Snakes -- Part 2: A Close Encounter

The first time I ever got really close to a rattlesnake in the wild, or in the semi-wild, was in Brownwood, Texas, on a warm spring day when I was jogging down one of the concrete roads in the old Camp Bowie area. This road connected Milam Drive to FM Road 45, and so it was clear, open, and often used by drivers. Not to mention by me when I was jogging.

As I was zipping along, a pickup passed me. I looked ahead and saw it pass over something lying in the road about thirty yard ahead of me. The pickup kept going, but the thing it had passed over raised up its head and looked around. It looked at me.

The thing, as you've no doubt guessed, was a rattlesnake. It had been taking the air and enjoying the warmth of the sun-baked concrete. The pickup had disturbed its contemplations, and it wasn't one bit happy about it. It must have blamed me, or maybe it just decided that since it couldn't catch the pickup, I'd do. It shook its rattles and started slithering straight for me.

You may have heard that once you hear the sound of those rattles, you never forget it. I know I never will.

Another thing I'll never forget is how fast that sucker could slither. It was really moving on.

After my initial shock, so was I. I probably never ran faster, and the amazing thing is that I was running backward. You didn't think I'd take the time to turn around, did you? If you thought that, you don't know me very well. When it comes to snakes, I waste no time.

I backpedaled for all I was worth. I was going so fast, I was afraid the suction I created might be helping the snake catch up, not that he was doing such a bad job of it that he needed any help.

There was no doubt about who he was after because he never wavered. He was coming for me in an absolutely straight line, as if he were following a laser beam.

Another truck passed me. This one, however, stopped. I didn't. Neither did the snake.

The truck backed up, fast, and ran over the rattler. Then it drove forward and ran over it again. I kept going.

The driver in the truck moved so that he could see what he'd done. The snake looked flat, which was fine by me. It must have been fine by the driver, too, because he gave me a cheerful wave and drove on.

As for me, I slowed down enough to turn around, and then I headed home. I wasn't going to take any chances with that snake. Maybe he looked smushed, but you can't trust snakes.

It was a long time before I ran down that road again.

Snakes

Maybe you like snakes. Some people do. My brother, for example. He can tell you how good snakes are for the ecology of a farm pond or a barn.

That's not convincing to me. I don't live in a farm pond or a barn, and snakes aren't good for my personal ecology. And don't talk to me about poisonous or non-poisonous snakes. My intention is never to be around a snake long enough to question it about the potency (0r lack thereof) of its venom.

The sad fact of the matter is that the sight of a snake triggers an immediate "flight or fight" response in me, except that you can forget the "or fight" part. For me, flight is the only option. Let me tell you how bad it is.

When we lived in Brownwood, Texas, I often ran in the area that had once been occupied by Camp Bowie during WWII. It had been a huge training camp, but now it's mostly gone. The part nearest my house was overgrown with weeds and mesquite trees. Not the roads, though. Those concrete roads were solid as ever, and I'm sure they still are. I'd jog up and down them nearly every day.

The junior high school wasn't far from my house, either, and some of the students walked home down those concrete roads. You shouldn't get the idea that the roads were used by cars. Most weren't, and they often had mesquite trees overhanging them and big rocks lying around on them. One road in particular had a big block of stone right in the middle of it. One day as I ran by the stone I noticed that someone, probably one of those junior high kids, had scrawled a message on it: "Snake under rock."

A pretty harmless message, you might think, and it might not bother you or my brother a bit. Me, it bothered. Brownwood was far enough west to be the home of plenty of rattlesnakes, and in fact the city had an annual "rattlesnake roundup." (Apparently it still does.) Camp Bowie was far enough away from town and houses to have more than enough rattlesnakes on the loose. I admit that one is more than enough for me.

Now that rock I mentioned was flat on the bottom. It sat right on the concrete, and there was no way a snake could have been under it, not unless it was dead and squashed. That didn't matter. Instantly, nerve cells fired all over my body. Adrenaline squirted into my blood stream by the gallon, and I started breathing as if I'd run a hundred miles instead of only four or five.

What's worse is that exactly the same thing happened very time I passed that rock. For years. That's just the way snakes affect me. Not spiders. I passed by a couple of saucer-sized tarantulas in my daily run, and I thought they were cute. Snakes aren't cute.

