you would find 666 tattooed on it. Just as dark as Sauce was blond, he was the prototype for the Turbo Tot, able to go from 0 to 60, out the door and down the street in five seconds.

He could be in Peoria in the blink of an eye, robbing folks of their Monopoly money and picking up speeding tickets on his Big Wheel, shooting his SuperSoaker over his shoulder and laughing at the coppers as he'd leave them in his dust.

Favorite games during these visits included:

• "Let's See How Pink We Can Make Sauceman Get," (this usually involved beating him with dusty pillows)
• Try to win at UNO in spite of Stick's marked UNO cards...
  
• Tickle Sticky until he wet himself (retaliatory for UNO incident)
  
• The Dukes of Hazzard (mostly involving yelling "yeee-haw!" and pretending to drive. By far our least violent activity.)
  
• Telling stories about bloody monsters, gross enough to make at least two kids cry
• Chasing each other around the grape arbor throwing sour grapes at each other, and
• Knocking me over to tie me up with my own long hair.
  

Sometimes we played Frisbee.

Because I was the eldest in this rabble, there was some Adultworld rule that all of this chaos was my responsibility to control. As a teenager, I once tried pointing out that obviously, the Cousins went on throwing grapes, scaring the Yoo-hoo out of each other, fake-crying and riling up Sauceman's allergies when I wasn't there the other 360 days of the year, too.

But this particular flaw in the logic of Adultworld was never properly addressed.

I do, however, think the imposed authority on me to control these young forces of nature might very well have been what led me to be a client project manager.

Interestingly, the only thing that we seemed to have a cheerful, smooth time playing was sitting down to my aunt's 60s "Mystery Date" game.

Yep, we'd play frisbee until yet another disk would get eaten by the garage roof....(There must have been half the Wham-o factory inventory up there.) Or somebody'd get a knee full of gravel and tar. And then we'd come in and play one of the girliest games on the planet.

I don't know if you've heard of "Mystery Date" before, but its whole purpose was to build outfits to wear on different dates-- the beach, the prom, etc., etc. And if you matched your outfit to the right date behind the mystery door, then you won. If you opened the door and found The Dud, a filthy bum that made Oscar Madison look like Cary Grant, well, you were out of the game.

In retrospect, only The Dud seemed really realistic in terms of blind dating.

But Sticky, Deej, Jarhead and the Sauceman and I, we would sit there and play Mystery Date for hours. And so as not to slander their masculinity, it was NOT so much the outfit assemblage that intrigued, as the fact that the boardgame came with this cool little plastic door you could open. My cousins would work hard to assemble prom gowns and swim suits, bowling gear and skiwear, just to be able to take their turn at that door.

But come to think of it, that's childhood, isn't it? You take what you get and work with it. Whether it's siblings or cousins, or marked UNO cards, or no cards at all, or a super-girly board game to while away the hours. Looking back, it seems the best parts of Kiddom were the ones you never expected.

Sometimes, maybe, a little plastic door is all you need.

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