The human joys of running really fast

(621 words)

I’m on record as saying I have the same interest in learning speed reading as I do speed sex. Both activities are something to savor.

The declaration is contrary to my typical outlook. See, I yearn to go really fast. Like cheetah fast.

Not in a car or a plane, circumstances so grindingly routine they’re practically pedestrian.

I’m talking about the human exhilaration that comes from running fast, just propelling your body as fast as it can go with joyful abandon.

When was the last time you just bolted? It feels wonderful.

It’s why I felt envious early this week when I saw speedy Cincinnati Red Billy Hamilton raced from home plate to third base in just 10.58 seconds, about 27 feet a second.

I tried to think how long it would take me to run 270 feet and I figured I could do it in about 10 also.

That’s 10 hours.

First I’d be winded from running 90 feet from home to first so I’d stop to catch my breath and chat with the first baseman about what it’s like to play professional ball and if he worries more about his post-baseball career or catching an STD from the baseball Annies. It would be a long talk. I’d then repeat the whole thing in getting to second, but by then I’d need lunch and a nap.

Sensing I was starting to embarrass myself, I’d give it all I had on my way to third and likely pull a groin muscle and require medical assistance, some liquor and another long nap.

So 10 hours, or about what non-baseball fans think attending a regular MLB game feels like.

Many runners make running look agonizing. Their faces are masks of painful endurance.

I know how to solve this common problem: Never run more than 30 feet at a time.

I know this from ’10 when I enjoyed my greatest racing achievement. I outran 25 Point Park University students who were half my age.

It helped that I was their professor, the surprise race starter and apparently the only one who gave a shit at all about winning.

My class had been invited to enjoy a gala reception with none other than John Grisham. I informed them about the schedule change and said, “First one to the elevator drinks free!”

And just like that I was off. Took me about 5 seconds to run 30 feet. I remember feeling like my hair was going to fly off my head. 

It felt great!

One by one, in varying degrees of evident indifference, my students shuffled down the hall. I do remember impressing one student who said I was a real cheetah.

Or maybe she said “cheater.”

No matter. I was so excited by my victory, I’d forgotten to push the elevator button and we all stood there like morons for almost two minutes before anyone noticed.

The greatest use of speed, to me, is the common goodbye. Few have mastered it.

Most people let the goodbye drag on and on and on. It may seem polite, but it’s truly tedious. It should be just goodbye and go.

It’s why I’ve always admired Waylon Jennings who used to alert everyone he could depart without notice or warning.

“If you see me getting smaller, it means I’m leaving,” he’d say.

And just like that, he’d be gone. I’d say he’d vanish like a puff of smoke, but he was legendary friends with Willie Nelson so it was likely he was on his way to puff smoke.

Maybe it’s a tactic I can start employing right here on the blog.

Write fast and just get the hell out.

If you see me getting smaller, I’m leaving …

Related …

A short distance runner

Justice & John Grisham

Ghosts & ghostings in haunted Virginia

Willie Nelson for “high” court

Hoping for Game 7s and extra, extra innings

Today I tried to break Usain Bolt’s record

Beds of nails, gator rasslin': My stunt stories

(1,159 words)

The way you hear our president talking about the “dishonest media” you’d think he’d want us fed to the alligators, heaved from airplanes, shackled, made to lay on beds of nails and smashed with sledgehammers.

In my case, it’d all be redundant.

Been there, done that.

Of course, I’m no longer part of the actual media. I’m some kind of oddball hybrid. I write, but mostly it’s for myself, so it’s like a presumptuous sort of hobby.

It’s been more than 25 years since I did any real reporting; i.e. covering council meetings, checking police reports, using deliberately enigmatic Latin abbreviations like i.e.

But all but one of those adventures befell me during the 10 swashbuckling years I wrote for National Enquirer, back before it become so political.

I was reminded of them the other night when I had drinks with a former student of mine.

You didn’t know? Yes, I from 2006-2010 taught creative non-fiction at Point Park University. They canned me when they realized — experience be damned — I was less credentialed than the grad students I was teaching.

It’s a pity. Many told me I was an outstanding professor and I enjoyed the opportunity.