So that's how I feel about snakes. If you like them, that's fine. Just don't bring any of them around me. Thanks.

I'm Not Invisible -- Part 4

About 35 years ago, I had to have hernia surgery. In those days, back when people had to walk 8 miles to school every day, uphill, through snow, hernia surgery wasn't done the way it is now. It required big slices and a lengthy hospital stay (four or five days; I can't remember now). Not only that, I had to stay in the hospital the night before the surgery. Insurance coverage these days wouldn't stand for any of that.

So there I was in the hospital, surgery scheduled for the next day, and suffering all kinds of indignities. The prep for one thing. The anesthetist, for another. She had a severe speech impediment, and I could hardly understand a word she said. I was afraid I might never come out from under the anesthesia because I wasn't sure I answered any of her questions correctly.

Then the big day came. The rolled a gurney into the room. The orderlies told me to lie on the gurney. I did, and they covered me with a sheet and told me to remove my gown, which was easy enough. I untied the knot at the back of my neck, and pulled the gown right off.

Now that I was naked under the sheet, they wheeled me down the hallway. I'm not sure, but I think there must have been another gurney beside me because we must have been racing it. I mean, we flew down that hallway to the elevator. Soon we were in the operating room.

There was a nurse who explained to me that when the anesthetist slapped the thingamajing on my face, she (the nurse, not the anesthetist, thank goodness) would tell me to count backwards from one hundred. I said I wasn't good with numbers, but I'd try.

The doctor came in, told me everything would be fine, and said that he was ready. The nurse whipped the sheet off me. There I lay in all my glory, and she said, "Aren't you the guy who runs down Ninth Street every afternoon?"

"One hundred!" I said. "Ninety-nine!"

She got the hint, hit me with the ether, and I was gone. Believe me, I was never so happy to pass out.

I'm Not Invisible -- Part 3

A few years ago, Kroger opened up a big new superstore in Alvin. One of the innovations was a self-checkout system, where people can run their own items over the scanner and get out faster than they can if they're in the so-called "Express Lane," which in my experience is unquestionably the slowest-moving lane in the store. It's the one where the woman in front of you has only two items, which make you think you're going to be out of there in a jiffy if you get behind her, but it turns out that she wants to pay in pennies that she keeps knotted up in a handkerchief. With knots that she can't untie. And neither can the checker. And when you offer the Alexander the Great solution with your pocketknife, the woman looks at you as if you wanted to kill one or two of her cats, of which you're convinced she has several dozen at home.

You know the line I mean.

But I digress. I was there using the self-checkout, which isn't as easy as it appears because if you have vegetables, there's no barcode on them. You have to look them up and then let the machine weigh them if they're sold by the pound. If they aren't, you have to punch in the number of them that you have.

Anyway, things were going pretty smoothly, so I wondered when the woman at the next station was staring at me. I hadn't made any blunders that I was aware of. I hadn't set off any alarms. I wasn't trying to sneak out without scanning the bread or the milk.

I ignored her and finished up my little transaction. I tore off the receipt and picked up my bags. As I was leaving, the woman said, "Don't I know you?"

I'm unfailingly polite, so I said, "I don't know. Do you?"

She looked at me again. "Do you run down Hill Street every day?"

"Yes," I said, "I do."

She smiled. "I thought so. I almost didn't recognize you with your clothes on."

This last comment got a great reaction from the other customers. I'm just glad that Judy wasn't there to hear it.

I'm Not Invisible -- Part 2

Back in the early '90s Judy needed some pretty scary surgery. We had to go to St. Luke's hospital in Houston to fill out the admittance papers, along with those scary forms you have to give them. You know the ones.

We located the hospital and found the office we needed. It was a busy place. While Judy talked to someone at a desk about the forms, I sat down to wait. I had a book with me, so I read a little, but I was too nervous to concentrate. So I closed the book and looked around. I noticed that down at the other end of the waiting room there was a guy who was really giving me the eye.

That wouldn't have bothered me if the guy had been someone like Mr. Peepers. However, he looked a lot less like Wally Cox and a lot more like Dog the Bounty Hunter. And he used the same fashion consultant.

I turned to see if there was anybody near me he could be looking at, but there wasn't anybody sitting on either side of me. I opened my book again and hoped I was imagining things.

