Jeff Young
My blogs
Blogs I follow
| Gender | Male |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Author |
| Location | Henderson, NV, United States |
| Introduction | We live in university housing near Madison. These temporary huts have quartered the troops as they trained before shipping out. Now they provide lodging for students and faculty until the school erects permanent structures. Of course, city planners have not had much to say about my fenceless backyard. It features a four-lane major arterial. I am three. I have a tricycle. Have trike will travel... Mom recognizes this propensity. Since my being cooped up inside all day with my year-old sister is not a pleasant experience for any of us, she fashions a harness and leash. I range out to the maximum of 20 feet and contemplate the ebb and flow of traffic just beyond my reach. Soon a big boy (he’s five) notices my predicament and saunters over. A conversation ensues. I sure wish I could get the perspective of the traffic flow from the other side, I tell him. Bummer, he says. We continue to inspect the throng. Damn, I exclaim, if only I weren’t tied up so. That’s the essence of it, anyway. Well, my new friend boasts, I could always get my mother’s scissors. Moments later, I bask in the aura of rush-hour traffic and gaze across the frenzied lanes at that other world, my backyard. |
| Interests | 1970: "I don’t want no big business telling me how to run my life!" To punctuate the seriousness and value of the seatbelt, General Motors commissioned a 60-second spot. It was to feature a super 8 film segment, taken by a graduate student doing research for her traffic engineering class. Her intention was to demonstrate the detrimental effect of the rolling stop. Several days into her data gathering, a fatal accident. A utility van blew through the crossing on the side street. The proposed commercial switched from a pan of that deadly intersection to a grainy Super 8 black-and-white documentation of a local mom and her daughter cruising down the highway. It immediately kicked into slow motion, then a frame-by-frame rendition of the crash, demonstrating that the steering wheel inhibited much of mom’s inertia, but the daughter’s head continued into the windshield. The next depicted the daughter’s head poking completely through, up to her shoulders. Subsequent frames, appearing in an excruciatingly graphic fashion, showed the rebounding daughter’s face being progressively cut off as her body settled back into the seat. The last four frames revealed her severed face, as if it had been scalped, slowly sliding down the outside of the windshield. Not much blood in that short time period, but the horror was evident. The daughter will soon die. General Motors received numerous admonitions from consumer groups, which had previewed the commercial. You can’t show that on national TV, they whined. It’s too graphic. As a partial result of this rejection and denial, I believe the advent of compulsory seatbelt wearing was postponed. We wouldn’t want to actually demonstrate the effects of sitting on one’s belt. After thousands more perish, we will finally get the message and pass laws mandating seatbelt usage. |
| Favorite movies | In February 1989, I am off to Sydney, sitting in business class. At the onset of our 90-minute layover in Honolulu, aware of the long flight ahead, I convince my flight attendant to allow me to remain onboard. Around midnight, several extra blankets and pillows augment my already reasonably comfortable perch. Having closed the shades on several nearby windows and bathed in the glow of the dim cabin lighting, I drift into a reasonably sound snooze. The air-conditioning hum and the baggage handlers’ activity bother me not. Then BAM! Jolted by what feels like a small explosion in the space immediately beneath my seat, and now totally awake with adrenaline flowing, I peer through my window to determine the source of all this commotion. An extraordinarily large gathering of maintenance personnel ignominiously interrupts my respite by hammering away at the baggage door one level below. After 20 minutes of banging and clanging, passengers begin to reboard. A flight attendant confirms the problems they also had in LA to secure that door. Rest assured, it’s now OK. The balance of the flight passes routinely. Once in Sydney, I then head out to find the flat advertised as Lady Seeking Gentleman to Rent Room. We interview each other and I become a tenant the following evening. The next morning, Olga hands me a section of her newspaper. Wasn’t that your flight? The front-page headline reads, Passengers Fall Into Pacific. The copy reports that my 747, on its subsequent flight from Honolulu to Auckland and Sydney two days hence, experienced a cargo door failure. The sudden, extreme pressure differential caused the floor to collapse, thereby sucking out nine people, including the man at ground zero who occupied my window seat, at about 7000 meters above the Pacific Ocean.0 [Subscripts such as this “0” identify corresponding URLs at larklemming.blogspot.com. Most of these links provide easy access to related info.] |
| Favorite music | Our dude moseys past the outposts. Exhausted, the mare balks at his insistence. The rider pats her neck, fluidly dismounts, and ambles toward the confluence of several weathered buildings. We relax in his presence, his confident, swagger-free stroll. His craggy, scarred face appears aged, yet his chiseled body resembles a 20-year-old athlete. His grit and smell permeates the roadway, yet his aura draws us in. We find ourselves taking for granted the medical miracles this youth performs with his special elixirs. His worldly engagements bestow him with the ability to cure most ailments. The reputation of this knight in dusty armor soon captivates people in neighboring counties. No malady escapes his touch. God must be especially pleased with these Kansans. Corollary elements of prosperity and security consume the communities. The revered healer walks on water. At first, only the loved ones of the afflicted recognize the pestilence as a particularly threatening scourge. But the toll of pain and suffering, for the dying as well as the survivors, mounts rapidly. Populations soon shrink into scattered campsites in remote badlands. Hope wanes in the effort to avoid a vicious pandemic. Common consensus pronounces our high plains drifter as the culprit. Folks who have not come into to contact with him remain healthy. They lynch the “godsend” to remove the horrible threat. Countless more die. Nearly a generation transpires before the area bustles again. As it finally recovers, the mystery of that youth evolves into myth. Was that the Pied Piper? The devil in disguise? Why would God unleash such atrocity? Does this characterize the epitome of evil? A century and a half later, viral warfare engulfs the globe. Immune to its ravages, our little corner of western Kansas thrives. Folks there retain unknown rare specific antibodies from the 1860s, which hold off the disease that afflicts the world. |
| Favorite books | In the main, my experience confirms that people are courteous, helpful, honest, and intelligent. When I venture across my street, my town, my country, or the world, I encounter nice folks everywhere, in every sense of the word. A middle-aged woman, ushering her preadolescent grandkids and their five friends through the front doors of a movie theater complex, notes my brisk approach from somewhat of a distance. In spite of her consuming supervision of this harrowing mayhem, she holds the door open for me. For a poignantly long time. I thank her. I’m totally unencumbered. I hike up mountains for fun. I have actually managed to open doors on my own. Yet she makes this gesture irrespective of her pressing responsibilities. A gentleman in the supermarket, engrossed in the decision-making process of which product to choose, notices out of the corner of his eye that he partially blocks my passage through the aisle, moves aside and says, Excuse me. I thank him. I could squeeze by with little fanfare, but he has the courtesy to momentarily step outside of his immediate universe and acknowledge my presence. Then why, for goodness sake why, do so many people forsake these benevolent intentions and social skills when they get behind the wheel of an automobile? Why do people allow their normal astuteness to deteriorate to that of an imbecile as they motor about? For many, heavy traffic is the bane of their existence. The congestion of the rush hours befriends nobody. So why don’t people make an effort to minimize the effect of greater vehicular volume by using a little courtesy and common sense? They would, if it amounted to holding a door open for someone. |