Gently down the stream

Me, Late Pearl Jam Era

I don’t remember whose idea it was, but one fall day in ’96 my buddy John Dzielski and I set out to canoe a forlorn stretch of creek that ran under the highway near the office park where we worked in suburban Chicago. We were into exploring urban wildlands - those forgotten places you see at the edges of the built-world where nature flourishes in the cracks of the municipal infrastructure. It took some research to learn this creek had a name, the East Branch of the DuPage River.

The morning was crisp and bright as we slipped our borrowed canoe into the stream, with no real foreshadowing of the absurdities about to unfold. The East Branch is more of a creek than a river, and in several heavily-engineered sections it’s more of a glorified drainage ditch. It runs south through back yards, under toll roads, behind strip malls, and at one point it snakes - in a very planned way -  through the Western Acres Golf Club. If you ever canoe through a golf course, let me strongly suggest you bring a helmet. Putting greens are often located near water features, referred to as “hazards,” to make the game more challenging. I’ve done a lot of canoeing over the years - many hundreds of miles in all kinds of conditions, and I can assure you that paddling through a bunch of novice golfers is right up there with being stuck on open water during an electrical storm - much to be avoided. I can still see the stunned looks of the golfers as we rounded a bend alongside their fairway. “Mornin, fellas!” we hollered as we drifted past. They said nothing back, just stared, slack-jawed. The trick to pulling off absurdist behavior is to do it with utter confidence, like Bugs Bunny or civil war re-enactors. It was our challenge to make the colored-pants men feel like they were the ones who didn't belong. John and I choked back our giggles for several long minutes until we were out of earshot.

East Branch of the DuPage River

In several places the creek was choked with fallen trees and floating wads of plastic debris. Aquafina and Pennzoil bottles, Starbucks cups, sticks and leaves and pieces of fence, a baseball cap, KFC buckets, six-pack rings and tampon applicators. On and on it went, in places so dense we had to take the canoe out of the water and portage around the clogs. It was clear that beavers had something to do with some of these stretches, though it was hard to tell whether the junk was simply snagged in their dams or whether the beavers had actually incorporated trash into the structures. Nature’s little engineers being above all, practical. But the most surreal surprise of the day was just beyond the golf course, where the river fanned out into a marsh. The tea colored water was only a few inches deep at this point, and I kept seeing these round whitish things on the bottom that I figured were some sort of eggs, except many had algae on them. Finally I reached down and scooped one up. It was a golf ball. So this is where they came to rest. In the slow waters of the marsh they settled out among the cattails by the hundreds, maybe thousands, to degrade in whatever way that golfballs do in six inches of tannic midwestern bog water.

John Dzielski

Further downstream the river became wide and shallow and we began to scrape bottom. The old canoe had been lent to us by a friend who warned us that it’s days were few. The fiberglass was worn and cracked along the keel and with each scrape and bump we began to take on more water. Finally we pulled ashore to assess our options. When we flipped the boat over we were dismayed at the ragged state of our hull. John and I hiked up the steep bank to take a look around. We were thrilled to see a Target less than half a mile away. I was hoping to find some sort of fiberglass patch, maybe in their camping or automotive departments, but that proved a fool’s errand. Instead we made due with duct tape. Lots of it. We made our way back to the boat which was left hull-side up to dry in the sun, but the frayed fiberglass was still water-logged. The tape wouldn’t stick to the damaged areas, so we extended it way up onto the sides of the boat for increased gripping power. It worked. For a while we were thrilled with our ingenuity and continued on. But eventually, as all half-ass duct tape solutions go, our patches failed and we were forced ashore again. By this time it was getting dark and we were cold and wet and the hilarity of our misadventure had dimmed considerably. We had a pretty good idea where we were since most of the bridges were labelled with street names on their undersides, for some odd reason. I figured we were a mile or so from where we’d left the second car, but walking along suburban highways at night would have been idiotic, so instead we crunched our way across a dry cornfield toward the lights of a middle school that I figured backed up to the forest preserve we had parked on the far side of. Bingo!

