By Any Other Name

Posted on October 20, 2023 by Marty Ryan

Why do humans name cats? They never come when you call. If you have a routine that lets them know it’s time to eat, they will come running. But most of all, the cat will be there staring at you with a look on its face that implies ‘where in hell have you been? I’ve been hungry for a whole five minutes now.’

No matter which species of cat you have, the animal will not acknowledge you unless it gives permission. Yet, we call them by a name we have given them, and they ignore it.

Cats are nocturnal, primarily. They will sleep at night, but don’t be fooled. Have you never woken past midnight to see a cat staring out the window in the middle of the night, yearning to be out there among its friends?

Cats are fussy eaters. It is difficult to try different brands of food on them. They’ll turn their nose up on it and refuse to eat until you replace that generic stuff with some of the most expensive food on the shelf. And yet, they’ll eat almost anything they can find in the wild during their romp around town in the wee hours of the morning.

They will never let you know where they are. A cat can be gone for days, and you’ll worry about its welfare until it comes home. Don’t try to scold it; it doesn’t pay attention to what you say.

Sleeping the day away is one of its favorite pastimes. In the sun, on the couch, in a bedroom on top of an unmade bed, cats will sleep like what seems forever. Then, when you make a noise, it will stretch, arch its back, and move on to some other place where you can’t bother it.

But cats are lovable. That’s why we have them. They are capable of giving us love and companionship. Unlike dogs, who come running from anywhere in the house to greet you when you arrive home, cats will slowly emerge from a far-off room to see if you brought them something while you were away. And if you did, don’t wait around for a ton of thanks. It’s as if it was a gift they deserve, and you finally came through.

But with all their faults, we still love our cats – immensely!

Now, go back and read the essay one more time, and instead of the word “cat,” replace it with “teenager.”

* * *

Please help Fawkes-Lee & Ryan maintain this website by donating $10, $20, $30, $50, $100, or more.

Donate

Your support is appreciated.

Subscribe (It’s FREE): Email mrtyryn@gmail.com with “Subscribe” in the Subject Line.

Fawkes-Lee & Ryan

2516 Lynner Dr.

Des Moines, IA 50310

Copyright (c) 2023. Fawkes-Lee & Ryan. All rights reserved.

 

Posted in General | Tagged | 1 Comment

That’s the Ticket!

Posted on October 12, 2023 by Marty Ryan

Cheap entertainment is hard to find when you reach my age.

As we were getting ready to walk the trail near our residence, a City of Des Moines police car was sitting on the curb in front of our house. I told Stephanie that the officer must have found a nice spot to do his paperwork. All of sudden he took off quickly, turned on his flashing overhead panel lights, and made a left turn at the corner. Hardly anyone turns left at that corner.

Since my back was hurting too badly to walk on that day, we returned home. We drove the Explorer to the store three blocks away rather than worry about injuring my back further. Upon returning from the store, the squad car was in front of our house once again. And again, he peeled out, engaging his lights, and turned left at the corner. We realized that the police officer was chasing cars that failed to stop, or even slow down, at a stop sign on the corner of the block not more than 150 feet from our property.

Years ago, the neighborhood group, Stephanie, I and several neighbors worked for twenty months to get a couple of stop signs at the corner. Without the stop signs, vehicles would race from one end of the street on the south side to the far northern limit of the street on the north side. There is a day care facility situated on the corner. The street is level with a length that comes just short of a half-mile. There are no connecting streets on the east side (it’s a community green space), and there are four feeder streets on the west side. Naturally, with two used car dealerships and an auto repair shop on the south end of the street, it was a testing ground in which potential car buyers and auto mechanics attempted to set Craig Breedlove’s land speed records.

It wasn’t city hall that fought us as much as the bureaucrats that seem to be the deciders about where stop signs may be placed. It took the death of a young motorcycle rider traveling at a high rate of speed down the road to get the Des Moines City Council to overrule the paper-pushers and vote to have stop signs placed at the corner.