Surely he couldn't be looking at me. I mean I don't hang out with guys who can change tires with their teeth.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guy get up. He started in my direction, but he stopped near a table, picked up a magazine, and sat down. When he opened the magazine, I could see that he was looking at me over the top of it.

Judy was still filling out forms, clearly oblivious to what was going on. It was cool in the room, but I was sweating.

The guy got up again and came over to me. I looked up at him. I don't know how tall Dog the Bounty Hunter is, but this guy was around seven feet. Okay, maybe not, but that's how he looked at that moment.

"Hey," he said. He had a voice like Jesse Ventura's.

"Hi," I said. Or something like that.

"I think I've seen you before," he said.

"Uh," I said.

"Aren't you the guy who jogs past Alvin High School in the afternoons?"

"Uh, maybe."

"I see you nearly every day when I come in from work."

He sat down and we talked a while. He was a pretty nice guy. I never asked him what he was there for. I hope it wasn't for anything like Judy needed to have done.

I'm not Invisible

When I'm out pounding the pavement, I rarely think about who might be passing me in a car. Even if I did think about it, I usually can't see who's behind the wheel. For one thing, I have poor vision. And for another, windshields these days tend to be pretty dark and do a good job of whoever's driving the car.

The drivers can see me, but I never think about that, either, until somebody mentions it.

A couple of days ago, I was in the post office. I handed the postal clerk the package I wanted to mail, and she said, "Do you run every day?" It turned out that she drives to work every morning about the time I'm sweating it out on the streets of Alvin, and she sees me all the time. I told her that I run six days a week if I can, and her next question was the same one everybody else asks. "How far do you run?"

I used to be able to answer that one, but not anymore. There was a time when I ran eight minute miles. Those days are long gone. Now I have no idea how fast I run. I don't want to know. Maybe I'm in denial. At any rate, I used to run five miles. Now I just run for forty minutes. Maybe I'm going only three miles now, but if I am, don't tell me. As I said, I don't want to know.

So I told her that I didn't count the miles, just the minutes. She thought that was a good idea because she does the same thing. Every morning she gets up, has her coffee, and walks three minutes on the treadmill. Every little bit helps.

Weather Report

This morning it was 22° when I frolicked out the door to run. You folks who live Up North, and those of you who dwell on the plains and the mountains, might regard this as a mild and temperate spring day, but those of us who live a little closer to the bottom of the U. S. map think of it as (to use a technical term) mighty damn cold.

Even at that, however, it was better than yesterday when it was 29°. That's because yesterday it was overcast and a 10-20 mph wind was blowing down from the North Pole. Today, the sun was shining and there was only a light breeze. I could probably have worn my shorts, but I went with the longies instead. Well, I had the shorts on over the longies, if you want to get picky about it.

Not a bad run at all, and in fact I was sweating by the time I got home. I'd rather run on a day like this any time than to run during a Gulf Coast summer.

Days Like This . . .

. . . can fool you. The forecast high for Houston is 96, and the humidity will be brutal, too. But when you go outside at 7:30 A. M., you think, "Hey, this isn't too bad." You can feel a little bit of seabreeze drifting up from the south, and you're standing in the shade, and you think, "I can do this."

So you start to run. You can even kid yourself along for the first half mile or so. You stick to the shade, you don't try to break the four-minute mile, you think cool thoughts.

But then you start to sweat. After which you start to sweat a lot. Pretty soon, your socks weigh as much as your shoes did when you started out, but not as much as your shoes do now. They're soaked, and they're as heavy as concrete blocks.

Before long, you start thinking about how good some cold water would taste, how good a cold shower would feel. When you look at your watch, you see you're not even halfway done.

You sweat some more. When you swing your arms, drops of sweat fly off your fingertips. If you weren't wearing a headband, your eyes would be stinging with sweat. A little bit gets in them even as it is.

Eventually you get home. You don't even bother to go inside. You just take off your shirt and shoes and hose yourself down in the driveway. Feels good.

After an hour or so, you've almost forgotten what it was like.

Tomorrow is another day.

Being an Old Guy

Sometimes when I'm speeding* along the sidewalks and streets of Alvin, I wonder what people think of me.  Maybe they don't even see me, as I've found I'm practically invisible in restaurants when I need a server or in a mega-store when I need help finding something.  