Back at the car, I rummaged my backpack in the waning light for my keys. A plastic shopping bag caught high in a nearby tree flapped in a stiff breeze and made a disconcerting buzzing sound. Nature had made a wind instrument of trash and was blowing a hellish protest tune. For a second I wished I could photograph the bag, but then I thought of all those tiresome trash-in-nature photos you see in Beginning Photography classes, and thought better of it. It seems no matter how startling the juxtaposition of garbage in nature, there is rarely a photo created that can disarm the cynicism by which we regard such images as hackneyed, preachy or naive. So commonplace is the degradation of the natural world we live closest to, that if we were to see its wounds, abuses and insults as they truly are we'd find that world unlivable. The creative challenge, which I did not feel up for, would have been to find something ineffable, haunted, or elegiac in the buzzing plastic bag, and thereby restore its irony. But instead I just drove home. There would be other days to make art about such things.

Wet and bone-tired, I pulled the car to a stop in front of my house and turned the engine off. Rivulets of water from the battered canoe on the roof ran down the windshield. After collecting my thoughts in preparation for my return to the normalcy I craved, I went inside to a dinner already in progress. In a little while I’d make the call to let my friend know about his boat’s last voyage, but for the moment I was deeply content to enjoy the sweet disorientation of being home with my loved ones on an otherwise ordinary evening. I was happy for the experience of seeing my world from a jarringly different angle, the details and texture of my strange day already settling into a tale.

In Clover

Photo by Mike Sheridan

No one could hit the ball into the outfield. The balls that did make it out there were all grounders. I was in third grade gym class learning to play for-real softball. During the warm up drills it was quickly determined that I couldn't catch, so I was banished to the outfield with the other sports flunkies. My loser status wasn't based solely on athletic shortcomings, it was already well-known that I spent more time in daydreams than in the real world, so in most activities that required alertness, I was a pure liability. In the outfield, I was instructed to throw any ball that came into my vicinity to the nearest base ahead of a runner - provided the runners hadn't already cleared the bases. During one inauspicious game, as I stood in right field waiting for the inning to end, a pair of bugs began fluttering around my head. I was busy waving them off when the ball hopped out past me. The jeers of my classmates dogged me as I chased the ball past the edge of our field and into the next ball diamond where another game was underway. Some kid from that game got to my ball first and hurled it over my head back to our infield. Above the shrill mayhem of my classmates my gym teacher roared at me for "Chasing butterflies like a girl." Later on the bench, I explained that I was trying to shoo the bugs away, and besides, they weren't even butterflies, they were two dragonflies stuck together. I was hoping this clarification would somehow clear me of shame, but it wasn't to be. The kids were having too much fun imitating me waving limp wrists at imaginary butterflies, like a girl – or worse.

I'm certain no one present that day, even the gym teacher, troubled themselves long afterward with the unpleasant memory of taunting an awkward kid. Most of them would have forgotten it later that day. But for me the memory lives on vividly in whatever brain cells are set aside for the task of self-loathing. I can recall it in detail whenever I want to, as if it had happened to me just now. And in this way, the trivial events of an ordinary life can become monuments of dread in the minds of those given to shame.

By that point in my school career I was already marked as easy pickings by the bullies. Each fall term offered the renewed hope that I could reset my classmate's expectations, but every new tormentor that came along was hardwired to sniff me out. And so it was that the following year one particular kid began taunting me for acting like I was "too smart." My glasses seemed to set him off, as if I was wearing them just to piss him off. One day he challenged me to meet him after school on the south lawn over by the buses. He promised to wipe my stupid glasses off my stupid face. So later that day when I made the long trek across the bare grass to my demise, it wasn't bravery or self-respect that caused me to do it, it was simple obedience. I knew If I didn't show up, that things could get way worse in days to come. Perhaps I thought he would be impressed and think me courageous, and that maybe we would talk it out. Whatever "it" was. So with utter dread I met my oppressor after school, and as promised, he beat me up. It only took one punch to the stomach, but my glasses actually did fly off and hit the sidewalk some feet away, while I fell to the ground unable to breathe. Some kids I didn't know stood close around laughing in their pre-pubescent falsettos as I gasped and heaved, crawling over to where my glasses lay blankly staring back at me. Suddenly I hated them too. When I regained my feet I was surprised and thankful that the bully didn't strike again. Instead he issued a stern warning to "never let me catch you looking at me again." That was it. I was never to look at him. That was something I could do. I ran off to catch my bus, where I was quizzed about why I was crying. I made clear it wasn't because I had been punched, but because my glasses were broken and I knew my dad would be furious. I couldn't own the humiliation of letting a bully punch me for no good reason. I had to make it about the glasses, which weren't broken, but I kept them hidden in my pocket. Later I taped them up and wore them to school that way for a week just to prove a point.

To my great fortune, a miraculous growth spurt occurred that summer which cleared me from the radar of most subsequent mean kids. Also I'd learned to catch balls well enough to get me through the prescribed number of gym classes in following seasons. Baseball stopped haunting me. In fact, by the time I was twelve I actually began to enjoy it. It wasn't a matter of suddenly "discovering" the game. It had always been there, spread out against the background of each summer. It was simply a matter of choosing to play. So that year I scraped enough kids together from our new subdivision to have two bush league teams that could play one another. Though our neighborhood was small, there were plenty of kids since none of the parents much believed in birth control in that part of the Bible Belt back in the 60's. One family even had exchange students, so with additional conscripts from England and Kenya, I was guaranteed to not be the worst player on the field. The trouble of not having a place to play was solved when one kid prevailed upon his farmer-grandfather to surrender an acre of cornfield next to our development for use as a ball field. The farmer plowed the corn stalks under, graded the parcel, and replanted it with clover -  a perfect playing surface for us, but also a useful crop that he was able to harvest for hay at the end of our season. It was a true win-win deal. Next, I made myself manager of both teams, as it was my job to schedule the games when no one had a TV show they needed to watch. So with nearly everyone's participation, including girls and way-too-young kids who ended up getting hurt a lot, we bumbled through a season of mostly-completed games, and succeeded in convincing the farmer it was worth his trouble to set aside that swatch of clover for our use the next season as well. When enough of us outgrew the game, such as it was, the farmer still had his crop.

It would have been beyond impossible back then to imagine that only a few years later I would be paid to eject bullies from a National League ball park, yet in the strangest convergence of skills and interests that my life has yet presented me, I was able to parlay a series of crappy security guard jobs into a position where I was managing crowd control for the Chicago Cubs. It made perfect sense. Only a few years out of college, I had been trying to make a go of it as an artist in Chicago, without a clear career path. I worked two double shifts as a security guard on the weekends, which left me all week to paint in my studio. In the summer this meant I had plenty of time for baseball, and since I was living literally in the shadow of Wrigley Field at the time, I fell hard for the Cubs. I'd spend mornings in the studio, and afternoons in the bleachers. Not everyday, but often enough that it distracted me hugely from my fuzzy goals as an artist.

As the 1986 season approached, I received a tip that the Cubs were going to be hiring seasonal "Protection Services" staff. I applied, took some tests, shook some hands, and before I knew it I was being fitted with the official blue and white security uniform of the Chicago Cubs. Thankfully, that was the year management switched the uniforms from the traditional rent-a-cop outfits to sporty warm-up suits, complete with baseball caps and starter jackets. It was the first and only work-wear I ever felt proud to be seen in.