At first, there was a mix of people who saw the signs from a safe distance and stopped. A few drivers drove through the area as they did, most likely not realizing that stop signs were newly erected. After a while, everything seemed to fall into place. Then, drivers became lazy. Many slowed down, but didn’t stop. It morphed into a dangerous intersection once again as the stop signs were totally ignored. I never realized that ignore and ignorance were so closely related.

Stephanie and I had to leave the house again. We walked over to the squad car and let the officer know that we approved of what he was doing, and asked him if he was acting upon a complaint. Smiling, he told us that the complaint was old, but that he had some time to work on the problem. In forty-five minutes, he had handed out nine citations. I noticed that he had gotten two in one stop. He was having fun. He mentioned that while he had one car pulled over another drove past him and right through the stop sign.

While talking to him, a blue car ran the stop sign traveling north and drove right up the street where we were. We waved him bye, he turned on the lights, and followed the car into the driveway across the street. Our neighbor was carpooling with a coworker and the coworker was the culprit driving through the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. It was strange to see a cop car go across the street to nail a violator.

I have no idea what we’ll do for entertainment next week.

* * *

Please help Fawkes-Lee & Ryan maintain this website by donating $10, $20, $30, $50, $100, or more.

Donate

Your support is appreciated.

Subscribe (It’s FREE): Email mrtyryn@gmail.com with “Subscribe” in the Subject Line.

Fawkes-Lee & Ryan

2516 Lynner Dr.

Des Moines, IA 50310

Copyright (c) 2023. Fawkes-Lee & Ryan. All rights reserved.

Posted in General | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Whether to go or Weather to stay

Posted on October 5, 2023 by Marty Ryan

“Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” I had always thought the first to say it was Benjamin Franklin. No, when it comes to weather, Ben Franklin said: “Some people are weatherwise, some are otherwise.” The first to conceive that brilliant observation regarding no solution to weather complaints is often credited to Mark Twain. Wrong again!

Charles Dudley Warner was the first to say that famous quip. Warner was a friend of Twain’s. As a matter-of-fact, they co-wrote “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.” I had never heard of the book, but after researching, I think I may want to read it. Although it was first published in 1873, it’s description might mirror what is going on in today’s world.

 The Gilded Age is both a biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America-an age of corruption when crooked land speculators, ruthless bankers, and dishonest politicians voraciously took advantage of the nation’s peacetime optimism. With his characteristic wit and perception, Mark Twain and his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner, attack the greed, lust, and naivete of their own time in a work which endures as a valuable social document and one of America’s most important satirical novels.

I love satire, and although I have authored a few articles of satire, it is very difficult to write. But, back to the weather.

The National Weather Service and television stations now have apps, up-to-date alerts, and every other invention to warn us about upcoming weather events. What those media outlets are not timely about are thunderstorms that originate over your head. Stephanie and I look at radar before heading out on a walk. Recently, she looked at radar for our immediate area and saw no signs of rain. She took off on her daily 6-mile walk. Upon reaching the 3-mile mark, she turned around to come back home. It was then that a storm erupted over her head. It was not just rain and some wind, there were little pellets of hail accompanying the storm. I walked out to greet her with a towel. As always, she was smiling.

Predicting the weather is not rocket science, but it is science. Meteorologists should not be held to a perfections standard, but with all the bells and whistles used in this field, accuracy should be close, at least.

We’ll take responsibility for checking radar sites prior to walking on the trail. However, a few days after the pop-up storm, I was looking forward to attending an annual party in rural Iowa. Forecasters were warning us that a major storm was going to brew over the party site, 60 miles from Des Moines. The wind was going to blow hard; the rain was going to be torrential; and “one or two tornadoes” could be a part of the storm.