Assuming they do see me, though, what do they think?  Do they think an old guy shouldn't be out there running?  That I should be inside sitting quietly with a shawl over my shoulders?  Do they worry that I might fall and break something?  Would they care if I did?

Let's face it: I didn't plan to be old, and I never dreamed that I'd still be running this long after that first attempt way back in 1971.**  In the years since then I've seen other old guys -- some of them as old as I am now, some even older -- out on the run.  I never identified with them.  I just admired them for keeping on.  Now I see there's nothing particularly admirable in it.  You just keep doing it because you've been at it for so long that you're afraid to quit.  Or at least it's that way for me.  I'm scared of what would happen to my body, which by now must be used to the almost daily pounding of the pavement.

Somewhere there's a picture of me in the early '70s, all decked out in new running gear.   New shoes, new shorts, new top.  All blue.  The shoes were Saucony, I think.  Maybe I can find that picture somewhere.  If I do, I'll post it here.  Young guy.  Skinny.  Black hair, and plenty of it.  Those were the days.

Now?  Gray hair, thin on top and almost gone in back.  Not so skinny, and definitely not young.  I don't have any recent photos of me in running gear, nor are there likely ever to be any.  Who'd want to look at them?  Certainly I wouldn't.

The funny thing is, I don't feel much different from the skinny guy in the photo.  On the inside, I'm still young, which I'm sure is true of all old guys.  I still think of myself as the dark-haired kid in the new running togs, ready for anything.

I can remember the routes I used to run, even some the exact quirks of the pavement, the rocks beside the road.  I could go there tomorrow and feel not a thing had changed in 35 years.  

I don't think I will, though.

*By my definition.  Probably not by yours.

**More about that later.  If I get around to it.

I'm Not Athletic

When I was a youngster long ago, people didn't tell us kids that we could be anything we wanted to be if we just tried hard enough, which was just as well. We'd have known they were lying, or we'd have figured it out pretty quickly.

I was a skinny kid, and I wanted to run fast. That was about the extent of my ambition for a while. Later on, though I wanted to be Roger Bannister. How likely was that? For me, not likely at all, not even within the realm of possibility. Why? Because I was slow. I was once beaten in a grade-school race by a desk. You can learn to be a lot of things, I guess, but fast isn't one of them.

I also loved baseball. After I gave up on the four-minute mile, my plan was to go the the major leagues as a second baseman, but I was a terrible player. I didn't know at the time that I could barely see out of my left eye and that I had the coordination of a puppet with broken strings. I just knew I couldn't run and I couldn't hit no matter how hard I tried. Very disappointing.

Of course my reflexes might have had something to do with it. Turtles are quicker than I am.

And I'm not built for athletics, especially running. I'm bowlegged. I'm not sure that my early life had anything to do with that, though my father did want me to be a cowboy, and I learned early to ride a horse. The cowboy thing didn't take, but I do have the legs for it. If I stand with my ankles together, a large dog can walk between my legs and not touch either one of them.

So my becoming a runner and staying one for many years was a big surprise to me. As you might guess, I'm not a good runner. I'm slow, and I'm awkward, but I'm persistent. I wasn't sure I could be, but it turned out I could. I've been persisting now since 1971. That's almost thirty-seven years now, no matter what the title of this blog is.

Jim Ewing

Jim Ewing taught English at Howard Payne when I arrived there. He was a distance runner, and he'd come to the U.S. from Scotland to be on the HPU track team. He'd been a star of the team, and he was still a runner. Four or five years after I met him, he finished first in a marathon in San Antonio. I wouldn't be surprised if he were still running somewhere or other.

Because I couldn't play handball at the college, I talked to Jim about running. He said it didn't require any talent, just persistence. I certainly lacked the talent, but I wasn't sure I could be persistent.

He explained that he liked the idea of training with LSD, which surprised me a little, since Howard Payne was a Baptist school. But then he told me that he meant long, slow distance. That was the key to success. Well, that was fine with me. In addition to lacking talent, I also lacked speed. Compared to me, statues are speedy.

I thought over what Jim had said, and I figured maybe running was for me, in spite of my bad experiences in Corsicana years earlier. After all, being slow and lacking talent, I had two of the three qualifications he'd mentioned.

