Hand Me That Hydrometer, Pal

Popular Mechanics published a list of 100 skills its editors decided that every man should know. Some of them are predictable (jump-start a car) some are puzzling (survive lightning) and almost all are stereotypical (rescue damsel in distress).

O.K. That last one isn’t really in there.

But the tenor is the pretty much the same. Except for the occasional androgynous task (use a sewing machine, iron a shirt) the overall implication is that men do manly things, and lots of them.

“I am lucky, my husband surpasses this 100 and can do more,” one female respondent crowed.

Well. I think I’m glad she didn’t feel the need to enlighten us further. But of course we all have additional skills not on the list. For instance, I am fluent in three languages (if you count Igpay Atinlay and Dulfouble Talfalk); can properly use “comprise,” “purport” and “begs the question”; and remember the birthdays of tons of people who have long since gone out of my life.

But do I really need to know how to stick weld or master a coolant hydrometer? I think not.

Instead, here are a few skills I wish I had that aren’t on the list:

Detecting and avoiding a boxing glove headed to my face.

Keeping my mouth shut when I know that opening it is just going to tick my wife off.

Performing routine computer functions without having to e-mail my geek friends in Nashville.

Making a cue ball go where I want it to go.

And playing a musical instrument. But not just any instrument. The guitar, say. Or harmonica.

You know. Something manly.

Either Write Things Worth Reading, Or...

My friend Alan Huffman once asked why I hadn’t considered writing a book. I told him I didn’t know enough words.

“Use some of them twice,” he said.

That approach must work for Alan, who has since written several books, including the latest, “Sultana.”

But the problem for me with nonfiction is that I’m far too lazy to do the kind of research required, even on a subject close to my heart. (Besides, does the world need another book on the refreshing qualities of beer?)

I tried fiction once, with a short story. And I quickly learned that it isn’t enough just to come up with a title. There have to be characters, and they have to say and do stuff. As if I had the imagination for that.

Which leaves available the memoir, a popular field I’ve never fully understood. Is it that these writers all have much better memories than I do, or simply that they’ve led lives filled with experiences much more tragic, comic or inspiring than mine? Or, as with Frank McCourt, both?

I’m not saying my years have been entirely without highlights, but near-starvation and a ne’er-do-well drunk of a father in Depression-era Ireland are not among them. And I’m not sure there is a market for my tale of angst about having to dance at the Farmer’s Ball in high school, or of hydrophobic trepidation at my full-immersion baptism.

Of course, James Frey and “Margaret B. Jones”, among others, have demonstrated that adherence to truth is not necessarily a requirement to get a memoir published. But I suspect that if I tried to mention my rewarding two years of Peace Corps service in Africa, or my daring rescue of 12 first graders trapped in a burning bus, someone in the know would quickly rat me out.

So I remain unpublished, at least in the book world. But if I should ever muster the gumption to try to tell my life story, I at least have constructed the opening line:

“About the time my face cleared up, my hair started falling out.”

Why the Grass Is Greener on the Other Side

The little signs on neighborhood lawns announcing chemical beautification treatments taunt me, reminders that my own grass is trying to make it without performance enhancers.

This is my doing.

Unconvinced that the hundreds of dollars a year we had been spending were doing any particular good, I suspended our lawn service last summer. And I’ve persisted in that stance, despite repeated telephone entreaties to re-up.

The last (and what I hope is final) time I told a guy no, he seemed genuinely puzzled that anyone could be so uncaring.

“What are you doing with your lawn?” he asked.

The answer, which I did not feel obliged to give him, is “nothing.” I have reverted to my previous practice, observed for decades, of a simpler relationship with grass: It grows; I cut it.

Granted, this is contrary to standard practice on Long Island, where chemicals to make grass green (and a wide array of other plants, as well as bugs, dead) are considered essential. So what if, in using them, people are turning the whole place toxic?

Thus I have environmental, as well as economic, principles to stand on.

I also, unfortunately, have some rather bare spots of dirt to stand on, especially in my front yard. (Why is it the grass will happily strive to grow across the sidewalk, without first filling in the yard gaps?) My wife fears an invasion of dandelions from the yard behind (which, in addition to a generally carefree attitude about grass maintenance, displays the same approach for children’s toys, wheelbarrows, discarded furniture and the like).

So my resolve is being tested. Will good triumph over evil? I’m ready to do my part: mow. Grass, the ball’s in your court. Man up.

Stick a Cork in It

So it’s come to this: Kayne took a bottle of screw-cap wine as a party offering the other night.

“The thing is,” she said, “it’s really perfect for a party, because --”

She stopped at that point, no doubt considering the possibility that I was gearing up to mock her.

Well…

I have a brief and undistinguished history with screw-cap wine, dating to some high school experimentation with a brand called Ripple. “A 90-cent drunk,” one of my more frugal friends called it admiringly, a comment that I think speaks succinctly to more than just the cost.

In college, I flirted for a while with both Boone’s Farm Apple and Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill. One night my roommate, Furby, pitched in as I studied for a test in the easiest college course I ever took, physical science. We tossed back a few bottles of the strawberry while he called out questions and I answered. Mental acuity deteriorated rather rapidly. I remember this exchange in particular:

Furby: “How far is the nearest star?”

Me: “Far!”

Us: Raucous laughter.

Perhaps needless to say, I flunked that test.

But association with academic failure is not the basis of my long-held anti-screw-cap bias; it’s the association with inferiority. I’m not saying the screw-cap stuff won’t deliver the goods, if you define the goods as teeth-melting inebriation. But, typically, screw-cap wines have not been the ones that evoked discussion on bouquet, balance, aftertaste and the like. No hints of allspice, no traces of morello cherry. Recommended cheese pairing: Velveeta.