A day before our intended trip to rural Iowa, we experienced a problem with the windshield wipers. It sounded as if the wiper motor was about to give up its soul and die on us at any minute. With a forecast of Noah’s flood in front of our drive, we decided it was best not to “throw caution to the wind” and remain home. I was disappointed.

I kept looking at weather reports and radar for that part of Iowa. Nothing! No wind; no rain; no hail; no “one or two tornadoes.”

Since the party was a potluck, I was tempted to call DoorDash. Not for that service to get me something from around here, but to drive to the party and bring me back some pulled pork, sides, and desserts. The variety of foods at the annual potluck present the best smorgasbord you’ll ever experience.

We have to wait an entire year before we have the chance to attend one of the only parties we try to attend throughout the year. All because the television stations, the National Weather Bureau, and other outlets of weather prediction efficiency failed to predict a popup storm with any iota of accuracy.

Now, we have to get the windshield wipers’ motor repaired, although I doubt we will be driving in any future storms for a long time to come. Unless, of course, a dark cloud travels above us on our rural Iowa ventures. We’re getting a little too familiar with dark clouds.

* * *

Please help Fawkes-Lee & Ryan maintain this website by donating $10, $20, $30, $50, $100, or more.

Donate

Your support is appreciated.

Subscribe (It’s FREE): Email mrtyryn@gmail.com with “Subscribe” in the Subject Line.

Fawkes-Lee & Ryan

2516 Lynner Dr.

Des Moines, IA 50310

Copyright (c) 2023. Fawkes-Lee & Ryan. All rights reserved.

 

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

A New Era of Union Leadership

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Marty Ryan

Today’s labor unions are not the violent mobs of the past. Compared to present corporate America, labor unions are docile. There are far more recorded incidents of illegal and unethical practices by American corporations, such as tax evasion, price fixing, bribery, and fraud, then there are of labor unions. But accusations of improper and questionable behavior of labor unions appears to be more of a media focus.

Unions have had to overcome a reputation as corrupt. Past union leaders have been associated with mob bosses and the misuse of union funds. The mention of so many corporations that have raided employee’s retirement funds is evidently overlooked. It wasn’t the few examples of union misuse and abuse of funds that led to the establishment of the Employees Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), an act that establishes standards for private sector pension plans, as much as it was the failure of private companies to maintain its fiduciary duties to keep those plans fully funded.

A 2022 Gallup Poll shows that 84 percent of households in the United States have no union member living within the home. Yet, the same poll finds that 71% of Americans approve of labor unions.

United Auto Workers at three targeted automobile assembly plants of Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (Chrysler) went on strike at midnight on Friday, September 15. In the past, public reaction to the strike would have been heavily negative toward the union and union workers. However, according to Morning Consult Pro: “By a 2-to-1 margin, U.S. adults surveyed said they would support [the strike] by the UAW if they are unable to reach an agreement with the Big Three.”

Of course, there’s a caveat to those figures. Fewer than fifteen percent of the people surveyed had considerable knowledge of the issue. Still, it’s good news for organized labor. Labor’s rotten reputation since the Haymarket Affair riots of 1886 have been a burden with a small exception throughout the 1950s. In the eyes of some Americans, union leaders are seen as goons and thugs; leaders are referred to as bosses, although the ultimate boss is the collective voice of members.

Why have so many people in the past hated labor unions? A labor union is not much different than the Farm Bureau, your local chamber of commerce, the Iowa Association of Business and Industry, the Iowa Bar Association, and the Iowa Judges Association to name just a few. Each of those associations of people and entities are organized to protect and advance the rights and interests of its members. That’s the definition of a labor union. Sort of. A labor union in Iowa must also protect and advance the rights and interests of employees who are not members of the union.

A labor union, as an association like the aforementioned organizations, works to protect and advance the rights and interests of its members in a particular trade or profession. It accomplishes this goal in a similar manner as so many other entities, through legislation, negotiation, and if necessary, the courts.

