One sure sign that I was not raised in the country is that, when outdoors, I wear footwear of some sort. On those occasions when I do find myself outside and barefoot (e.g. on the beach or by the pool), I do a good deal of “oooching and owching” if I walk across anything more lumpy than a piece of slate. I’m a tenderfoot.

I have discovered that there is a dedicated group of people who celebrate barefootedness and practice it regularly. They call themselves “The Society of Barefoot Living,” and, like all good twenty-first century organizations, the group even has a Mission Statement.

Interestingly, the group’s website debunks the notion that it is illegal to drive barefoot. It turns out that, in most states, it is NOT unlawful to drive a car barefoot (some states require footwear for motorcyclists). For you Garden Staters, feel free to doff your shoes this summer (but I suggest that carry a photocopy of the letter from Trenton that appears on the webpage to show the cop). My Jawja friends should also know that they can lawfully drive those big-ass pickup trucks barefoot, but I figure you already knew that, or you don’t much give a shit what the law says about driving barefoot.

Then I got to thinking, Yeah, sure. That barefoot stuff is great in warm weather, but I wanna see some of these barefooters strut their shit in Jersey in the middle of January. Well, it turns out that some of the more dedicated barefooters like walking barefoot in the farookin’ snow, although this winter walker had to concede that deep snow began to present a problem. Yo!! Deep snow? Ice? Slush? No way. Even barefooters can get frostbite and gangrene.

Interesting stuff, this, but I’m sticking with shoesies.

If you happen to be anywhere near Iowa this summer, don’t miss this:

Those fun loving people in Sac City are at it again. Forty-four volunteers and five staff members of Noble Popcorn Farms built a popcorn ball that weighed 3,100 pounds on Sat., June 12th to promote popcorn and to create a tourism attraction for the community as it heads into its Sesquicentennial celebration in 2005. The ball surpasses the old Guinness Book of World Records of 2,377 pounds set in September of 1995.

If you won’t be in the Iowa area, or if you are too stoked to wait for your summer vacation, you can check it out HERE.

So, again back in the 70’s, the owner of a bar in Belleville, New Jersey contacted us to book the band. As was our custom, we met with him to get a feel for the place. It was a fairly large and deep room. One entered near the large square shaped bar. Beyond the bar were perhaps a dozen and a half tables, which led up to and surrounded the dance floor. The place actually had a decent sized stage, which placed the band about three feet above the dance floor. It was well suited for live music.

Having checked out the layout of the place, I specifically asked the bartender what kind of crowd the saloon attracted. As much as he was interested in capturing our “following,” we were interested in not leading our following into a place that turned out to be a Bucket of Blood. The owner said, “Nice crowd here. We got no problems.” Done. We agreed to do a month of Fridays and Saturdays.

On our first night there, the joint was pretty well packed. People were two deep at the bar and just about all the tables were taken. The dance floor was full for every tune. The owner was happy, the partying customers were happy, and we were happy. It was a good gig.

Then, we played “Color My World.” It had followed several fast songs and, as such, provided the crowd with a bit of a rest, gave some folks on the dance floor the opportunity to rub naughty bits, and gave us a couple minutes to catch our breath. I had no singing part in the song, so all I had to do was relax behind the drums and “lay it in.” It was the first opportunity I had to really look over the crowd.

Because actually hearing the crowd is damned near impossible while the band is playing, one gets to pretty good at “reading the crowd” i.e. knowing how the members of a normal crowd typically move. When something out of the ordinary is going down, it is almost always accompanied by movement that doesn’t fit with the normal ebb and flow of bodies.

During “Color My World,” I saw such a telltale flicker of rapid and unnatural movement next to the bar, which was quite far away from the stage. Nevertheless, I knew from experience that this was almost always the sign of a fight. What made this typical pugilistic dance different was the speed with which it came and went. This was usually the opening moves of what would become a brawl. I was puzzled and was beginning mistrust my experienced saloon eye. However, one of the other guys in the band saw it as well and was similarly confused by it.

During the next break, I pulled the owner aside and said, “I could have sworn I saw a fight at the bar.”

The owner thought a minute, as if he didn’t know what I was referring to, and finally said, “Oh that? Don’t worry about that.”

I asked, “Waddya mean don’t worry about that? I thought you said that you didn’t have any trouble in this place.”

He laughed and replied, “I’m tellin’ ya. It’s no big deal. It was just Ted and Al. [fictitious names] This has been going on for years.”

He saw the look on my face, and before I could say anything, he continued, “About fifteen or so years ago, Al pulled some shit on Ted’s mother, which pissed Ted off pretty bad. Ever since then, every time Ted sees Al in town, he knocks him on his ass. Tonight was no different. Ted walked into the joint, saw Al and whacked him one, then left.”

Jimbo: “Are you shitting me?”

Owner: “No, it’s truth. Ask any of my regulars.”

Jimbo: “Nobody ever calls the cops?”

Owner: “Hey, I don’t wanna know nuttin’.”

I remember thinking, Damn, that’s one serious grudge. I remember also thinking, I oughta write some of this goofy shit down.

I never thought it would take me a couple decades to get around to writing it down, but there you have it.

Epilog
Ted and Al never did their bizarre “dance” again during our month there, or on subsequent engagements at the place, but I had no doubt that they were performing elsewhere in town.

Over the years I have often wondered why Al never filed a criminal complaint against Ted for assault and battery. The only conclusion I can reasonably draw is that Ted is one of the bent-nosed guys and Al’s reporting Ted to the police might lead to Al receiving something much more unpleasant than the occasional smack in the moosh.

