No soccer today. It rained over night (an inch), and the local Park & Rec brass, worried about damage to their fields, refused to let any games go forward. There were a bunch of frustrated boys and coaches today, because the weather was lovely, clear and crisp fall weather, dry and sunny, perfect socer weather.
The families with kids on the team who grew up overseas, playing soccer in Britain, Germany, parts of South America, etc., can't quite believe the nature of such things here in California. We treat weather, when it appears, as a surprise, a departure from the norm. Really, last night's rain was a rather heavy fog. No reason to panic. No reason to cancel games.
In fact, the kids (and the parents) needed a game so much they went and played an informal game anyway. Who won?
The kids, of course.
***
On those 45 miles south to San Jose this morning, I was listening to the Beach Boys. This is my "upper" music, counter-balancing my usual staple of the blues.
Somebody called, and I punched the music off. When I turned it back on, with one eye on the road ahead, I was suddenly listening to the radio ("Car Talk") and learning a few things about how automobiles operate. This is something of a sore spot with me. Growing up in Michigan in an extended working class immigrant family of auto workers who *all* knew more than I did about how an engine works is a familiar place to me.
As my best friend Howard did his journalism in Detroit, the combination of cops and drug dealers and double agents managed to do him in, and he was kidnapped in his own car by an informant who used Howard's own gun (from his glove apartment) to try and shoot him.
Ah, yes. Reality. It has been so much uglier than the stories we want to tell ourselves. And few of the real stories turned out to have any sort of happy ending...After all, they were not crafted in Hollywood.
-30-
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