Fair Share is the concept of charging non-union workers a fee to compensate the union for costs incurred by the union to represent them. I made a remark about how it was difficult for anyone to not understand the concept. Immediately, a Farm Bureau lobbyist jumped out of her seat and attacked me for my comments. I was left to point out that unions are the only organizations that have to represent people who are not members. On the other hand, if I want benefits offered by other organizations, for instance, the Farm Bureau’s health insurance, I have to become a member of the Farm Bureau. Why is it different with unions?

“Quarterly profits have surged by more than 80 percent over the last two years.” In a recent social media post, President Barak Obama wrote that “when the big three automakers were struggling to stay afloat, my administration and the American people stepped in to support them. So did the auto workers in the UAW who sacrificed pay and benefits to help get the companies back on their feet. Now that our carmakers are enjoying robust profits, it’s time to do right by those same workers so the industry can emerge more united and competitive than ever.”

If you’ll recall, two out of the three auto makers’ CEOs took the money, with no oversight, paid themselves and filed for bankruptcy.

What is it in a memory that allows a person to recall negative aspects of one entity (unions) but not the other (corporate greed)?

I anticipate that with today’s intelligent and ethical labor leaders, tomorrow’s unions will not only grow exponentially beyond the participation of the 1950s, but will gain the respect they deserve.

***

This article first appeared in the Fall issue of the Prairie Progressive. The Prairie Progressive is Iowa’s oldest progressive newsletter, founded by Jeff Cox in 1986.
It is funded entirely by subscriptions from our readers. Editor: Dave Leshtz.

$15 for a 1-year subscription. Order form on the link above.

Please help Fawkes-Lee & Ryan maintain this website by donating $10, $20, $30, $50, $100, or more.

Donate

Your support is appreciated.

Subscribe (It’s FREE): Email mrtyryn@gmail.com with “Subscribe” in the Subject Line.

Fawkes-Lee & Ryan

2516 Lynner Dr.

Des Moines, IA 50310

Copyright (c) 2023. Fawkes-Lee & Ryan. All rights reserved.

 

Posted in Fairness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Vail Marauders

Posted on September 19, 2023 by Marty Ryan

We were called The Vail Marauders. We didn’t coin that name. Two old men sitting on a bench outside of a bar watched a few of us Vail kids walk across the street. One said to the other: “There goes those marauders.” We liked it!

Not every boy in the small town of Vail, Iowa, was a Marauder, but The Vail Marauders was a large group of teenagers and a handful of preteens. That’s a pretty good-sized group considering the town was populated by fewer than five hundred residents. My sister compared us to the Our Gang short films from the early Twentieth Century. There was no comparison. A few Marauders served prison terms later in life, some served time in jail, and most were on a first-name basis with the county sheriff. You weren’t an official Marauder unless you served at least 6 months of probation. I never went to prison on the order of a judge, but met the other requirement twice. I never met a probation officer.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, you were foolish to leave the keys in your car. It would be used for joyriding. Although I was in on a few joyrides, I never once turned the key of a vehicle without the owner’s permission. I never shoplifted and I never vandalized. I did have some scruples. As a teenager, I asked my mom for permission to go somewhere once. She denied permission because she “didn’t want us hanging around with the wrong crowd.” I had to break it to her that “the Ryan boys ARE the wrong crowd.”

We knew every backyard in town. Clotheslines were numerous in that time, and any Marauder could tell you how far a line drooped and where the clothespin basket was located on the line. In the late summer, we knew where the best tomatoes were ready for harvest. In the middle of the night, we would sneak out with a saltshaker and raid a few gardens. But since most kids in town worked for farmers during the summer putting up hay, walking beans, hoeing thistles and other noxious weeds, or detasseling, they also knew where the watermelon and cantaloupe patches were hidden within a particular field. If you haven’t raided a watermelon patch and had a farmer shoot a shotgun above your head, you don’t know how sweet a melon can taste. They were always the best!

