Freddogg Off The Chain

Coach Fred down in Special Ed, the man who looked and sounded strikingly like Gabe Kaplan, star of the television series Welcome back Kotter. The Cape kids from Lower Delaware 1975 came by my room to get a look, young girls swooned like I was a movie star, and the throw away "Special Ed All Day" students had their games elevated, reflecting in my unearned celebrity which made no sense whatsoever.

Two weeks into my new job I pulled out a tee shirt with a winged foot on the front that read "Mitchell School Track" and on the back the name "Coach Frederick". I hated that shirt and the thought of walking down the street with my name across the shoulder blades. I raffled off the shirt in class-hyped it with a made up history-the bidding ran up to 15 dollars-Vaughn won- I took his money and gave him the shirt-talked of impulse buying-then gave him his money back.

Two days later there was Coach Frederick on the front page of the Morning News Journal along with the rest of the road crew from the local prison picking up highway trash.
“Vaughn may be an impulsive buyer but at least he ain’t in prison doing 10 years for holding up a liquor store,”Blue said, and they all laughed, because they knew Vaughn’s brother was getting that shirt and that it would be a front page statewide story-I never knew how they knew stuff like that but they were always dialed in to future random happenings.
Just before Christmas on a Friday I had my check on the desk. I had gotten paid for being an assistant football coach so the check was fatter than a dead center sticky bun on a cafeteria serving tray.
Big Heavy Joe with thick glasses, who repeated himself so often and relentlessly if he were a Mynah Bird he’d be blow torched by his owner, got way too interested in my check.
“Coach Fred, how much you make? How much you make? Coach Fred don’t make nothing. He don’t make nothing!”
I whispered in low toned confidence to Joe. “Listen Joe, I want to let you in on a secret. I am the George McGinnis of the Cape faculty. The rest of these chumps get paid peanuts every two weeks. I get paid every day, know what I’m saying, every day. I was recruited right out of Philly. I am an all star, I can palm the ball and dunk with either hand, I am under special contract, I am George McGinnis.”
I opened the check envelop and showed the amount to Joe. Maybe it was over $3,000 dollars. I made Joe promise not to tell anyone because the other teachers would get jealous.
“We cool McGinnis,”Joe said. “McGinnis don’t play, no way! That’s right McGinnis! McGinnis be snapping, can’t nobody mess with him. Hey McGinnis, can I have a pass to the bathroom?”
I wrote out a pass and signed it ‘George McGinnis’-a 6’8” power forward who had just signed with the 76’rs after three all star seasons with the Indiana Pacers of the old ABA.
Joe never came back, traveling the hallways with his McGinnis pass, which he flashed in everyone’s face.
The school principal summoned me to the office where Joe had created an emergency by defying all authority figures with mail order doctorates and refusing to go back to class.
“McGinnis don’t play,” Joe kept saying. “Yaw are a bunch of chumps man. I got me a McGinnis pass and I don’t play with you chumps either. Tell em McGinnis! These chumps are sorry bunch of school yard nobody’s. McGinnis is bad man, makes three thousand dollars a day, while the rest of you make 27 cents, ain’t that right McGinnis?”
Joe spent a good part of his adult life inside a confined observation hospital. Two years ago I came around the corner of the IGA into the cereal aisle and there he was, 30 years later, there was no mistaken Joe, he looked the same.
“McGinnis, what’s up McGinnis? McGinnis don’t be playing. McGinnis might buy this whole IGA store. You bad McGinnis! These other chumps be using food stamps buying barbeque chickens and eating them on the way home cause they sorry, but not you McGinnis. McGinnis is bad!”

Perhaps we all have a little ‘McGinnis within Us’? Actually,I doubt it!