I never dreamed of training with him. I knew he was too fast and too good. It would have been embarrassing to try to keep up with him because I knew that by the time I'd gone ten yards, he'd be somewhere in the next county. I thought, however, that I might be able to sneak out on my own.

But there was a catch. I was now married, with two little kids. Finding the time to run wouldn't be easy. Jim told me that if I really wanted the exercise, I could find the time. He suggested the weekends to begin with, and if that proved workable, I could try to get more time on the road going out in the late afternoons when I got home from the college. I lived near the location of an old army camp, Camp Bowie. There were lots of deserted roads to run on, and traffic was light. Hardly anyone would see me, and for the most part I could stay well away from the main roads. He encouraged me to give it a try. If I didn't like it, or if things didn't work out, I could quit and try to find some other way to exercise.

I told him I'd think it over.

The Years Between

In June 1965, I married Judy Laverne Stutts, and we moved to Denton, Texas, where I worked on my M.A. at North Texas State University. I gave up on getting in shape for a while.

In August 1966, we moved to Austin. I planned to get a Ph.D. in English at The University of Texas. I had a couple of friends in grad school there. Bob Vaughn was a journalism major, and Fred Williams was in the business school. They figured I needed some exercise, so they taught me to play handball in the school's new gym, where there were some pretty swanky handball courts. One of them even had plexiglass walls on three sides.

I'm not coordinated enough to play handball. I look like a spastic goose on the court. I can't use my left hand very well, I'm half blind in my left eye, and I have the reflexes of a brick. But I make up for it with enthusiasm.

Handball in a four-sided court's not a game for sissies. The ball's hard as a rock, and it bounces off the walls, floor, and ceiling at rifle-bullet velocity. You hit it with your hands, and you're wearing only a thin leather glove.

I've heard that in the big city, the game's even tougher. Sometimes there's only one wall, sometimes three. Guys play with cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths. They sip beers between points.

We weren't quite that tough, but we had fun. After Fred and Bob got their degrees and left, I played with John Henry Irsfeld and Richard Freed, both of whom beat me like a drum. Didn't matter. I loved the game. I think I still have a pair of those gloves somewhere. I may even have a handball. I planned to play forever.

Then I finished my degree and moved to Brownwood, Texas, to teach English at Howard Payne University. One of the first things I did was check out the handball courts. There were a couple of them, I think. They were about the size of a bathroom, dark, with low ceilings. Like something Torquemada might have designed when he was in a bad mood. I was told that I'd have to use a squishy, air-filled ball. I never set foot on one of those courts or any other handball court again.

False Starts: 1964

Early in my second year of teaching in Corsicana, Spencer Olesen and I gave up on living in manufactured housing and moved to an new apartment building located just across the highway from Navarro Junior College. The most interesting event of that year was a tornado that came very close to the apartment building.

We hadn't lived there very long before I became interested in "getting in shape" again. There was a good reason for this. Behind the apartment house was a dirt road about a quarter of a mile long. It led to a paved street, but nobody ever traveled on it, as far as I could tell. I figured it would be ideal for jogging. It was far enough from the college campus and the highway that no one would see me if I went out in the daylight, and that was my main consideration.

The weather was still mild, so one afternoon I put on the tennis shoes and an old pair of shorts that I'd worn in my college p.e. class, along with a white t-shirt. I went downstairs, walked around the apartment building, and jogged down the road.

I got all the way to the end without incident. Coming back was equally simple. I don't remember how fast I ran or if I was winded. I really have no idea if the road was really a quarter of a mile long. Whatever distance it was, and however I felt, I know I was pleased with the effort. I'd found the perfect place to jog. I was going to get in shape.

Or so I thought. We all know what Robert Burns said about the best-laid plans.

What happened was this: there was a spy in the apartment house.

It never occurred to me that a high-school student would be living in an apartment with her parents. I thought parents were supposed to have houses. Which shows how naive I am.

Anyway, the student spotted me that first day, but I didn't have a clue. I went out the next afternoon, feeling self-righteous about getting in shape while all the rest of the slugs in town watched TV and ate Cheetos.

I just made my turn to go back when the carload of my students showed up. I'm sure the one who lived in the apartment called them to let them know. They pursued me all the way back, hooting, hollering, honking the car horn, and laughing. Mostly laughing. The road that I'd guessed might be a quarter of a mile long suddenly seemed to stretch all the way to infinity. And beyond.