So to take a bottle as a gift to a party....

I know, I know, true, tree-based corks have been going the way of the dodo for a while now, for environmental and other reasons. But at least the plastic substitutes had the advantage of still allowing a suave gent (or me) the chance to deftly apply a corkscrew and demonstrate the seductive appeal of a smooth, powerful extraction.

“Shall I pour, my dear?”

Somehow the romance suffers when the operation amounts to, “Here, baby, I twisted one off for you.” I mean, she might as well be drinking beer.

Which, in a case like that, I already am.

The Dark Age

These are the doldrums in my neighborhood, that becalmed time when, try as they might, no one can find an excuse to decorate their lawns or houses.

It begins as Easter ends, and the assorted bunnies, eggs and baskets go back into storage until next year. (Odd, isn’t it, that the holiest day of Christianity seems to inspire no creche-like, Jesus-centric displays?)

And the slump continues until the first stirrings of Halloween, which seem to be creeping earlier and earlier into September.

That begins the high season, with Halloween morphing into Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then Valentine’s Day, then St. Patrick’s Day, then Easter again, each with its own ornamental symbols: jack-o-lanterns, witches, ghosts, turkeys, Pilgrims, St. Nick, reindeer, hearts, cupids, shamrocks, leprechauns, those bunnies and eggs ...

Then nothing.

Oh, there might be the occasional Old Glory put out to proclaim patriotism on Memorial Day, or Flag Day, or the Fourth of July. But nothing inflatable, nothing with movement, nothing consuming electricity.

You’d think the Festive Yard Association, or some such trade group, would be hard at work trying to expand the market, tapping into what is no doubt a pent-up desire that lacks only the proper encouragement to flourish. As calendars reveal, there’s no shortage of under-appreciated commemorations: National Maritime Day. Nurses Day. World Environment Day. Women’s Equality Day. The Opening of Hurricane Season. Whatever.

Shoot, on Long Island, Cinco de Mayo should probably be a paid holiday. Giant plastic shots of tequila, 10-foot bottles of Corona - wouldn’t it be glorious?

Instead, we have to make do with an explosion of blooming daffodils, crocuses, tulips, dogwoods, azaleas, day lilies, camellias, magnolias, forsythia, roses and the like.

They don’t even glow in the dark. What good is that?

Tommy E. Furby, 1953-2009

Furby and I had a deal, that whoever survived would speak at the other's funeral. That duty - and honor - fell to me on Tuesday, way, way too soon.

"I'm up here today because of a conversation Furby and I had more than 20 years ago. It was one of those days when life seems to be treating you especially right, and we were counting our blessings just before going to see Ole Miss play L.S.U.

He talked about how he had already done things he never would have imagined when we were boys.

He had not only made it to college, but had worked hard to put himself through undergraduate school and then law school. What he didn’t say, but what I knew, was that he finished first in his class in law school.

He had worked his way into a practice that was taking him around the country to cities big and not so big. He and Beth had traveled overseas together, had a home to admire, a fine son and another one that was about two weeks away at that point.

We both figured that even if it all ended tomorrow for one of us, the other one should tell people that things had been pretty good.

And in the years since, we updated that account. Furby got to see those two boys grow into fine young men he was proud of. The family expanded to include a daughter-in-law he considered a daughter, then a granddaughter he loved to tell me about.

Something else he loved was coaching boys and girls in baseball and softball and soccer and trying to teach them that there was a way the game was supposed to be played, and a way it wasn’t. When it came to some things, Furby didn’t see a lot of gray.

It all ended too soon, of course, and things weren’t always good, just as they aren’t for any of us. But he touched a lot of lives before he left us, and I count mine as one of those near the top."

One Thumb Up

The four of us were at McCoy’s Public House in Kansas City on our annual guy/baseball trip, deep in a philosophical conversation on the merits of assorted movies. Beer was present.

I mentioned that Roger Ebert was my favorite reviewer.

Oh, no, the other guys said, we don’t like what he likes.

That’s beside the point, I said. I don’t always like what he likes, either, but I almost always like how he writes about what he does or doesn’t like. I went on to defend him rather too vehemently, which I attribute, in that particular instance, to an accumulation of Landing Light Lagers.

I was reminded of my defense recently when I came across this line in a review Ebert wrote: “Wherever you live, when this film opens, it will be the best film in town.”

He was writing about “Goodbye Solo,” which I haven’t seen, but which I made a note not to miss. And that’s the kind of thing I mean about Ebert.

Here’s another example, about a movie he doesn’t like too much: “‘Fast & Furious’ is exactly and precisely what you'd expect. Nothing more, unfortunately.”

And another, about one he does, “W.”: “This is the tragedy of a victim of the Peter Principle. Wounded by his father's disapproval and preference for his brother Jeb, the movie argues, George W. Bush rose and rose until he was finally powerful enough to stain his family's legacy.”

I admire his ability to educate and to express his views whether positive or negative. Sometimes he’s effusive in his praise. Other times he’s not. Here he is on “North”: “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it.”

As you might imagine, you can find that review on his list of most-hated movies. And upon that point, comes an area of disagreement for me.

As it happens, the all-time favorite guy/baseball trip movie is “Joe Dirt.”

As it further happens, “Joe Dirt” leads the Ebert list of most-hated movies, comedy category. But that’s O.K. with me.

Ebert’s good even when he’s wrong. And you can’t say that about everybody.