Professor Freddogg

I have been a person belonging to the public all my professional life both as a teacher and journalist. Anytime someone from my cosmos steps off into the social matrix of laws, bylaws and Roberts Rules of Order I most likely know about it. I have taught students the intricacies and subtleties beyond the norms and mores that evolve into the laws guiding human interaction. Many of my best friends and former students have been arrested multiple times with little effort on their part.
“Mr. Frederick, is it true that you told your students if they haven’t been arrested by the time they graduate from high school that they aren’t getting out much? Please tell me you didn’t tell them that,”a parent asked me at the football concession stand not even offering to cover the cost of my boiled dog.
“I responded in non defensive fashion that with Town Cops, State Cops, Rent-A-Cops, Marine Police, Axially Cops, Ferry Cops, Choppers in the sky, Cops under cover, Sheriffs, Deputy Sheriffs, State Park Rangers, Environmental Protection Officers, Game Wardens, Deputy Dogs and an endless pool of Citizens on Patrol that it was no longer a status symbol to “have a sheet” of misdemeanors that would most likely not disappear when they turned 18 because someone, somewhere in place and space, would have to delete their record and that never happens until it’s too late and a prospective employer already knows you smoked Acapulco Gold before the Sun Splash reggae concert and got into a fight with a parking lot tee shirt salesman stoned on Quaaludes.”
. Fredman is a single word nickname given to me by students at Cape Henlopen High School early in my teaching and coaching career. It evolved from Coach Fred and is now moving in the modern millennium towards Freddogg as I get older and cooler. It becomes significant as I am often quoted by young offenders as a sub reference in magistrate courts and inside local police stations where those too talkative for tolerance are handcuffed to wooden benches.
A few summers ago a Magistrate Judge called me at home in the dead of the afternoon.
‘The funniest thing in my entire career just happened in my courtroom,”the Judge said. “Do you know Chris Palmetto?”
“Yes, I know him, former student and football player.”
‘Well I read him his ticket for multiple traffic offenses on the same maneuver in Lewes with the Chief of Police standing right next to him. He was charged with reckless driving, speeding, cracked windshield, no insurance or registration card and operating a motor vehicle with intent to deliver.”
“Dominoes?”
“No!”
“Anyway, Chris looks at the Chief then back at me and said, “everything he wrote down is absolutely true.’”
“Well then, Mr. Palmetto, if everything on the ticket is true, why are you standing in front of me pleading “not guilty?”
“Because Fredman said, “Always plead not guilty, ’” Palmetto said, with a seldom seen straight face.
The Judge thought it hysterical that I was being referenced and cited as a legal authority in court but try taking back a guilty plea coerced by a cop who threatens to pile on charges if you don’t plead out prior to legal counsel.
Another time I was summoned to a State Police Troop after three students were booked on multiple offenses after squealing tires leaving the pool hall parking lot catching the attention of “Secret Stake Out Man” slouching nearby in unmarked white car with black walled tires re-evaluating his career path.
Basically these three college bound seniors had a tiny digital scale in the backseat-grams and kilograms- and unless they were members of weight watchers that just didn’t compute.
The officer was going to “let my people go” except they wouldn’t answer the simplest of questions including their names, destination and who owned the car. Just before enacting the threat to take them to juvenile detention center a cop asked,”What’s wrong with you idiots? Why won’t you talk?”
“Fredman said we have the right to remain silent,”one kid said, before producing my phone number. “I had no idea such a rigid interpretation of Miranda Rights had been inculcated into their craniums through my teaching.
Delmarva is not “The Hood of Human Habitat” so really, is all the enforcement justified? Have you ever stood by and watched a grown man measuring another man’s trout? Have you ever had your boat pulled over by a Marine Policeman in a car because your registration sticker was out of date?
The newest addition to all of this enforcement is Citizens on Patrol inside state parks and small towns. No wonder our inner cities are so lawless. All the enforcement people have moved to Delmarva.
I enter each new day a soft target and easy mark and I will always plead not guilty if I speak at all.