Somehow I got to the end of it and back to my apartment. I ran upstairs and looked out my bedroom window. I saw that the car still sat there, and the students were still having a good laugh at my expense.

That was the last time I went jogging in Corsicana, Texas.

It was the last time I went jogging anywhere for a long, long time.

False Starts: 1963

In the winter of 1963, I was living in Corsicana, Texas, where I taught junior English in Corsicana High. I shared a "manufactured home" with Spencer Olesen, who taught English at Drane Junior High.

In those long-ago days, guys believed in "getting in shape." Or, if they thought they were already fit, they wanted to "stay in shape." So they exercised. In theory, that is. Mostly they just talked about staying in shape or getting in shape and never did anything to achieve "shape."

I, however, was determined to do something. I was going to run.

One winter evening, I put on a pair of tennis shoes, bluejeans, and an orange sweatshirt with a big white logo of The University of Texas at Austin on the front. I pulled a stocking cap down over my years, stepped out the front door of the manufactured home, and took off.

The conditions were not ideal. It was dark. It was cold. There was no moon, and a strong, gusty wind drove thick black clouds overhead. The narrow road had no shoulder, and there were drainage ditches on either side.

I hadn't gone far before I'd had a couple of close calls with passing cars. Those weren't as bad as the close encounters with dogs that came running out at me from yards and bushes. The dogs didn't maul me or anything, but it's pretty scary to have an animal the size of a dump truck come charging at you out of nowhere, barking like crazy, whether he attacks you or not. Gets the old heart rate up, though, I must say.

After a short time (I have no idea how short), I turned back. I'd had enough for one night.

I tried again the next evening. The wind was even gustier than it had been the previous night. They sky was darker. The dogs were more frightening. When I turned back, I decided that I didn't need to get in shape after all, at least not for a while.

One might reasonably ask, why not go during the daylight hours? I didn't want anybody to see me, that's why. I especially didn't want any of my students to see me. That would have been disastrous, or so I thought. I was right, too.

I still have the sweatshirt with my alma mater's logo on the front. I'm nothing if not loyal. The shirt's a little the worse for wear after all these years, but then so am I.

Prologue

It was 1971. I was thirty years old and full of vim and vigor. Or maybe just vigor. I've never been quite sure about vim.

At any rate, it was 1971, and I had decided to take up running for exercise.

One of the first things I noticed about running was that it was a sport for people of any age. Occasionally I'd even see some gray-haired old guy in his 60s plodding along, and I'd think, "It's great that he can still keep going without a walker."

Thirty-six years have passed since then, in what seems like hardly more than a few weeks.

When I go out for a "run" in the morning, teenagers flicker past me like humming birds.

People in their twenties and thirties move by like the Keystone Kops in a speeded-up silent movie.

Folks in their forties and fifties go around me as if I were a statue planted in their paths.

And that's when I realize I have become that old gray-haired guy that I used to see.

This is the story of how it happened.

Introduction

After a couple of false starts I became a runner (see the definitions post) in 1971. I've been on the run ever since.

I am, of course, an amateur. In any kind of competition, I'd finish last. So I'm not competitive. I'm just an ordinary guy with no athletic ability that anyone's ever been able to detect. Just ask the people who taught activity classes in my elementary school or p.e. in high school and college. They all despaired of me.

Anybody, however, and run, even someone like me. What I am is a plodder, and I'm persistent. I can keep doing something once I start. And I've kept running.

Because I'm a writer, I decided to tell what it's been like to run regularly over a long period of time. I'm not trying to benefit anybody by converting people to an exercise regime. I'm just writing stuff down for my own amusement.

Thanks to this being a blog, everything will be published in reverse order. This introduction will follow my definitions, and everything else will follow along as I write it. Anyone wanting to start at the beginning will somehow have to find the way here. Not that I expect anyone to do that. It's quite likely that one one will ever even find this blog, hidden away is it is in a little nook in cyberspace, lurking quietly in its corner with no publicity at all. Even if no one sees it, though, I'm sure I'll enjoy writing it.

And if I don't, I'll just stop.

Definitions

Jogging: Your speed or slower

Running: My speed or faster