Many of them have gone onto stellar careers in journalism, not an easy feat in these tumultuous days of shifting media outlets. Many are working at newspapers, some at magazines, some at feisty startups.

I’m proud of the guy who told me he’d recently been tased!

We met for drinks last week. He’s a truly great writer/reporter and the recipient of the only “A” I ever bestowed.

He just scored a book contract about how tasers are affecting law enforcement and as part of his research agreed to be a victim.

Spoiler alert: It hurt!

His tale had me recollecting all the foolhardy experiences I endured for the sake of a story. To say I did it to earn a buck (usually $1,000 of ‘em) would be untrue. I did it all because I knew I’d one day want to be the kind of person I was destined to become.

A really swell bullshitter.

I guess the first true stunt story I did was skydiving for the Nashville Banner. I remember the jump master being this big mean dude, a U.S. Ranger who’d served two tours in Vietnam.

It’s scary being in a perfectly good airplane cruising at 3,000 feet when they open the door and tell you to step outside and stand on the strut. But disobeying Sgt. Slaughter after a day of drills was scarier.

When he said jump …

Geronimo!

I clearly remember two sensations: silence and testicular agony.

It’s shouting loud being in a plane when the door’s open. But it becomes instantly and completely quiet when your static-line chute deploys.

As for the pain, they’d cinched the ball harness super tight, assuring me it was all procedural. I imagine they were cackling about it because for the entire two-minute descent I sky danced kicking my legs right and left trying in vain to find an illusive comfort sweet spot.

It hurt so bad I didn’t get to enjoy the jump.

So went a second time. And it was spectacular.

Would I go again?

Probably. I did the Skyjump in Vegas in ’13 and it was a similar thrill.

What I won’t do again — ever — is lay on a bed of nails and have an Ohio mystic put 50 pounds of concrete on my chest and smash it with a sledgehammer.

That was an Enquirer stunt story supposed to demonstrate the power of the mind over pain. The mystic was Komar the Great. He in 1997 was in the Guinness book of records for various feats of strength including longest barefoot fire walk, ascending knife-edge ladders and having 825 pounds placed on his chest while laying on a bed of nails.

His real name was Vernon Craig. He was a Wilmot, Ohio, cheesemaker and for a guy renown for hot feet, he was pretty cool.

I once had my leg broken in three places on a high school hockey breakaway. That hurt.

But nothing in my life hurt like the bed of nails. Now, the point of the story was to demonstrate the power of the mind over pain. So I’m either really smart or really stupid because it hurt like hell.

I remember praying the photographer wouldn’t screw up and demand an encore.

The story became the only Enquirer feature I did that was totally false. The headline: “I lay on a bed of nails and took a sledgehammer blow — but I felt no pain!”

I later complained to the editor about the lie.

“Well,” he said, “it wouldn’t be news if we wrote, ‘Enquirer reporter lays on bed nails — and feels incredible pain!’”

So in their eyes it was a victimless crime.

The alligator wrestling is a fun one to knock off the bucket list. I had a keen interest in gators ever since the Miami Herald ran my story about a blind Everglades gator wrestler. 

So my buddy George and I were one day day-tripping across central Florida when we saw signs for Gatorland. We pulled in and I asked the office if I could do a story about the attraction that had been around since ’49.

Well, they couldn’t have been more accommodating. A mirthful guide took George and I on a behind-the-scenes tour, even taking us on a field stroll amidst all the big monsters, some as big as 12-feet. It was exhilarating although I never felt we were in danger.

The gators had no menace and behaved like they were sedated, which was only fair because I’m sure George and I were.

The picture above is from later in the day when they put me on an island pen in front of a group of spectators and let me “wrestle” a feisty 7-footer. I snagged it by the tail and struggled to keep it from dragging me into the moat. They’re very strong.

The match didn’t last long and critics will point out it wasn’t true wrestling, but for story purposes I was in a pen with a real gator and only one of made it back to the parking lot.

I’ve worn kilts through construction zones, been shackled to my wife for 72 hours to test our love, and once gained 20-pounds in one week eating just like Elvis.

It’s been a lot of fun. The best part wasn’t so much what I did, but with whom I did it. Writing stories has led me into the lives of a carnival of characters and that includes all the ones who were characters in carnivals.