Clones can be made and will be made if there is money to be made. And there will be organs grown by stem cells and they will be for sale if there is a market. There are already test tube babies and surrogate mothers, freaking sperm banks and egg deposit programs.
A recent debate on a Bill O’Reilly program “Is it morally wrong to clone a monkey?” I am agonizing over that question but the bigger issue: “Is it morally wrong to fertilize a monkey egg in a Petri dish with a human sperm cell then place it inside the uterus of a surrogate mother, human or monkey?”
Yes, of course, that is messed up but put it in the bank it will happen because it is scientifically possible and mans thirst for knowledge is as unquenchable as an alcoholic in a brew pub. And here’s a tip, ”don’t stare down 'monkey man' in the WaWa because he will pummel your” horses ass” or is that “pommel horse your ass” and then do back handsprings over you 'beaten like a third world dog' self.
Here is the skinny on how cloning works, it is in quotes because I got it from a Clone leaving the Bagel shop who wishes to remain an anonymous clone which is weird because five other people in there looked just like him.
“The process is as follows: an egg cell taken from a donor has its nucleus removed. Another cell with the genetic material to be cloned is fused with the original egg cell. In theory, this process, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, could be applied to human beings.”
“Oh no,that annoying kid that sat behind me in high school, well it appears somebody cloned his ass several times-no tens of times-in fact- all the children left behind have cloned themselves mulitple times in an organized Revenge of the Clones” but wait is that Bo Derrick I see cleaning out your gutters and isn’t that Serena the prosecutor from Law and Order power washing your garage? Where did you get them?’
“Down at the Clone outlet. It’s two for one pre midnight madness to Black Friday sale. “
The technology is simple-people are greedy and immoral-“I’ll be a Clone for Christmas”

Professor Freddogg

Twenty, if not thirty years ago, I stood in front of my classroom and told my students, ”If the rich people haven’t bought up all the beach front property and built big obnoxious houses with great views then don’t let your poor ass ‘shack it up’ because when the wind blows it's a sure sign that the Bay of Bengal is about to rise 20 feet quicker then you can scream “Neil Frank” and run to the high ground that ain’t nowhere around.

Natural disasters-some simply call them god- have been dogging people in that region before the Concert for Bangladesh was conceived by George Harrison back when it was East Pakistan and a cyclone could claim 10 thousand people then five years later claim 10 thousand more.

We know pride and pestilence is nature’s way of cleansing the planet and we are nature which is why I don’t live in Camden New Jersey where my fellow man would just as soon shoot me that ask for directions to the aquarium where he mother was baptized.

What do you think of all this because the evidence is pretty convincing, either natural disasters are selective, preferring poor people or it’s some heavenly plan? And don't start talking about the San Diego fire.

Freddogg

I play by the rules almost all of the time. I guess laws are a system of rules developed from societal norms and mores that we contract to observe under penalty of having stuff taken away from us like money or freedoms or worse athletic victories and the right to stay with our team. That’s cool, I’m down with it to a point but if all rules were fair and just we wouldn’t need lawyers and courts and that scary American Civil Liberties Union.
The last two weeks I’ve written newspaper stories about high schools forfeiting games for use of an ineligible player. That is high school sports version of the death penalty. And why punish a single player when you can persecute an entire team?
I propose a ‘Whoops Rule” like our government uses when we make a mistake and drop a bomb on the Chinese embassy or flame out a passenger train of commuters with a smart bomb and save the cockpit video like we did back when NATO thought bombing Bosnia or was that Serbia perhaps Herzegovina was a good idea.
Amazingly I coached high school track for 10 years from 1975 to 1985, my teams hard core, many athletes on probation and great adventures in the classroom. The teams were 60 strong and I never mistakenly or intentionally used an ineligible athlete because I couldn’t run or jump in the meets but I could triple check a list and requirements fearing my oversight may result in our disqualification and giving back trophies we had already won.
“Sorry girls but we read Sally’s transcript this way when we should have read it that way and so the game she played in where she was an inconsequential participant must now be forfeited because that’s the rule and the team you beat which may or may not include girls who lather each morning with Marion Jones body wash will now be taking your place in the state finals where ironically they have as good a chance to win as the other team even though their coach was thrown out of your game for unsportsmanlike behavior no need to punish everyone for his bad behavior.
Have a nice off season.”

Sometimes “The Rule” gets in the way of ‘The Right”decision.

Freddogg Off The Chain which is against the rules

Yesterday I went to take a few pictures of a high school wrestler signing a National Letter of Intent to grapple at a Division Two school. Nice kid, nice grandmothers but the dad had suckered me into a media event and there was a cafeteria filled with photographers so I took a picture of a sheet cake because I knew that the rest of them would get up and do the same thing and I kept mumbling “I hate this! If you want me, I come running, but I require exclusivity.”