Our favorite activities occurred after dark. Vail had a curfew of 9:00 pm in which all teenagers under the age of 18 had to be home and off the streets. That’s when it got exciting. Most of us had to sneak out of the house, some just left. The town cop was a retired heavy equipment operator, J.C. McCullough. His official duties were to make sure business doors were locked after hours. He was supposed to make rounds walking the main street area, but we had other ideas.

Marauders would gather at some predetermined location, usually the corner of the deserted funeral home or a small walking bridge on the west side of town, and go downtown. One of us would run across the street to get J.C.’s attention and the chase was on. J.C. would gun the engine of his pickup and throw pea gravel around a street corner trying to catch one of us. We were popping up or appearing from out of nowhere all around town. He would abandon his chase of one Marauder to catch another he thought was easier to catch. The scenario was sort of like a dog chasing a car, or Wylie Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. He never caught any of us. He came close to catching me, once. He surprised me by coming around a bend without his headlamps on. I hit the ground so that he wouldn’t see me, and I slithered into a shallow ditch. His tires missed me by fewer than two feet.

If the Marauder running across the street was not noticed by J.C., he most likely was sleeping. That matter would cause us to take more drastic steps. We were known to let the air out of his tires. Not all of them; just enough to let him know that someone was aware of him sleeping on the job. He wouldn’t want that to get out. We never found out how he got air back in his tires by morning without raising red flags to city officials about why he was often having flat tires.

When you think about it, the curfew ordinance probably prevented burglaries in town. There was too much nighttime activity for a potential second story thief to operate safely.

As the Marauders aged and left town, a younger group succeeded as the Young Marauders. That group was big into carrying cases of beer from beer trucks parked in the alleys behind the bars. And Vail supported four bars for the longest time.

I’ll take the Fifth Amendment on whether I participated in any break-ins around the area, but each time there was a burglary in Crawford or Carroll County, the first accusations and suspicions of who the culprits might be was directed at the Marauders. The reputation was notorious, but often inaccurate.

We were bored kids in a small town doing what kids in small towns used to do when bored.

***

Please help Fawkes-Lee & Ryan maintain this website by donating $10, $20, $30, $50, $100, or more.

Donate

Your support is appreciated.

Subscribe (It’s FREE): Email mrtyryn@gmail.com with “Subscribe” in the Subject Line.

Fawkes-Lee & Ryan

2516 Lynner Dr.

Des Moines, IA 50310

Copyright (c) 2023. Fawkes-Lee & Ryan. All rights reserved.

 

Posted in Youth | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Full Circle

Posted on September 2, 2023 by Marty Ryan

Coming home from the grocery store this week, the traffic was erratic. I could see young people moving over toward my lane in traffic as they were looking down on their phones; going so fast I tensed up wondering if they were aware of the cars around them; and passing me – immediately moving into my lane, only to stop suddenly to make a right turn. I’m not finished describing the recklessness of the other drivers’ actions, but you get the picture.

The immaturity, recklessness, lack of responsibility, and disrespect by young drivers is not anything new. When I was a teenager, and even into my twenties and thirties, I knew that old people were not in car crashes very often, but it was my belief that they caused car crashes. It made little difference that I engaged in six car crashes in one month in 1968, and not one of them had anything to do with a person older than twenty-five.

During May of in 1968, the month I graduated from high school, I was driving my employer’s Econoline van (we called it the Weenie Wagon) from Vail to Denison on U.S. Highway 30 when a gust of wind picked up the empty vehicle and threw it in the ditch. I was okay, but a little shaken up. It was my first encounter with what we used to call accidents. The Weenie Wagon was okay, as well. It landed right-side up in the ditch. I caught a ride back to Vail and Dick Blair retrieved the Weenie Wagon.