That’s what I’d tell journalism students if I was ever asked to advise those interested in the art of storytelling.

Being part of what is being derided as the “dishonest media” is both fun and noble.

It sure was for me.

Honest.

Related …

Enquirer Greatest Hits!

Teaching at Point Park: Justice & John Grisham

Eats like Elvis

The summer I ran away with the carnival

What happened when I spent 72 hours handcuffed to Val

In odd we trust

Everglades City: The blind alligator wrestler

Enjoying a good long jump with Playboy Playmate Claire Sinclair

A day for real mourning; RIP Angelo Cammarata

(880 words)

Yesterday was a great day. I spoke before 250 members of the Pennsylvania Librarians Association and it couldn’t have gone better. It was a true home run. I’ve never enjoyed a longer and more raucous ovation.

Honest, some were in tears and all laughed. They loved me and my message. It was a big payday, too, with speaker’s fee and more than $600 in book sales.

But that’s a topic for another day.

Today is a day for mourning.

If you think I’m talking about the Pirates loss, man, you’re missing the big picture.

Angelo Cammarata is dead.

He was 101.

He was, oh, so much more.

He was one of the two most memorable and beloved — and lovable — men I’ve ever known.

Both are in the Guinness Book of World Records for vastly different reasons.

And someday I’m going to see if I belong in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the reporter who’s friendly with most people who are in the Guinness Book of World Records.

I’ve always sought out the company of interesting people and tried to learn how they chose to live.

That’s how I became friends with Ange and John Clouse.

Having been to all but two of the world’s countries, islands and territories, Clouse was the world’s most traveled man. A decorated combat veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, Clouse swore if he ever got out of the Ardennes intact he was going live an entirely original life.

He did just that.

He was maybe the most swashbuckling storyteller I’ve ever known. Absolutely hilarious. He was married and divorced six times. 

Cammarata was married to the same woman, the late Marietta, for more than 70 years and became world famous for rarely leaving the same building.

He is in the Guinness book for being the world’s longest serving bartender. He poured his first beer at his father’s old North Side tavern at midnight on April 7, 1933, the exact moment killjoy Prohibition in Pennsylvania was repealed.

I believe the Greatest Generation would have been worthy of being deemed the Greatest Generation if the only men in the Greatest Generation were Clouse and Cammarata.

It’s a pity Clouse never traveled to West View. These two men that seemed to have so little in common would have reveled in one another’s company.

I’ve never met two people with more genuine warmth and affection for their fellow man. It’s a joyful exuberance for the innate humanity that flickers within every human struggler.

Clouse discovered it by going all over the world. Cammarata by letting the world come to him.

I guess the best story I have about him is from 2006 when I was teaching narrative non-fiction at Point Park University and had Ange come in to be the final exam.

I was all about getting students to learn everything they could about a subject by asking incisive questions.

He was 97. I told him to simply answer their questions.

I introduced him by saying, “This is Angelo Cammarata. He is your final exam.”

The students went through about 15 minutes of increasingly frustrated questions — Where do you live? What do you do? — all the answers to which made this uncommon man seem increasingly common.

Then one exasperated student finally blurted out, “What makes you so special?”

That’s when he told them about being recognized by Guinness. 

He told them about the friendships he’s enjoyed, the family to whom he was devoted, the importance of persistence, and why he felt sad for people who choose to be pessimists.

He talked about how he’d made it a part of his daily routine to drive a cherished old friend to and from the bar because he knew how much Cammarata’s camaraderie meant to the old man — and to him.

He talked about all the customers he’d served, the spirits he’d lifted, the marriages he’d saved, the suicides he’d prevented.

How, he was asked, did he find the words for these humble heroics?

“Didn’t need to. Most people who are having trouble don’t need advice. They just need someone who’ll listen.”

He did this all with a gentle manner and smile so warm and engaging he made Fred Rogers look like a sourpuss.

Later, me and the whole class went back with him to the bar where this famous gent poured us all beers.

It was funny, I’d spent 12 weeks trying to teach them how to succeed as writers, but in two breezy hours he taught them all they’d ever need to know about how to succeed as people.