Later at night I was covering the semi finals of a field hockey tournament. I choose three girls for head shots and interviews after the game. One girl had an assist and that’s it, so I figured I’d have her to myself. Wrong, the rest of the writers figured I knew something they didn’t so I got followed. They also were surrounding my other two interviewees. Did I mention the head coach hugged me and nobody else because when you’ve been around a long time coaches and friends will “hug you up.” I’ve had more men tell me they love me than any straight man is the history of the planet.

I told the trainer of the winning team ,a young woman who also hugged me and loves me that I hated the media. “Check that, I said, “I hate everybody.”

The bright spot of my day was in the late afternoon when I had to stop for a Cow Crossing. “What in Carnation?”
I took a photo, an exclusive shot and if some other digital wanker had showed up I may have uddered an obscenity.
"Go home and hug your own heifer!"

freddogg

Lisa McCalmont, 49; lawyer had key role in challenge to execution by lethal injection


The Oklahoma attorney took her own life just before the issue is to be addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court. She left no suicide note.
By Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 14, 2007
Lisa McCalmont, an Oklahoma attorney who played a key role in the legal battle challenging the execution of inmates by lethal injection, has died. She was 49.

McCalmont killed herself at her home in Norman, Okla., about midnight on Nov. 1, according to friends. She was found by her husband, Craig Dixon, a geophysicist. She did not leave a suicide note before hanging herself.

Friends and associates, some who had known her for years and others who had worked closely with her in recent months, all said they were mystified about why McCalmont decided to take her own life just two months before the lethal injection issue was due to be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court.


I read this online this morning in the Los Angeles Times and it kind of knocked me over. I have always taught that suicide was an overriding of the self preservation instinct and by definition the person was “not in their right mind” and, in fact, they may not be in there at all.
I taught my psychology students to think of themselves as a 747 which can fly autopilot if you fall asleep at the controls. That’s why alcohol and abuse of drugs coupled the stressors that make a person an addictive personality in the first place can all evolve into an automatic pilot cerebral condition that will have the brain protecting itself from itself like in conversion disorders where healthy people go blind, paralyzed and lose their voice. It is the control center shutting down in “freak this mess” self defense.
I know, “what about clinical depression” you ask, raising your head from your hands? I know it’s real because I’ve read it in books but it cannot be bottled or transmitted and name another mammal that lies around despondent before sprinting off to end its own life by hurling it’s doggy self under a self propelled lawn tractor or whatever.

The woman behind the “lethal injection is cruel and unusual argument” to be heard in front of the Supreme Court in two weeks hangs herself and leaves no note? It’s just too weird, a self execution by hanging which is a cruel twist of fate and certainly an unusual ending to the life of a smart woman with a social conscious.

I could be driving these points home to students today in a classroom. I see a hand going up in the back of the room. ”Yes Dan, do you have a question?”
“Do you care if I eat this corn dog in here if all your going to do is talk?”
All my readers can now ‘corn dog it up’ because I am out!

Professor Freddogg

Dead November air and mild temperatures brought almost nobody to the boardwalk late Thursday afternoon because it was the dinner hour. There was a fat seagull on every single light post and v-necked Canadian Geese heading north. I saw some lazy white guy sprawled back on the counter of a jewelry store and if the Indian owners saw him pocket clock watching his ass would be back at Uncle Willies on the graveyard shift serving as bait for nervous crack heads of the night.

A middle-aged two ax handles wide western jeans wearing woman who buys shoes from the tire department at Sam’s Club waddled up to a boardwalk bench and her adoring husband-happy off the ride of his life earlier that afternoon-hoisted her up and for a flash it was so hideous the Seagulls bailed for inland grub retrieval.

She stood there hands on hips the body language was saying “I’m in charge here! This is all mine! The beach is my kitchen! Check me out! Don’t throw the high fastball up in my wheelhouse or I'll go yard on your lollipop ass!"

The husband was wearing a sport coat which had me mumbling “somebody needs to shoot his ass” and it may be improper use of adjectives but I believe he hoisted her down the way an engine hoist lifts up before setting down and your right ,”what about the ocean? Why was I fixating on this couple?”