As you know, subsequent to this event, things again would get sideways during our playing of “Color my World.” At that point, the song was stricken from the set list, and if anyone requested it, we pretended we didn’t know how to play it. It was a bad luck tune.

Here’s da choice.

Blog? Or, meet this guy for dinner in a classic Jersey Italian restaurant, where everyone, men included, had big hair?

It was a no-brainer.

It was great seeing one of the Jawja Bloggers on my toif.

Yes, dear hearts, I am one of the 12 million people who lives within a 14-mile radius of what terrorist experts describe as “the most dangerous two miles in America.”

If anything, the New York Times understates the vulnerability that is screamingly obvious to those of us who are familiar with the area in question. Once or twice per year, I have occasion to drive among the various tank farms and chemical facilities that are sandwiched between Newark Airport ant Port Elizabeth, and the mind boggles at the ease with which a bad guy could gain access to these places (let alone the planes taking off and landing at Newark Airport).

It is a huge and potentially deadly problem. And yet, while we try to go about our lives here in the bull’s eye, nothing gets better as the tangle of money-hungry and turf-protecting bureaucracies squawk about insufficient Homeland Security funds for New Jersey. The bitching loses a certain amount of credibility when we see, for example, that the City of Newark spent $300.000 in counterterrorism money on two air-conditioned garbage trucks, and New Jersey Transit used $36 million of Homeland Security money to overhaul the Hoboken Ferry Terminal.

New Jersey’s Department of Homeland Security, established in 2002, has done a good deal to help, but it is woefully behind the curve. Memo to all the knuckleheads who recently said that they would vote for former Governor McGreevey if he were to run again: Does the name Golan Cipel ring a bell?

Of course, the New York Times makes a point of saying, “Since 2001, at least two major efforts to bolster chemical plant security have been stalled, in part by industry lobbyists.” Let me say this. As a person who lives here, I don’t doubt that the chemical industry, already regulated to the point of causing many companies to leave New Jersey, is less than thrilled at the prospect of yet more regulation. Indeed, no business, mindful of its bottom line, is particularly interested in incurring more regulatory expense.

However, I have read some of the proposed regulations (published, by law, for comment in the Federal Register), and typical of many federal regulations, these are poorly written and tend to leave the members of the “regulated community” at a loss to know exactly what will be required of them by the proposed regulations. As such, the “opposition” that the NY Times speaks of appears to me to consist mainly of the comments to the proposed regulations by the regulated community seeking clarity. This is understandable, because Administrative Law 101 teaches us that the federal agency’s interpretation of its own regulations, once adopted, is the interpretation that will, in all likelihood, be the one that is adopted by the courts.

Make no mistake about it, I am all for regulations that clearly lay out what is expected of industrial sites in the most dangerous two miles in America, and I also believe that the chemical industry will comply with such regulations, once they are unambiguously written. After all, their people live here too. If, however, certain industries don’t wish to comply, they can pack up and leave, thank you very much.

Quite simply, we go through each day hoping for the best, but quietly worrying about the worst. We in New Jersey have learned that hoping for something worthwhile from our representatives in Washington is not unlike believing in the Tooth Fairy. The NY Times quotes one North Jersey resident as saying, “People pay taxes and deserve to be protected. But they probably won’t. It’s just the way things work.”

We just keep our fingers crossed, smile, and place our faith in the Washington Tooth Fairies.

WitNit has checked in with Chapter III of the Blog Western, and it’s a killer. Kelley is on deck. Lots of damned fine writing going on.

I wrote this about my mother last year on Mothers Day. I still have not come up with a story that better describes this amazing woman and our wonderful relationship.

I miss her.

It was a very nice party. Ken and Kathy’s granddaughter looked lovely in her communion dress. There were, of course, lots of kids there, and all of them had inherited the gene that drives children to run constantly and slide when exposed to a large, open floor. There were well=behaved and there were no bumps or bruises. The food was excellent and the cocktails were plentiful.

On the center of each table was a dish full of pieces of “white chocolate” in various holy shapes. Of course, ol’ Jimbo thought that they were pats of butter, and I damned near gagged when someone at the table popped one of them into her mouth. That brain fart provided the Usuals with a fair amount of ammunition with which to break my stindeens for the next hour or so.

After the party concluded and the normal people went home, the Usual Suspects all migrated to the bar, where we proceeded to keep the bartender hopping. After everyone was pretty well oiled, we decided we needed what to eat.

We proceeded to a local place named “Joe’s Bar.” No kidding; that’s the name of the place. Like a co-ed rugby team, we descended on the small dining room in the back of the saloon. By this time, it was damned near ten o’clock, and we had been at it since 1 PM. We ordered more beer and stuffed ourselves with Taylor Ham and melted cheese on hard rolls, with onion rings on the side. Genuine Jersey fare to cap off a genuine Jersey shindig.

It must have been a great party, because today I feel as if I had been hit by a bus.

The Usual Suspects will be assembling this afternoon to attend the First Communion party for the granddaughter of my friend and bodygoardmay return to the keyboard this evening, but one never knows, because there are … well … cocktails.

P.S. Thanks to Smadanek for the speeling check. 🙂

When you find yourself starting to type a post knowing that you’re really tired, and in mid-sentence you sort of think you may have nodded off for a second, and when you look at the screen you see “kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk,” it’s time to stop trying.

So, stop I shall.