One of the perfunctory questions I often ask subjects is about the best years of their lives. Many respond with “college,” or “When the kids were young,” or some other slim sampling of our portion.

Ange forever endeared himself to me when I asked him that question and he thoughtfully said, “I think they were the years from between when I was 35 and 80. Those were just really great years.”

Talk about seeing the big picture.

So pardon me if I’m not all weepy about my beloved Pirates getting bumped from the playoffs.

On this day, I don’t feel like any sort of loser.

I'm one of life's real winners.

I was friends with Angelo Cammarata.

Related . . .

When taverns usurp church; a bartender retires

A beloved — and legendary — bartender turns 100

A great fan; a better man (Steelers honor Ange)

I’m seeking a 25-year-old friend

The future of Edward Snowden

America getting too smart for its own good

My daughter, 11 and already beginning to sense fatherly failures, asked if I’d be teaching again this year. For three of the past four years I’ve taught creative non-fiction to graduate students at Point Park University in Pittsburgh.

No, I said. I’m done teaching.

“Did you get fired?”

No, it’s impossible to fire someone who doesn’t have a job.

“Why won’t you go back?”

They’re not interested in me. They said I’m no longer qualified.

“Too bad. I know you liked doing it.”

For a split second I thought about launching into a little parental dissertation about the importance of education, but my heart wasn’t in it.

And I don’t want to risk my daughter growing up over-educated like the rest of America.

New state regulations mean I have to on paper be at least be a smidgen smarter than the people I teach and that’s no longer possible.

I was an adjunct professor -- no salary, no benefits, no commitments. It’s the professional equivalent of a one-night stand. And I’m all for that.

The first day was always my favorite. I’d deliberately rush in to the first of 16 three-hour sessions 10 minutes late. Everyone was pissed.

Then looking frantic as a meth chef on deadline, I’d pull out a single sheet of paper and begin stammering: “When . . . I . . . heard . . . I’d . . . be . . . teaching . . . a . . . three ...”

Now imagine those excruciating pauses here: “When I heard I’d be teaching a three hour class I figured the only way I could talk that long for that duration was if I put . . . really . . . really . . . really . . . long . . . pauses . . . between . . . all . . . the . . . words.”

I had them by the end. They knew it was a joke.

My teaching was not. I earned uniformly good student evaluations and have maintained warm friendships with students who still seek my advice.

I think they liked my class because I’m an omnibus of their combined career dreams. Some of them dream of writing books. Some wonder what it would be like to dabble in tabloids. Some are ambitious to land bylines in prestigious magazines like Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Cooking Light, Men’s Health and Playboy.

I’ve done all that.

I loved college, but I’m confident I’d be the same writer I am today if I’d have skipped college and the subsequent student loan burdens and had instead sought a six-month internship under a crackerjack editor.

That was a recurring theme of mine made most emphatic in what I called my little-old-lady-in-the-woods postulate.

It’s about how while we’re engaged in lofty and theoretical discussions about writing, there’s a little old lady in the woods who just woke up today and decided she’s going to be a writer.

She never went to college, studied formal sentence structure or done much of anything but live her happy little life up there in the woods.

“This is the only calling where you don’t need any education. You can’t wake up tomorrow and say, gee, I think today I want to become a doctor, an engineer or even a school crossing guard. But anyone in the world with drive, a good story and a sharp pencil can tomorrow wake up and be a great author.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?”

I’m friends with many successful tradesmen. They repair roofs, unclog drains and fix your furnace when it fritzes.

They don’t talk about working. They work.

I’ve been encouraged to go back to school and earn another degree so I can resume teaching. Most of the people encouraging me to do so are the people who most benefit from all these people going back to school to earn more and more degrees.

They are academics. They think any problem can be solved through additional study.

On paper, America’s never been smarter. Everyone has a B.A., an M.A., an LL.D. or a Ph.Ds in sociology, poli sci or English lit. Many of them are doing honest work in places like Target and Lowes.

We do more thinking than doing and I’m thinking that’s a problem.

Pretty soon we’ll all be some sort of titular doctor fretting over coffee to one another about how there’s no one left who knows how to fix a busted fridge.

So, no, I’ll not incur $12,000 in debt to add another title indicating I know how to write.

If someone wants to see if I know how to write, I don’t show them a resume. I show them this blog.

It would require further study, but I wonder if this over-education is the root of Global Warming.

We’re all being burned out by too many degrees.

My mini-commencement address

Tonight is the last class I’ll teach this semester. It’ll likely be the last scholarly class many of my 16 grad students at Point Park University ever attend.

This, to me, is too momentous an occasion to let slide with yet another tedious dissertation about where to put all the commas.

So as is my custom, tonight I’ll engage the students in the grave life lessons I’ve learned over 47 years. I feel an obligation to deviate from conventional wisdoms and tell them -- political correctness be damned -- some of what I’ve learned.

Here is a summary of what I plan to say. Note: this version omits all the “uhs,” “ums” and other awkward pauses where I get distracted by the sounds of passing sirens or stop for as long as 90 seconds or so to scratch myself.

Good evening,

I’ve been privileged to be the instructional portal for teaching you how to navigate the choppy waters of basic storytelling and to provide you with a handy list of excuses for when the spellchecker fails to realize you meant ‘earthquake’ when you typed ‘earthquack.’

I’ve taught you all I know about how to be a successful journalist, which can be boiled down to five words: Do everything opposite of me.

Now I’m going to tell you how to be successful adults.

First, get the hell out of the passing lane. Remember, it’s not a left lane. It’s a passing lane. Apply your left turn signal and accelerate past slower drivers on the right. Then do the reverse with the right turn signal so you can get the hell out of my way.

Remember as you go through life to mute all the commercials. You’re a savvy bunch. You don’t need Flo or the Geico gecco to tell you you need insurance. Prime-time television devotes 23 minutes of every hour to selling you stuff you already have. Over the course of a year, you could earn a law degree simply by studying while the commercials are on mute. Keep a newspaper or magazine handy.

Wait until you’re 35 until you even consider getting married, then don’t get married until you’re 40. Willie Nelson says there is no such thing as ex-wives. There are only additional wives. Always aspire to the wisdoms of Willie.

Ask your parents important questions before it’s too late. Ask mom why she fell in love with dad. Ask dad about his greatest regret. And, remember, sometimes the most important question you can ever ask either parent is a sincere, hey, how are you doing?

Smile at strangers in elevators and talk to them when you’re sitting next to one another on airplanes. We’re all in this together.

I learned this by interacting with my 3 year old, but it applies to sweethearts, too. The four ingredients for any loving relationship are: play, tickle, cuddle and kiss. You can based on need divine your own proportions, but those are the essentials.

It’ll take three baseball-sized bean bags and about a month of stooping over, but learning to juggle will help you think through a lot of life’s problems.

Avoid going through life too drunk or addicted to drugs. Be careful, especially, of prescription drugs. We live in times of national madness when people consume more drugs than vegetables. It’s a sad, sad fact that strong drink and mind-altering drugs destroy many promising young lives.

On the flip side, avoid going through life way too sober. Excessive sobriety is a societal scourge with a host of nasty consequences all its own.

Both drunk and sober, I’ve devoted countless hours trying to figure out the meaning of life. I have failed. I have not the depth of wisdom to grapple with the answer to the greatest question.

But I know someone who did, someone with even more cerebral cred than baked, wise Willie. It’s Albert Einstein.

A 19-year-old Rutger’s University student in 1950 asked Einstein the purpose of life.

Here, in part, is what the genius said: “The answer is, in my opinion: satisfaction of the desires and needs of all, as far as can be achieved, and achievement of harmony and beauty in the human relationships.”

To paraphrase: the reason we’re here is to help each other. And to convince people to get the hell out of the passing lane.”

And that’s how I’ll conclude. That bit about the passing lane came from me, not Einstein, but I thought it would have more weight if I passed it off as coming from him.

And it is pretty darned important.

Justice and John Grisham

Here’s another indication of just how massive my ego is: Wednesday night I had an opportunity to forfeit one night of professorial instruction in favor of letting my students hear another writer speak.

It was not an easy call. I had to carefully weigh whether they would benefit more from a ninth three-hour class with me or one hour with a writer who might shed some insights into aspects of the writing profession. The other writer?