Actually I was waiting for the aging and out of shape white gay guys with an old Corgi named Harry to compare ‘wants and desires’ outside the candy Kitchen window. The one guy had Steven Seagull black hair pulled back into bobbed pony tail and he looked like the Aunt Betty of my 1950’s childhood who was, a Lesbian who specialized in incestuous cross gender grouping just to see if she could get a rise out of a relative too young for a drivers license. My cousin Harry was on a learners permit his entire prepubescent period which continues until this day.

Later at night I got a call from Gene’ Bucko” Kilroy who was Muhammed Ali’s personal manager for 40 years and they are still great friends. Bucko, my wife’s uncle not far enough removed, is now a “major player” in Vegas. He knows every celebrity in the world if you don’t believe me just google him like Aunt Betty googled cousin Harry back when laptop had an entirely different meaning.

Anyway the guy who was in the corner for every Ali fight traveling all over the world said to me,” You were one of the greatest athletes I ever saw” and sitting on the couch with a half eaten pepper popper in a paper towel I began to puff up with pride and then Bucko asked, ”How big are you?” and I responded “Do you mean how much do I weigh or did I grow to 6’11”?

‘Yea how big are you?’

“I can step up on a boardwalk bench and get back down by myself that’s how big I am, ”I told him.

“That’s good because I can’t,” he said. “I need a knee replacement.”

I ask Bucko to “say hello to the champ for me” and bailed back to my pepper popper.

All in all, it was a slow day with not much funny stuff going on in my life.

Freddogg

Some years ago sitting in an elevated booth eating pizza with a bunch of adult men who just finished playing full court basketball where the uncontested lay-up was just an ugly attempt to avoid multiple injuries, a state cop asked a college professor, “so how much do you make anyway?”
That became a long running joke, because asking that question is comically rude and most of us are perceived as being worth much less than we actually earn and that’s the way we like each other.
I was a public employee and perceived by students as affable, respectful of them, funny, clever, and easy grader, who taught life lessons and affording them the opportunity to express an opinion.
Once in awhile a student would ask, “What are you doing here making 30 grand a year, you should be a stand-up comedian.”
Then I would do my job and tell them facts which would increase their knowledge of the planet-no, it’s not 300 miles to Spain-and also tell them their teachers made twice as much money as students thought they were worth.
I’d throw out $70 grand a year for the average experienced teacher with a Masters Degree plus 45 credits in off road Sussex County and the students would flip, saying “phys ed teachers too” and the underlying current would be ugly reflective of the home front where teachers are perceived as doughnut dispensers making tips and overtime.
I’d also be asked if I got paid for “that little article” I wrote in the paper twice a week. My job as sports editor of a local paper including game stories, photos and columns looked like so much fun that it had to be a hobby.
I am always asked to emcee events and there is no expectation that I would be paid because I’m quick, funny and witty for free but for payment they will go get a professional. I'd always joke "why pay a pro when you cannot pay me?"
Five years ago I was teaching, writing and knocking down a real academic Masters Degree with courses in Bio Technology, Irish Literature, Latin American History, First Amendment Analysis and shit like that there.
And often people would ask me “So what exactly do you do?” and I would always answer “I don’t do a dam thing” because that is my talent-no matter how much I am doing I always look like I’m doing nothing-which is why my conversations with others are always interrupted because “how important can they be compared with the pressing needs of the overburdened and self absorbed?”
I am bringing up this subject as the revelation that local School District administrators have been granted raises over the last three years has been met with outrage by people who make much less with much less education because a plumber may be worth 85 dollars and hour but an education ain’t worth shit to a persons life running downhill.
In closing, let me ask,”How much does your sorry ass make and is it twice as much as your actually worth"