Not long after that, a small group of us were sitting in a car at the top of the hill where Vail’s park was once located. We had the headlamps off, of course, because we were drinking beer. All of a sudden, a car without headlights on came around the bend and ran into the front of us. The four in our car, and four in their car, all got out to see if everyone was okay. While the drivers checked out the damage (if there was any), three in our car took our beer and went east. Three in the other car, took beer out of their car (even though they were all over twenty-one) and went west over a fence. No one was hurt. I wasn’t driving; Herbie was. No old people (over the age of 25) were involved.

I didn’t go to my junior/senior prom. Rather than get dressed up to sit around watching people dance, three or four of us got some beer and went to a party. When the party began to break up, someone said that another party was going strong and that we should move to that party northwest of Carroll. I was driving my stepfather’s car, an ugly gray Chrysler with transmission controls on the dashboard. We were to follow the car which held the people who knew where the party was. They were traveling much too fast, but knowing that I could have been a race car driver, I kept right on their tail. That is, until we hit a curve in the road. I rolled the car right up to the fence that separated the ditch from an auto junkyard. The other car came back to get us, but I had to stay with the damaged Chrysler that was lying on its top.

The highway trooper didn’t show up until the sun began to come up over the horizon. His name was Larry Long, and I had to wait a “Long” time for him to arrive (pun intended). He gave me a citation for ‘failure to have control of vehicle’ and had me stay by his car until a wrecker could pull the car from the ditch. He knew what he was doing. When the wrecker brought the car upright, a full can of beer fell from it. “Is that yours?” He asked. “I don’t know; it could have been in the ditch.” He didn’t fall for it and gave me another citation for ‘possession of alcohol by a minor.’ After the tow truck drove away, I asked trooper Long if he could give me a ride home. He said he was off duty now and that troopers don’t drive people home. Fortunately, a guy by the name of Jim came by. He was in my class but dropped out a year before we graduated. He was driving to work in Denison at the beef slaughter plant. He gave me a ride home to Vail, which was on his way.

I walked into the house and my stepfather was sitting at the kitchen table. I told him I had wrecked the car and his face turned red. His lip hung open like a pissed off bull. I was scared to death. But he kept his cool. We did have another car. Eventually, the insurance company had the Chrysler towed to Vail. It sat there for a day or two before Quant’s Junkyard bought it and parked it about three feet on the other side of the fence from where it landed after I had rolled it. There were no old people involved in my prom night adventure.

It wasn’t long after rolling the car into the ditch when Kuemper High School held its Baccalaureate Celebration for seniors. After Mass in the gym, the school fed us breakfast. You know it was bad when I can still remember it. Upon moving the plastic-tasting sausages and eggs from our mouths to our stomachs, we rushed to the parking lot to pile into cars and head down to a farm north of Dedham where one student had a keg party.

After a day of drinking, I realized I had no way to get home. Mud and Pitter (not their real names) said they would take me home. As a matter-of-fact, Mud let me drive his car. It was a nice car. Somewhere along the way home I failed to navigate the car properly from going west to going south and ended up in the west ditch. Mud decided he would take over driving from that point. The car was not damaged. There were no old people in the way at any time.

I can no longer remember the other two incidents, but I’m sure I was a passenger in each incident. It’s safe to say no old people were involved in either case.

Yeah, I see now how old people cause crashes. Youthful drivers and their attitudes and actions require old people to drive defensively, and it’s that defensive driving that causes crashes involving young people who just may be irresponsible, disrespectful, irreverent, self-centered, and reckless.

If I cause a crash, it will probably involve a round-a-bout. I hate going full circle.

***

Please help Fawkes-Lee & Ryan maintain this website by donating $10, $20, $30, $50, $100, or more.

Donate

Your support is appreciated.

Subscribe (It’s FREE): Email mrtyryn@gmail.com with “Subscribe” in the Subject Line.

Fawkes-Lee & Ryan

2516 Lynner Dr.

Des Moines, IA 50310

Copyright (c) 2023. Fawkes-Lee & Ryan. All rights reserved.

 

Posted in General | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment