It was a nice day
We all went swimming
Me and my sweetheart and our boy
It was a nice day
We had a good time
The sun was shinin
And life was joy…
I’m 42 now
I drive a junker
I’ve got a shaky sense of self esteem…
–Tommy Womack, “Nice Day” on There, I Said It
I’ve created a monster.
In the past few weeks, my boy Evan has asked (for what might have been the same number of times Verizon’s “Can you hear me now?” guy has asked his infamous poser), “Dad, can we go for a trail run.”
Today, I relented, or to be more honest, today, I could think of no believable excuse, my lack of clever lies rather astounding given the gullibility of six-year-olds.
“Great,” he said, “I’ll get Graham.”
“Two boys?” I sighed silently.
“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” Jenn told us and left on errands, smirking.
Defenseless, I gathered three pair of running shoes, a water bottle, and house key, and I got my team ready for the trail.
We were on the foot bridge crossing the Interstate when Graham said, “This is great, Ev. I’m glad you told me about this.”
Then, a rabbit dashed across the trail on the other side of the bridge, and they sprinted after it.
“He’s too fast,” I hollered after them, but they kept running.
This morning, I got up at 7:00 to run loops at Iroquois park on the city’s South End with my running bud, David. It was a good thing we left early: We topped out at 81°F in the Derby City today.
We put in just over 10 miles of hills in preparation for next week’s Papa John’s 10-miler.
Theoretically, we should have done this several weeks earlier, but we have lives and children who need us to take them to cub scouts and soccer practice. The toughest hills of the Papa John’s course (and some of the toughest of the Derby Marathon course) are in Iroquois.
We needed the mental preparation we opined, and if hills make you stronger, well, we now have the quads of Hercules.
The last hill in the park, which strides the golf course and leads you out to the relative flats of Southern Parkway, is long and steep when you’re no longer fresh. As we crested for our second pass, we found ourselves talking about the Rodes City 10K we ran last week over short breath.
“I noticed you were in a higher percentage for your age group even though you finished behind me,” I told David. “I got robbed. You’re only six months older than I am.”
We pounded the asphalt, letting our bodies fall down hill.
“I got more than six months on you, I think,” David huffed.
“You were 40 on your last birthday?”
“Yup.”
“I’m 40 in June. Six months.”
“Funny how I’m about six years more mature,” David smiled.
I watched for signs of spring on our run, a little green on the grass beneath the oaks, maples, and sycamore throughout the park. The Ohio Valley forces one to be alert for changes of season. Winter bleeds into spring, and before you know it the celebrities are arriving at Standiford for Derby parties at the Barnstable-Brown mansion and throughout the Cherokee Triangle. Spring becomes summer when UofL lets out in May, and you don’t notice that it’s fall until you’re at Bowman Field for another Adam Matthew’s Balloon Fest.
In the Upper Midwest, where I grew up, the seasons jump up and smack you in the face. It’s hard to miss pastel pedal pushers on the girls in April when they’ve been underneath down and wool for five months of snow and ice.
I laughed with friends at work earlier this week that the biggest sign of spring in the northern states is the emergence of dog turds. Frozen from November through March, canine fertilizer blooms on neighborhood lawns by April Fool’s Day. Here, in Louisville, spring is announced with hayfever and runny noses, that which Fido and Spot have left behind has melted long ago in January rain.
The forsythia are out this weekend, like great yellow canaries preening on lawns and along fence lines. The dogwoods are budding and will color median strips around town next week. The early magnolias are out partying with the tulip trees, and our southern magnolia is dropping its cones and brown leaves (the legacy of a cold snap in February) and slowly turning forest green. Here and there, daffodils spot yards.
On Friday, as I waited for the boys’ bus to chug up the street, I watched a raptor surfing several hundred feet above the houses on blustery winds. A peregrine often visits our corner this time of year, and I watch for it, but I think this was a redtail. It would catch a a gust and skate east, then circle and glide. The wind seemed a bit strong for it to manage, and I wondered if it was a young bird. It dove suddenly, as if shot from the sky, tumbling, then spiraling toward the ground. It fell beneath the rooftops, and I wondered, “Rabbit? Sparrow? Who doesn’t enjoy a late lunch?” Then, the bus pulled up.
On our walk back to the house, I noticed prickly leaves emerging from a patch of grass. “Hey look at these,” I told Graham and Evan.
They bent over and squinted where I was pointing.
“What kind of flowers will those be, do you think?”
“Dandelions?” Graham guessed.
“Lillies?” Evan followed.
“Poppies,” I told them. “They’ll be big and orange. Don’t step on them. We’ll watch them come up over the next few weeks.”
On the solstice this June, I’ll join David in the 40 to 44 bracket. It’s far short of the Master’s group, but I know it’s the start of the long hot summer of my life. I’m looking forward to it, and it scares me to death. I’m getting slower, but I’m getting faster for my age.
After our final loop, David and I stood behind his mini-SUV, chugging water and popping Sport Beans. I pulled off my wet shirt, feeling too spent to be self conscious of my gut or bright white skin. A veteran runner with a white crewcut was switching shirts before getting into his car.
He was probably 25 years older than us, and perhaps twice as fast. He looked our direction. I imagined him thinking, “Look at those cocky young fellas,” because that’s what I’d think about a pair of fit, young twenty-somethings who might easily consider me a “veteran.”
I smiled from behind my sunglasses and took another swallow of much-needed water.
“It’s a hot one isn’t it?” he noted.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I just hope it’s not like last year for the 10-miler next week.”
“That was hot,” he laughed. “Don’t worry: It’ll be a good one this year,” he added, and opened his car door.
“Well, we’ll see you at 3rd and Central next Saturday, then,” I nodded, and he waved.
Later in the evening, I caught Tommy Womack, who played in the 80s with Government Cheese, at Gerstle’s up the street. Friends, Jeff and Leslie from Hillbippie brought him in. After he’s played six shows in two days and lost his voice, Tommy sounds something like a blend between Dan Bern and Camper Van Beethoven on a long chain smoking jag. (You can hear “Nice Day” on Tommy’s site.)
So, while Jenn was putting the kids to bed, I hung out with former punks who’d let their hair grow long. I was nodding along to “Alpha Male and the Canine Mystery Blood,” which is on Tommy’s MySpace page, thinking, yeah I remember when “REM was still kickin then” and “we didn’t have a loose cannon president and all this credit card debt,” when I smelled Djarum cloved cigarettes.
I rememberd a Hüsker Dü show in 1985 at the old Turner Hall (Turners were Southern Wisconsin Germans who promoted gymnastics, fitness, the arts, civic activity, and social reform. They formed the cabbage in the sauerkraut of much of the region’s culture). It was well worn at the time, and I think it’s a parking lot now, just off East Wash a few blocks from the capitol under Miss Forward’s watchful eye.
I met a girl there, tall and skinny with brown hair and a strappy white tank top. She offered me a cigarette from Indonesia, and we danced in the pit. She smelled like sweat and patchouli. She smiled a lot. I should have gotten her name, but I was thinking of somebody else.
I like Tommy, who’s “never gonna be a rock star.” His band includes real people who work for a living, and his guitarist wears a Kentucky waterfall and handlebar mustache completely without irony. It was impossible for me not to look around the room at the mid-lifers who’ve shown up for the early show and realize that I wasn’t passing as one of them, I was one of them.
It’s been a long few weeks with my busy family. Somebody has had something big every night for about ten or twelve days, cub scouts, soccer, weight training, the James Hunter show at Headliners, racquetball, dance class. We are overbooked, but Jenn and I have always run our lives at 15 over the speed limit and an empty tank. I think we must like it this way.
When the boys and I stepped off the trail, we ran the busy road (named for baseball legend Pee Wee Reese) that leads back to the park past the basketball courts, where we saw a group of men out hollerin, barbecuin, and throwin stones.
I was worried about their running in traffic, and I insisted they run on the shoulder, but that strategy introduced its own problems. Graham tripped over a rock, and I watched him come down on his hands, narrowly missing a green shard of broken beer bottle.
He bounced back up the way he usually does and said, “Whoops. This is awesome, guys. I’m sure glad we came.”
“See. I told you.” Evan reminded him.
“OK. Race you to the fountain,” I told them messing Graham’s hair, and they finished with a kick.
It was a nice day. We went running, me and my boys.