Professor Freddogg

Duck, a 6’5” too white for direct light, Temple basketball recruit, stuck his long neck and obnoxious face into the transom window over top the dorm door of Johnson Hall’s 10th floor room inhabited by a pair of artists from the Tyler School of Art. The year was 1964 and it was un-cool for a football athlete like me to have artist friends but nevertheless there I was holding a large seashell while this talented scrawny guy from New York painted something that resembled the hand of god pulling back on evolution which wouldn’t have been a bad idea.
Duck-ironically the duck billed platypus excites anthropologists because “what the hell is it” - kept amping and ramping up his game, so I took a short break, opened the door, took Duck gently to the floor and began to polish the tile with his long blond hair. Domestic duck went mallard, turned many colors, got up and threw a laughable punch,I grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back and threatened to break it if he didn’t just go away. He went away sticking out his neck and face like he had just kicked my ass.
The artist, who turned out to be New York famous, did a charcoal portrait of me for helping him out. Six months after I took it home I asked my mother where it was. “Where it was mom?”
“It’s upstairs on top of that television that won’t turn off,”she said. “While your up there, see if you spot checkers”?
The calico Checkers, who would bite your nose unprovoked, was curled up on my charcoal face as Bandstand warmed the television. I took a minute to fantasize about Justine Corelli then Arlene DiPeitro then yelled at Checkers to “get off my face!”
My face had been erased, pulled back, matted and etched into the evolutionary belly of a biting calico. I was a hologram of history, only seen by moonlight, undulating across suburban backyards on the left side belly of a stupid assed soon to be backed over by a 1959 Plymouth house cat I was worth nothing, as hairline drawings and disappeared faces by famous artists had no market value except in Argentina.

Freddogg

How much would you charge to Wax a herd of Elephants who are otherwise minding their own business?
I’m not talking Turtle Wax I’m talking automatic weapon and you get to ride on horseback and dress like a Raider of the Lost Ark action hero. Let’s say 30 Elephants including the baby ones. Remember they are highly intelligent and loyal to family and friends. Could you murder Elephants in Africa for a million dollars or even five million how about 10 then get on a plane and come back home with money to invest in your children’s and grandchildren’s college fund and what if it were all legal?
I saw the 60 minutes promo after the Colts/Patriots game as I sat in the pressbox at Lincoln Financial Field. No one paid attention and the monitors were quickly changed to a channel carrying John Madden’s face speaking of the elephant in the middle of the room. I was disgusted and even the Eagles performance against Dallas couldn’t trump my sick feeling.
There is not enough money in the entire world to pay me to waste one elephant. Could I join a group of elephant protectors, be issued a weapon and shoot at the people who ride in to murder them? I believe I could be talked into that so I conclude that one innocent elephant is worth more than 10 murderous humans.
And why are we humans so sure there are no elephants in heaven? Is it because they don’t have souls or wear shoes?
How about Saint Peter walks us through heavens gates and the first thing we see is a family of elephants?
“Are those mother-humping elephants I see over there Petey Dog? Who let them in?
“A better question is, ‘who let you in?’
A drive-in liquor store in Dover, Delaware had a train of pink elephants painted around the yellow cinderblock pointing to the drive-in window. You have to love delirium tremens humor and the sick Pakistani proprietor who thought of it.
But seriously, all great white hunters with scoped shotguns getting ready for deer season in your local neighborhoods, is killing elephants for their tusks simply promotion of the musical arts because who wants to tickle the ivories when they are still attached to the pachyderm because if you play the elephant he just may play back.

Peace

Freddoggy

I was on ITunes Sunday Morning Coming Down and ended up scrolling down the soundtrack from Brokeback Mountain which has some great music on it and I looked up to the right of the screen and it read “Listeners who purchased this album also bought “Blackout” by Britney Spears and I was like “Brokeback Britney” I’d rather be a step away from Gay that two steps closer to having Britney music on my IPOD. Talk about a Coming Out reckoning.

Last year I walked into my favorite bar and ran into a Joe I used to know and coach and still call J.V. Joe. He was dressed in a long leather 'High Plains Drifter' coat and cowboy hat. Joe is black and another black regular at the bar ‘Chicken George’ came up to me and said,”Fredman, I see you already know Broke Black Cowboy.”

I love the unanticipated “funny moment” and now that I am IPOD synced at the gym younger athletes I know come up laughing asking “what kind of music are you listening to Fredman” like I’m some silly older guy brushing up against a technological world he is dragging his Golden Oldies into?

I wonder which answer would have the best chance of flooring them, Brokeback Cowboy Soundtrack or Blackout by Britney?

Gooba Gooba Gooba Gooba Don't You Just Know It?

Freddogg

I took off during halftime of the two football games I was watching in the garage and went to Lowe’s for Some Space heater investigation. The place was packed with older couples on Saturday outings “how come you never take me anywhere?”
The women mostly trailed the men, a few walked in front, and a couple or two held hands in case one slid on the concrete floor the other could counterbalance.
I had no idea what I was looking for or where to look and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask someone who works there because they hate that and always pretend they are designing a construction project on the computer and just could not be bothered with customers.
I landed in a aisle that sold humidifiers, dehumidifiers and air purifiers and I don’t own any of those things and what’s worse I don’t know if I need to own one and if so “is my house too dry or damp and if the air is purified just exactly what pathogens are being sucked and plucked from the atmosphere of my not so great room?
I stood looking at a box with a picture of a little propane heater and the Lowe’s guy came by with another guy and they were desperately looking to kill off minutes until quitting time so they asked me if I needed any help.
Next thing I know I was asking questions like “where do you get a propane tank and who fills it up and if you weren’t careful could it asphyxiate the dogs and should I purchase a carbon monoxide alarm and what about a radon detector?
I pretty much left with nothing and went to Food Lion because I’m M.V.P. of the entire store and they sell Vitamin Water and I like the colors but it taste like garbage and throws my “attitude “into hyper drive.
I heard the great Studs Terkel interviewed on public radio on my way home. Studs was born in 1912 –he is 95 years old-and he talked of the McCarthy era and said he himself was investigated by Navy Intelligence. “Imagine that, ”Studs said. “I can’t even swim.”
Peace Freddogg