John Grisham.

He was invited to speak to The Innocence Institute at Point Park University in Pittsburgh where I teach creative non-fiction. Two of my students, Matt Stroud and Marie DoRego, are pillars of the program that painstakingly researches cases of death row inmates who claim to have been wrongly convicted.

They devoted long hours with grizzled program director Bill Moushey, a legendary local reporter, and thought, gee, maybe other aspiring journalists would benefit from the experience.

Partly out of laziness, I decided, yeah, well, let’s let them hear what a guy who’s sold more than 250 million books has to say. The students would have to write about the evening.

Twelve hours later, I’m convinced I made the right decision. But not for any of the reasons you might suspect.

Sure, Grisham was great. He was funny, handsome and spoke with a drawling eloquence that made everything he said compelling.

In short, he was everything that the three men who told unforgettable stories are not.

They are Greg Bright, John Thompson and Douglas Dilosa.

You may never have heard their names and but for saintly work by people in other Innocence Institutes you never would have. Thompson was five days from a date with a Louisiana electric chair.

The men spent a combined 58 years in Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary, one of the most notorious, soul-devouring prisons on earth.

They took turns telling their stories from stools behind metal podiums on a barren stage. Their demographic breakdown roughly equalled that of our nation’s prisons. Bright and Thompson were poor blacks from challenging backgrounds convicted of murdering strangers.

Dilosa on September 27, 1986, was a lot like me. He was a happily married father of two young children he adored. He was convicted of killing his wife for insurance money and then, according to prosecutors, staging a crime scene to make it look like it had been done by two intruders he swore were getting away with murder. Prosecutors said he’d strangled his wife, mangled himself and tied himself up to foil investigators.

Each was sent to Angola, Dilosa for 14 years, Thompson for 17, and Bright for 27.

Eventually, all were exonerated. A system that in every way was stacked against them said oops. Oops, but not sorry. None of the men were compensated for the lost years.

They talked about the indelible stigma that comes from being wrongly convicted in a society that smugly assures itself, hey, the dude had to be guilty of something.

But as Grisham’s 2006 non-fiction book “The Innocent Man” details, our criminal justice system is rife with laziness and outright corruption. It happens with police, lawyers, junk science, snitch testimony and indifferent judges who mars a system that strives for fairness.

Wrong men are convicted while guilty men roam free.

Later, I coaxed my students to talk to the men at the follow-up reception. It’s where I always get the best stories, I said.

And I couldn’t resist. I cornered Bright. He told me even after 27 years in Angola, he never stopped believing the system that put him away would eventually free him. He said he has no bitterness, was thrilled the Saints won the Super Bowl, and that he hadn’t seen “The Shawshank Redemption.”

He said the worst thing about being in prison was hearing the prison chaplain tell him his mother died thinking her son would be executed for a heinous crime she knew he did not commit. He said the best thing about being free is just being free.

Me and two of my young male students were talking when I saw Dilosa talking to one of their female classmates.

They thought it might be rude to interrupt. Nonsense, I said. Your job is to get a good story out of this. It can be done without being rude.

Maybe by them, but not by me. I went over and swamped the whole conversation. I just had too many questions.

He said he thought of committing suicide to spare his sons the indignities of prison visits. He said they found the “expert witness” who showed the jury how any man could tie himself up without assistance at a state fair. The guy was a professional contortionist.

As he was about to leave I had one last question: “How ‘bout them Saints!”

Dilosa fairly quaked with rage.

“I was furious they won the Super Bowl,” he said. “It deludes the people of Louisiana into thinking everything’s all right when innocent men are going through absolute hell every day of their lives.”

When it was over, I drove to my mom’s apartment in the South Hills where I stay with my 3-year-old daughter on nights when I teach class. I hugged mom, told her I loved her, then climbed into the bed where my father slept before he died in 2004 and later my grandfather before he died in 2008.

I cuddled my sweet little darling and said a prayer that someday a loving God will bring justice to all the wrongly convicted men and women who survive in prisons on the slim hopes that one day they might enjoy a single moment like the ones I enjoy throughout each and every day.

And I prayed that He will show a mercy undeserved to men like me for not doing more to help men like them.