On our first day at Wrigley Field, the new employees were taken out onto the diamond as part of our orientation. We strolled around the flawlessly engineered infield grass and were regaled with facts and figures about Wrigley's history. We were meant to be awestruck with the grandeur of the place. And thus we were. I had wanted to work in the park so I could see some ball, even if just occasionally, but any position within sight of the field was a plum assignment, not for the new guy. Instead I found myself stationed on the main concourse by the Cubs front office. My official title was "Crowd Control Specialist." It was my job to escort broadcast announcer Harry Carey, and any of the front office personnel across the public areas of the concourse to the employee elevator and up to the broadcast booth. Harry never said much to me. "Nice job, kid" was his standard line. It was about as boring a job as you could have in a major league ballpark. I didn't see any games that year. I could hear the crowd roar when something happened, but I wasn't stationed near enough to any of the TV monitors to get any sense of the action. That wasn't part of my job. My job was to help keep order on the concourse, and the concourse was, by design, pretty orderly.

Plenty of fans are troublesome in the ballpark, but few actually get ejected from the stadium. The ones who do are always over-served quarrelsome men who pick fights with their neighbors and yell obscenities at the umps.  Whatever it is about the game that triggers that kind of behavior, it's easy to imagine those guys suffer from some sort of undealt-with rage caused by things that happened to them outside the ballpark, and probably long ago. If a visit from Protection Services staff didn't help them see the error of their ways, then we quickly called in the real Chicago cops who made easy work of removing them from the stadium to a nearby police station. It was a regular part of our business to make this happen efficiently and with minimal fuss. Disorderly conduct was the usual charge. A special punishment for the worse offenders was banishment from Wrigley Field for life. Though it was all but unenforceable, we were regularly given photocopied mug shots of people to be denied entry to the park. The irony that I was being paid to help rid baseball of bullies was not lost on me. And though I couldn't say it was my calling, I was plenty proud to help make it happen.

The one bright spot in my time with the Cubs was Marla Collins, the ball girl. She was the first ball girl hired by any National League team, and it was my job to escort her through the public areas of the park when she went on or off the field. It took about ten minutes, twice a day, and it was pretty much the only thing I looked forward to. Marla and I barely knew each other. It was my job to protect her, not chat her up. The year I worked there she got in big trouble. She blew her whole career in fact. Marla was immensely popular and had dated a succession of ball players and entertainment types. Eventually it all went to her head and she said yes to the publishers of Playboy magazine when they asked if she could take her clothes off for their cameras. They promised her the pictures would be tasteful, but apparently they weren't tasteful enough for Cubs management. Word about the Playboy shoot was on the streets and people were suddenly incensed. Letters to the editors of both Chicago newspapers and local talk radio callers were demanding her removal. And still she came to work every day and tried to make it normal. The part of her job that she did with my help was in stark contrast to all the furor. At the end of each game she would autograph game-day balls (those used during play that day) for people in various states of physical and mental decline. Old people in wheel chairs, Make-A-Wish kids, anyone with special-needs could line up outside the front office and one by one she would greet them, smile and laugh and have her picture taken with them, and make each person feel the right kind of "special" for a change.  She would do this even as fans badgered her with insults and cat calls. After half a season of this distraction, management called her in. It seemed the front office was okay with dressing her in short shorts, and allowing Harry to blabber on-air about how she was "All grown up in all the right places," but when it came right down to it, Cubs management would rather enable their fans to mentally undress Marla every day than have her expose herself for real. So the Cubs balked, and fired her for violating the "family-oriented spirit" of their organization.

Marla Collins

Bullied by a bad decision, Marla was fired a week after the All-Star break. Her big story was over. She would go on to reinvent herself as a suburban mom, interior decorator, and more recently as an electrocardiogram specialist. Whether or not any of us endures a similar career crash-and-burn, most of us will bravely make ourselves over at least once in our lives, or at least quietly tweak our fate at key moments. Kids will grit their teeth through harassment to be rewarded with growth spurts.  Balls will bounce into and out of gloves. The Cubs will continue to hire and fire their way toward some workable combination of talent that they hope will lead them to a World Series win after more than a century of striving. Each of us indulges the the hope of renewal, the promise of a better version of ourselves "next year." It's natural and fitting to consider these things in spring, as the earth begins to warm and life in all its forms resumes competing and cooperating in varying degrees. And the future - whatever will be made of it - spreads itself out, like a field of clover sewn for one purpose, but perfectly useful for another.