I grew up surrounded by sickness, disease, depression and terminal illnesses and those were just the pets.
The point is when you have experienced life and lives lost and have watched those close to you get dealt bad cards they can’t throw away to the dealer you develop a certain insulating arrogance from what others deem important, especially as it relates to money and jobs.
“Pay attention because this is important!” may be a quote form a concerned employer or boss looking threateningly into your face but if a shrug of the shoulders is all you can summon it may be concluded that it is not earth shattering important to you.
Back in 1975 I took a Special Education teaching job at Cape Henlopen in off road Lower Delaware by the sea and was appointed Head Track Coach. The school had won four state titles in five years and there was no where for me to go but down but my special job gave me control over several special athletes so I could keep an eye on them get them stronger and pretty much guarantee thier eligiblity.
I’m from Philly and talked funny, a conflicting contrast with the lower Delaware accent-sing-song, back of the throat, hillbilly he-haw, except for the black people who sounded like the black people I knew in Philadelphia.
I remember a quote for Red Foxx at a Howard Cosell Roast: ”When I look at Howard it makes me glad all black people look alike.” I think there is a language lesson imbedded in that joke because it is just near to impossible to find a home grown black hick in America.
My class load involved the same 20 kids in and out of my room all day long and 19 of them were black and many of them were quicker and smarter than me-except for the other white guy-and I knew these characters were stashed in special class because they were a social pain in the ass in mainstream classes.
Every one of them loved my class “Fractions and Fitness” which started off with disposal of multiplication and division of fractions and ended with circuit training around a Universal weight machine stashed in a big empty room no one ever used next to the school cafeteria.
My students were buff and brazen and quick with percentages of small numbers. We ran the school store out of my classroom just pulling a glass counter case across the doorway during lunches.
The kids did all the purchasing, selling and loan sharking. The school administration was astounded at the great job I was doing and the reported store profits which were meager compared with the money siphoned off the top and I didn’t know how they did it and didn’t care. These kids didn’t ask to be Special People and run some dopey assed store and be marginalized inside their own school so suddenly they were idealized and envied and everyone wanted to take Fractions and Fitness along with making pocket change for out of pocket expenses.
A substitute came to my classroom doorway on a midweek November morning as I was summoned to the school office. There in a conference room and sitting around a table was every administrator employed by the district from superintendent to director of special programs and my principal. I sat down and they all starred at me. I was never so happy not to be guilty of anything unlawful so I didn’t know what their problem was and didn’t care.
Big Mike the blue collar principal with meaty hands and dirty fingernails was two fisting a pencil and tapping it on the table. He looked at me over the top of his glasses.
“Mr. Frederick, we have what you call a situation here, which is why you are here because of the situation here and….what do you know about pencils?’
Ten years earlier an inquisition of catholic priests sat around a table at my high school and asked me “what do you know about the devil” because a caucused opinion based on an essay I wrote in detention concluded that I was possibly possessed by demonic literary characters.
“I know more about pencils than anyone at this table,”I said. “If you hand me that pencil and ask me to go into your best class and talk about it I could teach an entire unit because it’s just what I do.”
“What do you know about tractor trailers?”
“I can teach a semester course on tractor trailers. I used to work at a trailer factory. I know about kingpins, fifth wheels, struts, rivets and mud flaps. I know that Jane Mansfield was decapitated when she skidded into the back of a Fruehauf trailer.”
The Superintendent had a wry smile on his face. I knew he liked me which he should have because at least I wasn’t a boring teacher or fearful in the face of overwhelming oddballs.
Mr. Mercer had a pink piece of paper in his hand.
“Fredman. Is that what they call you?”
“Fredman’s Fractions and Fitness. That’s me Sir. “
“Well Fredman, maybe you can tell us why a tractor trailer load of pencils is parked behind the school. There are boxes of blue pencils with gold lettering and gold pencils with blue lettering all inscribed ‘Cape Henlopen School District.’”
“I have no idea about any of that. Why am I being matched up with this odd occurrence?”
Mercer slid a purchase order across the table at me.
“Is that your signature?’
There was my signature next to a crooked number large enough to bring a tractor trailer load of pencils to the high school parking lot.
“I have no recollection of signing that but it’s most likely a slight of hand hoax perpetrated by the oligarchy that runs the school store,”I said.
Mercer sat back and said,”That’s enough pencils for every person in the school district to have five pencils for the next three generations.”
I was sent back to class, the substitute came flying out of the room only partially under his own power.
Big strong students surrounded me with affection. They looked into my possessed soul and I looked back into theirs. We were eternally bonded.
“Fredman is crazy, ordering trailers filled with pencils,”Blue said.
I looked out the window and the trailer was closed.
“How do you know that trailer is filled with pencils?”
The rest of them laughed. “You got him Fredman!”
Fifteen years later I asked for two boxes of pencils, one blue and the other gold, but was told they were being hoarded at the district office in a closet because there were only 10 boxes left and no one could have them. The pencils had become keepsakes of school district history.
Oddly and ironically enough we are all penciled in here on planet earth but for a fraction of time. Stay fit!

I want to shoot and not get shot. I want to compose not decompose. North Philadelphia is the neighborhood of my childhood. I’d love to visit the houses on Sergeant Street and Huntington Street where my parents made love and produced “Fred Heads.” I want to take pictures of houses and hoods. But I know they would kill me-not they-it only takes one impulse and life is beyond cheap-it is a video game.
There is Somerset Street that sat behind the outfield of Connie Mack Stadium and my grand parents house on Hemberger Street. I have no idea what a Hemberger is, possibly a 100 year misspelling or Max Schmelling’s German hometown.
I can go right to my other Grandfathers house at 4th and Lehigh where the big green sign Aramingo Avenue indicates open-air drug market. Shoot, I could make five thousand dollars a week real easy running drugs back to Sussex County but I’d have to pack more heat that Aunt Rose vacuuming a 1950 row house hallway where she couldn’t turn around only back up.
The neighborhood where my great grandparents lived under the elevated tracks in Fishtown was “so cool” but now it’s a kaleidoscope of bilingual dopes who speak pigeon English or Spanish sounding like actual pigeons and stupid ass hip-hop slang, no what I’m sayin?
That’s it I’ve talked myself into it. Is it possible you can’t walk down a public street inside a major American city without getting gunned down? Why are we worrying about civil war in Iraq? How is the bloodshed in our own cities any different?

Word to your Muther!